Dark Octave said:
Super Nintendo Entertainment System -- Gradius III
Nintendo 64 -- Cruis'n USA
Sega Genesis -- Altered Beast
Strikeout... that's a good idea, but more games need it.
Shard said:
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3167419
Nintendo Entertainment System -- Donkey Kong Jr. Math
Game Boy -- Super Mario Land
Super Nintendo Entertainment System -- Gradius III
Nintendo 64 -- Cruis'n USA
Game Boy Advance -- Super Mario Advance
Nintendo GameCube -- Wave Race: Blue Storm
Nintendo DS -- Feel the Magic: XY/XX
Nintendo Wii -- A Boatload of Crappy Licensed Kids' Games
Sega Genesis -- Altered Beast
Sega Saturn -- Clockwork Knight
Sega Dreamcast -- Mortal Kombat Gold
Sony PlayStation -- Street Fighter: The Movie
Sony PlayStation 2 -- The Troubled RPG Trio
Sony PSP -- Ape Escape Academy
Sony PlayStation 3 -- Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire
Microsoft Xbox -- Mad Dash Racing
Microsoft Xbox 360 -- Kameo: Elements of Power
So why is it that half of those games are decent or good (Kameo, Super Mario Advance, Cruis'n USA, Feel the Magic, probably Clockwork Knight)... and some are great, such as Super Mario Land, Gradius III, and Wave Race: Blue Storm...
DK Jr. Math's accurate, and some of the licensed junk, but those ones I just listed? No way. Just no way.
I mean, Gradius III... that's probably my favorite shmup on the SNES. Awesome, awesome game. Beautiful graphics, exceptional Gradius gameplay, lots of awesome ship configuration options (Formation option + Shrink shield is so, so good! (along with the missiles that go both ways and ripple lasers, because they slow the game down the most, and in this game, the more slowdown the better)), amazingly good music... It really has no flaws worth mentioning (other than, perhaps, the limited continues; infinite continues would be nice); the slowdown is good, because it's what makes it playable (just compare it to the impossible arcade game to see the truth of that!).
And despite the simple graphics, I really loved Super Mario Land too. SML1, really, is just as good as SML2. Wario Land is better, but that's one of my favorite platformers ever... SML1 is just as worthy of recognition as SML2. Game mechanics, level design, and level variety wise, it easily stands up to the second game... indeed, going back and playing them now, I definitely like the longer draw distance of the first game, and think that the game's unique enemies and powerup (the superball) were cool, as were the shmup levels, the themes (Egypt... okay. But Easter Island? That's not in any other Mario game! Same for the Chinese-themed final area...), etc. It's a great game!
Wave Race: Blue Storm isn't quite as good as Wave Race 64, but it's still pretty great... very hard, but very good. Great graphics too. And NST makes good games.
As for Cruis'n USA, I admit it was very short and didn't match the arcade version graphically, but it's a fun game. It doesn't take long to finish, but it is fun. And yeah, it wasn't a launch game. It came out several months later.
Feel the Magic similarly... short, but more than fun enough while it lasts that there's no way it should be near any "bad" list. And Kameo's good too.
Super Mario Advance? Sure, a new game would have been better than a port. The GBA did have too many ports. And yes, it is too bad that this port didn't have as much content as Super Mario Bros. Deluxe had a few years earlier on GBC. But still, it's a fine version of a great game. No real problems here.
Oh, Altered Beast... yeah, that is a short, simple game. I can see why it took until Sonic for the Genesis to take off... but still, at least Altered Beast was better than Keith Courage!
And as for the rest of the games, that I didn't cross out? The only one of them that unquestionably deserves it is DK Jr. Math. I've never played any of the rest of them. It's a really, really bad list, pretty much almost totally wrong from top to bottom by any standards.
It could have been epic.
