The Wonder Years 09.04.08: The Final Edition Blowout Bonanza Part 1/2

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 09.04.2008

The Wonder Years goes out with a bang in a two-part finale, counting down the 20 best games of the 16-bit era! Take a look and see which games made it to numbers 20 - 11!

Welcome to the column where all gamers of a certain age come to wallow in 16-bit nostalgia. I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield, and it's been a good long run here at 411 writing "The Wonder Years". When I started this eighteen months ago I had no idea I'd have so much fun chronicling some of the bigger hits and the cult classics that graced the Super NES and Genesis, which to me remain two of the best consoles ever to be released. However, as Bob Dylan once sang, the times they are a-changin', and right now it's time to move on. However, I'm not one to fade away, I'm gonna head out with a bang. And what finale could be more explosive than an attempt to chronicle the twenty finest games of the 16-bit era? Sure it's a little trite and clichéd, but dammit if I'm not going to indulge myself after a year and a half.

This isn't going to be a list of my favorite games, nor is it going to be a list of the games with the most substantial reputation. This is a genuine attempt to objectively rank the best games you could play during the Wonder Years. Sure it's not going to please everyone, but hell, that's not going to stop me trying, and I'm all for encouraging debate about my favorite generation of video games. Without further ado, let's kick off with part one of two, and begin our countdown of The Best Games of the Wonder Years!

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Diddy's Kong Quest
Ecco the Dolphin
Gunstar Heroes
ISS Deluxe
Mortal Kombat II
Phantasy Star II
Pilotwings
Shining Force
Starfox
Super Mario RPG

20. NBA Jam Tournament Edition

You know, this was probably the hardest spot to fill, but ever-so-narrowly beating out Shining Force and Mario RPG to the twentieth position comes NBA Jam TE, indisputably the finest basketball game ever to be released and surely the best overall sports game experience of the early 1990s. Of course, it's hardly the most accurate simulation of a sport you can find, but that doesn't even begin to cross your mind when you're rocking the court with old-school Chicago Bulls versus one third of the Beastie Boys and the dirty pres himself, Bill Clinton. The action in this game is absolutely furious, and the fact that it offers no real season mode is no deterrent at all when the gameplay is this well-honed. It also happens to be one of the best multiplayer games you can find on any home console, and a five-minute heads-up match with Juice Mode enabled and Hot Spots turned on is a thing of absolute beauty, even if you can't stand the sport. As the lovingly digitized commentator might well say, this game truly is on fire.

NBA Jam TE featured in "The Wonder Years" week 4

19. Zombies Ate My Neighbors

The only game so good I ever wrote two columns about it, Zombies is the essential cult 16-bit game. A top-down shooter in which two feisty teenagers take on hordes of the undead and a massive assortment of other B-movie monsters with little more than water pistols to their name, the game is arcade action all the way, tempered with a warped and morbid sense of humor, a ham-rock soundtrack straight from the 50s and a wonderfully wicked difficulty curve. Obscenely challenging (in a good way) as a 52-level single player jaunt, Zombies takes on a new dimension with the finest co-op mode to be found on a 16-bit console, as the harassed teens Zeke and Julie team up to take on the evil Dr. Tongue and his legion of terrifying, camp and terrifyingly camp baddies. Oh, and a fifty foot toddler. It remains the original - and, some would still argue, best- survival horror title.

Zombies featured in "The Wonder Years" week 2,
and I revisited that column last week

18= Contra III: The Alien Wars / Contra Hard Corps

OK, so I had to cop out and have tie for eighteenth place, but seriously, you try picking these two apart. One the one console (the SNES's Alien Wars) you have the third game in the legendary Contra series, one of the toughest side-scrolling shooters ever to be released, a masterpiece of run-and-gun gaming featuring some hugely elaborate set pieces and an impressive dystopian future setting. On the other console (the Genesis' pun-tastic Hard Corps) you have the fifth game in the series... and it's much the same, only even harder and with bigger bosses. These two games give absolutely no quarter to the casual gamer and are unflinchingly tough (there's a reason the Japanese versions have 70-lives cheats), but if you can gut it out you'll be treated to a masterclass in arcade gaming, with branching level patterns, awesome set-piece battles and, above all, two of the most satisfying shoot 'em up experiences you can find.

17. F-Zero

The best pure racer of the 16-bit years? I'd say so, and I know more than a few people who'd agree with me. The fastest game on the SNES and, on its release, one of the first major indicators of the console's technological possibilities, F-Zero pretty much invented the "future racing" genre as we know it (where would WipEout and Extreme G be without it?). Despite the four-racer limitation, this is a cacophonous blitz through the genre that reinvented most everything of what we knew about home console racers, and remains one of the more challenging racing games you can play. The sense of speed was unparalleled for its time, and that it still stands toe-to-toe with its technically superior sequels in terms of a gaming experience is a marvelous achievement. One of the most important games of the early 90s.

F-Zero featured in "The Wonder Years" week 41

16. Sonic the Hedgehog

The blue spiky one had to be here somewhere, didn't he. In a platforming world dominated by a certain mustachioed plumber, Sega knew they had to pull something pretty spectacular out of the bag if they wanted to compete, both in terms of a company mascot and in terms of a flagship title. And wouldn't you know it, they somehow succeeded in creating a character who could actually stand face to face with Mario at the summit of the gaming world. Sonic's debut remains a riveting experience, as even more than fifteen years on you can still easily identify that you're playing something rather special, a game that sets itself apart from the pack. Sonic soon came to run roughshod over the competition, and on this evidence it's easy to see why - he captured the spirit of the 90s with his effortless cool, and he brought a pretty damn good game with him too.

15. Streets of Rage 2

It's a bold claim, but I'm going to make it: the best side-scrolling beat 'em up ever. Indeed, perhaps the only thing holding Streets of Rage 2 back from climbing higher up the list is the limitation of its own genre, because what it does, it does to perfection. It's endlessly addictive, tough as you like, and with a superb balance of playable characters facing off against the encroaching hordes of goons, it's just so dang hard to resist giving it one more play through. Everything about the game screams "classic", from the unconventional jazz-techno soundtrack to the vibrantly drawn characters, and even from the opening minutes you can tell that you're never again going to play a game in which beating people up, whether with fists, knives or roller skates, is this satisfying.

Streets of Rage 2 featured in "The Wonder Years" week 17

14. Secret of Mana

Surely the finest multiplayer RPG ever devised, Secret of Mana would also have a decent claim to be the premier action RPG of the 90s, were it not for a certain nameless game that will appear next week. Eschewing the more traditional gameplay balance of the majority of Square's 90s RPGs, Mana tackles one of the more epic storylines of its time with grand vigor and an unshakeable optimism in its own brilliance. The tripartite character dynamic is a revelation, and a more consistently entertaining RPG game you won't find. One of the most solid gaming experiences on any console, let alone the Super NES.

Secret of Mana featured in "The Wonder Years" week 31

13. Mega Man X

One of the very best titles in the apparently endless Mega Man franchise, X is the best game the blue bomber starred in on the Super NES and is a high plateau for action platforming. The formula may be a little staid to contemporary eyes, but it's implemented superbly, and the little touches (including Capcom's inclusion of Ryu's hadouken as an unlockable attack) make this indispensable gaming, even if you are one of those gamers who still complains about Mega Man's inability to duck. If that's the biggest criticism you can level at this game, it surely says something about its quality. This is the game that perfected the Mega Man archetype, and that it remains at the head of its genre after six or seven sequels and a whole lot of years is testament to its greatness.

Mega Man X featured in "The Wonder Years" week 19

12. EarthBound

EarthBound is one of those games that has all the hallmarks of a cult classic, until you realize it's bigger than that - the game seems to be almost universally beloved (just ask our resident fanboy, 10th Hour columnist Derek Robbins), and its protagonist Ness is still finding new fans through the Smash Bros. series. As far as RPGs go, this is probably the most atypical entry in the genre you'll ever play, but it succeeds not in spite of this fact, but because of it. It's a glorious two-fingers-up at the establishment, endlessly inventive and with the most colorful cast of characters you're ever likely to meet. While the game does start to tire by its final stages, it's built up such an overwhelming mass of goodwill that even that doesn't stop this gaming juggernaut, and it soon redeems itself anyway with a unique final boss and a neat post-ending. The greatest western RPG ever to come out of the east.

EarthBound featured in "The Wonder Years" week 3

11. Super Metroid

I sense the relatively low placement of this one may generate a little controversy - after all, no less an authority than EGM once deemed this the best game ever made - but dammit, this is my list and I'll rank it how I like it. Samus' debut on the Super NES was a cosmic leap up from previous Metroid games, and given that they were more than decent anyway, that's pretty spectacular. Super Metroid is rightly hailed as one of the finest 2D action/adventure games in history, and benefits from a note-perfect balance between graphical stylings, level design and soundtrack. If this one thing this game does better than any other, it's to achieve a perfect balance between all its constituent elements, and when the gameplay execution on top of that is as flawless as Samus' exploits on Zebes, well, you have yourself a world-class game and one that still deserves to be in any and every gamer's collection.


And finally…

Thanks for reading folks; as always, reader feedback and suggestions are welcome. Have I missed any of your favorites? Do you reckon you know what's going to be number one? Do top twenty lists make you vomit in your own lap at the extent to which they're overdone? Drop me a comment and let me know! Next week in "The Wonder Years" - we count down the big top ten and look at the ten best games ever to grace the 16-bit generation, as well as a few other surprise treats. Until then - keep it real, keep it retro.