My Favourite Titles by System

Every console has that one killer app that defines it. Everybody can remember the one game that sticks out for every system that they have played on, the one game that they played more than any other. For this post I have decided to list some of my most memorable games for each console, the few that, for me, define the very system that they are played on. Expect a lot of subjectivity, a lot of opinion, and a lot of geeking out.

Mega Drive: Sonic the Hedgehog 2

My first introduction to gaming as a medium was through SEGA’s 16-bit effort, the Mega Drive, or as it was named in the States, the SEGA Genesis. One of the first true ‘console wars’ that people can remember was fought between this console and Nintendo’s powerhouse, the SNES. Naturally, the Mega Drive had a powerful influence on me, as it was my first foray into gaming.

The one most impactful game series on this console for me, and I suspect many others, was Sonic the Hedgehog. A platforming blast of speed and bright colours, with a cool blue mascot to boot, Sonic saw his heyday in the Mega Drive era where he was introduced. For me, however, the big game that I played the most with my first ever console was Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was just that bit more colourful, that bit more endearing, and that bit more well-designed than its predecessor. It was the true kind of sequel that all should aspire for; the one that improved and iterated, and genuinely felt like a true improvement over the first game. Graphically, the colours popped more on Sonic’s second outing, leading to greater stage variety and a better sense of identity and adventure to the game. Every stage felt unique and eye-popping, and each one had its own unique flavour that was backed up by excellent musical work. The addition of a spin-dash mechanically added a lot to the game, meaning that players would have a quick way to gather momentum. The addition of a ‘sidekick’ character in Tails was enjoyable, remembering that this was in a time when a new character in a Sonic game was something fresh and interesting.

Even though Sonic 1 may have started the series, and Sonic 3 may be the better game with a better sense of progression and adventure, Sonic 2 hit just the right balance of accessibility to keep me coming back, even to this day.

PS1:

The next console that I was introduced to featured a massive jump from 16-bit, 2D graphics to polygonal 3D that offered bright new worlds that could be fully explored. The PS1 was a great system, especially for a wide variety of bright and enjoyable new titles that pushed the envelope of gaming. Sony can be credited with beginning the popularisation of gaming consoles, and this is in big part thanks to the huge variety of excellent titles on offer. Honourable mentions to Crash Bandicoot, Metal Gear Solid and some excellent Disney titles as well as the legendary Final Fantasy games.

For me, however, the title of most-important game has to go to Spyro 2. As a 3D collect-a-thon platformer, Spyro faced stiff competition from the likes of Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie. The original title, however, was an excellent game that blew me away. The beauty and design of the world on offer was astounding for its time and the collection of gems was addicting. One of the most important things, mechanically, that made this game stand out was the character abilities that came to Spyro. The use of charging was a great way to make quick progress searching a level, and the glide mechanic made for some interesting variants of platforming challenges. The character of Spyro was equal parts attitude and endearing.

For me, once again it was the second title in the series that offered the most fun gameplay. Being one of the very first games that I completed 100%, Spyro 2 holds a large place in my gamer heart. It was set in a bright and fantastic world called Avalar, and boasted a cast of colourful and enjoyable characters. Though Moneybags was somewhat of an annoyance, the overall menagerie of interesting people that I got to meet along the adventure made Spyro 2 stand out in my memory. The music was wonderful as was the design, I truly felt like I was on an adventure in some beautiful locales.

Spyro 2 was one of the first games that I truly became immersed, and as a game I have 100% completed, holds a huge amount of my attention when I think about the PS1 era. Thanks to recent Crash Bandicoot remakes, I am very hopeful that we will see a HD remake of the original Spyro Trilogy; this will definitely be on my Christmas wishlist!

N64: Banjo Kazooie

Though Mario 64 was a masterpiece that brought 3D gaming to the fore, and Ocarina of Time was another stroke of genius that to this day has been hard to top, for me the main game I played a lot on the Nintendo 64 was Banjo Kazooie. A bright, colourful 3D collectathon, this game was endearing in all the right ways. Like Spyro, Banjo comes from a place of design genius, where every locale feels unique and beautiful. Though not a title I played 100% at the time, I have since returned to the game with the Xbox 360 re-release and completed the game in its entirety, with no less enjoyment.

Graphically, Banjo one-upped Mario in every respect, as it did musically and with character designs. Perhaps the peak of 3D platformers, the theming of the title is wonderful. Like Spyro you meet a whole cast of quirky characters along your adventure and delving into each and every level felt like a mini-adventure in its own right, each one being its own sizeable sandbox of experimentation and exploration. Freezeezy Peak is a standout for best winter-themed level of all time.

SEGA Dreamcast: Sonic Adventure

The swansong of SEGA’s console efforts comes along with perhaps the most obvious of picks. Sonic Adventure was the biggest game on the console and the most important release for the system as a whole. I was mesmerised by this game, being a lifelong Sonic fan, and to see my hero rendered in 3D graphics, with full voice acting and a whole storyline was enchanting.

The game didn’t disappoint. Although many look back to Sonic Adventure with a critical eye, I am one of those that find enough nostalgia and enjoyment in the title to consider it one of my favourite games ever. The Casino Night level was among my favourites for the sheer level of interactivity and optional exploration (in particular I loved looking around the pirate ship area), not to mention the fun pinball levels. I particularly enjoyed Tails’ whole storyline; an endearing tale of a young side-kick learning to become independent from the hero he has been following all his life.

Each character in the game had their own tale to tell and this was perhaps what I found most interesting. Though I was essentially playing the game 6 times over, I really enjoyed being able to see each different perspective. In spite of some weak links, such as the Big the Cat segments, overall Sonic Adventure was a treat. A beautiful game with plenty of spectacle and plenty of replayability, with one of the best pet-raising simulators to come out in gaming (everybody loves Chao!).

2D And Aesthetics vs Graphics

3D graphics arguably first became mainstream with the fifth generation of gaming consoles, featuring among its lineup the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Graphics became a talking point for many games, and polygon counts a significant measurement of prowess. Pioneers of 3D gaming included Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie, which brought platforming, arguably the bread and butter of any major video game console at the time, into the next generation.

With a good thirteen years since the release of the first Sony Playstation, one could have been forgiven for thinking that with 3D graphics being achievable in most modern games for so long we would have seen the death of 2D graphics. Those old days of pixels would be looked back upon with a sad nostalgia where we would wonder how we ever could make anything out on such old technology.

Of course, many gamers know that this is definitely not the case. 2D gaming stands now as a stylistic choice rather than a limitation. Indie games are always coming out with pixel-styled graphics to pull us in on the charm of nostalgia. On top of this we have all kinds of video games where the gameplay is on a 2D plane including, yes, 2D platformers.

The reason for this is because, while graphical capabilities have multiplied, so too has the artistic merit of videogame creators. We’re no longer content with ever-more photo-realistic textures but we also want our games to have an identity, to have colour and to be aesthetically pleasing. Some may even argue that we want our games to be artful. One look at how beautiful Breath of the Wild looks, despite being on under-powered hardware, tells us all we need to know about the importance of aesthetics over graphical fidelity.

With that, the use of 2D graphics has become a valid creative choice with thematic and gameplay implications that have their own useful circumstances. Most platformers haven’t really benefited from the extra dimension, and have instead resorted to the collect-a-thon style gameplay touted by Banjo Kazooie many years ago. Instead, 2.5-D games, videogames with 2D gameplay but an extra layer of 3D graphics, seem to be stylish in the platform genre. Looking at Yoshi’s Woolly World, or New Super Mario Bros., it is clear to see why such a look would be charming. The use of the graphics in these games have helped towards creating a distinct visual style.

In 2017 we have Cuphead to look forward to; an interesting 2D platformer that uses modern-console capabilities to craft an eye-popping tribute to golden age animations. The levels look like they’re pulled right out of an old Disney cartoon and look stunning in motion. It seems that choosing to craft a 2D rather than a 3D experience was vital here to achieve the exact look and feel that the developers were going for artistically, and hopefully the end result will be enjoyable to play when it comes out later this year.

Don’t Starve is another example of a game that uses 2D graphics to its vast advantage to craft a cohesive visual narrative that is striking and interesting. Here the art is meant to evoke a kind of Tim Burton storybook style, with the bold black outlines and the creature designs themselves looking like something out of an Alice-in-Wonderland book. Oxygen Not Included, Klei’s next outing, looks to be utilizing a similiar art style but with more of a utilitarian Fallout Shelter overtone.

Instead of slowly going by the wayside as 3D capabilities have continued to evolve, the use of 2D gameplay has instead become an interesting and valid creative choice in gaming that a developer can use to great positive effect for their games.

It is interesting that the 2D style still hasn’t disappeared, and I think this shows that for all the graphical bombast that the latest and greatest modern titles throw at us, what is most important is the artistic choices in developing the game, and how the end result looks. We don’t need the next big graphical powerhouse with more skin pores per inch of character skin, what we do need as gamers is aesthetic; beautifully designed games made not with lofty eye-popping graphics in mind but instead made to look beautiful on their own merit. As console power hits the point of diminishing returns with graphical fidelity, we will begin to see more focus on the aesthetic and visual design rather than the power behind the game itself.

The Importance of Console Wars

Console wars are an unusual thing to me. So many years in gaming have been spent dividing people into camps based on their choice of console, and the conflict that happens as a result is so far over-the-top that it is comical to watch an internet forum as they debate the pros and cons of different black boxes that play games.

I used to struggle to see the reasoning behind console wars, but I do believe that a big part of why people are so emotionally heated over console choices is to do with buyer’s remorse; a feeling of negativity over spending a lot of money on a luxury product and the need to therefore justify the purchase to one’s self. Games consoles, with their prices frequently ranging in the plus-£200 bracket, are very expensive and difficult to justify as purchases. The need to reason with one’s self over such extravagant expenditure is probably one of the reasons why gamers become so emotionally-charged over their console; they are simply defending their choices, and given that so much money is seemingly at stake, it is understandable why such arguments occur.

Another reason why arguments occur is because gamers are unusually invested in one console over another. However, I don’t think that this investment is completely misguided; for example, if the PS4 absolutely destroyed the Xbox One in terms of sales and Microsoft decided as a result to completely discontinue support for their console, many gamers would be left with a useless black box with no official support that they have spent well over £200 to purchase.

But, I think that competition is a great thing in the games market, as in any other market. I appreciate that there are so many different brands involved in videogaming, from AMD and NVIDIA, to Xbox and PlayStation, this level of competition is good for the consumer, because it pushes these companies to do better. Competition, in general, means lower prices and better products.

This is why I think that the first console war that many gamers remember; that of SEGA Vs Nintendo, was so important to modern gaming. We, as a community, have much to thank Nintendo for, as they brought back consumer confidence in an industry thought dead and buried, and gifted us with many of the modern gamer tropes we see today. If you play a game, chances are that a Nintendo game influenced it somehow.

On the other hand, SEGA were seen as the dark horse of the 90’s, and had a goal of de-throning Nintendo from their position at the top of the gaming world. Many gamers recall a playground battle between SEGA kids and Nintendo kids, stemming mostly from which of the two consoles they got from their mothers. I didn’t experience such console animosity, but the 90’s were definitely the most iconic years for console wars.

What I think made SEGA so important to the story, however, was that they laid the foundations for consoles to come. Before the Mega Drive, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly over the console market. If you wanted to play video games, you either played on the PC (which has its own interesting history, especially in the UK), or you played Nintendo games. Then came the Mega Drive, and Sonic with it, and suddenly a console war began in earnest. Then after this came the PlayStation, and we all know how gaming history has gone on from there.

What I think that SEGA did that was so important, was show that somebody could challenge Nintendo. Suddenly, competing in the console market became viable. If Nintendo were the ones to bring back console gaming to the masses, SEGA were the ones that turned it into a true industry, with competing companies vying for consumer attention and dollars.

Console wars are very important, and while many gamers will shout at each other from across the Internet in flaming sessions of hatred over their choice of gaming black boxes, and many others will scoff at the former, the competition that is the reason behind all of this is very important to the industry. We should embrace how console wars have forced an arms race of sorts, meaning that companies are always trying to one-up each other and deliver the best entertainment possible in the hope that they will capture our hearts and earn dominance over gaming. We should also thank SEGA for their contribution in showing how viable it is to compete in a fledgling industry, and for shaping the modern gaming market that we know today.