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Bobby's Top Video Games: 20-16
By Bobby - 02.20.03
20. Pokémon Red and Blue
1998 - Gameboy / Gameboy Color
I'll admit it. I am a Pokémaniac. I love all things Pokémon. The video games, the trading card game, plush dolls, collectible figures, even the Pokémon Monopoly game can be found in my room at home. Here at college I only have room for a Bulbasaur plush, a Mewtwo figure, and a Charizard pull-back toy. While Pokémon Gold and Silver are very fun, they just can't compare with the original two as far as the fun-factor is concerned.
Red and Blue will forever remain in my heart and in my collection as endless hours of fun on the road, on the go, and in the snow. "In the snow?" you ask. In 9th grade we got a ton of snow one night and I specifically recall me and Kevin, Gameboys in hand, walking up to McDonalds to get the $2.99 Cajun Chicken Sandwich Extra Value Meal and two apple pies for a dollar. He got Red for Christmas and I was rockin' the Blue. I also whooped it out a few times on the ski slopes for the long chairlift rides. I was a total nerd… but I was hooked. It was a lot like the Tetris invasion in 1989 when suddenly an influx of adults were carrying around Gameboys and playing Tetris instead of reading crappy novels or the newspaper. You can cite Blue and Red as being the catalysts that got Gameboys into the hands of all the kids you see carrying them outside of their house. No Gameboy games, aside from maybe Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, were really worth playing instead of a game on a console until these came to the states. Not only did Pokémon Blue and Red move carts, they sold units of the Gameboy Color (which was the newest incarnation of the Gameboy following the Original Grey and the Pocket).
As far as the game goes, you are a boy named Ash who has been given a special Pokémon to use in battle and the capture of Pokémon to become Pokémon Master. Along the way he will battle Pokémon Gym leaders who have the badges to prove that they are the master of their class. Red and Blue feature 150 Pokémon… but if you are anybody you should know this. Since the game's plot and engine should be common knowledge, I'm gonna skip the rest of that. Here's what I love about the game: the cute but badass Pokémon, the simple puzzles, the simplicity of the world you are immersed in, the ease of becoming very good, and the large number of combinations of characters/attacks. The things I don't like: finite money, slow walking, limitations of the two-button Gameboy. Pokémon is a simple, yet immersive, game. Simplicity is one of its strongest assets. The game doesn't require constant attention while playing (which makes it good for a traveling system), you can save anywhere at any time, and the linear plot allows you to put down the game and pick it back up later knowing full well what you were in the middle of. Most RPGs are too complex for the bulk of the younger audience to understand… Pokémon is an RPG in disguise. The only reason it's not higher up on the list are a few areas they really could have improved upon. Gold and Silver made the game too large to be as simple as it is and Crystal just doesn't cut it. Maybe Ruby and Sapphire will be able to be on a list like this in the future. Until then...
I gotta catch 'em all!!
19. Grand Theft Auto III
2001 - Playstation 2
 "What!? How dare you put this game so far down the list!?! This is the best game ever made!!!" The average person may be so inclined as to believe this. While neither this nor Vice City are the best games every made they are great games and at least one of them belongs on this list. The series started off simple: steal cars, make money, and complete missions all from an overhead point of view. The second game was the same thing but in a new place with new features. The feature it was lacking was a change in viewpoint and therefore immersion. With the power of Playstation 2, Rockstar Games was able to bring the gamer down to streets of Liberty City and bring the game to a whole new level (both figuratively and literally).
 I remember there being a big push to buy the game because it was supposedly going to be taken off of the shelves because of its mature content… whata great marketing scheme. But my friend Tiger bought a copy under these influences and I watched him play it for like six hours straight only shooting pedestrians. This was the "screw the missions" stage of the game. But once a person learned how awesome it was to cruise from mission to mission in an Infernus while snagging up hidden packages and hidden weapons, the mass killings became only a time waster. This is what makes the game so great: the missions. The story that is told throughout the missions is also very well done as far as construction and execution is concerned. The cut scenes are done in basically the same graphics as the gameplay so that you don't feel as if you're leaving the game to watch movies. The missions are set up with: here's what happened, here's what you do, here's what you need, now go do it. The areas of gameplay are well setup in relation to each other so the game's design is used to your advantage. Though the controls are a little crude and keep the gamer a little more distanced, this game is a fully immersive world in which any sane person will get lost in for weeks on end. Plus, I suppose I'll have to fess up and say… it's cool that you can shoot a pedestrian's head off.
18. Killer Instinct 2
1996 - Arcade
Sure it's not as popular as Tekken or Virtua Fighter series… but as far as fighting games go, Killer Instinct Gold is the coolest combo-flying-every-which-way fighter of its time. To put things in perspective for you, Killer Instinct 2 came out in the arcades in 1996, two years after the release of Killer Instinct in the arcades. Killer Instinct 2 was ported to the Nintendo 64 in 1997 under the title Killer Instinct Gold… but the arcade game was just more fun. I will confess to you that I love combos… and no other fighting game does it better than KI2.  I'd string together combos like it was my birthday with Jago. While jump and kick and punch games are fun and all, it is awesome for any gamer to be able to rock out a good solid 9 hit combo. What attracted me to this game in the first place (aside from the graphics) was that even I was good at it. Like I've mentioned before, I am awful at fighting games in general. I never know when to pull off the right moves and counters and all that jazz. Killer Instinct and its sequels allowed me to learn a few basic moves and link them together so I could kick some ass. Sure it's not very realistic but neither is throwing fireballs or ripping people's spines out or anything like that. The combos feel smooth, look cool, and are fun to do.
I never realized that there was a story to this game, but apparently there is. To quote the description on KLOV.com, "Eyedol's death at the hands of Orchid in the previous game accidently set off a time warp sending everyone back 2000 years and allowed Gargos to escape from Limbo." Hmmm… whatever. I'm in it for the Kim Wu and the Jago. Maya is hot too. Her tits are bouncy. So are Orchid's. Thank you, RARE, for your wonderful developing that. I like the characters in this game because all their moves are very martial-artsy. With the exception of someone like Tusk, the characters are all about fancy schmancy karate-fu-do. This makes the controls flow better than other fighting games which; something I like to place a high emphasis on. I feel that Killer Instinct 2's controls are better than those of the first one, and therefore this makes it on the list instead of that. And bouncing CGI boobs are cool.
17. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
1998 - Nintendo 64
 
I beat it! BWAHAHA!! After getting OoT the day it was released I have finally beat it this year. I sucked so badly at it at one point that I just gave up on it completely. Fortunately J made me start playing again… and since I didn't have my PS2 memory card with me over Winter Break I busted out the N64. I'd like to thank J, Nagle, my roommate, and my girlfriend for their support during that process. It was they who kept me sane traveling through the ridiculously hard temples. I kept saying, "how the hell are little kids supposed to be good at this?" but I learned that I was the only one who sucked. Regardless of all this the game has made it on my list.
It's really fun. That's one thing this game excels at. While some of the temples may have been very frustrating for me I did find that I enjoyed everything else that I did in the game. I liked the story, I liked the quests, I liked the characters, I liked the graphics, I liked the cozy little land of Hyrule. I liked how similar it was to A Link to the Past in composition while maintaining the 3-dimensional viewpoint. I didn't like how I never remembered the ocarina songs or how I didn't find enough secret things… but those are both my fault.
I had a very hard time mastering the Z-targeting system but it is a great way to do combat in a 3-D environment. I had trouble with some of the bosses because I couldn't Z-target and switch weapons and execute attacks quite fast enough. I liked the 3 button item-switching but the items were lacking in personality. They were too utilitarian in their design and required too much precision to be used for fun in combat when not using Z-targeting. My least favorite part of the game: "HEY! LISTEN!" Navi, while being a useful, was a tool in both meanings. "HEY! BITCH! OVER HERE! LISTEN ASSHOLE!" she babbled on and I wanted to kill her. Tatl is Majora's Mask is so much cooler. But that's beside the point.
16. Pong
1972 - Arcade
We're gonna go BACK IN TIME!!! It just wouldn't be right to list of the greatest video games without paying homage to the one that really kicked it all off. Pong was not the first game ever made… but it was the one that catapulted arcade games into the modern population. Nolan Bushnell and his Syzygy team were supposed to do something for Bally; a simple sports game.  The team really wanted to do a driving game but decided that a tennis game would be much easier. It proved to be fun to play and people dug it. Bushnell convinced the Bally people that they didn't want to buy the game after all and Bushnell's new Atari company kept it to themselves. Good choice too. Pong would make them lots and lots of money.
Pong is simple, competitive, and fun. Now obviously pong is not something you're going to sit around all day and play when you have a PS2 or a Gamecube, but when you go into an arcade and two friends pump in 25 cents each it can be just as intense as a sick game of Marvel Vs Capcom. It is also relaxing and works well for a simple Java game... a far trek from the original days of a handwired board with a Hiatchi TV set inside a wooden cabinent sitting in Andy Capps in Sunnyvale California over 30 years ago.
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