After a slight hiatus, we are back on our series of the Top 25 Greatest Video Games of All Time! Don’t forget to check out our video game brain trust as well as #25, #24, and #23! This week we are rolling into #22. We all come from different backgrounds and video game tastes which makes this list so interesting! See below for our picks for #22. 

Kai Powell – Soul Calibur – One of the few fighting games I really played, but boy did I play it. Junior year of high school, I’d basically play everyday at lunch with a random group in the back of our biology teacher’s classroom. It was really approachable, but also clearly had tiers of skill, with the best players almost always beating the worse players. It had a group of memorable and distinct characters (I played as Lizardman) and straightforward, comprehensible mechanics. Soul Calibur was the perfect lunch time distraction.

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Scott (Po) – Super Metroid – The premiere mix of horror and gameplay. I’ve yet to play a game that mixed mood, puzzle, and overall playability so well since.

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Andrew – Mega Man 4/series(NES + forward) – Same thing, should be higher. Series needs to be refreshed. It didn’t matter whether gameplay was the same, whether it was Mega Man or Mega Man X, you had a new map and different colored enemies and that was pretty much all you needed. The music was always fantastic. You had upgrades! Mega Man 4 had one of the best intros of all time. For anything. Period. Heartbreaking. Emotional. Legendary.  The TV show was phenomenal (it’s a tie in so it counts).  Mega Man X was probably the last good game in the series , Mega Man 64(Legends) was pretty disappointing all around but this game could play just like Metroid Prime if it was given another chance. Hell, make it a rail shooter…just give it another shot. Give a new generation of gamers the chance. 

Alana (Fit) – Battlefield 1942 – I’m not talking about the whole series here, I’m talking just the original Battlefield 1942. For way longer than we should have, my brother and I just played the demo. The only level in this demo was Wake Island, north of the Marshall Islands. I loved this game and I find it astonishing now that we never got bored of playing that one level over and over and over and over. Multiplayer, of course, so that it would never be the same. You could play as the Japanese or the Americans on this specific level. We played tons of Call of Duty, but what made this stand out was that you could use vehicles! And oh what fun that was.

We eventually bought the game and got the rest of the levels as well as the ability to play as Germans, English, etc. We would have jeep wars, where we would race each other in jeeps, which always resulted in a fiery crash of doom. Learning how to fly airplanes was certainly interesting as well as I would usually run into the building before I could get my tail in the air. All of the different classes you could play really made it special to me. I would always play as a medic and make it my duty to heal anyone out there. It highlighted teamwork, which I absolutely loved. We always played the scenarios where you would try to capture as much flags (aka land) as possible so that you would win with the highest points. The variety of ways to play really made this a fun one for me and I would still play it today. And you bet you would find my in the front seat of a jeep, nearing a cliff’s edge. This first-person shooter was truly a blast to play. I tend to stick to the original. 

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Chris (Hungry) – Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (2000, Arcade) – Yes, I also had it for PS2, Dreamcast, and later for the iPhone but nothing lives up to the arcade console. This game will most likely be the only game in the fighting genre on this list although some Mortal Kombat installments were extremely enjoyable. I was also a big fan of Gundam Battle Assault and other games that provided the opportunity to use your favorite characters from various other sources, but I’ll get back on track. This game makes my list because not only was it one of the best fighting games of all time, it also led to hours of great times at various arcades throughout the Jersey Shore. It’s huge cast of characters from two of my favorite entities of all time presented so many combinations for arcade and versus mode. The one down side is the story, because I love a good story. That is what makes some of the newer Mortal Kombats so good… a little extra on the story. (Marvel Super Heroes crushed this category by using Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet arc as the basis of the game.) This was a classic save the world by beating the final boss… (SPOILER) Abyss. His background and three forms make for a solid enemy, add the fact that he’s unplayable and it makes him even better. Maybe not quite as good as Onslaught in the first game, but still solid.

As for my team, it was relatively standard with some variations when I was having a hard time defeating an opponent. First, either Cable or War Machine. Cable had some cheap projectile attacks that kept your opponents at distance. War Machine had some amazing special attacks that hit often and added to your combo a lot. Second, either Ryu or Akuma. They would typically be my close combat character for dealing with some of the bigger and slower enemies like Hulk and Blackheart. They were usually my best bet in any pinch due to my playing style. Finally, Captain America. No alternate there. Obviously I played with every character at some point but these were my competitive ones. The Captain was always one of my favorites and as much as Wolverine if my favorite character, I just couldn’t get much done with him. Captain and myself worked perfectly together, using the shield as an extension of ourselves and creating distractions to bring in aid attacks and rush the enemy. Final Justice will always be my favorite special in the game. With that team, I had a blast and set a ton of high scores in arcades throughout NJ only to have my brother take some of those records back. I will play this game anywhere, anytime. It’s replay value is unmatched. Who was your go to team? Could it take down Cable, Akuma, and Captain America?

So that sums up #22 for our video game trust. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for next week! And as always…stay hungry and fit!