Top 25 Games Of All Time (20-16)
Each Wednesday I'll be counting down my favorite 25 titles from throughout the 30 years I've been playing video games. The rankings are more personal than objective - it's not just how well-made, fun, or groundbreaking they were at the time, but also how much nostalgia they inspire for me personally.
Previous entries:
Honorable Mention
Games 25-21
Top 25 Games Of All Time:
Games 20 through 16
20. R.B.I. Baseball (NES) - 1987
This Nintendo classic was licensed by the MLBPA, meaning it was one of the first team sports games ever to feature actual players - and not just their names but their skills. So Vince Coleman was a red blur, Dwight Gooden was almost unhittable, and Dale Murphy hit towering home runs.
It's one thing to offer a fun and accessible game of baseball - and this is still one of the best I've ever played in that sense. But I was a starry-eyed kid who had just discovered baseball and saw these players at the time as superheroes, and this was the first game that actually let me play with them.
A game that let you play with the 1986 Red Sox and hit a World Series-winning homer with Bill Buckner? That was the stuff 1987 dreams were made of.
19. Star Wars Battlefront (Xbox) - Sept. 2004
When I was eight, I saw Star Wars, bought "action figures," and re-enacted the battle scenes. It was epic.
When I was 33, I played all of those battles on my Xbox and they looked exactly the same way that they did in my head when I was a kid. I flew a snowspeeder and brought down imperial walkers with my tow cable, became a stormtrooper and blasted rebel scum, even had a showdown with Darth Vader. Except that now I could do it all with or against my friends, while rattling off lines from the movies ("Just like shooting womp rats in my T-16 back home." "You are unwise to lower your defenses!")
It was even more epic.
18. B-17 Bomber (Intellivision) - 1982
In the early days of home video games - when "cutting-edge" meant the ability to play a blocky, flickering recreation of Pac-Man on Atari 2600 - none were as groundbreaking or as imaginative as this Intellivision WWII title.
Sold alongside the "Intellivoice" add-on device, it was one of the first home games to feature speech. It came in the form of a computerized co-pilot who would warn you when you needed to man the guns of your flying fortress, or when you were getting close to the bomb target. You could press buttons on the Intellivision's keypad controller to switch between views and man different positions on the aircraft. When you made it to the target, switched to "Bomb Bay" view, and dropped your bombs, the voice would chirp "Bombs awaaaay" in a computerized southern accent.
Now it looks archaic and the aspects of the design that were innovative concepts have long since been rendered obsolete, but at the time the depth and variety of B-17 Bomber gave me a new perspective on what games could be.
17. Star Wars (Arcade/ColecoVision) - 1983
Around the same time that Return of the Jedi was in theaters, this vector graphics game let you fly attack runs in the trenches of the Death Star.
Aside from the fact that it captured the feel of the hottest film franchise of the century at the height of its popularity, the real star here was the sound. The digitized voice clips from the movie ("Red 5 standing by." "I've lost R-2!"), immersive effects, and sound design pulled you into the experience like no other game of its time.
A very good home console port was sold alongside the somewhat obscure ColecoVision, and this game alone made that console worth owning.
16. MVP Baseball 2005 (Xbox) - Feb. 2005
Forget that it's one of the most well-designed sports games ever made. Forget the intuitive and insanely fun gameplay, the dead-on player likenesses and personalities, the accuracy, depth, and immersiveness of the on- and off-field features.
It let you play as the Montgomery Biscuits! (Or any other Double A or Triple A team for that matter.) Controlling the Biscuits - with home games set in my actual hometown - as part of a full online season that pits me against a dozen friends who are each controlling their own minor league teams... that's one of those seminal moments in my gaming life. But the game is on this list because all of that happens as a smaller feature within an MLB game that's incredibly well-made overall.
Coming next Wednesday:
The Top 25 - Games 15 through 11
Previous entries:
Honorable Mention
Games 25-21
Top 25 Games Of All Time:
Games 20 through 16
20. R.B.I. Baseball (NES) - 1987
This Nintendo classic was licensed by the MLBPA, meaning it was one of the first team sports games ever to feature actual players - and not just their names but their skills. So Vince Coleman was a red blur, Dwight Gooden was almost unhittable, and Dale Murphy hit towering home runs.
It's one thing to offer a fun and accessible game of baseball - and this is still one of the best I've ever played in that sense. But I was a starry-eyed kid who had just discovered baseball and saw these players at the time as superheroes, and this was the first game that actually let me play with them.
A game that let you play with the 1986 Red Sox and hit a World Series-winning homer with Bill Buckner? That was the stuff 1987 dreams were made of.
19. Star Wars Battlefront (Xbox) - Sept. 2004
When I was eight, I saw Star Wars, bought "action figures," and re-enacted the battle scenes. It was epic.
When I was 33, I played all of those battles on my Xbox and they looked exactly the same way that they did in my head when I was a kid. I flew a snowspeeder and brought down imperial walkers with my tow cable, became a stormtrooper and blasted rebel scum, even had a showdown with Darth Vader. Except that now I could do it all with or against my friends, while rattling off lines from the movies ("Just like shooting womp rats in my T-16 back home." "You are unwise to lower your defenses!")
It was even more epic.
18. B-17 Bomber (Intellivision) - 1982
In the early days of home video games - when "cutting-edge" meant the ability to play a blocky, flickering recreation of Pac-Man on Atari 2600 - none were as groundbreaking or as imaginative as this Intellivision WWII title.
Sold alongside the "Intellivoice" add-on device, it was one of the first home games to feature speech. It came in the form of a computerized co-pilot who would warn you when you needed to man the guns of your flying fortress, or when you were getting close to the bomb target. You could press buttons on the Intellivision's keypad controller to switch between views and man different positions on the aircraft. When you made it to the target, switched to "Bomb Bay" view, and dropped your bombs, the voice would chirp "Bombs awaaaay" in a computerized southern accent.
Now it looks archaic and the aspects of the design that were innovative concepts have long since been rendered obsolete, but at the time the depth and variety of B-17 Bomber gave me a new perspective on what games could be.
17. Star Wars (Arcade/ColecoVision) - 1983
Around the same time that Return of the Jedi was in theaters, this vector graphics game let you fly attack runs in the trenches of the Death Star.
Aside from the fact that it captured the feel of the hottest film franchise of the century at the height of its popularity, the real star here was the sound. The digitized voice clips from the movie ("Red 5 standing by." "I've lost R-2!"), immersive effects, and sound design pulled you into the experience like no other game of its time.
A very good home console port was sold alongside the somewhat obscure ColecoVision, and this game alone made that console worth owning.
16. MVP Baseball 2005 (Xbox) - Feb. 2005
Forget that it's one of the most well-designed sports games ever made. Forget the intuitive and insanely fun gameplay, the dead-on player likenesses and personalities, the accuracy, depth, and immersiveness of the on- and off-field features.
It let you play as the Montgomery Biscuits! (Or any other Double A or Triple A team for that matter.) Controlling the Biscuits - with home games set in my actual hometown - as part of a full online season that pits me against a dozen friends who are each controlling their own minor league teams... that's one of those seminal moments in my gaming life. But the game is on this list because all of that happens as a smaller feature within an MLB game that's incredibly well-made overall.
Coming next Wednesday:
The Top 25 - Games 15 through 11
posted by Brad at
7:47 AM
1 Comments:
I like that you included RBI Baseball. That was one of my favorite NES games. I remember always being the American or National League All-Stars and playing against the computer team of the Boston Red Sox. I also remember bunting the ball and getting an inside-the-park home run a few times. With less than two outs and a runner on third base, I often simply bunted the ball back to the pitcher for an easy base hit.
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