Pat's Top 25 30 Games of All Time
by Pitchfork

The greatest competitive gaming experiences I've ever had on a PC have come from these 633 KB of pure joy. It's about as graphically flashy as an Atari 5200 game, and its soundtrack consists of whatever sound your computer fan makes interposed with the occasional "BUZZ" "BLEEP" and "BOOOOOM." Neverthless, I cannot tell you how many afternoons with my friends Jef and Scott and how many evenings with my cousin Matthew were whittled away arguing over the ethics of buying nothing but Death's Heads and firing them straight into the air at full power EVERY TIME IT WAS YOUR GODDAMN TURN, forming machiavellian alliances against whichever of the seven or eight computer-controlled tanks we suspected of being Cyborgs, and cursining at the screen whenever a Funky Bomb or Heavy Sandhog attack went awry.

Scorched Earth is one of those games you've either never heard of or worship. It pretty much invented the artillery game genre, which Worms and GunBound have since popularized. Not bad for a shareware game thrown together by a single dude.

To this day, by the way, I STILL have no idea what the purple shield was supposed to do. As far as I could tell it actually made its user easier to kill.



I really don't think I can do NIS games anymore. I'm at that stage where they've become far too time consuming, too high maintenance, and not really fulfilling enough to bother with anymore. They really ARE like gamer crack -- as addictive and absorbing as MMORPGs, but with absolutely ZERO human interaction. At any rate, I think the NIS game I had the most fun with was Makai Kingdom.

The game ain't perfect. Even by NIS standards -- a company whose games look like they were whipped up by five or six reclusive Japanese anime/computer nerds to pass the time during employment lapses -- Makai Kingdom is pretty unpolished. Still, its gameplay (which combines some of the best aspects of Disgaea's and Phantom Brave's systems) and almost totally nonsensical plot make Makai Kingdom such an endearing and addictive experience.

What I remember most about Makai Kingdom, actually, is my father's fucking cat. I played the game while living at my old man's place one summer, and this kitten of his would always disrupt things by clawing at the controller cord and A/V cables, biting my feet, or causing some kind of havoc nearby, which I'd have to stop playing and remediate. That dumb creature was such a major part of the Makai Kingdom experience that I can't think about the game without thinking of him. He was hit by a car last May. I miss the little bastard.



Dear PSX-era SquareSoft: how do I love thee? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS!

1.) Making a game whose opening cinema consists of the entire audience of a Manhattan opera house spontaneously bursting into fucking flames.

2.) Making a one-character JRPG that's actually fun. (Eat it, Dragon Warrior and Vagrant Story.)

3.) Making a role-playing game that actually takes place in modern-day America (with the Chrysler Building as the optional super dungeon, no less).

4.) Suspending disbelief well enough to make some kind of eons-old organelle conspiracy temporarily seem plausible and menacing.

5.) Not making the black guy a racial caricature for once.

6.) Successfully engineering a game that's part survival horror, part turn-based RPG. I seriously have a hard time believing no Oompa-Loompas were involved in the programming.

So yeah -- I have no small amount of love for this oft-overlooked SquareSoft gem. A few things still bother me about it, though:

- I can't remember -- Aya's half-Japanese or something, right? I'm pretty sure she is. Go figure. SHE MAY BE A STUPID LAZY BLONDE AMERICAN, BUT SHE'S NOT SO BAD BECAUSE SHE'S GOT A FEW DROPS OF NOBLE JAPANESE BLOOD IN HER THAT MAKE HER BETTER AND BRIGHTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE! Typical.

- Evacuating all of Manhattan overnight? Right. Sure. It takes forEVER to get through the Holland Tunnel on a regular day. You know...on days when everybody ELSE in the city isn't trying to leave with you. Evil mitochondria nothing -- THAT shit's what's hardest to swallow about Parasite Eve.



So I picked the Genesis over the SNES. This meant I missed out on Final Fantasy IV and Secret of Mana for a while, but the Shining Force games held me over just fine. The original Shining Force was definitely a factor in why I decided I needed a Genesis to begin with, while the sequel convinced me beyond a doubt that I'd made the right choice.

Shining Force II had everything an eleven-year-old RPG fan could want: a tremendous cast, dozens of classes, alternate class changes, far more battles and a much bigger world than the original, a bangin' soundtrack, and FULL FRONTAL 16-BIT NUDITY. Hellooooo, Sheela.

Also, Slade is the most (well, maybe the only) badass anthromorph I've ever seen, and I'd pay to see him shank Shadow the Hedgehog.







A year before I transferred from Montclair State to Ursinus, I briefly dated an Ursinus math student. Most of my weekends during that period were spent in her dorm room, hanging out and playing video games with our friends during the day and fucking at night. The sex wasn't half bad -- in the sixtieth percentile, at least -- but I barely remember it. I don't even recall the chick's last name. But I DO remember plying Guilty Gear for hours on end in that room. THOSE were some good times...back when Dave was at the top of his game and our Venom vs. Chipp battles were nothing short of epic.

Guilty Gear has become such a mixed bag lately. Isuka tanked. The DS and PSP games didn't seem like that much to write home about. Guilty Gear II, the first numerical sequel to the original game, is shaping up to be some kind of futuristic rock n' roll Dynasty Warriors and not a 2D fighter. Sure, Slash and Accent Core are fun, but not even Capcom dragged out SF2 as long as Sammy's dragging out GGX. As a result I've become somewhat indifferent towards a fighting game series which consumed my waking life for about a whole year. But every now and then, maybe once a year or so, I'll happen to be a room with another former or current Guilty Gear aficionado and a PS2. Then it's just like the old days again -- pure sex.