Favorite Video Games

My wife has been doing this on her blog and challenged me to do some similar lists that she's done. She recommended music but I'm going to wait on that one. Music is tough and I really need to consider what would be my top songs. These lists are going to be in no particular order and I'm going to stick with 10 per list. I'm hoping to do about one a week on these until I run out of ideas.

Mega Man 2

My friend's brother was playing this one weekend back in the 80s. Being a kid in the late 80s meant that anything video game related was awesome so I rented it at a local video place. I was instantly hooked. This game turned me into a life long Mega Man fan. There's just something magical about this game. The Metal Blade as a weapon for all situations, the level design and just how hard the game was. I've never had the same feeling about a Mega Man game since this one. I actually didn't own this game until much later. I probably rented this game a couple of times a year until finally coming across a copy of it. My final thought on this game is it had the best bosses of any Mega Man game. The dragon in Dr. Wiley's castle is just the tip of the iceberg. The eight robot masters are also the best group of any game and the most original if you ask me. I wouldn't say this is my all time favorite game but it's pretty close to it.

Chrono Trigger

This game came about around the height of my Nintendo Power reading. This game got hyped for a long time before it came out. In a rare moment, I bought this game new when it came out. I might have preordered it but I'm not 100% certain of that. This game lived up to the hype and then some. I think this game was the pinnacle of the 16 bit era RPG and stands up as one of the best RPGs ever. This game had amazing characters with a great level of depth. You could easily get emotionally invested in the story of any one character. The story is also dark, really dark. The plight of the world truly seems hopeless at points but the hero wins against all odds. This was one of the first games to feature New Game+ and encouraged you to play the same game over and over again to see the multiple endings. I believe I managed to unlock all of the endings over the course of several years. The music was also awesome in this game. I remember getting a tape recorder and taping all of the songs from the game so that I could have them on a cassette tape at the time. Stay away from the Playstation remake of this game though. It's a really bad port.

Earthbound

There's going to be a common theme to this list. There was a time frame from October 1994 to August 1996 were some of the best RPGs ever made came out. I also bought this one new because you couldn't rent it anywhere at the time. This game sold really poorly and was a total flop but also has one of the most hardcore fan bases ever. This is quite frankly the most bizarre game that I ever played. It's like Peanuts on LSD. The battle system is very similar to Dragon Quest. It also came with a strategy guide. I would say that I've never played a game even remotely like Earthbound since. I can't guess how many times I've played through this game. I fired it up on emulators for years and it was also one of my first purchases on the Wii U e-shop. This one aged really well so check it out if you get a chance.

Final Fantasy VI

This ushered in a great wave of RPGs on the SNES. The Final Fantasy series has always been near and dear to my heart. I first played the NES Final Fantasy at my friend Dan's house one weekend. I had never played an RPG before and I was just blown away by the genre and instantly fell in love with it. I bought this game and beat it. Then I bought Final Fantasy II for the SNES and by the time I got through it, this game was just coming out. I got this for Christmas the year it came out and this was a really strong game. There's a scene about mid-way through the game where one of the characters tries to commit suicide and I had never seen anything like that in a video game before. This game wasn't afraid to tread where games often didn't go in this era. Yes, I know the box says Final Fantasy III, it's a long story but trust me it's the same game.

Super Mario RPG

Yes, this game out in the same time period as the above 3 RPGs. This was about a year and a half period where there was an awesome new RPG to play every couple of months. This was Nintendo and Squaresoft teaming up to deliver Mario in a very unique situation... an RPG! This was just a really fun game. It had awesome graphics and music and an enemy so bad that you had to team up with Bowser to save the world! I remember this came out towards the end of a school year and playing this through a pretty nasty heatwave one weekend. This series turned into the Paper Mario games which are all just as awesome. You can get this on virtual console and it's worth a look.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

I bought a Playstation for Final Fantasy VII back in 1997. This came out I think about a month later. I was a huge Castlevania fan so this was a no brainer. I was blown away by what I got with this game. They turned Castlevania series into an action RPG starring Dracula's son Alucard. This game featured some intense action and a a truly moody game design. It also featured some of the best music that's ever been featured in a video game. Do yourself a favor and Youtube the game music. I would put it up against any video game ever made. This game also had an original twist. If you managed to get to the second half of the game you had to play in an upside down version of Dracula's castle. I can't recall any other game that's done something like that since. It's also a bit of an oddity as it's a sprite based game on the Playstation. You can get this pretty cheap on the XBox Arcade. It's worth a look if you've never played it before.

Diablo 2

I remember this got delayed maybe a year and I was pissed at the time. I still remember driving to Bestbuy, buying a copy and then playing this for hours on a random Saturday in the summer of 2000. The Diablo games are hack n slash RPGs. Basically, you kill giant hordes of monsters, get better gear and level up so you can kill bigger monsters and get better gear and so on and so on. The game also featured a very moody setting and some really great music. You would spend hours planning out the specs for your character and it was always awesome when you'd get that rare gear drop that your character could use. I probably dust this off about every 2-3 years and give it a good run through. The expansion is a must if you want to play this game.

Planescape Torment

If I had to call a game my favorite of all time, it would probably be this game. You wake up as an immortal with amnesia called the Nameless One. You explore a barren world and meet strange characters that join your party. You get a floating skull and a mage that looks like the Human Torch. There's no standard character when it comes to this game. The game is like Baldur's Gate and is based on the AD&D pen and paper game. This is a very tough game. You feel like you have to battle for every inch in this game. It's also really satisfying when you start to unlock memories for the Nameless One. I loved all of the AD&D titles that came out in the late 90s and early 00s but this was by far the best of all those games.

Pokemon Red and Blue

Last time I checked, I believe I had logged about 120 hours on my copy of Pokemon Red. I had all 151, even the one you had to use a glitch to get. My friends Dan and Matt used to battle with me all the time on this game. This game was easily a good year and a half of my life. I'm not going to go into any huge details on how the game works because I think everyone knows at this point. I started with Bulbasaur as my starter in this game. I've checked out every Pokemon game since the originals and a lot of the games are better but there's a charm to this game that will never be replaced. I can think of few games that have ever grabbed me and just held me for as long as this game did.

Phantasy Star Online

This was an MMO that hit a bunch of systems in the early 2000s. You can't play it online anymore but thankfully it has an offline mode. This is a lot like Diablo 2 in that it's about upgrading your gear and you're mowing down tons of enemies to do it. I bought a Dreamcast keyboard to better play this game at the time. Rare items would appear in red boxes and it was always a mad dash when one of those would show up during a game. This is probably still my favorite MMO. I liked the way it did small parties to tackle the levels and it did a good job of minimizing people being idiots. This one is hard to track down now I think. If you can find it, the Gamecube version is the best copy to get.