Bring 'em... part 4.
By Dalai 3 Comments
It burns! It burns!
Where were you on October 1st, 1997? Running for your lives, probably. Anyway, Crystalis was the best Zelda alternative on the NES, hands down. It had swords, shields, a top-down view, and a variety of monsters to battle. Sounds like Zelda, but it was much faster-paced, added experience points to the equation, and had an interesting setting... a quasi-medieval civilization after a nuclear war. I wasted many hours playing this lesser-known classic and it ranks among my top 10 NES games ever.
11. Banjo-Kazooie
Yeah, it's on XBLA, but honestly, do you N64 fans see yourself playing a Banjo game on anything other than a Nintendo console? Uh, you probably do... eh, before I lose it, Banjo-Kazooie was one of the many Rare greats to come out on the N64. To simply create a new mascot at a time where Mario and Donkey Kong ruled the land was no easy feat, but Banjo fit right in with the trusty Nintendo faithful. Today, Banjo feels like the oddball over on the other side alongside Master Chief and Marcus Fenix, but he can hold his own.
10. Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion taught me that microwaving hamsters is acceptable behavior and that you should never mention that act to the hamster's owner, no matter how awesome it is. It also introduced me to point/click adventures and video game humor. Maniac Mansion, in any form, is awesome... and I hope to see it on the Wii for all to enjoy. I'm hoping for a non-NES version... which had a few "censor" issues. Oh, family-friendly Ninty.
9. Baseball Stars
More SNK love in the form of my favorite baseball game ever. It had it all: customizable teams, customizable players, a semi-customizable season mode, female ballplayers, and even a mercy rule so you can't run up the score with the American Dreams. This might be the game I played the most of all my years of gaming and if SNK shoves this onto the Wii, that's an automatic purchase for me.
The first TMNT was a difficult mess to play, but TMNT II was difficult to hate. I spent countless quarters playing it in the arcades when I wasn't playing it on the NES back in the day. It's one of the all-time great co-op beat 'em ups in history and if you don't have it on Xbox Live, get it now. Now! Now bring it to the Virtual Console now. Now!
7. GoldenEye 007
All the young whippersnappers praise Halo for being the first-person shooter that brought the genre to consoles... and they're wrong. Others say that it was GoldenEye 007... they may be right on that one. While Wolfenstein 3D and Doom proved that first-person shooters can work on the PC, GoldenEye proved that consoles can also join in on the fun... and also proved that games based on movies can be great (as long as it's released long after the movie comes out.) GoldenEye might have aged a bit, but it holds up very well. But, will we see it on the VC, or on any current-gen console? Highly unlikely since it's in license limbo. Shit damn!
So which game takes the top spot? Find out tomorrow... if you give a crap.