The 10 Best SNES Games Of All Time - Honorable Mentions

2 weeks ago I posted my list of the 10 best SNES games of all time, and I still want to clarify it was more of a personal favorites list, rather than a list of the 10 best games by popular opinion. So a lot of games had to be left out of the list either because I hadn’t played them or for other reasons. So here’s a list of games that didn’t make the top 10, and the reasons why that game wasn’t on there. Hopefully this should answer some questions you might have to my list and specifically to my opinion on these games. So without further ado, let’s get started.

DOOM

I really wanted to put this on the list due to it being an incredible port. Just the fact this is Doom running on a console that was never intended for this style of game is amazing. Granted it’s not running that fast, the resolution is extremely limited and there’s a lot of missing textures on the ceiling and floor due to the console’s limitations. But the music sounds awesome, it has all the levels from the original PC game and is running on a 16 bit console that shouldn’t be able to run it. So this port is more notable for its technical achievements than the game itself as it is a seriously inferior version of Doom and thus why I didn’t want to list it. But it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re curious.

TMNT – TOURNAMENT FIGHTERS

The 16-bit era was the golden age of fighting games. With the release of the seminal Street Fighter II (and its ton of re-releases) by Capcom, a slew of imitators popped up. One of these that I definitely recommend checking out is TMNT Tournament Fighters by Konami. Much like TMNT IV – Turtles In Time, a lot of attention and care was given this game to make it a fun competitive brawler and in my opinion it works perfectly as a companion game to TMNT IV.
You have a roster of characters from the TMNT franchise to choose from and it’s to this day one of the few games where you can play as the badguys. Much like other fighting games of the era, it’s even more fun with friends, so if you’re looking for a Street Fighter II alternative for your next multiplayer session, this might be a good pick.

BLACKTHORNE

Blizzard are known for a few titles, such as World of Warcraft and Diablo. But before those franchises became their bread and butter they delved into some other genres. Their cinematic platformer Blackthorne is definitely worth checking out if you are into games like Prince of Persia, Another World and Flashback. It’s a sci-fi fantasy game where you play as a shotgun-wielding badass named Kyle Blackthorne who has to save his people from the clutches of an evil satanic figure known as Sarlac. I grew up with the PC version and to this day I still play it regurarily.

ALADDIN

The main reason I kept this game off the list and several other Disney games like Lion King was that I wanted to highlight Magical Quest. But of course, this one is also worth checking out and it came out during the era when multiplatform titles could actually be vastly different from each other. The Sega Genesis version of this game was developed by an entirely different team and Capcom was behind the SNES version, giving it a unique character. It has some solid gameplay, stellar music and some great visuals, so as far as Disney games go, Aladdin is up there among the best on both systems.

MEGA MAN X

Of course it’s hard to talk about the SNES without mentioning Mega Man X. While I personally don’t have much attachment to this game and have never completed it, I can totally see why so many people hold it in high regard. It definitely feels more “evolved” compared to the earlier NES titles and helped Mega Man stay fresh for a new generation. I think personally it adds a bit too much for my taste and while it isn’t a bad game, I just can’t really get into it as easily as the NES titles. Which is why I didn’t include it.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA – A LINK TO THE PAST

I’m only including this game as a mention because I feel someone’s going to kill me if I don’t. So, full disclosure, I have played this game. I just didn’t find myself very engaged in the story, sorry to say. I have the same problem with Ocarina of Time. Look, both of these games are good games, there’s nothing wrong with loving them and I totally respect that people do. I just… don’t connect with them. I don’t click with them in the same way others do. I just find myself just not really caring much for them. And that’s why you won’t see ALTTP on my list.

ARKANOID – DOH IT AGAIN

If you’re looking for something to use that SNES mouse for beyond playing Doom and Mario Paint, this game is a perfect choice. I didn’t include this game because I don’t really see it as necessarily a SNES exclusive experience, and it’s not really THAT playable on the system without a mouse or paddle controller. But if you have a mouse, then it’s still an excellent version of Arkanoid, which is still one of my favourite games to play.

FINAL FANTASY VI

Amazing music, a great story and a really cool combat system are common descriptors for Final Fantasy VI which many regard as one of the best games in the franchise. And yeah I’ve played a bit and what I’ve played, I enjoyed. Do I enjoy it enough to put it among my personal favourites? Probably not. I don’t really have much nostalgia for the game nor has it really been fun enough for me to really love it. But I like it. Enough to mention it.

F-ZERO

I’ll be honest, if I could, I would put both F-Zero and Super Mario Kart on my list as recommended racing games because I love both of them almost equally. I just happen to have more nostalgia for SMK and I personally consider it the superior game due to being more playable and having more variety. But F-Zero is a very different experience so comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges. It’s up to you what you prefer. F-Zero definitely has some great music and gameplay and utilizes mode 7 amazingly to create some sweet pseudo-3D graphics for the time.

EARTHBOUND/MOTHER 2

So… why wasn’t this on the list? Well, honestly? I haven’t played it. I have played plenty of Mother 1 because I was intent on finishing that game before tackling its sequel. And I have played little bit of Earthbound and yeah, it’s great and I’ll probably love it once I have played it and will consider it worthy of being in my list but until then I can’t really speak much about it.

NES Game Re-Review: Mother/Earthbound Zero

GAME: Mother (Earthbound Beginnings on WiiU)
RELEASED: 07/27/1989
DEVELOPER: Ape
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
AVAILABLE ON: Famicom, NES (unofficial release), GBA, WiiU

SPOILER ALERT! This review will spoil the story of Mother. If you haven't played the game yet, I strongly urge you to do so! If spoilers do not bother you, please go on.

Recently I was attacked by a nasty cold and have been out for a few days. I took the opportunity to revisit a game that's been on my mind for well over a few years now. Back in 2013, I reviewed this game on my blog without having really finished it. But already then it left a pretty lasting impression on me and it's always been sitting in my backlog since then, always having been that game that I knew I had to finish some day. And it seems that day has come as I have finally completed Mother. Granted, I have only completed Earthbound Zero Easy, a romhack of the fan translation which decreases encounter rates, increases XP gained and overall makes the game more managable so my review will more reflect this version of the game than the original, just so it's said. But I will still be keeping the original game in mind. So here's my full review of Mother after 4 years of trying to get back into it.

This game knows how to ask the important questions!

Mother tells the story of three characters who's fates intertwine as their world falls victim to an alien invasion. Set in a somewhat off beat 1980's America, you start out in the town of Podunk when young boy Ninten is awoken by a loud noise. He runs to his sister's room to find her doll posessed, moving on its own, and after fighting it, the doll stops moving. But not without revealing something incredible, inside it is a music box that plays a little melody, which Ninten remembers. Unknown to Ninten, this melody is part of a puzzle he has to solve in order to stop the invasion.  After finding the key to the house's locked basement on his dog, he discovers a diary from his great grandfather, George, revealing that Ninten posesses special psychic powers.

At some point on his journey, he ends up in a faraway land called Magicant, where in a castle Queen Mary resides. She mournfully tells Ninten that she cannot remember anything. She can vaguely remember a song but seems to have forgotten this as well, and beckons Ninten to find all eight pieces of this song which seem to have been hidden around the world. Together with Lloyd, a nerd with a knack for science and Ana, a seemingly fragile girl with extraordinary psychic powers.

The story of Mother is driven by the eight melodies and your search for them. Because as it turns out, these hold a significance beyond what you can imagine as they are the weapon you need to defeat the leader of the alien invaders, Giegue, who as it turns out, was once the adopted child of George and Maria and the melody is the lullaby she would sing to him. Reminded by the love of his surrogate mother, Giegue is forced to leave the planet and let go the people he has abducted.

To me, the story of Mother is really what got me coming back to it. It's one of the games that somehow creates an entirely unique narrative and uses the game mechanics to tell the story in a way that gives it a unique feel I've never seen in other games. And I find the way you defeat the final boss incredibly ingenious. Since you play as children, despite your powers, there is no way you can defeat a foe that is so infinitely more powerful than you can ever imagine. The only weapon you have is love, and you have to intentionally not attack him to beat him which I find amazing. It's easy to see why this game has been an inspiration to so many modern game makers such as Toby Fox who made the amazing Undertale, since this too kind of took the RPG genre and did something new and interesting with it, even if it also fell victim to some of its more outdated perks. So let's get on to discussing the gameplay shall we?

Mother, despite its cute first impression, has many dark heartfelt moments.

Gameplay-wise, Mother honestly plays like a traditional RPG for the most part. You level up through battling enemies in turn-based combat, and each of your characters have different stats and different talents which you need to get accustomed to in order to fully be efficient in battles. Ninten uses mostly melee weapons such as bats and has mostly defensive PSI. Ana has a lot of offensive PSI, but a low health pool and cannot use most weapons other than frying pans (bit of stereotyping there). Lloyd doesn't deal a lot of physical damage and can mostly use guns and items such as bottle rockets, bombs, plasma beams and flamethrowers, but can dish out a lot of damage with those items.

Much of Mother requires you to utilize the game's powerups correctly for these characters. Getting the right items can be crucial to easing the game's harsh difficulty, and there is a lot of grinding involved to make sure your characters are strong enough to tackle the road ahead. Granted I was playing the EB0 Easy hack, which cuts down on the difficulty a great deal and allowed me to appreciate the game more so I highly recommend playing this ROM if you can get it, but be prepared to deal with a lot of the typical tropes of early RPG's. This game definitely benefits from using a walkthrough so don't feel bad if you have to pay Starmen.net a visit. I used their walkthrough for EB0 for my playthrough and do not regret it as the tips and strategies in it helped a lot with easing the game for me. Granted you can play the game however you want to but the walkthrough saves a lot of time and grief from wandering around aimlessly.

It's very hard to recommend Mother on its gameplay, because it is sadly very outdated and not always in the best way. It requires a lot of patience, and requires that you find that drive to keep playing even when it feels tiring. To me that drive was the Eight Melodies. As stated in my original review, when listening to the eight melodies I would feel inspired to play the game, to see it through. And I felt that the eight melodies I picked up were valuable treasures that were almost lost in the world, it drove me to finish the game and bring peace to the world. The game feels bigger than the world you see, it feels like you're on an epic quest to save the world from a threat you at first cannot even understand. And your enjoyment of the game will definitely depend on how engaged in the world you become.

Well... fuck.

Graphically, Mother isn't impressive. But it definitely has a style. Heavily influenced by the Peanuts comic strip, it uses a style that feels really easy to like. It's bright, colourful and uses the NES palette to greatly enhance each area's look and feel. From the green fields of Podunk and Merrysville, to the snowy plains of Snowman and the cold industrial designs of the factories and laboratories, the world of Mother looks as varied and diverse as you would imagine it to look. The only thing I don't really like the look of is the battle screen. It's mostly just a black screen with enemy sprites on it, which granted are really detailed and great to look at, but having a background would probably help a lot here in my opinion.

Musically... this game has the best soundtrack of the entire NES library in my opinion. From the get-go, Mother bombards you with some of the most emotional and some of the most catchy music you may ever hear from an 8 bit system. From the mellow and soothing opening theme, to the driving beats of Pollyanna and Bein' Friends, to the dark disturbing industrial moods of factories and the sheer emotional power of the Eight Melodies, Mother's soundtrack is unforgetable. The soundtrack is varied too. There's everything from rock'n'roll tunes, to ballads, to menacing industrial atmospheric music. It feels like it never gets boring and perfectly fits every area you go to.

Every time I hear the Eight Melodies, I cannot help crying, because the melodies feel like they represent pure love. The kind of love you've felt from your mother. It feels like a genuine lullaby. And it soothes me in a way few things can. When I am angry at my friends, when I feel down and depressed, the Eight Melodies can soothe me like nothing else I know. It's become one of my favourite tunes in all of gaming really for this reason and it's why I can truly believe it can make even an alien menace like Giegue break down in tears and leave. In its simplicity, in its eight little melodies, it holds immense power and hits harder than anything I've ever heard. It was one of the things that truly stuck out to me about the game and the reason I've kept playing through it.

Thank you for your nice song indeed <3

Mother is flawed. Incredibly flawed. Even with a guide, the game is brutally difficult and at times is confusingly vague. It can be an infuriating game without knowing the right strategies and what the different items do. And yet, with its flaws, it holds one of the best stories of its generation, one of the best soundtracks, one of the most important messages and some of the most memorable worlds ever in a video game. It's an experience I will never forget, one I will keep with me until I die. Those moments when I sat there, singing along to Ninten, Ana and Lloyd as their song brought Giegue to tears, brought me to tears as well. The fact an 8bit game could make me feel so many emotions to me is amazing and if you're at all a fan of RPG's, or even better, Earthbound, you definitely need to play this game some day.

I guess it's time to finally tackle Earthbound next. A game which has eluded me for a long time and I swore I would finish Mother before playing it. Now I have no excuse not to.

SCORE

STORY: 10/10
GAMEPLAY: 6/10
GRAPHICS: 6/10
SOUND: 10/10

TOTAL SCORE: 8/10

PC Game Review: Rise Of The Tomb Raider

GAME: Rise Of The Tomb Raider
RELEASED: 02/09/2016
DEVELOPER: Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montréal, Nixxes (PC)
PUBLISHER: Square Enix
AVAILABLE ON: Steam, XBox 360, XBox One, PS4, MacOS, Linux

In 2013, Eidos decided it was time to completely reboot the Tomb Raider franchise, with the aptly titled "Tomb Raider", a complete reimagining of the franchise, offering a Lara Croft that we had never seen before. She was more human, more fragile, and taken to a different place than she previously had, a stark contrast to the kind of over the top action heroine she had been in the past. It made for a more interesting story, a story in which she would grow with the player, getting tougher as she gained more experience, ending on an iconic shot of Lara wielding two pistols after having beaten the final boss of the previous game.

It seems a no-brainer that after the success of the reboot, which received almost universal acclaim, the same team would work on a sequel. And 3 years later, in 2016, we received "Rise Of The Tomb Raider", the next chapter of the Tomb Raider saga. Despite being 2 years since its release already, during which I have been playing the game on and off, I want to give my own personal opinion on this game given I already reviewed the original at my blog in 2013 and absolutely loved it.

And then they saw "Lara Croft Go"...

The story of Rise is more of a personal story with Lara following in her father's footsteps, looking for an ancient artifact in Siberia, that allegedly contains the "Divine Source", the fountain of youth itself. Her father was on the trail for it, but died before he could finish his work, which is where Lara decides to pick up. Hunted by an ancient group called Trinity, she travels to Siberia in search of an ancient city known as Kitezh to find the Divine Source before they do. A journey which takes her through the Siberian wilderness, cold war installations and a valley where she meets the indigenous people, who she has to work with in order to find a way to stop Trinity from getting their hands on the Divine Source.

The story is told through amazing acting, both in terms of the animation and voice acting, which is absolutely stellar. The game does a great job feeling like a true cinematic experience, going back and forth between flashbacks and current events and utilizing the gameplay to also relay backstory to the player through artifacts which can be picked up and read or inspected to reveal little stories from ancient times. Throughout the game, Trinity remains a constant threat, and it becomes your main task to survive long enough to not only stop them but also clearing your father's name who was labeled a lunatic for his discoveries.

The opening level in Siberia shows off some gorgeous graphics, and details like leaving foot trails in the snow.

The gameplay in Rise largely follows the same mechanics from Tomb Raider. Moving around the environment is often done through climbing, scaling walls and all that good stuff. A lot of focus is put on survival and using your environment to aid you. Resources can be gathered around you to upgrade your weapons and craft inventory items such as ammunition and healing kits. Whether you are hunting animals for pelts, picking mushrooms or gathering wood, your environment is your best friend in this game. Campfires serve as spots where you can fast travel between places in the game, craft items and upgrade your equipment and skills.

The combat also remains largely the same, with Lara being able to carry 4 weapons in her inventory at any given time (which can be swapped out and upgraded at campfires). Lara can automatically take cover behind stuff and in addition to shooting enemies can also engage in melee combat, where you can dodge your enemy's attacks while also landing attacks on them. Ammunition is scarce though, so often the best course of action is to either avoid combat if possible or use stealth.

If you have a fear of arachnids, perhaps look away from this scene...

Lara will usually (unless the story calls for otherwise) approach any enemy group already in stealth and it is up to the player if you want to break stealth or maintain it. Maintaining stealth is usually more rewarding as it conserves on ammunition and lets you stay more in control of things. Picking enemies out one by one without being seen and ensuring their bodies aren't discovered is essential to keeping stealth and on higher difficulties, this becomes crucial as enemies will deal a lot more damage to Lara. The environment is typically also offering plenty of opportunities to remain hidden so using your environment to your advantage is another crucial element to survival in Rise.

The controls can be a bit confusing at times. While largely intuitive, during quicktime events and button prompts it can often catch you a bit by surprise if you're not expecting it and lead to an unfortunate death because you didn't time a button press correctly or pressed the wrong button. Granted it's a huge improvement over the previous game where quicktime events were a much bigger problem and button presses felt almost entirely random, but it's still a bit of a pain to deal with.

This squirrel knows what's up.

Another element of the game is exploration. As opposed to the previous Tomb Raider, in this game there are a LOT more actual tombs to raid, and they're usually hidden from the main path. Each tomb provides a unique puzzle to solve with a pretty high reward for solving them. There are also a lot of other perks to exploring the environment in Rise, such as coin caches to find, hidden pieces of lore and so on. If you truly wanna 100% complete the game, you are looking at a lot of hours spent searching every nook and cranny of the game to find all it has to offer. After my first completed game I was left with only 86% completion, and that was after a whole 2 years of playing the game on and off with a solid 20 hours of actual game time. So if you're a completionist, you're definitely looking at a pretty substantial amount of game time, even though the story itself can probably be completed much quicker than that.

In addition to the main story campaign, the game has some additional challenges to play through in the form of the Expeditions mode. Here you can use cards to grant additional buffs during the gameplay. You can do Score Attack, where you are trying to get the best time while also going for objectives that grant you a better score. You can beat an earlier chapter in Chapter Replay, faced with additional challenges such as completing it without dying. Expeditions is also where you can play additional DLC levels for some extra content after completing the main game, similar to the DLC missions in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

One of the most gorgeous games of its generation, Rise features a world that feels incredibly inviting and daunting at the same time.

Rise offers far more arctic conditions than Tomb Raider did, with its setting being the cold mountains of Siberia. While Tomb Raider had more of a tropical island feel to it, Rise offers more mountain areas and cold conditions, which helps set it apart from its predecessor and gives it a feel of its own. Everything is rendered with an incredible attention to detail, such as Lara's facial expression during moments of the game and animals limping after being shot. Your feet will leave realistic trails in the snow, sunlight will break up very realistically through snow and clouds. And the mountains and valleys are rendered beautifully in the background, giving the game a gorgeous world to explore. The facial animations are also something to behold with very realistic expressions that almost head into uncanny valley territory, but like the latest Call of Duty games somehow actually manages to go past that due to some tasteful style choices. You also have a variety of outfits to choose from with more being available as DLC, so if you're not happy with Lara's clothing, just change it.

As previously mentioned the voice acting is superb. The entire cast is giving a stellar performance here, especially Lara's voice actress who definitely sells her role of being a young adventurer often ending up in harsh situations yet surviving them through sheer will. The rest of the sound design is packed to the brim with realistic animal sounds, as well as lush environmental sounds such as weather and water flowing. Weapons sound realistic as well, but still sounding satisfying to use, especially using the pickaxe for melee attacks which always have a brutal crunch to them. As with the previous game the musical score is sadly largely forgetable background music, which makes sense given the game's cinematic focus but compared to the classic games that had memorable themes, it feels too forgetable to be noteworthy. It feels more functional than memorable, largely just being there to build up the atmosphere than doing anything else. It makes me miss the classic themes from the older games for sure, especially when they weren't afraid to mix in some techno and classical music, which is something I feel has been lost with the newer games.

And it was there, surrounded by ice all around her that Lara began seriously questioning her life decisions, and why she had decided not to bring more rations.

All in all, Rise Of The Tomb Raider is a great game. The story feels more personal and thus the stakes feel much higher than the previous games, dealing with themes of Croft cleansing her family name and living up to her father's expectations. It feels like a story where Lara is dealing with her past in order to leave it behind her and thus feels very important to her. Gameplay wise it improves a lot on its predecessor without taking anything away that shouldn't be, and it's an absolutely gorgeous game to behold, even on the lowest settings. And with its sequel coming later this year, now is as good a time as any to give Rise Of The Tomb Raider a playthrough.

SCORE

STORY: 9/10
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
GRAPHICS: 10/10
SOUND: 8/10

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

PC Game Review: Graveball

GAME: Graveball
RELEASED: 07/13/2018
DEVELOPER: Goin' Yumbo Games
PUBLISHER: 3D REALMS
AVAILABLE ON: Steam (consoles TBA)

If you've ever pondered the question: "What if goblins played sports?" then it seems 3D Realms and developer Goin' Yumbo and their new game Graveball has the answer. Given goblins are probably less known for their great sportsmanship, and more for their immense bloodthirst, it should come as no surprise they play it with clubs, massive bones, whatever blunt or sharp weapon they can get their hands on. And of course, the ball is a skull. Go figure.

5 seconds left... gotta run for it!

There isn't much of a story to Graveball, if any, other than that goblins apparently love getting together at cemeteries to play their own version of rugby. Gameplay in Graveball is fairly simple and if you're at all familiar with rugby or handball, it shouldn't be too hard to grasp. Two opposing teams of 3 goblins each face each other in matches where the ultimate goal is to get the skull into the opposing team's goal zone. When the skull lands in the zone, it will start counting down. Unless the ball is moved, it will eventually explode, upon which the scoring team wins. The team that gets the most goals until the timer reaches zero wins the match.

There are of course some quirks to this game that makes it a bit more interesting. As you can tell from the screenshot above, there are quite a few weapons to use and these are what makes Graveball more of an action sports game. Because you can just kill the crap out of your opponents to keep them from getting the skull into your goal, using any weapons you find laying around. You can also toss your weapons at your opponents, which will leave you unarmed until you can find a new one, but can be immensely satisfying if you manage to hit an opponent on the other end of the field.

Another aspect to the gameplay is that when you get killed, you are dead for 5 seconds until you respawn as a ghost. In this form you cannot interact with the playing field and still count as dead but you have access to a unique weapon in this form, being the scythe, which you can grab and then respawn as a goblin to use as a weapon. If all of your team are turned into ghosts however, the match ends, so even if you are respawned, keep in mind it's not a safety net.

Death is not the end in Graveball. He just kind of casually strolls by at times.

There's a lot of customization options you can use for your player character too, such as custom hairstyles, masks and taunts which adds flavour to the game. You unlock these by earning gold in matchmaking, so there's a lot of incentive to keep playing. One thing I'm not a huge fan of is that what you unlock is always randomized, so there's no way of previewing a hairstyle for instance and purchasing it, it's always a bit of a crapshoot what you'll get. I prefer being able to pick what to customize my character with personally. And it's not like I want to stop unlocking things to customize with either, I just would prefer that freedom.

Graphically the game looks alright. It uses the Unreal engine, which always looks excellent, so there's plenty of neat effects going on. I did run into some slight performance issues on my copy, so optimization might still not be 100% there, but all things considered it ran and looked great on medium settings for me. How the game runs might depend on your PC since mine is starting to get a bit old at this point.

I of course have to mention the music by Brian Brennan who did a pretty great soundtrack. It's sort of synthwave with a classic horror twist that perfectly builds up the mood and atmosphere in the game while also providing some driving music for the gameplay. The voice acting is also hilarious, with the goblins speaking entirely in grunts and garbled speech. I also love the punchy sound effects when using the weapons. All around the sound isn't stellar but it definitely works.

And while that is really all there is to this game, it makes for some great fun. You can either play solo against bots, create custom matches and invite friends to play, or create a party and join an existing match through matchmaking. Unfortunately it seems the playerbase at this point is kind of non-existent, which is understandable given the game just launched but I really hope that more people will get this game. Because it is stupidly fun at times, especially during those unforgetable moments where you just landed a goal and can still kill someone of the opposing team just to rub salt into that already deliciously fresh wound. And since the game is like $5 at the moment on Steam, with a console release coming later, I see no reason not to grab this game. It's not any deep or massive game, but it's definitely a worthwhile game to play with friends for short periods.

SCORE

STORY: N/A
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
GRAPHICS: 8/10
SOUND: 7/10

FINAL SCORE: 8/10