For the next few Mondays, I will be bringing you a list of 50 video games that I think are important or noteworthy for one reason or another in 10 game installments. The list is kind of in alphabetical order, so no game is really more important than another as far as this listing is concerned.
There are a few caveats to this list:
1. I stopped at 50. I just had to draw the line somewhere. That’s probably why your favorite game didn’t make the list.
2. Just about every arcade and home game from the late seventies and early eighties could be considered noteworthy, but I wanted to give a slightly more interesting cross-section of gaming. This is another reason why your favorite game didn’t make the list.
3. Okay, so the list is a bit Nintendo-heavy. Take a look around the site and I think you’ll see why. This is the third reason why your favorite game didn’t make the list.
Enough of my blathering. On to the list!
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Adventure |
| A good but mostly unremarkable game except for one thing. Adventure is widely credited with the first easter egg hidden in a game. Before this, it was very uncommon to give the programmers any credit for the games that they produced. One of the programmers for Adventure (so the story goes) decided that he wanted his fifteen minutes of fame and put it in there anyway. More information can be found at Atari Age. |
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3D Worldrunner |
| The only game that I know of for the NES that tries to use red/blue color seperation to generate a 3D effect. I could never get it to work. More information is available in this review. |
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Battlezone |
| Reportedly the military used a version of this game as a training device for fighter vehicle pilots.
More information is available |
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Burger Time |
| An example of the absolutely insane designs of early video games. A chef has to make burgers by stepping on the ingredients and forcing them to the lower levels all while being chased by a lifesize hotdog and egg.
Also has a disturbingly cult following. exitzer0 adds: “Acid trip game of the year. The motions the foods made when they walked was just creepy.” More information is available at The Church of Burger Time. |
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Captain Novolin |
| This is one of those games that tries to educate kids and be entertaining at the same time. I never had the pleasure of playing this game, but by all accounts, it’s not particularly fun and just barely educational. Well, it tried, I suppose.
One of the few reviews I could find is here. |
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Donkey Kong Jr. Math |
| Slap some math into an already established game/franchise and you have a guaranteed success right? Wrong. Donkey Kong Jr. Math took a mediocre arcade game turned NES port and made it less enjoyable by crowbarring math learning into it.
Here’s a review I managed to find. |
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Centipede |
| Decent game that was among the first (if not the first) that was more popular with women than with men. Likely due to the fact that a woman was on the design team (although it’s said she didn’t really have much to do with the actual programming of the game).
More information is available at the KLOV. |
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Conker’s Bad Fur Day |
| Conker’s Bad Fur Day was Rare’s self-published title for the Nintendo 64 after Nintendo bought a chunk of the company. The game earned a Mature rating, despite the kiddy reputation of the console, and once Rare was acquired by Microsoft they retooled it for the XBOX to take advantage of the better hardware and XBOX Live.
exitzer0 adds: “Too raunchy for Nintendo so like the true rebel they were, Rare struck out on their own and then got extremely popular on, of course, the Nintendo. Nintendo, you got burned.” More information is available here. |
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Crash Bandicoot |
| Synonymous with the original Playstation, Crash became Sony’s Mario, selling an obscene number of consoles. Crash played a large role in Sony’s early console success.
exitzer0 adds: “Crash is diffucult to quantify but appeals to a broad range of ages. Created an icon identifiable with the Playstation. I believe that not having a identifiable character is a downfall of a gaming platform, and was one of the contributing factors to the downfall of many systems.” More information is available at the official site. |
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Crazy Taxi |
| Oddly addictive game that saw you driving your taxi around San Francisco and taking people to their destinations. It was taxi driving, but it was EXTREME taxi driving and was different enough to be compelling. Spawned a home console port and two sequels and then vanished off the face of the planet. More information is available in the IGN Dreamcast review. |
Come back for part two next Monday!