In honor of the sixth installment in the Guitar Hero catalogue being released today, I give you this week's top 5... Top 5 Favorite Old School Video Games. For anyone reading this that may be significantly younger then me, I define "old school" as being anything for the original Nintendo system or earlier. So, for all of you who had to blow into your system or cartridge to make it work, who got chased around a two dimensional maze by ghosts, hot dogs, pickles, barrels and snakes, who's controller was connected to the system by a giant phone cord, and who screamed at their TV's "I PUSHED THAT BUTTON", here's my list...
5. Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt (Nintendo)
My answers to these top 5 topics sometimes end up being a little perverse, a little of which is a conscious effort to avoid the obvious and expose people to things they may not have heard of or experienced and a little of which is just because my taste tends to be just slightly outside the mainstream, but with this topic it's hard to stray to far outside the box. I guess putting it 5 instead of 1 is my way of keeping true to my lists even though this was the game that changed gaming for my generation. This game was so addicting that I would walk into our spare room where the Nintendo was and find my parents playing... and they wouldn't let me play! It was my game!! This game opened the door for gaming as we know it today)
4. Tron (Intelevision)
I had to include something from Intelevision. I'm sure most of you didn't even play on it, but it was the first system in my house. I used to spend hours playing this game. All you did was run around throwing discs at evil robots. It sounds so archaic now, but it kicked ass back then)
3. Tetris (Nintendo/Game Boy)
Again, super simple concept but I would play for hours. This is easily the most addicting game ever... well, other then Bust-A-Move, aka Bubble Boy. Tetris, like Mario Brothers, was the first of its kind and spawned a whole genre of puzzle games.)
2. Pitfall (Atari)
I submit that this game holds up to any game that is being played now, shitty graphics or not. I could have gone with Mrs. Pacman or Galaga or Space Invaders, but this was my favorite Atari game by far. I sure my love of Indiana Jones has something to do with that, but whatever, it's a classic.)
1. Baseball Stars (Nintendo)
None of you probably know much about this game but it was light years ahead of it's time. I'll admit that I haven't played a baseball game in the last few years, but up until I was still playing, there were concepts in Baseball Stars that still weren't being used. You built your team from scratch and got money for each win. Who you beat determined how much you got and you would use that money to pay players and improve their stats. Do you want to be popular so you can make more money or do you want to just build areas that make your team better on the field? To go along with this, the game play was great. You could jump walls to rob home runs and dive to steal base hits, things you couldn't do until the next generation of games came along. I loved this game more then any other sports game except NHL for Sega)
No honorable mentions this week, slipping Average guy...
ReplyDeleteI used to love Metroid and of course Super Metroid- I liked at the end when you won, the character takes off their helmet and it was a chick... for some reason that was hot news in my house! We were like WTF???
Adventures in the Magic Kingdom-- awesome game where goofy left the golden key to the castle gate inside and you have to go through the 5 disney attractions to get the parade to start. With levels on the Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, Autopia and crap what was the other one... Oh yeah, Thunder Mtn you had to collect these golden keys.. really cool.
Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!! --- I mean that just says it all, 3 exclaimation points in the title of the game. (nuf said) hours of fun with the power glove back in the day. and why did we think it was so cool to use the little keys on the power glove to type in our names on the high score? it was like Wii from the stone age. From the glass jawed opening fight to the way out of scale little character you played "Little Mac", and even the battle Royal you could never win against Mike Tyson himself this was an awesome game.
Duck Tales- You get to be Scrooge McDuck, and I love me some Duck tales (oo oo) and this game had an alternate ending when you finished with a certain amount of money :)
The Legend of Zelda- with the no-D graphics super fun adventure game.
Zork- not a NES game this was a computer game really REALLY old like DOS prompt no graphics. we used to play this one all the time. (You might not count that as a video game since it was for a computer not a gaming console, however I loved it so I had to add it as my only Non NES submission) This was an adventure game where at the (:) prompt you would type in an action or a question and the game would tell you what you saw or if what you did worked. example
:look left
:you see a cavern before you there are 2 caves go right or go left?
:Go left
:Fire erupts from dragon inside of the cave's mouth, you are dead
::Game over
Hours of fun on that one let me just tell you!
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego- probably the hardest game my parents ever bought me, I was obsessed with the Show Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego (a game show which I believe should be brought back) and this came out for NES I thought my brain would explode!
Tecmo bowl- Screw Madden Tecmo Bowl is where it's at!
We had A LOT of Nintendo games! Not a top 5 er.. 7 but some that instantly come to mind... weird thing is we had ever gaming system and we only ever played the Nintendo. well I only really remember the Nintendo...
We also played a lot of computer games, space quest, King's Quest, Life and Death and Life and Death 2: the BRain - preforming Brain Surgery as an 8 year old was marvie!