Let Me Sell You On Some of My Favorite Games

On 08/02/2013 at 04:02 PM by KnightDriver

Pokemon Snap [N64] (1999)

Are you a snapfish? A shutterbug? Do you "chimp" over photographs you've taken? Do you like photographing from the family car during vacations? Then you are going to love Pokemon Snap! This on-rails shooter replaces your gun with a camera and enemies with Pokemon. Your object as photographer Todd Snap, is to take the most exciting poses of any Pokemon you see from buggy Zero-One, and present them to Professor Oak for grading. Travel seven beautiful natural locations to capture the ellusive Pokemon in their natural settings. This is the adventure you've been waiting for!

SW Rogue Squadron Star Wars: Rogue Squadron [N64] (1998)

Want to be a member of the most elite squad of X-Wing pilots in the Star Wars Universe? Of course you do! You don't want to be one of those grunts fighting in the trenches on Hoth. You want the fastest thing with four wings and a big ol' Imperial fleet to shoot at. So join up with the crew of the Battle of Yavin (that's right, those guys who took out the Death Star) and wrap up At-Ats and blast Tie-Fighters for the Rebellion. They need all the help they can get. Join Rogue Squadron today!

Hexen Hexen [N64] (1997)

You shot Nazi's in Wolfenstein 3D; demons from hell in Doom; dark Cthulhuian monsters in Quake; LARD Pig-Cops in Duke Nukem; but what about fantasy creatures? In Hexen, the sequel to Heretic, you can choose to be a fighter, cleric, or mage and go to battle against two-headed orcs, skeletal knights and hungry dragons! Use an axe, a mace, or a magic flame throwing staff! Or just use your own two metal-spiked fists to pound those faerie beasts into mush. There's nothing more satisfying. Really!

WarCraft II [PC] (1996)

The pinacle of resource management and real-time battle tactics delivered with the easiest of controls that anyone can grasp and, in later levels, the complexity desired by the hardest of the hard core strategy players. In WarCraft II you choose a town building site, gather resources, build an army and defenses, and attack the enemy. That's the basic plan. It's fantasy medeval warfare at its best. Sail the seas, or march across the land; you'll be in varied environoments viewed from above so you can survey all the territory. Many possible strategies can lead to victory. Improvise to your heart's content and see it come out different every time!

Road Rash [PS1] (1995)

Take to the road as an outlaw biker and race against all that oppose you. Choose a character and earn money by racing to get yourself out of that lousy Rat Bike and into a Sport Bike and finally, the top notch Super Bike. During races, you will be chased by cops, challenged by fellow racers, and opposed by traffic and pedestrians. Luckily, you will be able to kick them, punch them, and grab melee weapons to give them a serious head knocking and send them flying. Feel the speed as you catch some serious air coming over a hill, land, and chain whip an opponent off their bike, all in a few seconds. It's the thrill of the race and the agony of the Road Rash!

leeradical42

08/02/2013 at 04:37 PM

And of course you pick a bunch of games you cant sell me on well except road rash which although dated was a great game man i was really hoping you were going to throw some 360 games out there. It seems like the 360 is the minority system, by the way i got The Testament of Sherlock Holmes by Atlus on the 360 its a point and click adventure game which i enjoy and have not seen besides CSI series but you may like it.

KnightDriver

08/03/2013 at 02:49 AM

I read your blog on it and I'm interested. I did these games from the late nineties because I already presented my current gen favs in another blog. My next blog is going to be about the games from 1990-1994.

08/03/2013 at 07:48 AM

I was mainly playing there good classics especially road rash which i wish i could find.

08/03/2013 at 04:04 PM

I just read it was first released on 3DO, then PS1, Sega Saturn and PC. There should be lots of cheap copies of it around. It's not rare.

08/03/2013 at 04:57 PM

I playrd it on the saturn back in the day, yea i know its not rare but unless i get it on amazon i cant find it around here

Ranger1

08/02/2013 at 05:33 PM

I love Road Rash! And I have Pokemon Snap, I grabbed it when I saw it at a local retro game store. One of these days I'll have to hook up that Good Will N64 and give it a whirl.

08/03/2013 at 02:50 AM

I really want to go through my list of top picks and play them all again to see if they are as good as I remember. Gotta finish Ni No Kuni first though.

mothman

08/02/2013 at 06:37 PM

Holy shit Hexen 64. I adored that game. Like most N64 games not called Mario 64 it probably doesn't look great today but I spent many hours playing that game. Rogue Squadron was no slouch either.

08/03/2013 at 02:58 AM

Yea, Hexen has a special place in my heart and especially the N64 version. Funny that I never played it on PC because I did so with all the other games I mentioned in that section. I think it was the dark vibe of the game that hooked me. I still have a vivid auditory memory of the frogs croaking in one section of the game. The sound sample was pretty realistic and in that context, creeped me out. I'm noticing now that I have a thing for dark fantasy: Demon's Souls, the Planes of Oblivion in Elder Scrolls IV, Hexen - all of a piece.

Cary Woodham

08/02/2013 at 07:22 PM

Pokemon Snap was such an original concept. I think it was educational, too, as it taught photography techniques. They need to make a Snap sequel on the Wii U! The first Snap game was made by HAL, makers of Lolo and Kirby, so that's why it was so good.

The other games you listed suck. :) JUST JOKING! JUST JOKING! :)

Super Step Contributing Writer

08/02/2013 at 08:58 PM

They totally need to make a WiiU version. Too bad Blockbuster is not still around, my favorite part of that game was getting my photos from it printed there!

Rogue Squadron was a bit too hard for me at the time, but I did like its sequel; I should have bought that instead of Luigi's Mansion for my Gamecube in retrospect. And I like Luigi's Mansion, but that first level alone with the Death Star was pure awesome.

Never even heard of Hexen, and not much of a Warcraft guy, but Road Rash was SO fun on multiplayer back in the day.

08/03/2013 at 03:10 AM

I wish I had gotten Luigi's Mansion instead of Rogue Squadron II on GameCube. I think RSII got really hard at some point and I never finished it. LM I just played a few months ago and loved it. I can't figure out how to replentish your hearts quickly though. It seems they are hard to find or something.

08/03/2013 at 06:15 AM

A few years ago I was at a flea market and they were selling one of those Snap printer kiosks that were at Blockbluster!

08/03/2013 at 03:19 PM

Sweet! How much were they asking for it?

08/04/2013 at 12:27 AM

Oh I didn't even bother looking. It was pretty useless at that point.

08/03/2013 at 03:05 AM

Why oh why aren't there more photography driven games. And why not another Snap game. Make it about all the Nintendo characters, not just Pokemon. I don't understand why a photography loving culture like Japan hasn't done more games like Pokemon Snap.

About teaching photo techniques. I thought Pokemon Snap was fine for teaching a documentary or journalistic style of photography, but when I tried to make more artistic shots by moving the subject off dead center, Prof. Oak would have none of it. It makes sense though, because Prof. Oak just wanted shots to go with his scientific studies, not works of art. It kinda annoyed me a bit though, because I have certain habits from doing so much real life photography. The game ran a little counter to my instincts.

08/03/2013 at 03:22 PM

Yeah, that game wasn't exaxctly adhering to the rule of thirds. They should make a Smash Bros Snap! And let you be artistic with it, too, maybe have a Prof. Oak mode where your subjects need to be centered, but let you do stuff on your own and allow you to share your photos online.

And I can definitely see RSII getting hard. I was happy with LM, but I think now I'd like RSII more. It was really effing pretty, at least.

08/03/2013 at 03:55 PM

The formula for Pokemon Snap was: center the subject, get it to fill the frame as much as possible, and have the subject doing something interesting by itself or with other Pokemon. I think it would be really hard for the programming to judge anything else. Artistic merit is so subjective and nuonced. I'm not sure how a computer program could do that.

08/03/2013 at 03:59 PM

Well, you could have the programming stand in for my college photography professor and tell you to do something specific, like capture motion blur or freeze action, or it could ask you to frame something a certain way.

Or just have a free-roam mode, which is really what I meant, then people online can judge your work. I hear people online like to do that.

08/03/2013 at 04:15 PM

Yea, that would be cool. See, that's what they could add to a sequel. Get on it Nintendo!

Aboboisdaman

08/02/2013 at 10:17 PM

I had bought Rogue Squadron a while back, but after Rogue Leader on Gamecube I just couldn't get into it. I played the crap out of Warcraft II back in the day and still play the third one every once in a while. Nice list man. I've played all of these except for Pokemon Snap.

08/03/2013 at 03:20 AM

I gotta find WCII to play on modern computers sometime soon. I wanna play those first ten levels over again like I used to do.

Blake Turner Staff Writer

08/03/2013 at 04:22 AM

Jesus Christ I loved pokemon snap! So much fun was had with that game...

08/03/2013 at 03:57 PM

They put it on Virtual Console, but it seriously needs a sequel. What you could do with the Wii-U would be really interesting.

daftman

08/03/2013 at 07:54 AM

I've played a negligible amount of WoW and a couple years ago I played the first few missions of the first WarCraft (man alive, is that ever dated!) but I'd like to try the other WarCrafts. I love StarCraft though.

08/03/2013 at 04:02 PM

I remember when WarCraft was announced as an MMO. I really didn't want to pay a monthly fee to play any game and it seemed the gameplay was much less about strategy so I never played it. I played a little bit of WCIII but WCII is where I made my home. I would play the first ten levels over and over again. After level 10 the game took too long and got too complex to be fun.

Star Craft seemed really difficult to me, plus I like the aesthetic of the fantasy world in WC.

08/03/2013 at 06:22 PM

I always liked the sci-fi aesthetic better, though fantasy is good too. I never did beat the Protoss campaign in StarCraft though...which means I've never played the Brood War expansion at all But some day! I still have the discs lol

08/04/2013 at 03:04 AM

I'll have to give StarCraft a try again one day. It does look cool.

Chris Yarger Community Manager

08/05/2013 at 06:23 AM

Road Rash!!!

I was just playing Jail Break and Road Rash 64 a few weeks ago! They were great games, but to me they didn't add up to the groundwork the second and third games laid out for them.

08/05/2013 at 11:21 AM

I remember being disapointed by Road Rash 3D. Then Jail Break didn't do anything for me although I was initially excited about playing with a second player in a side-car. I then went back to play the first three games on Sega Genesis. They were better, but nothing was as good as that 1995 Road Rash on PS1. I believe it was the fourth in the series.

Something about sequels in the late ninties that were bummers for me like all those third person view Duke Nukem games. On the other hand, the sequels to Destruction Derby were brilliant: Destruction Derby 2 and Destruction Derby 64.

PixlBit