Until fairly recently, there were only two Command & Conquer titles that I'd owned, despite enjoying them a fair bit. The original, naturally, and Command & Conquer: Red Alert, both for the PlayStation. It'd be close to two decades before I'd gotten PC versions of them, and others, in The First Decade collection.
For this entry, I wanted to go and check out the PlayStation port before the PC version, mostly because I didn't do so for C&C and really ought to have done so. It's time to correct that mistake with Red Alert, and a version that I've not played this Millennium.
Alfred Einstein has gone back in time and killed Adolf Hitler, changing history as we know it. Has he done so for the better? What world do we now live in? Red Alert shows that we'll still find reasons to go to war.
I've always seen the early days of first person shooters as Doom vs Duke Nukem. Why, I don't know, because there's a whole load of games I'm ignoring from those early days, but it's those two that have defined the early days of the genre for me.
Now Doom isn't a serious game, but when you stack it up against anything starring the Duke, it most certainly is a serious title. And yet the Duke Nukem series isn't really a straight up piss take of the genre like I thought it was.
It's a parody but still requires you to be alert, quick witted, and thorough in your level exploration, and my first proper look at the series is here, now, in the form of Duke Nukem 3D.
All the Duke wanted was a vacation, but no, Los Angeles is infested with aliens who have turned the police force into violent pigs. Literally violent pig-men. It's the tongue-in-cheek Duke Nukem series alright...
"Remember us." As simple an order as a game can give. "Remember why you played." For they did not wish tribute, nor song, nor monuments, nor poems of console wars and valour. Their wish was simple. "Remember us", they said to me. That was their hope, should any free soul across these technologies, in all the countless centuries yet to be. May all our voices whisper to you from the ageless cartridges, "Go tell the gamers, new player, that here by gaming greatness, we lie."
Oh, these Milestone Awards are like GCSEs - they get harder every time and still count for very little, but here we are, celebrating the next batch of brilliance that has been paraded before us. The 301/1001 Milestone Awards will see us struggle to select the best, the worst and the middles from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening to Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, and there are going to be cuts.
It is perhaps this list, more than any, that shows you how biased I am with all of these classic titles. This is the point in time where my childhood really started moving. It is the moment when memories really formed, and the first-hand experience with games I played for hours upon hours starts to leave lasting impressions.
Objectivity has gone out of the window, though to be fair, I don't know if it was ever in the room to begin with.
Speaking of beginnings, let's get The Indifferent 5 out of the way. Five games that, were they to be cast in 300, would be the guys towards the back of the pack, to flesh out the scene. Heck, their generic actions are probably copied and pasted - if they're even real people in the first place. They are, in no particular order, as follows.
May you be remembered by a stone epitaph a few thousand years from now.
There is, unfortunately, one game that shouldn't be remembered in stone. One game from this batch must be the answer to the question What Was That 1 Even Put On The List For? The answer is simple.
Why couldn't we have been allowed to play Twisted Metal instead? Or even Pokémon Red/Blue? In fact, if the list isn't going to take itself seriously, then I'm not going to take the next award seriously either. You Forgot What?! is the question we're bellowing into the beyond, and the beyond shouts back...
Of course it does. Why wouldn't it shout back The Lion King? He's the King of everything up to the goddamn horizon, after all.
Right. Down to business. The battlefield is strewn with combatants. Most will fall. Some who should have survived will definitely not. You're not going to like The Top Tenif you're a fan of Nintendo - I'm just sayin'.
10:Puzzle Bobble, Taito Corporation
Wee little time wasters do have their uses.
9:Worms, Team17
Name something after your friends and then drop rockets on their heads? Yes, please.
8: Yoshi's Island, Nintendo EAD
A little change of pace and something different to look at too. It's lovely.
7: Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament, Supersonic Software
My inner child definitely voted for this one. I don't know why I listen to him sometimes, he knows nothing.
6:Wipeout, Psygnosis
The music is still on shuffle, the design is still top notch, The Omega Collection is still waiting to be purchased, though...
5:Tekken, Namco
It's not even my favourite Tekken title, but damn it I'm a sucker for it.
4:Star Wars: TIE Fighter, Totally Games
Hella difficult, but I so want to get into it somehow.
Which leaves us with only one title. I told you that if you're a Nintendo fan this list isn't for you because there's no way I could not give the number 1spot to Descent. Yes, that's right, even with Super Metroid on the list.
However, there is a bucket load of Nintendo titles on The Topper Than That Top Ten list - the best games from the 301 that have been played so far. How many of them still stand tall against these latest entries? Is The Oregon Trail still featured? Cavil! Stop Waffling. Gamers! Come and argue.
10:The Oregon Trail, MECC
It's slipping! It's slipping but hasn't died yet. Still clinging to glory despite being the first game on the list.
9:Bomberman, Hudson Soft
I want to play another round right now.
8:Command & Conquer, Westwood Studios.
Played for hours, completed, played again. The sign of a good game, surely?
7:Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov
The screen is filling up now... It can't be too long before the pieces fall too fast for us to stay in control.
6:Super Mario Bros., Nintendo R&D4
He's still Super, but he's also slipping down the rankings.
5:Descent, Parallax Software
The puns will write themselves come The 351/1001 Milestone Awards, but until then, it sits right in the middle. Or hovers there, until it gets turned upside down and drives into a wall.
4: Doom, id Software
I hear someone has managed to get it to run on board games now.
2:Super Mario Kart, Nintendo EAD Wipeout is great, but Mario Kart is Mario Kart.
1:The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Nintendo EAD
The builders are in next door and I can't think straight over the sound of the machinery, but one look at a screen of Zelda - any screen - and I'm whisked away to a place where I just can't be bothered by the outside world.
So that's that, then. A few changes, but Nintendo still dominate. The 1990s are really steamrolling ahead now, and the next batch of 50 games begins with some guy called Duke Nukem. I'm sure he'll be a pleasant chap.
And I thought it was everyone but Capcom who poked fun at their naming conventions...
Source // Game Oldies
It's easy to lose track of which versions of Street Fighter II you've played when there are at least eight of them out there, most with wacky titles that make little to no sense. Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, anyone? The series' title structure, or lack thereof, is a joke that I didn't think Capcom would take too well until researching Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.
There is no Puzzle Fighter. There is no Super Puzzle Fighter II. There is just one game and its title serves as a joke, poking fun at the absurdly named Street Fighter series that it dabbles with.
Here, 'fights' are less about your braun and more about your brain, as you carefully place and destroy blocks and gems in order to clog up your opponents' playing field before they clog up yours.
It's so simple that you don't even need to learn how to quarter circle, so I've no excuses.
If I'm not mistaken, the first point and click adventure I played was Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. It was definitely a demo, rather than the full game, and the internet points me towards it being given away with the Official UK PlayStation Magazine in March 1997.
I haven't played it since.
Not because it was a point and click, no. Honest. I thought the demo was awesome. A game that looked like a cartoon - that even moved like one. I hadn't come across that before. Earthworm Jim wasn't in my life until later, for one example that springs to mind.
Anyway, believe it or not, I liked the idea of Broken Sword and what it had to offer, but kids being kids and pocket money being pocket money, I didn't get Broken Sword. It just fell by the wayside as I got easily distracted by whatever came after it.
As life went on, I never saw a reason to go back and actually see what the game was like beyond the conclusion of that demo. I never looked into the sequels - never even knew about most of them - and Broken Sword was left as little more than a memory.
Cars aren't really designed to be driven through the driver's side window, but damn are they a joy to watch when they are. I've always had a bit of a soft spot for rallying. Never really understood the likes of drifting and traction and changing road surfaces and all that stuff, but I don't go into games wanting all of that.
I want to put the pedal to the metal and thrash through a muddy field in the middle of Europe. In the rain. While a navigator somehow keeps his cool despite shouting into my ear, and onlookers dart for cover behind the nearest bramble bush.
Rallying is messy, noisy, stupidly fast and seems to go against everything that track racing stands for, so it was only a matter of time before someone gave a bit of thought to creating a game so that we can rally in the safety of the arcades.
Sega Rally Championship is that game, and it's arguably the first game to connect players to the road beneath their wheels. Handling matters. Adapting to change is a necessity. Having a good time is mandatory, and I can't wait to play.
Do you think I'm the kind of person to know of the Grabriel Knight series of point and click adventure games? I'm not the kind of person to know that Gabriel Knight is a name that is even associated with video games, let alone that it's the name of the lead character in a bunch of point and click adventure games.
If I don't know that, then there's no chance in Hell that I'd know that The Beast Within, the second game in the series, went down the full motion video, interactive movie route, putting blue-screened actors inside digital photos where, somewhere, there exists the thing you need to click on to progress the plot.
After reading that it was indeed a point and click with real people, I was interested in playing it. The introduction movie gives me no ideas as to what's going on, but what's new there? It's got fire and German folks in it, that's about all I gathered before being introduced to Gabriel Knight himself.
The juggernaut that is World of Warcraft had to start somewhere, and while Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness wasn't that start, it is the first of the Warcraft titles to make the 1001 list.
A real-time strategy title in the vein of Command & Conquer but swapping out humans for humans and orcs, tiberium for gold and wood, and full motion video cutscenes with in-game one-liners that do eventually get a bit old but at least lend to the almost cartoony charm on display.
It may sound like a reskin of a more familiar game, but saying that doesn't really give it a chance to show itself off, so I'm going to dive right into another game I've never played, absolutely blind as usual.
