1993 was a great year for gaming. In addition to the games on the list below, we saw Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA come to consoles. 1993 also saw the release of the Atari Jaguar, the 3DO, a redesigned NES and the Amiga CD32. JW is proud to say he bought one for $3 at a yard sale in 2002.
In 1993, we also saw two companies that would go on to change to way we play video games: Take Two Interactive, the future publishers of Grand Theft Auto III and beyond, and nVidia.
Dinosaurs for Hire was one of those games that, while great, was simply overshadowed by other releases that year. Coming out in the early part of 1993 the game was more or less buried behind copies of the then new Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and never quite got it’s feet steady. It’s a shame, too. As we wrote about a while back, Dinosaurs for Hire was one of the first console games to successfully inject some humor into the story.
Also, fighting a robotic minotaur on top of the Empire State Building is just plain righteous.
Sonic CD was the first game to be developed by a team that wasn’t Team Sonic. When you look back at the more recent Sonic titles, maybe it was a sign of things to come. But what made Sonic CD special? Well, one of the features that were introduced in Sonic CD was time travel. Yes, time travel. By running full-speed at posts marked either “Past†or “Futureâ€, you could travel forward or backwards in time to a different version of the
Sonic CD has a couple of distinctions. It is widely considered to be the best Sonic the Hedgehog video game, and is almost universally accepted as the best SEGA CD game… even if that isn’t saying much.
I openly admit that the omission of Battletoads for the 1992 list certainly would have been a fatal error on my part, if not for the fact that Rareware and Tradewest teamed up to give us Battletoads & Double Dragon for just about every console under the sun. Now, anybody who grew up loving the Double Dragon games like I did probably noticed some definite “artistic license†with some of the DD plot points. For instance, ‘Shadow Boss’ was an original character who looked a lot like Burnov from Double Dragon II. Another example is the stage 3 boss, Roper, who is just a renamed version of Willy, the final boss from the original DD.
All of these differences aside, Rareware and Tradewest pumped out a kick ass fighter. Even if it did take place in Bizarro World.
Shinobi III is fast, furious, beautiful, and much smoother than the game it followed, The Revenge of Shinobi. The game was supposed to be released in 1992, and a few game publications had already published reviews of the game before SEGA delayed it. When the game was re-released to the press and the public in July, 1993, reviewers noticed that many features from the copy they reviewed were nowhere to be found in the new copy. If you want to see what the original cut of Shinobi III looked like, Unseen 64 has a write-up on it.
Have you ever wanted to play a football game where mutant abominations not fit for the darkest recesses of hell lock horns with an army of undead? …what the hell is wrong with you, you sick son of a… anyways, if you have, you probably played a whole hell of a lot of Mutant League Football growing up.
In a way, Mutant League Football played more like a war game than a football game. One of the perks of MLF was being able to murder the quarterback with exploding balls, electric shocks or just plain beating the hell out of them. If that wasn’t enough, both sides had to worry about where they stepped at any moment. A wide receiver could break for the ball and fall in a pit of fire, or a running back could break through the lines and into the secondary, only to blow themselves to hell by stepping on a landmine.
MLF did so well that EA decided to turn their eyes on hockey, and in 1994 gave us Mutant League Hockey.
Sim City 2000 continued the success that was Sim City, only taking it several steps further. The first thing people noticed about 2000 was that it was in quasi 3D. But that was the first of many additions to the franchise. For the first time you had elevated terrain, the ability to build pipelines and later subways underground, and the option to set tax rates individually (i.e. Commercial could be 8%, while Industrial could be 11%).
One thing about SC2000 that gave it that extra step of customization was the ability to customize the buildings using the Sim City Urban Renewal Kit.
What could be better than having Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3 on the same cartridge? Easy: Having all three of those, plus Super Mario Bros 2: The Lost Levels, and Super Mario World on the disc, as well.
Oh, and they all have 16-bit graphical upgrades (sans SMW, which was slightly downgraded in order to fit the other four games). They all play exactly the same, but they all look gorgeous and are on a single cartridge.
What else do I have to say?
We all laugh and laugh and laugh at people who own Mac computers, mostly because they aren’t able to
If you haven’t played Myst, you suck. But more importantly, you missed out on one of the first true point-and-click adventures that sucked you into a fully 3D world. In Myst, all you did was explore the island that the game is named after. As you explored, you discovered new “ages†through a series of books that teleported you to different time frames, as well as solved a series of logical puzzles.
Myst has had a long-lasting popularity amongst the PC gamer crowd, and had been the highest selling PC game of all time until a little game called The Sims surpassed it. If you haven’t played through Myst in a while, you can pick the game up on either the Nintendo DS or the PSP.
It may not have been the first truly 3D game (that would be the abysmal I, Robot), but Star Fox is remembered as being the first console game to use 3D polygons. It was very basic by todays standards, and the gameplay throughout Star Fox played a lot like the flight sequences in the Super Star Wars games, but back in 1993 that was a technological breakthrough and the popularity of the original game has spawned four sequels, and the title character has made cameos in several other games.
Of all the games in the franchise, though, there was never a true Star Fox 2. As it turns out, Nintendo canceled Star Fox 2 after the game had been completed because Nintendo wanted to focus on the Nintendo 64 – a system that wouldn’t be released for another year and a half.
The gates of hell have opened on Mars, and YOU are the only man (or woman, if you’re butch) who can stop them.
With that one sentence, I have just described the whole plot line to the original Doom. The gameplay of Doom is equally as simple, but at the same time it has endured through fifteen years of game evolution. In Doom, all you are asked to do is find the colored keycard, and make your way to the exit. Along the way, you were given a shotgun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, chainsaw, the the ultimate in badassery, the B(ig)F(ucking)G(un) 9000.
Doom continues to live on today, with fans of the game still making new mods, called “WADsâ€, for the game. In 1996, Doom was finally made kid-friendly in the form of the infinitely awesome Chex Quest. In 2001, developers and selected game journalists voted Doom as the most important game of all time.
Worst Game of 1993
Last Action Hero
Last Action Hero was one God awful movie. The game was even worse, playing like a broken version of Kung Fu with weights in Ahnuld’s shoes. You could kick, punch and jump your way through scenes taken directly from the movie, all of which were awful.
Just. Awful. That’s all I can really say. Thankfully, we were given True Lies, which was an awesome game.
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Wow, 1993 does not hold up as well compared to other years.
I looked past all the other games just to see if you’d put up Doom. That’s the only game I could choose for number one of this year. Excellent list.
Where is Xcom: UFO Defense on this list????
Where is Privateer?! that game was awesome in so many ways
WOW. I’m surprised Secret of Mana, Samurai Showdown, and XCOM aren’t on the list.