Random: How Do You Find Out The Best 16-Bit-Era Game? Play Them All, Of Course

Yeah, any opinion that disrespects the incredible music of the Genesis soundchip is not something to pay attention to. YOu're entitled to your opinion, of course, but please have it over there, waaaay over there.

Five of his top six are pretty much gold standards. There's nothing to really see here.

Unfortunately, i have no longer interest with NES and SNES games anymore.

Only ONE megadrive game on this list???

Wow, I think many of us here would profess some level of Nintendo bias but just looking at the top scoring games there, this is on another level. An entire top 20 with only one game from either of the other consoles... no sign of Rondo of Blood, Lords/Gate of Thunder nor Sonic, Streets of Rage, Phantasy Star or Shining Force games. Some personal taste would account for this but the overall pattern is too much. No Street Fighter II either, which makes me sad, though admittedly that is more subjective on my part

A 100 perfect score for SMW2 Yoshi's Island? Haha yeah, I don't flipping think so. Decent game, but that baby brings the score easily down to 90 - plus some of the level design is also quite horrid so.. a 8 at most, 7 worst.

DKC2 should get a perfect then instead.

I am keen on doing something similar to this myself. The biggest problem I'm facing is having the time to do it. Especially if you have to finish all the games, this seems like an impossible endeavour.

@Maubari I really enjoyed Yoshi's Island but it felt like it didn't have anywhere near the scope/scale and hidden secrets of Super Mario World; more like a return to linear style of SMB3.

So in the Genesis column only 17 games got an 80+ score with one scoring 90 and nothing beyond that. The TG-16 fared a lot worse than that still by this blog. Heavily weighted for the SNES experience. So a ranking only useful I guess for players that want simply to validate their feelings about their favorite console, the SNES, and primarily want to play SNES games, preferring SNES games above all else. So not for me.

@Pillowpants if your approach is of being a fan simply of that era, and the broad experience that era had going for it in answer to the 8-bit home, and arcade gaming that preceding it, and of all consoles, you might have a much more useful ranking in comparison.

I feel like this is definitely an accomplishment to play all the titles from the 16-bit era, but I agree with the other and feel like this is definitely lob-sided to Nintendo bias, because I'm not sure what scale of how these games are ranked, and in someways maybe it's impossible to truly review every title without actually beating them, or at least making it half-way or so through the games. I might have to check out the blog to understand how these are ranked and stuff

Sounds fair enough regarding his personal ratings imo. Although I think a handful of Genesis and PC Engine games could have reasonably been ranked a bit higher. I did read his Gunstar Heroes review though, and he has exactly the same issues I have with the gameplay, which is why, even as impressive a game as it is in many ways, it's never ranked that high in the grand scheme of things for me personally. Graphics and technical feats only carry so much weight with me when push comes to shove.

Sounds about right regarding the very worst games imo.

Agree with you guys disagreeing with the idea that the Genesis sound chip was truly awful if that's what he said, even if I do think the SNES audio was generally better overall across all the games released on both consoles at that time and has what I consider the best sounding games of the generation too ultimately.

If y'all dig this kind of stuff, maybe check out Chrontendo on YouTube. He covers every NES game, by year, and the guy has a really soothing voice. I used to watch it to get to sleep on one of my less dicey army deployments.
Also, here's high quality scans of every SNES manual.
https://archive.org/details/snes-manual-archive

Ranked Chrono Trigger on top. This is a good list

Great article! LOL
For anyone wanting to do something similar, it took me a couple of years to complete the project. I'd play and write up a couple of games each night. It's a mountain of work to do, and all those football, soccer, and baseball games will test your patience for sure.
Regarding, the critique that I'm anti-Genesis, having played everything I can 100% say that the cream of the crop from the generation are mostly in the SNES library. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of good games on the SMD. You just have to scroll down a little to find them.
As for the Sega Sound, I'm convinced that it's like cilantro. Either you love it, or it tastes like earwax. My understanding is that's a genetic trait that you can't will out of existence. The Motorola 68000 techno sounds either appeal to you, or they don't. Obviously, they don't to me. 😎 But hey, to each his or her own, right?

@niner Yeah, I think the important thing here, if I'm getting your task correctly, is that you were just judging these games you played based on your personal experience of actually playing them and how much you liked the visuals, audio, and gameplay as you actually experienced those things firsthand in those games, rather than getting caught up in some silly technophile debate about what system has some random colour count or background layer limit or CPU MHz or audio KHz number or even which system people have been able to squeeze the most out of out thus far in modern times, etc.

And with that in mind, I can totally understand if you thought one system simply had better audio in general having played over 700 games on each. Although, I can acknowledge the Genesis still has great audio capabilities of its own too, especially when fully exploited, which we've seen a lot more of in recent times.

Going on the games that were actually released at the time and the real experience of playing them, even now, I think your list makes total sense. It's obviously your personal experience, so I can't complain in that regard.

I mean, I'll be honest and say I'd totally disagree with your list if it were the other way around and all the Genesis games were at the top and the very best SNES games were ranked below a large chunk of Genesis games, but that's because my personal experience aligns a lot more with your very real and personal experience, so it would just seem strange to me. And I guess that's what it must be like for those people who had a different experience or take than the one reflected in your blog and lists, etc.

What I will say though is that I think your list aligns pretty well with most Best Games of All Time lists more than if if were indeed the other way around, assuming we looked at only the SNES and Genesis games on those list for one moment. So that's something to consider in terms of both your personal take and the wider critic audience's general take on all of this.

A 60 for Phantasy Star II and 45 for Herzog Zwei? Defamation.

It's good to see Terranigma and DKC2 up there also.

@Yousef- Good question! There are several data points I captured about each game which didn't get added to the blog posts. The Memorable flag is set for games that I have a particular nostalgic memory of, or an interesting story. For example, I played quite a few of these games before they released and had some interesting experiences, like when I met one-on-one with the president of Enix of America and had to tell him that King Arthur and the Knights of Justice was terrible. Some of the memories are personal so I left all of them off the blog.

@DanijoEX-the-Pierrot Nope, there are 704 of them

Every review is a personal opinion. This is one man’s personal opinion.
I happen to agree with his findings in general. Having played Genesis and SNES heavily as a kid, I always found the SNES games to have better general quality, depth, and replayability.
Having continually replayed SNES and other classic games throughout my life, I have been surprised how poorly Genesis games have aged. Their controls are more rigid, and the sound is more tinny, and the graphics are more dark and ugly to me.
Indie games have been my favorite games for years, and I’ve found that most of them are heavily influenced by a great classic NES or SNES game. There are not nearly as many that you could point to that wear their Genesis / SMD influence on their sleeve.
The success of the Genesis was more a case study of the power of good marketing rather than in video game innovation.

Yoshi’s Island rightfully regarded as the masterpiece I believe it to be. All is well.

Yeah, I know, opinions and all that. But I just saw how low they scored Earthworm Jim 2 on Mega Drive and now I feel sick.

People are way too hung up on the concept of objectively. There is literally no way to do this without personal preference. People on the internet see a ranked list and think it's meant to be objective and definitive. If there's a deviation from their opinion, then it's wrong. This is not critical thinking. It's the attempted appearance of critical thinking.

This is an amazing accomplishment and a lovely thing to share.

Also, Chrono Trigger is the best game ever. Objectively. End of debate.

Some love for Super Tennis! I like it.

I was lucky to own both sega mega drive and Super Nintendo.

“Those were the best days of my life”

When I was a kid, I generally thought the SNES was better than the Genesis. As I grew older, I grew less impressed by the trumpety, "fart-y" soundchip and the low number of high quality action games. Now as an adult, my Genesis gets much more play than my SNES, as for every Contra III: the Alien Wars there is the superior Alien Soldier or Gunstar Heroes.

For every Axelay there are dozens more titles like Truxton, Thunder Force III, Lightening Force, Bio Hazard Battle and Sagaia to name a few.

I think the SNES is good for young kids and RPG fans (hell I grew up with it), but if you want action games the Genesis is unbeatable.

Now the TG-16 is a dark horse with some absolutely incredible games but it looks like this is HuCard only and some real bangers are CD only.

@gojiguy Yes, the TG-16 is highly underrated. I might get to the CD games eventually. I debated whether to play those next, but all the FMV games scared me away for now. Instead I started working on all English-friendly released in Japan or Europe. I just finished the Super Famicom (~450 games) and am gearing up to review Mega Drive (160) and PC Engine games (170).

This guy has good taste … but I’m not sure Contra 3 is a 100 …. was it?

It's an interesting idea in the abstract but reading through it once again exemplifies why these "I played through every X game on platform/in a specific timespan" featurettes are doomed to be more curios than valid analysis. The work-like nature of "I'm going to give these games 30 minutes" is inherently weighted against games that are slow-burned and not tuned for instant gratification (Management games, simulations). It doesn't encourage in-depth thought or fact-checking either.

The Thunder Force III review states "Choose from any of the five levels. Only five levels, but they're quite long. " (which I assume is why the game gets dinged one point from the "level design" criteria despite the rest of the writeup praising it) but the game has eight levels - you play through three more stages after clearing the initial five. They're not hidden or anything, it's something you would know from finishing the game normally. I wouldn't be surprised to find more weird/straigt-up wrong statements if I looked for the games I'm familiar with.

"Play all of them"

I would recommend just playing the ones that look appealing enough.

For me, that translates to roughly 350 Nes games (~60 RPGs), 350 Snes games (~130 RPGs), 150 GB/C games (~35 RPGs), 80 GBA games (~30 RPGs), 30 SMS/GG games, 100 MD games (~10 RPGs), and 50 PCE games (~15 RPGs).

As far as I'm concerned, the modern stuff doesn't even begin to hold up against the classics.

@Zeldork He's not including the PC Engine CD games here, just PC Engine games it seems. Makes sense, since he didn't include the likes of Sega CD games or Satellaview games, etc, either. I expect if he did score Rondo of Blood then it would be one of the highest scoring games on the PC Engine CD list.

@RetroGames ah, this makes sense! Thanks for pointing that out as I'd thought them strange omissions...

Sometimes, I want to dive deeper into a classic catalog, especially when wanting to look past the standard "top x" lists.
I had the games I had back then and formed my opinions of at the time, but there were a lot I didn't.

Something like this that tries to be comprehensive might be useful to get direction on where to look for a platform, as going back, reviews can be fairly spotty, and people who are fans of specific games are just that.

Though looking through the list, I can tell that he didn't give most of these anything close to a good try. I played Ranger X for the first time last month, and without having any nostalgia for the game, I was able to figure it out and enjoy it far more than the review gives it credit for. It sounds like he stopped shortly after starting the second level, not taking the time to figure it out, which isn't even 30 minutes. Not sure how useful the list would be even for games on a specific platform.

@Zeldork I had to go back and double check that it said he played all the western released games for each platform, so that would explain the omission of Rondo of Blood. That is an amazing game and is my favorite of the pre SOTN Castlevania games. I know Alien Soldier got a European release, but not in North America, and that is, in my opinion, one of the best games of the era.

There's no getting away from bias and taste for something like this. It is subjective, after all. Super Metroid is very good, but it's not upper echelon for me. Contra 3 is great, except for the Mode 7 stages, which really mess with me. I'd put the likes of Castlevania Bloodlines and Shinobi 3 pretty close to the top. Ranger X is another strong effort too. On the SNES side, aside from typical heavy hitters, I recently played Cybernator which was great. And I never get tired of playing The Ninja Warriors for the system.

Best generation ever, I have em all !!

I think that's a pretty awful list myself. Any true connoisseur of the era would have far more Mega Drive and PCE/TG-16 games. I get having games like Mario World and Link To The Past in there, but Contra 3 so high....yet Contra Hard Corps nowhere to be seen? That's hilarious. It's the same formula, but without the awful overhead levels, more stages, more bosses and more playstyles. Same as having Space Mega Force so high, yet no MUSHA, MUSHA is the same Compile formula, but done better and with way more creativity. This chap may have played all these games, but he he has a very beginner grasp on them and appraising them. This is also a sad individual who has no friends, as the lack of quality multiplayer games in there is shocking.