#175. Bonus Episode: The Ranking of the Nintendo Games!
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Sonny is out sick again ("the Rona"), so JVL and Mike Warren open by rehashing how much they both loathed the new Super Mario Bros. movie before turning the whole show over to a bonus-episode bit: each ranking his five favorite Nintendo games of all time, any console fair game. Mike's list climbs from Super Mario Bros. 2 at five through Super Mario World, Mario Kart 8, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, topping out at Donkey Kong Country 2, whose score he admits to still listening to as writing background music. JVL's picks are stranger: NES Golf at five (a leisurely two-player favorite), Tecmo World Wrestling and Double Dribble in the middle, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! at three, and The Legend of Zelda at number one -- not because it's his favorite, but for the sheer novelty of a saveable, weeks-long console quest, which sends him into a long nostalgic tangent about calling Nintendo's pay-per-minute hint hotline before the internet existed. Along the way they swap notes on shared racing- and sports-game pedigree, JVL's dislike of open-world "sandbox" games (traced back to a bad experience with the Dreamcast's Shenmue) against Mike's love of Breath of the Wild's exploration, and reminisce about arcade ports and cheat codes like the famous Contra code. Both close with rapid-fire honorable mentions -- Mike naming Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run, Duck Hunt, Super Mario All-Stars, and GoldenEye 007; JVL naming Metal Gear, Batman, Castlevania, and Contra -- before JVL ends the show with a heartfelt shoutout to an ailing friend of the show, Cameron McVay.
From the show notes
Still no Sonny. But Mike and JVL went way off the beaten path for their Top 5.
Full transcript
JVL00:00:00Welcome to the Sub-Beacon bonus show. I'm JBL here with my buddy Mike Warren. We do not have Sonny. He still has the Rona. Sorry. He'll be back next week, though. He'll be fine. The vid. Michael and I vented our spleen about the Super Mario Brothers movie, which we both hated to a nearly irrational degree, but at a very visceral level, I would say we didn't we didn't just dislike it. We genuinely hated it. Fair. Is that a fair characterization of our feelings? Fair. So we were talking about. So what are you going to do for a bonus show? And I suggested we rank the top five. Five Nintendo games. Now, I left when I said to you top five Nintendo games, I intentionally left this open ended. I did not specify which system. Yes. So it doesn't have to be. I myself stuck with the NES, the original Nintendo Entertainment System, which I had and which I bought the full package of, including the blaster and the robot, the gyroscope robot, which I used. Never. Once I paid an extra eighty dollars or one hundred twenty dollars. I think it was two hundred fifty dollars for the full system, whereas if I had just gotten the the console and the controllers, it would have been one hundred ten. That's great. Great. Great choice. JVL. And when I said rank the games, I didn't say rank by what. And so my own rankings are not a objectively the best. They are my favorite games. Okay. So. I don't know what what path you took for this. And if you'd like to explain your your your theory behind them and how you conceived of your ranking.
Mike00:01:57Sure. Yeah. So I had a similar approach, although I did not limit myself to the games to one console, for instance. So I took it to mean any Nintendo system. But of course. The Nintendo systems that I knew and know are not are not certainly not all of them and certainly not sort of contiguous. So my first brush with Nintendo was NES for the I didn't have one, but a neighbor had one. And that's what I played a lot. Then we got a Super Nintendo and SNES, and that was the game system. That we had for a while. I never got the Nintendo 64. I sort of it just wasn't in the cards. And then my brother was more in the driver's seat for the next console, and he got them. So good choice. So that sort of set us away. Yeah, yeah. But I had friends who had N64, so I played N64. None of my yeah, none of my list draws from N64, although I do have games that draw from the switch, which we have. So two of my games are switch games. But I want to give some. Should we just jump into the list? I go. I own my first video game.
JVL00:03:24Come on. My second video game console was the NES. The original Nintendo Entertainment System actually had an Odyssey Magnavox Odyssey before then. But that's that's a different story. The next system. Did that run on electricity? The next system we had was the Sega Genesis. So we moved over to Sega. Then we went Sega. Then we went with a PlayStation and a Dreamcast, the Sega Dreamcast, which really was before its time. I fucking love the Dreamcast. Totally. And that was like the last of my youthful things. I didn't touch it. And so we didn't get back to Nintendo until the Wii and then the Switch. So we have a Wii and a Switch in our house now. We don't really play the Wii anymore. We only do the Switch. And the truth is, with the Switch, there's only one game we play. And the only game we play is Mario Kart. So that's where we are. Do you want us just to alternate? We'll go together, you know, one, one. I guess we should start at the bottom. Start with five and then work our way up.
Mike00:04:37Right. Before we do that, can I just name some honorable mentions on my list? Or should we wait until the end for honorable mentions? Should we wait until the end to do that? Okay. Okay. So we'll wait until the end.
?00:04:46Okay.
JVL00:04:46What is your number five?
Mike00:04:50My number five is Super Mario Brothers 2. Super Mario Brothers 2 is a weird game. It is, was not originally Mario game. It was a, another Japanese game with different characters. And, uh, at some point for the NES, they ported onto this old game. Uh, the Mario characters, Mario, Luigi, Princess, Peach, and Toad. Um, I liked it not because it was like some fantastic game, but it was so different than the other Mario games I had. It was so kind of weird. There was like, you know, there was those kind of bizarre, um, uh, pink and red, like creature dinosaur creatures with like giant O shaped mouths that spit. Eggs at you and had bows in their hair. They had defeat. Um, one step away. It was the origin of the shy guys who could say what was going on in my mind. Um, uh, the shy guys, of course, were, were, uh, uh, were a part of this. Um, I loved the idea that you could pick, uh, the two other characters as playable characters toad and, and, and toadstool princess toadstool. Um, I've added this extra element of like, uh, um, like choose your fighter kind of thing. Um, it was just so weird. And the music was part of, you will find in this list, uh, part of what, uh, brings me along on these games is the score. Um, I just fall in love with the score as well. And, and so super Mario brothers two takes number five on my list.
JVL00:06:37So, uh, number five on my list is really weird. It's golf golf. Okay. The intent Nintendo's own house NES version of golf. Uh, why, why is it the NES golf? I don't know. I don't like golf as a sport. I don't like golf video games, but this, this game was, and I, and I guess once I put this together, this is sort of a theme for my, my choices. Uh, most of my video game time was spent playing either with my little brother or with my best friend, Chris. And golf was a super fun game to play head to head. It gave you two views simultaneously. It gave you an overhead view of the hole you were playing on. And so you could move around, uh, like sort of God's eye view. Where do you want to be hitting your, your shot? And then in the split screen, it gave you a head on view, uh, of your golfer standing there addressing the ball. And so you are clicking it's, you know, like all golf games, it's a matter of clicking and then timing the swing to, you know, add a hook or add a slice. And it's, it's slow, but the courses were interesting and it was just, it was a leisurely turn-based sports game that you could play with a buddy. I can't imagine playing this game by yourself, but if you're sitting there with like a bag of potato chips or something, uh, and you can, you can munch while you're playing because it's golf, you could take time between turns, right? You like to wipe your fingers off on your shirt because of course you wouldn't use a paper towel or anything like that. I just wipe. And it was just a very, very pleasant and well-designed and well thought out, uh, sports game there.
Mike00:08:37Eight. Number four. All right. Number four. Um, I'm going with Mario Kart eight. Uh, this is, uh, the Mario Kart version on the switch. It is, uh, we just got the switch this Christmas, so we are very late to the switch because I, I'm guessing we're a couple of years away from the switch being replaced with something else. Um, so we're slow to this, but I am, uh, loving Mario Kart eight. All my family can play it except the baby. Um, and. Uh, it's the, everything about it is great. I love the way it integrates the, um, other courses from the other Mario Kart games. Um, it, it looks great. It sounds great. Um, there's all these different ways to play the cups, the battle versus the flags, the battles, the ghost, the, uh, you know, where you race the ghost, uh, version of yourself, uh, the online version way you can play it. Like I have. Played, uh, our friend Daniel Halper, uh, on Mario Kart, just like late one night, the kids are down. Hey, let's go play some Mario Kart.
JVL00:09:51You got to loop me into that. You, me and Dan racing in Mario Kart together. Hey, Dan, that would be good times.
Mike00:09:59I, I destroyed Daniel, by the way. Um, I destroyed him. That's all I have to say. So Mario Kart eight takes number four on my list.
JVL00:10:08JVL. Uh, I am a racing game connoisseur. I have been a racing game guy. As long as I've been into video games, uh, and starting with from pole position, the OG of them all to outrun to, uh, rad racer and ridge racer, ridge racer on the original PlayStation, which was an amazing game. I have always hated cartoony racing games, always hated them. And so I was primed to be anti Mario Kart, but it's sensational. Oh, it's so good.
Mike00:10:43I love it.
JVL00:10:44Yeah. Uh, okay. My number four, again, these are very particular to me, Tecmo world wrestling. So this is a, a wrestling. So I get this at like age 11 or something, which is right when I am super into wrestling at the most I've ever been in my life. The idea that you could have a video game for wrestling was wild. Uh, you had very Japanese heavy inspired. Uh, wrestlers, but that's fine because the Japanese were, you know, super into professional wrestling, but the, the best of it is that the Tecmo world wrestling had 20 different moves you could use per wrestler and every wrestler had their own finishing move. That's amazing. And it achieved this by, uh, having a different grappling system. So all the other, I mean, you only had two buttons on the NES, right? You had, you had an a and a B and you had your little three, you know, D pad, your little four direction D pad. And the way you get to 20 moves is you don't have a grapple, right? You don't waste any of the, the button inputs on grappling, uh, in Tecmo world wrestling, you just run into, and once they, once the, the avatars run into each other, they begin grappling and so you can do submissions, pile drivers, figure fours. It was, it was fantastic. Love it. All right. Number three.
Mike00:12:20Number three, there's a fee. I promise they're not all Mario games, but it was a favorite, uh, brand of mine. So number three comes in super Mario world, super Mario world for the, uh, S N E S. Um, I just love the, uh, everything about this is that we get introduced to Yoshi. Um, we, uh, have this. This whole idea, but I'll tell you what I really loved about super Mario world was the alternate exits from certain stages. You could find yourself going out a door and it wasn't the end of the, uh, of the, uh, of the level that you were on that you were supposed to go, but you could get out of the and go to a secret place. You know, you go to a, through a certain door in the ghost house and you're not finishing and going on the path that you're supposed to go, but you're going to a secret place. Where there's a couple of other puzzles and other levels that you can only reach by going through that secret door. I loved that. I love the, all of the sort of sense that even if you played the game all the way through, you hadn't fully played the game all the way through. There were all these little extras. Um, and it was just, it was just, it reminds me of being seven, eight, nine years old and playing that game. That's a good choice.
JVL00:13:42I like to play that over my friend's house. Uh, in high school for me, number three, Mike Tyson's punch out. Uh, I don't know why this game is included. Um, I, I mean, it's, it's not, it's not really a combat game. It's a memorization game. It's, it's essentially dance, dance revolution for your fingers, right? You're just memorizing patterns and doing button pushes and patterns. Uh, and yet the characters who you would fight in punch out. We're so perfectly conceived and drawn. Uh, they had so much personality, so much personality, uh, and, and then to be able to, to fight Mike Tyson at the absolute height of his Mike Tyson-ness and, you know, I don't kid quick and pizza pasta and Mr. Sandman and bear.
Mike00:14:44Hugger and this dragon Chan soda pop in ski.
JVL00:14:48Do you remember soda pop in ski, the great tiger with his gem, right?
Mike00:14:54And you know what?
JVL00:14:54The truth is in, in the modern era where everybody can post all of the cheat codes and the stuff and getting stumped in anything in a video game is a matter of just like going to Google, the magic of having to figure this shit out by yourself. Because you, I'm sorry if you didn't pick up that the great tiger was gonna do his finishing move when his jewel sparkled, then there was no way to just go on to Reddit and ask Reddit, well, how do you beat the great tiger? What's the key. And that was, that was awesome. It was really, really awesome. Uh, and I, the other thing about it is it was a direct port of a game that you were playing in the arcades simultaneously, and this game. This was a, a thing, which was pretty rare. It's pretty rare to be able to get the same game that you were getting in the arcade home to play in your system. And that was a rare treat. Uh, all right. Number two for you. I'm sorry. Don't let you have any thoughts on punch out number.
Mike00:16:02Uh, no, the only, the only thought is, is just to reiterate, it's amazing that Mike Tyson was like lending his name to a video like that, that, that he's lending his name to a video game. What this was like, what the mid to late eighties, like it just, it's, it's what a world, what a world that was, it must've been all right.
JVL00:16:22Number two for you.
Mike00:16:23Um, number two is another Nintendo switch game. It is the legend of Zelda breath of the wild. Um, this is a game again, we just had the switch for a few months, my brother-in-law, um, knowing that Santa was bringing, uh, the Nintendo switch, uh, bought my two older sons and me each a game. The game he bought for me was breath of the wild. Um, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Zelda was always kind of an interesting game. I liked the puzzles, but I wasn't like a Zelda nut, uh, by any stretch of the imagination, uh, breath of the wild is a, uh, impressive game. And I found out since that, like, it is held in high acclaim by all the like true gamers, like, not just like the, the, the, uh, lamos and noobs like me. Um, it is, uh, seen as sort of a, a top achievement for the, for the franchise. Um, the upcoming tears of the kingdom sequel, which comes out in just a month or so, uh, has a lot of high expectations because of this game. Here's what I love about it. Uh, it is open world. It is, uh, it encourages exploration. It encourages, um, experimentation, trying things out that doesn't work. How do I? How do I do this? You're cooking things to give you buffs and extra, uh, uh, life. Um, you're learning things like how to tame horses, use different weapons, but it, it still maintains the kind of, uh, lore of the game. Um, it's beautiful to look at. Um, it just, these, these expansive views when you're climbing, even the aspect of the game, you can essentially climb anything. Uh, you just run out of stamina. If you climb too long. Uh, but you can see just these beautiful vistas, this wholly realized world. There's always like something in every corner of this giant game. It's like, uh, it just did an impressive game. I'm impressed by it. I suck at it, but I am impressed by it. I love it. It is everything that, uh, a game like this should be. I just never knew they actually made games like this breath of the wild.
JVL00:18:40I, I hate open sandbox games. And this is, I think a function of age. If they had had open sandbox games when I was a kid, I think I would have loved it. But I, the first open sandbox game I ever truly got to see was for this ring cast and it was called Shenmue. It was a Japanese import title and everybody gamers fucking love. They slobbed the knob on Shenmue. Like you would not believe. And I got this thing and I would like Walker. You're just like walking around Tokyo and you're supposed to like, like, what are you doing? What's the plot? But you know, like, well, it is whatever you make it to be. And, you know, you meet the people and I'm like, I'm sorry. I don't have fucking time to, you know, I got four kids. I got a job. I got 17 podcasts. I don't have time to explore the sandbox. Please tell me what the mission is so I can go solve the mission.
Mike00:19:44And I think that's just because like, that's the place where I am in my life.
JVL00:19:47I'm the, you know, there are points in your life when you can do open sandbox and appreciate it and love it. And there are points in your life when you're there to do a job. And that, you know, that, that job, like I will go beat this quest, right? Give me the quest. I'll go beat it.
Mike00:20:01The idea that there is no quest, you would just like, I'm sorry, because it's, you know, story time for kid number three, you know, like I got things to do. Right.
JVL00:20:11And so I couldn't, couldn't do. Couldn't do open sandbox, but it sounds lovely. My number two, double dribble. When this came out, basketball was the most important game to me. It was Konami, which was a Konami and Tecmo were the, I'm sorry, Konami, Tecmo and Nintendo were the three best game developers for the, the original NES. Right. And double dribble had four teams. You could choose to be your Chicago, Los Angeles. Boston and New York. They were, there were no licenses attached to the NBA, but they were clearly the Lakers, the Bulls, the Knicks and the Celtics. And in addition to the amazing cut scenes, when you dunked, which I don't know if you remember, but you know, if you went in for a dunk, all of a sudden you would get these flashbulb posterized cut scenes of you throwing down a dunk, which were randomized kind of an amazing. Once you figured out how to shoot corner threes, the trick of which was to be deep in the top corner and then to flick forward and then away as you released, you could shoot like in the same way that in Tecmo football, you could like just retreat, retreat, retreat, retreat to the back of your end zone and then throw a 95 yard bomb. You know, if you were the Minnesota Vikings, I think, uh, you, you could, you could do, if you were Boston, you could fucking kill it. You could kill people from the corner, but it was, it was also, you didn't have to do that. You could pass the ball around, right? It was five on five basketball in a way that was recognizable and it felt like actual basketball in a video game. And that was revolutionary. And that is a game that you could play by yourself if you want to do. But the real reward was like sitting there with a buddy and just, oh man, I would needle Chris, like fucking be like, no, stop shooting the threes. I'd be like, sorry, dude, let me see if I can double you up this game, you know? But anyway, what is your number one overall? Love it. Love it.
Mike00:22:20Number one overall, this is, excuse me. This is something that is really nostalgia driven. This is a game that is, but I also think is critically acclaimed. And it really, I think, reveals what my preference is for video games, which is not with playing a lot of sports games. But I loved platform games. I love those kind of side-scrolling platform games. This, to me, is the peak of SNES in terms of all of that. And that is the game Donkey Kong Country 2, Diddy Kong's Quest. It is an improvement on the original Donkey Kong, which country, which is a good game. It's a very good game. I just played it a couple of months ago, all the way through. It is impressive for the 3D technology, but the story is a little lacking in looking at it. Looking at Donkey Kong Country 2, the original just kind of pales in comparison. Donkey Kong Country 3 is a cute and fun addition to it, but really doesn't add anything to what the first sequel did. Donkey Kong Country 2 is, it's darker. It is more difficult. It is the different functions, the abilities that you have as the players. From this girl, monkey character, Dixie Kong, to the whole thing. She has all this crazy flying ability. Everything about this game is like, it is peak mid-90s, you know, kind of cartoony platform side scrolling. I love it. And the best thing of all about Donkey Kong Country 2 is its score. And I'm going to sound like a real psychopath when I say this, but I will sometimes listen to the score to Donkey Kong Country 2 as like a writing or work background noise because it is, it just soothes me and brings me right back there. And I feel like I can just do anything listening to that music. Number one on my list. The haters come for me. I don't care.
JVL00:24:33You are a sicko to be listening to that. I never, never played it. I remember the ads at the back of comic books for Donkey Kong. Country, but never, never play. Cause again, didn't have the SNES for me. Number one is legend of Zelda. And I, it's not my favorite. It's this is what's funny. So it's absolutely not my favorite of these five games, but the mind blowingness of a game that you could save. Right. The, I did, this is a game which is to be completed over the course of weeks on a console. Not, not, you know, it's not Zorf or Gorf or whatever that game was, you know, where you had to on your TRC. Which you had 15 floppy disks that you loaded and said the console game that you saved and where you were constantly upgrading your character. And well, what shield do I have now? I have a wooden sword. I need the golden sword. And it was part action and part quest and part puzzle solving. And they'd had secrets to it. And again, all of this is stuff that you could do pre internet because you're figuring it out all on your own. Right. I mean, I remember being a charter subscriber to Nintendo Power Magazine and being thrilled when Nintendo Power Magazine had a foldable map of the Zelda world that you could pull out of it. Because I had tried drawing my own my own Zelda map, you know, based on like this screen is here. The screen is there. And God help me. There was one thing that I couldn't figure out that I called the Nintendo 900 number. Do you remember 900 numbers? You're muted. You're muted. So 900 numbers were a thing that existed in the 90s where you would you would call it. It's the opposite of an 800 number. And one 800 number is a number which you can dial for free. People under 40 are going to listen to this be like, what the fuck are you talking about calling for free? They used to charge you for phone calls pre-internet. Anyway, in a 900 number, you would call and you would be paying for it. And a lot of it was. Uh, phone sex where you were, you were paying some woman to talk you off and you're paying like 699 or 2999 or something per minute. Uh, there were also financial scams and stuff like that, but there was a Nintendo hotline for this, uh, which you found in Nintendo power magazine. They would charge you. I think it was 299 a minute. And Chris and I were stuck on. I forget what it might've been the screen that you have to like go right three times in order to get out of it.
Mike00:27:13Uh, you know, it's like the, the never ending forest or something. Oh, right, right. Yes. Yes.
JVL00:27:19But you called for two and you got to like an actual operator. And so you got to a person, there's like a video game expert and you would ask them your question and you would say like, how do I get, I'm on, I'm on grid G two a 15. Uh, and I can't on legend of Zelda and I can't get, but of course with your little kid voice, I can't get out of it. What do I do? And so. Some disaffected 20 year old says, you just go left three times and then you'll wind up at the forbidden forest gem tree, you know? And you're like, oh, thank you. And then there, that was $20. You know, the game was 40 and you just spent $20 on the Nintendo one 900 number because there is no Reddit for you to go crying to, right? You, your choices are to, to you, your brothers or, or your five friends at school. And if you guys can't figure it out, then I'm. Sorry, that's it, right? This is, you have to achieve your knowledge. There is no received wisdom in video games then. And that was a super cool feeling.
Mike00:28:24Oh yeah. So it's interesting. You mentioned that because this is, this was not the case then, but it is the case now that like my kids ask me to help them, you know, when we win some get past something and like, um, like because I, cause they know I played video games. Like my parents did play video games. They didn't know what that wasn't. It wasn't a thing. So like, that is another element where like it is now passed down through the parents, which is nice. You know, that's a nice, that's a nice thing. Um, I, I, you know, I think it's a great, I think it's a great choice. Um, I love it. Um, so, uh, should we talk real quickly? Just go through some honorable mentions before we wrap up here. Uh, I'll go through them real quickly. Uh, sports game, Kendrick, Ken Griffey, jr's winning run. It is not Ken Griffey, jr's, uh, well, I can't remember what the other game was that, uh, that was actually MLB sanctioned. This is Ken Griffey, jr's winning run, which was the sequel that was not MLB sanctioned, but that's the one that we had for a set of, uh, SNES. And the only thing I remember about that game was if you sat there and you were the pitching team and you sat there and you didn't, uh, you didn't throw the ball for like, I don't know, 15, 20 seconds, the umpire who you were sort of looking at the back of would turn around knock as if he was knocking on your TV screen and say, it's a game and that just used to crack my brother. And I, uh, I loved it. I loved it. It was just like this little Easter egg that we figured out. Um, uh, obviously, uh, duck hunt on the original NES. I just loved it. Loved it. Um, super Mario brothers, all stars was the SNES repackaging of all the NES super Mario brothers game. So it had by the shit again for the new console suckers. Yeah, but I didn't have the old console JVL. It was a revelation for me and improved graphics. Super Mario brothers three and super Mario brothers, the lost levels, which was the other Japanese game that was never released in the United States. All in one game. Loved it. Uh, and then of course, I have to say. I didn't have the N 64, but gold nine double Oh seven. I played it enough to know it's an amazing game. I just didn't have it. I just didn't play it enough to say it was in my top five.
JVL00:30:54There are my honorable mentions, uh, metal gear, the first metal gear, the beginning of that franchise. That was a ton of fun. Batman, which weirdly enough is a side-scrolling licensed thing based on the Michael Keaton. Batman was quite good. Actually, uh, Castlevania was fine. I dug it. Um, the music was good. The sound effects were good. Uh, Contra obviously because Contra was Contra. It was another arcade port. The port you got was not as good as what you were playing in the arcade, but it had the Contra code in it. Right. A B a left, right, left, right. A B B A B start, start. Yeah. Whatever. I forget the Contra code. And, um, and that was the first like secret knowledge that I thought I had as a kid learning the Contra code. Where did I find the Contra code? I don't even know, but this, it was like an urban legend that turned out to be real. And, uh, you know, unless you're of a certain age, you can't, you can't really understand how cool that was. Uh, all right. That's all the time we're going to give to this show. I would, a quick shout out to a friend of the show, Cameron McVay, who has been having a tough go of it. And I don't even know if he's going to listen to this, but, uh, if you're out there in the SSC, you guys know Cam, uh, say a prayer for him and, uh, drop me an email if you can figure out what we should send him. So, uh, Cam, if you are listening to, we love you, buddy. Hang in there. All right. That's all the time we're giving to this show. Bye. Bye. Bye.
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