65. Magical Drop III

(NeoGeo/Saturn/Playstation, Data East, 1997)
More jolly puzzle fun now as the third iteration of the Magical Drop series enters the list. Much like Puchi Carat, this anime puzzler is a split screen affair that requires fast thinking and careful planning.
The player runs a small clown across the bottom of the screen, pulling similarly coloured balloons off the board then firing them back on to connect long chains of the same colour. The balloons clog the screen incredibly quickly and the player must be fast on his feet and truly think two moves ahead in order to avoid being overrun.

As with many games of this type, the split screen mode features two players battling it out, transferring chains to each others board with the first player to become overrun losing the battle.
The player can pick from one of a mighty 24 avatars, all based on the tarot, these stylish anime characters lurk in the background, celebrating and deriding the ups and downs of their host's actions.
My favourites are Empress and Fortune... Noticing a trend yet?Like many games before it, Magical Drop is a simple puzzle battler that's as addictive as crack (just not nearly as bad for you) Solid practice will reward the player with strategies to help them through the challenge and story modes, which climb in difficulty very quickly. Many an afternoon can be wasted battling against friends and the game's infectious "Just one more go" syndrome should provide you years of enjoyment. It has for me anyway.

Great art and fun gameplay. Magical Drop III will have you jumping for joy...

..Indeed.

66. Cabal

(Arcade/Various Home, TAD, 1988)
War...HUH! What is it good for?
80's Arcades apparently. Many 10p eaters in the 80s/90s were based on the concept of one or two guys trapped behind enemy lines, fighting they're way through an entire army single handed. Usually armed with a machine gun and a handful of grenades, these one-man war machines would gun their way through an entire regiment of men and often several tanks and helicopters without batting an eye. USA! USA!

Cabal is a game that requires the fire button being held down. A lot. The players run back and forth across the bottom of the screen, relentlessly pumping lead into anything that moves in front of them. Wave after wave of infantry, grenadiers, jeeps, tanks, helicopters and even jet fighters charge headlong at the two warriors, whose first mistake was to show up to the jungle in red and blue jumpsuits. After a certain quota of kills has been made, everything explodes on cue, the music stops then, out of nowhere, this comedy tune kicks in as our heroes DANCE their way into the distance to perform another massacre. Without a shadow of a doubt its the most inappropriate mission complete sequence in game history, and its AWESOME.

After four screens, the player comes up against a boss vehicle, these must be taken down in one life, as a player's death results in the boss getting all it's energy back, a high pressure situation for sure. Once five missions are completed, the rainbow warriors can return home, well, actually they'll just start again from the beginning. That's old school.

Cabal is your standard arcade shooter, what could essentially be an Operation: Wolf clone is twisted by having an actual on-screen character to dodge and weave amongst the bullets slowly trailing toward him, the game also has destructible scenery, with all the buildings in an area satisfyingly crumbling to the ground under heavy fire. The player is one-shot, one-kill so great care and fast reflexes are required to avoid the hot steel rain incoming from all and sundry. The sound is super basic, with putt-putt machine guns and a repetitive beat instead of actual music.
Although the game is very straightforward and incredibly bare bones, it's still good fun, especially with another player. The onscreen carnage never stops and although the gameplay is simple, it still requires cat-like reflexes and even a bit of forward thinking.

Of course, if nothing else, THAT end of level song and dance routine is worth the price of admission alone. Cabal is tense and exciting, with brutal violence that builds to a comedy farce conclusion. Reminds me of something else...

67. Cybernator

(SNES/PS2/Wii Virtual, NCS Corporation, 1992, JPN title: "Assault Suits Valken")
I'm not really a mech suit guy, I like my fair share of Anime, but it's generally angry hitmen and sexy cartoon women that float my boat, whilst I'm aware of the popularity of giant robot suits, they're just not for me.

Back in the SNES days, I would play anything, regardless of it's content or quality, so I borrowed Cybernator from a schoolyard chum despite it's schmuppy, sci-fi, mech suit presentation, I also had a big Konami kick going on at the time as they rarely let me down when it came to the Super Nintendo. A sequel of sorts to 1990's Target Earth, Cybernator (or it's cooler Japanese name of Assault Suits Valken) is a sideways scrolling run and gun which follows the tour of duty of Jake, a young man piloting a huge mech battle suit. Working for "The Federation" Jake and his comrades in arms engage in combat against rival alliances in an intergalactic war over the few fossil fuels left in the universe. With many planets and cities already lying a smouldering mess, Jake must help prevent these fuels falling into the wrong hands whilst coming to terms with the violence he has been thrown into at such a young age

Yes. Yes it is.

The player controls Jake's mech suit which has eight directional fire and a selection of weaponry, as well as a shield and a dash attack. Good thing he's armed to the teeth, as Jake will be under constant attack from all directions by an onslaught of airborne weaponry, gun emplacements and a variety of opposing mechs. The levels are large in scale and there is usually several routes through to one of the game's mighty bosses. The controllers at The Federation radio Jake during play, updating him on his suit's status and offering advice to help him out in the warzone.

Cybernator is a great game, It's exciting, controls well, has great atmosphere and even squeezes in a story which has two endings depending on the player's actions on a certain mission. The sprites are all well detailed, despite their size and the game has some real smooth parallax scrolling. Top it off with cool explosive effects and a pumping soundtrack and Cybernator is very hard to dislike.
The game has both visuals and a style of gameplay that date well, making it as playable today as it was on it's release. With the huge amount of games pointlessly getting the HD remake overhaul at the moment, it seems a shame that games like Cybernator are unlikely to be picked up for the same treatment. It seems like one of the few games that would be well suited for it, especially seeing as the Western SNES release was censored and the PS2 remake was redundant. As such, it still feels like this game deserves a "Definitive" version.

68. Guardians Of The 'Hood

(Arcade, Atari, 1992)
As previously mentioned, I'm a huge fan of games where vigilantes decide it's time to walk through the city, punching men and women in the face as a quick solution to the crime problem, especially when there's a bound and gagged girl waiting to be rescued at the other end. If any game fits that bill, then sign me up and let's bring the beatdowns. In my world, happiness is finding a roast chicken in a barrel.

However, If you want me to save "Da HoOD!" Thanks, but I'd rather let it burn.
Guardians Of The 'Hood is a total shit sandwich of a game. Seriously, take a good look at the above screenshot again. Atari, apparently trying hard to wipe it's own credibility of the face of the earth, tortured gamers with what is essentially a scrolling beat 'em up version of Pit-Fighter. Picking one of four hopelessly un-cool characters, up to three friends (An oxymoron, If you enjoy this game you won't have any friends) can make their way through DA 'HOOD, beating up wave upon wave of the same four blocky digitised badguys, Palette swaps and all.

The game has that horrible Pit-Fighter engine which means everyone floats around bouncing off each other like they're made of rubber, punches and kicks flail through the air, randomly striking characters or ghosting straight through them, floored characters get pushed around the screen and every attack and fruity cartwheel evasion is nailed to two or three frames of animation.
It's like someone took the worst game engine ever, then devised a way to make you hate it even more. The game has droning music that sounds like a walkman when the batteries are running out.

After suffering through some of the longest levels ever farted onto a JAMMA board, our non-heroes come up against the imaginatively titled Big Boss. This is where you are hit with the game's big twist: Big Boss is ACTUALLY A WOMAN! This may have been shocking if it hadn't been for two things:
1. Big Boss looks like a woman
2. Big Boss is clearly a woman
Guardians of the 'hood is a grade 'A' turd. A button bashing mess, the awkward engine doesn't allow for strategy and the broken control system makes the game a total credit muncher, especially considering the ridiculously overpowered bosses. When you look at it's year of release, it's actually rage-inducing that Atari had the gall to attempt to con gamers out of they're hard earned tokens.
Well, people aren't always that stupid, and this game rightfully bombed. I hope everyone involved in it lost their jobs. No, actually, I hope they had to play their own abortion from beginning to end.

I'd encourage you to boot up an emulator and try all the games I post about here, but not this one, straight up, It'd give your PC computer syphilis.
If Guardians Of The Hood was a human, it'd be Gary Glitter. If it was a TV show, it'd be that episode of 8 Simple Rules where the Dad dies, If it was a videogame, it'd be Guardians Of The 'Hood.

Shame on you Atari. You are still unforgiven.

69. Aliens: The Computer Game

(Spectrum/C64/Amstrad, Software Studios, 1986)
"You always were an asshole Gorman."
James Cameron's Aliens is one of my favourite films and definitely my favourite of the series. As a kid, my Dad wouldn't let me watch films that were outside of my age range, Aliens was the first I got to see by sneaking round a friend's house and it's probably that feeling of "forbiddeness" that made it stick in my brain. After repeated viewings, I still cannot tire of that movie. Or Bill Paxton.

So, how stoked was I when I got my hands on a game for my beloved Spectrum. Released by retro all-stars Electric Dreams, Aliens attempted to capture the tension and action of the movie and covert that same style to the humble home systems of the time. Played in first person, the player switches between six of the film's characters as they scroll through the rooms of colony LV-426 trying to track down the Xenomorph Queen lurking deep within, The game plays in almost total silence, however, when a Xenomorph is encountered, the scanner beeps kick in, rising from a low octave to a high pitch, during this time, the player must scan the area for the creature and gun it down before it turns and charges the camera. If the player fails to act, the camera goes to static and the character is killed or cocooned. I always used to let Burke get killed straight away, what a dick. In fact, it surprising they made him a playable character. After fighting through the warriors, eggs, face huggers and cocoons the team eventually comes up against the Queen.

Aliens could be seen as an early example of survival horror, with limited ammo, a huge map to traverse and alien attacks that were legitimately scary, Aliens conjured up the same presence and tension gamers would later feel playing games such as Resident Evil and Dead Space. The fact it managed to be so creepy with the graphics and sound available at the time is a triumph for videogame design. The title theme is also one of my very favourite Spectrum tunes. Aliens has its faults, all the rooms are practically identical and, without a map to hand, players are destined to get lost in the labyrinthine colony. The game is fairly quiet and many rooms are passed through with no activity, this isn't necessarily a bad thing though, as it makes the jarring Xenomorph attacks far more heart-stopping. Hudson also isn't playable, which is unbelievable.
Film tie-in is good game shocker. Very few games based on films are any good, generally due to licensing costs and an inability to translate the screen action into gameplay. That is still very true even today, which makes the small miracle the developers achieved with Aliens all the more special. Good work guys.

True story. Back when I was a kid, I had a friend who came round and loved playing this game, he went straight out and bought it for his C64, but the version he got was the U.S edition, which is a totally different game. He was so gutted that he actually burst into tears when it loaded. I don't know where he is now, but I'm sure it scarred him for life. I bet all he plays now are fucking mini-game compilations.

70. Dragon's Lair

(Arcade/Various Home, Advanced Microcomputer Systems, 1983)
Dragon's Lair is one of my favourite videogames of all time.
Dragon's Lair is barely a videogame.
Trying to squeeze all my thoughts and pro-laserdisc arguments into a few blocks of text is impossible, but I'll endeavour.

Released as a Laserdisc arcade in 1983, Dragon's Lair was the result of hard work by animator Don Bluth and developer Rick Dyer. The game is basically hand drawn animated film telling the story of our hero, Dirk the Daring, as he attempts to rescue the gorgeous Princess Daphne from an evil Dragon (Ive never understood why Dragons kidnap princesses, What's in it for them? The possession of beauty or just for LoLs?)

Every few seconds the player has to make a move to prevent Dirk from dying, based on what unfolds on screen, it's hopelessly unfair, as the events offer little in the way of clues and the reaction time allowed is superhuman. The game basically becomes a memory quiz, where a successful player will just remember the moves needed and after many attempts will be able to move smoothly through the game purely on knowledge learned through trial and error. Dragon's Lair II is more forgiving, although it is faster paced it has clearer visuals cues and slightly more reaction time.

After making his way through various scenes of danger, Dirk comes up against the Dragon, saves the Princess and, it would appear, receives the promise of some hardcore action once they get back home.
Dragon's Lair is universally trounced by many gamers, claiming that the game has little to no interactivity and is questionably a game at all. These critics miss the point, Dragon's Lair is a masterpiece of design, an attempt made during gaming's golden era to try something new and different, possibly taking the business in a new direction. The fact is that upon release the game had incredible success, with gamers queuing up to play despite the game's higher price and insane level of unfairness. It was something never experienced before and, for the time at least, had people guessing at the direction their favourite hobby would be taking. Unfortunately, as historians know, that direction was downward, as the market crashed and put many companies out of business, shutting down arcades left, right and centre.
Dragon's Lair's art is beyond compare, Don Bluth and his studio created beautiful imagery that is arguably better than anything produced by any animation company at the time and makes most of today's animation look like the very worst fanart.
But, is Dragon's Lair a videogame? people will argue, it didn't have pixel graphics, computer produced sound or even "proper" control. However, it did provide excitement and thrills and required both concentration and hand to eye coordination of the player in order to get Dirk through to the bitter end.

More importantly, Dragon's Lair tried something different, it rolled the dice. Whilst it might not have come up double sixes, it invented a new style of game, got itself in the Smithsonian museum and was ported to almost EVERY SINGLE home format there has ever been.
I'm not here to argue over the game's playability, I'll be the very first to admit that it's one long "quicktime event" before the phrase was even coined. This blog's purpose is to write what these games mean to me and Dragon's Lair means a lot. It was one of the first arcades I ever played and it's legacy has followed me throughout my gaming life. With Blu-Ray, Nintendo DS and Iphone versions on the way, it's still being ported nearly thirty years after it's original release.
Don't hate Dragon's Lair, it was a brave attempt to try something completely different and whilst it only worked in the short term, it did it with style and flair. The game is iconic and should be remembered proudly as a part of videogame history.

71. Bucky O'Hare

(Nes, Konami, 1992)
"From another, dimension. Another time and space, a parallel universe is falling on its face. When out of, the chaos, who else could it be? but the animal adventurers from S.P.A.C.E. BUCKY! CAPTAIN BUCKY O'HARE! He goes where no ordinary rabbit would dare"
and so forth...

Bucky O'Hare And The Toad Wars was a short lived animated series in the early 90s, based on a series of comics. Bucky and his crew fought intergalactic battles against an empire of evil toads, led by a super computer called KOMPLEX. After a 13 episode run, the show disappeared.
Even though only around for a short time, the merchandise machine acted fast, with the action figures, bedsheets etc. hitting the stores almost simultaneously with the show's debut. After the Ninja Turtle's super success, Cartoon merchandise was the cash cow to milk during this period.

Two Bucky games were produced, an arcade brawler, similar in style to TMNT or The Simpsons and this platform romp for the Nes. Almost unashamedly, the game borrows heavily from Capcom's Megaman series in control, level design and action. The player takes ahem.."The funky fresh rabbit" through various planets to rescue his crew members from danger. Once rescued, the player can switch characters as and when they desire, utilizing each characters various weapons and abilities to overcome obstacles. Once re-assembled, the team head into the Toad mothership for the final confrontation.

Bucky O'Hare is a quality NES game. As a blatant Megaman clone, it suffers the peaks and pitfalls of that series, It has fast action and a nice variety of weapons and levels. However, it also suffers from Megaman's graphical glitches, slowdown and, of course, its insane level of difficulty, usually in the shape of pixel perfect jumps, ungenerous restart points and powerful bosses.

Bucky O'Hare falls into that NES classic platform canon, alongside games like Ducktales and Chip'n'Dale, but it most definitely plays more like Megaman than anything else. That's no drama, Megaman is a fine series. So if you're the masochistic type who likes their cutesy platformers painfully frustrating, hop on board the Righteous Indignation and blast your way through the anthropomorphic Aniverse.
Who knows where it might take you?

72. Gun.Smoke

(Arcade/Various Home, Capcom, 1985)
Its Gun.Smoke, not Gunsmoke. See the full stop?
Gun.Smoke is a classic vertically scrolling schmup from the good people at Capcom, I assume they're good, it's not like I've met them so don't hold me to that.
Gun.Smoke follows the adventure of Billy Bob, a bounty hunter with the world's biggest hat as he attempts to "round-up" (murder) a group of hardened criminals who are making the West, indeed, Wild.

Billy Bob walks forward in a automatically scrolling screen, gunning down generic enemies approaching him from all directions or firing at him from buildings and mountain tops. Armed with two guns, Billy can fire to the left, right, straight ahead or a combination of any two directions together, a technique that is to be mastered by players wishing to get anywhere in the game. Unfortunately, his guns appear to suffer some kind of malfunction which means the bullets drop out of the air a few feet out of the barrel, Nice one Billy. Power-ups and a galloping Horse can be picked up along the way to aid our hero in his suicide mission.
After making his way through the landscape, Billy comes up against one of the rootingist, tootingist (Ugh) cowboys in the state, each boss is armed with a trademark weapon and for some reason, even some ninja guy turns up.
I think Gun.Smoke is REALLY hard, I don't know if I just don't have what it takes, but I still haven't finished the game, despite playing it on and off for fifteen years. For me, Gun.Smoke is what I expect of any classic arcade game, it's simple, frantic and a hardcore challenge, the fact I'm still trying to finish it after so many years without either succeeding or giving up is a testament to both the game's difficulty and it's addictiveness.
Every gamer should have a small selection of vintage games that they are die-hard to, occasionally coming back for nostalgic fun and never tiring of it, no matter how many years have passed. For your humble host, Gun.Smoke is undeniably one of those games.

If only I could finish the damn thing.

73. Lupin III: The Shooting

(Arcade, Sega, 2001)
A lot of lightgun games made the draw into this list, which is fair enough as many of them are very popular and they are one of the few genres that still appear in what little arcades are left (especially here in Britain) The chances of this one appearing anywhere soon are unlikely, which is a tragedy of epic proportions.

I was lucky enough to spend some time in Tokyo in 2002. Of course, the first thing you should do when visiting an exotic land is seek out and enjoy the sites and local culture, or just go to the arcades. Wanna take a guess what I did?
Anyway, amongst the rows of Virtua Fighters and Dog walking simulators (No, really) I came across this gem of a shooter from Sega featuring my favourite manga/anime character, Lupin III. Gentleman thief Lupin has been the subject of many games in Japan and his exploits appear on various consoles including Nes, Snes, Saturn and PS2, sadly, none of these games were translated to the West, That's just the way things go.
Lupin games: 0, Dragonball games: 500,000

Lupin III: The Shooting runs on the GD-ROM technology that enabled Sega to port their arcades at great speed to the awesome Dreamcast console with virtually no loss in quality. Lupin The Shooting is not ground-breaking, it almost seems more like it was made for fan service than anything else, so as a hardcore Lupin fan I thought it was brilliant. One or two players take up the firearms of Lupin and his sharpshooting comrade, Jigen Daisuke and blast their way across the globe in some very varied missions, ranging from the usual "shoot bad guys" setup to missions where you have to use the gun to stop missiles, suck up gems with a vacuum and even drive a car (Don't ask)
As you fight through each level, various voices and samples cry out whilst cutaways and stills fly into shot. Each level is based on scenes either from the Lupin TV series or from his various films, its almost like watching a "classic clips" show, except with interactive violence. SOLD.
Lupin III: The Shooting is a another quality lightgun game from Sega, but oddly, with the attention to detail, various stills and clips, samples, missions based on episodes and use of original soundtrack, the game feels far more like it is a tribute to the characters and their universe than it is an actual game. For fans of Rupan Sansei, this game is mana from heaven, for everyone else, its just a good shooter.

This game never made it to Dreamcast, which is a real shame. However, DC emulation is really coming along and it seems likely that fans will only have to hang on a little longer and hopefully Lupin's fabled Walther P-38 will be in their hands.

(As with House of The Dead, there is a typing variant to this game which uses a keyboard)

74. Shadow Of Memories

(PS2/Xbox/PC/PSP, Konami, 2001, U.S title: "Shadow of Destiny")
Somebody wants Eike Kusch dead.
Maybe its his emo Green jacket, his sensitive ponytail or his freakishly long legs which, despite their roundhouse kick potential, do nothing to help when he is stabbed in the back and left to die on the streets of Lebensbaum, the quiet German village where he lives.
Eike awakens in a void where he meets a creepy, smooth talking Homunculus. Given the opportunity to change his fate, Eike receives a small time bending device called a digipad and is returned to the cafe he visited moments before his murder. Maybe this time, Eike can have a say in his future.

So begins Konami's Shadow of Memories, a complex and mysterious story in which Eike must use his time travelling ability to prevent various attempts on his life long enough to work out who wants him dead and why.
The game is built around paradoxes, Eike soon discovers that the slightest changes to his own past can have huge repercussions and he is soon up to his sky-high thighs in trouble.
No, seriously, his legs are REALLY long.

In third person, the player controls Eike as he runs back and forth through time, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home This can involve obvious fixes such as ensuring witnesses are around at the fatal hour or more obscure answers such as travelling back a hundred years to ensure a fountain is built or travelling back five years to replace a rope. Eike meets many characters along the way and realizes that attempting to change his own fate will inevitably change the fates of many other people.

Shadow of memories is a quiet, patient and lonely game, best played in long secluded sessions. The story has paradoxes that put Back to the future II to shame and much attention is needed if you are to follow the game through logically to one of it's multiple endings (which, depending on Eike's actions, change the outcome of many characters lives drastically)

The game looks very quaint. Its European setting oozes out of the screen, with the various time periods having relevant colour styles and architecture. The player models unfortunately haven't dated too well though. The voice acting is hit and miss depending on the character, but never bad enough to put you off playing. There is very little action in SoM, just lots of travelling, talking and lateral thinking. Eike is a likeable hero who really didn't ask for the hassles he has to deal with, he is a far cry from the selfish sulkers that front many story based games and genuinely seems to care about not wronging the people around him.

Shadow Of Memories is love-or-hate, It has an intriguing plot that demands concentration but most of the game consists of running back and forth and starting conversations. For some players, the fact there the game contains no "fire" button will be enough to send them running. The puzzling is cool and the game's attitude to the all important "What is life worth?" question is refreshing and thought provoking.
I remember buying SoM on a whim and playing it all night, my sister occasionally popping her head round the door and saying "You're STILL playing this? Its been hours!" That can only be a good review I think.

Shadow Of Memories is a game where the object is to salvage lives, not end them. It's not a theme that you'll come across too often and Konami must be commended for daring to use it.