You know, it was while I was working on my review of Secret of Evermore, a game I love, that it occured to me what a different world we live in today. A world where the best for the time and the best of all time can be two different things. Where people can talk highly of a game in the future, but when you’re in the time it came out, it could have been overshadowed or, even worse, not as high quality as other titles. A good example of this is Earthbound. People nowadays hold it up like it’s some kind of masterpiece, but for someone who lived and played in the time when Earthbound came out, it was a game I would never touch simply because better games were out there.
When Friday night would come around, I remember my brother and I would finish all our homework and when our father got home, he’d take us to Hollywood Video and, eventually, Blockbuster to pick up a game or two for the weekend to play.
Now, I’m not trying to preach to the crowd or, heck, even to the choir. But the games people love depended on how available they were. And during the 90s, many gamers didn’t have the kind of money necessary to buy every game coming out, so you typically rented games and bought them if you liked them. Which meant you had to try them.
For me, I missed out on a lot of the big names as a kid simply because I couldn’t reliably get my hands on them. Secret of Mana? Always out of stock. Final Fantasy 6? Always rented. Chrono Trigger? Never available. Earthbound? Actually, always available, but no one wanted it because you had to put down an additional fee to cover the strategy guide that, for some reason, Blockbuster was also renting with the game. Turns out when a game is always available because it’s considerably more expensive to rent, no one wants it.
This is why if you were to ask me for my favorite RPGs from the Super Nintendo, you’d get answers like Lufia 2, Secret of Evermore, and Ys 3. Games I could actually rent because they weren’t always out of stock like the big names were. And the few times I actually managed to get my hands on games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 3, I wouldn’t get very far and by the time I got a hold of it again, my save file would be gone. But for the lesser rented games, like Lufia 2, I could usually rent the game for five days, return it, and by the time Friday came back around, I could rent it again and my file would still be there, allowing me to get really far in the game.
But this is a beautiful thing, as it allows lesser known games to rise to the top, perhaps not necessarily into lists of the top games of a generation, but high enough to get attention. High enough for people to notice it and be like “What’s this? Looks interesting!” and discover new games they might enjoy. Games they might not have even noticed if someone didn’t mention it.
This is why you should be careful about those top tens and the like. Sure, they might be objectively right and these really are the best of the best, but it’s kind of like reading about a war and thinking you know the horror of it and then you talk to a veteran who actually served and you might discover things the books wouldn’t even hint at. History is, after all, written by the victors, so they paint history in a way that they’re right and the other side was evil. Of course, that’s not what happens here, but it kind of is.
People write lists all the time about the best of the Super Nintendo or the Genesis or whatever console, lists that may objectively be right, but talking to people who lived through that generation, well, you could find out about odd games the major list people would never even hint about.
For example, I think we all know that when you talk about the best in action adventure on the Nintendo 64, a few names are likely to pop up. Zelda and Mario. But how about Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon? Or Jet Force Gemini? When you keep to a top ten, hundreds, if not thousands, of games go unnamed and if you really want to experience a console, sticking to those top lists only leaves you with a very small amount of games. Sure, they might be the best of the best, but reviews don’t account for taste.
Which brings us back to Earthbound. While I don’t enjoy it as much as other people, it’s an RPG with a contemporary setting, in the not so fictional modern (for the time) suburbs of any American town. No other RPGs offered such a setting, instead focusing mainly on the far flung future or the distant past. Aliens and blasters or swords and sorcery were your choices. But Earthbound came out and defied both of these, granting a very different theme that people, at the time, may not have noticed due to it’s odd advertising and, well… Most SNES games were $60 while Earthbound was pushing $100. Why would I get Earthbound when I can get Chrono Trigger instead for less?
This is why you’ll see the games I review differ from the best of the best. Because, while I do cover some of the best, I want to review them because of my own enjoyment with them. But I also want to bring up other quality games that may have flown under the radar of a retro industry constantly looking back, but so blinded by the shadows of the big dogs that they’re not seeing the other diamonds in the rough. They don’t see the Suikodens and the Lufia 2s and the Persona Qs or Dino Crisis. They see the Chrono Triggers and Earthbounds and Final Fantasy 7 or Resident Evil 2s. The big boys are big for a reason, yes, but they overshadow so many other games that’re just as deserving of people’s attention.
Now, not all games are created equal, that’s for certain. But I just want to bring a spotlight to games people might not have noticed before if you don’t spend hours going over the entire history of this form of entertainment. Even just looking back through an entire console’s history can be overwhelming! And when you just have a few reviews to go off of, it can seem like a vast wasteland with everything from Mario 3 to Battletoads, Double Dragon 2 to McKids and more. Sometimes, getting a little nudge in a direction can be a welcome hand in finding the games worth your time.
Because, let’s be honest, no one has the time or patience to play through everything. If you just want the games worth playing, that’s what I want to bring forth. The games worth playing and the garbage better left buried.
The Professional Protagonist 