Friday Five – Favorite 16-bit Era Games

Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week we help you get to know our writers with the help of a top 5 list! This week: Favorite 16-Bit Era Games
 
It’s been a quiet week over here at One-Quest, a lot of things have been going on behind the scenes, but we didn’t forget about the Friday Five. So for this week’s Friday Five we decided to get a little nostalgic and talk about our favorite games from the 16-bit Era of gaming. We basically all picked Super Nintendo and Sega games, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still love the games on the Turbo Graphix 16 or Neo Geo. We just don’t love them as much. So let’s get on with the listing!

Chris

The 16-bit era of gaming was a magical time, so many classic games that people still play and love today came out. I would love to say my top 5 are games like Final Fantasy II(IV) or Chrono Trigger, but I never played those back on the SNES. It wasn’t until years later when the games were ported to handhelds that I finally get a taste of their greatness. Instead my list are games of my childhood that I would play for hours and hours.

1. Super Mario World – Super Mario World shipped with the original Super Nintendo, and it was a masterpiece of platforming. I’ve spent so many hours traveling through the islands of this game that I can get through some levels while barely looking at the screen
2. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 – Who didn’t love Sonic, a hedgehog with attitude and a love of chili dogs. My Sega Genesis was basically only used to play Sonic games, and occasionally rentals like Earthworm Jim, Power Rangers, or Aladdin. But Sonic 2 was always my favorite, the music, the levels, just about everything.
3. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – One of my first articles on One-Quest was an overly long look back at Link to the Past, and there’s a good reason for that. This game is amazing, and was a huge part of my childhood. I think I own 3 or 4 different versions of the game on various platforms at this point, and I would buy another if it came my way.
4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time – TMNT games were always fun, if not unbearable hard (I’m talking about you NES TMNT). Turtles in Time was different though, it took aspects of the cartoon and the movie and blended them together in this fantastic side scrolling beat-em-up. I played this as recently as last year, and it’s still a load of fun.
5. Sonic & Knuckles – This may be a bit of a cheat, since you can play it by itself or with Sonic 2 or 3 attached, but it was a lot of fun. I loved the new worlds you got to play through, and Knuckles was a great addition to the cast of the game. Not to mention playing through the familiar levels of Sonic 2 with Knuckles totally changed the game. And of course as an added bonus if you put in any other game but Sonic 2 or 3 you’d be able to unlock the special levels of Sonic and Knuckles to practice.

Drootin

1. NHL ’94 – This game is still in my top 5 games of all time so it deserves its spot atop my Friday 5 for this week and it is still one of the best sports games of all time. This was easily the most played game until I got a PlayStation 1
2. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – In my mind this is THE best Legend of Zelda game and I couldn’t possibly not list this.
3. Mutant League Football – One of the best arcade style sports games in the best era of arcade style sports games has to be on the sports gamers list of 16-bit games.
4. NBA Jam T.E. – Another one of the great arcade style sports games. Tons of hours were sunk into this by me and friends trying to beat the tournament mode without losing.
5. Madden ’93 – I played this game so much as a kid that now if I ever pop it in or play on an emulator I need to set arbitrary rules for myself for this game to be even remotely challenging.

Eric

I didn’t own a Super Nintendo as a kid. I had a Sega Genesis. It does what Nintendon’t!

1. Final Fantasy IV (SNES)
2. Ecco the Dolphin (Sega Genesis)
3. Jurassic Park (Sega Genesis)
4. Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (Sega Genesis)
5. Vectorman (Genesis)

Vogel

Growing up, my sister got a Super Nintendo and I got a Sega Genesis. Many fond memories come from those systems.

1. Super Mario RPG – I would rent this from Blockbuster every week because I wanted to do everything there was is the game.
2. Super Mario World – In second grade I came dow. With bronchitis really bad and missed a month of school, I played this game just about every day.
3. Darius Twin – a semi challenging shooter game where you’re a spaceship flying through a war field of animalesque robots.
4. Link to the Past – I had LoZ for the NES but never really got into it as a kid, but LttP was amazing. It felt like two games in one and had so much optional content.
5. Mario’s Time Machine – part educational, part detective work, but I loved this game growing up.

Chris talks a bunch on PodQuest each week. He's also been known to write about stuff from time to time. You can Email Chris or follow Chris on Twitter @Just_Cobb or Facebook

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