Readers discuss their favourite fourth generation video games, from Dungeon Keeper to Gunstar Heroes.
The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader JesseM, and included consoles such as the Mega Drive, SNES, PC Engine, Neo Geo, as well the Atari ST and Amiga and coin-ops released between 1987 and 1993.
There were many different suggestions, across a wide range of formats, but Zelda: A Link To The Past did get mentioned a lot, along with Mario, Sonic, and, surprisingly, Shadowrun.
Magical peak
For me, the 16-bit era was all about the SNES. The Nintendo magic was firing on all cylinders and the peak was Yoshi’s Island.
The whole baby Mario mechanic, when you take a hit and he is trapped in a bubble and you have to retrieve him, was inspired. Throwing eggs felt brilliant and precise. The morphing abilities broke up the action.
The graphics were (and still are) beautiful, with a lovely hand-drawn aesthetic and the sound effects and music were gorgeous. Also, the final Bowser boss was amazing, with a crazy atmosphere. Aside from Super Mario Galaxy, it’s probably my favourite Mario game.
Rangersingh (PSN ID)
Grown-up gaming
Having played games from the Commodore 64 onwards, the 16-bit era was a really exciting time. Early games were filled with potential, but I always knew they could be so much more. Gone were the infuriatingly long, temperamental loading times of the tapes, basic graphics and sound and replaced with a more polished and impressive product.
The power of the hardware allowed developers to take the games in the direction where modern gaming has ended up. Stand out titles for me were Hunter, Syndicate, and Moonstone on the Amiga and Blackthorne and Shadowrun on the SNES. There may have been games like them before, but to me they felt innovative and way ahead of their time.
Hunter was the first time I’d seen an open world, so unlike the linear side-scrolling platformer or shooters I was used to. Moonstone was so gory but impressively animated and with a good variety of moves (and punishingly hard), Shadowrun and Syndicate were so pleasingly grimy and exciting they felt like grown-up games, contrasting the more cartoony offerings (gaming had a ‘games are for kids’ stigma at them time I remember).
Maybe Blackthorne wasn’t all that great, but I liked being able to point a pump action shotgun behind you and blast an orc in the face without looking. I’m not sure so these titles (apart from maybe Shadowrun) stand up today, but I can think of modern equivalents for all of them that may not exist if it wasn’t for their distant 16-bit relatives.
Mickey Nine
Quantum leap
I think I wrote about this game to GC many years ago. I was lucky enough that my dad had bought an Atari ST at Christmas 1989 for ‘educational’ needs. This is what he told my mum anyway! It came with a lovely bundle of about 20 or so games and my dad also bought a game called Dungeon Master.
For 12-year-old me this game was just jaw dropping, before the Atari ST we had a Spectrum 48K and an Atari 2600. There was such a huge difference between Dungeon Master than anything on the Spectrum.
You could resurrect your team of four adventurers from what I assumed were past victims of the dungeon trapped behind mirrors or start the characters from scratch by reincarnating them.
Right from the start the game had a great sense of isolation and dread, right from the moment you started the game and the dungeon gate slowly raised to let you in.
There was no map, I had to try to map the levels out myself using graph paper. You cautiously went round the dungeon never knowing what was lurking around the corner, from deadly pit traps to groups of monsters. Dark Souls often reminded me of Dungeon Master; there was no pause, when you sorted your inventory or your party rested you could still be attacked at any time.
Food was always in short supply and a real sense of panic would set in if you found yourself down to your last torch and stuck in the pitch black. There were no real easy monsters, everything in the game was capable of killing you. I also like how you became better with weapons and spells the more you used them.
For me, Dungeon Master was probably the biggest leap I ever saw in what was possible in graphics and gameplay between console/computer generations, way ahead of its time in inventory use and a complex magic system that you were just expected to work out for yourself, with no real help. The game never held your hand and it was all the better for it.
PE
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Possibly the best
Now, I have actually played a lot of Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past on my little brother’s DS several years back. It was at the very least 9 out of 10 material, if not more, but the console was faulty and one of the shoulder buttons no longer worked and so I couldn’t capture any fairies. So, when I came to a trickier boss late in the game, I didn’t have the safety net I needed in order to progress further. I have a Classic Mini SNES, but I am an Olympic-level procrastinator. As such, I don’t feel fully qualified to say that A Link To The Past is my number one fourth generation game. It probably is, though.
I do know for certain that at the moment it is Gunstar Heroes for the Mega Drive. Easily a full marks game back in 1993, it’s still excellent to this day, with set pieces arguably superior to the likes of Uncharted. Seven Force is such an iconic boss that Treasure felt compelled to do it again in Alien Soldier. Not quite as good, mind. Lord Black’s Dice Palace could have been a game by itself and the final gauntlet of returning bosses on the moon is breathtakingly good. Seriously, only the original Bayonetta has done boss gauntlets better.
There are problems. That Colonel Red is clearly a rip-off of Street Fighter’s M. Bison is odd, unintentionally funny (well, at least I think so) and distracting. The final boss was a bit of a disappointment, especially when we never got to fight the evil Emperor. I felt that the Emperor and Golden Silver should have merged to make something more monstrous and memorable. And the ending makes no sense at all. Even by 16-bit standards.
Also, as nobody else will mention it, a shout out to Rocket Knight Adventures. The robot boxing boss is one the best bosses in history and it’s frankly a crime that the game has been overlooked when compiling games for Classic Mini SNESes and Mega Drives so far.
DMR
Do you wanna be in my gang?
My introduction to the 16-bit era was the Amiga Screen Gems pack, and I must have watched the shadowy figure on the hill snatch that crying baby in the Shadow Of The Beast intro at least a billion times, jaw gaping.
That the game was terrible didn’t matter at the time; the Amiga heralded miles shorter loading times than my doddery old Spectrum 48K+, more colours than you could shake a rainbow at, and incredible sound.
It was, if you’ll pardon the pun, a real game changer.
So, despite the actual best 16-bit game clearly being something on my later, and similarly beloved SNES (Super Metroid or Super Mario World probably), I’m going to pick my all-time fave from the Amiga and go for Mega-Lo-Mania.
A humour filled god sim the likes of which they don’t make anymore, I had hours of fun with it and to this day I still find myself muttering the classic voice samples under my breath when they fit a situation. If the fridge is a little sparse, ‘We’re running out of elements’ and if my son goes up a grade in Jujitsu ‘We’ve advanced a tech level’, etc., etc.
I had a nice little online chat once with Stoo Cambridge, who worked at Sensible on the Mega Drive conversion, and he mentioned those samples were on a loop in the office at the time. As much as I love them that may well have driven me crazy!
Andrew Wright
Timeless classic
I have probably mentioned Zelda: A Link To The Past as the ultimate game that I’ve played on the SNES, but Final Fantasy 6 would definitely be a worthy contender of a game played in a different way altogether.
Final Fantasy 6 was possibly the game which made Final Fantasy 7 the game it is today. The technology was a clash of medieval and high magic incorporated and infused into machines. If you think He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, then that is a good starting point regarding magic and technology syncing with each other.
Kefka is such a great villain. He had no reason to do anything apart from hating everyone and everything, including existence itself, just wanting complete and utter emptiness in a universe-ending catastrophe!
‘Nothing beats the sweet music of hundreds screaming in unison!’
‘Life, dreams, hope, where do they come from? And where are they headed? These things… I am going to destroy!’
‘The end comes, beyond chaos.’
Final Fantasy 6 is definitely a perfect Japanese role-playing title and you’ll be thinking of the story for a long time to come. A timeless classic and definitely a game where time can’t damage it in anyway whatsoever.
Alucard
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