Super Mario World (1991)
i think i could easily say i love SMW better than any NES game i've mentioned before. it was still a straight-up 2D platform mario game, but the added capacity (for both storage and graphics) of the SNES game really made the series into something that felt completely different. the music for the varying levels was fantastic, as well as the changes in atmosphere.
super mario world, despite being a launch title for the SNES (thus an early 16-bit experiment), just did everything right. i even loved things like the digitized effects when entering a particular level, the music adding drum beats whenever you rode yoshi, etc. even the addition of yoshi himself, with different colors and abilities, added a completely new element to the game. the world map concept did well for the mario series, which had been started in SMB3, but expanded even more in SMW. the castles & ghost houses usually succeeded in creeping me out somewhat, and loved how the doors/keys would swallow mario into them.like i said, the game just did everything right, basically. SMW, since it was much less linear than its NES counterparts, had a lot more replayability to it. my sister & i spent a ton of time playing it over and over, which was kinda funny cuz it'd be like 1994 and we'd play the 1991 game that came with the system. with that kind of replayability, i felt particularly obligated to note super mario world.
F-Zero (1991)
f-zero was one of those games that i never actually owned myself. my childhood friend kevin had it when the SNES first came out, and so i was constantly over at his house playing it. i'd say it really says something that a game i didn't even own myself would appear on this list.
f-zero is probably the least celebrated game i've put onto my all-time favorites so far. i don't know if the common gamer today is entirely aware of it, even. but it came out before Super Mario Kart did, so it was basically THE racing game for the still-young SNES. i think at that time console racing games weren't really all that popular, so this was really my first exposure to enjoying a full-on racing game.it was kind of just a coincidence that it was a great racing game and also futuristic, which i was into as a kid. the idea of driving (well, more like flying) around in hovercrafts instead of cars was appealing, as well as the illusion that you were travelling at ridiculous speeds. i liked that the game was relatively simple as far as no item collection or brilliant AI, just trying to beat the rest of the fields. just like the majority of my all-time favs, the music was great as well. i particularly liked the mellow tune it would play when you'd crash out and die. at the moment, i actually have the start-up and GO!!! sound as my 'new text message' sound on my SLVR cell phone. old school, kids, old school, indeed.
i'm convinced it was the original f-zero that paved the way for me enjoying the hell out of later futuristic racer Wipeout XL, as well as the gamecube iteration of the f-zero series, F-Zero GX.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992)
okay, i don't wanna blow my load on this whole all-time favorites list, but i'll just say that of all the games i've listed and probably will list later on, this is my absolute favorite game.
with that short disclaimer out of the way, i'll try to come even close to explaining why that fact is true. you could basically throw down two different genres on the table, platformers and RPGs. somewhere in the middle of those two radically different types of video games are straight-up, vanilla adventure games. i've already discussed the original Legend of Zelda here a bit, so i've touched on what i like about the genre, but obviously LttP just expanded on that concept even more. nintendo achieved a perfect mix of purposeful quests to get through the game with whimsical and intriguing side quests to further advance link's capabilities.
i loved how it borrowed magic and item elements from RPGs, yet didn't really bother with levelling and turn-based actions that slowed the game down too much. i loved how the further you went on in the game, the more your items screen had so many useful items in it. often times the later parts of the game would require you to use all the tools you'd acquired throughout the game to achieve something, which piqued the puzzle enthusiast deep inside me. the inventory list of items you'd collect would only expand further in future iterations of the zelda games.the idea of having both light and dark worlds, and the interesting contrasts between both, was especially cool to me. as the game went along you'd become aware that you could go back and forth between these worlds, something that enhanced gameplay even further. the light world that you start in already seemed huge compared to the NES version, so obviously it seemed downright massive once you realized the world was actually twice as big.
i dunno, moreso than the often-frustrating and occasionally-empty platformers like mario and the like, the zelda series has always appealed to me. i like the mythology that they create with the zelda series, because they successfully create the type of fantasy world that an average gamer can grasp without feeling like a bit of a dork for being so into it. possibly moreso than all other zelda games, LttP appealed to a large audience with the initial SNES crowd once the mystique of Super Mario World wore off. i recently bought a used copy of the GBA version of LttP just cuz i wanted to go back and play it again on my DS whenever i felt like it. i figured for $10 it was better than fiddling around with an emulator version of it, which i'd tried and never felt natural. so far i've loved the nostalgia of playing my all-time favorite game some 14 years later and yet still enjoying it just the same.
--j
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