spoonshiro's stuff

Just as the name implies, this is a top 100 of my personal favorite games of all time. Keep in mind that this list is my opinion and no-one else's, so if you don't agree with an included game or where it's placed... I honestly don't care!

100. Battletoads (Rare, 1991)

Battletoads is a name that brings back fond gaming memories and thoughts of dread in roughly equal measure. On one hand, it is a game known for being well designed, containing tons of variety and having fantastic visual effects and music for the NES. On the other hand, it's notorious for being punishingly difficult. Much of the game is comprised of obstacle courses that require nearly perfect execution to make it through, and one mistake usually resulted in your death and sent you back to the previous checkpoint. Even the two player mode didn't help much with this, as one player's death on an obstacle course would end the attempt for both, and if one person lost all their lives, both would be booted to the continue screen and have to restart the level - questionable programming, to be sure. But as a single player game, it was a great challenge and exceptionally fun once you were used to its special brand of sadism, and hey, if you could actually beat it in one go, even with the lives code, you were the man.

99. Saturn Bomberman (Hudson Soft/Eleven, 1997)

The best Bomberman game of all time. Yes, really. Building on the foundations set up by Mega Bomberman and the Super Bomberman games on 16-bit platforms, they had all the same powerups and gameplay innovations from those and took advantage of the high res, gorgeous 2D graphics that the Saturn could deliver. But what really sold it was the ten-player simultaneous mode, which is just a hilarious melee of sheer chaos. Yes, it's expensive to set up - you need a copy of the game, two multitaps, ten controllers and a relatively large TV to see the action with any degree of clarity, but man is it a rush..

98. Star Fox 64 (Nintendo, 1997)

A great many fans ended up disappointed when Star Fox 2 was cancelled. Understandable, as the game looked fantastic, expanding on the original in every way imaginable and featuring some downright amazing 3D graphics on the SNES (which, as stated, was not designed with 3D graphics in mind at all). Well, Nintendo somewhat made it up to us with Star Fox 64, a solid remake of the original game featuring a voice acted narrative (with actual voice acting, not garbled gibberish), sharp graphics, gigantic bosses, clever stage designs and numerous stage routes that gave the game some substantial replay value. There were even two new controllable vehicles in the form of the Landmaster Tank and the Blue Marine sub, which were pretty cool but sadly limited to specific stages. All in all, though, we have a solid entertaining game that's fun to try and get a high score on. It was also the first game that touted the use of the "Rumble Pak", the device that introduced proper force feedback to gaming and would shake your controller whenever you took an especially big hit. Every game console since has incorporated that into their controllers in some form or another, so it was a pretty big deal at the time.

97. Perfect Dark (Rare, 2000)

If Goldeneye broke new ground for the mission-driven shooter genre, then Perfect Dark took it to, well, perfection. This was in no small part due to the addition of the Nintendo 64's Expansion Pak, which allowed for much more detailed visuals and voiceovers for many of the characters, not to mention much more threatening enemy AI. Additionally, the futuristic setting also allows for all sorts of clever new gadgets like ricocheting "pinball grenades", laptop sentry guns, and submachine guns with automatic lock-on functionality. That's all good, but like Goldeneye, the real draw is in its multiplayer, which adds in several new game modes as well as the ability to have up to eight computer-controlled "simulants" running around, making for some very intense and surprisingly strategic matches. Everything about Perfect Dark is just pure fun.

96. Panzer Dragoon Saga (Team Andromeda, 1998)

An epic and amazingly well produced RPG that could have easily been the Saturn's answer to Final Fantasy VII; sadly it got almost completely ignored outside of Japan since it was printed only in extremely limited quantities despite considerable fan demand, and it continues to fetch insanely high prices today as the source code has since been lost (making porting it to modern platforms extremely difficult). Still, it took the rail shooter format of the earlier Panzer Dragoon games and adapted it quite well to a turn-based RPG, adding in a continuous (and fully voice acted) narrative, a creative combat system that built on the rail shooter gameplay of the original games in a surprisingly creative way, the ability to transform your dragon to adapt to challenges, some downright incredible graphics for the hardware and an unforgettable, amazing soundtrack.

95. Ikenfell (Happy Ray Games, 2020)

RPGs are a notoriously difficult and time-consuming genre to develop, which is why well-made indie RPGs are pretty rare, but something I greatly enjoy when they're done well. Ikenfell definitely fits the bill, with, some low-resolution but surprisingly expressive and well-animated sprites, some wonderful music (by the two who composed for the show Steven Universe, so they definitely know what they're doing) and a very charming cast of well-written characters. Its gameplay is nothing especially groundbreaking (working in the timed button presses of Super Mario RPG and some light grid-based combat tactics), but serviceable and fun, and it's just the right length that it remains fun throughout and never wears out its welcome. A delightful experience from start to finish.

94. Fallout 2 (Black Isle Studios, 1998)

The original Fallout definitely had charm to spare with its open-ended character development, multiple ways to complete objectives, heavy world lore and a wry sense of humor despite itself, but Fallout 2 took all of that and expanded upon it tenfold. Bigger guns, new monsters, a wide variety of recruitable characters, and tons of new locations to explore and characters to interact with - some lovable, some you just love to hate. There's also a reworked Perk system and a very handy new feature in the form of a drivable car, which makes transportation around the landscape more convenient and gives you plenty of extra carrying capacity to boot. A stellar RPG experience from beginning to end and, again, one of the finest games in the CRPG genre.

93. Dragon Quest I/II: HD-2D Remake (ArtDink PlayStation 5, PC, XBox Series, Switch, Switch 2)

I absolutely loved the HD-2D remake of 3, so this was the next logical step. They took things in a pretty different direction this time too - whereas III's remake felt like the original game with a lot of added content, these use the originals as more of a jumping-off point to tell their own take on the story and add many gameplay improvements - not unlike Final Fantasy VII Remake, though thankfully a lot less bloated. There's a new narrative, dungeons and gameplay elements like the sigils that grant access to souped-up skills and spells, and the overall balance and design is much more polished, taking two fairly updated games and upgrading them to modern standards while still keeping what made the originals classics to begin with. I never thought the company that brought us Aquanaut's Holiday would be making some of my favorite RPGs in the modern era, but hey, life is full of surprises.

92. Valkyria Chronicles 4 (Sega/Media.Vision, 2018)

Valkyria Chronicles was easily one of the previous best tactical RPGs of its generation, but it kinda got the shaft after its first entry. The second game (on the PSP) was lackluster overall and sold poorly, 3 got passed up entirely for localization as a result, and well, the less said of that lousy action spinoff game, the better. Almost ten years after the series debuted, Valkyria 4 brought back what made made it a hit in the first place - wonderful storytelling, polished design and a well-realized story with some amazingly written characters, high stakes and great plot turns. A couple new twists are added in the form of a new class called Grenadiers (who can fire mortar rounds at long distances) and the Brave system, which allows an injured character a chance to turn the tide back on their opponent by boosting an ally or getting to finish a turn before they're incapacitated. Another excellent wartime tale in Europa.

91. Ultima VI: The False Prophet (Origin Systems, 1990)

It seemed that every Ultima title did its best to up the ante over the previous one, and Ultima VI was no different in that regard. While the previous games had a recognizable world to venture through with a lot of surprising nods to realism, Ultima VI set out to create an immersive, realistic world that you'd live an alternate life in. You could hunt animals for food, milk cows, load and fire cannons, move furniture around and so forth, and creative solutions to get around problems often work. The story was another great one too, starting with what appears to be a hostile invasion but having you looking at things from a very different perspective by the end. The somewhat clunky UI and limited viewpoint don't make it my favorite Ultima to play, but even with the annoyances of constantly running into dead-ends and getting lost in towns, it's another fantastic RPG from Origin and a very worthwhile entry to a legendary franchise.