Author: atmaphoenix

Top 100 Games of All-Time: #3

Mega Man 3

Release Date: November 16, 1990

Platform Played On: NES

2018 Placement: #2 (-1)

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What It Is:

The game that introduces the most important move in Mega Man’s arsenal: the slide.

Okay so maybe that’s not the important thing (that’s actually the charge shot in Mega Man 4) but Mega Man 3 is another iteration and improvement on the basic formula of the previous games. It’s also (obviously) my favorite version of the game. We get introduced to the slide and Proto-Man, the anti-hero that becomes a hero, and also Rush, Mega Man’s faithful dog companion. He joins with his Rush Coil, Marine and Jet perks to replace the boringly named “Items” from Mega Man 2.

It is also the first game to introduce a bigger challenge between the eight Robot Masters and the final Wily Castle. While future games replaced it with a second non-Wily Castle, Mega Man 3 remixes the levels of this game AND brings back the bosses from Mega Man 2 in the Doc Robot levels. Once again, my child self loved remixes of levels and surprise added length to games – the Doc Robots were always one of my favorite parts of this game as they were a very unique concept that hasn’t been replicated – getting to fight the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters again but with the Mega Man 3 arsenal was quite clever and fun to me.

Why It’s Important To Me:

Look, if you’ve managed to read 97 other entries in this top 100, you know what I’m going to say here. The music, man, the music! Shadow Man’s theme, Spark Man’s theme, Snake Man’s theme, all of these are legitimate bangers and it’s just awesome tune after awesome tune in this game. I don’t think there’s a single Robot Master theme I don’t like from this version of Mega Man. And the Wily Boss theme is probably my favorite of all the boss themes across the series – sometimes a 20 second loop is all you need.

It also has my single favorite Robot Master – Top Man. First, his stage is my favorite stage theme out of all the original Mega Man games. Second, he’s just absurd. Top Man? He spins at you and throws tops. That’s it. He’s such a goober. Third, his weapon – the Top Spin, is one of the most useless weapons in Mega Man, nay, video game history. AND YET. It is THE weapon that can put the most hurt on the final boss. He is just the absolute BEST Robot Master.

My Strongest Memory:

This is a game I’ve played over and over again. From the first notes of Shadow Man’s theme making me relive those blasted parachuting dolts, to the pure joy I feel every time I think about the Bob and George comic and that instilling in my mind that Top Man is a gay icon (although the comic itself is pretty bad now), I can’t pinpoint one single memory that jumps out at me.

I remember fighting the final boss and it being way cooler than the stupid alien in Mega Man 2. I remember the first time I experienced the Doc Robot stages and just how blown away my child mind was at the idea of adding a second round of Robot Masters in fucked up stages. I remember searching for midi file versions of the Spark Man and Shadow Man theme when I first got the internet and was only able to download at 28.8k speeds (not even 56k!).

Why It’s #3:

This game will always, always, always be in my top 3 because Mega Man as a franchise is important to me and this game is, to me, the purest form of Mega Man. Before the Robot Masters started getting a little too weird, before the jump to 16-bit and 32-bit and all the other bits. Even before the charge buster. This had the best everything: music, level design, enemy design, etc. etc. etc.

It slid to #3 instead of #2 because while it excels and is my favorite from a gameplay perspective and is almost assuredly the reason I fell in love with platformers as a genre, it just doesn’t have any story oomph. You could go down a psychological rabbit hole of why Dr. Light keeps trusting Dr. Wily and getting fooled by him time and time again, but really, this is the fun-blow-up shoot robots game. The final two games on this list are storytelling masterpieces that elevated the gaming medium to me and made me love it even from a young age.

Manatees 2023: 10 Months Late!

So this has been sitting in my drafts since early January. There was a podcast episode that went with this (sorry Matt and Jose!) that I never got around to editing. Between getting married, moving into a new house, adopting a second dog, a couple major health issues, and having work from home ending for my job, I never quite got around to editing the podcast so this companion piece kind of languished as I was determined to release it alongside a podcast episode.

Alas, I’ve finally given up the ghost as we creep towards GOTY 2024 and just want to have this one on the record. 95% of this was written 10 months ago – so enjoy my favorite games of 2023! If that’s your bag.

Continue reading “Manatees 2023: 10 Months Late!” →

Top 100 Games of All-Time: #4

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Release Date: October 2, 1997

Platform Played On: PS1

2018 Placement: #6 (+2)

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What It Is:

The game that basically put the genre of “Metroidvania” on the map, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was the first of the Castlevania games to break away from the standard level progression and instead give you a giant Dracula’s Castle to explore freely (sort of). You play as Alucard, the half-vampire son of Dracula, who is investigating the return of Dracula’s Castle after his defeat by Richter Belmont in the previous game. While Alucard had been a supporting character in Castlevania III, the plot of Symphony of the Night is all his own.

This game introduces a lot of features that became standard in later Castlevania games – from full equipment (instead of just a whip and secondary weapons) and RPG stats to the interconnected map, Symphony of the Night became a blueprint for success despite initial sales being not great in the West. It also has one of the biggest surprise second halves in gaming history, as when you get to the top of Dracula’s Castle you discover Richter Belmont is the “villain” and “final boss.” Except once a special item is acquired, you find out he’s being manipulated by a wizard named Shaft (Shaft!) and there’s a whole ENTIRE SECOND UPSIDE-DOWN CASTLE TO EXPLORE and the map completion goes from 100% to 200% on your save file. The game goes from big to massive and it’s phenomenal.

Why It’s Important To Me:

This game sealed in the Metroidvania-style gameplay as one of my favorite genres. Coming off Super Metroid on the SNES, playing Symphony of the Night was a delight. Not only were there plenty of unique abilities, items, weapons, etc. to find scattered in nooks and crannies in the castle, but then you got an entire SECOND castle to fine MORE abilities, items, weapons, and so on. Like the previous entry, as a kid I just fucking loved a second map that was a twisted version of the first. Symphony of the Night’s upside-down castle is probably one of the more poorly designed map extensions if I’m honest – it’s literally just the main map but upside-down and with harder enemies, which makes traversal a little weird and awkward in some cases. But the sheer joy I experienced when I first got to the second castle and having that much more game to play was unparalleled.

It also has some great tunes that stick in your head (of course): the Colosseum theme is probably my favorite banger from the entire soundtrack. And then there’s the Clock Tower that just drops heavy metal guitar on you out of nowhere. The boss theme is incredible and gives crazy energy to every boss encounter. And the main Dracula’s Castle theme is another earworm that is perfect for Alucard’s introduction in the game. The game is just stellar from gameplay to music to boss fights to everything, what more can I say?

My Strongest Memory:

“Why don’t I press it and SEE?” Throughout the game you can acquire familiars, and one of them is the devil familiar. There’s this one area in the game that is only accessible by a switch you can’t possible reach – but if you equip the devil familiar he will press it for you. However it is paired with an incredible voice line reading that buried into my brain at a young age and refuses to leave. It is just unmatched in the voice acting department. I don’t remember Dracula’s voice, but I do remember that stupid little devil familiar.

The other strongest memory is actually a more recent one – the game was rereleased alongside Rondo of Blood as a collection within the last few years. I immediately got it and started playing through in on the PS4. Playing this game really, truly, felt like going home. I knew the map, the bosses, where all the items were, how to progress to the second castle – all of it was second nature to me. It was relaxing and nostalgic and peaceful and just pure joy and happiness. But the funniest part was that I was playing it and apparently regressed even further to a child-like state because my girlfriend pointed out I was so absorbed that I had been talking to myself/the television for the entire time I was playing it. Thankfully she thought it was cute – but arguing with myself/the television while playing a video game is a pasttime of a younger self and that was how strong this game was to me.

Why It’s #4:

Recency bias. Yeah, when I made this list I’d played the rerelease relatively recently. That’s why it jumped to #4 over Tetris Attack and Link to the Past this time around. But honestly, Symphony of the Night is another perfect game to me. Despite its flaws, despite the awful, garbage, no-good very-bad boss design of Galamoth (who, to be fair, is optional), this game is still just 200% the best Metroidvania. Nothing since, not even other Castlevanias, has come close. After all, none of them have an upside-down castle, and really that’s the key ingredient here.

Top 100 Games of All-Time: #5

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Release Date: April 13, 1992

Platform Played On: SNES

2018 Placement: #4 (-1)

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What It Is:

Link’s big transition from 8-bit to 16-bit, A Link to the Past was Link’s return to the top-down exploration vibe of the original game after Zelda 2’s sidescrolling departure. Like the original game, there is a large overworld to explore with many interesting characters, but you get a little bit more direction this time around. The wizard Agahnim has taken over Hyrule Castle so Link is tasked to find three pendants which will allow him to draw the fabled Master Sword and stop Agahnim.

And while it seems like the Master Sword will be the culmination of your efforts in this game, it’s actually only the conclusion to the first act. Upon defeating Agahnim, Link is drawn into the Dark World and must rescue the seven Maidens who have been sealed away in crystals. A second, warped map and seven more dungeons, each with their own complexities, await the hero and man, let me tell you, young me loved surprise remixed/altered maps. (This is going to be a theme in every game from here to #2, just you wait.)

Why It’s Important To Me:

Every gaming person has a favorite Zelda game. For some it’s the first game in the franchise they played. For others it’s Breath of the Wild. As I write this Tears of the Kingdom is about to become a bunch more’s favorite. This one is mine simply because I think it’s perfect. It has the perfect amount of dungeons and the perfect amount of items that have the perfect amount of usefulness. The exploration between each of the two maps is perfectly spaced, all the bosses use the special weapons of their dungeons perfectly. The story and characters are perfectly executed with not being too strong to overpower the thrill of adventure and discovery, but not completely absent.

I dunno, it’s hard to describe this game in any other way. Ocarina of Time duplicated its dual world strategy in 3D, but for some reason it just didn’t have a huge effect on me like it did most others in my gaming generation. I felt like the items were more unique and fun to acquire in Link to the Past. I’ve played this enough that I have a lot of the map memorized like Link’s Awakening, but not fully so every time I play I still have to do a little bit of thinking and remembering. It’s long enough that I feel excited to play it again but never overwhelmed. I can’t ever get sick of this game.

My Strongest Memory:

Back in the 90s there was this magazine called Nintendo Power, and I was an avid subscriber. One of the things the monthly magazine had was a comic that semi-followed the story of Link to the Past. I loved following that little comic monthly and was doubly excited when I did stuff in the game that was also in the comic. You can read the comic in its entirety here if you’re curious (bless you, Internet!).

Other than the memory of the comic, my strongest memory is definitely the Thieves’ Town dungeon – the fourth dungeon of the Dark World. In the dungeon you find a surprisingly empty boss chamber and one of the Maidens you’re supposed to rescue chained up inside a cell deeper in the dungeon. After bombing a higher floor and allowing sunlight into the boss chamber, you can lead the Maiden into the light only for it to reveal Blind the Thief – the dungeon’s boss and a minion of Ganon. Unlike most of the other bosses in the game which are monsters or otherwise uncommunicative and just sort of attack Link regardless, Blind the Thief having a small personality and trying to trick Link always stuck out to me as one of my favorite bosses/enemies of the entire series. Figuring out how to reveal the fake Maiden’s true identity was one of the highlights of my first playthrough of this game and I’ll always rank Thieves’ Town highly in terms of Zelda dungeons because of it.

Why It’s #5:

Like I previously stated for Tetris Attack, this game is interchangeable in the #4-#6 spots. It will always be my favorite Zelda game and I don’t think the childlike wonder of discovering the Dark World for the first time can ever be replicated as a cynical adult now, no matter how fun the gameplay is. No other game has ever reached the highs of finding useful tools/weapons and then being able to use them in fun/useful ways across a vast open world – too much of big, open world gaming is highly directed nowadays. Give me the variety of a staff that creates blocks, a rod that shoots ice, and a medallion that makes earthquakes and I’m a happy camper. Also a hookshot. There must be a hookshot.

Top 100 Games of All-Time: #6

Tetris Attack

Release Date: August 11, 1996

Platform Played On: SNES

2018 Placement: #5 (-1)

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What It Is:

A match-3-ish competitive puzzle game released many years before Bejeweled, Tetris Attack is a game where you have to switch around and match shapes to clear out your area which then sends large blocks to your opponent’s side to mess with them. The larger the combo when you match, the bigger the headache for your opponent. Released in Japan as Panel de Pon with fairy characters, the game was renamed Tetris Attack and redone with characters from Yoshi’s Island for Western audiences (despite the game not being similar to Tetris at all aside from the timed puzzle nature). I personally like the revision – the Yoshi’s Island characters gave the game much more personality to me.

It’s a pretty straightforward type of game – there’s a campaign mode where you fight each character before making your way through Bowser’s henchmen before taking on the big turtle himself. But the real fun from the game comes from the local play and demolishing your friends over and over no matter how hard they try to beat you.

🙂

Why It’s Important To Me:

This was one of the first (if not the first) head-to-head multiplayer games that I enjoyed playing against my friends. Generally, I’m not a huge competition-based gamer as is evidenced by most of my top 100 list being solo games or games where you play co-op/working with your friends. But I was a Tetris Attack savant when I was younger. I was unbeatable. Friends tried and most gave up eventually and wouldn’t play with me anymore because it was not fun for them. And that’s okay. I still loved the game.

There is also, of course, the music. God, the music in this game is just incredible. Probably top 10 favorite soundtracks if I’m being honest with myself – yes it holds up against stuff like Persona 5 and Final Fantasy 7, I’m that serious about it. I think my #1 favorite track is the ice world theme for Bumpty. Then there’s Gargantuan Blargg’s theme in the lava world. And the theme for the main Bowser minions is also rockin’. Then of course every stage theme has a frantic escalation when your blocks reach critical mass where the music cranks up to 11. My personal favorite is the change from Poochy’s regular theme to his critical theme – it goes from this nice, peaceful, chill vibe to holy shit my world is burning. It’s fantastic.

My Strongest Memory:

So aside from all the good times I had smushing my friends into paste while playing this game, there was one particular memory of mine that has never left my brain. One day, me and my friend were playing a versus match on the Bowser stage and the Koopa King’s music was playing. Another friend of ours arrived and as he entered the room, he heard the music playing and immediately said “What IS this, field day at the old folks’ home?”

Me and my friend burst out laughing and I have not been able to remove that description of the music from my brain no matter how hard I’ve tried. It became a minor inside joke whenever this game was played and while it’s likely faded from all my other friends’ minds at this point, this memory and the game are forever intertwined to me. I literally cannot think about Tetris Attack without reflexively thinking about field day at the old folks’ home.

Why It’s #6:

So games #4-#6 of my top 100 are basically in an ever-rotating order. At any given time any of these three could be #6 or #4. The dice rolled on this one being #6 because it’s been the longest since I’ve played it. Tetris Attack is my favorite puzzle game and my favorite competitive multiplayer game – partly because I was so good at it and mostly because of the music. Yes, the original Tetris also has legendary music but to a young me this game’s themes were on another level. It also helped that I loved Super Mario World 2 as well so all the random enemies getting extra characterization in this game didn’t hurt. I will never not preach the good word of Panel de Tetris Attack.

Top 100 Games of All-Time: #7

XCOM 2

Release Date: February 5, 2016

Platform Played On: PC/PS4

2018 Placement: #14 (+7)

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What It Is:

The original XCOM was released in 1994 and was a crazy hard (and sometimes borderline unfair) strategy game about saving the world from an alien invasion. The series was rebooted in 2012 with XCOM: Enemy Unknown and that game rocketed to the top of my list as one of my favorite strategy games ever. And yet…as you have seen so far, it is not in my top 100? Why is that?

Because its sequel, XCOM 2, blew it out of the water for me in every way, to the point that I don’t feel the need to play it anymore because XCOM 2 is the ultimate itch scratcher.

This game is one of my favorites because it is a direct sequel and goes in a completely novel direction for the series (and games in general): the bad end is canon. You failed to stop the invasion in Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 starts off with the aliens in control of Earth. Instead of being a world government offshoot tasked with defending us from UFOs, you’re a ragtag rebellion trying to fight against the alien takeover with what resources you have left.

This adds a new layer of strategy to the game – missions often start in infiltration mode where the enemies are unaware of your presence, which allows you to set up a brutal first attack ambush to clear out enemies and give yourself a strong position. But like all XCOM games, you live and die by the percentages and sometimes your surefire start descends directly into chaos almost immediately. It’s a blast from start to finish and easily cemented itself as my favorite strategy game of all-time.

Why It’s Important To Me:

I can talk a lot about the bits and bobs and doodads of this game – the different classes having fun and unique abilities, the War of the Chosen expansion adding even cooler special troops (Templar for life!), the base management between missions being fun and manageable without becoming too overwhelming. But the main reason I adore this game is because I get to create my own stories within the world. You can design and customize all your troops – I name them after friends, after favorite characters, or sometimes just leave them as is because the random generation has personality.

And then as you play a full game, these troops become your storytellers. With my podcast partner I’ve retold many stories of XCOM 2 playthroughs where there were running stories between characters – how one person got captured and we had to go rescue him, only for his bonded partner to die sacrificing himself to get the prisoner of war to safety. One game my expy character of MYSELF was mind controlled at the very end of an hour-long mission, and I had the impossible decision of killing myself to complete it or running the risk of losing more people and possibly failing the entire mission after so much work. (I chose to murder myself.) And sometimes there’s happy accidents, like the time I accidentally had a character kick down a door and break concealment, and then RP’d the entire rest of the game with him kicking down doors any time he could because he didn’t give a fuck.

These personalized adventures are what make XCOM 2 a game I will always treasure. Sure, the strategy is great. But no other game gives me this.

My Strongest Memory:

So outside of the anecdotes I already spoke about, I have to make sure you understand how much I love this game. Because this game did not want me to love it. It was originally released on PC only without any indication of coming to consoles, so I upgraded my PC to bare minimum requirements to play it on launch day. It was slow, blurry, buggy, took forever to load, the animation quality sucked, and I fought like hell with outdated hardware to play it but I did and got all the way to the end even though my experience was more than suboptimal.

It came out on PS4 later that year and I bought it again and started a new campaign and played it for a while. It was still buggy but a much better experience.

And then the War of the Chosen expansion came out and I got it on console and started a new campaign on Commander Ironman from the beginning. And good fucking lord that game fought me. I had crashes. I had gamebreaking bugs. I had a game crash that was so hard it CORRUPTED MY SAVE FILE. TWICE. I had to redownload my playthrough from the cloud and lost a month of in-game time and mission completions. XCOM 2 is an unforgiving game but it was like the game itself was trying to break me. But I completed it.

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According to PSNProfiles it’s the rarest trophy I’ve ever achieved. It’s the trophy I’m most proud of in my entire collection anyway, because I fought software, hardware, aliens, humans, everything to finish that playthrough. And I will never forget it.

Why It’s #7:

XCOM 2 holds the highest spot for a “modern” game in my top 100. It is my favorite game of the “new” era of video games. Not to spoil anything, but the final 6 all were released before the year 2000. Yeah I’m that kinda person. But I want to be clear that this being here is no joke. For a long time my top 10 was immutable. XCOM 2 (and FF7R) making the top 10 are achievements on their own. And XCOM 2, quite frankly, has a shot at eventually breaking the top 5 with more time. I can always start a new playthrough of XCOM 2 because it has infinite possibilities in its stories to me. Other games I will shelve at the first sign of bugs or hardship. But even at my most frustrated I wouldn’t ever let this game beat me. That’s my XCOM 2 guarantee.

Atma’s Gameplay – April 3, 2023

So I was about to write some thoughts about games I’ve been playing in a tweet on Twitter, and I realized that Twitter has become a complete shitshow. Why am I using my hard-earned time and creative thought on a website that is currently a trash fire burning in a dumpster on fire that is in another dumpster that is also on fire, when I could write a thing on my own website? I pay for this website! Why don’t I use it more frequently?

Anyway, this is going to be pretty freeform. I’m going to try to get back into the habit of writing on here regularly, so this has no format, no structure, no real cohesive point. I’m just putting thoughts to paper (or digital screen, in this case) and sending them out into the world like little baby birds. Go free, my young thoughts, and eat a worm.

Continue reading “Atma’s Gameplay – April 3, 2023” →

Top 100 Games of All-Time: #8

Earthbound

Release Date: June 5, 1995

Platform Played On: SNES

2018 Placement: #7 (-1)

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What It Is:

Released in 1995, Earthbound was the sequel to a game called Mother, and while that game eventually did see a U.S. release, Earthbound was the first to see the western shore and became a huge hit (or a niche hit, depending on your viewpoint). It stars Ness, a young boy who goes on an adventure because an alien lands in his backyard. It’s quirky, it’s weird, and it’s really captivated. There weren’t many RPGs like it at the time: instead of a fantastical world with swords and demons and the like, you ride a bicycle, hit enemies with a baseball bat, and some of those enemies are hippies.

The game had its own weird humor that stood out from its contemporaries. But it also had a very strong plot that didn’t shy away from getting sad and philosophical. One minute you’ll be fighting a pile of vomit named Master Belch, the next you’ll be getting poignant advice from your mom or dad on a phone call. There are strange cults, policemen that arrest you for being a kid, and a nihilistic entity who wants to end everything. It’s a strange, strange game but it embraced its own style and because of it, it became one of the most memorable RPGs ever made.

Why It’s Important To Me:

As I mentioned in the Super Mario RPG entry, Earthbound was one of the first RPGs I ever played. I honestly can’t remember which of these two came first, but this game definitely deserves partial credit for getting me into the JRPG genre. I can also say the off-beat humor of this game was a definite influence of my own humor and creativity. Some of the boss designs are super memorable, even to this day: the Carbon Dog to Diamond Dog evolution, the simplicity of the Kraken design, that blasted New Age Retro Hippie. This is a game that oozes style from its pores, even in simpler 16-bit graphic times.

Of course, the music was another high point of the game. The hippie’s theme is just a classic battle track. The hauntingly eerie melancholy of the Sanctuary Guardians theme is another great song. As I keep saying, the game just has personality, and each boss theme just adds more on top of it: exhibit A, the oddly invigorating bop that is the Kraken’s theme. And of course, I’m not going to forget the all-timer of a final boss music.

My Strongest Memory:

Just to add to how bizarre this game was, one of the strongest memories I have of this game is not of the game, but of a smell. The strategy guide for Earthbound came with these scratch-and-sniff pages for different enemies and characters in the game. One of them was a monkey that smelled like the sweetest banana you’ve ever smelled. And then one was Carbon Dog and I still to this day cannot describe what it smelled like other than strange. It was like smelling spicy hotness, but with no actual good flavoring. Just…heat. It was weird as hell.

But they say olfactory sense triggers memories and let me tell you, I’ve never forgotten Earthbound’s scratch and sniff stickers. It’s the kind of thing that sticks with you. It’s great that the game was also fantastic, but the ad campaign for the game (“This game stinks”) was a weird one. Still, those stickers left an impression. Even just thinking about those odors is making me have trouble with coherent sentences and arguments.

Why It’s #8:

Now that the gaming library of RPGs has expanded to all kinds of types – fantasy, sci-fi, modern, western, vampire, etc. – it’s easy to forget that an RPG starring random kids that uses everyday stuff like baseball bats was a big departure from the norm at the time. But the game’s irreverence and willingness to stand out from everyone else was a big part of its charm to me. Even in the modern landscape where games have tried to capture Earthbound’s vibes, there hasn’t really been any RPG that’s truly succeeded. It’s a master-class of a game and not easily replicated. And I love it.