Sam's video game collection essentials

Here are, unequivocally, the most successful iconic games on the original Xbox. Probably no other games at any time were ever more closely associated with the Xbox brand than the Halo games in their early days. The original Halo was a launch title, and was most definitely the game that truly put Xbox on the map. The Halo games are first-person shooters. They were far from the first games in the genre, or even the first successful FPS games on consoles (as opposed to PC). But they advanced the genre very significantly and set a new standard for what fans expected from a console FPS. The first game’s story places you in control of Master Chief, the dude on the cover who wears a green suit. He fights in a war against a dangerous legion of aliens known as the Covenant. The good guys discover a very large, mysterious, inhabitable ring-shaped entity known as Halo, which is where the series gets its name.  I’m not going to talk any more about the story, because the single-player campaign ...

PlayStation dominated the video game market for years starting when the original system reached all the major worldwide markets in 1995. However, one thing that was never really a strong suit for them was multiplayer party games. The original console had the standard two controller ports, and gamers could buy a “multitap” adapter to play with more than two players, but this requirement meant that party games were always going to be a niche part of the PS1’s library. The Nintendo 64 was far less successful overall than the PS1, but it had four native controller ports and absolutely had a bigger reputation as the “party console” with a variety of hits for four players to participate in. Perhaps surprisingly, the PlayStation 2 still only featured two controller ports requiring a multitap adapter for more than two players, and they didn’t make any real push to be a “party game” console. However, Microsoft, the newbies to the console business in 2001, did have aspirations to compete in this...

I previously showcased NFL 2K and NFL 2K1 for the Sega Dreamcast. Those were the first games in a new series from Visual Concepts and Sega, and set a new bar for what fans expected out of American football games. Their graphics were, at the time, unparalleled. Gameplay and presentation were similarly excellent.  It didn’t take real long for competitors to start taking big shots at the new high bar. In particular, once the extremely popular Madden series hit the PlayStation 2 for the 2000-2001 season, 2K had a very worthy opponent. For a few years in a row, both franchises would pump out a quality new football game and be greeted with highly positive review scores and great sales numbers. The early 2000s were arguably the best era for sports video games in history up to this point, as there was both a high quantity and quality of titles available for whatever spot you were interested in. You’ll notice I skipped a few years. So what is special about ESPN NFL 2K5 in particular? Well, ...

Retro gamers may be surprised to find that this is the first time in the history of this blog that I’ll have talked about SNK. Before talking about this game, I’d better briefly give some background about them. SNK was one of the notable companies of the arcade era, coming to prominence in the 1980s, and making both arcade and console games. They are probably best known for their innovative “Neo Geo” hardware. They created and sold Neo Geo arcade cabinets which were unusual because they weren’t dedicated to one singular game. The cabinets were compatible with games produced on a cartridge, and each one had a few slots to insert multiple games at once, allowing players to switch between games. This proved convenient and economical for arcade operators, because they could have more games playable in their arcades with fewer cabinets taking up space, plus they could buy and swap in new cartridges without having to move any big heavy cabinets. It was a pretty neat idea. SNK also produced a...

If you’ve read a lot of my earlier blog posts, you’ll remember that Capcom was a name that came up a LOT. They were one of the greatest and most prolific developers for a couple decades starting in the 1980s. I think of them, Konami, Nintendo and Sega as the “big four” developers of that era who were incredibly prolific and made great games for a variety of different genres. Capcom really made a name for themselves making arcade games first and foremost. Of course, they made a habit of porting their biggest arcade titles to then-current home consoles. One problem, though, was that home consoles almost always lagged behind the power of arcade cabinets until the end of the ‘90s. Therefore, home versions of arcade games were almost always compromised at least a little bit. As home consoles caught up by the turn of the millennium, more and more companies started getting into the habit of releasing these compilations of their arcade games which were more direct conversions and close to perf...

Wario’s creative new series started with “Mega Microgame$!” on the Game Boy Advance. That game had been single-player only, but Nintendo saw multiplayer potential in the gameplay formula. And so, later on in the same year, Nintendo released this…um…I’m not sure what to call it, because it’s not a sequel, not exactly a port, so I guess you could call it a spinoff maybe? Anyways, Mega Party Game$ borrows all the “microgames” found in the GBA original. It has fewer single-player features than that game and has basically nothing new to offer in that regard, something that’s perhaps more forgivable when you consider that this was a budget title that retailed for less than normal video games of its day. The main focus of this game is local multiplayer, offering a variety of fun and/or wacky modes for groups of friends to play. For more info on the basics of WarioWare, you can refer to my post about the GBA original . Most of the multiplayer modes in Party Game$ are designed for four players ...