#30: Super Bombermam
1993
KERBLAMO! Bomberman + a four-player multi-tap + four guys + Bailey's + Jaimeson + Guiness = an explosive evening. Allow me to explain. Bomberman is one of the best multi-player games ever made, especially if you turn it into a drinking game. My buddies and I love to prepare Irish car-bombs, and every time you win a match, you have to chug one. The SNES only started with two controller ports, but in 1993, the multi-tap came out, which allowed you to play up to four-players, which mainly affected sports games (my least favorite genre), but the tap was worth getting just for Bomberman. The matches are extremely fast-paced, rarely lasting over a minute. It's some of the most frantic, frenetic fun you'll ever have. Players are all thrown into a maze armed only with bombs, and the last man standing wins. Your bombs explode five seconds after laying them, and they also act as walls before they detonate, so mastery of timing, cornering and chain-reactions is key. You can also collect a variety of dynamite power-ups, including a boot (which lets you kick bombs), a glove (which lets you throw bombs), a fireball (which upgrades your explosion's range), remote-detonated bombs, and invisibility! This game's a blast! Apparently, there's even a single-player mode. Who knew?
#29: Mega Man X2
1994/95
There were three Mega Man X games made for the SNES, and you'd better believe all of them made this list. X2 was my least favorite of the three, though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a kickass game. In the opening sequence, Mega Man and some other maverick-hunter are speeding across a desert on jet-bikes against a wave of enemy lazer-fire. The Mega Man wanabe gets hit and explodes. But does our boy in blue turn back? Fuck no. He accelerates. And just as he closes in on the enemy base, he leaps off the jet-bike as he olleys it into the robot guarding the gate, obliterating the shit out of him. And that's what Mega Man's all about. He's a fucking badass, made even cooler by the fact that he's not even trying to be cool. He doesn't flex, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't womanize, he doesn't wear shades indoors and he doesn't drop cheesy one-liners like most action heroes from the eighties. He's just a genuinely good hero with a talent for ass-kicking. X2 rocked almost as hard as the first X game. It actually had my favorite weapon selection of the X games, including the Magnet Missile, which was remote-controlled, the Speed Burner, which, fully charged, gave you a fiery horizontal boost, and the Crystal Hunter, which froze enemies in an ice cube which you can then use as a platform! Like its predecessor, X2 was full of hidden upgrades that only the cleverest gamers will find. The only thing I didn't like about X2 was the sidequest to reclaim Zero's parts, which involved defeating three secret bosses known as the X-hunters. You'd think that after locating the hidden X-hunters, defeating them and reassembling Zero, you'd get to play as him. But nope. Your only reward is getting to watch him defeat one of the final sub-bosses for you. What a tease.
#28: Mega Man X3
1995/96
Don't you hate it when you start a sequel with none of the many abilities from its predecessor? As usual, Mega Man starts X3 with a minuscule health bar, no upgrades and no special weapons. But this time around, Capcom finally decided to give the fans what they wanted: they let you play as Zero. He starts with a huge health bar, fully-upgraded arm cannon and a devastating lightsaber attack! But there's a catch: if Zero dies only once, he's gone forever, so be careful with him, switch back to his blue brother if he gets weak, and prepare to do some resetting. The funny thing is, Mega Man soon becomes the far superior choice, because X3 had the greatest upgrades in the entire series, including a helmet upgrade that pin-pointed the level’s secrets for you via radar, a leg upgrade that allowed you to dash and/or jump again in midair, and an armor upgrade that allowed you to, while standing still, slowly refill your health AND YOUR SUB TANKS! So, before every boss battle, you can just leave Mega Man sitting there to rejuvenate while you run to the bathroom/kitchen/methlab. Dr. Light kindly warns you that you can only choose one of the ultimate upgrades (damn, Capcom was getting stingy). If you skip the upgrades, a hidden capsule in the fourth Sigma level rewards you with all of them. I cannot describe how powerful and happy these make you. It makes all Mega Man's previous incarnations look like scrap metal. Aside from the ultimate upgrades, you can also acquire four mechs to ride around in and some cool special weapons. My favs: the Spinning Blade, which were close-range yet powerful, the Ray Splasher, which sprayed fire like an out-of-control fire hose, and the Tiger Fang, which could drill through anything, including cracked walls. As far as the X series goes, this should have been the last. X4-6, on the Playstation, are better left unmentioned. Capcom should have called X2 and X3 “Mega Man Y” and “Z.” I still recommend picking up the Mega Man X Collection, available for a variety of consoles, if only for the first three.
#27: The Lost Vikings
1992
Lost Vikings was the best action-puzzle game since the Lolo series (my two favorite games on the NES). The evil Tomator is a time-traveling alien who starts abducting Earth's inhabitants from a variety of time periods for an intergalactic museum/zoo to show off Earth's history. Everything goes fine until he abducts three vikings who decide to break out of their “habitat” and fight back. You get to control all three of these vikings and they all have their own unique abilities, which means you'll frequently switching back and forth between them to solve puzzles and defeat enemies in order to gude the entire trio safely to the level's exit. Erik the Swift can run, break through walls with his helmet, and is also the only character who can jump. Baleog the Fierce has the weapons -- a sword and a bow 'n arrow. Olaf the Stout has a shield which he can use for protection as well as hang-gliding. The vikes must fight their way through all the different sections of Tomator's spaceship "zooseum": prehistoric times, ancient Egypt, a futuristic factory and the wildly weird Wacky World (perhaps the sixties?). The game's most charming feature was the Vikes' witty batter, which provided great comic relief between levels or whenever you fail a level. You can play it with one or two players, but not three, which is a good thing. It's hard to explain why without doubling the length of this review, so just trust me. Personally, I preferred to play the whole game on one-player. Probably because I don't have any friends... I mean, uh, friends who will play the game with me.
a.k.a. Norse by Norsewest
1994
Interplay did the unthinkable by actually topping the first game. The three Vikes are back, but this time, each of them have new abilities in addition to their old ones: Erik the Swift now has a new helmet which allows him to breathe underwater and rocket boots which give him a second jump. Baleog the Fierce has a grappling hook that doubles as a mid-range weapon. Olaf the Stout can now shrink to fit through narrow passages and fart, which destroys things below him as well as gives him a boost of air while hang-gliding. There are also two NEW characters: Fang, a werewolf who can use his claws to shred enemies or climb walls, and Scorch, a dragon who can breathe fire and fly! Only three of the five characters are playable at once avoid becoming overcomplicated, and the game always gives you the three you need to complete the level. The quirky quintet journeys through the countryside of Gothic Transylvania, medieval castles in the dark ages, pirate ships in the middle ages, ancient temples in the Amazon jungle, and a post-apocalyptic future that looks straight out of a James Cameron film. The action, puzzles and humor are all better than the first. It's also much harder than the first game. You will end up retrying many of the levels many times, but it's sooooo worth it. The more Game Overs you get, the more the vikings make fun of you, and the jokes just keep getting funnier and funnier. Go to Valhalla fifteen times and Thor himself chastizes you. It's not often that a game rewards you for failing, and it's touches like that that make the Lost Viking dualogy so wonderful.
#25: Super Metroid
Samus Aran = the greatest bounty hunter of all time. Eat your heart out, Boba. Like Zelda III, Metroid III was the definitive game of the series, and completely negated the need to ever play its predecessors again. It’s one of the most unforgettable gaming experiences you will ever have. It’s a thrilling, epic, atmospheric game that really makes you feel. Anyone who’s played it knows what I’m talking about. Some games have such imaginative settings, you never forget what it feels like to be there, like Planet Zebes, a dark, unpleasant, cavernous hellhole where Samus is sent to recover the last living species of alien larva, the Metroid. Unfortunately, the planet is infested with hostile lifeforms. So basically you’re an exterminator, eradicating an entire planet as you attempt to find the last Metroid. Unlike most platformers which feature a series of linear levels, Metroid is one ginormous, open level. Like Zelda, the game is meticulously structured to limit your progress until you acquire the necessary power-ups. Ah, the power-ups. Super Metroid is full of them, and they're all fucking awesome. Morph ball, bouncy ball, ice beam, grappling hook, screw attack... the game just keeps getting better and better. And as complex as the underworld of Zebes is, it never gets overwhelming. You will get to know the planet like you're own home. It's divided into distinct sections, like an underwater area and a lava area, and you get hella helpful maps that tell you where you’ve been and where you haven’t. I loved getting all the blue squares pink! Metroid gave birth to the popular term "speedruns," where players competed to complete a game as quickly and efficiently as possible. The quicker you beat the game, the less Samus was wearing in the game's ending. Players that beat the game in under three hours got to see her in her undies! That's as slutty as she gets -- believe me, I tried. The controls are excellent: jumping and wall kicking are very precise, you can shoot in 8 different directions, you can even pull an Michael Jackson moonwalk! The music’s very dark and ambient, it really immerses you in the environments. Super Metroid also had some amazing boss battles, like Ridley, a metallic dragon, Mother Brain, the final boss, and my favorite, Kraid, a boss so Godzillian it can't even fit on the damn screen.
#24: Contra III: The Alien Wars
1992
This is my go-to game for a quick adrenaline fix. It's easily my favorite entry in the series, at least on one-player. As much as I loved the 3D Mode 7 levels on one-player, I can't say I cared much for playing it on splitscreen with a partner. Contra games were always awesome, but this one cranked the badassery to the max. It makes you feel like the star of a big-budget action film, throwing you into one classic action set piece after another. You'll jump through the fiery rubble of a freshly nuked city, duel a robotic spider while climbing the side of a skyscraper, and leap from a motorcycle to a helicopter -- then jump between airborn missiles as they fly toward the enemy base. Ridiculous? Yes. Ridiculously awesome! And for the first time, you don't have to enter the Konami code to make the game possible. See, all the previous Contras were unbelievably difficult on the default difficulty, and only by entering a famous button sequence on the title screen would you get enough lives to make the games possible (and enjoyable). But in Contra III, you can simply go into options and change the difficulty, or even increase the amount of extra lives you get per continue. I loved all the new features in Contra III: You could climb on walls and even monkeybar across ceilings, carry two weapons at once, lock your mobility so you can fire in any direction without moving, and get bombs that destroy everything onscreen. This game is like a mental trip to the gym; it will turn you from Jigglypuff to Duke Nukem, at least in your head.
#23: Mega Man 7
1995
Between X2 and X3, Capcom made Mega Man 7, a continuation of the original series. MM7 had a strikingly different style from either series, which is the only reason I can think of as to why the game is so underrated. The look of the game was neither as familiar as the old 8-bit games nor as badass as the X games. But don't let the colorful, bubbly appearance fool you. This game kicks major ass. It was great to see all the old faces return, and get a 16-bit take on the classic formula. As usual, Wiley has eight bosses for you to defeat, only this time, you only get four at a time, which I really liked. It narrowed down the trial and error period of trying to find out boss weaknesses. I normally abhor using the internet for help on games, especially on your first play-through. However, I do make an exception for Mega Man games, for which I always look up a cheatsheet for the boss weaknesses, just so I can play the levels in the right order. I don't have time for all that guess-and-check bullshit. MM7's greatest strength was its amazing level design. The stages really complimented their end bosses (for example, Spring Man’s stage is full of bouncy coil springs), and the bosses were some of the best villains in the series. My favorites were Shade Man, a vampiric robot who could actually drain your energy, and Slash Man, who was like X-Men's Wolverine on speed. I loved how the weapons could also affect the environment. Thunder Bolt could activate machinery in the background, Scorch Wheel could burn flammable objects, and Freeze Cracker could turn things to ice. MM7 also marked the debut of “the shop.” Between levels, you could visit Auto to purchase helpful items like Beat, a robot-bird who could air-lift you from pits if you fall into them. Each level also boasted brilliant secrets. Smart players will be rewarded with awesome items like Protoman’s shield and a jetpack! This is probably the most underrated game on the SNES. Though hated by many, I actually think it's the best of the original series. *flinch!*
#22: Disney’s Aladdin
1993
Alternate lyrics to “Friend like Me:”
Well, when Capcom got those Disney rights,
they made all the movies into gems.
And one of their best games on the SNES
was Aladdin (Copyright) *TM.
It's like Prince of Persia with good controls.
You're a rebel Arab acrobat.
And to get some azz from princess Jazz,
you'll have to get the magic lamp and mat.
It features all the tunes from the feature 'toon.
All the characters are in it, too.
If you don't believe me, look it up!
All you gotta do is read reviews...
...and they'll say...
..this game's the shit,
but Sega's version's just plain shit.
You gotta buy it for yourself and see:
You ain't never played a game like this!
#21: The Lion King
1994
Alternate lyrics to "The Circle of Life:"
From the day it arrived at the game store,
I knew it would have to be mine.
“Save up,” said my rents. “Every chore, fifty cents.”
“BUT I WANT IT NOW!” I started to wine.
So they bought me the game just to calm me.
And I'm happy to say, it was gold.
From the level design to the soundtrack and lines
straight from the film, it will never get old!
It's the Lion King game!
and it's fuckin' awesome!
I've shown all of my friends
and it always awes 'em.
'Til the final fight
where Uncle Scar has fast paws!
Only way I could win
was by constantly pressing “pause.”
And the list goes ever on... up next: the top 20!
