GB's 100 Games: 30-26

As Nappa would say, "This shit is getting crazy."

We are about to reach the games that were huge parts of my childhood and shaped my gaming preferences and direction. The games that my teen self eagerly discussed on GameFAQs message boards. The games that influence my writing and creative projects.

The game that began the long, tortured, twisting road to the Sarahkin.

It's all here, and the next thirty games are, as far as I'm concerned, some of the all-time greats.

Kick it.

30: Ms. Pac-Man
Genre: Arcade-Style Action
System: Sega Genesis
Developer: Innerprise Software
Publisher: Tengen
Released: 1991

This is not your daddy's Pac-Man. The Sega Genesis version of the classic dot-eating game is a huge upgrade, with dozens of levels and a bunch of different modes of play, plus a "speed booster" to make Ms. Pac-Man faster. The game also has an actual ending as well as two-player cooperative and competitive modes (Player 2 plays as the original Pac-Man!). My mom and I played this game a lot back in the day, and even now it remains her favorite video game ever made.

Not a whole lot to say, except that this is an arcade home version done resoundingly right, and it's very playable even today.

29: WarioWare, Inc: Mega Microgames
Genre: Microgame
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: May 26, 2003

WarioWare is one of a kind, and thanks to Nintendo's obsession with making the series adhere to random gimmicks, it will never be duplicated.

The original and best WarioWare plays much like Touched, except that you use the D-Pad and the A button rather than the touch screen. I've always preferred traditional control methods, so for me this is the better game (I played both a buttload in the mid-2000s, though).

I also must praise the excellent "full games" on offer here - unlockable longer games. They're almost all pretty good, unlike the unlockable "toys" of Touched that are basically just touch screen tech demos. I sank entirely too much time into Dr. Wario (since I didn't own a copy of Dr. Mario at the time).

28:The Mario Kart Series
Genre: Racing
System: N64/GameCube/DS
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: February 10, 1997/November 17, 2003/November 14, 2005

I've played other Mario Karts, but the trio covered above are my three favorites and therefore will represent the series here. Mario Kart is infamous for cheap, cheating AI and, as even the kobbers are aware, items and obstacles that can completely change the tide of battle. Despite that, it can still be a grand old time, especially with friends to play with.

I was unable to really get into Mario Kart 7, the 3DS entry. Perhaps the series doesn't really have anywhere else to go at this point, because to me it felt too much like "Mario Kart DS again, but with fewer/lamer playable characters". That doesn't change the good times I had throughout the last decade with this series, though.

27: Super Mario World
Genre: Platformer
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: February 9, 2002

Like the other two SNES Mario platformers I've covered, Super Mario World was only played by me when it got the Game Boy Advance upgrade, complete with silly voice acting and the original Mario Bros bundled in.

Super Mario World receives the honor of being the highest-rated game in the mainline Mario series. I've always liked the series and it always produces strong games, but they aren't even my favorite platformers, let alone my favorite games. There's one character I prefer for 2D platformers and another for 3D. You may already know which two characters I'm talking about, but that's for later...

Super Mario World is perhaps the quintessential Mario game. Its' sprites have been used extremely heavily in Flash movies and machinima, it introduced Yoshi to the series, and no game has anywhere near the number of hacks and edits as this one. Even if Mario 3 seems to be the current darling of the series (with the recent strong emphasis on putting Mario in animal costumes and bringing back Boom-Boom and the airships), Mario World is my personal favorite Mario title for the many levels and time-tested gameplay.

26: Final Fantasy 1 (Dawn of Souls version)
Genre: RPG
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: Square-Enix
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: November 29, 2004

You wanna know where Sarah came from? I'll tell you where Sarah came from.

In the early- to mid-2000s I was unwilling to try a Final Fantasy game. The fact that I didn't have any systems with Final Fantasy games on them was part of that, but I also had a problem with aesthetics: The worlds the later FF games created did not look appealing. When I was younger, my aesthetic sense heavily dictated which series I gravitated toward, and it usually preferred cute or cartoony to the more realistic-looking characters in FF and other games (this didn't stop me from enjoying Mortal Kombat, Contra Hard Corps, or the not-on-this-list-because-I-never-beat-it Castlevania Bloodlines. I was and remain weird, that's all I can say).

So anyway, it wasn't like Pokemon or Mario where I'd see the game in action and want a piece of that. I simply saw no hook to Final Fantasy.

Somewhere around 2004, a Newgrounds flash animation introduced me to 8-Bit Theater.

8BT was not the first webcomic I'd read, but it was probably the first popular one. And one character in particular had a design I really liked. That character was... the black mage. Yes, the black mage. The other one. White Mage was okay but Black Mage was my favorite.

Over the next year I slowly eased myself into a peripheral Final Fantasy fandom by way of liking 8-Bit Theater. I seeked out pictures of them and used them in fanfiction. I even started doodling the two in my notebooks, and considered them an "item". At some point in 2005 my preferences flipped and White Mage became my favorite of the two.

Finally I decided to take the plunge. The characters I liked were stars of the first Final Fantasy game, which conveniently enough was now available on Game Boy Advance. It wound up being one of the first GBA games I played exclusively on my DS (and far from the last - I kept getting new GBA games for years after the system "died"). And that is how I grew attached to the mages of Final Fantasy, and that is why I made that goddamn 8-Bit Theater reference in 2011 that caused whatever the hell happened afterward. Blame Newgrounds for Sarah, I guess.

Oh yeah, there's a game.

The original FF1 for NES is, by modern standards, an unplayable piece of shit. The magic and save systems are limited, a bunch of spells don't work, the graphics are crude and every single battle uses the same damn music - even the final freaking boss. Now, you may recall I mentioned during the Metroid Zero Mission entry that there was one GBA remake that did an even better job of improving an old NES game. Dawn of Souls is that remake, and FF1 is that game. The graphics are better, the sound is better, the music score is expanded, there are bonus dungeons, you can save anywhere, you can replenish your MP, the magic spells work correctly, and there's only one bug (there's an item that is impossible to obtain due to not spawning where it's supposed to, but it's a minor piece of bonus equipment that wasn't in the original so you wouldn't even know it was an issue unless you looked it up online). Some people criticized this remake for its' low difficulty, but you can still get a Game Over if you aren't adequately prepared or have a crappy team, and the challenge runs will no doubt prove serious endeavors (FOUR WHITE MAGES?!)

In terms of gameplay, FF1 is pretty basic - the turn-based combat has no frills aside from being able to use certain equipment as items to cast spells. You'll notice a lot of fantasy and RPG cliches here, but since this is the first Final Fantasy, I think that's acceptable. This wasn't the first ever RPG, but it was among the first, and was part of a standard for RPGs to come. Battles are quick and characters level up regularly, lending a real feeling of progress and reward to the fighting. There's also four bonus dungeons to adventure through that range in size from decently sized to absolutely massive. The easiest one is five floors, the last one is forty. Each contains four bonus bosses from other Final Fantasy games.

Also, if you play this game you'll see the extensive amount of story and character elements I swiped for ZFRP. I used the first battle with Garland and the encounter with Astos as flashbacks. Celestia and her WarMech fleet were expanded from the bonus boss Death Machine (WarMech is the NES name, which I preferred). Garland and the Four Fiends are the major enemies from the game, and almost all of Garland's summons are bosses from the bonus dungeons.

This improved version of FF1 is also available on the PS1 (the PS1 version lacks the bonus dungeons), and it was later improved still further and released on the PSP and IOS.

Oh, and the cartridge also contains a remake of Final Fantasy 2.

Nothing could save Final Fantasy 2.