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"Dear Santa, this year I want..." - A Chronological Wishlist Activity
Zonugal
(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Team regular
(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Team regular
Have you ever seen these sorts of pictures pop up across Reddit or Twitter? Adjusting for inflation its a wonder any of us ever managed to own video games, cause, holy shit they were so expensive. Which got me to thinking about how most of the games I played were rented from my local Hollywood Video, but my household did still have a few games. I'd get one for my birthday and perhaps another during Christmas.
And all of this has made me wonder, if bestowed the knowledge you have now, but still in keeping with who you were during a specific year, what games would you add to your own personal collection?
THE RULES
-- Beginning in 1990, you are allotted three video games per year. These have to have been released in the region you lived and the release date has to sync up to when you would hope to obtain it within that particular year (for example, my birthday is in October, so I wouldn't be able to slot in a game releasing in say December of that same year in that particular birthday slot).
-- Beginning in 1990 you have two game consoles and every 5+ years you can gain a new game console. These covers portable consoles as well.
-- You have access to a personal computer, which is slowly being updated across the years, so you are free to treat it as a single console for this project.
THE CONDITIONS
-- You still have reasonable access to a video rental store and thus should presume you can rent video games, but only for a time period of a weekend at a time. Do you think you could fully enjoy a video game from Friday night till Monday morning? It may be a better choice for a rental store than your own personal library.
-- The historical challenge of this activity is balancing what games we know recognizing as being the best of their respective years with your own personal interests within that year, in addition to where you were at, as a person, in that specific year. For example, in our first year, 1990, I was two years-old, so I will be basing my choices off of what my seven year-old brother would have picking for our household (that's going to remain the process until I am about 4 or 5).
-- An additional challenge is in if you think you would be okay putting a game on the backburner for a year, with the future knowledge that a better version was on the horizon. Would you be able to, within the year 1992, hold off on not grabbing Street Fighter II, if you now knew that Street Fighter II Turbo would be released the following year?
RESOURCES
-- Mobygames is probably the best resource for figuring out when games released for a particular platform during a particular year, but be warned, Mobygames does use the first release year of a game, so be warned that they may be using the Japanese release date or an arcade version of the game, instead of the North American region release date.
-- Wikipedia is another useful tool for this, as they're a bit better about filtering release date by region.
-- Topsters3 is a fun tool if you want to show your choices in a visual manner to the thread.
So, SE++, what do your choices look like? With the knowledge of the future and the self-reflection of who you were as a child, what does your personal game collection look like across the 1990s and into the 2000s?
Zonugal on
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CONSOLES
I'm going to use one of my two new consoles on the Gameboy, as it'll be my dedicated portable console for effectively the entire decade. I'm going to hold the other in reserve, as I recognize that the Super Nintendo releases the following year, and, my household will be getting a SNES.
GAMES
With only access to a new Gameboy, a personal computer is going to be doing the heavy lifting for what games are chosen for 1990.
-- Tetris is a pack-in with the Gameboy and thus its a freebie. This puzzle game is a classic and is going to immediately make the Gameboy viable for my brother and my parents too.
-- Point-and-click adventure games were a big thing in my household and while The Secret of Monkey Island arrives this year, I am actually going to slot in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure as our first PC game for my household. I think it has more replayability and the fact its Indiana Jones is a strong factor.
-- For our second computer game, we want something distinctly different from a point-and-click adventure game but still with a lot of replayability and spirit, that'll be Wing Commander.
-- The first year of the Gameboy isn't spectacular, but there are a few titles that jump out. While my household would have been swept up in turtle fever, I don't know if I would, with hindsight, slot in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan as our third choice for the year. Rather, I think my brother would have opted for a denser game, something that he could get HOURS out of from that DMG brick. My third game choice for 1990 is Final Fantasy Legend II.
My choices for 1990:
Zonugal is apparently interested in how people decide based on regional availability and taste without the restriction of budget per se.
The Giant Bomb wiki might also have some utility here:
https://www.giantbomb.com/games/
I can tell you that I played the HELL out of Scrabble because I'm a fuckin nerd, but other games I possessed in the year of our Lord 1990ish:
(JPN April 1989; NA July 1989; UK September 1990)
Tetris
(JPN June 1989; NA August 1989; UK September 1990)
Qix
(JPN April 1990; NA May 1990)
Dr. Mario
(JPN July 1990; NA December 1990; UK July 1991; AUS 1991)
Super Scrabble
(NA Mar 1991)
I was p sure we didn't buy any carts while we were overseas, only before and after that assignment; the wiki assertions about release dates is in conflict there. My dad is def a tech geek & early adopter, but I would not guess he imported Game Boy games for his youngest from Japan to the States, or from the States to Europe... But I distinctly remember playing Scrabble while waiting for pizza in German restaurants, so maybe the PX was just ballin' out while we were there.
So sticking to 1990 to be sure:
As you said, Tetris is a freebie, but I would've picked it regardless. Since we have that gimme, and Dr. Mario has a similar puzzle space -- Qix is just a weird game as a kid, but it had a push-your-luck mechanic that made it easy to go "just one more", and I still think about it occasionally.
This, while acknowledging Super Mario Land as one of the very few games I have 100%d multiple times, and had pretty good execution.
We had a Colecovision, and I have fond but vague memories -- I played a lot of games by myself, but it's not an experience I can separate from family gaming, either; even knowing more sophisticated consoles are around the corner, that's my home system. The S/NES are great consoles, but I'm content to get my Nintendo (and newer titles) via GB. So my favorite, fairly obscure pick is Looping. I ~*adored*~ the gentle challenge and sparse, truly repetitive soundtrack.
For the PC, I'm also gonna have to stick with nostalgia and say the Mac. And another at the time older release, no less, because it lives in my head rent-free, ie, Dark Castle. It's obtuse as hell, but the sound effects, creature design, and goofy movement appealed to and shaped my sense of humor.
So,
Game Boy: (Tetris), Qix
Colecovision: Looping
Mac: Dark Castle
We had a PC at some point, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't in 1990, so this is very fantastical indeed.
My brother is 6 years older than me, so he probably would've been into RPGs at that point and also Elvira.
The Tetris is the DOS version, and is probably obtained by copying that floppy.
Super Mario Bros. 2 is the sequel to the game we got as a pack in with the NES, so it is a natural pick and also it is the best Mario game on the NES.
This matches up with what my mom talked about what it was like growing up in Nova Scotia.
Chico, this is a wild opinion.
Which are still good, but not as good.
Unlike in other Marios you aren't trying to rescue the Princess, you get to play as the Princess and the Princess gets to float and defeat a Dream Lord who is a big Frog King.
That Dream Lord Frog King also appears in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, the best Zelda game, where he is now a humble and awful soul singer.
i'm in catholic school
i just snuck(or was soon about to)sneak into a bar to see gg allin as a kid
i was a few years out from sneaking into jason goes to hell
ghostbusters 2 is my current favorite movie
i didn't have a video game console until 93-94ish
so, this would be me:
I'll get in on this on Sunday and do however many years I need to to catch up. All I know for sure is that the Sega Genesis will be involved as in 1991 that was the first console I ever bought for myself, using all of the money I'd saved for ages and all of the money my parents gave me as a reward for earning a ton of scholarship money to the Catholic high school they wanted to send me to.
I'm not going to be able to meaningfully contribute until the mid-90s
CONSOLES
I'm going to use the last of my two new consoles (for the next five years) on the Super Nintendo, which will be my household's primary video game console at least until we get to the next generation. And because we're getting a new console, it is 100% a Christmas present, so it gets slotted at the end of the year in December.
GAMES
My household has access to a Gameboy, a personal computer, and a Super Nintendo (but at the end of the year).
JUNE '91 -- We're going to continue with our collection of point-and-click adventure games but with another non-LucasArts title (sorry George...): Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood. This is a game with a lot of hidden depths and also feels like the sort of thing my brother would have been interested in and, principally, my dad would have signed off on getting because of the Robin Hood IP.
DEC '91 -- Super Mario World is a pack-in with the SNES and thus is another freebie (just like Tetris the earlier year). This is the first video game I truly played and what taught me how video games work. It also is a great game with a lot of replayability. It'd be a stellar choice even if it wasn't a pack-in but I'm happy to include it into my household's personal collection.
DEC '91 -- I feel like its a good call to continue to develop our Gameboy library, especially as in my household, pretty soon, my older brother will hand it off to me so that he has dominion over the primary console. That said, I want a good ol' fashioned video game, one that is easy for me to play at a young age that won't require too much reading. I'm going with Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge.
DEC '91 -- We're going to pair Super Mario World with a slower, more narratively-rich game that I know my brother would have snagged as even at a young age he was pretty hooked on RPGs. Now, it'll be a few more years till I can engage with it because of fuckin' literacy but when I get around to it, it'll be a fun time. It's going to be Final Fantasy IV.
My choices for 1991:
This may be partly because when I got my NES for Christmas, the games I got with it were Mario 2 and Zelda 2 but.. hell yeah, Mario 2 is better than 1 and 3. It was a wild diversion that I didn't think gets nearly enough credit, even if it was a sprite swap.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Honestly this is the aspect of this activity that excites me, the different age-ranges and regional preferences, showcased through our choices.
CONSOLES
Nothing new here, the household continues to have a SNES, a personal computer, and a Gameboy.
GAMES
OCT '92 -- How am I celebrating my birthday? I'm getting The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which may as well be the game of the year for the SNES. A system-defining classic and one that I could navigate as it had very limited text within it.
DEC '92 -- This year Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis comes out, but our computer has been a bit dominated by point-and-click adventure titles (and the "talkie" version of Fate of Atlantis releases the following year...), so I think I am going to say that my brother would stay in the same genre as Wing Commander, but pivot into a strategy game: Star Control II.
DEC '92 -- We're going to pause the development of our Gameboy library because trying to hold back the flood wall of turtle fever is impossible at this point. It's an arcade classic and we could have it in our home?! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time is a promise of a good time with a friend during a Saturday afternoon. It also helps that its arguably the best beat 'em up on the system. As for exclusion of Street Fighter II? I think my home is going to hold off a year so we can get Street Fighter II Turbo.
My choices for 1992:
1990 - I'm 3, just starting to form my first coherent memories. An only child for a couple more years, I'll be doted on with quite a few gifts to give me some early kid credit boosts, including some formative games. This version of Matev has been given many more terrible insights, so we'll see if he learns delayed gratification.
One of the first Christmases I can remember, I was granted the boon of a hand-me-down Nintendo Entertainment System. It's a beastly workhorse of a console with an already impressive library, so I can let it carry me through the early going while the 16-bit consoles get churning. We did in fact have a PC powerful enough to run games (Dad was both a software engineer and a gamer himself) so that'll be seeing a workout of it's own. There are murmurs of other consoles on the horizon, though. Soon, soon he will feast.
Challenge Picks
-Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt - The Pack In for the NES is a corker of a double game, both giving the classic platformer experience, and the "edge of the future" gameplay that only the slick Nintendo Zapper can provide. While not the absolute finest NES titles, they're a great introduction to the system and well worth a place in the library.
-Ducktales - Little Matev was a cartoon fiend, so of course Ducktales would grab his eye. Fortunately, it's a solid platformer from Capcom with distinct level designs, easy to pick up mechanics, and a kickin' soundtrack. Wooo-ooo!
-The Legend of Zelda - While not necessarily a firm Matev pick, swords and sorcery are an easy pick for someone whose bedtime story was the Hobbit, so I imagine this is gotten by young Matev's parents partially for him to fiddle with, but also something to try for themselves. Fortunately, it's another all time classic, with exploration, enemies to fight, and dungeons to delve secrets from. While little Matev won't necessarily like dying so often, he'll come to appreciate the cruel lessons of Hyrule with time and practice.
-TMNT 2: The Arcade Game - As noted before, we're a cartoon crowd here, and none reigned supreme in 1990 other than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Although I did get the Konami beast at a later point, we're going to let young Matev's parents do him a solid and instead get the home port of the arcade beat 'em up. Now you're playing with power. Turtle Power.
My actual starting library of the time was much more eclectic, and less high calibur. This was offset by renting early and often, and having very close family friends that indeed had their own robust library of classic NES games that I would have access to on at least a weekly basis for the majority of the decade. The PC had the standard Windows suite of time-wasters, and a couple other DOS-Bootables
EDIT: Oh shit, I did some research, the Sega Genesis dropped earlier than I thought it did. So we'll add that to the line up, cause Sega does what Nintendon't and that'll mean something to young Matev in a couple years, I swear. It's 1990, so the pack in game for the Genesis should be....... no.....oh god no.....!
-Altered Beast - A.... sigh port of the arcade game of the same name by Sega. It ain't takin home prizes for innovative gameplay or moving story, but you sure do turn into bara dudes who turn into beasts and fuck up Hades cause he took your girlfriend or Zeus' daughter or something. It's.... it's fine. It'll be fine.
Challenge Picks
-Sonic the Hedgehog - The Blue Blur will be the pack in for the Genesis this holiday season forward, but Sonic releases standalone in June of '91 and is the hot ticket vidya this year. I remember booting my Genesis up for the first time and the Green Hill Zone opening to be a revelation straight from Heaven. I was fighting robots, freeing animals, and I was going fast! The boss didn't take 4 levels to get to, it only took 3. And then we went to an entirely different looking place with it's own music!? Get the fuck out of here!
-Ghostbusters - Of course Little Matev liked the Real Ghostbusters, not a shocker by any stretch. Though the character models are stylized from the movie versions, any game where we could bust ghosts is a good one. He'll probably need some help with buying stuff and managing his inventory in the early days, and he'll probably skip the dialogue just to start shooting ghosts, but that'll probably fine, lots of time to grow into it.
-Revenge of Shinobi - This one is, again, a pick with the elder Matev Sr. in mind that little Matev will grow into with time. Ninjas are still cool, and while there aren't as many mutants, there's still a lot of different levels, power ups, and variety of enemies (Including some flagrant copyright infingements!). Little Matev will be terrified of game overs, rushing to either continue or shut off the console before NEO-Zeed's synthesized laughter taunts him through the TV speakers. It will drive him to greater feats of ninja mastery, fighting across two countries for Joe Mushashi's revenge.
Not a lot of development that I can remember on the IRL front, except getting the ok-ish Star Wars game for NES that made you do a lot of spelunking on Tatooine before you could blast off to rescue Leia from the Death Star. Oh, and Lemmings. Lemmings were cute and I could actually figure out how to make them work since it didn't use words! Next year's gonna be a doozy update though, so strap in.
***
1992 - Aw yah, 5 years old and hitting the good shit. There's fighting in the raging streets with some level of finality, and console gamers are getting the next course of their grand feast. Let's see what's in store the Matevs in 2 timelines!
Challenge Picks
-Mega Man 3 - Through rentals and airings of Captain N the Game Master, young Matev will develop a taste for Mega Man, and while several different iterations will be in play, he'll settle on Mega Man 3 as the challenge to take home. A classic lineup of robot masters, the god send that is the slide move, and 3 different sets of levels will keep Matev busy for quite awhile as he looks to take the fight to Dr. Wily.
-Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Fresh off the success of the first iteration, Sonic 2 dropped in to the eager anticipation of newly minted hedgehog fans, who readily devoured the sequel as it brought new zones, sidekick Tails, and the much needed and beloved Spin Dash. About as good as a sequel could get, it improved on the slick gameplay of the original and delivered more of what everyone wanted. Though he's probably still grappling with Spring Yard Robotnik and the Labyrinth Zone, young Matev won't be left behind in getting the new hotness.
-World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck - Apparently, this is the year of sequence breaks cause all 3 of the games I picked, all excellent in their own right, are games I get in later years, but still work as picks for the younger Matev as they're still in keeping with his tastes. In this cause, World of Illusion is a platformer Sega made in collaboration with Disney, part of the deal commenced with Castle of Illusion and continued with Quackshot. This game brings Disney's top 2 billers together to escape a magical world they've been trapped in by a sorcerer before their big magic show. There is platforming, but to dispatch enemies, Mickey and Donald transform them with flourishes of magic capes. Also, there are different levels depending on if you play Mickey, Donald, or both (With the both sections requiring actual player cooperation, it's pretty nifty for it's time!) This is one of those games with some solid replayability and is a good revisit down through the years. May it provide young Matev with some nice tunes and a whimsy to contrast Sega's tough reputation.
This holiday was the year I got my Sega Genesis. (Grandma spoiled us and we got a choice. Cousin went with the SNES so of course I had to do the different thing so we could show off different games when we visited) I got a pretty solid set of starter games, with Sonic as the pack in, Revenge of Shinobi cause ninjas, and ToeJam & Earl cause it was weird cartoony aliens and ended up being this weird hodgepodge game that the entire family liked playing (A rare feat given mom's only game interests had been puzzle games like Tetris and Dr. Mario. Again, rentals would heavily supplement this line up as weekly video store trips were commonplace and I was usually given the chance to try a game to keep me quiet broaden my horizons. The arrival of the Genesis was timely as soon the NES would begin to show it's age and become unreliable (Repair methods being difficult to find in the old days, and potentially costly if you didn't know how to do them properly). Dad would also start getting more into PC gaming, exposing me far earlier than I should've been to classics like Alone in the Dark, but also stuff like Scorched Earth and Wing Commander, and Star Control II was a game that saw quite a few sessions of play as flew various alien ships at each other, locked in combat and half-mezmerized by the different animations.
CONSOLES
No new adjustments, the family has brought the SNES, the personal computer, and the Gameboy across the continent to western Washington state.
GAMES
OCT '93 -- For my birthday, per my older brother's advice, my household will finally be getting international sensation: Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting. It's the only game being added to the SNES this year, thankfully its the type of game that a kid can sink hundreds of hours into, a virtue of the fighting game genre.
DEC '93 -- This Christmas season we're adding The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening to the Gameboy, which casually sits in maybe the top three games for the portable console. I now have two Legend of Zelda games in my household, one of them I can take on vacations. The Gameboy continues to be a solid investment.
DEC '93 -- This year we finally get the "talkie" version of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, in addition to SimCity 2000. Two excellent PC games that on another year would get added to my personal game library. But... But in 1993 Doom released and, well, we're getting Doom. There is no reality where my brother and father don't advocate for that. It's fuckin' Doom.
***
1993 - 6 years old, and baby brother has entered the picture. This will pay off for main timeline Matev later in the form of extra games and rentals which he has some influence over. For now, it means slightly less doting and eventually having to share a room cause the baby really shouldn't be sleeping in the utility closet. Alt timeline Matev will just have to wait for the pay-off of extra rentals.
Challenge Picks
-Bucky O'Hare - Based on the cartoon of the same name (Itself based on an indy comic that was walking the TMNT path) you play space-rabbit captain Bucky O'Hare, who must free his crew of freedom fighters (of the starship Righteous Indignation) from the Toad Empire and wreck their plans for galactic domination! This one's an interesting one, as you start out with Bucky, who has the power to charge super jumps, but once you free the other crew members you find they have their own attacks and powers that you can use, making it something of a mega man setup where you need to have the right tools to accomplish the tasks at hand. I went through so many rentals of this as a kid cause I loved Bucky O'Hare (Which only ran for the one season) and really I should have just bought it. Well, alt-Timeline Matev's getting the damned game.
-X-Men - Another game we should've just bought as both Matev and Matev Sr. were/are major X-Men fans and despite having access to 3 or 4 video stores nearby, it was almost never available for rental. I never really got past the 1st level as a kid cause I wasn't good with figuring where to go in the Savage Land's many different layers. The line-up's top notch, with playable characters being Cyclops (yawn), Wolverine (Bub), Gambit (Remember it), and Nightcrawler (BAMF) Other X-Men show up as summons and the soundtrack is suitably cool.
-Doom - Speaking of games young Matev should not have been playing, Doom was one of them. But I started it up on my grandpa's PC and started blasting away, not fully comprehending that I was gorily gunning down the forces of hell, but I knew they were monsters, and that I was shooting them until I found the exit, so it was ok. A lot of the more horrifying scenery was lost on me, and sure some of the noises and invisible monsters gave me a spook, but I wasn't terrified of it like I was Jack Nicholson's Joker or Gremlins, so it was determined that since the cat was out of the bag and it wasn't giving me nightmares, it was all right to play with permission. Thus began the age of shooters. (This method will come into play again later)
Sonic 2 showed up as an Easter gift this year, which was a fairly shocking feat that kept me rapt for the holiday for the rest of my childhood, none of the baskets after that living up to the lofty heights. Otherwise, console vidya for this year were somewhat thin on the ground outside of rentals. On the PC though, we were granted by Pepper's Adventures in Time, a Sierra Adventure game geared towards learning about Ben Franklin and colonial America. It doesn't have the full bite of Sierra's humor (but it does have a very bitey dog called Lockjaw) but it's still fun and full of the usual Sierra nonsense you deal with in the games of the time. There was also The Even More! Incredible Machine, which tasked you with making Rube Goldberg style machines using limited supplies of objects to accomplish various objectives, such as turning on lights, putting basketballs in hoops, and helping cats catch mice.
1994 is a stacked year!! There are some quality choices!!
CONSOLES
While the Sony Playstation releases this year, that's only for Japan, so my family continues to only have the SNES, the personal computer, and the Gameboy.
GAMES
OCT '93 -- For my birthday this year we're adding what I consider to be a top five Gameboy game. It's a testament to the portable console that it was delivering products as good as Donkey Kong '94. This game takes the joy of the arcade game and adds 94 more levels of high quality puzzle gameplay to it. To this day if I have a device that can run older games, Donkey Kong '94 is always installed on it. It's a foundational video game for me.
DEC '93 -- There are a lot of high quality SNES games this year. Super Metroid, Final Fantasy VI, NBA Jam, and more. But I am going to pivot away from a game and add a piece of hardware to my SNES: the Super Gameboy. This choice lets me access my entire Gameboy library on my home television, expanding my SNES library by five additional games and will continue to pay off with each new Gameboy title added to my personal game library.
DEC '93 -- This year frankly belongs to Donkey Kong... He showed up on the Gameboy in the form of a classic and he's showing up again on the SNES via Donkey Kong Country. There is no way I avoid requesting this game for Christmas. The marketing push alone! I'm a simple six year-old!! But this game is a barrel of fun and one I'd be happy to revisit on a rainy afternoon. Honestly, that same sentiment remains true 21 years later.
i am all about the x-men.
i had my first kiss, and i just saw death wish 2 for the first time.
i live for the simpsons and my family is poor as hell.
i still only have the nintendo.
topster is broken so this me:
more to come later
i finally have a super nintendo
my mom works at pizza hut, my dad works at dominos
the first snes game i have ever seen/played is pocky and rocky
i have discovered both eating raoul and the scrambled spice channel
this is what i get
topster is still broken
Challenge Picks
-Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - 1994 might be very well be the Year of Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic 3 rolls onto the scene in February and is a straight up phenomenon. There is no escaping the hype and you will have a strong opinion on Knuckles the Echidna. This iteration of the game brings tons of new level mechanics, but also new types of shield with their own special attacks. With a kick ass soundtrack, memorable setpieces, and even a vs. mode, this is Sonic at nearly the height of his powers.
-Shadowrun - In this timeline, Matev Sr. is going to put his thumb on the scales slightly more often in this early going, with a game he'd almost assuredly get for himself, but young Matev will come to adore in about 3-4 years. Shadowrun is based on the TTRPG of the same name, with it's own story involving you traveling to the Seattle sprawl to find and/or avenge your dead brother. You start out hunting ghouls for cash, but eventually upgrade and start taking on spicier runs. One of the better RPGs you can snag for a system that was desperate for them. Matev Sr. was a big Shadowrun head and it'll rub off onto young Matev quicker in this timeline.
-Sonic & Knuckles - Gee Matev, how come Sega lets you have two Sonic games in 1 year? Cause technically they're 1 game nerd! Too much hedgehog for 1 cart, the wizards at Sega split what was supposed to be Sonic 3 into 2 games, Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles. And with the power of God and Anime Lock-On Technology, we can play the entire epic! Not only that, Sonic 2 gets extra versatility by letting us play as Knuckles! More sanic, more levels, more grooves, and even a hidden ending if you collect all 14 Chaos Emeralds. This is proof God loves Genesis owners.
This year saw several new additions to the collection, notably challenge runner Master of Magic (Which is a cross-breed of Civ and Might and Magic that I forgot the name of until I started this challenge, (and need to hunt down again now that I'm a man with patience for such games!) as well as the Mechwarrior equivalent of Jungle Strike, Battletech (The Battletech cartoon and Matev Sr.'s love of Mechwarrior coming to bear here) as well as a little known, gods awful Indiana Jones-alike called Earnest Evans that's best known for being having cutscenes animated by Studio Madhouse for the Mega-CD version. The main character moves weirdly cause it's using a prototype of the tech used in Symphony of the Night, and the levels are a mish-mash and the enemies are non-sensical, but we loved it cause it was a gift to Matev Sr. for reasons that you can divine if you know me well enough, and the soundtrack goes surprisingly hard.
CONSOLES
The Sony Playstation has finally released in the United States and... Eh...? It has no amazing games within the Christmas season of 1995 and my household would only get it during the Christmas season, so, we're skipping it for this year! My family continues to only have the SNES, the personal computer, and the Gameboy.
GAMES
JUNE '95 -- I have finished the 2nd grade and with summer vacation arriving, I'm using one of my slots for Kirby's Dream Land 2. It's not a particularly long game, by any measure, but its a pretty fun game that offers an enjoyable, full game within a whole night. This is a game you can enjoy on a hot summer night, outside on a back porch.
OCT '95 -- For my seventh birthday I'm going to choose a game I never actually owned, a game I have never actually played! But I know of its pedigree and I also know that the reign of the PSX is right around the corner, so I want to end my SNES library with a game that offers some real replayability. That game will be Chrono Trigger.
DEC '95 -- Oh boy... My Christmas choice for 1995... I considered SimCity 2000: CD Collection but this year two early titans of the real-time strategy genre arrive and, well, I'm just going to enjoy one of them considerably more than a city simulator (even one as good as SimCity 2000). While I played and enjoyed Command and Conquer, I do prefer its sequel, Red Alert, and that won't arrive till next year. Which means young Zonugal is jumping on the Warcraft band-wagon with WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness! It has multiplayer, it has a scenario editor, it has elves fighting trolls. And its also going to prepare me for when Warcraft 3 releases several years from now!!
Choosing between Warcraft II and Command & Conquer felt like a real throw of the dice.
But I feel pretty confident I will grab Warcraft III later on, so it establishes a solid foundation with the series, an advantage Command & Conquer simply doesn't replicate...