1993 Ranked
Another year where, for whatever reason, I just haven't played most of what came out. I feel like the very last stages of the 2D to 3D transition were quiet, though.
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Doom is a video game singularity, signaling decades of similar FPS design to come. It's less a formula that's been expanded upon than a wormhole with which Halo, GoldenEye, Call of Duty, Titanfall, Dark Forces, Killzone and every other enormous FPS title fell out of.
It's because Doom is masterful at what it does; its formula is a perfect balance of twitch gamelay, the control of space, resource management, exploration and (at the conclusion of the campaign) player-created content. Doom's best qualities are intractable from the experience that is playing Doom; adding or removing any one element from Doom could make the game better, or more fun, or more fascinating as the subject of study, but it would inevitably make the formula imperfect in one way or another. Because of its characteristic flawlessness, all of Doom's descendants feel less like iterations on Doom's formula and more like rebrandings of a finished product.
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The original Shadowrun is a hell of a game. Here is a brief list of things Shadowrun does that wouldn't become standardized until over a decade after its release:
- it successfully blended the core qualities of the isometric, story-driven RPG with the tactile expectations of console players
- it adapts concepts from William Gibson's Neuromancer beyond its surface-level cyberpunk aesthetics
- it preempts Fallout and Fallout 2's standardization of hire-able, mercenary companion npcs
- it blends the format of the adventure game within an action game
All of these traits stuck out to me playing Shadowrun contemporaneously, mostly because these scope-widening innovations likely caused the game's poor sales. In other words, the exact reasons Shadowrun failed to garner critical acclaim in 1993 are the same reasons that it's a great game today. It wouldn't be until the mid 2010s with games like Pillars of Eternity that developers would find workarounds to make isometric RPGs playable with a controller, and even then, I think Shadowrun exceeds expectations in a few specific ways, giving the player *just enough* action-game feedback without compromising its dice roll-based RPG mechanics.
Some of Shadowrun's appeal, of course, is due to the material it's adapting. Shoving the anachronistic high fantasy archetypes from the original table top Shadowrun game into Neuromancer's grime is a weird, surprising, and compelling addition to that novel's much-retold cyberpunk premise. There's the score, too, which is far and away one of the best cyberpunk music ever written for a video game.
Of course, being a game from the '90s, it inevitably collapses into a series of *absurdly* difficult challenge dungeons by the end, giving this otherwise pristine example of the isometric RPG a harsh aftertaste; although, I suppose, that's just as much a tradition of the genre as anything else.
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The majority of contemporary pieces about Myst are more concerned with Myst's development and historical impact than with the content of its design. I think this is because - and keep in mind this coming from someone who played through it for the first time nearly twenty years after it originally released - the best parts about Myst are nebulous and difficult to define.
Myst isn't beloved because of its narrative - well, it's not beloved because of its plot, at least. There isn't much *story* in Myst. In fact, the implication that there is a wealth of lore, nearly all of which is undefined and, in fact, non-existant within the game itself, is of greater importance than the plot which does exist in Myst. When the player encounters a new age in Myst, unpacking the imagery throughout each room and area is what matters, even if the game lacks any true, concrete answers to the questions its levels are designed to ask. The pleasure of exploring a level in Myst is to consider the little information provided to you as seriously as possible. Indefiniability is a big part of it.
The aesthetics of Myst, then, are overwhelmingly responsible for its enduring appeal. You might hate Myst the puzzle game, but you probably at least *tried* it thanks to its surreal, magical imagery. Myst's empty spaces are magical realist spaces. In the logic of our world, they're bizarre nonsense, but they aren't illogical. Every area has specific rules and mechanics which can be utilized and extrapolated from in order to better understand the world's lore. No matter how frustrating a puzzle or place might be, there *is* a logic to it.
While I'm sure the developers would've loved to be able to fill their levels with the same NPCs which litter every other adventure game of the era, their wide-open emptiness is a huge, defining asset. They all have this unsettlingly liminal quality, yet they're not threatening, exactly. You're always left with the impression upon exiting a Myst age that something *should* be there, a people *should* be using these devices and living in these quarters, but someone has prevented that from happening. Yet, the spaces themselves are so dictated by magic, and the joy of discovery is baked so deeply into Myst's puzzles, that you're likely to feel wonder and caution in equal measure. This is an idiosyncratic, but also very potent combo; Myst gives us tragedy and wonder in equal measure.
Of course, Myst's bottom line is also that it is a puzzle game, and a very - maybe extremely - difficult puzzle game at that. Even more than its threadbare story, the obscurity of Myst's puzzles is it's biggest flaw. Its difficulty will permanently withhold it from standing the test of time as an all-time great in the canon of historically important video games. That doesn't mean that Myst isn't remarkable though, and for this one extreme flaw, that second aspect of Myst - the tragedy and wonder - makes it timeless.
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Gunstar Heroes is a *perfect* video game. In spite of the fact that its surface-level components look broadly similar to other side-scrolling shooters of the era, all of those components are designed and animated with so much more character and complexity that it easily outshines other titles in the genre. Games like Contra: Hard Corps would go on to tighten the 'gamefeel' screws on how a game like Gunstar Heroes operates, but none of the titles it inspired could ever generate a sequence as weird and compelling as Gunstar Heroes' board game stage.
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MK II is a huge leap from the first title - not even because the gameplay was particularly refined, even, they just doubled down on the personality of the first title and added new mechanics to make it feel closer to other competitive fighting games. It's a pretty good sweet spot between MK 1, which is comparatively a purely functional clunker of a game, and MK 3, which has a wider feature set that isn't as fun to engage with.
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Inconceivable to me that this wasn't released in the states for over a decade. They put out Simon's Quest in America but not *this*? This is one of the best ones! Ludicrous.
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Despite Kirby's proliferation as a mascot, it often feels like no major Nintendo series is as frequently under-discussed as Kirby. This first game in the series is a hell of a start, too. While I understand that this is a NES game made in 1993 and is therefore at an advantage versus other NES titles, it's stunning how much of the Kirby aesthetic is invented and perfected here with the meager power of Nintendo's first console. Again, I fully realize how much changed in the world of game development (and at Nintendo, speaking generally) since the first Super Mario Bros. released in 1985, but it's *wild* to compare, just from a pure *vibe* mode, how much more aesthetically complete Kirby's Adventure is versus the first Mario, Zelda or Metroid title.
I guess that's kind of the story of Kirby, though, right? Achieving stellar, dynamic visuals that outdo even flagship Nintendo franchises, but doing so too late for anyone to notice.
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Hudson made approximately 78,000 Bomberman games in the '90s, but if you had to play just one, I suppose Super Bomberman would be the most logical choice. Hudson understood that their 1991 arcade iteration of the game had everything a video game franchise designed to proliferate int he 1990's would need: a visually unique mascot character, perpetually replayable arcade-style game design, and a vibrant art style. Many of Bomberman's best and most iconic qualities are defined in this iteration, and the game's relatively forgiving difficulty and measured learning curve make it an ideal first game for new players. Like all Bomberman games, Super Bomberman would've benefited greatly from additional modes or a bit more complication to the core gameplay; nevertheless, Super Bomberman is a fundamentally good video game.
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The Shinobi series is so weird. You have practically no space with which to use a melee strike and a limited number of shuriken's available as ranged attacks. Unlike, say, Ninja Gaiden, in which this is also the case, you also have very limited mobility, especially vertically. It makes the game feel more tactical somehow, but at the same time you really feel the tug of 'aaaaagh just let me run and jump around!!!' while you're playing. Shinobi feels too week and clumsy in comparison with other games about ninja.
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This is actually an amazing idea for a game, but having your pinball be a controllable character makes for a sluggish-feeling pinball experience - until Yoku's Island Express came out, at least. You'd think it'd be snappier considering it's a Sonic game. Not bad, but not anywhere near its potential.
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Disney '90s platformers are a dime a dozen, but this one was pretty decent.
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This is a pretty good puzzle game! Like a lot of SEGA takes on other classic titles, though, it's a decent, weird, and ultimately worse version of the other titles it's aping.
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The old EA sports titles feel completely alien to the contemporary ones. The limited tool set of the SEGA Genesis made this a completely different experience because, to some extent, the developers *had* to reduce the sport to parts in the way an arcade game does. Still - pretty boring!
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This is an absurd team up, because Battletoads are terrible, and the Double Dragon guys are totally generic but otherwise fine. That's not, like, a rousing crossover event. And it's probably less interesting than new games from either franchise, even the bad ones.
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ClayFighter was a 'comedy' fighting game, but the other fighting games of the era were already so ridiculous that it doesn't read as that at all. It just kinda feels like an ugly, poorly designed fighting game. And...well, that's because that's what it is!
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