John Fleury – Reviewer
Super Mario Galaxy
The original Super Mario Bros. was the first game I ever played, and Super Mario World was the first game I ever owned, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that the iconic plumber remains a personal favorite to this day. Mario continues to show no signs of stopping either his sidescrolling or 3D platforming adventures, but it may be a near impossible task for the series to top this Wii masterpiece and its direct sequel. Taking the best elements of 64 and Sunshine from before, fully exploiting its space setting with imaginative gravity mechanics and level design, and boasting the most surprisingly epic soundtrack the series has ever contained, Galaxy wasn’t just a fun throwback for longtime fans. It was a one-of-a-kind experience.
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest
Most kids who grew up with a Super Nintendo will cite classics like Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, or Super Metroid as their favorite game for the iconic console, but personally, I can’t think of any title from the era that captured my attention and adoration as much as Rare’s first follow-up to their smash hit 1994 revival of the Donkey Kong franchise. It improved on many of its predecessor’s elements (like the hidden bonus stages having a genuine point now), provided solid and varied level design and gameplay mechanics, and boasts great art direction and one of the best soundtracks around. Considering that it took almost 20 years for another DK game to best this in my eyes with Retro’s stellar Tropical Freeze, it’s easy to see why the game is held as one of the series’ biggest achievements, and replaying it over the years remains a wonderful experience.
Rock Band 3
Building on the foundation Harmonix created with the original Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, one can argue that Rock Band 3 is the cream of the crop when it comes to peripheral-based rhythm games. The established note-matching and karaoke gameplay mechanics were in top form, and meaningful additions like the keyboard controller and vocal harmonies made for an even more fun experience. A noticeable graphical revamp and improved character creation compared to its predecessors, along with backwards compatibility for existing downloadable songs, made this the definitive Rock Band experience. Though Harmonix has thankfully revived the series for the foreseeable future with Rock Band 4, its lack of big new features and the omission of several older ones means that 3 still holds the series’ crown, and its multitude of features and downloadable tracks help to keep it possibly my most-replayed game ever.
Grim Fandango
The point-and-click adventure genre suffered a large decrease in prevalence around the late 90s before experiencing a renaissance of sorts in recent years, but one of the last major titles to come out during this decline also became one of its most revered. Grim Fandango kept in adventure tradition by hosting numerous tricky puzzles involving items and environmental elements, but also gave us one of the most unique and endearing plots and casts of its time. Manny Calavera’s four-year journey of redemption across the Land of the Dead provided a bevy of memorable settings, situations, and character interactions – who can forget the Casablanca-inspired second year in Rubacava? Tim Schafer, the head behind the game’s development, has spearheaded many other quality projects both before and after it, but Grim Fandango may just be his magnum opus.
[zergpaid]Elite Beat Agents
The age of quirky rhythm games seems to have ended since Guitar Hero and its ilk faded from mainstream prominence, and that’s a real shame, since it makes seeing anything like Elite Beat Agents ever again seem unlikely. A Westernized remake of the Japan-only Ouendan, this DS exclusive utilized the then-novel touch screen in a wonderful way, tasking players to tap and drag colored markers to the beat of a diverse soundtrack of American hits, ranging from Queen and David Bowie to Sum 41 and Good Charlotte. Not only was this approach to gameplay super addicting and fun, but each song got a wonderfully silly backstory to it, as the titular agents danced to each hit in hopes of motivating random citizens to overcome a dilemma. These ranged from mundane setups like a babysitter dealing with rowdy kids to a baseball player fighting a golem, all the way up to a surprisingly epic two-song finale against a global threat. Agents never received any sort of sequel or spiritual successor despite seeming like prime material for it, but one could argue that it just makes the one entry we got all the more special.
Final Fantasy VI
While its groundbreaking PS1 follow-up left the biggest mark on gaming history, Square’s final 16-bit entry in the Final Fantasy series remains a personal favorite. The developer fully utilized the Super Nintendo’s capabilities, and delivered a lengthy, engaging, and impressively robust role-playing adventure. Boasting over a dozen diverse playable characters, beautiful environments, immersive music and a plot that could range from funny to emotional and surprisingly dark, Square capped off their early relationship with Nintendo with one of the generation’s best titles, and despite not personally discovering it until nearly a decade after its original release, the fact that it could still make such an impression on me says a lot about its staying power.
The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
The success of the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation, combined with their horsepower resulting in some of the first truly 3D-capable home consoles, was a revelation for many gamers at the time, and while classics like Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot gave us lighthearted and accessible animated adventures, I still remember playing the Zelda series’ jump to polygons, and getting my first proper taste of how expansive and immersive 3D games could really be. Link’s time-hopping adventure took the difficult task of adapting the formula introduced in 2D overhead Zelda games and pulled it off with flying colors, thanks to pioneering the now standard enemy lock-on mechanic, retaining many of the best elements of classics like A Link to the Past, and presenting a then-mindblowing amount of detail and atmosphere, backed up by one of the most iconic soundtracks in gaming. The fact that an enhanced 3DS port released 15 years later still received rave reviews is a great indicator of how well-made the series’ first 3D entry truly was.