I honestly can’t think of any educational game that has been more successful. Thanks to green-screen IBMs, an entire generation of people grew up knowing what the Oregon Trail is. …well, assuming the Oregon Trail has to do with dysentery, hunting, writing witty sayings on tombstones, and deciding whether to caulk the wagon or ford the river.

For the few among you that are uninitiated, this was a game about, well, pioneers and the Oregon Trail. It was one of those subjects that you were guaranteed to spend at least a few months on every year in elementary school, and it was one of my favorite subjects, partially because it meant I got to wear cool period clothes that my mom made me and play with wooden propeller toys.

Anyways, this was a strategy/simulation game that involved, well… trying to get to Oregon from Missouri or wherever the heck you started. (You states east of the Continental Divide are all the same and I can’t keep track, pffft.) Along the way you had to deal with whatever nature and various diseases decided to hurl at you. Not to be taken lightly as a kids game, people in your wagon party could– and would– die at a moments’ notice, which promptly led to the infamous playground trick where you would name your party after all of your least favorite classmates and then try to induce rattlesnake bites. (Come on, we all remember kids who did that. Maybe you were that kid.)

Looking back on it I think what the Oregon Trail game was most successful at, in terms of educational value, was teaching me place names. For example, apparently there is a rock somewhere that looks like a chimney. I would not have known this if not for the Oregon Trail. I mean, you never know when you’ll be in a life-and-death situation requiring you to point out various historical landmarks, right?

Now most people probably quit playing Oregon Trail right about the time they graduated into middle school, but if you were me, you decided to be hardcore and play the later editions, which had super shiny graphics.

This edition included the exciting hunting-for-plants minigame, where ten minutes worth of sorting plant pictures turned into about five seconds’ worth of food in the actual game. It’s much more economical to just shoot a bear. (Sorry, vegetarians!)

It also came with a super easymode option at the beginning of a new game where a guy would sell you basically all of the supplies you needed for your entire journey in one neat bundled package. Of course, we all know that only casuals pick that option, and us hardcore gamers start with only a gun, a box of bullets, and a grandfather clock.*

Speaking of your items, a word of warning: the people in this game that you can trade with love to rip you off. I mean, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure an ox isn’t worth a jar of pickles. As enticing as that jar of pickles might be. (And for the love of all that is holy don’t try to haggle with them, or they’ll start wanting TWO oxen for a jar of pickles.)

Ultimately, though, for all that we love to poke fun, this game and its derivatives are truly among the all-time greats. Long before the disaster that was “Mario is Missing”, there were truly fun and memorable educational games like Number Munchers, Odell Lake, Murphy’s Minerals, and of course, The Oregon Trail.

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* Is it terribly wrong of me to want to point out the historical inaccuracies in calling a longcase clock a “grandfather clock” prior to the year 1876? >_> SHUT UP, I KNOW THESE THINGS OKAY?

A few people have left comments here regarding this game so it’s got me thinking about it. This, folks, was the first SNES game I ever played.

And this game was GOOD. I mean, I dunno, maybe I’m just being nostalgic. And there was nothing particularly super-groundbreaking about it. But it was a solid platformer and every level had a sort of different twist to it.

There was a lot of memorization involved and a lot of trial and error. For the second level, you had to growl at monkeys in a particular order in order to beat it.

…and this was just a warmup for the ninth level, a labyrinthine series of caves that you could get lost in forever if you didn’t know where you were going.

Despite the many comments on YouTube crying about how hard the game was, however, it was never too hard for me a kid. I mean sure, there were levels I spent a lot of time on. But back then, (before I was spoiled by modern games which seem to put more emphasis on getting things right the first time), that’s just how games worked. Plus, it really wasn’t that hard. Not only did I memorize the cave level pretty quickly, but I also memorized all the little sideroutes where bonuses and secrets were hiding.

This game had tons of replay value and I don’t even know why, because once you nailed the game, every playthrough thereafter was essentially the same. I think it’s because once you figured it all out, you could beat the entire thing, bonus levels and all, in under a half hour, and it gave a smug sense of self-satisfaction to be able to do so. Sort of like how I would later go on to do repeat things like beating the 150cc Special Cup in Mario Kart 64 or redo-ing half of the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time or wandering around the map looking for stray clans in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance… just to unwind. These things were challenging but always do-able and they worked as little pick-me-ups because it meant you had mastered some skill, and The Lion King was no exception.

I’m not sure how well this game would hold up these days for someone who hasn’t played it before. But I guarantee that most of us who played this game back in the day have nothing but fond memories of it.

In honor of the latest OCRemix project, I am here today to talk about the greatest of the three Donkey Kong Country games:

I’d go into a more detailed analysis of why DKC2 was the height of the series, but honestly looking back on it I don’t remember much about the first or third DKC. It was the second one that was the most memorable to me, and in my experience a lot of people feel that way. So that’s a good enough reason for me.

Off of the top of my head, here are some of the things that stick out in my mind about this game:

• Greatest music of the series, hands down. No wonder OCRemix picked it for its project.
• The snake level. I have no idea why it was so fun. It just was. As an aside, this level had the best music in the game. Seriously, if you only click one link in this blog post, click this one.
• The roller coaster levels. Fun, fast paced, and original. These are levels that I would play over and over again just because.
• Two best characters: Unlike the other two games, both of your characters were small and maneuverable without having one that was too bulky and took up tons of the screen.
• Pirates. YARRR!! I think back to DKC and I think of pirates. Pirates were really only in the second game. ’nuff said.

I have this game on Game Boy Advance because I’m that person who buys new game consoles so she can play old games.

But honestly, if something is still just as fun fifteen years later, that’s a mark of success in my book. Rare in the 90s: The Pixar of Video Games. You can’t deny it!

There is a very good chance you haven’t heard of this game.

…but there is a very good chance that you have heard of what made this game famous:

Ah yes, All Your Base. The subject of a now-legendary flash animation, this is one of the earliest internet memes I can think of– early enough that “All your base are belong to us” was my “Favorite Saying” in my senior yearbook back in high school, and folks, that was a long time ago. Someday in the future, the early-2000s are going to make a fashion comeback and it’s going to happen with first-gen iPods and All Your Base T-shirts.

Little known secret, though: This game is really good. And really hard.

It’s a scrolling-shooter akin to Gradius, which means it’s basically like Robot Unicorn Attack, except you have powerups and lasers, and stuff is trying to kill you.

The onslaught of enemies is neverending and on top of that, you have to deal with obstacles like walls with tiny spaces that you have to squeeze through at just the right moment. This game is seriously difficult. I don’t think I’ve ever beaten the first stage. And yet I played it a ton anyway, because it was still fun.

Other things about Zero Wing that you may not have known:

• The music is fantastic. Especially from the Sega Genesis version. Stroll through some of the stuff on the sidebar; it’ll give you Mega Man 2 flashbacks. It’s that good. Did I mention the first song was called “Open Your Eyes”? Told you it was like Robot Unicorn Attack.
• The story, according to the original Japanese, is pretty hardcore:
  Engineer: It appears that someone has planted explosives.
  Radio Operator: The main screen is receiving a visual.
  CATS: Thanks to the help of our forces, your bases are all under our control. Make the most of these last moments of your lives…
  Man. CATS is a smooth-talkin’ operator, no?
• All Your Base has gotten people arrested. No, really.

In short, if you can find this game, you should play it, at the very least for historical significance, but mostly because it’s simply a good game. Be warned, though– it’s often called “Contra Hard” for a reason.

…yeah I dunno what’s up with the giant California Raisin at the end. Really, I don’t.

Most people who know me know that “Aliens” is one of my favorite movies ever. It has action, it has humor, it has thrills, and it has Ellen Ripley, who pretty much single-handedly kicks the collective butts of Lara Croft et al.

Before I watched the movie, though, I played the game. Yup. Back when I was about five or six years old we played this on Commodore 64 all the time. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to one of the hardest games EVER.

We start out with the dropship sequence. This sequence involved piloting the dropship through a bunch of hula hoops in a first-person view. Sounds easy enough, right?

WRONG.

This thing threw hairpin turns at you and “rough air” made your screen wobble and your controls go all over the place. And if you missed going through one of the hoops? “Game over, man. Game over!” The only redeeming quality for this level was the awesome music.

Nobody in my household (gaming was a family affair back then, often branching out to extended family as well) could beat this level except for my little brother, who I’m pretty sure was still in diapers. So we’d hand the joystick to him, he’d beat the level for us, and then we’d resume playing.

…you know, as if it was going to get any easier.

Because next was the level where you had to get all (well, four) of your marines to safety, which involved guiding them one by one through a giant maze where they were prone to being attacked by packs of aliens. Heaven help you if more than one of your guys was attacked by aliens at once, since you could only “be” one guy at a time.

Alien attacks were more frequent if you were in “the nest”, aka “A bunch of random pixels making squiggly lines”, but they could happen at any time, and if you lost said attack, your guy would slowly be devoured while you couldn’t do much about it.

There was a bit of an element of strategy to it though: if you had more than one guy together, then they were immune to alien attacks. Which was handy. Your best bet, though, was probably to get them through to the end as straight as possible. You started in a random place every time and this level was so labyrinth-like that my mom actually took a pad of graph paper and mapped the entire place out.

My mom: hardcore with video games before the rest of us.

Once you got through this level it was time for a further descent into nightmares with The Most Difficult Level of All Time. This level involved staving off aliens with a gun while you waited for the door to open. If an alien got through, he took one of your guys, until you had none left, at which point it was game over. Here’s the thing, though: the game didn’t care if they sent a superfast alien at you at the top of the screen and a superfast alien at you at the bottom of the screen at the same time. The game didn’t care that you couldn’t be at two places at once. As such, I am 99% sure that it is impossible to beat this level with all your “lives” remaining. Heck, if you get through it with more than one or two lives remaining, you are a god among men.

(As an aside, Blizzard remade this level as a Blizz-game-related Flash game on the BlizzCon site a year or two back. The nightmarish flashbacks: they happened.)

As I very rarely could pass this level myself, my memories on the rest of the levels are fuzzy, though they were just as difficult and involved another maze like level, this time with bombs, and then going back to the FIRST maze, except this time you’re Ripley and you have to save Newt. Oh, and you have a strict time limit.

This game did save the best for last, though, because you do, in fact, get to beat up on the Alien Queen with your hydraulic suit…

…in a sequence that was kicked off in one of the most memorable ways ever in Commodore 64 gaming.

Primarily because I was five years old and *gasp!* She said a bad word!

And if you managed to beat all of that?

“Not bad… for a human!”

For today’s CVGM I’m going to show you the greatest SNES game that no one ever played:

Uniracers.

See, back before Rockstar was Rockstar and making games about carjacking, they made a game about alternate-universe sentient unicycles who spent their days racing around on colorful tracks, doing stunts. This sounds like a rather, uh… interesting premise but boy, did they ever pull it off. The basic formula for this game was that doing stunts (jumping, spinning, flipping, etc.) made you go faster, so you had to do as many stunts as possible to win. However, in a game where the track goes up and down and twirls around and makes unexpected hairpin turns, doing a stunt at the wrong moment is likely to hurl you into a wall, which would cause you to lose a lot of time.

The solution?

Multicolored tracks which you learn to “read”. A normal blue-and-green striped track means it’s all clear and you’re okay to do stunts. Red-and-blue means be careful: some big jump or twist is likely coming up. Orange-and-yellow means be on the lookout for unusual obstacles, solid yellow means a shortcut is coming up, and finally, blue-and-yellow means you’re seconds away from the finish line.

This all probably sounds either very complicated or very simple. Trust me though: the execution was brilliant.

The trick to this game was that you could learn how to squeeze the most out of every inch of racetrack– and that was something you had to do if you wanted to beat the more difficult opponents.

Uniracers comes with dozens of racetracks and a sense of speed rivaling that of Sonic the Hedgehog. Of course, Rockstar, not do be outdone on that last point, allows you to name your Unicycles anything except Sonic or Sega… you will be informed that said name “isn’t cool enough”.

The Super Nintendo has got to be one of the greatest game systems of all time so narrowing its games down to “favorites” is difficult to say the least, but this game sucked up far, far too much of my SNES time back in the day, and it was worth it.

I should preface this by saying I’m a huge SimCity nut. I should then add that I always sucked at SimCity games until I figured out the secret for cost-efficient city layouts.

Anyways, no matter how much I sucked at it at the time… I present to you the game that is solely responsible for teaching me what those mysterious signs in front of empty lots saying “Zoned Commercial” mean:

If you’ve never played SimCity, it might be one of those things that has you wondering “Wait, you find this fun?” You know, like Harvest Moon or one of those other simulation style games. Well, I’m here to tell you that planning and designing your own city is basically one of the most addictive things ever. Why? Because it goes beyond just the planning/design stage. You gotta keep your citizens happy. And make sure they have enough schoolhouses and hospitals and fire stations and etc. While somehow pulling in enough SimCash to do so.

Another way that they pulled you in was by dangling technologies in your face. Most SimCity games start by default in the year 1900. Not that SimCity is dying to be particularly historically accurate in most respects, but at the same time, they won’t give you much tech until you are actually able to use it. If you wanna run your city on nuclear power in the year 1900, tough luck. You’ve got coal and you’ve got oil. You’ll have to wait to get the nukes. SimCity 2000 was brilliant here, because not only did they give you presents of better power technology as you went along, but you got Arcologies, a.k.a. giant bio-dome-esque houses that would quadruple your population and also double as spaceships.

You got these babies in the year 2000. (Speaking of which, ten years on and we don’t have these in real life yet? What the heck? C’mon people!) And they were awesome.

For a bonus challenge you could turn on disasters and have to deal with things like hurricanes, fire outbreaks, or giant Godzilla monsters attacking your city– you know, just the normal everyday stuff you see in the newspapers all the time.

So yeah. SimCity 2000. Sometimes I wonder how many addicts of this game went on to become actual urban planners. Perhaps not many, because thanks to this game I have a tendency now to look at the way my own hometown is laid out and mumble about how inefficient it is…

Think back to a world of awesome 3D platformers that were just coming into their own. Think back to something a little more refined than the formula started by Super Mario 64, but not an overboard collect-o-fest like Donkey Kong 64.

You know what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about BANJO-FREAKING-KAZOOIE.

(Attention: Please stop everything you are doing and listen to this remix:)

I remember when we first got this game. We got this at the same time as our Nintendo 64 and Yoshi’s Story. Yoshi’s Story was what we played first, because we all knew who Yoshi was but we’d never heard of this Banjo character. It was only a matter of minutes, though, before the Banjo-Kazooie cartridge replaced the Yoshi one, and there it would stay for a long, loooong time.

Let me explain the brilliance of this game for those of you who missed out. It’s a Mario64-ish platformer, as I said. You wander around a central “hub” world and visit “themed” worlds inside. You’ve got all your obligatory ones… the water world, the snow world, and so forth… but the way that they are done is so original that you don’t even realize it’s old territory. Not to mention the last world, Click Clock Wood, is actually split up into four different versions based on the seasons of the year.

The controls are intuitive and varied and make much use of, well, you being a bear and toting around a bird in your backpack. The humor is offbeat and quirky and quintessentially British (oh Rare, gotta love ’em.) and the music is some of the most memorable you will hear, particularly the main theme, a motif which is masterfully weaved into most of the other music in the game and done in different styles and tempos depending on location.

The game objectives themselves mostly revolve conquering various challenges to collect items, which is how most platforming games in that era worked, but in my opinion Banjo-Kazooie pulled it off just about right: lots to do without going overboard. The sequel, Banjo-Tooie, would later teeter close to being overboard in my opinion (but was still fantastic and had a lot of improvements, don’t get me wrong), but B-K just did it right.

And don’t let the cute fuzzy characters fool you, this game was challenging. I don’t think I ever beat it. I never quite had enough Jiggies (the game’s lingo for “puzzle pieces”, an item you collected) to get into the last world. And yet despite that, I still managed to dump countless hours into this game and I enjoyed every minute. This was platforming at its finest. Rare and I go back a long ways. I spent many, many days with the likes of Diddy Kong Racing, Jet Force Gemini, Goldeneye 007, and all three Donkey Kong Country games. All of these games are amazing and all of them would be top contenders in my personal “Best Games Evar” list.

But if I had to pick a fave Rare game?

It just might be this one.

I was doing one of my favorite past-times and looking up playthroughs of old-games on YouTube, and discovered an amazing remix of an amazing old video game theme.

And I thought, man, Archon was awesome.

It looks like chess. It… isn’t really. The pieces don’t move anything like chess pieces do, oh, and when two of them meet on the battlefield, suddenly it turns into an action game:

Whichever color square you happen to fight on determines what color piece has the advantage, but underdogs can– and will– triumph.

The objective is to either kill the other side’s “king” or control all five diamond-shaped areas on the board– there is one at each compass point and one at the center. This is harder to accomplish than it looks, between all the fighting you have to do and the way you also get magical spells and can teleport around or revive fallen pieces. You think Echo of Medivh cheats, wait til the computer revives his most powerful piece and then teleports it on top of you.

Hax? Perhaps, but you can dish it out to the other guy just as well.

Delightfully original and fiendishly difficult, this game is a true classic from the C64/Atari/Apple II era. Orson Scott Card approved. Oh, and distributed by Electronic Arts, funnily enough.