1992 was a busy year for SEGA with the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and the North American launch of SEGA CD. We also saw another game console in 1992: The horrendously terrible Philips CD-i, which gave us a long line of downright terrible Nintendo-licensed games.
Speaking of Nintendo, they faced two lawsuits in 1992: One from Atari, the other from Lewis Galoob Toys over copyright infringement stemming from Galoob’s Game Genie, arguing that the Game Genie made a derivative work of whatever Nintendo game was plugged into it. Ultimately, the courts ruled in favor of Galoob, and opened the door for other companies to create devices like the Game Genie, and later on, the Game Shark and Action Replay.
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty was not the first real-time strategy game, but it did lay the groundwork for just about every RTS game since. Why is that? Because it plays a lot like Command & Conquer. Not a surprise, really, when you consider that Dune II was developed by Westwood Studios.
A few of the features first introduced in Dune II? Mouse support, the fog of war, a world map, resource gathering, a tech tree, and unique factions. How many RTS games do you play nowadays that actually don’t have these basic features? Not too many.
The Lost Vikings is more than a song by the most metal band of all time, Dethklok. In fact, it is one of the all-time classic puzzle games from future World of Warcraft creator
Each of the three star Vikings, Eric, Baleog and Olaf, had different abilities: Eric could run, jump and crash through walls, Baleog had a sword and bow, and Olaf had a shield that he could use as a device to block enemy attacks (duh) as well as a glider. Using each of their abilities, you were tasked with guiding the Vikings through each level as they looked to escape Tomator’s space ship before becoming an exhibit in an intergalactic zoo.
…yes, Vikings in space.
Before I talk about the game, let’s get one thing clear right now: Konami naming their lightgun the “Justifier” is just plain manly. The lightguns were molded to look like the Colt Python, a .357 magnum that, in my opinion, made Dirty Harry’s Smith & Wesson look like a capgun. But enough about all that, let’s get to the game.
Lethal Enforcers is one of those games that you can still probably find up and running in small-town gas stations and movie theatres, and it has a very basic premise: Point and shoot. You played as a Detective responding to five high-risk situations, including a bank robbery a plane hijacking and… something happening at a chemical plant. Your default weapon was a six-shooter, although as you progressed you could get weapon upgrades to include a 9mm clip-loader, shotgun, or machine gun.
Now, depending on what system you played the game on, you either got to play through “Chinatown” or “Downtown”, and the Drug Dealers were now Gunrunners. Why?
Probably for the same reason Nintendo didn’t allow blood in Mortal Kombat. Speaking of which…
Before there was Mortal Kombat all fighting games had vivid animations and cartoonish artstyles that never truly capitalized on the brutal nature of two people beating each other to a pulp. Not only did Mortal Kombat do that, but they also gave us this all-time great video game death:
For a game that used FMV, it was extremely responsive and became a formula that just about every other fighting game in the early and mid-90s used. But what MK is easily most known for is the gruesome violence (for the time) that led to Congressional hearings and ultimately the formation of the ESRB.
Also, since MK3 will not be featured in any of these lists, keep this in mind: Kerry Hoskins, the woman who replaced Elizabeth Malecki as Sonya Blade, has appeared in Playboy. A lot. So you all can go Google that whenever you want.
A Game Boy game? Really? Well, Super Mario Land 2 is a cut above the rest of the junk that was coming out on the Game Boy in the early 90s (except Kirby, but I’ll be damned if a Kirby game gets on this list) in that it finally brought a Super Mario experience to the Game Boy that could finally be considered on par with the NES classics.
Super Mario Land 2 played much like Super Mario Bros 3. and Super Mario World in that you had a world map where you could select what stage you wanted to play through. You could also save your progress (unlike the previous game), and thanks to the power of the Super Mario Bros. 3 engine, the game finally looked like a Mario game, which was a great improvement over the original.
There are three things to note about Super Mario Land 2: 1.) It was not designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, but rather Gunpei Yokoi — the man who created the Game Boy. 2.) SML2 is the first appearance of Mario’s doppelganger, Wario. 3.) It was one of the only Mario games to have a kill counter.
All games should have a kill counter.
Super Star Wars is hard. I mean, it’s downright stupid hard. But it was also excellent in every conceivable way but one: No way to save your progress. Sure, this would be fixed in both the sequels, but at the time that was just one last bit of salt that Sculptured Software sprinkled on an already fresh wound.
In actually, Super Star Wars was more or less a remake of Star Wars a game that came out on the NES in 1991 that played fairly faithful to the film it was based off of, the original 1977 Star Wars movie (aka “A New Hope”). In Super Star Wars, you played through most of the game as Luke Skywalker as he fought his way through the deserts of Tatooine, the innards of a Sand Crawler, and through the Death Star before ultimately facing off, mono-a-mono against Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced. At different points in the game you also played as both Han Solo and Chewbacca at different points.
Oh, and did I mention that it was hard?
I’m pretty sure we’ve allplayed at least one first-person shooter in our lives. For most of you, it was probably Doom, Unreal Tournament… or Halo… yeah, anyways, before any of those games were glints in their creator’s eyes, there was one that made the genre a viable form of gameplay: Wolfenstein 3D. Was it the first FPS? Certainly not, but it was the first commercially and critically successful FPS game, and with good reason.
Naturally, the heavy usage of Nazi symbolism within the game (including a level that is made almost entirely of swastikas) caused quite a bit of backlash. The game was banned in Germany, and Nintendo demanded that the game have all the blood and Nazi symbolism removed. Also, the dogs were replaced with big ass rats. All of this tinkering with the game that was done by Nintendo is believed to be the reasoning behind id Software’s licensing of the Wolfenstein engine to Wisdom Tree in their development of Super Noah’s Ark 3D — but we’ll touch on that a little later.
Regardless, Wolfenstein 3D is remembered as being the father of the modern FPS, and still has one of the greatest boss battles in video game history with the one and only…
Mecha Hitler.
Super Mario Kart was more than a simple kart racing game, it was a sign. A sign that soon Nintendo would be whoring out their corporate mascot in dozens of games that had nothing to do with Mario’s platforming roots.
Thankfully, Super Mario Kart was freaking awesome. The original had eight different drivers, including Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, and Yoshi (and more). Each of the drivers had different ratings for their speed, acceleration, etc., and depending on which driver you chose determined what kind of game you were going to have to play. So in that sense, it was imperative for the player to know their own driving style before making their selection.
Super Mario Kart became the 3rd highest selling SNES game on the console behind Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country, although many could argue that Super Mario World had an unfair advantage. In France, Super Mario Kart is still one of the top competitive games, with an annual tournament held every year.
Everything that made Sonic the Hedgehog great was made even better with Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It was bigger, stronger, faster than the previous entry in the series, and still has some of the most ingenius level design ever seen in a 2D platformer. Not only that, but SEGA was able to improve on the first game by introducing Sonic’s Spin Dash, which meant that you didn’t have to scramble to find a jump or a spring to get up a particular ramp.
Sonic 2 wasn’t perfect, though. The multiplayer component suffered from heavy slowdown, there still was no save option, and Tails was a fucker who always managed to steal your damn air bubbles. Thankfully, though, you had the option to make Tails go away.
However, even for all it’s improvements, Sonic and SEGA still played second-fiddle to Nintendo…
Finally! A RPG makes it’s way to these lists, and of course the first game on the list would be a Zelda game. The first thing players noticed about A Link to the Past was that Nintendo learned a valuable lesson: No more side-scrolling. Nintendo returned to the top-down gameplay dynamic that made the original Zelda an all-time classic, and on top of that Nintendo also introduced some new features that have become staples in the franchise, such as the Hookshot.
A Link to the Past also introduced the notion of parallel worlds of light and dark, which would make appearances in almost every Zelda game from that point on.
A Link to the Past is widely considered to be one of the best role-playing games, as well as best SNES games of all time. EGM, Nintendo Power, EDGE and ScrewAttack all have the game in their top five lists for SNES, and it is without a doubt the best game of 1992.
Worst Game of 1992:
Night Trap
Night Trap is remembered for all the wrong reasons. It spawned tons of controversy due to a scene in the game that Democratic Senator Slime Ball Joe Lieberman cited as “ultra-violent” and “disgusting”. I’ll let you be the judge of that:
…that is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve watched BioDome. But back in 1992, that was a huge deal and wound up helping to form the ESRB.
In the next couple of weeks we’re going to have a full write-up on what we consider the worst development studio to ever exist, Digital Pictures, and you’ll be hearing a lot more about Night Trap then.
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Mortal Kombat should have been number 3.
I actually have to agree with Mortal Kombat being lower than Super Mario Land 2 and a Star Wars game *shudders*
Because of the game play of zelda (fighting style) it isn’t considered to be an RPG, but rather a platformer. But I do definitely have to agree it was the best for the year and years to come.
Hah, thanks for using my Night Trap footage, and yes, Joe Liberman is nothing but slime.
Dune 2, my 1st PC game which lead me to love RTS games. I still remember building hordes of infantry and sending to battle at once, just like in AoE or Starcraft.
Mortal Kombat, we just to “emulate” the ambiance sounds like the “oooh” when you hit a jab or the “uhm!” when jumping, obviously, the “finish him!”
Wolfstein… well, I switched to DN3D when it appeared but both are remembered as the basis for FPS, then Quake arrived followed by HalfLife and ultimately by UT.
Those were great days!