GB's 100 Games: 45-41

As you've probably guessed from the list so far, I'm a bit of a Nintendo loyalist. I was a Sega fan in the early and mid-90s before Pokemon drove me to Nintendo. In recent years I've been taking advantage of my brother's purchases of a PS2 and Xbox 360 to branch out a bit, but I've always had a connection to family-friendly Nintendo fare, and it makes up the backbone of my collection.

Here, we have five different games from four different time periods - pre-Nintendo, Nintendo, late Nintendo, and the branching-out period. And only two of them are actually Nintendo-produced games, so... variety, I guess?

45: Metroid Zero Mission
System: Game Boy Advance
Genre: Metroidvania
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: February 9, 2004

Metroid's one and only representative in 100 Games is Zero Mission, a shining example of how to do a remake correctly. MZM is actually the original NES Metroid, updated so heavily it's barely recognizable - and much better for it, as the original Metroid was a product of a bygone age and has no place in modern times. The brutal difficulty is replaced with multiple difficulty levels, the small selection of bosses is complemented with new encounters, multiple upgrades from later games in the series are brought back, the graphics are massively improved, Kraid and Ridley are TOO BIG FOR BRAWL like usual, and there's even simple cutscenes and a brand-new finale added to the end. I've only seen one GBA remake that did a better job than Zero Mission of upgrading a crusty, near-unplayable 8-bit title, and that one's ranked higher up on this list. You'll see it later.

44: Kirby Air Ride
System: GameCube
Genre: Racing
Developer: HAL Laboratory
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: October 13, 2003

The game so nice, I bought it twice.

See, in 2005, my purple GameCube stopped working due to no longer being able to read discs. Rather than send it to Nintendo for repairs, we wound up throwing it away and buying a new silver Cube, which were just 100 bucks.

Except the purple Cube kind of still had Kirby's Air Ride inside. Talk about a derp moment - and it happened a second time when we returned a malfunctioning DVD player without taking out The Spongebob Squarepants Movie. Not my proudest moment.

Tragic mistakes aside, Air Ride (which I always want to call "Kirby's Air Ride" rather than "Kirby Air Ride") is a very different sort of racing game that got some mixed reviews when it released. I love it, though, especially for some of the very interesting ideas it brings to the table.

In Air Ride, you have three main modes of play, each with some sub-modes. Air Ride is the standard racing mode and Top Ride is a top-down race on tiny tracks, giving the impression of a Kirby-themed Super Sprint (which is a fun little arcade racer that didn't make the list). The real standout is City Trial, a mode that unleashes four players into an open level with the mission of collecting power-ups and upgrading their vehicle. When time runs out, the characters are ushered into a surprise stadium event to use their upgraded machines in. It's very unique and very addictive.

There aren't a ton of courses here, but there is a giant challenge grid full of achievements, many of which unlock characters, vehicles, and music. It's the precursor to the similar grids seen in Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Kid Icarus Uprising, making it a Sakurai trademark.

43: MySims
System: Nintendo Wii
Genre: Building/Casual
Developer: Electronic Arts
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Released: September 18, 2007

God, this game was like crack to me for a while in the late 2000s. MySims, although named after the famous Sims series, has almost nothing in common with it aside from the green diamond, the characters speaking Simlish, and an in-joke about splines and how they reticulate.

The most obvious change is the graphical overhaul. These Sims are adorable animesque little guys I fell in love with pretty quickly (as I have a longstanding weakness for cute things). The other major change is the gameplay. You don't need to tell anyone when to eat, sleep, work, or poop - they just kinda do their own thing.

As your own created character, your job is to save an almost totally-abandoned town from becoming history by rebuilding it and attracting people to it. This is accomplished by performing missions for characters which are always about building them things. Playing a major part in the game are "essences", themed items that enhance an objects' appeal when used in the building mode. For example, a character that likes spooky things may ask for a chair that uses eight "Thorn" essences and four "Pumpkin" essences. Most of the game boils down to hunting for essences and using them to make the required objects. If that sounds like a repetitive grind to you, you may be correct, but for whatever reason I got totally wrapped up in making people furniture and smearing it with their favorite essences.

A big hook for me was the characters, which are not only appealing on an aesthetic level but on a personality level as well. Everyone has a silly backstory, and the game is full of jokes and humor. The Italian cook Chef Gino looks like those clipart chefs you see on diner menus, the fun-loving DJ Candy runs the world's only G-rated nightclub, the perpetually deadpan Jenny writes sci-fi fanfics, and I swear Maria is related to the Sarahkin somehow considering her fondess for books and freakishly enormous appetite. It's extremely lighthearted and a great relaxation game.

42: Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories
System: PlayStation 2
Genre: Turn-based Tactical RPG
Developer: Nippon Ichi
Publisher: Nippon Ichi
Released: August 29, 2006

It's been a lonnnnng time since an RPG last appeared on the countdown. In fact, we haven't seen one since Pokemon Colosseum and XD, which were all the way back at number 84. That's about to change, because the top half of 100 Games has no shortage of RPGs. In fact, there is at least one RPG in every single group of five from here on out.

Disgaea 2 follows the story of a character who didn't appear in Disgaea 1 - Axel, a demon hunter. Axel seeks the powerful Overlord Zenon, a mighty demon king that placed a curse on the humans of Veldime, dooming them to mutate into monsters. Axel's mother, father, sister and brother are all becoming monstrous, as have all the townspeople, with Axel as the only pure human left. Desperate, he and his family decide to force Zenon to appear via a summoning ritual - but they get his daughter instead, Princess Rozalin. Haughty, snobby, and irritated, Rozalin demands Axel escort her home. Axel accepts, deciding to use this oppurtunity to finally challenge Zenon and lift the curse on his hometown. The plot then descends into complete madness as a lecherous frog demon, a hard-rocking action star, a ninja girl with a weird accent, and characters from the first game all blunder into the adventure and variously join or attack the party.

The gameplay is familiar to anyone who's played a Nippon Ichi game before - a grid-based tactics system that uses special effects, team attacks, character positioning, and monster capturing as major aspects of battle. There's also an "Item World" where you can level up your equipment by completing randomly-generated hundred-floor dungeons (you can leave every ten floors). The quest will be over before you reach level 100, but the level cap is 9999 and there's a lot of bonus content that will require levels in the thousands to take down. Simply put, this game can be beaten in thirty to forty hours like most RPGs, but if you want it to it can easily take far, far more of your gaming time than that.

41: Contra Hard Corps
System: Sega Genesis
Genre: Run and Gun
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Released: August 8, 1994

This is the hardest video game I have ever completed. Originally given to me as a Christmas gift in 1994 or 1995, I was terrible at it as a child. I sometimes lost all my lives before finishing the first stage, and I never made it past the third. Then, in the mid-2000s, I looked up CHC on GameFAQs and found a very well-made and informative strategy guide. With its' help, I eventually managed to beat CHC.

Hard Corps features great graphics, an amazing soundtrack, and insane boss fights as well as four playable characters (each with four unique weapons) multiple branching paths, and six endings that vary in quality. The game varies in length from four to seven levels depending on the path you choose. Also notable is the slide mechanic - your character can perform a slide move that makes them invincible and slightly damages enemies. Successful use of this technique is pretty much required to beat the game.

CHC is tough as nails but isn't completely unfair (especially once you've worked out boss patterns and mastered the slide). It's easily the best Contra I've ever played and is highly recommended for shooter fans.