(Each Month I’ll be looking at some of the Best or Worst Games ever created.)

One of the greatest games ever created, certainly the most addictive. I don’t know of anyone who has not played this game in some form and if you owned a Game Boy this was probably the game you played more than any other.

The game, originally designed by Alexey Pajitnov, is simple. A number of different shaped blocks (or Tetrominoes to give them their correct term) full from the top on your screen. You must guide them to the bottom and interlock the shapes to create a line. Once a line is created it disappears and so you continue. As you play, the pieces fall faster and thus your reactions must become quicker. Playing continues until the blocks reach the top.

That’s it. It’s really that simple. Yet this was the game that kept us on our Game Boys for almost a decade. A game that despite the technological advances in design, graphics and so on is still distributed in its basic form today and as addictive and popular as ever.

The appeal of Tetris was and is its innate simplicity. With so many games that required you to learn patterns, combos, button tapping and secrets, here was a game that was simple. Create lines. That’s it. There’s no underlying objective or skills that need to be expanded upon. You just need to move the pieces into position… though the ability to think a few steps ahead also comes in handy…sometimes. As well as the main game you also have a number of levels that can be played in which pieces have already been placed or the screen is blocked and so you have to create the allotted number of lines with these restrictions. This is a nice alternative to the main game or if you don’t have the time for an hour long slog on what is generally dubbed ‘The Marathon Mode’. This main mode was so popular because of the fact that in theory you could play forever (this has been proven false with the game crashing after you have reached a certain point), however the very idea that you could play indefinitely is an enticing one with fans of the game submitting scores and line totals with the current record standing at 593,286.

Of course being 1989 on the Game Boy, the graphics are a little basic, but really that’s one of the things that makes it so good. Any time they have attempted to create a more impressive visual style (Tetris Worlds on the PS2 comes to mind) it just doesn’t work simply because it is not necessary. However, what cannot be underestimated is just how good the music is for the game. Though it is only four tunes, all variations on classic Russian composers or themes, but they work their way into your psyche until you can hum every last note of it. I still cannot listen to Bach without thinking of Tetrominoes falling.

Tetris on whatever console you choose is the greatest, most addictive puzzle game ever. There is simply no other game that has had the same affect. Sure other games are more technically advanced or harder to master, but no game is so universal as this one. Of course the best way to experience it is the Game Boy version it and with thirty five million copies sold; it must have done something right.

10/10 Doesn’t matter what system you own, you need to find this game… or if not go on eBay and get yourself a classic Game Boy and game. You’ll thank me later

When Nintendo released Super Mario All-Stars in 1993 on the SNES, it came with a game known as ‘Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels’. This was the original sequel to Super Mario Bros. but it was deemed too difficult and too similar to the original for the west. This was shelved in favour of what we now know as Super Mario Bros. 2 and boy did Nintendo make a bad move.

After Super Mario Bros. its sequel, based on a Japanese game Doki Doki Panic, is a slower paced game that allowed you to play as one of four characters Mario and Luigi and a now playable Princess Peach and Toad. All of the characters had their own special abilities such as Luigi’s ability to wiggle his legs for …erm… extra wiggle power?

Look at those legs go!

Instead of all the bouncing around fun that we got from the original, it was decided to scrap all of this and instead every enemy you jump on you landed on their heads. Once on there, you could lift the character up and throw them at any other opponents. As innovative as this was, it was also pretty tricky and you had to time jumps just right removing one of the more fun aspects of the game.

As the game progresses, you encounter various bad guys who would later appear in the various Mario franchise games. The ability to change which player you could be was a helpful aspect at time with Peach able to levitate for a short time and making items or areas easier (or possible) to reach. However, as I said before, the actual benefits of the others is not too obvious and you will probably find you spend most of the game playing as Mario or Peach.

Yes, for once Peach wasn't kidnapped!

The problem with this is the original NES version had only three lives and no continues. This was the cause of many frustrated plays and ultimately abandoning of the game altogether. Though this was rectified in All-Stars and subsequent versions of the game including the one currently available on the Wii Home Console.

The graphics, as always are perfect with the classic Mario backgrounds and characters. Generally the game looks and feels a lot more like the Paper Mario series and maybe that is where the game fell down. Whereas we were all expecting another game worth of Super Mario bouncing around, what we got was something so radically different that it just didn’t sit right. It still doesn’t. Though fun at times, the game is hampered a little by its unique controls and by slowing the game down kit became a more cerebral experience and thus became slightly boring. However, the music is as iconic as ever and this is possibly the only point where the series improved on the original.

However, I do seem to be in the minority on this. It sold 10 Million copies and regularly featured in the top games polls, but compared to the original and its sequel no one can seriously tell me they enjoyed playing this game more. Super Mario Bros. 2 to me will always be an overrated disappointment, much like Mario Sunshine on the Gamecube. Though it sold many copies, people need to remember that Mario was so hot at this time that they could have released anything and the public had waited nearly three years for the sequel.(Remember how excited we all were for Phantom Menace?)  For me when the list of top Mario games is created I doubt this game will be considered and if it is, it is for nostalgia rather than quality.

It’s amazing how most gamers tend to have fond memories of games they had played when they were younger, even when they weren’t that great. This is particularly true for games which came with the system you bought as you inevitably played them a lot if they were good or not.

One game I have fond memories of is Altered Beast. It was a very average game but when my brother got it packaged with the Sega Megadrive I was amazed at how good the graphics and sound were (compared to the NES I had). I did quickly realise that it wasn’t a very involving game but I still enjoyed going back to it every now and then.

Another game I have fond memories was also on a Sega system which I didn’t own. Most of my friends had the NES or even Commodore 64s but one of my friends had the Sega Master System. The NES was undoubtedly a better system but I liked the Master System, probably because no one else had it so everything felt new.

I don’t remember my friend having too many games for the system but he did have Alex Kidd in Miracle World. The game was originally released in cartridge form but the console my friend owned had the game built in and you could play it simply by turning on the system without a cartridge in it. I didn’t play the game until around 1991 but the game was originally released in Japan in 1986.

Sega didn’t create too many platform games during the 80s but Alex Kidd was actually not bad. Granted it isn’t a classic game and looks very poor when compared to the likes of Super Mario Bros, however it was a decent game. It certainly ranked very well compared to other Master System platformers.

In the game you control Alex Kidd, a monkey looking boy who hails from the Planet Aries. His main strength is his ability to smash through rocks with his freakishly strong hands. The storyline is very similar to the Super Mario Bros series. In this game some a’hole called Janken the Great has kidnapped your brother and your fiancée. So Alex sets out to defeat him and save them.

At the end of most levels you face one of Jankens goons. To beat some of them you need to play them at rock, scissors, paper. I’m confused why they don’t add this to more games!!

If you’ve never seen the game before I recommend viewing the video below, part one of a walk through of the game.

The game has been released on the Wii console so if you like the look of the game you might fancy downloading it. Alternatively, the pirates among you might fancy downloading an emulator and playing it that way

UniRacers, known as UniRally here in the UK, was a fantastic two player racing game which was released on the Super NES in 1994. I played the game a lot when I was younger with my brother and in my opinion, it was one of the best games for the system.

Strangely, I also played this game against the Scottish Nintendo Champion at the Adidas StreetBall basketball tournament event (he beat me on the third round at SFII Turbo with less than 5% energy – very annoying!).

In the game you control a unicycle, in which you need to navigate around bendy courses with lots of bumps, hills, slopes, loop the loops and more. You can do a variety of tricks and when you do, you get a speed boost.

The graphics were pretty basic (read poor!) but it didn’t effect the enjoyment of the game in any way. Perhaps the basic graphics were required so that you weren’t put off by the incredibly fast gameplay.

It had a good one player mode but I much preferred the two player mode, which pitted you against a friend at the same time.

There have been many F1 racing games, futuristic racers and fun based racing games over the years. Though Uniracers was really unique, both in the choice of vehicle (can you remember another unicycle game) and the style of play.

If you haven’t played Uniracers before, I encourage you to try it out. You can pick it up very cheap on eBay. Alternatively, why not download an emulator and give it a try.

As I mentioned last week, I’m a big fan of the Nintendo 64. The follow up to the Super NES had a great library of games and boasted 4 controller ports on the console whilst it’s rivals only had 2.

Over 30 million Nintendo 64s were sold worldwide. Which is just slightly more than the number of PlayStation 3s which have been sold since it was launched in 2006 so it should be considered a success. However, when you consider the Super NES sold 50 million units and the NES sold around 60 million, it doesn’t appear as successful as it’s predecessors. More importantly, it’s main rival at the time was the Sony PlayStation, which sold a whopping 125 million units worldwide. Ironically, Sony only developed the PlayStation after a joint project with Nintendo to produce a CD ROM for the Super NES fell through (known as the SNES CD).

So why didn’t Nintendo get a bigger share of the market during the mid to late 90s? One of the biggest factors was Nintendos choice of using cartridges instead of CDs, which was used by the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, both of which were out a year or two before the 64.

Nintendo were obviously concerned about piracy, which they had experienced before with the Famicom Disk System in Japan in the 80s and early 90s, so decided against optical media.

Cartridges were’t all bad. There would be virtually no loading times and batteries could be included in games to save scores, saved games etc. However, developers had less space to develop games. Most of the first games released used 64mb cartridges though some later games, like Perfect Dark, had 256mb of storage. Though this was still way less than the 750mb which rival CD based consoles could use. CDs were much more cheaper to produce as well.

The Nintendo 64 was a much more advanced machine than the Saturn and PlayStation boasting a processor speed of around double it’s rivals but did cartridges limit developers? Would we have seen better graphics and improved gameplay in games had game designers had more storage?

It’s difficult to say however I do think the Nintendo 64 would have sold more had units had it used CDs as people could have used the system to play their music CDs or VCDs (Video Compact Discs: Essentially films on CDs, this format was incredibly popular in Asia). No doubt Piracy would have been more common though Sony showed that it doesn’t need to cripple a consoles success.

There were other reasons why the Nintendo 64 didn’t sell as well as the PlayStation (e.g. too few 3rd party games) however I do believe that the decision to use cartridges instead of CDs was a major factor in Nintendo losing the number 1 position which they had held for the best part of 10 years (it was also a reason why they had less 3rd party support than previous systems).

What do you think, would the Nintendo 64 been more popular if it used CDs instead of cartridges?

I was 11 when I got my NES for christmas (which I loved). Within the next year my older brother got the Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis). It was a great console whose graphics were much more advanced than the ageing Nintendo.

My bother mostly had sport games for the system. It came bundled with Altered Beast, which was fun for a short whilst but was suited more for the arcade and didn’t have any longevity. However, he purchased the ground breaking Sonic the Hedgehog and imported some great 2 player sports games from the USA like Lakers vs Celtics, EA Hockey and John Madden 92; all of which happened to be developed by gaming giants Electronic Arts.

Another Electronic Arts game he purchased was Road Rash, an iconic motor bike game in which you could run your opponents off the road or beat them up with clubs and crowbars.

The original Road Rash was released on several platforms including the Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis), Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, 3DO, Sega Master System and Sega CD. It was even released on the Game Boy and Sega Game Gear.

The game also spawned many sequels including Road Rash II, Road Rash III, Road Rash 3D, Road Rash 64 and Road Rash Jail Break. I’ve played Road Rash II on the Mega Drive and Road Rash 64 on the Nintendo 64. I’m not sure what people consider to be the best game in the series but my fondest memories are playing the original on the Mega Drive.

The original game was only a 1 player yet we used to play it in the living room. It was fun watching others play it as well and we would sometimes race a level each. There was nothing more satisfying than watching someone else get whipped off their bike with a metal chain!

In many respects the game was similar to other motor bike games that had been around before like Hang On. However Road Rash was a lot more fun. You could ram your bike into opponents and force them into incoming traffic or even obstacles like cows. You could also punch your opponents. Rivals had weapons but if you timed it right you could snatch the weapon off them and then use it against them.

It wasn’t just other racers you had to worry about. You also had to worry about the Police. The police would try and ram you off the road as well and if you got knocked off your bike and didn’t get back on quick enough you stood a chance of getting busted which means all the money you earned would be lost.

To earn money you had to finish in a race. This could be used in between levels to upgrade your bike in for one which was faster and had better handling.

You started off with the Shuriken 400, which had 60 HP and weighed 400lbs. Other bikes included the Banzai 750 for $6,500 (100HP and 465 lbs), Ferrari 850 for $11,000 (110HP and 470 lbs) and the famous Diablo 1000 for $25,000 (150HP and 450 lbs).

The game had 5 courses, all of which were set in the USA. The tracks included Sierra Nevada, Pacific Coast, Redwood Forest, Palm Desert and Grass Valley.

Road Rash was by no means perfect but it was an enoyable arcade style racing game which is rightly remembered as one of the best games on Segas best selling console.

What are your memories of Road Rash?

Kev

The Nintendo 64 was a great machine. Nintendo chose to stay with cartridges with the 64 instead of rivals which were using CDs because of piracy concerns. However, they still managed to grab a large part of the games market and the system had some fantastic games.

I have a lot of fond memories of that machine. I was in my first year at University on it’s release but had enough saved from working part time to purchase the system just after release. On release I made the decision to also purchase an additional 3 controllers to take advantage of the systems 4 controller ports.

This proved to be a great decision. The Nintendo 64, power cables, 4 controllers and a few games would easily fit into a backpack. So I regularly played the game at home with friends or take it around to my friends home for some multiplayer mayhem.

The system had it’s fair share of great multiplayer games including Mario Kart 64, WWF No Mercy (and it’s predecessors WCW/nWo Revenge and WWF Wrestlemania 2000), Super Smash Bros and International Superstar Soccer 98. However, the best multiplayer game is without doubt GoldenEye 007.

GoldenEye 007

Earlier First Person Shooters (FPS) like Wolfenstein 3D and Quake had been released on consoles by the time GoldenEye had arrived. They were good games but not great games.

Developed by Rare, GoldenEye 007 set the benchmark for console FPS games for years to come and is one of the best games released for the Nintendo 64 (probably tied with Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time). It was an anomaly in many respects.

First of all, it was a game based on a movie which was actually good. There have been many great movie tie-ins but the majority of games based on films are either average or just plain awful. Rare didn’t make the mistake of rushing the development of GoldenEye 007 though, with it being released 2 years after the film. Because of this, they were able to get the game exactly how they wanted.

Secondly, the game was not only a great multiplayer game, the one player game was amazing too. The one player game matched the films storyline and was able to get the right balance of action, adventure and a good storyline. It’s no surprise that the game was well received by critics and gamers alike and it went on to sell more than 8 million copies.

In one player mode you had a list of missions to achieve like collecting items or taking out key targets. You were required to complete these in order to proceed but you could do the missions in a number of ways i.e. you could use stealth tactics to sneak around and complete the objective or you could go gun hoe and blast your way through the level. There were also some cool cut scenes which mimicked key moments in the film.

You could use sniper rifles, pistols, laser guns, double weapons, knives and more.

However, the game really shone in multiplayer mode. You could play with 2, 3 or even 4 players at the same time. There were a variety of game modes in mutliplayer, most of which could be played in in the free for all setting or in teams.

The normal setting was a team mode. You could player 2 vs 2, 1 vs 2 and 3 vs 1. The winners are simply the team who racked up the most kills. There were some more interesting modes though. You Only Live Twice was the same as normal mode except you only had two lives, so players were usually a bit more cautious.

The Living Daylights was a flag type game whereas Licence to Kill was a free for all game which any hit (including slaps) killed your opponent.

Another popular mode was The Man With the Golden Gun. In that mode there is one Golden Gun on the map. Whoever gets the gun can kill another player with one shot, regardless of where they hit them, regardless of how much health they have and even if they are wearing body armour. The person with the Golden Gun cannot pick up body armour and they also show up on other players screens as a blue dot so they cannot hide. If they are killed, the gun is dropped where they died and someone else can pick the gun up.

Mario and Zelda were the best one player games on the Nintendo 64 in my opinion and although I enjoyed THQs wrestling games for multiplayer action, GoldenEye 007 was by far and away the most enjoyable. There really was nothing as satisfying as killing your friends repeatedly.

The multiplayer game did give a slight disadvantage to those who knew the game well. I played the game all the time so I must admit I used this to my advantage on many occasions. For example, each level had certain spawn points. So it was very easy to know where other players would likely be.

Proximity mines (my favourite) made this problem even worse as you could place the mines on spawn points so that people would die just after spawning. Incredibly infuriating for the person that dies but incredibly satisfying for the friend that did it to them!

When the radar was off new players sometimes struggled. Everyone was playing the game on the same televsision so you could simply look at the other persons square to see where they were. Those who didn’t play the game much and didn’t know the maps well would struggle without the radar but a quick glance was all that was required for a person who played the game a lot to know there their rival was and pick them off.

However, these things weren’t really detrimental to the long term enjoyment of the game as once your friends got used to the maps, your advantage was lost.

Looking back the graphics for the game don’t look that great but at the time they were revolutionary and the game was very quick to play.

3 years after the release of GoldenEye 007 Rare released Perfect Dark, the unofficial sequel to their ground breaking FPS (they had lose the James Bond license). The game came packaged with the new Nintendo Expansion Pak. This extra memory allowed much improved graphics and is widely regarded as being one of the most technically advanced games on the Nintendo 64.

However, GoldenEye 007 is still regarded by many as the better game. Although I played Perfect Dark a few times at a friends, I never owned it. GoldenEye 007 was the game I enjoyed playing for years so it’s difficult for me to give the two games a fair comparison (i.e. I think GoldenEye is better!).

Apparently, Nintendo are trying to release Goldeneye on the Wii through the Virtual Console. However, Rare are now owned by Xbox rivals Microsoft and the James Bond license is owned by Acitivision. Hopefully all parties involved can agree on something and release this great game to a new generation.

What are your memories of GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64?

Kevin

Last month the infamous 1991 Nintendo Campus Challenge Cartridge was sold on eBay for a whopping $20,100. This confirmed once again that rare video games are worth a lot of money and that rare NES games still command the most. For those of you who have never heard of this cartridge before, here is a brief history.

In 1991 Nintendo toured 58 Universities in the United States promoting what was known as the Nintendo Campus Challenge. At each event the people with the best NES and GameBoy scores would be announced. Each winner from the 58 events was flown to Disney World in Florida to attend the final event. The final event had 3 rounds with the top scorers advancing until the final was a head to head competition.

In the event the participants had 6 minutes 21 seconds to play 3 mini games (why that time is beyond me). All 3 games were included in one cartridge, the infamous 1991 Nintendo Campus Challenge Cartridge.

In the contest they had to collect 25 coins in Super Mario Brothers 3, get 100,000 points in a pinball game called Pin-Bot and then play Dr. Mario until the time expired. Apparently the final score was worked out by multiplying the Super Mario Brothers 3 score by 10, adding the Pin-Bot score and then adding 100 times the Dr. Mario score.

1991 Nintendo Campus Challenge Cartridge

For whatever reason, none of the challenge cartridges were kept and were either lost or destroyed. However, in 2006 a guy called Rob Walters found the cartridge in a Garage sale. He then sold the game in July this year to JJ Hendricks via eBay for $14,000.

It was then sold again on 8th October for $20,100. A profit of over $7,000 in 3 months suggests that this cartridge could be sold again at sometime in the future, and no doubt for a higher price.

As you can see from the images below, the cartridge is longer than a regular NES cartridge. Nintendo didn’t develop the game for consumers so they never had a problem with circuit board just sticking out of the top of the game. Because of this, the NES lid has to be removed in order to insert the cartridge properly.

Two controllers were required to play the game. The 1st controller is used to play the game whilst the start button on the second controller initiates the timer.

Why the high price?

The sale last month had 48 bids on it. In the last two minutes the price doubled from $10,000 to over $20,000. Someone actually lost the auction by just $100.

To an outsider the high price of this basic games cartridge seems absurd, though you need to appreciate how rare this game is. This is the only game in existence. The challenge was also a revered tournament amongst gamers in the early 90s.

RacketBoy has a great interview with JJ Hendricks, the man who just sold the game on for $20,100. In the interview JJ explains that he had purchased a Nintendo World Championships Gold cartridge for $17,500 and there are 12 of those available (this competition was held in 1990 and the gold cartridges are considered the Holy Grail of gaming!). Upon hearing that I was actually surprised that the 1991 Nintendo Campus Challenge Cartridge didn’t sell for more, particularly when you consider that it’s the only one.

Like any product, the price is determined by supply and demand. With millions of gamers worldwide, the games which are in short supply see their prices go up and up. It’s the same for rare cars, comic books; anything really. The less there is of something, the more perceived value it has.

It will be interesting to see if the challenge cartridge or any world championship cartridges change hands over the next year. If they do, I believe they will sell for an even higher price.