Top 5 games of 1992

I’ve been a gamer for most of my life, having lived through the third generation of gaming (NES)

upwards. Over 25 weeks, I will list my top 5 games from 1990 – 2015. To ensure consistency, here are the rules I will be following

• I will only write about games I’ve played (which means no Mario Kart)
• Even though I played most of these games a few years after they released, I will stick with the year they were released (otherwise this list will be all over the place)
• Some games may have been released at different times for different regions. When this happens, I will use the year related to the version I’ve played
• Due to the second rule, it does mean I won’t be able to list gems like Super Mario Brothers and Circus Charlie

This week I will highlight 1992

Mortal Kombat (Arcade)

This list was quite easy to compile (1992 was a bit of a dud year it seemed). The five games highlighted here were all quite special to me (except Darkwing Duck – it wasn’t really that good but I liked the show). When you’re a kid and your folks don’t take an active interest in what you play, you tend to play anything that’s cool. And Mortal Kombat was cool (maybe that should read Kool). You know what’s kool, being the inspiration for the Entertainment Software Rating Board forming (which explains why no one cared about age-ratings before). One of the things I liked about Mortal Kombat is that the developers wanted you to root for Lui Kang (the John Cena of the series) but everyone loved Sub Zero (cheap ice-balls) and Scorpion (because he was awesome). It was also responsible for a half-decent movie adaptation (with arguably the best theme song of the nineties, and every period since).

 

Streets of Rage 2 (Mega Drive)

Streets of Rage 2 is the pinnacle of side-scrolling beat-em-ups. It’s  been downhill since then. Don’t take my word for it (although I would really appreciate it as it cements me as an influencer) but ask any 30 something gamer who played Streets of Rage 2 when it was released and they will swear by it’s varied combat, eclectic cast, and kicking soundtrack. I completed it about fifty times and I can’t for the life of me remember the plot, but like all good beat-em-ups, it doesn’t matter at all, seriously, you could be pummeling a bunch of scientists who are 95 percent of the way to curing AIDS and it wouldn’t matter. Do check it out if you get a chance (it was reently re-released on the 3DS).

Sonic 2 (Mega Drive)

One of the biggest rivalries in the nineties was between two wrestling companies, WWF (now WWE) and WCW. The competition pushed them to upped their game every week and in so doing, create some of the most memorable television to date (think NOW and Stone Cold Steve Austin). Sega and Nintendo had one of these storied rivalries, with hit after hit being unleashed on our battered wallets. Sonic games were the Fifa titles of the early and mid-nineties as everyone seemed to have  it (there was also a TV show where you barked orders over the phone while someone played it poorly (I can’t remember what this was so please remind me). Sonic 2 added Tails to the mix, in a half-baked mutliplayer mode that was perfect for when you had to play with younger siblings (You weren’t dependent on Tails keeping up and he never actually died).

Darkwing Duck (Golden China/ NES)

Darkwing was a lesser-spotted duck of the nineties (it was actually a spin-off of talespin, which was a spin-off from Jungle Book – Disney Inception). As stated above, I was struggling to find a fifth game that I liked  in 1992 and Darkwing Duck does tick all my low expectations (licenced platformer), yet I haven’t tracked it down since to replay it (something I’ve done with the other four? Perhaps because it felt too much like a mega man game, or it relied on me loving the source material more than I did. I think the actual reason I didn’t like it was because it was tough. Like darksouls duck tough.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Mega Drive)

This game was very similar to 1991’s Turtles in Time, but like a good cinnabon with tea, it always hits the spot. This was the first game ported to the Mega Drive and it was all the more beautiful for it. It was the first time I noticed more frames in the sprite animation. There were fewer levels (these games were churned out annually like Call of Duty), but they were longer, so that helped.  The issue with beat-em-ups (including modern titles) is that as enemy types respawn, it becomes repetitive. This wasn’t really an issue in the TMNT games because the footsoldiers were these faceless entities anyway (stormtroopers of New York city) so it wasn’t too bad.

So these are my top five games that were released in 1992. Join me next week as I go through my favourite games from 1993. Leave a comment and let me know which were your favourite games from the nineties.

Top 5 games of 1991

I’ve been a gamer for most of my life, having lived through the third generation of gaming (NES) upwards. Over 25 weeks, I will list my top 5 games from 1990 – 2015. To ensure consistency, here are the rules I will be following

• I will only write about games I’ve played (which means no Super Mario World today)
• Even though I played most of these games a few years after they released, I will stick with the year they were released (otherwise this list will be all over the place)
• Some games may have been released at different times for different regions. When this happens, I will use the year related to the version I’ve played
• Due to the second rule, it does mean I won’t be able to list gems like Super Mario Brothers and Circus Charlie

This week I will highlight 1991

Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Mega Drive)

Part of my infamous 8-in-1 (you can read about it here), Sonic led the charge like a blue Aragorn storming into the Mushroom Kingdom, a shot of attitude to counter Nintendo’s saccharine franchises.  ‘Attitude’ stood out in the little things, like Sonic tapping his foot impatiently if you didn’t touch the controller for a few seconds, coaxing you to get on with it. I dig the villain, Doctor Robotnik (proper doctor, not honorary). Sure the guy was evil, and turned critters into robots, but I got the sense he worked hard to build his evil empire. Let me know if my nostalgia-loving eardrums deceive me but I do think the theme music of Sonic is much more memorable than most games released these days.

Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior (Arcade and Mega Drive)

While not my favourite in the Street Fighter 2 series (that honour belongs to Super Street Fighter 2), Street Fighter 2 was my jam. That’s not to say I was any good at it (I was pretty much useless against anyone with working fingers). I didn’t let my countless defeats get to me, often blowing up to R5 at the arcade (I think It was 20 cents a go back then). Street Fighter was one of the first games to introduce me to lazy stereotypes (booga fire and all that), which was par for the course since it was published in the same era as Bloodsport.

Tiny Toon  Adventures (NES)

Keeping with the theme from last week’s list, platformers were a staple of my formative gaming years, with Tiny Toon Adventures being one of the stand-outs. A large part of the allure was that my friend had M-Net (which meant he had a lot of friends, most of who did not have M-Net…) so we would go to his place and watch it on KTV. I really liked that you could switch to another character when you picked up an orb, with each secondary character having their own unique skills (Plucky flew short distances, The Tasmanian devil broke stuff and the cat (Furball or something – not sure, limited exposure and all that) could climb walls. The only thing I could fault it on was difficulty – the game seemed a little tough. There were these stages where you were chased by this crazy person, and if she caught you, you had to start from the beginning (this is something Prince of Persia would try to recreate (unknowingly) with their Dahaka character in their not-as-great-as-sands-of-time sequel.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)

I was a huge TMNT fan back in the day, which of itself is not newsworthy because it’s like someone saying they’re a huge Lionel Messi fan (doesn’t raise any eyebrows). I remember the arcade set-up at the Durban Beachfront (a questionable establishment that smelled like bubblegum ice cream, salt and wet towel), providing four cabinets for unrivalled co-op action (a joy I would only taste again half a decade later with Goldeneye, and now with Rocket League). I’m only just realizing how much I liked licensed games.

Sunset Riders (Arcade and Mega Drive)

We end 1991 with another co-op game, and what might possible be the last time I reference my notorious 8-in-1 mega drive cartridge. Sunset Riders is a side-scrolling western shoot-em-up in which you play as a bounty hunter killing outlaws and avoiding stampeding bulls. These games were really popular back then (Double Dragon, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs being among the more popular ones. Maybe not Cadillacs and Dinosaurs but that was pretty bad-ass). I replayed the mega drive version a few years ago – not too shabby.

So these are my top five games that were released in 1991. Join me next week as I go through my favourite games from 1992. Leave a comment and let me know which were your favourite games from the nineties.

Top 5 games of 1990

I’ve been a gamer for most of my life, having lived through the third generation of gaming (NES) upwards. Over the next 25 weeks, I will list my top 5 games from 1990 – 2015. To ensure consistency, here are the rules I will be following

• I will only write about games I’ve played
• Even though I played most of these games a few years after they released, I will stick with the year they were released (otherwise this list will be all over the place)
• Some games may have been released at different times for different regions. When this happens, I will use the year related to the version I’ve played
• Due to the second rule, it does mean I won’t be able to list gems like Super Mario Brothers and Circus Charlie

This week I will highlight 1990

---

Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers (NES/ Golden China)

As a thirty-something year-old man, I tend to be a little jaded when it comes to licenced games, but as an eight-year old kid hooked on Disney cartoons during M-Net’s Sunday evening open time slot, I couldn’t get enough of it. Chip ‘n’ Dale was a fun platformer, improved by the option to play two-player (loved chucking Dale onto enemies). I never actually owned a NES, and did most of my gaming on a Golden China (had no idea I was playing pirated software), so with no option to save my progress, it actually worked in my favour that the game could be finished in a single sitting.

---

Super Mario Bros 3 (NES/ Golden China)

You’re going to be seeing a LOT of Super Mario games in my lists. Arguably one of the greatest games ever made (having just been chosen as number 1 in IGN’s Greatest Games of all-time list), Super Mario Bros 3 was and still is an absolute joy to play. I recently booted it up for my nephew to play and within ten minutes I wrangled the controller from him and took over. A timeless game that every gamer should play.

---

Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (Sega Mega Drive)

I never actually owned an original Mega Drive. I got a knock-off at a flea-market along with an 8-in-1 cartridge that had Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, Flintstones, Columns, Mickey Mouse and a few more games. I did not know it was a knock-off at a time (8-in-1’s made sense compared to the previous 64-in-1’s I had in my previous knock-off). Like Chip ‘n’ Dale above, this was another Disney platformer I was really into in my youth. The game sees Mickey save Minnie from a witch named Mizrabel (ten points for name) who wanted to steal her youth (a theme we will see a few years later in a famous Rare game). The game was a mix of the first two Super Mario games, in that your attacks alternated between jumping on your enemies heads (like the first SMB) or throwing apples (like the second SMB).

---

Snow Bros: Nick and Tom (Arcade)

The second co-op title in my list, Snow Bros was a spiritual successor to Bubble Bobble, and continued in its storied, manic tradition of encasing enemies and then killing them. I never thought I was actually killing them before I sat to type this piece. Games are simplistic like that, like old action movies. The game follows the exploits of these murderous siblings on their quest to save their girlfriends (I’m not sure if they were also siblings). These icy damsels happen to be princesses, and the bros happen to wear overalls. Coincidence? I replayed Snow Bros about six years ago, and it remains just as fun.

---

Columns (Sega Mega Drive)

Confession time, I actually prefer columns to Tetris. This might seem blasphemous but some of my fondest memories of playing video games as a kid was playing columns while my granddad sat on the couch next to me, probably judging me for not using investing my time in better pursuits, like rubbing his feet or playing Carrom (check it out). For all the millenials reading this, Columns is the spiritual ancestor of bejeweled, or candy crush, without the annoying social media sharing.

---

So these are my top five games that were released in 1990. Join me next Monday as I go through my favourite games from 1991. Leave a comment and let me know which were your favourite games from the past, and if you can guess the Rare game I referenced earlier.

Video Game Review: Puzzle & Dragons Z Super Mario Bros. Edition

“Match-three” games, in which you line up or three or more similar icons or shapes in order to clear them from a board, are one of the most popular sub-genre of puzzle games. Candy Crush Saga was the most-played Facebook game of 2013. (Chances are, you probably got a Candy Crush Saga game request while reading this intro.)

Games like Chuzzle and Bejewelled – arguably the most popular match-three game on PC – from PopCap have garnered over a 150 million downloads over the last 14 years. Columns was the first match-three game that hooked me, and I have fond memories of playing it with my grandfather on my trusty Sega Mega-Drive – he didn’t approve of Streets of Rage or Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, you see.

Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Bros. Edition (a mouthful that is doing wonders for my word count) continues this fine tradition and adds three innovations to the mix, free-form version of the classic match-three format, RPG elements (with monster collecting) and Super Mario. It’s available on the Nintendo DS/3DS handheld now.

The original Puzzle & Dragons was a free-to-play mobile game, financed by micro-transactions. Would a handheld port offer as much value for the price-savvy consumer? Let’s find out…

The main game is familiar to those who’ve played any of the 3DS Pokémons, down to the visuals and the now-obligatory chat the hero has with his mum before beginning his quest. The story then takes a Game of Thrones turn, sans Red Weddings and questionable relationships, as you take possession of three dragon eggs that will eventually lay waste to the land of ‘I’m not actually sure’.

Levelling up the Mushroom Kingdom.

The RPG elements remind me of career mode in fighting games, adding a layer of longevity to what is essentially a repetitive format (match orbs to defeat monsters).

Like Mortal Kombat, I guess the developers realise you need a hook to extend the experience. I’m still on the fence whether I like it or not. I don’t think I played as strategically as the game wanted me, hardly ever augmenting my attacks with special items. On the plus side, unlike other retail games that have the chutzpah to hide large chunks of content behind various paywalls, Nintendo have assured consumers that there won’t be any micro-transactions in the game.

I was initially sceptical to the extent that Mario and co. will integrate with the classic Puzzle & Dragon experience having been disappointed with the Nintendo-themed extras in Tekken and Bayonetta 2 on the Wii U, but it was refreshing to experience a game that was so well-considered.

I shouldn’t be too surprised – the Mushroom Kingdom has a diverse range of hobbies and Nintendo protects its flagship IP from glitch half-baked games (Nintendo would have never allowed Assassin’s Creed: Unity to be published if Mario was in it).

Removed from the higher-order RPG elements, the Super Mario version tells a simpler, familiar tale; one of kidnapping and rescuing. And yes, I can confirm that the victim was last spotted wearing pink.

Eskom gifted me with many opportunities to use the 3DS and I plonked many of those darkened hours in the Super Mario mode. Stripped of the RPG elements, the Super Mario mode gave me quick thrills as I lapped up the familiar comfort of Shigeru Miyamoto’s vision, ploughing through waves of goombas and koopa troopas on a rudimentary rock, paper, scissors turn-based format.

Half-way through the first world there was a considerable spike in difficulty. And I died. A lot. After two continues I breezed through the next few stages before facing another Brock Lesnar type Goomba.

If I have any major complaints, it’s that Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Bros. Edition is a lot like 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. You’re getting two products in one handy package, which seems like great value for money, until you realise that you’re only getting half a bottle of each.

I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys puzzle titles, and is looking for a deeper alternative to Candy Crush Saga. The difficulty spikes are sometimes frustrating to the point that I rattled my 3DS like Homer choking Bart, so if you’re new to the genre, or have little patience, I suggest you start with something like Bejewelled instead.

This review originally appeared in HTXT

Why 90's games are making a comeback

Recently did a Q and A with the team at Fin24 on why Nineties games are making a comeback.



1) Have you noticed an increase in the number of older consoles being sold again and since when?

There’s a significant increase in the number of retro consoles that are being sold, with most targeting an older nostalgic market. The rise is probably due to a few reasons:
The proliferation of emulators and the ease in which people can get older game files on mobile phones, single-board computers like Raspberry Pi, web browsers etc. One way to combat this as a manufacturer is to release your own version of the console
New TV inputs and standards like HDMI present a challenge for those who have kept their older machines, hence manufacturers like Sega and Nintendo have released the retro consoles with HDMI.

2) Why do you think these consoles are being sold again? Do you think it’s a demand from customer or an attempt to draw nostalgia from customers by manufacturers?

A lot of the machines have added functionality and features. The Sega Mega Drive Arcade Ultimate Portable Player as the name suggests is portable, allowing the player to experience authentic 16-bit games on the move. The console comes bundled with 80 games, spread across a number of genres. It’s much easier to gauge demand from consumers, especially for nostalgia products like these consoles – manufacturers can analyse google search trends around specific titles and listen to social media conversation to determine and forecast success.

3) What consoles do you know of, are being sold now?

There are a few popular retro consoles available in South Africa at the moment – The Atari Flashback 6, The Nintendo NES Classic edition, the Sega Mega Drive: Arcade Classic and Ultimate Portable player. The Nintendo and Sega machines are easier to find (Nintendo does have a worldwide shortage at the moment)



4) A typically older console is now retailing for around R800, however a game for PS4 or Xbox One can exceed that amount – Do you think parents might see an older console as a cheaper alternative to keep their kids occupied?

While parents will undoubtedly see value in a 80-in-1 console, with the exception of a few games like Super Mario Brothers, most games are only fun to play for nostalgic value and little else. Chances are, if a kid wanted Fifa 17 for Christmas and got a retro console like the Atari Flashback 6, I imagine the kid will be disappointed.

Click here to read the article 

MJ