Most of the time, they're supposed to be working, but they're not because they're playing video games.
I try to make gaming my “work” (or at least content) by occasionally streaming my games and posting the streams to my SWO Productions YouTube channel, but I'm much better at playing games than making videos (the minimalist look of my Twitch and YouTube is proof of that).
The bottom line is, I love games! And when I heard my friends Paul and Wayne each list their top 10 video games of all time on The Countdown podcast, it seemed like a very vague and overstuffed category to me. It's easy to split games into categories, but it would be very hard to simply list the 10 best of all time! What a job!
So I decided to give it a try, but also to make things a little easier for myself: I could at least sort them by century. What were my favorites as a child before 2001? And what are my favorites as an adult?
So let’s take a look at part one, childhood, and see what makes the list.
To this day, River City Ransom remains a ridiculously fun game to sit down and play with friends. You and your friend each control one of two generic protagonists, roaming the city, bashing enemy after enemy with chains and metal knuckles. You might stop off at a small shopping district to pick up a takeaway meal or a book to sharpen your skills, then head back down another alley to battle more bad guys in what is likely the most gang-infested city on Earth.
It's difficult, but nowhere near the typical NES level of being basically impossible to complete. It's true that me and a friend completed this game, but playing it as an adult reminded me just how difficult this game is.
Ahh, the combination of video games and wrestling. What else could form an instant love connection in my heart? Yeah, maybe it's the combination of games and manga, but most of the manga-based video games I saw when I was younger were either too difficult or too terrible. But wrestling games were fun!
Like River City Ransom, WWF RAW was a game to play with friends. Teaming up with friends or competing in the Royal Rumble was a lot more fun when you had your buddies and you could look at them and swear that next time you wouldn't hit them with a steel chair…
The Sims! The makers of SimCity discovered that rather than playing out chaos in fictional cityscapes, we prefer playing out chaos with simulated humans.
The Sims was a global phenomenon when it came out. I haven't played it in probably decades, but I still have the original Sims CD. What's underrated is how nightmarishly punishing the first Sims was. Your wants and needs leaked out like they were in a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Keeping a family of more than two happy was Sisyphus's job.
Still, there was always the infinite money code or the ability to build your dream home with a giant swimming pool in the middle of the kitchen. Throw avatars of your real-life friends (or foes!) into the maelstrom and see what happens. Or just unleash your inner madness and torment heartless little creatures. There was no telling how far the series would go (Sims 4 has dozens of expansion packs that let you play as mermaids, horses, vampires, and more), but at the time the possibilities felt endless.
Chrono Cross feels like a bit of a cheat on this side of the list, since I didn't actually play it until the mid-2000s, but since this list is about games that came out in the last century, and not about games I played back then, I feel like I need to include it.
Chrono Cross is the sequel to Chrono Trigger, and while it does relate to it as little as possible, it does have some ties to the original, with a clever color-coded combat system, an unconscionable number of characters you can have on your side (you can only have three at a time, to begin with), and characters with their own unique accents and attitudes depending on what part of the world they're from.
This game was hard; you almost needed a guide just to know what to do next and where to go, but the variety of characters is so extensive that you can play through it multiple times and have a completely different experience each time (and I had to play through it multiple times…it's impossible to get all the characters on your team in one playthrough), so it made the list.
Street Fighter is a much more fun game to play with others than it is to play alone, and my favorite game of the early 1990s was Street Fighter 2 vs. Mortal Kombat war.
In fact, I used to play this game a lot with my dad when I was a kid. He loved Chun-Li and was adamant that her “Yata!” was her way of saying to her fallen nemesis, “You suck!”
Good memories. Would have been even better if I had the edition where I could play as M. Bison and friends! As a Wolverine fan, I thought Vega's claws were super cool.
NHL 94 seems like a game that's best played with other people, but in reality, I've played it alone for hours. You see, I had the PC version, so playing with friends wasn't as easy as it was with console iterations and kids with multiple controllers.
But it did have a lot of benefits, like the ability to edit players and keep your roster up to date for years after the game's season ended, which meant I could basically do my own little fantasy draft, build all-time teams, and play through the classic season in which the Rangers won their first Cup in nearly 50 years over and over again.
PC gaming has had so much versatility that's now basically standard for any sports game, but when this came out I was surprised.
Long before I even knew what “modding” a game was, I was modding my own little first-person shooter called Doom 2 .
If there was a skill set I wish I had kept, I would have had access to the game's audio files and replaced the monster howls and gun fire sounds with clips I'd taken offline from cartoons and wrestling.
(This was in the early to mid 90s, so downloading a clip of Macho Man saying “OH YEAH!” would take essentially forever in modern download times.)
In the end, the game was 100% more fun when they quoted jokes from my favorite episodes of The Tick as I gunned down bad guys, or made Ric Flair's signature “Woo!” sound when firing a shotgun.
Now, as you can tell from my Twitch and YouTube links, I'm basically a Luddite when it comes to technology, but for a little while I was able to “mod” Doom 2, and it was awesome.
This is hands down my favorite Mario game of all time, and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was worth buying just because it came with this gem.
I loved exploring the world and playing the most fun levels over and over again, trying to find all the hidden levels or replaying the game after beating Star Road to see what had changed in the monsters you had to face.
Great reviews, fun graphics, and great depth. I love it.
I don't really know where to begin with my story, but for about 15-20 years of my life I've basically been playing one version of Pokemon or another nonstop, and it all started with Pokemon Red.
I was “too old” when Pokemon came out. I started playing when I was around 18 or 19 and it was all the rage in America. But I didn't care. As a game, Pokemon is great, and always has been. The fun, yet easily understood RPG elements? The imaginative creatures? The replayability that even blows away what I said above about Chrono Cross? Cross certainly gave me 20 or 30 potential companions. Pokemon Red gave me 100 or so. Trade for Blue and you've got another 50 or so!
I played Pokémon over and over again. Then when Pokémon Gold came out, I moved on to that. Then Sapphire. Then LeafGreen, Diamond and Pearl, Black and White. Pokémon Stadium and Stadium 2. Pokémon Crystal. It never ended.
And this won't be the last we hear about Pokemon before this list is over. It can't be. The only question is, which game will I choose this century?
Final Fantasy VII was a revelation for me, albeit a quintessential one: by the time Cloud and company came into my life, I had played a ton of video games, but I had no interest in them at all.
FF7 showed me that video games could tell stories that were just as compelling as comics, books, movies, and TV shows. I remember running to my friend's house every day for weeks, sitting around the original PlayStation with a few of us, and playing through this compelling, moving story to the end. I remember how we all really hated Cloud when he gave up the Black Materia. We had been betrayed! And then, against our will, he got our love back.
Despite playing for hours on end, we thoroughly enjoyed the game. And after we finished, I bought a copy for myself. And I bought copies as gifts for my cousin and other friends, excitedly talking about what was in store. I've talked before about the moment while reading comics when I realized there was so much more to this art form than I knew. And Final Fantasy VII was my first such transformative experience in the gaming world.
Well, right now I'm fondly remembering my childhood and I wish I could go back in time and see friends and family that are no longer in my life and play those games again.
But instead, I choose to look forward, because I'll be talking about 10 more games here soon.
In the meantime, tell us: what are your favorite games from the last century? How did those games influence you? Let me know in the comments!
Until next time…take care!
