EB Minion's Top 25 Games of All Time
by EB Minion

I can't believe I put off playing this game for as long as I had. As I said before, I enjoy the cinematic aspects of the game as much as I enjoy getting to play sometimes. And MGS managed to fit everything on the plate all at once. Having to seriously run around and avoid enemy contact really gave the game a different dynamic I hadn't experienced before, making many situations much more tense than they would've otherwise been. This game has kicked my ass seven ways to Sunday. I've died at least once everywhere, but I kept plugging away at it until I beat it. I think the most spectacular part of the game is edging out cautiously during an intense fight, seeing what's ahead, and then trying every different thing you can think of to get around it. Like fighting Raven while he's in the tank, before I'd ever picked up any scrambler grenades (or whatever they're called). The game's industrial setting feels appropriately claustrophobic when you're dealing with shit like poisoned hallways, trapdoors and electrified floors while trying to evade guards. Maneuvering through the game was fun because you had so many items to work with that, even if they didn't do anything, made you feel as though you were honestly trying. I recall unloading every conceivable weapon at the Cyborg Ninja before reluctantly putting up my dukes. I recall trying to aim my SOCOM at Sniper Wolf before having to pull out the PSG1. I remember throwing everything I had at Raven to keep him from tearing my ass inside out, until remembering that C4 existed. It was a challenging game, but a fun one to experiment with. And I ultimately feel that the story I got out of it was one worth telling, by far. Same goes with every game in the series, really. I actually think MGS2's ending is the best out of the bunch.



I'm not an entirely serious RPG gamer, or at least I feel as though I can't claim to be since I have never once beat the original NES Final Fantasies. I'm rather fond of Final Fantasy IV and VI (Never played V), and X was at least worth a go-around. But none of this matters, because I'd probably still be completely in the dark about the entire Final Fantasy universe if I hadn't first picked up FFVII one day eight years ago. I will explain how this is possible (what with me liking RPGs and everything) by the last entry on this list.

Wow. First picking up this game after a lifetime diet of SNES and Sega games really knocked me for a loop. For the first time, using the power of the Playstation, the world was rendered in a way that made it look more real than ever before. And because the setting of the game has a lot of interesting parallels with the real world, the setting connected with me all the more. My fondest memories of the game don't involve reaching level 99 with everyone and upping all their stats to 255 just so the final boss becomes a complete joke... even if that's what I ended up doing before I finally beat the game. No, everytime I think about FFVII, my thoughts always take me back to the very first segment of the game, traveling through the sprawling streets and slums of Midgar.

In fact, that's what I thought the whole game was about at first! When I first rented the game, I must've had a completely screwed-up rental disc or something, because every so often the screen would go completely black. This happened as I was getting on the train to blow up Sector 5, and just after Sector 7 crashed. I assumed at the time that I'd reached a third of the game's total length, popped in the next disc, and kept playing because the game actually continued like nothing was wrong.

I know the idea is silly now, but at the time I really thought that Midgar was the entire game because of how much story you actually go through during this part of the game. Squaresoft included a lot of content for the game's opening act, and it made for an excellent hook. You first met the Turks in Midgar, the primary cast assembled there, the setting was established, and there were just a lot of screens you could get totally lost in! I know I did.

Eventually I got out of Midgar, fiddled with the game here or there for about five years, and eventually beat it one summer three years ago. But damn if those weren't good times. Remember throwing barrels at Shinra goons while Aeris tried to make good on her escape... only for the barrel to hit her instead because you had no idea which barrel went where? Ha! The first days in Midgar contained the most imagination in the entire game.



OMFG. Back when I was little and I first heard about this game, it was damn near the coolest thing that Nintendo could've ever come up with. An RPG... only with Mario! Now obviously, this was just a plain good game or they would never have tried making another Mario RPG, and there's like 5 to-date. And it WAS a good game. One of the only two RPGs I would play for the SNES for the longest time. To me, the idea of Mario appearing in an actual story was too good an opportunity to pass up. And what was this? A battle system with Timed Attacks? Man! Actually, it really was exciting as a kid because I felt like such a genius mastering the timing of every character's weapon, and the timing that allowed you to block an enemy's move.

Maybe I'm just a complete sucker; stick a light-hearted Nintendo mascot into a more meaningful narrative and I go to pieces over it. As a kid, the setting of this game and the characters that Mario was surrounded by, they fired up my imagination. Frogs, cloud-people, rats, thwomps, goombas, magikoopas, snifits and shy guys, Mario's world has overflowing with creatures and characters to interact with. To me it was like an odyssey, and Mario was my guide. I couldn't even put the game down when I wasn't playing it; I was so enthralled with the RPG that I'd use all my action figures to reenact scenes from the game.

Mario RPGs constantly retain a certain element that combines platform hopping with storytelling, to remind you that you're playing a Mario game. It's a successful formula and I hope to see it put to use in even more interesting ways in the future, both as a casual gamer and as that little kid who was obsessed with the damn thing.



Damn am I glad I played this game. I was a seriously picky gamer when I was younger, but I honestly think I would have been worse off not having played Chrono Trigger, above all the other games I never played. I'm sure this game is going to pop up on a lot of lists if you have people assemble a Top 25 games list, and there's an excellent reason for this. It's the game that kicked the ass of the entire SNES RPG era. There's no one thing that sets Chrono Trigger apart, really. The entire package is just fucking awesome.

I feel as though I have some right to say this. One Saturday night a few years back, I decided I wanted to play Chrono Trigger (the PSX version). I picked up the controller and started playing from the beginning to the final chapter, starting at 7 PM Saturday and shutting it off at 9 on Sunday night. It's not a marathon session worth bragging about, sure, but it was a really fun and meaningful decision on my part because I had never played a marathon session before, nor have I since. It's special, see, because when you play most RPGs you stop and take breaks that can last anywhere from an hour to a week before picking up the controller and playing again. But I got to experience the bulk of the game without pause or rest, and I would like to think I am better off for it.

It's not just a story about kids saving the world from a planet-devouring entity. It's about people from across history finding common ground with one another and facing a common threat. Most of Crono's posse is never going to live to see 1999, and find a day where Lavos does not rise. They aren't fighting for their immediate future, they are fighting against the enemy of everybody, regardless of time or politics. A universal enemy. And it feels good to finally beat that giant mutant porcupine into the ground, but the journey there is ultimately more fulfilling.



This was the first RPG I ever played. I first played it when I was like seven years old, when a friend showed it to me. Every couple of weeks (we had short attention spans), we'd play a little bit of the game and maybe further the plot somewhere. We never really played the game from start to end, and when we did play, it was always in a new part of the game without any sort of transition (we'd load other people's saves and play on those each time). Still, I was hooked. I didn't think there could possibly be a better game in the entire world.

I know now that the main characters of the game are actually young adults, but back then I'd associate them very closely with my own age. In fact, I'd always assume they were right around my age no matter how old I got. I'd imagine myself doing the things that the main character was doing, and usually gave Ness my own name. I'd always find myself wishing I had a destiny like the characters in the game. It was my first long-lasting childhood fantasy.

I've had some really interesting experiences with the game. I played EarthBound sporadically from the time I was first introduced to about age 9 or 10, before I managed to buy a copy of the game. During that two year period, since I was so new to the concept of the RPG and hadn't played another game like it, the game's first enemies were giant hurdles to me. It took me forever to actually beat Frank, but when I finally reached the first Your Sanctuary location, the Titanic Ant was simply impossible. I'd fight him over and over again and the same result would happen every time. I wasn't the right level, I didn't understand the concept of fight-and-heal, and I didn't realize that my PSI powers were more potent then my normal abilities.

Then one day, after putting down my controller, I took a nap and had a dream. I found myself using PSI Rockin' Alpha to blow the crap out of that giant ant. Of course, at the time it looked more like something out of Power Rangers, but I knew what the dream was about. It was telling me how to advance the game. When I got up, I picked up the controller and tried again, only I started using my PSI abilities this time, and whomped the boss for the first time. It was amazing that the means of victory had come to me in a dream, and as a kid it was probably one of my coolest experiences.

I really consider this game my growing-up odyssey. While my friend and I rented the game a lot, we never had a consistent play-through. I was always seeing different patches of the story and having no real idea of what it was all supposed to be about. I'd wander confusedly through Twoson only to gleefully stumble onto the path back to Onett, familiar territory. And there would always be certain characters in the party even though I didn't know who they were.

Now this could only happen back during the time of the cartridge-based save, but it made the game an even greater mystery to me. It became my lifelong goal to actually beat the game, and you can probably guess what a daunting task that was. It's worth noting that even after fighting the Titanic Ant and the Onett police force, I stumbled across Everdred unexpectedly and died because I hadn't gone to an inn yet. Eventually I bought the game and the true war began. I persevered, and came to understand the game's mechanics over the course of many years. I finally started to fight the bulk of map enemies rather than run away from them. I managed my resources and met the people of the EarthBound world in the order I was supposed to.

Near the end, closing in on the final stages of the game was all I could think about. I'd wake up early before school and get in a small amount of play, spend my time in class mapping out the next strategy and reminiscing on what had happened before, and then I'd stay up two or three hours past my bedtime, grinding away at the last of the game's defenses. It took so long because I am notoriously bad at navigating mazes and dungeons. All the same, I eventually found my way to Giygas, the final boss, and the culminating fight from many years of labor was fought and won. I couldn't believe what I'd just done, and I wanted so much to tell the friend who'd shown me EarthBound. But it had been years since I last saw him, and didn't even know his phone number. So I sat in the light of the television, talked to all of the people who had made the game feel so special, and watched the end credits.

The ending song gets to me everytime. The final line always makes me want to cry, though why I can never quite tell. It was especially hard not to the very first time.

EarthBound kicks ass because it had a large hand in building the person I am today. I could continue to go on and on about this game that I love so much, but I think it's about time that I wrap up this list. Thanks a lot Polly for giving me this chance, I enjoyed making the list a lot. Sorry if I did sort of write a book about a some of these, heh. Ah well, good times. Later, everyone!


--Steve