Top 160+ Favorite Games of all time! (Pt 6)

This is getting to the real meat of favorite games throughout the ages. Are they perfectly in order? Not so much. Do they all belong on this list? Oh, yes, they do. You'll notice as you go along, a lot of the games come more and more from the 1990's. That is not an accident and it will not be brought with an apology. This is still a very definitive list. Whether they be 2D or 3D, they are still great in my eyes. We're chugging on through this list, so hold onto your hats!

59 Daytona USA

I have heard plenty of shade thrown at the Sega Saturn version of this game, but I still stand by the fact that it is far better than the Championship Edition. The soundtrack itself gives it a long lasting life by itself, and it's just an all around good racing game. Yes, there are graphical lag problems here and there. That doesn't really take away from the gameplay all that much, though, as you still are able to race efficiently enough to keep up. The pit stops are useless, yes, and are probably just there as an extra mechanic to perk up the difficulty. If people give this game a try, it will show that the game devs knew what they were doing, even with all of the horrible limitations they were given. With the Sega Saturn version, no quarters or checkpoints needed. Just have fun.

58 Final Fantasy VI

Everyone points to FFVII as the greatest game in the series, but I very much disagree. Lacking in graphics, probably, but it doesn't let that limit it. The story is where this game flies like an eagle and gives us something more than worth while. The locations are vast and diverse and the characters are truly relatable. You want to see these people succeed and become involved with the rest of the group. If you have love for a good story in your video game and even more so, a Final Fantasy fan, then I can't imagine why you haven't played this yet. Pick it up, it's on basically every console they could throw it at.

57 Wolfenstein: The New Order

A fantastic return to form after the great Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the divisive 2009 title. This one is very heavy with the story and that works both to its favor and against it. BJ starts in battle against the Nazis and unfortunately, in this reality, we lose against them. Well, now we need to join the resistance with our new friends and take down the third reich. The love story between BJ and his former nurse is probably one of the more relatable elements here, but the weapons, the strategies, items and missions are definite highlights of this game. It's just plain fun to traverse through the very detailed maps and get your spy information to infiltrate their base. You go to the moon and you keep fighting Nazis, even against their giant mechs and robot wolves. Yes, it gets rather weird, but give it a try!

56 Unreal

If you were there back in the Quake era when 3D games started taking over, Unreal was something of a need-to-play. We still knew it as a Doom Clone, even if it was actually a Quake Clone, but the strange thing about it is that the normal game with the normal story is actually one of the low points. Where this game shines is the arena shooting mechanics that allows you to go through bot matches and fight against other players. You go through some of the most awesome weapons in FPS history, even if the shotgun isn't great, the 8-ball rocket launcher is amazing. The Mini-gun slices through enemies like butter and the flak cannon is DEVASTATING when shot up close. Take down Sky Troopers and don't miss out on Deck 9! With the advent of Unreal Gold on new computers, there is no excuse to not play this gem!

55 Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

My favorite RPG on the SNES was very close to being FFVI, but then I'd be forgetting a place where you can play both Mario and Bowser while fighting an evil blacksmith named Smithy. If you love to follow a long story with interesting explorations through strange and interesting worlds, this game has what you want in spades. You start simple enough, saving Princess Peach, but then Peach starts fighting with you and you fight anything from Power Rangers knockoffs to Boos and Goombas. This game is rather long, but it never really gets boring or monotonous. There is some grinding involved, but it's an RPG, if you didn't expect that, what are you doing with your life?

54 GoldenEye 007

If you love this game more than Perfect Dark or whatever else on the N64, do not let people tempt you otherwise. I don't know where the stigma that this game was overrated came from but it was completely unfounded. No other game will ever replace the GoldenEye parties, the rocket matches and the search for the Golden Gun. A lot of people think that the best way to win is to pick the shortest guy because he's the hardest to hit. They don't seem to know that you can very easily lean your gun downward, making this a moot point. What you need is an AK-47 or an automatic pistol to take down anyone who stands in your way. 

53 Ghostbusters (2009)

If you are a Ghostbusters fan, this is now a sacred staple in our collections for a vast number of reasons. Not only did they get the proper pandering down, but they made this FEEL like a Ghostbusters property. Just playing it brings back those beautiful feelings of watching the original films back on VHS. Harold Ramis made this his final appearance as Egon Spangler (as a voice) and that by itself make this game irreplaceable. All of the main cast came back for this, sans Rick Moranis, and that is another gigantic reason this game rules! The graphics are not the greatest, but they're great enough to keep the game going and even when the game glitches, it still proves that this stands the test of time. Take down the librarian from the first movie and even take down Slimer! It doesn't matter, this game rules.

52 Crazy Taxi

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah! Crazy Taxi is 90's nostalgia released when the 1990's were leaving out the door. It encapsulates everything we love in an arcade driver. The controls are very sensitive, but that's mostly because you're trying to go at top speed toward a taxi stop and sometimes need to make a sudden U turn. This game is hard, that much is for sure. Trying to get a Grade A or Grade S when you're first starting off is a chore, but just sitting and playing the game is among some of the best experiences on the Dreamcast or the arcade. You've got this many CRAAAAAZY minutes to get this game and start the chaos on the road!

51 The Simpsons Arcade

Among the Konami triforce and the greatest arcade games of all time, The Simpsons came out of nowhere and showed us what we didn't know we needed. The story is dead simple, Mr. Burns sends Smithers to get a diamond, Maggie has it in her mouth so he kidnaps her and now you must play one of the Simpsons to get her back in an arcade-style beat'em up. This game is among the greatest beat'em ups for a very good reason. You get all kinds of Simpsons cameos from the show and working together as a team to take down the boss battles like the hot air balloon or a boxing body builder. If you love the Simpsons and random silly violence, your ship has arrived!

50 Wolfenstein 3D

This is quite the fitting #50 spot. Wolfenstein 3D started me on the FPS genre, as it did many before me. I still play this game whenever the bug hits me and I still love it unconditionally. As stated before, my father, brother and I completed this entire game 100% after around a year or so of playing. We'd beaten it before, but playing it to absolute completion is a serious accomplishment, as any fan will tell you. Killing Hitler, Hans Grosse, and the fake fireballing Hitlers has to be on the forefront of the experience. The mutants suck and hinder the game quite a bit, but they can be conquered with enough willpower and gunpower. The more you kill Nazis, the better the world gets. So, have at it.

49 Warcraft II

Another game that is easily accessible on current PC's, but good luck finding it at a decent price on Sega Saturn or even PS1 for that matter. This is probably my favorite RTS, but I do also very love Warcraft 3. this game was an overall improvement over the first Warcraft, and it's honestly a shame that people remember this game series because of World of Warcraft. It runs by its own merits and came up with several of the mechanics we know and love today. The Death Knights with their Death and Decay, the Ogre Mages with Blood Lust and so many other tropes of Azeroth we know today started right here. This was an amazing addition of the series and it deserves another look.

48 Super Mario 64

So few games capture the essence of the original platformers of old while also bringing about the future of gaming through the third dimension. Many games tried but Mario 64 blazed the trail for all others to follow. It brought the goombas, boos, bones, koopa troopa and even Bowser! You couldn't ask for a better introduction to both the 3D realm and the Nintendo 64 than this. The music is iconic to the Mario franchise and the level designs are absolutely gorgeous! From high flying with the wing hat to the bottom of the sea with the metal hat, this game's got it. It has been ported to the DS and to the Switch through Mario 3D All Star. This game answered everything just in time to become a legend. 

47 Mike Tyson's Punchout

When you fight against Glass Joe, you may think that you've got this game down pat. Well, I've got news for you, after fighting King Hippo and Great Tiger, even then you've only scraped the surface. From someone who never got past Soda Popinski, I can tell you that this game gets hard. The boxers become faster and more disorienting with different techniques to take you down, no matter how much you think your control skills are the greatest. Good luck putting in the cheat code to get straight to Iron Mike Tyson himself. If you can best him in a fight, you deserve a title. For real, though, get ready to get knocked down more than once.

46 Super Street Fighter II Turbo

This is Street Fighter II but faster! Your control of the situation becomes null when going against these fighters. The roster is bolstered and your options are bigger, but the game itself gets tough. This is the game that started the modern fighting game along with Mortal Kombat and it is the bar that every fighting game wished they could reach. M. Bison is rough to fight in this game, but for some reason, more than that, Sagat is ridiculous! This series needs very little introduction and it is a go-to for so many gamers who just want a solid fighting game experience. 

45 D

The horror puzzle games are nothing new, even when this game came out. However, the atmosphere, the point and click adventure through a haunted mansion with the Sega Saturn at the reins really elevates this to an experience. It's not a long game, especially if you know what you're doing with it to begin with, but there are some scares that are real. If you're playing through it for the first time, or even after a long stint away from it, it can surprise you in the best way. Horror games could really benefit from trying the creepy vibe this game gives you. Just remember that you've got a flintlock pistol and all evil should beware!

44 Saints Row 2

A game series that has been celebrated on this very site on several occasions. This game is where it started. GTA 3 boosted up the 3D sandbox and Saints Row had a rough start, but this title catapulted them to true gamer stardom. Saints Row 2 gave you brand new options for guns, vehicles and missions of every sort. You can go on killing sprees and sometimes you NEED to go on killing sprees! Finding ways to blast through entire missions using your own skills and hardware you collected along the way became the name of the game throughout this entire slugfest. Creating your own gang boss to play and seeing you bring your posse back to relevance through blood and sweat of your own is just a rewarding experience all its own. 

43 Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

The best Mortal Kombat in 2D, bar none. Between this and Trilogy, you're looking at the best 2D roster and the core of what MK truly stood for: Awesome fighting mechanics and extreme amounts of blood. Gore became Mortal Kombat's boon and the fans ate it up! This game came about because of the mistake that was Mortal Kombat 3. While the original third iteration had its own strengths and fans, this game was the correction that sparked greatness. Through the arcade and Sega Saturn, this became my absolute favorite in the early franchise. With the code CRAZYCYRAX, you can unlock a TON of extra content, i.e. Cooking with Scorpion! 

42 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

As terrible as both Star Wars and Bioware have it now (like being dead), this has to be the peak of both. Not only do you get to customize your own light saber and fighting style, but now you can choose which side of the force you want to be on. Whether you go into the light side or dark side completely changes the story and the gameplay! Where some interactions would have been peaceful and over with a bit of talking, now you piss them off and kill every single one of them with or without mercy. The choice is yours! This level of morality was very rare to see in any game and KOTOR brought it all with amazing gameplay. It really feels like Star Wars at its true summit. 

41 Tetris

You really cannot get simpler than Tetris. The theme song is iconic to retro gaming, the gameplay is satisfying while also being very challenging. Hell, no one truly beat this game until a child made it cry just by slamming the shapes into place instantly and made the game completely freeze! This game is HARD as you climb through the levels, and it is a true test of your concentration along with your hand-eye coordination. With twenty million clones and even 3D iterations, you are looking at one of the cornerstones of being a gamer geek. Now make them disappear!!!

40 Batman: Arkham Asylum

When no one asked about Batman games, Batman games came to us in the form of Rocksteady. We got a beat'em up game with pure Gotham City DNA and you really feel like Batman traversing Arkham Asylum and fighting the inmates as they come. The plot is so simple and yet the gameplay make stealthing and using Batman's gadgets feel as natural as spring water. Arkham became its own universe and had a series that captivated Batman fans and gamers alike. While the last "title" in the series did everything wrong, we at least got three or four games that did it with Bat Style. Fly down from the ceiling or pop up from a trap door and break a criminal's face. You're Batman, now act like Batman! 

Super Smash Brothers - Every Toy in the Box!

If there is one thing that gamers have grown accustomed to, especially Nintendo Gamers, it is that Super Smash Brothers will find a way to include any character. It started off modestly enough on the N64, and even with a limited character selection, the game was a gigantic hit. The games, it seemed, only got more and more awesome as they went through each generation of Nintendo game consoles. After the 64, the Gamecube took up the mantle, and Smash Brothers Melee became the favorite for a lot of fans, even today! 

The concept is ridiculously simple. You fight one to three opponents in a match where it's either limited by time or by falls. You fight them to knock them out of the arena once they've reached a percentage of damage. Honestly, the percentage of damage has been a bit of a point of confusion for a lot of fans, because sometimes you can get mega hit when you're at 110% damage and not get knocked out, but the same hit will send someone with 59% out of the ballfield. Each character has their own unique (ish) set of skills with which to fight each other. Some of them are amazing to the point of being over powered, like Marth or Link. Some of them are just terrible moves with a long span and very little damage like Cloud or Sonic. 

It really depends on your playstyle. A lot of people say that Ganondorf is way too difficult to use, but yet there are tournament winners who mained Ganondorf from the start. There has been character rosters that reach ridiculous heights. Smash Brothers Ultimate from the Switch was a huge success, having the biggest roster in the series but when you look at the unlockable characters (or DLC characters), it was lacking in the wanted challenge. All of that, and the fact that Cloud was one of the final characters to get made it a lackluster experience in the long run. 

The main gameplay we all know and love is the Free For All or 2v2 but there were also plenty of platformer levels or bonus levels where you jump and run around to find bullseye targets. Some of these even come in the form of a makeshift boardgame where you find levels to fight enemies, go on platformer levels and even have some boss battles. Boss battles can come in the form of multiple forms of Kirby or even metal mario characters. The biggest one everyone remembers is the Master Hand. Your basically a toy fighting the hand that controls you in the form of a kid or something. I can only imagine the little kid wearing bandaids and having scratches all over his hand once you beat the entire single player campaign. 

This is also one of the few game titles that brings Sonic and Mario into the same game. Many fans loved this little feature, especially the trailer where Sonic smashes his fist into Mario and knocks him out of the arena. Then again, that's the fun of the game in a nutshell. Many of these characters have never met before this whole thing. Even when Mario and Sonic had the Olympic games, they didn't have a smash down knockdown dragout fight like in Smash Bros. Now, you can bring in Cloud from FFVII, Kirby, StarFox, Pikachu, Mr. Game  & Watch, Ryu from Street Fighter, Samus from Metroid in several forms and even Isabelle from Animal Crossing! There are so many games that are not even in the Nintendo library, they just wanted a piece of the pie! 

Sony also wanted a piece of the pie. They wanted it so badly that they created an entirely "different" game that had a lot of the same... "ideas". Playstation All-Star Battle Royale was already a terrible title to begin with. I literally had to look it up by typing in "Sony Smash Bros Knock-off" and Google knew exactly what I was talking about. This game was abysmal in more ways than one. Not only did it have the second-hand characters from other franchises that Sony owned, but its gameplay was so complicated, it ruined the entire experience. Dante from Devil May Cry was already in Smash Brothers, so they couldn't even use their own character. So what do they do? They use the emo knockoff from DmC, which was rather fitting when you step back and look at the forest for the trees. 

You've got the Big Daddy, Sly Cooper and Jak from some interesting Sony properties, but there was no real draw from any of them. They had Raiden!... from Metal Gear Solid.... Yeah, there wasn't much to see here at all. It already had the problem of being two or three generations too late to the party, but now they're putting in complicated gameplay on what should be a simple concept. There is a sequence you need to follow to knock someone out of the ring, instead of just smashing them to a certain damage point and knocking them out with a well-placed strike. No, you actually need to build up Action Points and then execute a proper special move in order to actually knock someone out of the ring. Rinse and repeat. So, you've got a knockoff game with half the roster star power and an over-complicated fighting mechanic that makes the game take longer and become more monotonous. Nothing strange there! 

That's not to say there weren't more knockoffs of Super Smash Brothers, but this one was the most glaringly obvious and highest budget attempt. The idea of having a character stew of several intellectual properties all mashed together is not even close to being an original one. The Marvel vs DC or X-men vs Street Fighter crowd has always gravitated toward these types of games and for very good reason. Sometimes, the character roster can be really daunting, but there are plenty of characters for everyone with fandoms and fighting styles that you're more accustomed to. 

As fighting games go, it has a solid set of mechanics. Sometimes, the screen can get overly busy and your characters can get overly small to where you lose them. That has happened more than once and it can screw up the gameplay. It's still a perfect game to get some friends over and beat the snot out of each other. Whether you have current game consoles or retro game consoles, Smash Brothers is a great fit for you. The Wii and the Wii-U versions are no slouch when it comes to solid gameplay, and it was the Wii version that was still available when the Sony Battle Royale was released, so it still romper-stompered that whole idea into the earth, never to be seen again. When it comes to fighting entire groups and absolute carnage in the fighting arena, Super Smash is as good as it gets. Looney Tunes has tried it, Cartoon Network has tried it but none of them even come close to the greatness of Smash. Remember to Smash responsibly and knock your opponent into the water!! They need a little drink.

Resident Evil Apocalypse - The Audience's Nemesis

It used to seem like it was always a third or fourth installment to a series where people spelled its impending doom. Well, there are several instances when it was clear that the series lost the plot just in the first sequel. It happened with Beastmaster, Pumpkinhead, and The Joker. Well, it also happened to Paul Anderson's Resident Evil. The writing was on the wall, although it wasn't as apparent as others. Apocalypse wasn't an especially bad movie, but it did make especially bad decisions that would later come back to bite it on the ass. Their biggest mistake was most assuredly Paul W.S. Anderson deciding to start a relationship and eventually marry Milla Jovovich. Normally, these sort of things can be overlooked but in this case, it was clearly a very large detriment to the series. 

Every single decision made in this sequel and all of the impending installments had to service one thing: Alice's power and ego. She was the most amazing thing in this world, able to kill zombies without thinking about it and having an ego trip as a result. This all comes to a head when we are introduced to Jill Valentine, and she is never given a proper place to shine. She has her very awkward boss moment when she simply walks into the police station and puts two rounds into random people that she sees are transformed into zombies. This was jarring to say the least and painted a very good picture of what is to come in this movie. 

Every single other character, from the T-virus's creator, his daughter and even Nemesis, are all there to either be victims or villains. Jill tries to keep her video game character's cool factor, but she constantly fails and needs Alice to bring her out of it. Alice has to save the creator's daughter, Angela Ashford. Her father is being held captive by Umbrella Corp and she apparently needs to be saved while she is hiding in a school. Along the way, we meet such colorful character as a pimp who serves as a very poor comedy relief, then there are the members of S.T.A.R.S., with whom are almost all killed by Nemesis.

Nemesis is about the only character they actually got right in this movie, but that is also one of the movie's big downfalls when the climax takes place. The big baddy, with hostages held at gunpoint, commands Alice to fight Nemesis in single combat. Yes, Alice has grown so powerful and skilled that she can even meet one of the strongest undead characters in Resident Evil hand to hand and actually come out on top. It really goes to show you that the director just can't stop bringing his own personal life into his work. 

There is no reason that any of this should be the plot. The first movie got away with diverging from the video games because it actually had a fairly decent idea. The execution was shoddy, but it still formed a coherent enough plot and Alice was still just a regular fighter with trained skills. Here, she is overpowered and becomes a Mary Sue by the end of it because, somehow, her powers have become nigh omnipotent. Propping your hero up while bogging everyone down is already a horrendous practice, but this movie made her into near godhood. The way she runs through a window on her motorcycle with two machineguns and the way she literally defeats Nemesis with her own awesomeness became so boring! She was taken down, character-wise, while trying to prop her up as undefeatable. 

The plot suffers from random happenings all over the city, which could be a neat little sideplot here and there, but with the reporter who comes to make a name for herself, only to be killed by zombie children, and a random guy feeding his sister humans because she turned into a zombie, plus the sideplot with the random S.T.A.R.S. members dying all over the place and everything else happening, this movie feels bloated. It's very difficult to recall much of anything that happens in this plot, or what the plot is even about, because there is just so much to it. This is made worse with the fact that Alice comes in exactly when she is needed and defeats the obstacle with ease, while also saving people and moving on as if it wasn't even worth acknowledging. 

The real kicker is that the third movie is actually better than this one in many ways. It's still not that good, but it beats this constant trainwreck that doesn't seem to know where to draw the plot or how to even carry it through the movie. The ending only compounds all of this by giving Alice the ability to kill a random, innocent security guard through the security camera. No, I'm not making that up. She looks at a security camera, and the man watching on the other end has blood come out of every orafice in his face, seemingly melting his brain. She is somehow super charged after waking up in a science facility and killing her captors without thinking about it. Get used to that, folks, because this series loves to embellish her powers and make her out to be an unstoppable killing machine. The movies can't tell a coherent story and keep lining up ineffective villains who do their thing, say their lines and die because Alice wills it. It's a long 7 movie ride and it only gets longer from here. Virtua Sigh. 

TMNT Cowabunga Collection - Slash'm'ups in a Half-Shell!

 It's so nice when companies get it right. When they seem to wear that mask just right and tell you that they understand, every once in a while it's nice that their lies actually make something valid. Putting together a Konami collection of Ninja Turtle games was a definite step in the right direction. This is right up there with the Capcom fighting collections, you've got yourself a winning bunch. This is an entire generation of childhoods we're talking about. If there's one one thing that can nostalgia punch on the level of Ghostbusters 2009 for PS3, it's TMNT for the arcade, plus Turtles in Time! 

That's right, dear reader, TMNT IV looks pretty damn good, whether it be for SNES or the arcade. We're loving it either way. Just going through these levels and rediscovering the fights against the machines, against Shredder and going across time to different settings fit like an old jacket that I haven't worn in ages. Shredder's Revenge was awesome in its own right, but there's something about playing the originals that get you really engaged. 

It doesn't stop at the awesome classics, though. TMNT III is awesome to revisit from the old childhood, but what about the games that were missed in our childhoods? I know some of you out there have had Turtles 2 for the Gameboy, but wow, this is a different sort of game to its very core. Still, even with the clunky gameplay and the very narrow point of view that you get from the limited scope of the handheld, it's just 90's nostalgia all wrapped in a bow. 

There's no way around it, you need to get good at these games just to get past the third level. It's not impossible but it is a very daunting task when you run out of continues. That's the great thing about all of the arcade ports in this collection. All of them go by a coin system and if you can just push a button to gain more continues, then you can basically beat the game. In the old Gameboy/Nintendo mentality, you have probably 3 continues and then you start at the very beginning of the game. 

Well, now with some current gaming trends of actually having a SAVE FEATURE, you can bypass this little detail. In all 13 titles of the Cowabunga Collection, you are allowed to save whenever you wish. This allows you to refine your gameplay and start to catch onto the controls for each game. While we're not going to go into great detail on every single title, as there are many, we are going to take a look at some noteable Turtles games. Some of them I've either never mentioned on this Planet Virtua or others that I've mentioned many times. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)

Even as a kid, I really did not like this title. I had already played TMNT II for the NES and the arcade by the time I had gotten to this title and it was obvious why I really did not favor it. The dull side view platformer angle did not work for the turtles at all. You need to get Donny in order to get a good weapon with a long range, and that alone is not really a good selling point. There's a reason I love Mikey and part of it is his unique design and his personality. I also prefer the nunchaku over the bo staff when it comes to beating down some Foots. 

The platforming itself is already boring and tasteless, but then they bring in the mechanic of when you need to go into the overhead view and vehicles can come out of nowhere. All of the sudden, you've lost a life because some jerk on the street decides they want to run you over! We haven't even gotten into the water level with the electric seaweeds! There were just too many variables throughout the game. Not all of it is terrible, but a great deal of it is and those are also the most memorable parts. They're memorable for all of the wrong reasons. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (NES) 

There has been some talk around the block about this game being a wholly inferior experience to the TMNT arcade port. Obviously, to some degree, this would be the case, but is it really enough to consider it inferior in every sense? No, really, it's not. When it comes to controls, this port is functionally just as good as the arcade port. The graphics are a downgrade, but still hold up as some of the peak in the NES library. This is also because they added to everything. They even added Tora! Not that he was the most memorable villain in the roster, but still! It's just really cool to see them needing to keep with limitations while also generating a very positive experience with the NES port. So, calling this a wholly inferior experience is very disingenuous and it's important to keep the record straight. Any kid in the 90's was proud to have this added to their collection. 

Fall of the Foot Clan (Gameboy)

This game... is annoying. Let's be real here, they did not put their best foot forward. Ha! Foot!... I'll see myself out... but seriously! They put the camera so close to you that it's very difficult to see what is right in front of you and react accordingly. The controls are very, very stiff and it's hard to keep a good pattern going when you need to deal with the Gameboy's shortcomings. If this weren't bad enough, Splinter keeps coming up to you for bonuses with his "Guess what number I'm thinking of! You have this many chances!" And it feels like a kid going, "Dad! I'm fighting the Foot Clan! Can we do this later, please?!?" 

It's not always rocky sailing, but even when you're getting good with it, this title tends to drag. It does get pretty boring. This is not entirely its fault, as the Gameboy was made back when handheld gaming had ridiculous amounts of limitations and we were lucky to get what we had. Still, now it's just more of a relic with no nostalgic ties and it is a snooze fest. Then it starts to throw so many things at you from both sides and your progress becomes slow as a result. It's not overly difficult but it's also not a very pleasant or fun experience. I clocked out after beating the Shredder fight. The time and effort that took was not worth it.

Radical Rescue and the other Gameboy titles are more or less the same experience as this one. While some of them have a few extra gimmicks like being able to helicopter your weapon or something to that nature, they are still the bland and boring beat'em ups that gameboy had to offer. 

TMNT Tournament Fighters (SNES and Genesis)

Fighting games have been a dubious genre when it comes to our favorite green heroes. These titles were pretty big on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo but they never really caught any traction in the franchise as a whole. Sure, they've had appearances like they did with Injustice: Gods Among Us, but TMNT has never flourished as such. Tournament Fighters is something of an indication as to why. This is not a terrible game by any means, but it's just not an especially good mix. This is strange, though, you would think that with the translation from comic to TV Show to Beat'em up, Fighting games would be a knockout. 

No, honestly, the game is excellent in its own right, even as a fighting game outside of the franchise. The problem was that it just wasn't any sort of standout in the genre against Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. TMNT was seen more as a cartoon and a silly Saturday morning chuck partnered with a bowl of cereal. The fighting games did not offer anything new or innovative, so as good as the controls are and as cool as the game mechanics were, they did not pursue this genre any further. 

Another big problem is that they jammed it full of characters you don't even know. I have no ties to these weird dinosaur-like things, nor do I care about this storyline being jammed between fights. They could have brought in tons of the TMNT rogues gallery but they didn't. Instead of fighting memorable villains like the Bebop or Leatherhead, you're fighting monster things from the Archie comics. It was a decent effort and not a terrible game, but fans didn't latch onto it all that much and it didn't really have an appearance in arcades. Good for a play or two, though.

TMNT Tournament Fighters (NES)

Wait, there was an NES port?!

Whether there be Hyperstone Heist or the Manhattan project, this collection is more than worth it to at least try these games you missed as well as play the incredible games you remember. Turtles in Time still stands as one of the favorites, even when my personal favorite has always been the original TMNT for the arcade. It really doesn't matter which one is your favorite, this collection's got it. Playing the old games and discovering some other, perhaps stranger ones is just all part of a fun package for not a terrible price, even on launch. If you're a turtle head, then give this collection a try and take a bite out of Shredder. 

Suicide Squad - Kill Your Franchise

 

Before you ask, no, I never played this game. My ear was very close to the ground and there was still more than enough content to build an entire series of articles. We'll just be limiting it down to one, though. There are miles and miles of nails to drive into this coffin and my hammer is more than up to the task. When talking about the Batman Arkham Series, many will cite only four games. Even when people are hesitant to mention the highly underrated Arkham Origins, they are far more hesitant to include Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Calling Captain Boomerang "Boomer", pandering and putting women up on a pedastal along with cringeworthy one-liners are the very least of this game's problems. Rocksteady took ten years to create this and with the original head developers leaving in the middle of its making, the fans of the series were starting to worry. Their hesitance was... "justified".

This all came to a head when the game was released and all of its majesty was there for the people's consideration. First, the game charged you seventy space bucks for the root game, one hundred simoleons for the same game with a few alternate costumes and then it had the GALL to ask you to pay for more costumes, extra DLC missions with watered down characters then just about every other thing they thought they could drain your wallet with. If any of you paid full price for any of this, you have my sympathies and the notion that you hopefully learned your lesson. 

Suicide Squad killed itself from the very start with the tag "LIVE SERVICE GAME", which everyone with a braincell can translate to "You play for maybe a year before the servers go down". It already happened to Avengers, why did they think we would fall for it yet again with a terrible idea like this? Then they came out and PROUDLY stated that they will be killing all of our beloved characters with little to no reverence and all around pure embarrassment. The fan backlash was immediate and very harsh, as it should be. 

The treatment of the Justice League was beyond repugnant. They not only killed the Flash and had Captain Boomerang piss on him, but they also killed Batman while shaming him with Harley Quinn's disgraceful monologue. This was the final time Kevin Conroy voiced the Dark Knight and they let him go out with a shot to the head on a park bench. This game deserved far worse than its already abismal fate. If that wasn't enough, Wonder Woman was the only one to be paid any sort of respect when she overcame her brainwashing and stabbed Superman with a piece of kryptonite. The only reason she was paid any reverence was because she was the only woman featured in the Justice League and their bias toward the demographic was as naked as this game's shameful concurrent player count. Women hated being pandered to and men playing were disgusted by the obvious lack of any creativity and trolling of the fanbase. Whoever made these choices should never make creative decisions again. 

 This is especially true when you start to see how desperate and pathetic their attempts were to save this awful mess. The sales were so bad, they started cancelling DLC's almost immediately after release. Whatever wasn't cancelled was given the chop in the budget. Many cutscenes were no longer 3D rendered to match the game. They became flashpoint 2D art that barely moved, if at all. The DLC cutscenes were "augmented" like this to save on money, but it was obvious that they were shooting them out the door as fast as they possibly could. Game glitches were aplenty, the sound kept going out and the more they made, the more they started regretting their numerous bad decisions. The Joker looked absolutely terrible, as if he decided that hard drugs were preferrable over actual food. Mr. Freeze turned into Miss Freeze, and her one-liners were not funny in the slightest, nor were her missions favorably reviewed. Then they brought in Deadshot's daughter, AKA "Lawless" to make sure we understand she is a "criminal genius" with a flair for skating in the moral gray area of being a criminal and an "anti-hero". Spoiler Alert: She was not popular.

The dialogue is agonizing to watch, even when you're catching them on youtube. One can only imagine having to deal with these lines while actually playing the game. Even without doing so, the repetitive nature and the looter shooter qualities are plain to see. Even IGN, who has given some of the worst games a 7/10, couldn't defend the gameplay of this so-called "Arkham title". The obvious toxic political agenda this game tried to present is another gigantic tumor in its engine. If you really want to scare away your entire fanbase, make sure to treat your audience like idiots and then put a place where they can slide their debit cards in for more. That's how successful games are made, right? 

No, as it turns out, Rocksteady (or the people claiming to be them) was destroyed as a result of this game's release. Layoffs, a gargantuan budget, EXTREME gaming bugs and server issues, release delays, expensive character outfits, terrible reviews on the game demo, developers leaving, fans giving the game the finger through ENORMOUS amounts of boycotts and refunds, all culminated in this game becoming an unfunny punchline. It lost them around the neighborhood of 200 million dollars. The player count stagnated to only three digit numbers. They stopped making content for it in under a year and the game is now officially dead. 

As Arkham fans, we can only take these trolls at face value and show them how their C-note game is now being sold for five space bucks. They thought they could spit in our faces and pander to a new audience. Well, that audience of nine people bought the game, but I can already tell you most of their revenue came from youtubers who were more than happy to tear it apart. It is a staggering tale of why you should never take an intellectual property in an attempt to "own the chuds on their own turf". Whether they consider their work accomplished or whether they wasted ten years on a dud is up to their own delusional state of mind. 

Am I enjoying spitting on this game's grave without spending a cent on it? Oh, yes, this is much needed therapy and it is a joyous experience. No Arkham fan in their right mind would ever canonize this garbage, and even if they did, the real joke came at the very end of its lifespan. Of course, in the cheapest cut scene they could muster, they explained that all of these Justice League members killed were all clones made by Brainiac or some crap, I don't care about any of the details. By this point, no one cared and the game's shills were yelling into the void of no players. It was worth a laugh, seeing them try to commit to damage control when no one was playing the game. Even the developers who were chortling at their own wit were finding out that they needed to keep developing content for this turd when it was already belly-up. 

It's a lot easier just to pretend that this game was never made. Sure, WB spent hundreds of millions on it to cram it into Arkham canon, but when has that ever truly mattered? One great thing to come out of this was many fans went back and decided that Arkham Origins really wasn't that bad. It was no masterpiece but playing the entire game was a far more rewarding experience than even glancing at the cutscenes for Suicide Squad: Kill Me Now, Please. As fans, we hold that power and the fans of the original Rocksteady creations used that to its utmost. The "New Rocksteady" has already dug its own grave, having lost more than half of its staff as a result of the botched game they released. They're trying to convince the public that they're working on a new single-player Batman game, but their reputation is already in the toilet. Whether they learned their lesson or not, the road to redemption is very long and costly. Perhaps it would be wise to never let this happen again. Virtua Bat Glare...

For Kevin

Death Binges - How GTA 3 Actually Stole our Hearts

DISCLAIMER: I shouldn't need to say this, but certain individuals need it spelled out for them. This article obviously does not condone the real life act of shooting firearms in public places. All acts of violence expressed within in a positive light are fictional, digital and thus not real. As much as people like to pretend that video games cause real life violence, the truth is that mental illness and real life violence cause real life violence. There are millions upon billions of people in the world who do not commit these acts of violence and yet they have played and enjoyed games such as these as well as video games that are far worse. If you have any concerns of moral ambiguity on games rated M for Mature or video game codes of ethics, you are free to close this window or move on to the next article. Thank you for your time. 

Everyone has their own flavor of sandbox games to choose from now. If you wanted to have powers and be able to kill random people with lasers and fire from your hands, there is Saints Row 4 and Infamous. If you like westerns, there're Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2. If you just want a blank slate world with different continents and islands built in, there's Minecraft, Ark, Garry's Mod, the list goes on. Now days, you can do whatever you want in these worlds, and it all began on the streets of Liberty City. 

Grand Theft Auto 3 and its direct successors brought about immersion on another level. While you weren't able to go into every building, you could drive on every street, steal whatever cars you want, so long as there are no cops and/or it's not locked, and you can drive over people by the dozens, so long as you're ready to start racing the fuzz. While there was a main line mission to get to, there were also people who still draw breath. 

A lot of people like to just put in the cheat gunsgunsgunsgunsgunsguns and that will be enough to get you an arsenal with which to destroy entire crowds of bystanders. Now, this may sound easy, but once the police begin to barge in with their cars and their guns, it's suddenly a shootout and you need to be in cover. The AI of old was not great, and if you have the high ground with a railing (much like the one beside the hospital) you will have the advantage. The police can still shoot you, but it's much more difficult for them now, as the idea to go up the ramp doesn't occur to them very often. 

Depending on your choice of weapons, this can be pretty devastating. Employing the molotov cocktails and burning groups of people can hold some benefits. The problem is that if you release them too lightly, the fire will catch onto you. Now, this is also true for grenades, and those have a higher chance of killing you. The flamethrower for targets nearer to you is a way to go. It cooks and it's nice and clean so long as the people don't approach you while they are on fire. You need to keep at least some small distance but they will die very quickly. 

If you were wanting to go a more subtle route, there is the sniper rifle. This will literally take an NPC's head off. It may even kill two or three if you line them up correctly. Another horrifically awesome way to distance kill is with the AR-15. It shreds in this game! The AK-47 gets the job done but the AR-15 will even take down a helicopter after about a full clip. Usually, helicopters are best with the rocket launcher. 

Oh yes, dear reader, there is a rocket launcher and it is to be used with caution, as all rocket laucnhers are. This one is a bit more devastating than usual, though, and there are times when helicopters come in a little too close for comfort. One rocket will make people fall to pieces in large groups, though, and its power is not to be overlooked. You may also need it if you ever get tanks or other armored SWAT vehicles. It gets rather nasty.

Speaking of tanks, there is another cheat called giveusatank and you get one on the road immediately, destroying any vehicle beneath it. That's what this does. It takes the action movie cliche of cars exploding on impact to a new level. Every single car you hit, boom! You can drive down the street and fire off the cannon, sure, but you really only need to drive. Cop cars will run directly into you and explode immediately. This doesn't last forever, though, and once your tank lights on fire, you'd better exit, or you will find yourself faced against the word, WASTED! 

This is basically GTA 3's bread and butter and it has been for a good number of years. Other video games have broadened this idea and even improved on it. Saints Row 2 even put minigames where it keeps score on your progress of knocking civilians. There's no shame in enjoying this, sometimes it's just nice to take some anger out on some digital nonplayer characters. Just keep it in the digital world and drink real water.

Top 160+ Favorite Games of all time! (Pt 5)

We're going deep into territories of my absolute favorite titles, and this bunch is a great example of how many great games there are to choose from. There's all kinds of genres, but one look at the list shows off my deep love for the roleplaying games. Strangely enough, Final Fantasy VII is the oldest game on this segment of the list. I promise you, that will change as we move up toward the #1 position. There are still good games being made, but the mid to late 90's were a special time where games started to create franchise starters.  

79 Saints Row IV

Yes, this game is not the greatest in the series and yes, there were a lot of changes that weren't great, but this title has a lot of greatness to it still. Saints Row fell off the deep end, but it still did a very memorable send off. Hacking into the system and giving yourself super powers may not make a lot of sense, but it is a lot of fun to play out in a free roaming sandbox game. Taking out entire patrols with one explosion of your powers is just so satisfying. This game is the last great Saints Row game, and it's probably going to hold that title for a very, very long time.

78 Left 4 Dead 2

This is one of those sequels that let's you have your cake and eat it too. Not only does it introduce new zombies, new main characters, new weapons and new maps, but it also gave you everything from the first game updated with the new mechanics and old characters. This game is fun whether you're playing with other players or just playing with bots. Either way, you're working your way through zombie hordes and throwing molotovs at boss zombies to see how long it takes to kill them. If you wanted to play either game, just get the sequel. You'll get the full experience through all of it. 

77 Cyber Trooper Virtual-On Marz

While it is not quite as good as its predecessor, the sequel to Virtual On brings all of what you love about the first game and makes it ten times harder. Getting through some of these hordes of mech suits is just ridiculous at times. It's also ridiculously fun! Destroying mechs and dueling Cyber Troopers is still an amazing time. This game can be especially unforgiving but the controls and the combat are just an all around good time. Not to mention, the graphics upgrade is just flat out beautiful.

76 Final Fantasy VII

Cloud has become one of the icons of gaming, and here's where it all started. This is a long, very complicated game when it comes to its story, but the combat is simple enough for everyone to play and enjoy it. The fast paced roleplaying element is one of the most enjoyable aspects of it, as well as it's beautiful 1997 graphics. This is one of those games that revolutionized graphics and brought games to a new era of 3D polygons. If you've got a long span of time to spend playing a legendary roleplaying game, give this one a try.

75 Skies of Arcadia

A high flying, swashbuckling adventure on the sky in our big huge air ship! The combat is mixed with both sky pirates and explosions! You must make your way across the sky and take on big surprises along the way. Discover new lands as you spend hours making your way through this gigantic world and storyline. This game allows you to fight with both your crew and your ship. With magic and swords at your grasp, you need to be strategic and take down unique enemies that present challenges of their own. Do not miss out on playing this game, as it is a Dreamcast classic. 

74 Dragon Quest IX

Create your own character for a beautiful experience in the Dragon Quest universe. Fight through goblins and gain up a new party for adventures across the land. You must discover the origin of these horrible monsters that destroy the land and you must fight powerful foes and gain experience in order to face the more powerful demons that face off with you. This game can get a bit grindy but who doesn't see that coming in a Dragon Quest game? The graphics are beautiful and the 3D environment still gives you that sense of fantasy as it always has throughout this franchise of games.

73 Mortal Kombat Deception

When you must travel across the land in order to find more and more power and learn all of the fighting styles, you've got to wonder why all of the games didn't do this. Deception is not a perfect Mortal Kombat game, but the adventure mode is just priceless. The story is a bit convoluted and takes kind of a stupid turn near the middle, but the journey to get all of the orbs for what turned out to be Onaga had to be some of the best game mechanics while being a bit crude in that PS2 kind of way. The combat is still there, as it is a fighting game, and it just beats Deadly Alliance out in everything, including character roster. This is where the 3D MK Era really peaked.

72 Red Dead Redemption 2

One problem with this game is that there it can feel like there is entirely too much to do. That is not a bad problem to have. It's so easy to get immersed into this world of cowboys and shootouts. If you're a fan of the old western culture and like to see a game that takes on authenticity with some actual thought, then you could look for worse ways to spend 20 hours. It's just an all around fun sandbox experience that you can just play on and off without losing too many detail. If you forget, just do another mission and you'll come across the story again. Now git! 

71 The House of the Dead

Sleep on the Sega Saturn version all you want, but I count it along with the arcade version as a worthy port. It's one of the first 3D shooter games where the graphics are good enough to make the gore very chunky without being too overly gross or off-putting. The bosses are fun to fight and find their weak spots. 

70 Elderscrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim is a game that I will return to time and time again, because sometimes I just want to start a quest to go somewhere, somehow. It doesn't matter where you go on the map, there is a dungeon, or a castle, or a tower, or a dragon flying around nearby. Everywhere you go, there are vampires and bandits coming to kill you. You can customize your character by how you act. Every single skill that you constantly use, it keeps leveling up and that levels up your character as a whole. Whether you want to go melee or magic or both, this game will let you become that warrior and you can join whatever side you want. Skyrim is the peak of Elderscrolls and coming off of Murrowind and Oblivian, that is saying a lot.

69 Guardian Heroes

If you want a good, challenging and different roleplaying experience, Guardian Heroes has you covered. With a very entertaining storyline, some awesome combat mechanics and fast paced roleplaying action throughout, it's just fun to play. The graphics, especially for the time, were phenomenal and have aged like a fine cask of wine that you can crack open anytime you want the full Saturn experience. That's right, this is a gem on the Saturn that is honestly not talked about a tremendous amount. If you ever have a chance to play this without paying the scalping price, do give it a go.

68 The Lengend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

That's right, the legendary N64 classic is at a fairly moderate place and not in the top 50. Well, there's a lot of great games in the netherverse and not all of them can be in the best of orders. This game is still awesome and a whole lot of fun to play. Half the time, I hardly remember what to do whenever I play this game. This game's master version on the Gamecube is also a good hike on the graphics without making it lose its identity. Hell, you can face and kill Ganondorf on the 3DS now. Ocarina of Time is now on handheld. That just proves how much people love this game. 

67 Dragon Ball FighterZ

A fighting game that is downright addictive. Playing through the various modes, story modes, power leveling modes and even the ingame online interface, this is just a fun time for anyone who was a fan of the franchise. You can customize your icon to virtually any character in the series. The fighting mechainics allow you to perform the greatest versions of the Final Flash and the most bombastic Kamehameha and explore the fighting mechanics of characters through a team fighting system! While the story is nothing close to the original series, it is nice to see them coming out with new androids rather than just constantly bringing back Cell and Freeza as some sort of threat. This game is just hours upon hours of defeat and victory!

66 Shining the Holy Ark

This game is better than the sum of its parts. The story is rather cut and paste, but the point is that it is a pinnacle of 32-bit grime. This was a pure Saturn game, one that looked like the period it came from and just gave us dungeon crawling that allowed you to live in that 32-bit world and fight some of the most charming monsters since Dragon Quest... okay maybe not that memorable or awesome but this game has an ageless charm that struck me from my original Saturn collection.

65 Power Stone

Dreamcast's most awesome fighting game, bar none! That's a very competitive arena as well, because that include Capcom vs SNK, Street Fighter III, and Marvel vs Capcom 2. Power Stone has this amazing pure arcade graphic feel that is on a much different fighting arena. The maps are so much more 3 Dimensional than your normal fare, and Power Stone pulled it off in style. Fighting to get all of the stones during the fight is just so satisfying when you unleash that power and get a full bunch of attacks into your opponent. These stones can mean victory and defeat and blasting them into a crater is a rare pleasure of gaming.

64 Sonic Gems Collection

So, yes, you could say that I am lumping all of these games together, or you can realize that half of these games would never see the light of day without this collection. How many people do you know played on the Sega GameGear, let alone having Tails 2 for the stupid thing? This also has Sonic CD, Sonic R, and a plethora of other very obscure titles for Sonic and the experience of playing these games one after another is just so wonderful when it seems like you have an endless list of games to play. Sonic has some duds and some of them are in this collection, but those are just extra trimmings to an already solid bunch of titles.

63 Dragon Ball: Xenoverse

If you want the experience of fighting different villains all throughout Dragon Ball Z and GT, and whatever else they put into the DLC, then this is your game. It is a lot of fun to create your own character, make them whatever race you want (everyone loves to reach the different levels of super saiyan) and team up with the Z Warriors to fight the evil that comes to take on Earth. You're a Time Patroller, and you're sent on missions to take down someone who is trying to destroy the timeline as we know it and make a corruption take over the dimension itself. The combat is a lot of fun and the story is very simple. Xenoverse is just a good time for Dragon Ball fans.

62 Super Smash Bros.

Yes, the first Smash Brothers is on this list because it was the first. We seriously sat on my friend's bed until my legs were numb while we smashed each other's faces in as Pikachu, Captain Falcon and Star Fox. We did all types of games, from extra items, to just rockets, to no HP items to EXTRA HP items. It was just a lot of fun to unlock characters, hold mini-competitions and just have a good time with character we love. It left a legacy that continues today.

61 Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Arguably the objectively best Wolfenstein game ever made. The graphics are perfect for its time, the bad and the good about it. While not every level is the greatest, mostly the stealth missions, there are so many great traits to love. The callbacks to Wolfenstein 3D, the sniper rifle, the powerful new weaponry all around is great as you take down the third reich! Well, now it's in true 3D for the first time and it is probably the greatest leap in quality the series would ever see again. This and the 2009 game have nothing to do with each other, but they were good separate games for their time before the big New Order reboot. This game earns its place, though.

60 Grand Theft Auto III

Where it all began for many. The sandbox genre had one place to start and this was it! While the first two were good games in their own right, this is the milestone in gaming history many of us remember as the first. Before Saints Row or Infamous brought about the running, GTA3 was already running along with them. It was that great of a leap! Being able to kill random citizens and have actual concequences where the police will aim to kill or arrest you if you get out of line and it goes up from there the more you misbehave. And misbehave many did! Killing people in a rampage is this game as a child's park vs a theme park! It's fun to play by the rules, but to just fly off the wall and be able to survive for as long as you can, there is just so much fun to be had, and even after you lose, you can gather up your stuff and just carry on as if nothing happened. You'll have less money and all your weapons will be gone, but those are easily brought back. This game is long, some of the missions suck, but overall, this game is a legend and spawned an entire genre that would bring about even better, more high quality games. It put Rockstar on the map and there is a very good reason why. Kill well, just don't question why paramedics can bring a headless guy back to life. They just can!!!