April 1, 2008 - Welcome to IGN Retro's new weekly countdown of the strange, silliest, and best moments in classic gaming: Top 10 Tuesday. But don't let that "top" part lull you -- we'll point out just as much infamy on these lists as we do the good stuff.
Many hardcore gamers regard the Super Nintendo as one of the best videogame systems ever. Ev-ah! To that kind of hyperbole, IGN Retro says: Pish-posh. The SNES was a great system, but it is no Colecovision. It's no Vectrex. It's no TurboGrafx-16. All systems the refuge of true hardcore gamers. That's not to say there aren't a few good games for the SNES. But no system since the Atari 2600 has hosted so much shovelware as the SNES. And it's time we called out some of the worst offenders on this system that the hardcore crowd loves to defend to the death on message boards 'round the Intertron 3000.
| 10) Mario Kart |
| As much as we love Double Dash!! around these here parts, 7.9 is far too generous for the game that kicked off not only the series, but also inspired a host of lame imitators starring mascots like Sonic and Crash. The Mode 7 visuals are severely over-rated. Rubberband AI to keep the action frantic? Thanks, but no thanks. If I have a clear lead for 6 laps, let me win the damn race. If you want a good example of a 16-bit racer, you are better off checking out Battle OutRun on the Genesis. Now that's playing with power. |
| 9) Star Fox |
| Perhaps one of Nintendo's most greivous sins is introducing the world to Slippy. Slippy is a nightmare that speaks. When you close your eyes, he is right there, taunting you from the backs of your closed lids. His voice is the sound of the earth cracking open just as the four horsemen visit plague and pestilence on humankind. He is the offspring of the Whore of Babylon. Die, Slippy, die. |
| 8) Super Castlevania IV |
| Remember how cool the idea of Simon Belmont in 16-bit sounded? Thanks, Konami, for smashing dreams with this boring, predictable platformer that serves only as an excuse to show off that you know how to work those Mode 7 whatevers inside the SNES. Ooh, rotating backdrops. Oh, and nice flute solo. Yeah, nothing inspires dread like Jethro Tull run through the MIDI machine. Maybe next time you can scare me with some steel drums? |
| 7) Super Mario RPG |
| In the history of game company mash-ups, Super Mario RPG ranks as one of the worst -- surely only to be topped by Sega and BioWare hooking up to make a Sonic RPG. Square was already trafficking in ineffective heroes long before they took on Mario and his crew. Marrying Mario with some boring turn-based RPG mechanics already ground into the dirt by Square was a bad enough jumping off point, but a lead villain named Smithy? No. No. No. |
| 6) ActRaiser |
| Lest the Enix half of the Square Enix marriage feel left out, we need to point out how inferior ActRaiser was to its sequel, the aptly-named ActRaiser 2. All those strategy, city-building stages that break up iffy platforming scenes? Thankfully, they were ripped out for the sequel. And I like good chiptunes as much as the next gamer, but the ActRaiser soundtrack is so overwrought and overrated. You can download this one from the Virtual Console and perhaps you should, just to see how wrong those so-called hardcore gamers get it every once in a while. |
| 5) Final Fantasy III |
| Final Fantasy is neither final, nor a fantasy. Discuss. And discuss it somewhere else, because gushing over this alleged landmark RPG is getting old. |
| 4) Super Metroid |
| Only one of the most overrated games on the SNES, Super Metroid is an exercise in patience. Backtracking for three minutes in your house to find your car keys is not fun. Backtracking for 10 hours in some space complex is even worse. And Ripley is the name for the big monster? Somebody thought we'd never draw the parallel to "Aliens?" I'd like to believe that. Or not. |
| 3) Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island |
| One of the few times when the sequel far outstrips the original game. And we're not saying Yoshi's Island is better than the first Super Mario World. We're talking about how superior Yoshi's Story on the Nintendo 64 is to this cookie-cutter platformer starring a bunch of subservient dinosaur babysitters. Collecting melons is so much better than chasing down Mario as a screaming brat. Seriously. |
| 2) Chrono Trigger |
| Let there be no doubt, listening to two nerds slobber over this game is one of the worst ways to spend an hour waiting to get into PAX. Supposedly, this game has something like 14 different endings, but the only one we liked was the black screen you saw when ripping the cart out of the SNES. Also, Frog? Really. Couldn't come up with a better name than Frog? Oh, a robot named Robo? Did the living tree hero named Leafy somehow get left out? |
| 1) The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past |
| Such a tragedy to listen to gamers harp on and on about this game. Big overworld, light and dark worlds, blah blah blah. When you have to pull some trick like light and dark worlds to double the real estate in your game, that's not clever. That's lazy. Why couldn't Nintendo just make a direct sequel to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link? This hero was meant to side-scroll, not mamby about from a top-down view. Although, the bunnies were cool. You really cannot take that away from Link to the Past. |
source : http://retro.ign.com/articles/863/863612p1.html
Comments