HF Retro Game of the Year - 1990 - Vote in the Poll!

[bambamcam4ever]

Super Mario World still holds up as a great platformer.

You mean the best 2D platformer.

 

[Osprey]

PC games just can't compete in polling at this point in time. Not even factoring in inflation you're looking at what, $2,000 for a PC that could play Wing Commander? Versus $300 for the new Super Nintendo. Would basically be a privilege to play Wing Commander at the time while nearly every kid that wanted to got to play Super Mario World if not at launch then within the next few years.

Probably one of the reasons that Doom/Doom 2 worked so well is it came out at a point when it started becoming common for schools to have computer labs that could run it.

It was also more common for homes to have PCs in 1993 than in 1990. People were starting to understand the value of computers for word processing, education (ex. encyclopedias on CD-ROM) and the internet (ex. 1993 was when AOL started giving away their free trial disks). I was definitely fortunate that my dad needed a computer at home for work in the 1980s and early 1990s.

 

[vaspa]

I voted for Wing Commander for reasons already stated here and I played it with an Amiga, although Wikipedia says it was out only in -92 for that platform. Amigas were far cheaper machines than top end PCs and very much loved in European gaming circles until late 90s because of their audio visual capabilities compared to PCs of reasonable price. I never had NES and didn't really want one because games were very expensive and pirated Amiga games were free, which was quite a thing for a kid operating on meager pocket money budget without much care for copyrights.

Two games that I loved from 1990 on a Amiga were Stunts with its fantastic track editor and Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe (what a name for a game) with its frenetic pace and shiny graphics.

I know that Amiga wasn't really much of a thing in North America so very few mentions of it in these great retro gaming threads.

 

[Morbo]

It's not going to win but I voted Wing Commander.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Two games that I loved from 1990 on a Amiga were Stunts with its fantastic track editor and Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe (what a name for a game) with its frenetic pace and shiny graphics.

OMG Stunts was incredible.

I totally forgot about that game. I'm not particularly into racing games, but that one was something else.

 

[member 157595]

PC games just can't compete in polling at this point in time. Not even factoring in inflation you're looking at what, $2,000 for a PC that could play Wing Commander? Versus $300 for the new Super Nintendo. Would basically be a privilege to play Wing Commander at the time while nearly every kid that wanted to got to play Super Mario World if not at launch then within the next few years.

Probably one of the reasons that Doom/Doom 2 worked so well is it came out at a point when it started becoming common for schools to have computer labs that could run it.

I agree entirely. I didn't get into PC gaming until DOOM and it's exactly because of school computer labs. Consoles were much cheaper and we had the ability of renting games from the video store for a very small fee. We could only afford to buy games here and there.

PC gaming was much bigger in Europe at this time than in North America. Going back further in time, the PAL region survived the video game crash of 1983 using home computers playing games stored on cassette tape, a very cheap storage medium.

 

[NyQuil]

OMG Stunts was incredible.

I totally forgot about that game. I'm not particularly into racing games, but that one was something else.

Stunts was a lot of fun.

Great mix of cars. Amazing instant replay video room. Hilarious physics issues that would send your car flying into outer space.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

We're getting into the 80s now, things are going to get more obscure and difficult lol.

Here's my proposal for the 1989 nominees:

Batman: The Video Game
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
Duck Tales
Final Fantasy Legend (GB)
Final Fight
Golden Axe
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Minesweeper
Phantasy Star II
Populous
Prince of Persia
River City Ransom
Sim City
Super Mario Land (GB)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

 

[bambamcam4ever]

What year is Super Mario Bros 3 under?

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

What year is Super Mario Bros 3 under?

Looks like it slipped through the cracks - should have been 1990 (North America release) but it was released in Japan in 1988. I'll include it in 1988 just so it's not omitted entirely. I kind of doubt it would have beat Super Mario World in this poll, though.

 

[Osprey]

Looks like it slipped through the cracks - should have been 1990 (North America release) but it was released in Japan in 1988. I'll include it in 1988 just so it's not omitted entirely. I kind of doubt it would have beat Super Mario World in this poll, though.

Under the same criteria, Super Mario World should've been in the 1991 poll, then, since that's when its North American release was. I understand the logic of using the Japanese release dates, but the vast majority of us didn't play them until 1-3 years later and compared them to different games. For example, we compared SMB3 against 1990 games, not 1988 games. In fact, SMB2 is a 1988 game, so the 1988 poll could end up pitting SMB2 vs SMB3, which would be strange because I remember it feeling like an eternity between the two. The alternative at this point is to just let it slide and not include SMB3 because it's too late, but I can see how not everyone would like that, either.

 

[RandV]

We're getting into the 80s now, things are going to get more obscure and difficult lol.

Here's my proposal for the 1989 nominees:

Batman: The Video Game
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
Duck Tales
Final Fantasy Legend (GB)
Final Fight
Golden Axe
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Minesweeper
Phantasy Star II
Populous
Prince of Persia
River City Ransom
Sim City
Super Mario Land (GB)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Doesn't seem like many people played the Sega Master System but as the owner of this family heirloom and with a good collection Wonder Boy 3 should be on this list. Good enough that they did a remake 3 years ago that's just a re-skin of the original game (you can switch back to classic 8-bit mode), same as Duck Tales. Ratings aren't everything but for a comparison:

Duck Tales: Remaster
IGN: 7
Gamespot: 4.5 (player: 7.5)
Metacricit: 75

Wonder Boy: The Dragons Trap
IGN: 7.1
Gamespot: 8 (player: 8.1)
Metacritic: 79

If there are any SMS games that deserve mention it's this and Phantasy Star 1.

 

[Nickmo82]

I was a hair's breadth away from voting for F-Zero... but that was because he hadn't seen SMW on the list.

 

[member 157595]

Re: SMB3: One could argue it's the greatest game on the NES and I definitely believe it can compete with SMW. I personally think the difficulty is finer-tuned in SMB3 whilc SMW is largely too easy IMO.

My friends and I all heard about this game first in 1989, in the movie "The Wizard". I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

I love me some StarTropics. So much nostalgia for that game.

 

[bambamcam4ever]

Re: SMB3: One could argue it's the greatest game on the NES and I definitely believe it can compete with SMW. I personally think the difficulty is finer-tuned in SMB3 whilc SMW is largely too easy IMO.

My friends and I all heard about this game first in 1989, in the movie "The Wizard". I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.

I think it would be pretty hard to argue it isn't the best NES game.

 

[member 157595]

I love me some StarTropics. So much nostalgia for that game.

Amen.

I own a NES Model 2, the toploading version. Every once in a while I play a game on the original hardware. The game in there right now? StarTropics.

StarTropics and Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse are two games I point to when I say to others that stiff controls don't always break a retro game. StarTropics has super stiff controls but every obstacle in the game is designed with those exact same controls in mind (unlike with the sequel, where they weren't sure what sort of controls they were designing the game for and it suffers as a result.) You can tell the developers play-tested the shit out of that game. Chapters 7 and 8 are brutally difficult but hard games were often the law on the NES.

 

[Osprey]

I think it would be pretty hard to argue it isn't the best NES game.

If we're talking about most technologically advanced and with the most polished gameplay, I agree that that's probably true. If we're talking about impact and influence, however, I think that it'd be pretty easy to make a case for the original SMB. It was arguably king for 5 years before any of us outside of Japan got our hands on SMB3, which was then king for only one year before the SNES and SMW came out.

 

[member 157595]

If we're talking about most technologically advanced and with the most polished gameplay, I agree that that's probably true. If we're talking about impact and influence, however, I think that it'd be pretty easy to make a case for the original SMB. It was arguably king for 5 years before any of us outside of Japan got our hands on SMB3, which was then king for only one year before the SNES and SMW came out.

Therein lies an important point: being the best game and being the most influential game are not one in the same and their level of overlap varies. There's a big gray area here.

It's almost impossible to overstate the importance of the original SMB. It basically invented the platforming genre, saved console gaming worldwide after the Crash of 1983 and gave rise to by far the most successful and influential gaming franchise in history. After the fall of the Atari 2600, toy stores refused to stock video game consoles, thinking that they were a fad. Nintendo had to jump through a ton of hoops (including using ROB the Robot) to convince retailers to stock the damn console but once kids got a hold of that SMB/Duck Hunt combo cart there was no stopping Nintendo. That said, while it's still fun today I really don't think it holds up quite as well as other games in the franchise.

 

[saluki]

We're getting into the 80s now, things are going to get more obscure and difficult lol.

Here's my proposal for the 1989 nominees:

Batman: The Video Game
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
Duck Tales
Final Fantasy Legend (GB)
Final Fight
Golden Axe
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Minesweeper
Phantasy Star II
Populous
Prince of Persia
River City Ransom
Sim City
Super Mario Land (GB)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This will be interesting. Sim City certainly deserves a lot of votes. I'm sure Sim type programs existed before but SimCity introduced the genre to the masses in a way that was easily digestible. It certainly gets my vote.

The total amount of hours I spent on SC certainly stood at the top of my personal list until at least 10 years later, when Alpha Centauri was released.

It'll be interesting to see how many votes it gets.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

One way or another the answer to this is a Super Mario game.

 

[hangman005]

Does the rattle count as a retro game

I don't believe I've played any of them

 

[member 157595]

Does the rattle count as a retro game

I don't believe I've played any of them

You're never played Super Mario World?

You should. You'll enjoy it even if you don't like retro games.

 

[member 157595]

@50 Sheas of Grey After this is over, I was thinking that another interesting idea for a series of polls would be something like "You can only pick 5". Basically, if people could only choose 5 games for a given console, which 5 would those be? I'm useless after the N64/PS1 era but I think it would be fun, and would avoid the release date conflicts. If a game was ported to multiple consoles it could be on each console's list. For the PC guys, that would be a challenge. I was thinking to divide the PC games into 5-year blocks that roughly correspond to console generation periods (i.e. 1990-1995, 1995-2000, etc.)

What do you think? Do you think anyone would be interested besides myself?

EDIT: Okay it would be extremely hard to pick only 5 SNES games...may have to make it 10 haha.

 

[RandV]

@50 Sheas of Grey After this is over, I was thinking that another interesting idea for a series of polls would be something like "You can only pick 5". Basically, if people could only choose 5 games for a given console, which 5 would those be? I'm useless after the N64/PS1 era but I think it would be fun, and would avoid the release date conflicts. If a game was ported to multiple consoles it could be on each console's list. For the PC guys, that would be a challenge. I was thinking to divide the PC games into 5-year blocks that roughly correspond to console generation periods (i.e. 1990-1995, 1995-2000, etc.)

What do you think? Do you think anyone would be interested besides myself?

EDIT: Okay it would be extremely hard to pick only 5 SNES games...may have to make it 10 haha.

Kind of hard to have enough polling options, for all the more obscure picks people are going to have. Like for me my SNES clear cut top 4 (not sure about #5) would include three standards: FFVI, Super Metroid, A Link to the Past, but 4th would be Ogre Battle.