Top 10 Games - #8
03/09/09 09:45 Filed in: Gaming Goodness
If you know me, you’ll know that my favourite gift of all time(next to my puppy) was the Sega Master System that my mother gave to my brother and I when we were kids. We played a lot of games on that system. Standouts were Zillion, Quartet, Space Harrier, Ghostbusters, and Rambo. Sega treated me very well with that system. That’s why it was so hard to shun the Genesis and pick up a SNES instead. My brother and I can’t remember exactly how we got the SNES. But we think we sold our Master System and games in order to buy it. Man we played a lot of games on that system. I fondly remember playing Super Mario World, F-Zero, and Starfox(I fucking hate you Slippy you tool). But of course, those all paled in comparison to “The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past”. “Link To The Past” was the third game in the series, but you really didn’t need to play either of the first two in order to understand what was going on. In fact, being a Sega guy previously, I didn’t even know that “Link To The Past” was the third game until a couple years later.
Synopsis. Princess Zelda is in trouble. Which if you’ve played other Miyamoto games, you’ll know is nothing new. I swear the guy has some kind of fetish for princesses being kidnapped. Before “Link To The Past” came out he made 5 other games that revolved around princess-napping. “Donkey Kong”, “Super Mario Bros”, “Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels”, “Super Mario World”, and “The Legend Of Zelda”. In most countries that would be enough to get you on some kind of list. So yeah, Zelda is in trouble and you’ve got to rescue her. Thankfully for her you’re able to free her pretty early in the game.
But the news isn’t all good after she’s rescued. Some nutter of a wizard is trying to free the big bad Ganon from some sacred realm, and it’s your job to stop him. But in order to do so you need the “Master Sword” Not an easy task if I may say so. It’s been lodged in a pedestal and in order to pull it out you’ll need 3 special magical pendants. 3 pendants which have been scattered throughout the massive world of Hyrule.
And you’re off. You’re pretty much given free reign to wander around Hyrule. And that’s what the real allure of “Link To The Past” is. Wandering this massive world. There were games that were bigger in those days. But none matched “Link To The Past” in its incredibly well-tuned gameplay. The controls were fantastic. It’s blend of action and puzzle solving was superb. And it looked stunning with its rich colours that popped off the screen. “Link To The Past” is about as well-polished as games get. You can tell that people sank a lot of time and effort into this one. Which is really a staple of pretty much every Miyamoto game. But the best thing about “Link To The Past” was the fact that the game world was absolutely filled with things to do. Almost every screen had something on it for you to kill, move, or get.
And that’s probably the most important thing I can learn from “Link To The Past” Creating a large world to roam around in is only fun for the player if two conditions are met. First you need to give the player controls that make it easy to navigate your world. And second you need to fill that world with fun and interesting things to see and do. Something that many games still fail at. I don’t know about you, but I’ve played many a game that boasted massive worlds for you to explore, and then left you to wander barren wastelands with little to see. Just take Red Faction Guerilla for instance. It takes place on a sparsely populated Mars where most of the world is devoid of anything but rust coloured dirt. I’m also reminded of “Star Trek The Next Generation: Future’s Past” for the SNES. A game I bought cause I was a huge Star Trek nerd in the mid 90s, and also partly because it bragged that you would be able to warp to thousands of worlds. Yeah not really. Yes you technically could travel to any world in the Star Trek universe. You just can’t actually beam down to any of them unless there is a mission already planned on it. And there weren’t a lot of planets that had missions on them. “Yay, I’m orbiting Romulus. Now I can look at the the planet in the viewscreen...whoop-de-doo”.
What else can I say about “Link To The Past” other than it’s really just a ridiculously fun game that will keep you playing for many hours. I never actually owned this title on the SNES. My experiences with it came from many a rental from the local video store. It wasn’t until I got a gameboy advance SP, that I actually owned this game. And that’s one of the best ways to play it still. If you have a DS with a GBA slot, pick this title up. Or if you have a Wii, you can get it on the virtual console.
I’ll come right out and say that this title is the only nintendo game that made it into my top 10. When I compiled my list I thought hard about each console I had ever owned. I then thought about my favourite games for each of those systems. Those games made it onto a list. A pretty big list at that. I then went down the list several times, moving games up and down depending on how much I remember enjoying them when originally played. I just want you to know that if you could see 11-15 on my list you would have seen 5 Nintendo games. And they were as follows:
11.Super Mario World(Best of my 3 favourite Mario platforming games. The other two being Super Mario 64, and Super Mario Bros.)
12.Goldeneye
13.Super Mario Kart
14.F-Zero
15.NHL 95 for SNES(Ok, not a “Nintendo game”, but I played it on the snes. Of all the games I’ve played, this one trounces all others in terms of hours clocked. It’s not even close. Let me put it this way. You could add up the amount of time spent playing every single other game I have on this list and it still wouldn’t come within a tenth of the time I logged in NHL 95. I played this game almost every single night for 2 and a half years).
And you’re off. You’re pretty much given free reign to wander around Hyrule. And that’s what the real allure of “Link To The Past” is. Wandering this massive world. There were games that were bigger in those days. But none matched “Link To The Past” in its incredibly well-tuned gameplay. The controls were fantastic. It’s blend of action and puzzle solving was superb. And it looked stunning with its rich colours that popped off the screen. “Link To The Past” is about as well-polished as games get. You can tell that people sank a lot of time and effort into this one. Which is really a staple of pretty much every Miyamoto game. But the best thing about “Link To The Past” was the fact that the game world was absolutely filled with things to do. Almost every screen had something on it for you to kill, move, or get.
What else can I say about “Link To The Past” other than it’s really just a ridiculously fun game that will keep you playing for many hours. I never actually owned this title on the SNES. My experiences with it came from many a rental from the local video store. It wasn’t until I got a gameboy advance SP, that I actually owned this game. And that’s one of the best ways to play it still. If you have a DS with a GBA slot, pick this title up. Or if you have a Wii, you can get it on the virtual console.
I’ll come right out and say that this title is the only nintendo game that made it into my top 10. When I compiled my list I thought hard about each console I had ever owned. I then thought about my favourite games for each of those systems. Those games made it onto a list. A pretty big list at that. I then went down the list several times, moving games up and down depending on how much I remember enjoying them when originally played. I just want you to know that if you could see 11-15 on my list you would have seen 5 Nintendo games. And they were as follows:
11.Super Mario World(Best of my 3 favourite Mario platforming games. The other two being Super Mario 64, and Super Mario Bros.)
12.Goldeneye
13.Super Mario Kart
14.F-Zero
15.NHL 95 for SNES(Ok, not a “Nintendo game”, but I played it on the snes. Of all the games I’ve played, this one trounces all others in terms of hours clocked. It’s not even close. Let me put it this way. You could add up the amount of time spent playing every single other game I have on this list and it still wouldn’t come within a tenth of the time I logged in NHL 95. I played this game almost every single night for 2 and a half years).