GB's 100 Games: 20-16

 
It feels like it's been ages since I began this series, and now the final twenty entries are here. These were the games that truly hooked me. I played them top to bottom and fell in love with their miniature worlds.

Let's begin.

20: Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light
Genre: RPG
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: October 5, 2010

Bet you were all wondering when this one would show up. Of course I would give high marks to the legendarily insane adventure of Alex, Sarah, Pit, and the long-suffering Josephine!

I've talked more than enough about Four Heroes of Light in previous blog entries so I'll keep this short, but it was cute, charming, addictive, and definitely one of the three best games I played last year. Unfortunately for Four Heroes, though, both of the other AAA games I played last year have managed to outrank it. You'll be seeing them later.

For more on Four Heroes, check out my Chatzy "Let's Play"-type thing and my review.

19: Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
Genre: 3D Platformer
System: GameCube
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
Released: February 11, 2002

I loved both Sonic Adventure games. They had their flaws, but they were extremely playable and I enjoyed the story that went with them. I also had no problem with any of the different character gimmicks - I even liked Big's fishing levels in SA1. SA2 has held up better than its predecessor, and is still a worthwhile Sonic game.

But you know what really locks this game as high as it is? Chao raising. I freaking loved those little buggers, and it was a great incentive to replay levels. I eventually managed to build up a monster of a Chao named Azure who wound up rocking the Chao minigames and scoring me all of the Chao emblems. Thanks, Azure. You were a hero.

18: Super Paper Mario
Genre: Platformer/RPG hybrid
System: Nintendo Wii
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: April 9, 2007

Don't let the cute box art and the general cuddliness of the Paper Mario art style fool you. Super Paper Mario is probably the darkest Mario game ever created, with such E-rated wonders as Mario getting sent to hell, forced slave labor in a factory, and a little girl splitting her own neck to mutate into a massive, grotesque spider-like robot demon with the limp, unmoving body of the girl hanging at an angle underneath the thing's head. And other stuff I won't get into.

It's got an epic story, it's got bonus dungeons, it's got fantastic music, it's got funny characters, and it expands and builds on the Mario universe in interesting ways. Super Paper Mario is everything a Paper Mario game should be, except that it's not quite the right genre. A lot of platformer fans won't like how story-heavy SPM is, while RPG fans would have preferred turn-based battles to the hopping and bopping offered here. It's an odd beast indeed, one of a kind. But for the most part, this was an experiment that succeeded.

But Intelligent Systems, it's now been eight and a half years since this RPG series got a game that was actually an RPG, so... please? :<

17: Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers
Genre: Fighting
System: Sega Genesis
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Released: June 1994

THIS HIGH PLACEMENT IS DELICIOUS

YES

YES

This will forever be my favorite standard fighting game. The characters - all 16, from Blanka to Zangief - became household names in my home when I was growing up. Street Fighter was one of the few games my parents played regularly, and my mom wasn't half bad - compared to my dopey dad and six-year-old me, of course. I remember excitedly watching the two of them duke it out.

In my house, among our home movies, is one featuring this game. I had set up a two-player match and put a controller in front of my infant brother (who couldn't have been older than 1 and a half), then I reached over and pressed buttons for him, with the eventual result being my character losing. I showered my brother with praise for this tremendous accomplishment.

Street Fighter also holds a place in my memories and heart for being one of the first games I accomplished something really significant in besides just beating it. I beat Street Fighter with all 16 characters to see their unique endings. And I think that right there is one of the biggest reasons Street Fighter was so beloved in my home - every character mattered. All 16 had their own level with their own music, all 16 had their own special moves and their own voice clips. Everyone was special, one-of-a-kind, with a biography and stats in the manual and two different victory animations nobody else had. Too many fighting games neglect to give their characters this kind of personality, and the game suffers for it. I like the Mortal Kombats, but too often the characters are interchangeable and recycle sounds, and none of them have their own stages or theme music. No, THIS is how you stick your game and your characters into someone's imagination. Even lesser characters like Dee Jay and Fei Long are memorable to me because of their music and unique attacks and animations.

As a minor aside, Super Street Fighter 2 holds the honor of being the first game played in my new home when we moved in 2006 - my brother started it up to see if we had hooked up the system correctly. The last game played in our old home, by the way, was Final Fantasy 1.

16: Animal Crossing
Genre: Casual/Relaxation
System: GameCube
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: September 15, 2002

And here is the highest entry in the series of games that my brother bought, but I wound up playing more than he did. For years he told me he wanted to play Animal Crossing. When he finally got it for Christmas 2005, he played it a good deal. Then, something unexpected and seemingly unrelated happened - I injured my foot and got a toe infection.

I spent a few weeks home sick because of my injury, and had to take extended footbaths as well as keep my foot elevated when it wasn't in the bath. With all this sitting around, I needed something to do. At first I watched my brother play Animal Crossing a lot while I amused myself with the DS, but one day while he was at school I finally decided to join his town.

Bang, I was hooked.

In Animal Crossing there is no true goal, no villain to defeat, and no battles to win. It's the Seinfeld of video games. It's a game about nothing. But goddamn if it wasn't addictive as hell. The main point, I suppose, is to earn money to pay off your debts and expand your home, which you can decorate with stuff you find, buy, or receive as a gift. There are NPC villagers you can interact with and a lot of rare items that are hard to find. There are also fish and insects you can catch to sell, keep as decorations, or donate to the local museum (gotta catch 'em all). There's a tailor where you can design your own patterns for clothing, wallpaper, and umbrellas (naturally my designs included both a white and a black mage). There are fossils, special sales, visiting NPCs, a tropical island only accessible via a Cube-GBA cable, and the always-entertaining K.K. Slider, the singing dog. The game keeps track of time and celebrates holidays. Sometimes it rains. You'll get presents on your birthday. Nearly a dozen NES games are hidden unlockables. You can decorate your house with a boxing ring, a Moai, a coelacanth, or a radio shaped like ROB.

At first glance it looks like nothing, but there's so much hidden eccentricities in Animal Crossing that it boggles the mind. For whatever reason, I couldn't get into the sequels, but the original is fantastic and is a GREAT game for unwinding and relaxing.