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5 reasons Why I Think Game Informer’s 200 Games Of All Time List Is Not Accurate.

Date posted
December 3, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Categories Filed Under
Editorials, Systems
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I’m sitting in my living room, enjoying the conversation between Alistair & Morrigan in Dragon Age: Origins (I swear. I never enjoyed a more love/hate relationship like this since Han & Leia) then I hear the mail carrier drop off my mail. I check and find out that the latest copy of Game Informer has arrived (I got the copy with the Doom pig demon on the cover… YUCK!) While reading the mag, I come to find out that they’re doing a “greatest games of all time list” and we all know those can not bold well. However I want to see what they came up with. I scan through the whole list and then I just felt disgusted. Pure nosium swept across me. “SUCH INSOLENCE CAN NOT BE TOLERATED!!!” Is what I thought as I threw my mag to the ground. I can not let this injustice continue!! The world must know about this folly!!! So here we are. The five reasons why that list is Null & Void.

5# Blades of steel / Double Dribble
Come on now. How can you forget these two? I know it’s a tough list and I know certain games can not make it, but are you serious??? Before there was EA sports, before MADDEN NATION, before NBA Jam. There was three sports games that stayed in rotation on the NES at your house. Tecmo bowl (which did make the list), Blades of Steel & Double Dribble. Hell, Im not a hockey fan, but I loved blades of steel. ESPECIALLY the fights!! I would love to just skate around to pick a fight. I mean once the fight started, the screen would change to a close up and the guys would just throw down the gloves and it was like another video game (maybe this is why I like fighting games so much???). It was great. Double Dribble was all about the dunks. Yea we all liked the noise when you shot a three, but when you dunked and it would switch to a close up of a dunk, it was the greatest thing back then.

4# Jet Grind Radio (Jet set radio)
Where in the blue hell is JSR??? If you had a Dream cast in the late nineties / 2000, it was mandatory to have the following games; Shenmue, Sea Man (giggles), Marvel vs Capcom 2, Soul Calibur 2, Crazy Taxi, D and Jet Grind radio. Jet set radio (I prefer to call it by it’s Japanese title, thank you very much) was AMAZING! It was like nothing I have ever played! Not only that, it just oozed with so much hip hop it was down right nasty (in a good way). It was like the Hip Hop gods converged and created this game. It had the tagging (graffiti), the music (emcee), the dancing (breaking) & the Professor K ( the DJ). If that ain’t old skool Hip Hop, I don’t know what is. It’s not like the game did bad either. It sold a lot of copies and won some pretty decent awards (It won 2000’s E3 Best Console Game AND was runner-up for Best in Show that year). To whom ever listening (game companies, this means you) I want another JSR game in the NEAR future!!

3# Suikoden 1 & 2
I’m sorry but these two games are a package deal. You cant play one with out the other.It’s just not fair.There are two genres I love the most out of all gaming genres.Fighting & RPGs. While Final Fantasy has been the KING of RPGs, there have been a few that have given it a run for its money. One of them has been Suikoden. Suikoden first came out on the PSone and I was like, “hmm not Final Fantasy, but lets see what it’s about”. One of the smartest investments I ever made. The game was just put togther rather nicely. The story was smart, the score was nice and the setting was great. What makes these two games nice was 1) you could have 6 party members (compared to the 3/4 party members in other RPG games), 2) you can actual control a battle that has over hundreds of soldiers (unlike other RPGs where you’re shown cut scenes of the major army battles) and c) you could customize your headquarters / castle, not only that, you had to find members through out the countryside to accommodate your HQ. Need a cook? Go find him. Tired of walking up those steps? Go find the master mechanic so he can put an elevator in there. Also, every single character in your HQ was playable. It was a total of 108 characters!!! Why is are these game a package deal? Because it was a continuation of the story and some of the characters from the first game could be used in the second one, including the the main Protagonist from the first game (just keep your save from the first one & get the good ending. Also if he died, you had to go back to his area and rerecruit him)! Good luck trying to find a copy of the second game though. I hear that it still sells for over hundred bucks on Ebay.

2 # R.C. Pro-Am
Ahhh yes. Good ole R.C. Pro-am. There where may of days I would rush home, watch the daily cartoons. Then pop this game in to my NES (blowing in the cartridge first of course) and just try to beat my high score. This game had it all, oil slicks, puddles, rockets, temp. invulnerabilty, speed up arrows, even had drifting in it before we even knew what drifting was! That game is a classic and should’ve been added to the list.

1 # Pitfall
If it wasn’t for this game, we wouldn’t have the tomb raiders, the ghost n’ goblins, or the uncharteds of today (yea I said it). I remember as a kid, just loving (and hating) this game. Kids of today may look at this game and be like, “are you kidding me?” However this game will always bring back nostalgic memorys of my child hood. I still cant get over the fact that it didn’t have any back ground music and the midi Tarzan yell still give me a chuckle.

So there you have it. 5 excellent reasons why GI’s list is rubbish. Yea I know they put a disclaimer on the list, stating that all games wont make it and the list is, blah, blah, blah. These 5 reasons is proof enough that they should be on there, compared to certain games that are on there (when was the last time you played Mario’s Picross? /facepalm), even with that said, even I still left out some good games (Honor mention: Bonk, Bionic Commando, Splatter House, Ninja Spirits, Samuari Showdown 2, Ninja Gaiden II, Centipede, Earth worm Jim, River city ransom, Xenogears, etc..) but lets be frank here. The list of all lists was attempted, however the five reason up top proves that the list is not accurate.

The opinions expressed during “5 reasons why I think Game Informer’s 200 games of all time list is not accurate“are solely the opinions of the author and they do not necessarily reflect the thoughts and/or opinions of the entire Koalition staff.

Written By Shelton Doutherd

I call dibs on T.Hawk in SSFIV. Favorite games of all time; Guardian heroes, Chrono Trigger, King of Fighters 98. Capcom Vs SNK 2, Suikoden 1 & 2, Jet Set Radio & KOTOR