Top 50 Videogames: 15 and 14
15. The Addams Family (1992, Bally Midway)
Difficulty from 1 to 10: Compared to most other pinball games, about average, I'd say. There's plenty of play time, but to get the best modes you have to have pinpoint precision.
Played it with: Leif Bierly, Ben Mullaly, Nate Nicholson, Nick Wells...anyone who hung around the video store at which I worked.
Did I complete it? It's pinball, stupid.
Other pinball games that I considered putting on this list: Jurassic Park, Earthshaker, Super Mario Brothers.
This game is awesome. I had originally meant for this list to involve home console games only, but when this one and Ms. Pac-Man popped into my head, I realized I had to open up the floor. I'll say this, though, which I can't say for Ms. Pac-Man: if I owned this one, it's entirely likely I'd spend more time on it than any console game.
A quick net search of this one proved what I probably would've guessed--this is the best-selling pinball machine in history, at 20,720 units sold (well, I wouldn't have guessed the number of units sold, but I...okay, you get me). My benchmark for true success is whether the machine found its way to my hometown of Blue Earth, Minnesota, where there was just a single store that had arcade games after a time--my video store. And this one lasted a long time there. It was also in the game room when I went to college, where it remained for a couple years before the pinball games went away for some ridiculous reason (it's entirely possible the management had no idea that pinball has been much more popular than the arcade games for about fifteen years now, with the meteoric rise of consoles). Anyway, I hope you didn't blink, because that was the only arcade game and the last non-console game on the list.
14. We <3 Katamari (2005, PlayStation 2)
Difficulty from 1 to 10: 8. Easy to beat, I think, but fairly difficult to really impress the king. That means nothing to someone who hasn't played it.
Played it with: Cathy, Leif, Josh Mitchell, my elder daughter. She calls it Rollin' Ball.
Did I complete it? Yes. The ending is awesomely fun. Such a stupid game shouldn't have such a satisfying ending, but it was better than an least half the endings of RPGs I've spent hundreds of hours with.
Others in the series that could've been on the list: Katamari Damacy, which was the original. But there's no reason for multiple titles from this series to be on the list.
Let me say this straight off: I don't know exactly how to explain why this game is so freaking awesome. Nobody does, I don't think. In this game, the King of all Cosmos even mocks the game itself, saying "just rolling a ball and making it bigger? It doesn't seem much fun to us." It's this kind of meta-humor, along with the endlessly brilliant premise, that makes this game so addictive (and for others, impossible to get into).
So you're this little dopey-looking Prince, and you're the son of the King of all Cosmos, who's basically a godlike figure. But he's pretty lazy, and when he accidentally gets rid of all the stars in the sky, he asks one of his countless sons to go to Earth, roll things up, and he'll make stars out of the resulting balls. Now, that whole storyline is a total MacGuffin meant to get us to the point where we're rolling up balls of stuff, but as MacGuffins go, it's pretty damned hilarious. So in each level, the Prince starts with a small or smallish ball, and can only roll up small things. As the ball grows bigger, he can absorb bigger things...it's especially funny when humans are introduced to the mix, as they scream and flail their arms as they're rolled up.
In addition, there are special levels like "try to get as close to this size as you can" and "roll up the biggest cow you can find," which is insanely hard because as you're growing your ball to the point where you can get a huge bull, you'll almost certainly accidentally run over a pylon with holstien spots, which apparently counts as a cow. If this paragraph sounded stupid to you, that's probably good. But if it sounded funny-stupid to you, you should drop everything and buy both of these games immediately. I mean it.
Difficulty from 1 to 10: Compared to most other pinball games, about average, I'd say. There's plenty of play time, but to get the best modes you have to have pinpoint precision.
Played it with: Leif Bierly, Ben Mullaly, Nate Nicholson, Nick Wells...anyone who hung around the video store at which I worked.
Did I complete it? It's pinball, stupid.
Other pinball games that I considered putting on this list: Jurassic Park, Earthshaker, Super Mario Brothers.
This game is awesome. I had originally meant for this list to involve home console games only, but when this one and Ms. Pac-Man popped into my head, I realized I had to open up the floor. I'll say this, though, which I can't say for Ms. Pac-Man: if I owned this one, it's entirely likely I'd spend more time on it than any console game.
A quick net search of this one proved what I probably would've guessed--this is the best-selling pinball machine in history, at 20,720 units sold (well, I wouldn't have guessed the number of units sold, but I...okay, you get me). My benchmark for true success is whether the machine found its way to my hometown of Blue Earth, Minnesota, where there was just a single store that had arcade games after a time--my video store. And this one lasted a long time there. It was also in the game room when I went to college, where it remained for a couple years before the pinball games went away for some ridiculous reason (it's entirely possible the management had no idea that pinball has been much more popular than the arcade games for about fifteen years now, with the meteoric rise of consoles). Anyway, I hope you didn't blink, because that was the only arcade game and the last non-console game on the list.
14. We <3 Katamari (2005, PlayStation 2)
Difficulty from 1 to 10: 8. Easy to beat, I think, but fairly difficult to really impress the king. That means nothing to someone who hasn't played it.
Played it with: Cathy, Leif, Josh Mitchell, my elder daughter. She calls it Rollin' Ball.
Did I complete it? Yes. The ending is awesomely fun. Such a stupid game shouldn't have such a satisfying ending, but it was better than an least half the endings of RPGs I've spent hundreds of hours with.
Others in the series that could've been on the list: Katamari Damacy, which was the original. But there's no reason for multiple titles from this series to be on the list.
Let me say this straight off: I don't know exactly how to explain why this game is so freaking awesome. Nobody does, I don't think. In this game, the King of all Cosmos even mocks the game itself, saying "just rolling a ball and making it bigger? It doesn't seem much fun to us." It's this kind of meta-humor, along with the endlessly brilliant premise, that makes this game so addictive (and for others, impossible to get into).
So you're this little dopey-looking Prince, and you're the son of the King of all Cosmos, who's basically a godlike figure. But he's pretty lazy, and when he accidentally gets rid of all the stars in the sky, he asks one of his countless sons to go to Earth, roll things up, and he'll make stars out of the resulting balls. Now, that whole storyline is a total MacGuffin meant to get us to the point where we're rolling up balls of stuff, but as MacGuffins go, it's pretty damned hilarious. So in each level, the Prince starts with a small or smallish ball, and can only roll up small things. As the ball grows bigger, he can absorb bigger things...it's especially funny when humans are introduced to the mix, as they scream and flail their arms as they're rolled up.
In addition, there are special levels like "try to get as close to this size as you can" and "roll up the biggest cow you can find," which is insanely hard because as you're growing your ball to the point where you can get a huge bull, you'll almost certainly accidentally run over a pylon with holstien spots, which apparently counts as a cow. If this paragraph sounded stupid to you, that's probably good. But if it sounded funny-stupid to you, you should drop everything and buy both of these games immediately. I mean it.