For starters, this game had perhaps the smoothest controls of just about any 2D action shooter from the timeframe. Yeah, the mechanics behind Earthworm Jim and Gunstar Heroes were fluid as all hell, but this game felt positively PERFECT. It was as if the controller melded with your flesh and you could move the character by simply thinking it. The game was THAT finely tuned.

I think a lot of people were kind of turned off by the character design. Begrudgingly, they kind of have a point: the first time I saw the box art for this title, I though the protagonist was a string of green and yellow boogers. Also, the graphics had the whole 2.5D thing going on, so things were coated in that icky Donkey Kong Country over-sheen. That being said, if you could get away from those annoyances, one would find a superb little shooter, and a game that is just RIPE for a modern day revival.

Oh, and when the game boots up, stand on the A on the Sega logo, point your cannon arm at a 45 degree angle and start blasting at the right top most corner of your TV screen. Why, you may ask? Oh, you will see. . .

#054 Phantasy Star II



You never forget your firsts.



PS II was the first real RPG I ever played, and upon my initial play through, I was more than just a tad confused by what was going on in the game. Now, I am very much what you would call a fan of twitch game play, sporting a particular fondness for the variety of games that require keen eye-hand coordination and expeditious reflexes.



Obviously, PS II was not a game alike the ones I was conditioned to. Sure, I had played a number of Action-RPG hybrids on the NES (like Crystalis and the incredibly underrated Magic of Scheherazade), but this was a game that was, quite literally, the equivalent of virtual checkers!

Basically, all of the staples that have become cliches of the Japanese RPG form were introduced to me, in all of their inert splendor, through this game. As a super-nationalistic American at the time, I wondered why all of the characters in the game had such huge eyeballs, and the turn-based game play positively bamboozled me. I did, however, think that it was really cool that I could actually name the characters in the game; at the epoch, such specifications were virtually alien concepts to me.

Admittedly, my experience with the game was rather limited; I only played it a few times, but even in such minute exposure, I simply knew that I had stumbled upon something out-of-the-ordinary, and something that would soon unfurl a new world of gaming to me. And to think, getting my ass kicked by literally the FIRST enemy in the game spawned my love affair with the role playing game!

#053 Revenge of Shinobi



This was one of two games that PROVED to me the positive sublimity of 16-bit gaming.



It was 1990, and I had played a number of early Genesis titles. While considerably impressed, nothing I had yet played totally made me LUST after the console. I was still satisfied with my NES, and although that new black console was pretty, it's offerings had not yet wowed me with its extra processing power and megabits.



Then, I played Revenge of Shinobi.

This game positively BLEW my mind back in the early 90s. This was a game that made full utilization of those three buttons (which, in fact, led to much cursing when you accidentally triggered a ninjitsu special that you DID NOT want to use) that many Nintendo-heads claimed was merely superfluous, and the music was just stellar. However, it was in the games gorgeous graphics (dear lord, seeing the underground waterfall level for the first time. . .) and killer game play that converted me to the new religion of Sega. That, and it actually proved a challenge, too, as in, the part where you had to use the double jump to switch between the foreground and background. Looking back on it, it is somewhat bizarre that the guy can go toe to toe with giant fire breathing monsters, but cannot take a light tap from a Buick. Weird.

This is a title that has been in licensing hell for WELL over two decades now, thanks in no small part to the litany of, ahem, unscheduled cameo appearances by guys like Spider-Man, The Terminator, Batman and Godzilla. Although trampling upon intellectual property rights, Revenge of Shinobi was the first game I played on the machine that absolutely STUNNED me; although I was intrigued by this newfangled Japanese play thing, it was not until I played THIS classic that I knew I was soon to be besotted by Sweet Lady Sega.


#052 Strider



And this was the OTHER game that made me realize that 16-bit gaming was my one true god and that the NES was but a false idol.



The weird thing is, I played Strider on the NES like a weekend before I played the Genesis version. In that, I had the fundamental idea of the title wedged firmly in my memory banks, and when booting up the Sega copy, I expected, well, nothing but a mildly fancier version of the 8 bit offering.



Instead, I was absolutely aghast at how beautiful the game appeared; seriously, this might as well have been the arcade version I was playing! Everything about this title just took my breath away, as for the first time in a video game, I had a genuine sense of scale; climbing up the face of a gargantuan building, I actually SHUDDERED as I gazed down at the abyss below me. With all of the subterranean areas within the game, I actually felt as if I was in a real, breathing world, immersed in a level of nuance and detail that I thought was physically impossible to achieve in gaming.

The only thing that impressed me more than the first stage was the second one; pretty much every video game, by dictum, is required to include an Arctic level of some kind. Go ahead, trudge up your favorite 8-bit ice-world real quick. Now, compare the rinky-dink, watered-down level 2 from the NES version with the Sega iteration, and it was like a spiritual reawakening. Not only could you tell what the mid-boss was supposed to be (a cyborg gorilla!), it actually appeared vicious, and you could SEE its facial expressions change!

Of course, it certainly helped that the game was an out and out action masterpiece, filled with incredibly detailed levels and a scope that was totally unparalleled by modern offerings. Strider, for all intents and purposes, may not be the best Genesis game ever made, but it is perhaps THE game that made people take note of the upstart console, and the first truly transcendent experience I had with the machine.

#051 Mortal Kombat II



Every afternoon during second grade, our lunch table camaraderie was essentially anchored by MK II discussion. Seriously, it was as if all we ever did was eat, sleep and breathe this game, and looking back on it, this has to be the zenith of puerile interests in gaming.



Nobody is ever going to accuse MK II of being the most nuanced game; in fact, compared to Street Fighter II and Samurai Shodown, this was essentially a retarded fighting game, devoid of depth or complexities. That being said, it DID have something that neither of those games had, and that was sensationalism.



Even if you did not own a modern gaming console, you were expected to know the button combinations for all of the game's fatalities. In fact, it was Nintendo's reluctance to include the crimson in the SNES version of the original MK that led MANY gamers to flock to the Genesis SOLELY for that reason. Of course, the arcade version of the game became a major facet of the mid 90s pop-cultural landscape, and when the home versions finally landed, it was a cause for much rejoicing amongst the nation's degenerates.

Even if the game was not all that great on a technical level, the sheer nostalgia emanating from this cartridge is just off the charts. Every time I uppercut a hapless victim into the acid pit, I cannot help but wallow in a perverse sort of innocence; there is just something about this title that instantly sends the scent of cafeteria fishsticks wafting through my nose and the idle chatter of purported nude codes coursing through my brain. To this day, the game has something of an unconscious gravity on my thought processes; all you have to do is look up my collegiate article detailing the election of President Baraka Obama to validate THAT notion.

James Swift is a 23 year old author from the metro Atlanta area. His first book How I Survived Three Years at a Two-Year Community College, is currently available from I-Universe Publishing.



E-book copies are priced at just $6 USD, and can be ordered at iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookSearchResults.aspx?Search=James%20Swift