The Nintendo Entertainment System (1985)

What I am about to say may not be a shock to you, but is crucial to the understanding of the Nintendo Entertainment System:  It is the single most important video game console in the history of the medium.  Everything that we take for granted, even things that the average layperson will not realize, we owe to this grey box.  It brought us into the modern video gaming world, and single-handedly resuscitated the video game market in North America after the crash of 1983.
There was a period spanning two years where nobody in the United States would dare produce, market, or sell a video game.  The business models of Atari and their contemporaries had proven that it could not sustain itself, and an over-saturated market has collapsed on itself.   In Japan, however, video gaming was just as strong as it had always been.  A software company called Nintendo had created their first console, known as the Famicom (short for Family Computer) and had been met with success.  It was 8-bit, the most powerful piece of gaming hardware at the time.  They wanted to expand into the North American market, and to do that, they knew they would have to be clever.
After a serious redesign (pictured above), the Nintendo Entertainment System was ready to hit store shelves by Christmas 1985.  But who would sell it for them?  Nobody wanted to carry video games because of the negative stigma it carried.  So in a brilliant move of marketing, Nintendo sold their machine as a toy.  It came packaged with a copy of Super Mario Bros, and since then almost every Nintendo console has come with a Mario game.  It was, of course, a huge success, and Nintendo was able to hold a monopoly of sorts for six years until the Sega Genesis started to become popular in 1991.
Now monopolies are obviously bad for any healthy market, but if anyone was going to have one, the best option would be Nintendo.  The way they managed to keep it for so long was by maintaining the highest quality product available.  Sega had their Master System out there, but the far more popular NES was where third party developers wanted to publish their games.  Nintendo was smarter than Atari too, since they created a lock-out chip for NES games.  The Nintendo would only play games that were licensed by the company and had this chip installed.  Another tactic Nintendo used for quality control was limiting third party releases to five games a year.
What this created on the NES was a golden age of experimentation and high-quality games.  Since every software developer wanted to make games for Nintendo, the competition was between them to make the best games.  Heading the competition were Konami and Capcom.  Konami had their Castlevania games, space shooters like Gradius and Life Force, and a solid line of sports games.  Capcom had Mega Man, Disney games, and Bionic Commando.  Nintendo themselves produced high-quality first-party titles, which set the bar high for third parties.
The NES library, over its near ten-year life span, contains over one thousand games.  Most of them are terrible, but there is still a huge number of A+ titles, some of these spawning franchises that still exist today.  In the terms of good NES games, there are two categories.  There are the classics, like Super Mario Bros. 3, Mega Man 2, and The Legend of Zelda, which are the most fondly remembered.  The other kind of NES games are the ones that die-hard Nintendo fans like to talk about today, the underrated gems.  These include wonderful but overlooked titles such as The Guardian Legend, Crystalis, and Blaster Master.
Experimentation was a big factor of game development back in those days.  The quest seemed to be for programmers and designers to find the ways to make their games look, sound, and play the best that they could.  Some of these experiments, like The Legend of Zelda, with its non-linear story progression, and emphasis on puzzle solving and item collecting, have aged remarkably well.  Others, like Castlevania 2, with its confusing navigation, failed RPG elements, and lackluster design and aesthetic have aged poorly.
Some of the most influential titles were those that shifted from the straightforward arcade approach and went toward the choose-your-own-adventure style.  I pointed out The Legend of Zelda, but there was also Metroid, which fostered exploration and atmosphere, and Final Fantasy, an intuitive and incredibly customization RPG experience.  Games were no longer quick hunks of action which you could beat in a dedicated hour, but were now full adventures, which could take days, weeks, even months to complete.  Games like Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Warrior were some of the earliest to include a battery for back-up saves, which is taken completely as a given today.
The NES still lives on in our pop culture.  Anyone can recognize the famous themes from Super Mario Bros., or the line "Thank you Mario!  But our princess is in another castle!"  The movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is full of NES references, from the main character's band being called "Sex Bob-ombs" to one of the rival bands known as "The Clash at Demonhead".  Many sound effects and songs were taken directly from Nintendo games.  How many people have held something they've found aloft and hummed the Zelda theme? How many people will point out their frustrations at the Duck Hunt dog?  The NES is the reason I love retro games so much.  These games are still fun to play, and more interesting when you look at their historical influence.

Kirby's Adventure (NES, 1993)

Unbeknownst to most people, the first game in the Kirby franchise of games was a massive critical failure.  Kirby's Dream Land on the Game Boy was an attempt by Adventures of Lolo creator HAL Laboratory to make a simple game to introduce kids to video games.  It was the story of the titular pink puffball who must reclaim the land's food from the totalitarian King DeDeDe.  Kirby could jump, fly, and inhale enemies to spit them back out at other enemies.  I can praise it for being simple fun and the graphics are quite nice for a Game Boy game, but it is not worthy on its own to be a Great Video Game.  Kirby's Adventure (1993) on the NES, on the other hand, is a different story.
In making a Kirby game for the NES, HAL must have realized that they were going to need more to play with to create a worthwhile home console experience, and what they came up with is a stroke of genius.  Now when Kirby inhales his foes, he can absorb their abilities.  There are over twenty copy abilities, ranging from fire-breathing to becoming a UFO.  Some of them are fairly common and can be used for a variety of fighting styles (such as sword, electric, or fire) and some of them are extremely rare (like backdrop, UFO and bomb).
There are eight main levels with sub-stages and a boss fight at the end.  Kirby starts on a "map" screen where he can roam freely and enter each stage through a door.  Also on this map screen are mini-games that offer extra lives or copy abilities.  There are some areas that are locked away and you must find a secret switch within one of the stages to unlock it.  Some of these switches are simply in a room that is hidden out of sight, and requires some exploration, but others require you to solve puzzles with copy abilities.  For one puzzle you will have to light a fuse and then quickly get into the cannon at the other end to launch yourself to the switch.  For another you will have to get the hammer ability in a different stage, bring it back to another, and use the hammer to break some underwater blocks to get to the room with the switch.
The story, this time around, goes that King DeDeDe is back, and he has stolen the Star Rod from the Fountain of Dreams, broken it into several pieces, and given it to his buddies.  The Star Rod is important because it allows the denizens of Dream Land to dream while they sleep.  Kirby battles his way to get the pieces back and replace the Star Rod in the Fountain, but as it turns out, DeDeDe was only trying not trying to hide it from Kirby, but another being known only as the Nightmare, who seeks to corrupt everyone's dreams.  Using the Star Rod, Kirby defeats it and restores peace in Dream Land.
This game represents NES action games at their finest.  In terms of visuals and sound, it has some of the brightest, most colorful, and best animated graphics, and some of the most memorable music on the NES.  The control is tight, the play mechanics are fully realized, and the possibilities for ways to play through each stage are virtually endless.  There would be another game on the Game Boy, Kirby's Dream Land 2, which would take the copy abilities from Kirby's Adventure and combine it with friends Kirby could ride.  On the SNES there would be Kirby Super Star and Kirby's Dream Land 3, and on the N64 came Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, which is considered by many (myself included) to be the best Kirby game.  This first game was a big step in the right direction.

Cave Story (PC, 2004)

If Cave Story (2004) were just a good game, that would be enough, but it goes far beyond that.  Beginning development in 1999 by a single man (who goes by the moniker Pixel), it would be consistently perfected for five years before its release in 2004 as a downloadable title online.  Considered to be the spark that would ignite the indie games movement, this game is an excellent conglomeration of the greatest games for the NES, with its own personal touches and a great story.
In the game, you are a fighting robot from the surface who has fallen to the caves below in some battle.  You make your way through the first cave to find Mimiga Village, a micro-society of rabbit-people.  They are in a bit of a civil dispute over the arrival of a mysterious Mimiga girl named Sue.  She is seen as an outsider, only befriended by the young Toroko.  While looking for Sue, you witness Toroko being kidnapped by a sorceress named Misery and her giant henchman Balrog, who are both working for a person known only as the Doctor.
This mysterious figure has been kidnapping Mimiga and forcing them to eat the dreaded red flowers, which cause them to become rabid, violent, and mindless.  He'll use them to wage war against the robots of the surface, in a plot for total conquest.  What makes this villain more interesting that most "take-over-the-world" villains is his complete ruthlessness, and perverse pleasure in corrupting the Mimiga.  You and all else who are able to help you must fight together (and sometimes die together) to stop him.
The game is a 2D platforming shooter in the best spirit of the classics.  The most obvious inspiration for this game is Metroid.  You jump and shoot through a large subterranean world, and collect new power-ups and upgrades as you progress.  When you kill enemies, they may drop pieces of gold which can be used to level up each weapon you have, making them stronger and more useful.  For instance, the machine gun weapon at level three can be used as a makeshift jetpack by shooting straight down.  Each weapon has a specific use that makes them ideal in different situations, like in Mega Man.  The machine gun is great for crowd control.  The fireball works well against ground-based enemies.  The rocket launcher packs a stronger punch than the other weapons.
What is great about this game is the heart and weight behind its story.  There are some genuinely dark, sad, and heavy moments in the game.  One that sticks out to me is when the doctor ravages a dragon hatchery, and the prematurely-born flying dragons madly try to defend themselves, dripping with blood.  Animal cruelty is a huge theme at work here.  Friends you make along the way die, often because of decisions you make.  Every choice you make contributes to the ending of the game.
This game is a miracle of the indie movement.  It was one of the earliest, but came out in a time when there was virtually no way to get publicity for low-budget independent games.  YouTube was still a year off, Steam was brand-new, and most of the social media we use nowadays were still not online yet.  In recent years, it has been made available for WiiWare, Steam, and there is even a 3D remake on the Nintendo 3DS, but this is still a game that is remarkably unheard of.  With all the major releases each year hogging the spotlight and making gaming look bad, it is great to play Cave Story and be reminded of why I play video games.

Illusion of Gaia (SNES, 1994)

It was almost unheard of to have a character driven game back in the days of 8 and 16 bit games.  Quintet/Enix were one of the few companies that concerned themselves greatly with having great plots in their games, which they succeeded at with their Dragon Warrior/Quest series on the NES, and then again with Actraiser (1991) on the SNES.  They wouldn't nail that mark until they made Illusion of Gaia (1994), the second game in their "Gaia" trilogy, which began with Soulblazer (1992), and ended with Terranigma (1995).
The three games, like Actraiser, deal with themes of creationism and evolution, with Illusion of Gaia being the strongest of the three.  In the game, you are a young man named Will who survived a fatal expedition, while his father and the rest of the crew did not.  Back in his home town, he amazes his friends with his gift of telekinesis.  One day a young girl named Kara and her pet pig, Hamlet, come to the seaside village and she and Will strike up an immediate friendship, but she is quickly taken away by guards.  As it turns out, she is a princess, attempting to free herself of palace life in favor of adventure and romance.
Will is summoned by her father, the King, to ask him about a precious artifact that he suspects the boy possesses.  Regardless of Will's answer, the King is outraged and has him thrown into the dungeon.  Sitting in his cell, Will is contacted by a spirit, unknown to him but offering strength.  Hamlet comes to him, with a letter from Kara and a key.  He escapes the prison, ascends to her bedroom, and the two of them make their way out.
Travelling across the globe, Will is contacted by the god Gaia, who tells him of a great evil that will pass over the Earth, in the form of a comet.  This comet has been by the planet before, and when it comes close it changes the whole world and speeds up evolution, at the cost of many lives and entire civilizations.  Will is tasked with preventing the annihilation of life on the planet, but knows that he may not survive.  His friends, especially Kara, with whom he is developing a romance, agree to help him in any way they can.
So the epic tale is in motion.  It is a good thing that the plot is so interesting, because it forgives the game of having somewhat mediocre gameplay.  The actual gameplay is similar to The Legend of Zelda in that you have a top down perspective and you slash at enemies with your flute (not sword).  You have telekinesis, as I stated before, but it is only really used to move objects.  Occasionally Gaia will grant you the form of one of two ancient warriors, but these parts are limited and few.  It is adequate, I suppose, but it would make for a boring game if the story weren't so grand and exciting.
One part of the story that keeps things interesting is the romance between Will and Kara.  This is one of the most realistic and affectionate personal relationships I have seen in a game, especially incredible when you take into account that this was a time when gaming relationships were mostly hero-saves-damsel.  The two of them share a believable affection and chemistry, seen most evidently during one scene that takes place after a shipwreck.  The two of them are alone together, floating through the ocean on a chuck of their vessel. Without the constraints of society and peer pressure, the two of them survive a few weeks adrift, forming a tender closeness.  They very clearly have fallen in love, but whether or not they consummated that love would have been impossible to even suggest in a video game at this time.
Perhaps it is to set them up as the Adam and Eve figures for Illusion of Gaia's other main theme of creationism and evolution.  The god Gaia has clearly defined the effects of the comet as evolution, so perhaps Gaia's illusion is that he has intentionally set it on a course for Earth.  After continuing the progress of creation, Will and Kara shall be the patriarch and matriarch of a new human civilization.  So which is the game in favor of?  Creation or evolution?  I believe that the game is suggesting a symbiosis of the two, where the actions of a deity can be best explained through natural science.
Illusion of Gaia is a criminally overlooked title for the SNES.  Of all of the operatic and melodramatic RPGs of the time (even the best Final Fantasy games were guilty of this), it has the most subtlety of tone and genuinity of characterization and storytelling.  Quintet/Enix obviously took great care and attention to detail in their games, which sadly led to their eventual purchase by Square (forming the current day Square Enix).  On the bright side, many of their great titles made it to the United States because of their insistence.  We have all four Dragon Warriors on the NES, Actraiser, and the first two installments of the Gaia trilogy (Terranigma sadly did not make it over).  Their old titles are a vindication to the medium of video games.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (Multiplatform, 1999)

I will admit that the first time I played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (1999) was not at the time of its release.  My cousin let me have his old Playstation sometime in the late 2000's, and this was one of the first games I bought for it.  To my amazement, the game was not as dated as I might have expected.  Sure, it reeks of the late 90's, but it more captures the spirit of that time than keeps itself stuck there.  In concept, it should have been a bad game.  It was made to cash in on the popularity and success of skateboarding legend (then a new star) Tony Hawk.  By design, it is one of the best games about the sport.
The game needs not much of a plot, other than you are a skateboarder of your choosing (there are ten to choose from but most people will stick with Hawk) and you are trying to skate your way to fame.  There are a number of city locations where you have several missions to complete to earn tapes (remember VHS?).  Once you have enough tapes, you can move on to the next location.  There are also three competitions where you have to perform to your best ability to get a medal.  Only the most acrobatic will achieve extreme sports glory.
The two big factors that make this game a gem are the control and the level design.  Maneuvering a skateboarder and pulling off tricks could have been an exercise in frustration, but the control setup feels natural and tight.  You move forward automatically, turn with left and right, and stop by holding down.  Press and hold one action button and you will lean to go faster, and release it to jump.  For tricks, hold any one of the eight directions and one of the four action buttons.  You can build a chain of tricks for a maximum score, but be careful, because if you fall you lose all of those points.
Level design complements the control flawlessly.  Each level offers infinite possibilities for trick combinations, as well as secret areas.  To earn tapes, you will have to go around each stage and complete certain objectives within a time limit.  There are some that are similar in each stage, for instance, collecting the five letters of the word SKATE, or getting a certain amount of points.  Others are stage specific, like in San Francisco you will have to grind five police cars.  Beside earning tapes, it is simply a joy exploring each level and finding all the best ways to pull off tricks.
I'm fairly sure that many of the maneuvers you pull in this game are physically impossible.  I suspect that no skater (not even Mr. Hawk) has successfully ramped up a quarter-pipe to grind on a rail at least a story higher, and then ollied back to the ground with no injury.  But I don't play this game (or any game) for stark realism.  This game is about the joy of skateboarding, and the fun and mastery behind it.  There is a certain rush I get from zooming around a level pulling off impossible tricks, boldly defying gravity and physics.
The Tony Hawk series was immensely popular for a while, receiving three sequels and a number of spin-offs, each one successively losing that tremendous feeling of flight.  It had a direct influence on the Skate series of games and other extreme sports games, but none of them feel as right as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.  Skateboarding is still around, but it is not nearly what is was back in the 90's.  Pro Skater perfectly captures its day and age without feeling archaic.  A well designed game is timeless, even if it does reflect a certain time period.

Vectorman (Genesis, 1995)

After Donkey Kong Country was released for the SNES, Sega must have been feeling some degree of embarrassment.  They had for so long claimed that their Genesis was the graphically superior of the two, but still needed to release add-ons like the Sega CD and 32X to give it a little technical boost.  Donkey Kong Country was a game that looked just as good, if not better, than games for either of them, and it required nothing more than what the SNES already had.  So Vectorman (1995) was released as something of a response to that.
Vectorman is possibly the best looking game for the Genesis, as well as one of the latest (by this point, the Playstation was already out and Sega's own Saturn was not far behind).  It uses computer rendered sprites and animations, but still using less frames than in DKC.  The Genesis simply did not have the memory capacity necessary to make a game that good looking.  One trick that is used to mask this is by making characters out of multiple sprites to create fluid animations (a trick also used in great games like Gunstar Heroes and Sonic the Hedgehog 3).  The main character is essentially a robot made of orbs.
The story goes that it is centuries in the future, and mankind has been forced to evacuate Earth due to over-population and pollution (games in the 90's seemed to be fond of faux-environmental themes).  They leave robots behind to clean up in hopes of returning to a cleaner planet.  One day, the robot in charge accidentally has a nuclear weapon attached to his head (go with it) and he becomes Warhead, tyrant of the machines.  He gains control over all of the other robots (except for Vectorman, a sludge barge driver) and plans to destroy the humans upon their return.  Only you can defeat him and restore peace.  Quite elaborate for a run-and-gun game.
Okay, so the plot may be a bit more than necessary and completely ridiculous, but the gameplay makes it forgivable.  As stated, your objective in each level is to platform and shoot your way to the end.  It is completely linear, but the stages are huge and sprawling, and there is substantial reward for exploration.  There are also special stages in between the main levels which add some variety.  The control is simple, yet responsive.  You jump with one button and shoot with the other, and Vectorman can perform a double jump.  This is another game where the double jump makes logical sense, since the eponymous robot has boosters on his feet.  You also get temporary power-ups, some that give weapon upgrades, or transform Vectorman to give him special abilities needed to progress at some points.
It is the subtle touches that make this game great.  The attention to detail in this game is extraordinary for a Genesis title.  When you shoot straight down in the arc of a jump, it will slow Vectorman's descent.  Combine that with the double jump and you can make very precise jumps and maneuvers.  If you double jump right over an enemy, they will take damage from the propulsion exhaust.  Some minor graphical details are impressive, such as the lighting effects.  Vectorman's sprite will change shade in accordance with the lighting.  Another amusing touch is in his idle animations.  When you stand still, he will amuse himself by juggling some of the orbs that make up his body.  Stand against a wall, and he will lean against it in a cool pose.
On a system that is famous for high-quality platforming and action games, Vectorman stands out as one of the best.  It would receive one sequel, also for the Genesis, which was vastly overshadowed by both its predecessor and the next generation of gaming.  The first game was barely early enough to have been successful.  Once the Playstation had been released, it was time for both Sega and Nintendo to move on from their 16 bit systems and look forward to an age of polygonal graphics and 3D.  Vectorman can be seen as a fond farewell to the Genesis.

Ducktales (NES, 1989)

It is a generally accepted fact that licensed games will turn out poorly.  A game based on a TV show or movie already comes with an audience, so the idea is to make a cheap product and sell it for maximum profit.  Film companies looking to expand into the video game market would hire a game studio to develop their merchandise, relationships often being fair but producing low quality product.  Lucky for the Walt Disney Company, they had a solid relationship with Capcom, makers of the Mega Man games.  In the days of the NES and SNES, the two produced games based on properties owned by the Disney company which were not just good.  Some of them, like Ducktales (1989) were some of the finest titles for the NES.
Ducktales is based, of course, off of the Disney cartoon where Scrooge McDuck, uncle of Donald and richest duck in the world, goes on adventures around the world in search of treasure.  You play as Scrooge, travelling between five different locations to find a treasure on each.  You go to the Amazon, Himalayas, African Mines, Transylvania, even the Moon in the never-ending search for more money.  You may play the stages in any order you choose (not unlike Mega Man).
There being only five stages, you might think this game is terribly short.  The limited number of levels is made up for by the large size of all of them, and the non-linear approach to their design.  Every area in the game is packed with secret areas and hidden treasure, which ensures that you will not find everything in your first playthrough.  You will need to carefully examine every inch of the world if you want to get the most treasure.
Level design complements the control of the game, which is flawless.  Scrooge reacts precisely to every tap of the button, and attacking enemies is a breeze.  You have two means of attack, pogo-bouncing on toughies with your cane, or hitting stuff with the cane.  The latter is used mostly to break blocks out of the way or break things open to look for treasure.  You will make most attacks by bouncing onto enemies' heads, which you can also use to get to high-up platforms.  The game is very difficult, but never frustrating.  If you die, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Naturally, you will have the help of all of Scrooge's friends and relatives.  The nephews Huey, Duey, and Louie appear to give you helpful hints.  Launchpad McQuack will give you a ride back to your mansion with his helicopter (and true to character, refers to you as "Mr. McD").  Even Mrs. Beakley shows up to give you some food for healing, and extra lives.  Also in the game are some of Scrooge's rivals, like Flintheart Glomgold and Magica De Spell (you fight her in Transylvania).
Capcom is responsible for some of the most iconic and impressive visuals and music on the NES, some of the best of which is found in Ducktales.  The Moon theme is so recognizable that some gamers may not even know it is from this game.  The graphics are bright and colorful, and sprites are drawn and animated to represent perfectly their cartoon counterparts.  This would be the beginnings of a great line of Disney/Capcom games, which would later include Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers, The Little Mermaid, and Goof Troop (none of which will be appearing in the Great Video Games, but are fun, original pieces of software regardless).  There would be a Ducktales 2, but it did not reach the same level of greatness that this first game did.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600, 1983)

What!?  Surely this is a prank.  Is this April Fool's Day?  I couldn't seriously be adding one of the most despised games in history to a list of Great Video Games.  E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1983) for the Atari 2600?  The game that killed the system, and caused the video game market crash the same year it was released?  There is absolutely no way this could be.  But, yes, I'm serious.  I'm adding E.T. to the Great Video Games because of its influence, historical significance, and because frankly, I kind of enjoy it.
I suppose I should tackle the last thing I said there, as that is sure to be the most controversial.  No, I'm not saying that this is some kind of misunderstood, underrated masterpiece.  It is a severely flawed piece of software, the product of misguided corporate decisions and rushed production.  It is, of course, based off of the classic Steven Spielberg film, where the eponymous alien botanist is stranded on our planet, and befriends a young boy named Elliot, who helps him escape Earth.  The game follows this plot.  Loosely.  I can't recall the part of the movie where E.T. had to go jumping in holes to search for pieces of the telephone, and I must have missed the scene where a scientist takes him to jail (only for him to walk right out again).
So the search is on.  E.T. has a limited frame of time (9999 footsteps, to be precise, shown in a counter at the bottom of the screen) to find three pieces of a phone which are hidden in random holes across a map.  These holes become the centerpiece of the hatred for this game.  "You have to check every one!  Plus climbing out of them is a nightmare!  Once you fall in, you lose health!"  Well, no, you don't actually have to check every hole.  If you stand in a certain spot on each screen where a special symbol appears at the top and press the button, You can see which, if any, holes have a phone piece in them.  Climbing out of the holes is easy if you know how.  When you want to climb out, hold the button and the joystick up.  Once you are floating out of the hole, move to either the left or right side of the hole and you are out.  When you fall in the holes, press the button quickly and lower yourself down to avoid taking damage.
The world is crueler still to poor E.T., as there is a scientist and an FBI agent trying to impede his progress.  The scientist will grab E.T. and drag him to jail, where you can hilariously walk out of as soon as you are put in.  The FBI agent is far more devious though, as he will confiscate one piece of the phone you have worked hard to find.  There is a spot on each screen you can stand to send these two away, but your best bet is usually to run (and then fall in a hole).  The extra-terrestrial is not helpless though.  You can find Reese's Pieces scattered about, which you can trade with Elliot for extra health.  Once he has all of the phone pieces, he must phone home, and then stand in a certain spot so that the alien lander can pick him up.
So this game sounds kind of annoying (to say the least).  Don't worry, it is also buggier than that cave in Temple of Doom.  Glitches ooze out of every crevice of this game.  So, why do I enjoy it?  I suppose it is for the same reason I love bad movies.  Their flaws make them unintentionally hilarious.  The same goes for E.T.  I had one experience in the game where I called Elliot on to the screen, and then when he tried to walk off the bottom of the screen, he got stuck, unable to leave.  The crude sound of his footsteps produced a catchy beat, so he and I held a little informal dance party.  There is a funny bit where if you die, Elliot comes back to resurrect you, and you can still move E.T.'s dead body back and forth.  One of the funniest scenes was when I went to actually complete the game, and just as a got picked up by the ship, I ran out of health.  What followed was an hilarious bit where the carcass of E.T. ascended into the heavens, and then the game stopped because it couldn't figure out where to go from there.  I consider that completion, technically.
I mentioned in my Yar's Revenge article that the programmer of that game, Howard Scott Warshaw, also programmed this one.  With Yar, he proved that he was a competent programmer, so what went wrong with this game?  The fault is entirely on Atari.  They gave Warshaw only six weeks to go from concept to completed product.  To put things in perspective, a typical game on Atari could be expected to spend about three months in production, if not more.  It is a miracle that E.T. runs at all.
Its lasting impact is in what it did to the industry as a whole.  The video game market crash of 1983 was not the single-handed product of the game, but it played a big role.  After that, Nintendo would take careful measures to prevent its first home console, the Nintendo Entertainment System, from meeting the same fate.  All consoles after the NES follow its guidelines.  Also, it has a striking influence on games of the next generation.  Its gameplay style of randomly generated items may have led to the modern sandbox titles of today, and its nonlinear gameplay and multiple screen exploration can be seen in games like The Legend of Zelda.  Is it a bad game?  Certainly.  Does that alone make it ineligible to be in the Great Video Games?  I don't believe so.

Donkey Kong Country (SNES, 1994)

Games on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) were often very blatant about their use of the system's biggest graphical toy, Mode 7.  As I've stated before, Mode 7 allowed the SNES to stretch, twist, and tilt sprites without having to redraw them, which could be used to generate pseudo-3D graphics.  Early SNES titles like F-Zero and Pilotwings showcased the kind of visuals the system was capable of, and most later titles had to shoehorn Mode 7 in some way.  So how is it that Donkey Kong Country (1994), often considered one of the best-looking games on the SNES, uses its special effects so invisibly?

Actually, Mode 7 is used very subtly in the game.  More impressive and revolutionary was its use of pre-rendered computer graphics.  Character sprites were drawn and animated using early 90's CG, and then put into the game.  This allows every character to have crisp, detailed sprites and fluid animation.  It allows the game to look just as impressive today as it did back then.  When Mode 7 is used, it is for background details.  Inside of a mine shaft, lanterns hanging from the ceiling will rock back and forth.  In underwater stages, a vast expanse of sand will move as you move in the distance.

A game is nothing if it doesn't have great gameplay, even if it does have amazing graphics, and Donkey Kong Country nails that as well.  It is a 2D platformer, one of the best on the SNES.  The story goes that King K. Rool has stolen Donkey Kong's precious horde of bananas, and now with the help of his buddy Diddy Kong, he'll get them back.  You control the two apes through levels of jumping, climbing, and fighting baddies.  The two have different strengths and weaknesses which makes each one better for unique situations.  Donkey is stronger and tougher than Diddy, but Diddy is faster and jumps higher.  They also have animal friends who will give them rides from time to time, like a rhinoceros, ostrich, and giant frog.  The pair can also pick up and throw barrels at enemies.  Some can only be killed with a barrel.  If Donkey or Diddy get hit once, they are knocked out, but can be brought back if a special DK barrel is found.

One of the best features of the game, however, is its marvelous atmosphere and sense of humor.  The game is full of self-referencial humor, such as the inclusion of another Kong named Cranky, the old wise ape who will impart some knowledge to you, and scold you for being spoiled by new-age graphics ("I'll bet you thought this was 64-bit!  Back in my day you only got four pixels, and you'd be lucky to get more than one shade of grey!").  The music also adds to the atmosphere.  Every track is memorable and fantastically composed, but they never make an overstatement.  The soundtrack is right up there with the likes of Super Metroid and Final Fantasy VI.

The game was actually not developed by Nintendo, but a company called Rare Software.  They had produced a few games on the original NES, but were now tasked with making a high profile SNES game.  Obviously, they did an outstanding job, and Donkey Kong Country's success led to a golden age for Rare.  There were two sequels to Donkey Kong Country, plus their own Killer Instinct on the SNES.  On the Nintendo 64, they had Goldeneye 007,  Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark, and Conker's Bad Fur Day.  They were bought by Microsoft in the early 2000's, where they suddenly started to produce sub-par (even awful) titles on Xbox consoles.  Nintendo bought them back recently, so maybe we will see a return to the glory days of Rare, all started by their early masterpiece, Donkey Kong Country.

No More Heroes (Wii, 2008)

Travis Touchdown is a scoundrel.  He watches anime and pornography in his apartment in the town of Santa Destroy, his only companion being a kitten named Jean.  He doesn't have a job, and he visits the bar much too often.  His luck is about to turn around though, now that he has won a beam katana (essentially a lightsaber) in an internet auction, and upon one of his trips to the pub, he is hired by a mysterious woman named Sylvia to assassinate "the Drifter".  He does, and finds that she represents the United Assassins Association, and now he is ranked 11th among the world's greatest killers.  Now Travis is on a quest to find and kill the other ten assassins and become the number one ranked, and possibly get Sylvia to sleep with him if he does.
This is the beginning of No More Heroes (2008), one of the most unique games you will ever play.  It was created by Suda 51, who also directed the acclaimed Killer 7 and the recent, not-so-acclaimed Lollipop Chainsaw.  His games, even when they are no good, always carry his fingerprints.  Cel-shaded graphics, quirky characters, and an anti-hero as the protagonist are all his trademarks.  His games all have an over-the-top and dry sense of humor, and it really comes through in this game.
The game starts you out on a mission to take down the tenth ranked assassin, Death Metal, a retired rock star, now wallowing discontented in his mansion, waiting for his final battle.  This is where the player is taught the rules of the game.  Travis can fight by either using his beam katana or a number of wrestling moves that he has learned by watching WWE fights.  Be careful with the katana though, since it can run out of battery power (which is recharged by shaking the remote in a masturbatory fashion).  When you have drained an enemy's health enough, you can perform a finishing move by swinging the Wii remote in whatever direction the on-screen cue tells you to.  In lesser games, this is known as a "quick-time event," where you have to press a button or buttons in a timed sequence, and failure to do so results in death.  It works in this game though, since they are always expected, you have plenty of time to react to them, and failure does not have fatal consequences.  The reward for success is a hilariously stylized death, with dismemberment and a shower of blood.
When Travis gets to the end of a level, he has a one-on-one duel with the assassin.  These are the best parts of the game.  All of these battles are incredibly fun and unique, with the standard being set by Death Metal.  You arrive with him sitting alone by his pool, sipping on wine.  They have an exchange:
Death Metal:  "Quite beautiful, wouldn't you say?  Paid for with the lives of many.  When you have the strength to take life for yourself, that is true wealth.  I am free of desire, so long as I have this scenery to look upon.  I need nothing more.  Please, leave me be."
Travis:  "You're the one leaving, in a body bag."
Death Metal:  "I'll only say this once more, leave here now!"
Travis:  "Hey, you know what paradise is, right?  This is paradise, the place where dreams are fulfilled.  Well, you've had your dream, old man, time to wake up!"
Death Metal:  "Paradise.  This is no paradise."
Travis:  "Okay, then what is it?"
Death Metal:  "A place to die."
Death Metal comes across as a man who is sick of the game, and Travis is unaware of the risk he is about to take.  He does not understand that to get into the game of killing means you can never escape.  Once you are one of the top ranked assassins, there will be others trying to kill you.  It is an endless cycle of killing that only ends with your death.  Death Metal knows this only too well, and while he is not going to give up the fight on purpose, he is eagerly awaiting his release from the system, so that Travis can take his place.
Not all of the assassins are on the same page as Death Metal.  There is Shinobu, a high school girl who is in the same mindset as Travis, kill all those in your way and become the best.  There is Destroyman, an actor who plays the superhero personality that has taken over his twisted mind.  Dr. Peace, a corrupt detective, has been left cold and unfeeling by his divorced wife and estranged daughter.  The only thing he enjoys anymore is killing.  Travis's motivation changes over the course of the game as a conspiracy starts to make itself apparent, and suddenly it becomes about more than simply being number one.
No More Heroes plays like the best of a samurai film or western.  If I could point out a few flaws, they would be centered on the sections in-between missions, where you roam around Santa Destroy, doing odd jobs to make enough money to pay for the next admission fee for a battle.  You can level up your stats here and get new stuff, but it feels more like padding than anything.  This aside, It is a highly original and fun game, one of the best and most original for the Wii.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis, 1992)

A great video game sequel ought to expand and perfect the gameplay of the first game.  It should not just be a retread of the same formula, but stay true to what made the original special.  It should iron out the flaws of the original game while avoiding making new flaws.  It isn't very hard for a video game sequel to be better than the original, but there are instances where a sequel takes a major misstep.  On the other hand, you have fabulous games like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992) which are everything I described as a good sequel.
The game basically continues the plot from where the first game left off, with Dr. Robotnic once again trying to take over the world, this time by constructing a doomsday device known as the Death Egg (no, you don't use the force to take it down).  Sonic has a bigger challenge this time, but he is aided by his new sidekick, Miles "Tails" Prower, a two-tailed fox who can spin his tails like a helicopter rotor to fly for a short period of time.  Of course, his name is a not-so-clever pun on the phrase "miles per hour," but I suppose that is forgivable.
Now Sonic has been given one new move for this game, and it feels like a godsend all by itself.  By holding down and tapping the jump button, he can charge up a dash and launch himself from a standstill to running in no time flat.  I can't tell you how annoying it was in the first game to have to run back and build some momentum if you had to get over a slope.  This problem is gone in Sonic 2, and is one of the biggest reasons why it is a much better game.
The other new feature of Sonic 2 is a multiplayer mode, where two players engage in a split-screen race to the finish line in one of four levels from the game.  I usually don't talk about the multiplayer in games because I feel that most games nowadays push their multiplayer in the spotlight while the single player campaign is left to suffer.  Sonic 2's multiplayer doesn't feel that way since the main game is so solid.  It feels like icing on the cake, an additional feature that does not detract from the overall experience.
Sonic 2 also features bigger levels, more of them, and better graphics.  The levels in the first game sported branching paths, but nothing like in the sequel.  There are some areas of the later levels that you may never see if you don't do a little exploring.  They are also more varied and numerous.  The first game had six zones that were broken up into acts.  Sonic 2 has at least twice that.  One level is a marsh with underwater paths and sections high in the trees.  Another level is a giant casino with pinball segments and slot machines, the dark of night illuminated by neon lights.  The game isn't drawn with much more definition than the first game, but Sonic 2 has a brilliant color palette.  Everything is bright and eye-pleasing.
Speed has always been one of the defining features of any Sonic game, but this was the first game to truly use it to its full potential.  The levels are all designed like huge roller coasters.  In fact, this is one of the games used in Sega's famous "blast processing" commercial, where they claimed that Genesis games were faster than SNES games.  This is true, since the Genesis' processing speed is about twice as fast as the SNES' (although in every other techical category, the SNES is superior), and if any game were to be the proof of it, that game would be Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
Like the first game, Sonic can only get the true ending if he collects all of the chaos emeralds, but the way you get them this time is different.  Instead of collecting fifty rings and then going through a big ring at the end of the level, now you need to collect that many rings and go through any one of the many checkpoints in the stage.  This will open up a portal to the bonus round, where Sonic and Tails run headlong down a tubular track, collecting rings and avoiding obstacles.  Collect enough rings, and you are rewarded with a chaos emerald.  Fail, and you are sent back empty-handed, left only to try again next time.
Sonic has become something of a whipping boy nowadays.  His contemporary titles have ranged from lackluster to abysmal.  Who remembers a time when Sonic games were always looked forward to?  His days in the Genesis were a time of constant uphill improvement, rather than a joke.  The Sonic games were always Sega fans' biggest and best argument as to why their system could be superior to Nintendo's.  We are long down the road from those times, but many people still argue as to which system was better.  What's my take on the situation?  Well, Mario has never appeared on a Sega console.

Doom (PC, 1993)

Doom (1993) collected an awful stigma after its initial release.  At the time, it was possibly the most violent, macabre, and distasteful game ever made (with close competition coming from the Mortal Kombat games).  It became the poster boy for politicians looking to outlaw video games after the shootings at Columbine High School.  The two boys responsible were avid players of Doom, and so it became a scapegoat that video games cause violent behavior.  So, why in the world am I adding this game to the Great Video Games?  For a couple reasons, actually.
The first reason is that it was a trendsetter for gaming.  The first-person shooter (FPS) is the most prolific genre of our day, but back in the early 1990's the technology to produce it was just becoming available.  Doom was not the first of these games, Id Software's own Wolfenstein 3D predates it, but it was the first to really nail how an FPS should work.  No, it isn't perfect, but the games of today owe Doom a lot for its innovations.
Doom's plot goes like this.  You are a marine banished to live on the Moon for violent crimes/treason, and during his sentence, a portal from Hell opens and starts leaking out the armies of Satan.  Bummer, right?  So he alone will use his arsenal of found weapons to fight back the demonic legions.  It's not a very complex story, and it would make for a terrible movie (as a matter of fact, it did) but this was still in the days when story was an underscore to the gameplay.  And boy, did Doom have gameplay.
The trouble with first person games before Doom were the controls.  There was no standard at the time for the way to move, attack, etc.  It set a new template for all of this that is still used to this day.  Move with the A, W, S, and D keys, aim with a mouse and shoot with the space bar.  You can carry a large amount of weapons, ranging from the basic pistol to the famous BFG 9000 (stands for Big @$#%ing Gun) which could wipe out a whole room of enemies with one shot.  You could reasonably charge into a crowd of demons and come out okay if you have the right weapon, but sometimes it pays to be stealthy and sneak up on enemies.  Sometimes, enemies will get the drop on you.
Doom's art style is a glorious conglomeration of all things demonic, macabre, and occult.  Decaying zombies will try to blast shotguns at you.  Cacodemons, floating bull-like heads, will spit balls of fire at you.  You battle the cyber-demon (a cyborg faun with rocket launchers for arms) while hiding behind pillars that wear the face of the devil on them.  If all of this sounds completely over the top, that's because it is.  Doom does not take itself seriously, and neither should you.  Aside from the testosterone fueled action segments, there are some genuinely scary moments.  For instance, on one level, you find a key card innocently sitting on the far end of a room.  When you pick it up, the lights black out, and enemies swarm you.
So does Doom hold any other significance?  Its unintended association with many violent crimes suggests that it should not be spoken in the same breath as games with better taste.  I think not.  Should we not hold ourselves accountable for our own actions, instead of blaming a piece of media?  Later games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto are also thrown into this heap, and I added one of them to the Great Video Games.  Doom never specifically endorses violence, and you never kill anything human in the game.  If it had not been for the tragic events at Columbine, I'll bet that Doom would have been remembered today as an oddity and influence on the medium of gaming, rather than an influence on unhealthy minds.

Machinarium (PC, 2009)

I will admit that I've never been a fan of point-and-click adventure games.  When I was a kid, I actually played a lot of them, but they were the ones developed by Humongous Entertainment.  That's right, the edutainment titles like Freddi Fish and Putt-Putt.  Years later I tried my hand at some of the more intelligent titles of the genre, like Shadowgate and King's Quest, but I always have the same problem with them:  they are too confusing and difficult.  Solutions to puzzles are often too specific and too surreal to solve, with the added problem of death being at every turn.  So I just figured the genre was not for me.  Until, that is, I played Machinarium (2009).
In this game, you play as the little robot Josef (named after the man who coined the word "robot").  He has just been dumped out by a garbage bot, and after reassembling himself, he returns to the robot city to find that three robots that used to bully him (as well as everyone else) are going to detonate a bomb on the tallest building in the city.  You find out later that this is actually Josef's home, and you must save it, as well as his girlfriend who has been taken prisoner and forced to cook for the bullies.
The story could have been more in-depth than it is, but the characters make up for it.  Each robot in the game is wonderfully drawn and has a unique personality, shown not through dialogue (of which, there is none in this game) but through appearance and behavior.  Josef, for example, is a weakling by nature, but he is clever and contemplative.  Whatever revenge he can get against his tormentors gives him not catharsis, but just indifference.  The bullies each have a different personality.  One of them is a portly bandit, who offers oafish laughter when he steals another bot's drum.  In your quest, you will come across many colorful characters.
True to adventure game style, these characters will have something that Josef needs to advance, but will only give it if you perform a favor for them first.  One robot is a walking wrench that you can use to drain a water tank (dumping it on the unsuspecting bullies below), but he wants you to get him a new radio before he'll lend his services.  When the bullies find you and toss you into a jail cell, your cellmate will let you borrow his extendable arms if you can make him a cigarette, which is a fabulous example of the game's greatest achievement, its puzzles.
Puzzles in Machinarium come in two different forms, whose that require item use and combination, and those that require clever manipulation of machine interfaces.  Sometimes you will have to do both.  In an early scene in the game, you must disguise yourself as a police bot to gain entrance to the city.  These bots wear a flashing cone hat and are taller than Josef.  Fortunately, Josef can stretch and contract, but needs to fashion himself a cap.  Another puzzle requires you to use a control panel to move a pipe that you can use to reach an object that you need.  All of the puzzles in this game are clever and will require a great deal of intelligence from the player.
Machinarium is a game that takes the tried-and-true templates of games past and perfects it.  The game is fun, smart, and beautiful.  All environments and characters are hand drawn and animated, giving this world of machines a feeling of life.  The art style reminds me of the dystopian world in Terry Gilliams' Brazil, with pipes and tubing running everywhere, a bureaucratic system that is not entirely practical (the same goes for the puzzles), however, the world of this game is much friendlier.  This is a game that will test your brain and get to your heart simultaneously.

Crystalis (NES, 1990)

Before talking about Crystalis (1990) for the NES, I'd like to briefly discuss Zelda II: The Adventure of Link which came out around the same time.  As a sequel to The Legend of Zelda, I think it fails pretty drastically.  This is not because it is completely different from its predecessor, but because the new things it tries are executed poorly.  The top down gameplay of the first game is abandoned (except for on the map screen where you cannot fight) in favor of traditional side-scrolling platforming.  Also introduced is an experience system where you level up for fighting enemies.  This game has aged quite poorly.  The control is slippery and lags a bit, the level design is sadistic at times, and the experience system encourages more grinding than in Dragon Warrior.
Having said that, here is Crystalis, a top-down (a la Zelda) action-RPG that in my mind, very well should have been Zelda II.  The story is about a nuclear war that ravaged the world some centuries ago, and your character awakens from a cryo-sleep chamber with no memory of anything.  He awakes to find that the empire of Draygonia is trying to use an ancient power sealed away on a floating island to take over the world.  It may not sound like much, but for the days of the NES, it is practically Shakespeare.
In terms of gameplay, it basically does right everything that Zelda II did wrong.  You have an overhead view of the action, allowing more precise swordplay and dodging maneuvers.  You upgrade your character stats with every level, and levels increase by collecting so much experience.  Grinding is actually handled very well in this game, as enemies give reasonable amounts of experience for killing them, fights don't take very long, and enemies respawn.  This all makes farming for experience fast and painless.
Apart from being successful in standard RPG elements, Crystalis also has its own unique innovations.  By holding the attack button, you can charge up a beam that will fire from the sword, allowing you to attack enemies at a distance.  Combine a sword with special items and you can get a bigger charge.  Larger charges are more powerful, but at a cost of taking longer to fire.  There is a nice strategy to it.  You collect four elemental swords, and different enemies are vulnerable to different elements.  There is also a system for different magic spells, some used for battle, and some used for context-sensitive situations.  One spell allows you to disguise yourself, which can be used to breach enemy security.  Another lets you put a person to sleep.
Crystalis has some of the best looking graphics on the NES.  Character sprites are well-drawn, and backgrounds and environments are colorful and detailed.  In addition, the music is lively, fits the mood of each area, and is fairly memorable.  There were many underrated games on the NES, some of those including The Guardian Legend, Journey to Silius, and Metal Storm, but for my money, Crystalis is the best of them.  It is an epic quest that was criminally overlooked both in its day, and today.

The Atari 2600 (1977)

Video games are the only medium that one can have a deep discussion about the hardware.  Film historians may go in depth about film quality and formats, but you will rarely see two casual moviegoers discussing DVD vs Laserdisc.  Literature even less so;  you'll never see two people debating over which is better, quill and ink or printing press.  But video games are different because they inhabit the hardware they are played on.  The console becomes part of the gaming experience.  Back in the 90's, there was a debate between the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, and TurboGrafx16.  These days it is between the Xbox 360, Wii, and Playstation 3.
And so I would like to write my first analysis of a console with Atari's Video Computer System, more commonly known as the 2600 (named after its serial number).  Here is a video game in its purest form.  No pretenses, no preconceptions, and no real predecessor.  Released in 1977, it was not the first game console as believed by many, that was the Magnavox Odyssey (1972) which was a total failure on all accounts.  Atari must have taken the Odyssey's flaws into account and tried to remedy them for its own system.
The Atari used interchangeable cartridges for its games, a completely new idea in gaming.  At that point, most games were played in the arcade, with each cabinet holding only one game.  The 2600 separated the hardware and the software, allowing many games to be owned and played on one system.  The controllers feature only one joystick and one button, and were detachable from the system.  Its design is classic:  power and option switches on the front, top-loading cartridge slot, wood grain on the front.  The system was an immediate success.  The rest of its history would be read as a rise to glory, followed by destruction by its own hubris.
Early titles were mainly ports of arcade games to the system (although very well-made ones).  Games like Asteroids, Pong (renamed Video Olympics and featuring a number of Pong variations), and Space Invaders are all examples of the Atari's ability to accurately simulate the games of the arcade.  This trend would continue with the excellent later titles such as Centipede, Frogger, and Ms. Pac Man.  The relationship between Atari and third party developers is one that would be unheard of today:  Atari bought the property to the arcade titles, and then had one of their own programmers translate it to the 2600.
Atari made their own games as well.  They were the first to realize that having a console at home meant that they could make games that could be completed.  The earliest example of this is Adventure, which I have written about previously.  Later titles to follow in this trend would be Raiders of the Lost Ark, and yes, the dreaded ET the Extra Terrestrial (more on that later).  With Atari handling all of the major releases, things were going well for the 2600.  It was at the height of its popularity that it started to show some major flaws, that would lead to its downfall.
The first mistake Atari made was in not allowing its programmers the dignity of credit for their work.  Creative designers could sneak their initials or names into the games via Easter eggs, such as Howard Scott Warshaw and Warren Robinett.  The majority of them were unsatisfied though, so in 1980 there was a major exodus of Atari's most talented programmers, who went on to form the massively successful Activision.  There was nothing Atari could do about Activision games being sold for its system; it featured no lockout chip to differentiate between licensed and unlicensed games.  Anyone could make 2600 games, and everyone who could, did.
There became a flood of games on the system, most of them being completely terrible.  But surely Atari was able to maintain the same level of quality in their own games to keep itself from sinking?  With only the most inexperienced programmers left, even the first-party releases suffered.  There are two main games which are blamed for the death of Atari, the first of which was Pac-Man.  Atari really screwed the pooch with that one.  They arranged for there to be more games made than there were existing Ataris, and paid the programmer by each game made, not sold.  It was still the best selling Atari game, technically, but the disgustingly low quality of the game caused many returns and refunds, making it a major flop.
The second of the terrible games was the infamous ET.  Made by Howard Scott Warshaw, an actually talented programmer, it should have been a great game.  The problem was, Atari wanted the game completed within a six-week time frame, giving Warshaw barely enough time to squeeze out what was a very buggy and half-realized game.  The released product should very well have been only a prototype.  ET was, like Pac-Man, an initial success, but angry players returned the games, making it another bomb.  Urban legend states that Atari took the leftover carts of ET and buried them in a landfill in a New Mexico desert.  With more product being made on the market than sold, Atari went bankrupt, and the whole video game market crashed in 1983.
Years later, now that the smoke has all cleared and we can look at the system in full clarity, we can appreciate it for what it truly was:  an ambitious, yet failed, experiment in home video game technology.  Why was it a failure?  It still had a vast library of first-rate titles, many of which still hold up to this day as marvelous fun and entertainment, and is looked upon with fond nostalgia.  Its failure was entirely on the part of the company that produced it, but on the bright side, future game consoles would learn from the experience, the first of which being a brave grey box produced by Nintendo.

Metroid (NES, 1986)

Right from the title screen of Metroid (1986), with its dark visual and haunting, lonely music, you can tell that it is going to be a very different NES experience.  I have already talked about the vastly superior Super Metroid, but this first game is, in its own right, a masterpiece of the 8-bit era.  It was one of the first games with non-linear progression, power-up collecting, and an unsettling and thick atmosphere.  This would set the bar in one of the greatest series in video gaming.
In Metroid, you play as the bounty hunter Samus Aran, who is sent to the planet Zebes to wipe out the space pirates, and destroy their leader, Mother Brain.  They are harvesting the parasitic life-forms of the planet, called Metroids, and plan to use them for scientific experimentation and hopefully as a weapon.  To enter the space pirate base, Samus must first hunt down and kill two of their leaders, Kraid and Ridley.  Upon doing so, Samus discovers that the pirate base has been taken over by the Metroids, and fights her way through to Mother Brain, who, once defeated, sets off a time-bomb, which Samus barely escapes.
The character of Samus Aran is interesting because she is one of the first female protagonists in gaming.  The game has multiple ending screens based on how quickly you completed the game, and completing the game faster reveals Samus's true gender (throughout the game she is fully suited, and neither the game nor manual mentioned her gender).  Playing as a female character was unheard of back in those days, when women in video games were things to be saved or otherwise, the hero's motivation.
The gameplay is classic NES platforming with a twist.  Instead of the game being broken up into straightforward levels, there are a few giant sections that you will have to explore and backtrack through.  It essentially puts you in a maze at point A, tells you what point B is, but not where you will find point B or how to get there.  From the start, you will naturally start going right, only to be met with a wall, with a hole too low for you to walk into.  By going back, you will find the morph ball upgrade to the left of where you started, which allows you to roll up into a ball, and now you can pass the wall.  This part of the game is a brilliant way to teach the player about power-ups, how they will be needed in order to progress, and that the game will not follow a straight line.
The game also features great atmosphere and personal development.  Every area of Metroid is dark, unsettling, and threatening.  The whole of this game is subterranean and it really feels like it.  Enemies are almost entirely consistent of the natural creatures that live on Zebes.  In the main area, you will find all sorts of insects that crawl around uninterested in you, or actively trying to kill you.  And kill you they will, because at the start of this game, you are mostly helpless.  Your beam attack only reaches a few measly measly meters away, and you have only thirty health.  But collect weapons upgrades, health upgrades, and new attacks (such as the famous screw attack) and by the end of the game, you will feel empowered.
Metroid, like so many other of the experimental games of the era, is not perfect.  The lack of a map system makes navigation nearly impossible, as many areas look alike.  The game very much makes you feel like a rat in a maze.  The jumping is somewhat floaty, but this is forgivable since level design is made to work around it.  There are a few flaws in the level design though.  Vertical passageways are long and tedious to climb and a fall may send you back to the bottom.  There is one room that can only be accessed by blowing a secret hole in the floor, but going down there will yield no rewards and will likely become impossible to climb out of.
Despite its flaws, Metroid is one of the best games on the NES.  It, along with The Legend of Zelda, helped invent gaming from the 90's onward.  It has become one of Nintendo's most prolific and celebrated franchises, with such adored titles as Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, and Metroid Prime.  The original received a remake on the Game Boy Advance called Zero Mission, which both expanded the story and improved the graphics and controls.  Metroid shall always be remembered as a progressive title on a system famous for having many of them.

Dear Esther (PC, 2012)

"Dear Esther, the gulls do not land here anymore.  I've noticed that this year, they seem to shun the place.  Maybe it's the depletion of the fishing stock driving them away.  Perhaps it's me.  When he first landed here, Donnelly wrote that the herds were sickly and their shepherds the lowest of the miserable classes that populate these Hebridean islands.  Three hundred years later, even they have departed."

So begins Dear Esther (2012), with your character narrating one of the letters he has written to a woman named Esther.  Who exactly is she?  This is the first of many mysteries that surround this amazing game.  Your character is stranded on an island, which has obviously seen human activity before.  There is a radio tower that blinks faintly in the distance, and he is evidently living inside of a decaying lighthouse.  Whether he came to the island by choice or by accident is irrelevant; his boat has crashed upon its shore, and he is now lost to it.

This game is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.  Originally a modification of Half-Life 2 using the Source engine (developed by independent studio The Chinese Room), this 2012 commercial release of the game is essentially an HD expansion.  The island is gorgeously drawn, reminding me of the grassy beaches of Cape Cod, and the rock formations around northern Michigan.  There is a caves section of the game which blew me away with its grandeur and beauty.  Stalactites and stalagmites create a spiderweb of rock, and water drips from them into cloudy pools on the ground.

So what is the gameplay like?  Well, I wouldn't call this a game to play, more of one to experience.  All you do is explore the island, taking in its majesty, and also collecting clues to a greater mystery.  There are no enemies to fight, there are no puzzles to solve.  There has been a lot of debate as to whether or not Dear Esther can be called a video game.  A critic at Destructoid criticized the game heavily for its minimal level of interaction, calling it "W Key: The Game" (the key that you hold to walk forward).  So, why should you play this game?  Sounds pretty boring.  "Au contrair," I say.  I think that the inclusion of obstacles in this game would be detrimental and jarring to its real purpose:  an intellectual puzzle.

The most interesting part of a mystery is in the solving of it, not the explanation.  Dear Esther knows this, and even in its beautiful final act and conclusion (which I dare not spoil for you) it only raises more questions.  But they are satisfying questions which hold great incentive for the player to re-experience the game multiple times.  Why am I here?  Who is Esther?  Are there any other intelligent beings on this island?  The game offers no explanations, but gives a substantial amount of clues.

From the first moments of the game there is mystery.  Going inside of the lighthouse, you will find that someone has been there also, who has painted the molecule of an alcohol on the wall.  This has thematic relevance, revealed later by one of the character's brilliantly written and acted narrations (done by Nigel Carrington).  He speaks of how Esther died in an automobile accident, and that it was caused by a drunken man whose memory torments the narrator.

The narrator also quotes from the only thing he has in his possession, a book by the cartographer, Donnelly, who came to the island in the 18th century to map the island, and chart the history of its original inhabitant, a hermit named Jakobson.  Donnelly discovered that the hermit came to the island in search of pure solitude, but eventually succumbed to an injury to his leg.  The narrator has also sustained a broken leg, so now he is going to cross the island to complete what Donnelly started, and find his absolution.

More wall paintings are discovered in seaside caves.  Depictions of neurons, nerve endings, more molecular structures.  Eventually symbols from electrical diagrams start popping up, and then whole circuit diagrams.  A painting of five "male" symbols suggests that the painters were five men.  One of the most intriguing pieces of evidence is a congregation of monolithic boulders obviously not set by nature.  In the center, found on the ground, is a chemistry textbook lying next to a copy of the Holy Bible.  These other people were chemists/electricians, but were they also religious?

Religious themes recur throughout the game.  Walking along the beach, the narrator comes across the rotting remains of a ship, only the skeleton is left.  The mast of the ship has come to resemble a cross sitting lonely in the sand.  In the caves, you will find this scrawled on the wall:  "BEHOLD, DAMASCUS IS TAKEN".  If you look carefully, you will find "Acts 22:0" written, and after I looked it up, it made sense.  Acts 22 of the Bible tells of the conversion of Paul the Apostle, his sermon at the city of Damascus (which apparently fell upon deaf ears), and then his arrest.  Perhaps the chemists, after being lost on the island for so long, have turned to religion to comfort them, and now want to convert anyone else who finds the remains of their micro-society.

Dear Esther is a fairly short game, beatable in about fifty minutes if you rush through it, but that is missing the point entirely.  If you stop to look around, collect evidence, and solve the island's mystery you will find an intellectual experience that will linger with you far beyond your completion of it.  This is also the first game that brought me nearly to tears.  The build up to and the conclusion of the game is one of the most emotional and gratifying moments in video gaming that I have experienced.  If we are to accept video games as a legitimate form of art, then this game is an example of the kind of magnum opus that the media can produce.

Yar's Revenge (Atari 2600, 1982)

At a distance, this game will appear to be a jumbled mess of information.  The premise doesn't make even the slightest bit of logical sense.  The screen features a block of random flickering pixels, and each character is a distant abstraction of what they are meant to represent.  And yet, Yar's Revenge (1982) is one of the most finely crafted and enduring games on the Atari 2600, and also my favorite on the system.
The game was designed and programmed by Howard Scott Warshaw of Atari.  Most people will not be able to know him by name, but he was one of Atari's more prolific programmers, having also made the adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark and, yes, the ill-fated ET the Extra-Terrestrial.  This game is proof that ET's failure was not on the part of Warshaw being an incompetent designer (it is, in fact, evidence to the contrary), but Atari's poor business decisions.  His influence on Yar's Revenge's success is a stroke of genius.  Originally meant to be an Atari port of the arcade game Star Castle, which the 2600 would not have been able to support due to technical limitations, Warshaw changed the premise of the game to make it workable.
The premise is this:  you control a housefly trying to fight off an attack by the alien, Yar.  You may move and shoot in eight directions (highly uncommon for Atari shooters).  First, you must shoot down the barrier the Yar hides behind to expose him, while avoiding (what might be) a homing missile.  That flickering area I mentioned earlier?  That is a neutral zone, where the missile cannot kill you if it touches you, but you cannot shoot.  Once the Yar is vulnerable, you touch him to summon a bomb, and aim carefully to hit him with it, which will blow him up and advance you to the next level.  Be careful through, because without much warning, the Yar may decide to fly out and attack you!
This may sound convoluted in theory, but in practice, it is great fun.  This game actually offers a high level of strategy and fair challenge relative to the other games of the age.  If you shoot from a distance, you are safer from the attacks of the Yar and also the missile.  If you draw close, however, you can achieve greater accuracy and speed, at an increased risk.  You must use the neutral zone to your advantage, and since you wrap around the screen (go off one edge and you reappear on the opposite) it can be used to make quick escapes from the missile, which grows progressively faster with each level.
What Mr. Warshaw created is one of the greatest games of its day.  While other Atari games age and/or rot around it, Yar's Revenge stays fresh and fun.  Compare it to his other titles.  While Raiders of the Lost Ark is generally considered to be better than ET, it is still archaic, cryptic, and in some places, dysfunctional.  Yar's Revenge, on the other hand, shows its age only in its visuals.  Howard Scott Warshaw has been unfairly criticized for ET, whose flaws are mostly not his fault.  He ought to be celebrated for the enduring classic that he created.

Limbo (PC, 2010)

A small boy awakens, completely alone, in the woods.  It is not clear to us who he is, but we get the feeling that he is not alone.  The forest opens up to reveal a Stygian river, and a boat takes the boy across.  Damp noises in the distance suggest a lurking evil.  We come across another life-form in the woods on the other side, a giant tarantula.  The boy deters the titanic spider by making it step in a bear trap, but is later caught in its web.  He manages to wriggle out and escape, but is still under pursuit.  He finally takes care of the spider by dropping a boulder on its head.
He encounters some other young boys, but they don’t want anything to do with him.  The boy approaches one of their camps, and is greeted by the dead body of another, hanging from a noose.  They set traps for him, but the boy evades all of them, and getting through the tribal camps, he comes across a massive machine.  When he turns it on, the machine starts the rain.  He takes refuge from the maelstrom inside of a factory, but it will prove to be no more a sanctuary then the forest.
Limbo (2010) is an indie game directed by Danish game designer Arnt Jensen.  It seems that the indie movement of our time is bringing with it a movement of video game auteurs the likes of which was previously inconceivable.  The early craftsmen of gaming, such as Shigeru Miyamoto, David Crane, and Hideo Kojima, are the equivalent to film’s John Ford, Cecil B DeMille, and Alfred Hitchcock.  Similarly, Arnt Jensen, Suda 51, and Tim Schaffer are equivalent to Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, and Stanley Kubrick.
The game itself is a 2D platformer with puzzles, but it would seem to be much more than that.  Much of the game gets its marvelous effect from atmosphere, storytelling, and a logical mystery that challenges the player.  The game is entirely black and white.  All characters and objects are silhouettes, and the boy is the only one having eyes.  Along the way, he will encounter the giant spider, other children (a possible reference to “Lord of the Flies”), mind-controlling worms, and creatures that eat said worms.
The atmosphere is constantly unsettling.  The air is stagnant with the feeling of dread and foreboding.  The boy will have to make some dark choices to survive.  For instance, to evade a trap (a giant press that will be set off by a trip wire) you must use the body of a dead boy to set it off, allowing you to pass unharmed.  This game features some heavy gore, mostly by implication, which makes it seem more gruesome than the bloodiest games.  I’m not fazed when I see an alien grinded by a chainsaw in Gears of War, but when the boy in Limbo falls from a great height and I hear the snap of his bones, and then see his body go limp and his eyes shut, I cringe.
This is a fairly short game, beatable in about two hours, but it is such an emotional, intellectual, and challenging experience that you will want to play it multiple times.  I suppose it is better that I want there to be more of the game than feeling like it overstays its welcome.  The ending does feel somewhat abrupt, but it is a mind-bending scene that creates an interesting new puzzle to solve, which has been in my brain like one of those worms, driving me forward until I reach some absolute answer.

Gargoyle's Quest (Game Boy, 1991)

Capcom was one of the most prolific game developers from the mid-80's to late-90's.  On the NES, they created Mega Man, Bionic Commando, and had a relationship with Disney that produced some of the best licensed titles of all time.  So in 1990, when the Game Boy came along, they mostly did what all other third parties did:  they made watered-down ports of their console games.  There was one huge exception though, and that was Gargoyle's Quest (1991), a completely original Game Boy game that took big risks, made grand innovations, and is still just as good today because of that.
You play as Firebrand, a gargoyle called back to the ghoul realm when an army of "destroyers" attack, attempting to take it over.  Legend tells of the Red Blaze, a mutant gargoyle, who defeated the destroyers several millennia ago.  Firebrand must become the Red Blaze and save his people from the wicked invaders. Unlike most video game plots of the era, this one has twists and turns that yield some real surprises.  At one point in the game you run into a town where the villagers (who are zombies and demons) call you a fraud and tell you that another gargoyle is the true Red Blaze because he has the eternal candle.  Of course you defeat him in battle and prove yourself.
The game does well to keep you engaged in the story which seems massive when compared to other Game Boy games, and it does this through the clever mixing of genres.  There is an overworld map where you go to different towns and get into random enemy encounters.  Action segments of the game are done in a 2D platforming style, well suited to a handheld game.  In these action stages, you can jump, fly (for a limited time), cling to walls, and breathe fire.  I've never been a fan of the "double-jump" in gaming, because it almost never makes physical sense.  In a game like Super Smash Bros, it just seems like the characters are bouncing off of thin air.  In this game however, it makes perfect sense because the main character has wings.
This is also complimented by level design and upgrades.  Each level has a different concentration and variation on different aspects of the gameplay which keeps things interesting.  Some levels may have a focus on combat while others have very few enemies, being more like obstacle courses.  The levels are all well designed, but being on the tiny Game Boy screen things can feel a bit cramped sometimes.  There is a system of upgrades to go with the other RPG elements of the game, which will grant you more health, higher jumps and longer flying times.  The last level is a masterfully crafted combination of everything you have learned.
This is a great game, but also a flawed one.  As I mentioned before, there are random encounters on the map screen (which are looked down upon in traditional RPGs) which play like miniature platforming stages.  These break up the pacing a little and are the cause of a few undeserved deaths.  The difficulty curve is also a little weird.  Like Kid Icarus, some of the harder stages come early on when you are weaker, and then when you've gained more health things get a little easier.  The final confrontation with King Breager is also kind of anti-climatic.  He cheaply blocks most of your attacks by holding his arms up and fires homing sparks at you, and after exhausting several lives trying to strategise, I finally found a sweet spot by his head where I spammed attacks at him and won.  It was disappointing, to say the least.
Don't get me wrong though, this game is definitely worth playing.  In twenty years, it has aged surprisingly well, and its great points overshadow its bad ones.  It offers a great challenge without being terribly frustrating.  It experiments with gameplay styles in a way that makes it a wholly unique experience.  Capcom is known for making games that push the graphical capabilities of their platforms to the limit, and this is no exception.  This is one of the best looking and most atmospheric Game Boy games.  On the NES, there would come a Gargoyle's Quest II, and a third game on the SNES called Demon's Crest.  The critic Derek Alexander said that this is Capcom's "most consistently good series to date," and I can't disagree.