Genre: Hockey

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Year: 1988

Basic Idea: Make a pass!  Make a pass!  Make a pass!

Review:  The best hockey game for the system was amazing at the time, but there’s little reason to play it today.  The graphics are sound are pretty great, the play control is slick, and who doesn’t love the fact that you can do close-up fighting and only the loser goes to the penalty box?  But fights are too easy to pick and there’s a bright arrow that serves as your “aim” when you shoot, so the opposing goalie has little doubt where your shot is going.  The computer is insultingly easy as usual, and head-to-head games are broken up by too many fights to keep any rhythm.  Perhaps the game’s worst sin is the game announcer yelling “with the pass!” every single time you make a pass.

The best available hockey game when it came out, but it definitely shows its age.  If you’re going old-school, you may as well play one of the EA Sports hockey games on the SNES or Genesis.

Genre: Platformer

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Year: 1990

Basic Idea: Beat that pesky Red Falcon again in this sequel to Contra.

Review:  This game is universally lauded, and indeed, there is nothing really wrong with it.  It’s a worthy sequel to the incredibly famous Contra, but I don’t think I’ve ever played this and didn’t think I’d rather be playing the original.  Nearly everything is identical, but the graphics and play control feel slightly less crisp to me.  Also, it’s much more difficult, making 2-player mode less fun as there’s a good chance you won’t make it through, even with the (now) 10 man life code.

Still, you can’t ignore this game if you at all like the Contra empire.  However, you can safely avoid Contra Force, the third game for the NES (released after Contra III for the SNES).  That one was a brutal effort by Konami to cash in and it fails on most levels.

Genre: Platformer

Developer: Absolute Entertainment
Publisher: Absolute Entertainment
Year: 1989

Basic Idea: Give your pet blob jelly-beans and make him your bitch.

Review:  An amazingly creative game that would easily be Top 20 if it had a ton of polish.  There’s some plot about the King of Blob World doing bad things and you have to help your pet get there and destroy him, blah blah.  The game is essentially one enormous puzzle, searching out the jelly-bean that will turn your blob into a rocket(!) and send you to his planet.  To find that mysterious jelly bean, you must traverse an enormous cave with the help of your blob and 12 different kinds of jelly beans at your disposal.  Each bean can turn him into something different.  A trampoline, an umbrella, a jack, and a blowtorch are just a few of the things you can transform your pet into to help you.  Determining what to use and when can be great fun.

Unfortunately, the game struggles in a few areas.  You can put yourself in walking dead situations without realizing it.  For example, one problem may be solved with more than one jelly-bean, but by using up a particular bean, you cannot progress in another area.  Hit and fall detection is not perfect either.  You can’t save the game, so note-taking is necessary.  It’s not a terribly long game if you know what to do, but knowing what to do can take a long time to figure out.  Finally, the end-game is pretty banal compared to the rest.

Still, it’s great to have a game that was not derivative of anything ever done in a video game.

Genre: Puzzle

Developer: Irem
Publisher: Irem
Year: 1990

Basic Idea: Kick ice cubes!

Review:  Similar in style to Adventures of Lolo (but not as complex or interesting), a solid puzzle game with enough variety to keep things interesting.  Your job is to access magic pouches by kicking around ice cubes, and you can use your freezing breath to turn enemies into your own weapons.  The game doesn’t get quite difficult enough to be satisfying, but there’s nothing terribly obnoxious about it either (except maybe the music).  However, it’s brain surgery compared to Angry Birds.

Genre: Platformer

Developer: Tamtex
Publisher: Irem
Year: 1991

Basic Idea:  Flip gravity

Review: The selling point of this platformer was that at any point you can decide to reverse gravity and walk along the ceiling.  This allows the game to have several intricate puzzles that require simultaneous strategy and quickness.  The boss battles are interesting.  It gets a bit mazey at times, but I enjoyed the challenge.  Unfortunately, the game gets it a bit too hard as it goes along, but at least there’s many continues and a password system.

The game is a little hard on the eyes; it’s colorful, but the colors often clash.  The music is also a bit too techy for my tastes.  The game is worth at least one play, though your mileage may vary.

Genre: Gambling

Developer: HAL
Publisher: HAL
Year: 1988

Basic Idea:  Play keno, roulette, slots, blackjack to try and become a multi-millionaire.

Review: Gambling games are a tough bet to begin with, as it’s hard to get much thrill out of playing with fake money.  Vegas Dream sidesteps this common problem a bit by adding a threadbare plot and interactive cut scenes throughout the game.  About every five to fifteen hands/rounds of whatever game you’re playing, some random person will come up to you and ask for money/a date/gambling partner/your help and it’s up to you to decide if you want to or not.  Often times, you’re getting conned and lose some money out of the deal.  But there’s plenty of lucky strikes as well where you can make extra money.  You might even have a shotgun wedding!  Playing with a friend can be fun if you enjoy a friendly competition for fake money or fake wives.  26

This game could have been improved significantly by adding a wider variety of games and interactive scenarios (especially ones that relied on more than random chance).  However, it’s still my favorite gambling game, with the possible exception of Poker Night at the Inventory by Telltale.  The sequel for the SNES, Vegas Stakes, does add craps and stud-poker (and more casinos), but some of the charm was lost.

Genre: Platformer

Developer: Tokai; Sunsoft
Publisher: Sun Corporation
Year: 1990

Basic Idea:  Avenge your father’s cliché death at the hands of terrorists and pretend you’re not fighting Terminators.

Review: From the same people who brought you Blaster Master comes possibly the best game ever based on the Terminator movie.  It can be hard to tell, though, since they lost the license to the movie and had to quickly change the plot and the main character before releasing it.  Thankfully, nobody plays platformers for their plots.

There’s nothing extraordinary about this game.  The graphics are good, not great.  The music is upbeat.  The weapons are fun and the robot/cyborg enemies creative.  The boss battles are fun. The difficulty curve is very fair.  There are much better platformers for the system, but if you’re looking for a new one that isn’t frustrating, this is a good bet.

Genre: Shooter

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Year: 1988

Basic Idea:  Single-handedly take on the entire Japanese empire

Review: 1942 is a pretty mediocre shooter, indistinguishable from every other shooter on the market and with awful sound to boot.  Its successor is a tremendous improvement in every way and one of the best shooters on the system.  It’s one of the few shooters where your plane can actually get hit and not instantly explode; you can upgrade your shields as you go to improve this.  Not only that, there are several awesome weapon upgrades, including a five-way shot and a smart bomb.  You can also fire a powerful shot from your cannon if you’re willing to let it ride for a bit.  Also, in addition to continues, there is actually passwords provided at various points.

There’s not much negative to say about this game.  The graphics are nothing exciting, but they’re fairly well-detailed.  It can get a little monotonous after a while.  There’s also no 2-player mode, unfortunately.  But for what it is, it’s a worthy play.  In fact, a must play if you’re at all a fan of shooters.

Genre: Platformer

Developer: Tokai
Publisher: Sun Corporation
Year: 1988

Basic Idea:  Jump in a hole to save your radioactive pet frog.  Or, more accurately, blow up a bunch of stuff in your tank.

Review: I’m tempted to call this game overrated, but being as that I have it in my Top 100, that would be a bit whiny.  It’s a very creative game, with mostly excellent play control, which is usually a slam dunk.  Traversing the overworld in your tank, jumping and shooting all the way is pretty fun.  And I love that there’s overhead adventuring a la Zelda in some sections and the boss battles.  I have no complaints about the way the game plays.

But there’s two major problems that keeps this game out of the top fifty for me.  First, the game seems like an endless maze after a while, requiring extensive backtracking which I don’t think any gamer has ever leapt for joy about.  But the worst crime of the game is the inability to save or get a password.  If I was blown away by the game, I think I could forgive these things and plow through.  But since I wasn’t, I never had any desire to complete this.