Leftwich's Top 100 Games of All Time

[Leftwich]

17

Tecmo SuperBowl



Platform: NES

I tip my hat to this game. Tecmo SuperBowl for a very long time was the best sports game I’d ever played. Sure I was always a huge fan of Bases Loaded on the NES but I remember getting this not too long before I got my SNES and I guess you could say Tecmo SuperBowl was my last hurrah on the NES. Damn it, it was a great one.



TecmoSuperbowl was the sequel to the insanely popular Tecmo Bowl. Sure they could have slapped some paint on it and sell it again for a ton of money but the transition from Tecmo Bowl to SuperBowl was amazing and some would consider this the greatest sports game of all time. For the first time in history an NFL game had both the real teams and the real players. The whole licensing thing was a lot different back then. SuperBowl also added more playbooks and more stats, might seem minor but it really built the foundation that most sports games use to this day. For the first time in a football game there were eleven men on both sides of the ball which was unheard of before Tecmo rolled the dice. You also had bench players who you could bring in due to injury and what not. This game was before fatigue so most all players would play the whole game. Another thing that wasn’t in the previous entry was actually injuries. If a player got injured you’d have to substitute him and watch a cool cutscene. Fumbles were added too but most of the time I’d be too late to get to the ball. Touchdowns and extra points garnered a cut scene as well and they were always cool to watch although they looked a bit generic. You can play an exhibition match by yourself or with a friend. You can play one season which kinda sucks but the goal is the superbowl and if you make it there, I guess you would say you win the game? The exhibition was typically the most fun if you had friends over to play with you. As I got older and found my NES after years, friends would come over and play all the time with me. We had a rule though that no one could play as the Raiders. Most of you know why already but if you don’t it’s because Bo Jackson was god. You couldn’t tackle him, catch him or even get close to him. I guess the developers really liked him and wanted to make him impossible to stop. I will say one thing about the season mode, if I ever played against the Raiders I always would end up pissed off because of him. Other than the whole Bo Jackson thing the game plays very well. Kinda simplistic but because of the nostalgic feel to it, you’ll have a lot of fun by yourself or with a friend. Who cares about graphics? The game was amazing and if it were stick figures I’d still play.



Tecmo SuperBowl ends up at seventeen and begs the question, is there another football game on this list? Maybe but while you ponder that watch the video below to see straight Bo Jackson cheese.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkdZesB_nzE"]Bo Jackson Tecmo Super Bowl Run - Benny Hill Theme - YouTube[/ame]

[SethMode]

I had 2124 yards in a single game with Bo Jackson.

Also, one dick move was to put Jerry Rice at running back. My brother used to do that all of the time. And who can forget the NT cheese?

[Leftwich]

16

Goldeneye 007



Platform: N64

This is the first person shooter to start it all. I understand that Doom and Wolfenstein came before this game but Goldeneye was the first first person shooter to put console multiplayer on the map. I still play this game when I got back up to PA and see old friends. We’ll literally run a king of the mountain tournament and it lasts for literally 6-8 hours, we go ham.



First and foremost I want to say this; Rare developed this James Bond game and then didn’t give us another one ever. I was so pissed at every other entry in the James Bond franchise and when they tried to make games similar to Goldeneye, they failed. Sure we got Perfect Dark as an unofficial sequel but god damn that game sucks compared to Goldeneye. I’m not going to go into the plot of this game because It follows very closely to the movie complete with the Dam jumping scene, battling in the archives and the final showdown at the satellite dish. The story mode is actually fun and if you were like me you played that first to get yourself accustomed to the controls so you don’t suck ass in multiplayer. The single player mode did have varying levels of difficulty ranging from a breeze through and OMFG why is this so hard? They had real names for their difficulties but I can’t remember them.

Alright so now I’m going to get into the meat and potatoes. Goldeneye was pretty much the first real 3-D first person shooter to ever grace a console. The game featured many of the cool gadgets that James Bond was known for such as proximity mines and his Swiss army watch, not really a Swiss Army watch but had a lot of shit on it. Also there was a plethora of weapons. Why is that so important? Goldeneye had more weapons than I’d ever seen in a game before, guns ranging from pistols, AK-47s and Rocket Launchers. There was always plenty to choose from whether you wanted to kill some guards in the story mode or wanted to put holes in your friends via multiplayer. Unlike games of today, most of the guns were modeled after real ones but given clever names. They also had guns very important to the Bond franchise such as the Golden Gun and the Moonraker. The game did feature some stealth elements like crawling through air ducts but that was mainly just in the story mode. If you tried that shit on multiplayer someone would have shot you in the back and moved on. Throughout the game you can see your health and armor on your screen if you’re shot. Not exactly ground breaking but it’s just one of those things I’ll always remember. Graphically the game was your typical N64 game. Nothing mind blowing but everything was recognizable and you knew you were playing a Bond game. Ok right now the moment you’ve all be waiting for, The Multiplayer.



Goldeneye’s multiplayer was king for about 10 years. It was knocked off in my opinion by another game and we’ll find that out later in the countdown but that’s neither here nor there. In multiplayer you could have 2-4 people on the console at once. You can play Normal which is your standard most kills in the time limit, You Only Live Twice which is a battle to the death, you have two lives and whoever is last alive wins, The Living Daylights which is whoever holds the flag the longest wins but if you have the flag you can’t attack, Man with the Golden Gun which is deathmatch but with one hit kills from the golden gun and finally License to kill which is one hit kills and whoever has the most kills at the end wins. Not that those modes were enough the game featured a plethora of classic maps such as Complex, Facility, Archives, Bunker and more. The game featured 12 maps which was more than enough to have a fun. Even then that wasn’t enough you could be any number of characters from James Bond. Oddjob, Jaws, James Bond, Natasha and again, many more. I don’t think I ever thought the multiplayer ever got stale for me. We always had a rule growing up, no one can cheese and be Oddjob. Oddjob was the first taste us as gamers got of cheesiness in a multiplayer game. All in all the multiplayer was a blast and I feel bad for the younger generation of gamers who never got to experience this.



Not much more I can say about this game that hasn’t already been said. This is arguably the greatest game to ever come out for the N64 and a lot of gamers still say this is the best First Person Shooter and multiplayer experiences they have ever had. Watch the video below and take a trip down memory lane.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqW8KdnQ-gk"]Goldeneye 64 Multiplayer Gameplay - YouTube[/ame]

[FirstTimer]

GoldenEye was the shit.

I loved getting the GoldenGun/Invincible cheat on the second level. Killing Trevelyn and Oromouv(sp?) then letting that alarm go off and have guards running at me for literally hours and wasting them with AK's etc. Setting traps for them in rooms where I had mines, blowing them up. Etc.

Fuck..I have issues.

[Bomberooski]

This is still the best thread on VSD. Love those Final Fantasy games.

And Gran Turismo 2 was one of the ultimate time sucks

[Nevermind]

I love this thread.

[j.hen]

My roommate just bought that 360 Goldeneye game which I know nothing about. Is it anywhere close to the N64 version?

[Leftwich]

My roommate just bought that 360 Goldeneye game which I know nothing about. Is it anywhere close to the N64 version?

Yes and no. I played it at the ex's house with her brother and I was less than impressed. I mean it feels a lot like it but its just not the same. Apparently they nerfed Oddjob as well... lame.

[SethMode]

Yes and no. I played it at the ex's house with her brother and I was less than impressed. I mean it feels a lot like it but its just not the same. Apparently they nerfed Oddjob as well... lame.

I don't even understand how that's possible. What did they do? Grow him a few inches? Stupid.

[Leftwich]

I don't even understand how that's possible. What did they do? Grow him a few inches? Stupid.

I dunno but i used him and he fucking sucked and i think i read somewhere that they changed him.

[SethMode]

I dunno but i used him and he fucking sucked and i think i read somewhere that they changed him.

I just always felt like the big advantage to him was that he was so damn hard to hit.

[Leftwich]

I just always felt like the big advantage to him was that he was so damn hard to hit.

That's why my friends and I don't allow him when we play. Nobody chooses Jaws either cause hes so easy to hit. We used to go crazy some nights playing this game. We were like 16 betting money on who would win the most matches all night. Had we had online back then it would have been on a much grander scale.

[Leftwich]

15

Resident Evil 4



Platform: Gamecube

I’m pretty sure but I’d have to look but I think this is the only game on my list that I only played on the Gamecube. Gamecube had a shitty controller but they used the controls perfectly in this game. Resident Evil 4 was more or less an unexpected surprise from the minute I started playing it until I was done with the masterpiece.



Ok I’ll start with the biggest change made to the franchise that in my opinion made this one of the best games I’ve ever played. Formally in the Resident Evil series you controlled your character who for the most part controlled like a tank. In Resident Evil 4 we were given an over the shoulder vantage point which really worked well. Why did it work so well you ask? When you aim your pistol, shotgun or whatever, the camera will zoom in on your target. This in turn effectively gives you a better chance at getting a headshot or possibly disarming foes. The whole aiming thing worked past getting headshots and disarming, if you shot an enemy in the leg he would stumble or fall to the ground but unfortunately if you shoot them in the chest it just pauses them for a bit and they come right back at you. Another thing Capcom added to Resident Evil 4 was button sequences. If you saw a ladder an A button graphic would show up, if you needed to jump out a window the B button graphic would show up and so forth and so on. Yet another thing Capcom added was the quick time events during the cut scenes. If you’re being chased you will have to hit a sequence of buttons to make sure you survive or if the chainsaw dude gets you it tells you to mash A as fast as possible to get out. A lot of games now a days use this system and they can all pay homage to Resident Evil 4 by doing so. When you need first aid spray, guns and anything else you can always either find them lying around in the environment or find the shady guy who sells you the stuff. You’ll probably remember him by his raspy voice and his line “Whataya Buying?” “Whataya Selling?” That guy is probably the most memorable thing from this game and actually made the game a bit easier due to the fact that if you run out of herbs, spray or ammo you could count on the guy being right around the corner. Resident Evil 4 is farely long and I think it took me about 18 hours to beat my first time. It’s a very different departure from the normal series. No zombies, Raccoon City or STARS team in this one. You control Leon Kennedy; you might remember him from Resident Evil 2. Raccoon City is ruble but The US Secret Service remembers the work Leon Kennedy did in Raccoon. Ashley Greene, The President’s Daughter, has been kidnapped by a super secret cult somewhere in Europe. The game never tells you exactly where in Europe but judging by the name of the cult, Los Illuminados, you can safely assume they are in Spain. I won’t spoil too much of the story but you will see some people from previous installments of Resident Evil in this game. The enemies are not zombies but infected by a virus known as the Las Plagas. Its less of a virus but more of a parasite so as you kill enemies later in the game you’ll know what I’m talking about. Resident Evil 4 had some of the best graphics I’d ever seen on the Gamecube. Sure it came our kinda late in the console’s life cycle but they took all that technology and made one of the most beautiful and eerie games I’ve ever played. The sound also adds to the eeriness as well and when you hear that one guy rev up that chainsaw it makes you think on your feet, quick.



Capcom took a gamble by changing the Resident Evil series for the fourth installment and it really paid off this time. Resident Evil 4 is my all time favorite Gamecube game and one of my second favorite Resident Evil game. Watch the video if you missed out on this awesome game.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1KsnbqkLec"]Resident Evil 4 HD! - YouTube[/ame]

[Maestro]

Never played it, thinking about downloading the HD edition.

[Leftwich]

Never played it, thinking about downloading the HD edition.

It's the second best Resident Evil and well worth the money for the HD edition.