Golden Tee Live

BORE?

Golf. Where would we be without Golf? Enjoying the countryside that bloody Golf courses take up, for starters.

I don't like Golf, but video game Golf can at least go wild and wacky and bend physics for the sake of a good time. And if it does try to stick to real-world physics (sadly, most of them do), then at least the courses - real or imagined - take up significantly less space than their real-world counterparts.

Golden Tee Live is the arcade smash hit of the Golden Tee Golf series - I think. It's hard for a non-Arcade Golfer to pull apart which line is which. The 1001 list wants us to play the game that brought the Internet and online leaderboards to Golfing arcade cabinets in airports, released in 2005, if that helps you narrow it down.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

GOOD!

The last time I played an Advance Wars entry on the 1001 list, I played for hours. Something about it was addicting. I couldn't put it down. But the Game Boy Advance is already a memory. Technological progress marches onward, and the Nintendo DS needs an entry in the turn-based tactics genre. It's time for Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

Dual Strike. DS. Get it? There's more to the title than that, of course. COs teaming up to pummel dinky little tanks into dust. This should be good.

Yoshi Touch & Go

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's...

Games that show off what a brand new console can do, especially in the gimmick department, seem to have a good chance at landing on a 1001 Must Play Video Games list. I suppose it's to be expected, to some degree. A game doesn't have to be phenomenal to warrant playing it, and by most peoples accounts Yoshi Touch & Go sure isn't anything remarkable - but here it is, showing the world what the Nintendo DS can do.

What's this thin, pencil-like stick? What's a 'touch screen'? What are the laws of physics? Let's find out.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

I'll be gone when the morning comes.

Ugh. It's here again. Not only on the 1001 list, but all I'm bloody hearing in 2020 is Animal bloody Crossing. While everyone, apparently, is enjoying New Horizons (sadly not the space probe, but the Nintendo Switch title), I'm here seeing what I've read was the turning point of the Animal Crossing series; the moment of its explosion in popularity, for reasons unknown, though highly likely to be due to the portability of the Nintendo DS.

I am, of course, sadly, talking about Animal Crossings: Wild World.

Dead or Alive 4

Dead or Alive Phwoar, amiright, lads?

Source // MobyGames

Everyone has a favourite fighter, and you should all know by now that mine is Tekken. I want to like other fighters, and some have come close, but they've never quite made the Tekken series redundant. There's comfort in the chunky combat it offers, though I have found myself enjoying other fighting games thanks to this 1001 list.

The question is simple: Can Dead or Alive 4 make an impression?

Darwinia

Digital evolution when?

The great thing about games is that if you can imagine it, you can make it. Just look at the past few games we've dabbled in. I imagine myself as a tiny little cleaning robot. Boom! Chibi-Robo! I want to drill my enemies in the face. Bam! Drill Dozer. Ok, how about this. I want an RTS set inside a computer. Like a kind of Tron thing. Can we do that?

Darwinia is a real-time strategy game where you defend goofy looking Darwinians against snakey viruses inside a computer simulation of some sort. It's different, to say the least, and I know absolutely nothing about it.

Drill Dozer

What? Mr Driller is evolving?

If you're known for developing the Pokémon series, you'd probably expect to have your hands rather full, near constantly. When would you ever get the time to be able to branch out into different things?

At some point in the early 2000s, Game Freak found some time to give us Drill Dozer, an action platformer for the Game Boy Advance that follows bandit gangs who like to do their work inside robots equipped with ruddy great big drills.

Hmm.

Chibi-Robo!

Plug into adventure!

Everyone likes robots. I think. Obviously, some robots are nasty pieces of work. We don't like them. But little robots who just want to help out around the house? They're alright, aren't they? Slaving away on tasks we can't be bothered with. Good little robot.

Chibi-Robo!, then. A dinky little robot who just wants to pick up trash. Tiny scraps of paper and crumbs and whatnot - I don't think he's going to be hauling the trash bag out anytime soon. Every little helps, however, so let's roll up our robo-sleeves and get stuck in.

Civilization IV

"Never bring a sword to a gunfight."

Has the 1001 list deemed it essential to play every single Civilization game so far? Oh no, we skipped Civilization III. I wonder where that one went wrong. Anyway, we're back to turning a bunch of early humans into a world superpower in Civilization IV, and truth be told, I've played so many Civ games for this list that I've forgotten what it was that I'm looking for in this genre of gaming.

Did I want things to be easier to grasp? Probably. Improvements in graphics are a bonus, but not an essential one if memory serves. I'm basically going into this game knowing what I'm going to get, but not the form I'm going to get it in.

Will we rise and dominate the globe, or get crushed or out-cultured by our neighbours?

Freedom Forces vs the 3rd Reich

Peaches and Cream indeed.

Superheroes and videogames. Just think of the possibilities. Beat 'em ups. Action adventures. MMOs. It's not hard to come up with something that should work. Getting it to actually work seems to be harder. There aren't a load of absolute must-play superhero video games, so it's a good job if you like superheroes and role-playing games because Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich exists.

I must admit, I had no idea that it did. At no point in the past five years of going through this 1001 list have I actually bothered to find out just what on Earth this game is all about. Now I have. Superheroes and role-playing games, like Neverwinter Nights or something. Superheroes fighting Nazis.

I don't even know where to begin.