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Greatest Game Ever …
My list of “Ten Games That Have Had Probably Way Too Much Influence On My Life” concludes with biggest of Kahunas …
No. 1: “John Madden Football” (1989)
The Game: Football. 11-on-11 football, with real player names, real player stats and even a “matchup analyzer,” which I pored over endlessly but never really knew what it meant.
It was the very first “Madden,” and by today’s standards, it might as well be cobbled together by stones and twigs. There were a few plays that always worked (I ran Brent Fullwood for well over 3,000 yards in a season of Green Bay Packer football) and it didn’t keep track of season stats.
But I loved it, and have never devoted as much time to a sports video game as I did to that.
What Was So Great About It: For a kid raised on Strat-o-Matic football (I played both sides for hours … the parents did, indeed, worry), this was such a step up from the original console versions of football that I can’t really put it into words.
I got around the “not keeping stats” thing by keeping track of the printed out records from each game I played (scheduling them myself).
It was also the first time I ever got “Maddened,” as I advanced to the Super Bowl with a one-loss regular season … only to face so many injuries along the offensive line that the computer started leaving gaps up there.
The result? The Cincinnati Bengals wiped me out — easily — to win the Lombardi Trophy.
That’s weird on so many levels, I can’t even deal with it appropriately.
But can you believe I remember all that? Oh, I do. I do very well, indeed.
Impact On The Rest Of Humanity: It’s really the title that’s launched a thousand consoles … as no new product is complete without a John Madden version of football playable on its circuits.
Last year, it also became the only official brand of football, as EA Sports snatched up the exclusive license from the NFL.
But nothing will ever improve on the sweetness of the original.
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Great Game No. 2: “Battlefield: 1942”
My list of “Ten Games That Have Had Probably Way Too Much Influence On My Life” continues …
No. 2: “Battlefield 1942” (2002)
The Game: A first-person shooter set in World War II was nothing new, even when “BF42” hit shelves three years ago. Neither was online multiplayer, with at times dozens of combatants fighting on teams and on their own.
But “BF” was my first real taste of these things, particularly the latter, and its nifty combination of deceptively simple gameplay, cool graphics, navigable server selection and multi-vehicular gameplay was a door that opened to the purest of timesuck experiences.
You’d look up at the clock, convinced it’d be something like 7:30, and it was midnight.
What Was So Great About It: Part of it was the community aspect of it. Part of it was the widely-varied map selections that each required different approaches to achieve consistent success.
Part of it was the joy of knowing some guy in Omaha was cursing your very name as you sniped his “Cpt.Dooglypants” avatar out of existence for the sixth straight time.
No way you could put a pricetag on that.
Impact On The Rest Of Humanity: Imitators lined up, and the game spawned a fantastic sequel that is, in many ways, vastly superior to the original.
But there’s nothing like your first time.
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No. 3: “GTA: Vice City”
My list of “Ten Games That Have Had Probably Way Too Much Influence On My Life” continues …
No. 3: “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” (2003)
The Game: Just out of stir and looking to make a name for yourself, you hit Vice City to do a small job and end up getting involved in all sorts of trouble, ranging from simple car theft to political scandals.
You might’ve heard a little bit about this game and the more recent installment in the series, “San Andreas,” which was also a great game but didn’t pack the wallop this entry did.
What Was So Great About It: It was like living a good, pulpy crime novel — or graphic novel, if you will — instead of just reading it. What the game lacked in realistic graphics and combat engines it more than made up in style, which struck the perfect balance between nihilistic satire and satiric nihilism. (Harder than it sounds, believe you me.)
It was also the first time I ever revisited a game about a year later, just cruising the streets, listening to the radio and remembering all the fun I’d had there. Yes, I was nostalgic for Vice City, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Forced to make room for saves in the new NHL games, I recently wiped out the massive files that contained my completed versions of both “Vice City” and “San Andreas.” It was a sad moment.
Impact On The Rest Of Humanity: Oh, I think people noticed. Some people even did some talking about the “San Andreas” entry.
Can’t wait for the next installment.
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Great Game No. 4: ‘Double Dragon’
With an entry more social event than video game, my list of “Ten Games That Have Had Probably Way Too Much Influence On My Life” continues … No. 4: “Double Dragon” (1985)
The Game: A street gang has swiped your girlfriend … or, well, somebody’s girlfriend … and you have to beat them all up in order to rescue her. You’re one of two fighters, brothers (?) Spike or Hammer, and you either go solo or team up to clear the levels. Controls were rudimentary, but it was cool being able to pick up items that were scattered about … a piece of pipe, a bull whip … to enhance your attack.
What Was So Great About It: It didn’t blaze trails so much, but I do remember this as one of the first “tag-up” arcade games I ever played. This happens, of course, when you have more than the two-player maximum and therefore work yourselves in when one of the active players gets killed off. The “killed-off” player then resumes his place in line until another opening is created, and so forth, until the game is either completed or everybody runs out of quarters.
You could easily drain 10 bucks each via this method.
My favorite part of this ritual was the challenge to keep yourself alive (and the game going) when everyone else had run out of change and one of the group had been dispatched to fetch more quarters. You’re not just playing for yourself at this point … you’re playing for all of us.
Impact On The Rest Of Humanity: It spawned numerous sequels, and I do remember it was one of the first of a score or so of similarly-styled game.
You also might remember the best-forgotten film of the same name, starring Scott Wolf and, yes, Alyssa Milano.
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Great Game No. 5: ‘Bard’s Tale’
My list of “Ten Games That Have Had Probably Way Too Much Influence On My Life” continues …
No. 5: “Tales of the Unknown Volume I: The Bard’s Tale” (1985)
The Game: This game, and the first couple of sequels it spawned, hit right around the time I went to college … and I recall it as the first game I ever wasted an entire night playing. While not speaking loads for my social life at the time, this fact nonetheless makes the game a trailblazer, even if it was basically just “Dungeons and Dragons” without the trademark.
My roommate James was even better at it than I. He had keystrokes memorized so he could travel from, say, guild headquarters to a specific room in a given labyrinth at light speed. I still had to wander around until I found what I was looking for.
What Was So Great About It: The graphics were cool, for the time, and I liked the effect of walking down city streets (a pseudo-3D effect). Why was it so addictive? I honestly can’t tell you anymore. But, oh, it was.
Impact On The Rest Of Humanity: The game’s got a pretty devoted following, enough so they re-introduced the franchise with an exceedingly lame new title earlier this year. I suspect, but never bothered confirming, that gamers tend to break into “Wizardry”/”Bard’s Tale” factions, a sort of “really big nerd” East Coast/West Coast rapper kinda thing.
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All you ever need to know about ‘Minesweeping’
It started innocently enough with a screenshot from a Joystiq entry showing what the next generation of “Minesweeping” will look like when the next Windows is rolled out.
That led to a perusal of some of the amusing comments below … which led directly to the site “Planet Minesweeper,” which is one of those “mayhap they take these things too seriously” kinda sites.
Personal favorite part of the site: the “before starting” selection of tips to maximize your “Minesweeping” score:
Put a finger of your left hand (example the index finger) on the F2 key (to form ’ New Part ‘) and the other hand on the mouse.
Provide yourself with a Mouse, with a grand ‘M’. A great Mouse. Especially not a Microsoft IntelliEye 1st generation, which is an anti-record mouse (I’ve alas done this mistake, also repaired…) All name-brand mouses, and also Microsoft IntelliEye 2nd generation are good for minesweeper.
Release the wire of your mouse to leave it free for movement. Nothing is more infuriating than missing a record because of the wire… Maybe the solution is a wireless mouse.
And, perhaps the most vital piece of advice:
You must plan a time period, when nobody and nothing can distract you
Considering most people play this game at work, that one’s usually covered.
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Nintendo unveils revolutionary controller
In case you missed it, Nintendo rolled out the controllers for its upcoming Revolution console and its design is, well, revolutionary.
Mario’s bosses showed off the new, motion-sensitive, one-handed controller to crowds at the Tokyo Game Show. Since it can detect how it’s moved, you can use it like a sword, bat or conductor’s baton.
Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata said the resemblence to a TV remote control was no coincidence:
“Its intuitive form allows both experienced and new gamers to stand on the same starting line,” he said during his keynote address at the show.
So if you’re intimidated by game controllers — a concept I would’ve laughed off a few years ago, but understand more and more with each passing generation of console — it’s like seeing a familiar friend.
For those of us who can’t imagine a controller without a stick on it, you can relax … there’s an adapter that plugs into the base of the main controller:
The Revolution will be released some time in 2006.
Microsoft will release the Xbox 360, the first “next generation” console, on Nov. 22.
No date has been set for Sony’s Playstation 3.
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Great Game No. 6: ‘Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2’
My list of “Ten Games That Have Had Probably Way Too Much Influence On My Life” continues …
No. 6: “Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2” (1991)
The Game: One of the first honest-to-God hockey sims, I bought this for my PC and lost about six months of my life to it. Graphically, it wasn’t so great, but they really nailed the feel of the team game, to the point that running plays actually worked … a phenomenon that went away from video hockey games shortly thereafter, not to return until the heyday of the PS2 and Xbox.
As memory serves, NHL rosters were available on a different disk, but I went ahead and input them manually, using a copy of “Hockey Scouting Report 1991-1992” to determine each player’s ratings. (Had I mentioned 1991 was marked by a brief period of unemployment for me?)
What Was So Great About It: Again, it was the first hockey simulation I played that put more of an emphasis on strategy than on mashing buttons (or winning fights).
Creating teams was also super-easy. I even added my favorite minor league team, the Columbus Chill, to the game — complete with team colors, player names and numbers. (Unemployed, remember?)
Impact On The Rest Of Humanity: I don’t think that much. It’s not one I see tossed about much, even among the harder-core sports gamers. The Great One has leant his name to a series of games, but I never enjoyed another as much as this one.
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ESPN Fantasy Football crashes
The verdict’s in on ESPN’s revamped fantasy football engine: It stinks.
How bad does it stink? Well, they followed up a rocky preseason (live drafts were almost universally tainted by severe technical glitches) with a flat-out terrible first week (crashing steadily all weekend, no live updates for many who had paid for the service, etc.) culminating in the page being entirely down for pretty much the entire day Tuesday, the day folks traditionally turn up to see if they … oh, I dunno … won or not. (Needless to say, I did win, but that’s beside the point.)
ESPN even took the radical measure (for them) of posting an apology and making … well, you can’t call them promises, more like “hopeful statements” … that things will improve.
Our aim is to have our Fantasy Football application operating normally for this Sunday’s games. We will be updating you on our progress and resolution.
Again we appreciate that you are playing Fantasy Football with us and we will do everything possible to make this a terrific experience for you this season.
Some aren’t waiting around to find out. One league I’m in (“The Third Graders”) is trying to replicate everything over to Yahoo’s equally free fantasy site.
It’s a shame, though. I’ve been in ESPN fantasy leagues since 1996, and I hate to see ’em break up on the rocks like this. I’m still waiting to see if they’re even gonna attempt to field their Fantasy Hockey games this year. They claim they are, but in light of the difficulty surrounding football, who knows?
I just wish they’d have spent more time and money concentrating on the final football product than the annoying “fantasy girl” commercials they used to promote it.
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Great Game No. 7: “Karate Champ”
What’s this about? Explanation here.
My list of “Ten Games That Have Had Probably Way Too Much Influence On My Life” continues …
No. 7: “Karate Champ” (1984)
The Game: Man faces man in this great-grandaddy of “Mortal Kombat” and “Tekken.”
Two joysticks … one controlling your body and the other the form of attack, gave you a few dozen options during the fight. Winning two out of three moved you along the tournament ladder … with the background scenery changing as you toured the world, winning matches.
Periodic interludes challenged you to break objects or survive an attack by a raging bull.
What Was So Great About It: The simplicity of the game design made it easy to start out and loads of fun to play against your friends. The underlying complexity of it and the rapidly learning AI, though, kept it challenging. For example, this guy is blocking all my attacks. Now, I have to do a sommersault over his head and kick him from behind. (Man, I loved doing that.)
Impact On The Rest Of Humanity: The game’s basic design — though heavily adapted and improved upon — is essentially the same as the fighter games of today. Who knew?
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Latest comments
Oh man, I hope Baldur's Gate II is going to be on your Great Game list. It's the five year anniversary and everything!
... read the full comment by Sarah Wark | Comment on Great Game No. 5: 'Bard's Tale' Read Great Game No. 5: 'Bard's Tale'
Yep, I cannot say I am surprised by the failure of ESPN and their STUPID new system. I hosted a FF league on their site for six years and was happy to pay for it, as the they always have *the best* fantasy analysis, hands down. This year when I went back
... read the full comment by Robin | Comment on ESPN Fantasy Football crashes Read ESPN Fantasy Football crashes
Of course they're whining- they're Steelers' fans!
Who Dey!
Pat In Austin
... read the full comment by Patrick | Comment on Steeler fans whining again . . . Read Steeler fans whining again . . .
How about "Sopranos?" Or even "Godfather" if EA wants to expand on its franchise.
Work you way up from thug, to lieutenant to Capo. Might even be able to work some gambling stuff (poker?) in there to keep it interesting. Earn in-game money, then
... read the full comment by tdt | Comment on LOTR, Trek and Pirates go MMORPG Read LOTR, Trek and Pirates go MMORPG
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