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

When I was in first grade or so, I adhered to a strict Saturday morning shedule:

5:45 am: Wake up. Go downstairs and watch last few minutes of ranting priest on television.
6:00 - 8:30 am: Cartoons. Lousy Cartoons. Whatever was on Fox at that ungodly time of day -- usually awful Saban cartoons, Captain Planet, Toxic Crusaders, and my very favorite, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
8:30 - 10:00 am: Beat River City Ransom while eating cereal made of sugar-saturated newspaper and Red no. 40.

I beat River City Ransom exactly once a week for...god, I don't even know how long. At least a year or two. Without fail. I rarely ever skipped a Saturday morning RCR session. And I didn't even mix up how I beat it. I'd spend half an hour beating up guys in Sherman Park, earn enough cash to buy Stone Hands and Dragon Feet (I was also VERY particular about wolfing down one of each item at the Rise n' Shine Cafe, and then almost never eating anything else), then breeze through the game simply by not ever letting any enemies get back up. Halfway through I'd also have to grab a Grand Slam book, only because you needed some sort of weapon (I always used a chain) to hit both Dragon Twins at once and keep knocking them back down before they had a chance to split up and murder you...but the strategy was pretty much the same.

I don't know why I did this. I was kind of a weird kid and it was just one of my rituals, I guess. Either that or River City Ransom is such an inexplicably fun game that it never gets old no matter how many times you play through it the exact same way as before. (My guess is that it's something like a 60/40 combination of the two.)



Hah! The best JRPG of the 128-bit era was on the DREAMCAST, bitches! Put THAT in your PS2 and smoke it!

Let's get the negatives out of the way first: the American voices are silly, it's linear as all get out, and the plot gets kinda really over sentimental and hokey at the end. But everything else about Grandia II is so much fun you won't even notice. Especially the battles; Grandia II has the best battle system I've ever seen in an RPG. No contest whatsoever. It's a little bit like Chrono Trigger, a little bit like Tales of Phantasia, a little bit like...I dunno, shouting orders at your friends while they play Secret of Mana.

I remember beating Grandia II in about three days, since I had it on rental. I just couldn't put the damn controller down. I pretty much only stopped playing to eat and sleep. Sometimes I'd decide it would probably be a good idea to turn of the game and rest my eyes or go outside for a few hours...but usually "a few hours" became "twenty minutes." Friends would call me up and ask if I wanted to hang out, and I'd just give them the first excuse I could think of and get off the phone as quickly as possible. WHO NEEDS FRIENDS TO TALK TO ANYWAY?! I GET ALL THE VIRTUAL COMPANIONSHIP I NEED FROM MAREG'S DINNER CONVERSATIONS!



It's getting to be almost a decade later, and Jet Grind Radio is STILL hip. How is that possible? What else was cool back when it came out -- Puff Daddy and Limp Bizkit? Why doesn't JGR feel even the least bit cheesey at this point? Those guys at Sega are (were?) geniuses.

I don't think JGR was just the definitive Dreamcast game. It encapsulated everything the Dreamcast itself was: hip, alternative, innovative, ahead of its time -- and uh, a commercial flop. So it goes.

The game's realism is really uncanny, by the way. I didn't realize this until actually going to Tokyo and having all kinds of deja vu while walking around the city.



Yeah, yeah...last time I had X-Men Vs. Street Fighter up here instead. Honestly, the games are pretty similar and I like them both about equally. Sometimes I'm in the mood for Cammy and Juggernaut, and sometimes I'm feeling Sakura and Blackheart. Besides, I already wrote about X-Men Vs. Street Fighter once, and I want to mix things up a bit.

One of the downsides to the information age is that video games are rarely surprising anymore. I don't own a Wii, I'm not really a Smash Brothers fan, and I don't really go out of my way to read up on the new game, but I can still probably name most of the confirmed characters for SSBB, tell you what moves they have, and name some of the stages. I pretty much understood KoF XI before even touching the joystick, thanks to all the previews, match videos, forum discussions, etc. I'll probably know the exact date XII comes out, know every character's move list in advance, learn the tiers, and see fan-captured and translated pictures of the endings, just because I can.

Well, there was once a time when things weren't like that. Back when it was possible for me to stroll into the arcade, pockets full of change, all set to play X-Men Vs. Street Fighter -- only to find a large group of people gathered around where the XvSF cabinet used to be, playing the brand new Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter. Finding Sakura and Dan on the character select screen for myself the first time I played was a much more pleasant surprise than reading about it on a message board four months before the game even came out. Man, that was a good day.



Even before I dabbled with illicit substances, I knew Rez was a work of genius. It's brilliant. It's still the best attempt at a fusion between art and video games to date. However, it really is true: Rez was practically made to played under the influence of psychedelics. Rez on psilocybin becomes a harrowing, pulsing journey through the winding grooves and twists of the player's very psyche; an introspective roller coaster ride to the heart of the Self. Rez on LSD, meanwhile, is the closest thing you'll ever have to a religious experience while holding a DualShock controller. If I ever find out where to get mescaline, I'll let you know how THAT goes, too.

Just trust me on this: do dangerous illegal drugs and play Rez. You can save the moral posturing until after you've tried it yourself.