Post by Woo on Feb 25, 2010 23:37:21 GMT -1
70. Civilization II
Create a civilization and rule it however you see it from a noble king to a tyrannical dictator. Tyrannical dictator? Yep, same here.
This legendary PC simulation (ranked the 3rd greatest game ever by IGN in 2007) hit the PSone in 1999 and surprisingly survived the porting process intact. Just like the original this is a turn-based strategy game that spans 6000 years (starting with 4000BC!) with victory being claimed when you either eliminate all of your rival civilizations or make it all the way to 2020 and win the space race by being the first launch a rocket to Alpha Centauri.
Of course if you want to get that far you need to chose your civilization from the 21 empires available including the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and even the Celts, Vikings and Zulu to name but a few. With your choice made you then have to develop your nation and take control of literally everything from helping your followers learn the alphabet to how much tax the citizens should be paying. Of course you won’t have it all your own way as there will be up to seven rival empires also vying to take over the globe. Whether to go to war with them, call peace with them, or align yourself with them and then going to war against them will be crucial to victory. If all that sounds a bit complicated or dull it shouldn’t as bar the on-screen text which is harder to read that ancient hieroglyphics it isn’t too difficult to pick up and there is a great sense of humour here too. Be warned though, one save game takes up a whooping 10 memory card slots!
69. Dead or Alive
‘Bouncing Boobs On/Off‘?
The Dead Or Alive series while having lots of loyal fans it frequently panned for two reasons. First of all many claim that it’s gameplay is a poor copy of Virtua Fighter’s and secondly for the voyeuristic treatment of it’s female characters and both complaints are justified. Lets just get to the girls right away as that is what Dead or Alive is most famous for and stating, after all they eventually went right-ahead and scrapped the fighting stuff (it just got in the way after all!) and featured all the girls in a volleyball game, which was just an excuse to feature the women practically nude and get it past the censors. In fact these days stating that you like Dead or Alive for it’s fighting mechanics seems as laughable as saying that you buy Playboy to read the articles and even on the PSone with it’s blocky graphics the game makes it’s intentions known with Tina, Kasumi and co. being victim to quite laughable bouncing animations. So much so in fact that there really is a ‘Bouncing Boob On/Off’ option in the menu!
Now getting back to the Virtua Fighter complaint. Yes there are similarities and Virtua Fighter was acknowledged by the creators of the game to be a big influence, but if you’re going to copy stuff from other gamers it might as well be from the best. Besides there is no Virtua Fighter on the PSone so this really was the next best thing for owners of Sony’s little grey box. (Rather amusing how the Virtua Fighter was eventually released on the PS2 while Temco decided to switch over to Microsoft, rather childishly in my opinion, after Dead or Alive 2 didn’t garner as much attention as, what is in my opinion, the superior Tekken Tag Tournament).
Anyway while Tekken’s gameplay is all about juggling and learning 10 hit combos (on the PS1 era at least) Dead or Alive’s gameplay hook was it’s excellent counter system, which is something Namco’s flagship series didn’t really attempt to do for years. There are also several alternate costumes to be unlocked for each character after completing the game (after thing Namco nabbed) and the explosions that occur whenever a character hit’s the floor in an out-of-bounds section aren’t too dissimilar to Tekken 6’s Bound system either. So Dead or Alive was rather ahead of it’s time and the fighting is still as good now as it was then and it’s perhaps because of that reason that DOA game still holds up and should be remembered and not because of the TNA.
68. Fifa 99
Check this out now, the funk soul brother.
As I write this EA Sports real football sim is once again the best there is, but for a whole decade they were the proverbial Manchester City to Konami’s Manchester United- i.e. 2nd best. Now while Konami had already released the excellent ISS Pro and were about to unleash the sublime ISS Pro 98, Fifa 99 was still in with a chance of taking the Premiership title and this was really the last genuine time you could say that for ten years.
The Fatboy Slim soundtrack wasn’t the only new feature included here. The graphics were vastly improved over 98’s and this was the first in the series to have players of different sizes. There was also the option to create custom cups and tournaments and there was a nice feature called the European Dream league, which played out like a simpler version of Pro Evolution’s Master League. Next year’s Fifa was the first to include licensed kits and liveries, which ended up being the series’ main selling point to many as ISS evolved into the all conquering Pro Evolution, and the series plunged into a more arcade type affair. Even the cover stars got worse! Dennis Bergkamp > Sol Campbell! If this had included Fifa 98’s amazing indoor football mini game and it’s theme tune, Song 2 by Blur, it could have cracked the top 50!
67. Fear Effect
The best looking game on the console.
The original Fear Effect begins with an opening video being voiced over by Wi-Ming Lam, the daughter of a rich businessman, who has run away from her home in her quest to discover what she describes as the purest emotion of all- pain. “I have never experienced pain and I so wanted to feel it now” she says while the credits roll on-screen and Lam continues with “I wasn’t disappointed” as we see her throat being cut. It’s a brilliant introduction to the game, one which leaves you wanting to know to know just what happened and it even manages to out-cinema Hideo Kojima!
The cutscene then resumes and we go back in time 24 hours and get to see two of our three main characters, Glas and Hanna, who are flying on a space craft discuss the disappearance of our narrator and want to find her. Not to rescue her however, but so they can extort money of her concerned Father. It’s during this video that we get to see the game’s first location, a futuristic cell-shaded Blade Runner inspired Neo-Hong Kong and it looks beautiful. The spaceship then lands and you’ll find yourself staring at the screen waiting. And waiting…. Then after a while you realize two thing- 1) That the video has ended and seamlessly and 2) That Fear Effect really does look that good.
I know praising the graphics of a PSone game may seem a little redundant these days, but honestly Fear Effect could quite easily pass itself off as an early PS2 title and nobody would question it. It’s not just the graphics that shine here however, though if it were it may still have made the top 100 on them alone, but the plot is also very well told across through three perspectives and spanning four discs, although I should point out that despite four discs the game is very short. However it’s not the absent of the lengthy plot that is the main problem, oh no! You see Fear Effect is clearly inspired by a lot of films such as Blade Runner, The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, Akira and John Woo, but it also borrows ideas from games too, mainly Resident Evil. Now Resident Evil is a fantastic series and there is a lot of good ideas in there to pay homage (i.e. rip-off), but it’s control scheme is not one of those things. It’s just horribly awkward trying to make your character walk around corners and while it’s passable against slow moving zombies it’s unforgivable against soldiers with weapons and that’s the reason why it doesn’t get any higher.
66. Theme Hospital
“Patients are reminded not to die in the corridor.”
Theme Hospital has been on and off this list more than any other game here. It’s not because I questioned the quality of it, it’s just that I wasn’t sure what Theme game to include. Theme Park holds the nostalgia card for me as it was one of the favourite games from my youth and who doesn’t want to build their own amusement park? Then there is it’s sequel Theme Park World, which may be even better than the original. But in the end I went with Theme Hospital? Why, well it just tickles my funny-bone.
Humour isn’t something videogames do well all too often, just go back to the start of this countdown to read about Team Buddies to see proof of that, but Theme Hospital is a different story. From it’s snaky receptionists telling patients to refrain from kicking the bucket in the hallways to the various diseases such as Chronic Nosehair and Third Degree Sideburns. Even the treatments are hilarious/ Bloaty Head (which is where the patients head is twice the normal size and is according to the game caused by sniffing cheese) for instance is cured by the doctor popping the patients head with a needle and then re-inflating it to the correct size. Theme Hospital is a joy to play and I’d prescribe it to anybody.
65. Bust A Groove
PaRappa the Rapper on a night out.
Describing Bust A Groove is very simple- it’s just like PaRappa the Rapper. However while PaRappa is a charming tale about how a little self-belief can help any rapping dog win the affections of the sunflower of his choice, Bust A Move is a surreal mix between a music game and a beat-em-um. If you like dancing games, but don’t want to look like a tit on a dance mat and embarrassing yourself then this is the game for you! Oh and if you also enjoy games that are a little bit ‘out there’ then you’ll love this as it’s proper bonkers…
Just read some of the bios for the characters to see evidence of that such as 70’s Motown inspired Pinky Diamond- ‘She is a stripper, fortune-teller, a professional contract killer, ad she does hair. It’s no wonder she’s so weird. She has the power to se into you lover’s heart and claims to know you better than you know yourself. Your secrets are nowhere being close to safe near her!’ So naturally she ends up in a dancing game. Seriously the cast of Tekken must read that and think “WTF?”. Even the kangaroos and bears, and they can’t even read. Ignoring all the craziness though you’ll find an excellent dancing game here with a great two-player mode too, which is something PaRappa does not have. Like a real night out you might be reluctant to dance at first, but once you get into it you won’t want to stop. Plus you get to do it from the comfort of your sofa and you don’t have to cope with a hangover the next morning.
64. Speed Freaks
Forget about hopscotch and conkers Grandpa, kids these days all about karts!
Speed Freaks game hit the Playstation in the summer of 1999 and was the first go-kart game on the console and despite the many, many, that followed there is only one that tops this. Renamed Speed Punks when released in America for unknown reasons (perhaps the word ‘freaks’ wasn’t politically correct?), involves seven school children and their dog racing and fighting it out in order to reach the chequered flag first, with an extra three to unlock, over twenty four courses so there is plenty of longevity here and the graphics for it’s time were amongst the very best ever seen on the Playstation.
The racing itself is your standard karting fare with the usual power-ups which either shoot the person in front of you or leave obstacles on the track for those behind to fall victim to. The main hook of the game however is that every racer has a boost-bar which they can use to get an extra little bit of speed and trying to figure out where is best to use that is key to victory, well that and not being shot by missiles of course. Speed Freaks also had another feature which made it stand-out and that was a four-player split-screen mode. It may not sound like a huge deal, but it was one of the first games on the console to have that option. What made this game great however as that it allowed Playstation owners to look even more smug at N64 fans now that they had a game that rivalled, and perhaps even toppled Mario Kart from it’s perch.
63. LMA Manager 2001
“Eat My Goal!”
While Football Manager (formally Championship Manager) was the undefeated champion of the soccer management simulations on the PC in 2000 and wasn’t released on Sony’s console Playstation owners were still spoilt for choice when it came to the genre. The problem is that all of them, without exception, were awful. The first LMA Manager’s arrival then was as welcome as a new Russian billionaire owner. To start with LMA realized that it wasn’t a PC game and decided to ditch the ‘point-and-click’ interface that previously by most management games and instead used the shoulder buttons to quickly navigate through the menu screens. While the user friendly menus are nice, what won me over was that it allows you to actually watch the matches.
Okay so the graphics during the matches are more Sensible Soccer than Pro Evolution Soccer after years of playing Championship Manager and feeling cheated whenever I was reading the match reports and the CPU had scored a convenient last-minute winner this was a godsend. Rather than relying on stats and figures to see who is playing well/bad and whether your tactics were working, here you could actually see it with your own eyes. What’s more is that you could then watch excellent 3D highlights of your match afterwards and hear commentary from BBC’s own Alan Hanson.
Another nice thing about LMA is that the game is deep and gives you the ability to not only control tactics and signings but gives you the option to select training exercises, chose shirt sponsors and improvements to your stadium- the great thing about that is that you don’t have to and you can simply delegate the tasks you don’t want to onto a member of your staff while you continue your never-ending quest to try and sign Patrick Klivert from Barcelona. Lastly if you have a friend with the same game LMA allowed you to have a one-off friendly match where you can pit your two teams against each other to find out who really has the better team. Speaking of memory cards that is probably the games’ only fault as it takes up a massive fourteen memory card blocks to save a game! The long load times are another sour points, mainly due the annoyingly addictive song ‘Eat My Goal’ that plays while loading that will be stuck in your head for years…
62. Sheep, Dog ‘n’ Wolf
A rare Looney Tune game that ‘Aint a stinker’
A faithful recreation of the Looney Tune cartoons that involved Sam the Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf (cousin of Wile E. Coyote) who are work-mates at a farm. The trouble is that Sam’s job is to watch over a flock of sheep while Ralph’s job is to try abduct, and I assume eat, them from under Sam’s nose when he isn‘t looking or asleep. You of course play Ralph and it is therefore quite literally your job to try and capture the sheep. How do you do that? Well by using gadgets invented by the ACME company of course! What could possibly go wrong?…
The game starts when Ralph arrives home after a long day and begins when to relax when Daffy Duck bursts into his home and says that Ralph has been selected to take part in a gameshow which Daffy likes to call “Who Wants to Be a Sheep Stealer” or to give it the correct title ‘Sheep, Dog, ‘n’ Wolf’. So armed with ACME rockets, catapults and female sheep perfume (seriously) Ralph begins to abduct the woolly animals, in several Loony Tune inspired levels, all in the name of entertainment. The Loony Tune look isn’t just confined to the level design, SDnW really does feel like it takes place in the Warner Bros world for instance there is one moment where you are chasing the Road Runner and it runs into a tunnel…. Road Runner fans probably know what will happen next…. Yep, just like his more famous cousin Ralph Wolf follows him into the tunnel, but smacks straight into a wall.
There are also cameos of Porky, Sylvester, Bugs, Taz and the rest of the gang all show up too, some as guests in Daffy’s show, while others appear during the main storyline. Marvin the Martian for instance appears at a key point towards the end of the game and forces Ralph to undertake a new task while Gossamer is featured as a boss fight. It’s a brilliant title that is a combination of platformer and stealth genres and perhaps the only good Loony Tune game ever made. While Ralph and Sam are destined to punch-in to work every morning for eternity, you too will be playing this with equal regularity.
That’s All Folks.
61. Time Crisis
The G-Con .45, the most powerful lightgun in the world and will blow you head clean off…
Time Crisis is as corny as hell and simply awesome. The plot revolves around silent protagonist Richard Miller who is tasked to rescue the President of the fictional republic of Sercia daughter who has been kidnapped by the knife-wielding Sherudo and recurring Time Crisis antagonist, the impossibly-cool Wild Dog. The story is incredible simple clichéd and like a John Woo or Steven Seagal movie really just an excuse to get from one action set-piece to another.
The gameplay too is rather simple and boils down to one thing- everybody on the screen is bad and needs to die. That may sound like a complaint, but sometimes it’s such a relief to play something that doesn’t take itself too seriously had isn’t at all pretentious. The thing that separated this from other on-rail shooters when it was released at the time was the inclusion of a ‘hide’ button. Press the red buttons near the barrel of your G-Con 45 (or if you want to recreate that arcade feeling- the pedals from a steering wheel) and your character will hide behind the nearest placed object. Release the button and Richard pops out of cover allowing you to take pot shots at whoever falls into your gun’s sight.
However you won’t be able to hide for too long as there is a constant time limit which forces you to try and complete the levels as quickly as possible, or presumably Sherudo will kill the President’s daughter. this isn’t called ‘Time Crisis’ for nothing! However the real star here is not the ability to take cover, or indeed the main character, but it’s all about the gun itself, the superb G-Con 45. It’s accuracy is unrivalled amongst light guns and with the time constantly ticking down an accurate gun is essential. The only reason then this doesn’t blast it’s way into the top 60 then is because there is another similar game on this list that does the on-rail shooter thing a bit better. But Time Crisis is fantastic. So good in fact that I let my copy of the game and my gun to a friend over two years ago and haven’t had it back yet…
Create a civilization and rule it however you see it from a noble king to a tyrannical dictator. Tyrannical dictator? Yep, same here.
This legendary PC simulation (ranked the 3rd greatest game ever by IGN in 2007) hit the PSone in 1999 and surprisingly survived the porting process intact. Just like the original this is a turn-based strategy game that spans 6000 years (starting with 4000BC!) with victory being claimed when you either eliminate all of your rival civilizations or make it all the way to 2020 and win the space race by being the first launch a rocket to Alpha Centauri.
Of course if you want to get that far you need to chose your civilization from the 21 empires available including the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and even the Celts, Vikings and Zulu to name but a few. With your choice made you then have to develop your nation and take control of literally everything from helping your followers learn the alphabet to how much tax the citizens should be paying. Of course you won’t have it all your own way as there will be up to seven rival empires also vying to take over the globe. Whether to go to war with them, call peace with them, or align yourself with them and then going to war against them will be crucial to victory. If all that sounds a bit complicated or dull it shouldn’t as bar the on-screen text which is harder to read that ancient hieroglyphics it isn’t too difficult to pick up and there is a great sense of humour here too. Be warned though, one save game takes up a whooping 10 memory card slots!
69. Dead or Alive
‘Bouncing Boobs On/Off‘?
The Dead Or Alive series while having lots of loyal fans it frequently panned for two reasons. First of all many claim that it’s gameplay is a poor copy of Virtua Fighter’s and secondly for the voyeuristic treatment of it’s female characters and both complaints are justified. Lets just get to the girls right away as that is what Dead or Alive is most famous for and stating, after all they eventually went right-ahead and scrapped the fighting stuff (it just got in the way after all!) and featured all the girls in a volleyball game, which was just an excuse to feature the women practically nude and get it past the censors. In fact these days stating that you like Dead or Alive for it’s fighting mechanics seems as laughable as saying that you buy Playboy to read the articles and even on the PSone with it’s blocky graphics the game makes it’s intentions known with Tina, Kasumi and co. being victim to quite laughable bouncing animations. So much so in fact that there really is a ‘Bouncing Boob On/Off’ option in the menu!
Now getting back to the Virtua Fighter complaint. Yes there are similarities and Virtua Fighter was acknowledged by the creators of the game to be a big influence, but if you’re going to copy stuff from other gamers it might as well be from the best. Besides there is no Virtua Fighter on the PSone so this really was the next best thing for owners of Sony’s little grey box. (Rather amusing how the Virtua Fighter was eventually released on the PS2 while Temco decided to switch over to Microsoft, rather childishly in my opinion, after Dead or Alive 2 didn’t garner as much attention as, what is in my opinion, the superior Tekken Tag Tournament).
Anyway while Tekken’s gameplay is all about juggling and learning 10 hit combos (on the PS1 era at least) Dead or Alive’s gameplay hook was it’s excellent counter system, which is something Namco’s flagship series didn’t really attempt to do for years. There are also several alternate costumes to be unlocked for each character after completing the game (after thing Namco nabbed) and the explosions that occur whenever a character hit’s the floor in an out-of-bounds section aren’t too dissimilar to Tekken 6’s Bound system either. So Dead or Alive was rather ahead of it’s time and the fighting is still as good now as it was then and it’s perhaps because of that reason that DOA game still holds up and should be remembered and not because of the TNA.
68. Fifa 99
Check this out now, the funk soul brother.
As I write this EA Sports real football sim is once again the best there is, but for a whole decade they were the proverbial Manchester City to Konami’s Manchester United- i.e. 2nd best. Now while Konami had already released the excellent ISS Pro and were about to unleash the sublime ISS Pro 98, Fifa 99 was still in with a chance of taking the Premiership title and this was really the last genuine time you could say that for ten years.
The Fatboy Slim soundtrack wasn’t the only new feature included here. The graphics were vastly improved over 98’s and this was the first in the series to have players of different sizes. There was also the option to create custom cups and tournaments and there was a nice feature called the European Dream league, which played out like a simpler version of Pro Evolution’s Master League. Next year’s Fifa was the first to include licensed kits and liveries, which ended up being the series’ main selling point to many as ISS evolved into the all conquering Pro Evolution, and the series plunged into a more arcade type affair. Even the cover stars got worse! Dennis Bergkamp > Sol Campbell! If this had included Fifa 98’s amazing indoor football mini game and it’s theme tune, Song 2 by Blur, it could have cracked the top 50!
67. Fear Effect
The best looking game on the console.
The original Fear Effect begins with an opening video being voiced over by Wi-Ming Lam, the daughter of a rich businessman, who has run away from her home in her quest to discover what she describes as the purest emotion of all- pain. “I have never experienced pain and I so wanted to feel it now” she says while the credits roll on-screen and Lam continues with “I wasn’t disappointed” as we see her throat being cut. It’s a brilliant introduction to the game, one which leaves you wanting to know to know just what happened and it even manages to out-cinema Hideo Kojima!
The cutscene then resumes and we go back in time 24 hours and get to see two of our three main characters, Glas and Hanna, who are flying on a space craft discuss the disappearance of our narrator and want to find her. Not to rescue her however, but so they can extort money of her concerned Father. It’s during this video that we get to see the game’s first location, a futuristic cell-shaded Blade Runner inspired Neo-Hong Kong and it looks beautiful. The spaceship then lands and you’ll find yourself staring at the screen waiting. And waiting…. Then after a while you realize two thing- 1) That the video has ended and seamlessly and 2) That Fear Effect really does look that good.
I know praising the graphics of a PSone game may seem a little redundant these days, but honestly Fear Effect could quite easily pass itself off as an early PS2 title and nobody would question it. It’s not just the graphics that shine here however, though if it were it may still have made the top 100 on them alone, but the plot is also very well told across through three perspectives and spanning four discs, although I should point out that despite four discs the game is very short. However it’s not the absent of the lengthy plot that is the main problem, oh no! You see Fear Effect is clearly inspired by a lot of films such as Blade Runner, The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, Akira and John Woo, but it also borrows ideas from games too, mainly Resident Evil. Now Resident Evil is a fantastic series and there is a lot of good ideas in there to pay homage (i.e. rip-off), but it’s control scheme is not one of those things. It’s just horribly awkward trying to make your character walk around corners and while it’s passable against slow moving zombies it’s unforgivable against soldiers with weapons and that’s the reason why it doesn’t get any higher.
66. Theme Hospital
“Patients are reminded not to die in the corridor.”
Theme Hospital has been on and off this list more than any other game here. It’s not because I questioned the quality of it, it’s just that I wasn’t sure what Theme game to include. Theme Park holds the nostalgia card for me as it was one of the favourite games from my youth and who doesn’t want to build their own amusement park? Then there is it’s sequel Theme Park World, which may be even better than the original. But in the end I went with Theme Hospital? Why, well it just tickles my funny-bone.
Humour isn’t something videogames do well all too often, just go back to the start of this countdown to read about Team Buddies to see proof of that, but Theme Hospital is a different story. From it’s snaky receptionists telling patients to refrain from kicking the bucket in the hallways to the various diseases such as Chronic Nosehair and Third Degree Sideburns. Even the treatments are hilarious/ Bloaty Head (which is where the patients head is twice the normal size and is according to the game caused by sniffing cheese) for instance is cured by the doctor popping the patients head with a needle and then re-inflating it to the correct size. Theme Hospital is a joy to play and I’d prescribe it to anybody.
65. Bust A Groove
PaRappa the Rapper on a night out.
Describing Bust A Groove is very simple- it’s just like PaRappa the Rapper. However while PaRappa is a charming tale about how a little self-belief can help any rapping dog win the affections of the sunflower of his choice, Bust A Move is a surreal mix between a music game and a beat-em-um. If you like dancing games, but don’t want to look like a tit on a dance mat and embarrassing yourself then this is the game for you! Oh and if you also enjoy games that are a little bit ‘out there’ then you’ll love this as it’s proper bonkers…
Just read some of the bios for the characters to see evidence of that such as 70’s Motown inspired Pinky Diamond- ‘She is a stripper, fortune-teller, a professional contract killer, ad she does hair. It’s no wonder she’s so weird. She has the power to se into you lover’s heart and claims to know you better than you know yourself. Your secrets are nowhere being close to safe near her!’ So naturally she ends up in a dancing game. Seriously the cast of Tekken must read that and think “WTF?”. Even the kangaroos and bears, and they can’t even read. Ignoring all the craziness though you’ll find an excellent dancing game here with a great two-player mode too, which is something PaRappa does not have. Like a real night out you might be reluctant to dance at first, but once you get into it you won’t want to stop. Plus you get to do it from the comfort of your sofa and you don’t have to cope with a hangover the next morning.
64. Speed Freaks
Forget about hopscotch and conkers Grandpa, kids these days all about karts!
Speed Freaks game hit the Playstation in the summer of 1999 and was the first go-kart game on the console and despite the many, many, that followed there is only one that tops this. Renamed Speed Punks when released in America for unknown reasons (perhaps the word ‘freaks’ wasn’t politically correct?), involves seven school children and their dog racing and fighting it out in order to reach the chequered flag first, with an extra three to unlock, over twenty four courses so there is plenty of longevity here and the graphics for it’s time were amongst the very best ever seen on the Playstation.
The racing itself is your standard karting fare with the usual power-ups which either shoot the person in front of you or leave obstacles on the track for those behind to fall victim to. The main hook of the game however is that every racer has a boost-bar which they can use to get an extra little bit of speed and trying to figure out where is best to use that is key to victory, well that and not being shot by missiles of course. Speed Freaks also had another feature which made it stand-out and that was a four-player split-screen mode. It may not sound like a huge deal, but it was one of the first games on the console to have that option. What made this game great however as that it allowed Playstation owners to look even more smug at N64 fans now that they had a game that rivalled, and perhaps even toppled Mario Kart from it’s perch.
63. LMA Manager 2001
“Eat My Goal!”
While Football Manager (formally Championship Manager) was the undefeated champion of the soccer management simulations on the PC in 2000 and wasn’t released on Sony’s console Playstation owners were still spoilt for choice when it came to the genre. The problem is that all of them, without exception, were awful. The first LMA Manager’s arrival then was as welcome as a new Russian billionaire owner. To start with LMA realized that it wasn’t a PC game and decided to ditch the ‘point-and-click’ interface that previously by most management games and instead used the shoulder buttons to quickly navigate through the menu screens. While the user friendly menus are nice, what won me over was that it allows you to actually watch the matches.
Okay so the graphics during the matches are more Sensible Soccer than Pro Evolution Soccer after years of playing Championship Manager and feeling cheated whenever I was reading the match reports and the CPU had scored a convenient last-minute winner this was a godsend. Rather than relying on stats and figures to see who is playing well/bad and whether your tactics were working, here you could actually see it with your own eyes. What’s more is that you could then watch excellent 3D highlights of your match afterwards and hear commentary from BBC’s own Alan Hanson.
Another nice thing about LMA is that the game is deep and gives you the ability to not only control tactics and signings but gives you the option to select training exercises, chose shirt sponsors and improvements to your stadium- the great thing about that is that you don’t have to and you can simply delegate the tasks you don’t want to onto a member of your staff while you continue your never-ending quest to try and sign Patrick Klivert from Barcelona. Lastly if you have a friend with the same game LMA allowed you to have a one-off friendly match where you can pit your two teams against each other to find out who really has the better team. Speaking of memory cards that is probably the games’ only fault as it takes up a massive fourteen memory card blocks to save a game! The long load times are another sour points, mainly due the annoyingly addictive song ‘Eat My Goal’ that plays while loading that will be stuck in your head for years…
62. Sheep, Dog ‘n’ Wolf
A rare Looney Tune game that ‘Aint a stinker’
A faithful recreation of the Looney Tune cartoons that involved Sam the Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf (cousin of Wile E. Coyote) who are work-mates at a farm. The trouble is that Sam’s job is to watch over a flock of sheep while Ralph’s job is to try abduct, and I assume eat, them from under Sam’s nose when he isn‘t looking or asleep. You of course play Ralph and it is therefore quite literally your job to try and capture the sheep. How do you do that? Well by using gadgets invented by the ACME company of course! What could possibly go wrong?…
The game starts when Ralph arrives home after a long day and begins when to relax when Daffy Duck bursts into his home and says that Ralph has been selected to take part in a gameshow which Daffy likes to call “Who Wants to Be a Sheep Stealer” or to give it the correct title ‘Sheep, Dog, ‘n’ Wolf’. So armed with ACME rockets, catapults and female sheep perfume (seriously) Ralph begins to abduct the woolly animals, in several Loony Tune inspired levels, all in the name of entertainment. The Loony Tune look isn’t just confined to the level design, SDnW really does feel like it takes place in the Warner Bros world for instance there is one moment where you are chasing the Road Runner and it runs into a tunnel…. Road Runner fans probably know what will happen next…. Yep, just like his more famous cousin Ralph Wolf follows him into the tunnel, but smacks straight into a wall.
There are also cameos of Porky, Sylvester, Bugs, Taz and the rest of the gang all show up too, some as guests in Daffy’s show, while others appear during the main storyline. Marvin the Martian for instance appears at a key point towards the end of the game and forces Ralph to undertake a new task while Gossamer is featured as a boss fight. It’s a brilliant title that is a combination of platformer and stealth genres and perhaps the only good Loony Tune game ever made. While Ralph and Sam are destined to punch-in to work every morning for eternity, you too will be playing this with equal regularity.
That’s All Folks.
61. Time Crisis
The G-Con .45, the most powerful lightgun in the world and will blow you head clean off…
Time Crisis is as corny as hell and simply awesome. The plot revolves around silent protagonist Richard Miller who is tasked to rescue the President of the fictional republic of Sercia daughter who has been kidnapped by the knife-wielding Sherudo and recurring Time Crisis antagonist, the impossibly-cool Wild Dog. The story is incredible simple clichéd and like a John Woo or Steven Seagal movie really just an excuse to get from one action set-piece to another.
The gameplay too is rather simple and boils down to one thing- everybody on the screen is bad and needs to die. That may sound like a complaint, but sometimes it’s such a relief to play something that doesn’t take itself too seriously had isn’t at all pretentious. The thing that separated this from other on-rail shooters when it was released at the time was the inclusion of a ‘hide’ button. Press the red buttons near the barrel of your G-Con 45 (or if you want to recreate that arcade feeling- the pedals from a steering wheel) and your character will hide behind the nearest placed object. Release the button and Richard pops out of cover allowing you to take pot shots at whoever falls into your gun’s sight.
However you won’t be able to hide for too long as there is a constant time limit which forces you to try and complete the levels as quickly as possible, or presumably Sherudo will kill the President’s daughter. this isn’t called ‘Time Crisis’ for nothing! However the real star here is not the ability to take cover, or indeed the main character, but it’s all about the gun itself, the superb G-Con 45. It’s accuracy is unrivalled amongst light guns and with the time constantly ticking down an accurate gun is essential. The only reason then this doesn’t blast it’s way into the top 60 then is because there is another similar game on this list that does the on-rail shooter thing a bit better. But Time Crisis is fantastic. So good in fact that I let my copy of the game and my gun to a friend over two years ago and haven’t had it back yet…
