1992 Ranked
Someone should really do a full-on remaster of Mario Land 2.
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I'll concede that Doom is the *better* Id Software original, but because Wolfenstein lacks the 'clever' level design twists of later Id titles (especially Doom II, GOD Doom II's second half is rotten) I ultimately had more fun with it. It's essentially the most raw an Id title can be.
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I install Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on literally every device that I own; this is not an exaggeration. I bought a new phone and installed Sonic 2 on it literally *minutes* ago. I need to be able to access Chemical Plant Zone at any given moment.
I'm not even a huge Sonic fan - hell, I'm not even, like, a Sonic 2 superfan (although Sonic 2 rips). I think it's because I always thought the Genesis was so cool as a kid, but didn't actually get one for myself until many years later. It's not even like I wanted one or asked my parents for one or anything, I just sorta silently thought it was cool. So now I boot this thing up on every device imaginable as a sort of reward for being an adult, I guess?
Anyway, I'm psychotic but Sonic 2 rocks. Sonic 1 gets a little in the weeds with some finicky precision platforming sequences, Sonic 3's got more polish but it's levels are more generic. Knuckles is pretty boring. Sonic 2, though? It's got the base mechanics from 1 which work so well but fills itself with these fun, weird ideas for stages that somehow stay memorably even as you speed past them. It's the Mario Galaxy 2 of Sonic games, I guess is the way to put it: a great formula without any big structural changes filled with fun new ideas.
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The Mario Land series is so weird. The first title was obviously as appreciated as it was because 'Mario on the go' was a totally new concept, but it bears almost no resemblance (core mechanics excluded) from the mainline Mario series. Mario Land 2 is closer, but it, too, feels like the product of a team with a genuinely different direction for the character than Miyamoto. Unlike the original, I think Mario Land 2's unique takes on the series sometimes even exceed the traditional Mario canon.
First, it can't be stressed enough that this is the game which introduced Wario. It's the second game past SMB 3 to use an overworld map, but isn't as linear - it actually allows the player to select any of its unique worlds from the map at will. It also expands Mario's assortment of power ups.
Perhaps my favorite unique trait Mario land 2 introduces is that each world is completely aesthetically distinct from every other world. While SMB 3 repurposes one of only a few level designs for each world, Mario Land 2 goes totally weird with it, making it a more interesting game to look at and explore by far. The character designs are cute enough and lack an iconic quality, sure, but you're not going to forget about the world in which you platform through a gigantic clockwork Mario mech. Or about the moon. Or about horror movie world.
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If there's any one origin point to the vaporwave movement that briefly dominated the internet, I think it would have to be the experience of sitting in front of Ecco the Dolphin as a 10 year old and just trying to parse it all. Ecco the Dolphin SEGA is the SEGA that remains timeless, even moreso than their better Sonic titles or their army of generic Genesis collections. Titles like Ecco and Seaman and Jet Set Radio and Rez are *just shy* of making sense in the era in which they were made, and they're way more interesting to analyze now than Nintendo's far more coherent and successful design of the era.
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Like Echo the Dolphin, Streets of Rage 2 is ultimately more important as an aesthetic experience than anything else. Like the first title, Streets of Rage 2 alternates between mindless button-mashing fist fights and chaotic, absurd demands of the player towards the end-game. Those last few stages are junk anyway, though, and I think you get everything you need to out of Streets of Rage 2 just by replaying the first three or four stages a few times to understand what makes it such an audio-visual hallmark.
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As far as superhero games go, it doesn't get more classic than X-Men. There have been a multiplicity of super hero adaptations in video games since the beginnings, but this is probably the first one, ever, to actually nail the look and feel of comic book characters.
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MK 1 is probably the most punishingly difficult and the least rewarding entry in the series. Taken out of that context, it IS a great deal of fun, though. It doesn't have the design elegance of the other early fighting juggernaut of the era, Street Fighter II, but where that game is essentially a functional work of art, MK is the product of sheer charisma, personality and functionality. The game's kitsch factor alone is infectious.
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Super Mario Kart has almost nothing in common aesthetically with any other Mario Kart game, and I'd go as far as saying it's the only 'real' racing game - the rubber band-iness of each race and the interchangeability between first and last place are way, way less pronounced here than even the very next game in the series.
I think this means Super Mario Kart is missing something, too. Like Mario Party or Smash, the best Mario Kart matches have players (probably with a wide skill gap) wading through the chaos, hoping their opponent doesn't stumble past through a series of dumb circumstances to the top. Without those arbitrary tide shifts, Super Mario Kart just isn't the same party game as the other titles.
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Kid Chameleon is blessed in that it captures better than most any commercial product what advertisers thought 7-11 year old boys were into in the early '90s, but there's a good reason that it isn't listed as one of the more classic Genesis titles. It's not a terrible game, but it's definitely not a memorable one, either.
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I think there's a lot you could do with The Addams Family as the premise for a video game - wandering aimlessly around the Addams Family's mansion while spiders and rats and shit donk into you until you're dead isn't what I'dve chosen, but whatever.
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