General gaming

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• The Essential 100, No. 71: Silent Hill 2
• The Essential 100, No. 72: Mega Man 2
• The Essential 100, No. 73: BioShock
• The Essential 100, No. 74: King's Quest
• Cover Story: 1UP's Essential 100, Part Two
• The Essential 100, No. 75: EarthBound

The Essential 100, No. 71: Silent Hill 2 Posted: 20 Aug 2012 05:31 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO The Essential 100, No. 71: Silent Hill 2 Cover Story: One of the most notable uses of hell as other people left an indelible mark on the rest series. S ay what you want about the current state of the Silent Hill series, but no one can ignore the second chapter's bold approach or the mark it left on the rest of the series. The original Silent Hill freed players from the flat 2D-painted backdrops often associated with console-based survival horror games from the PlayStation era. But after establishing its nightmarish premise, and the dual appearances of its sleepy mid-western setting, a bizarre final act left many folks scratching their heads. Blame the tacky mystical cult known as the Order if you want to, or any other outcome found in the original game's five endings, but the tone of the first Silent Hill indicated something far more sinister lurked within the touristy vacation spot -- and sadly that something never really showed up. Thankfully Silent Hill 2 set out to provide a clearer glimpse into this foggy purgatory and its weary inhabitants. In order to understand the sequel to Silent Hill, it helps to know the work of existentialist author Jean-Paul Sartre, and his line from the play No Exit that succinctly postulates that certain people, trapped in an unwillingly situation, can create a type of hell for each other. For Konami, that dark place world of the Silent Hill sequel would be laced with a few weary souls, all visibly drained of emotion, who all survived grim past experiences.

The Essential 100, No. 72: Mega Man 2 Posted: 20 Aug 2012 05:05 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO The Essential 100, No. 72: Mega Man 2 Cover Story: An 8-bit action game whose seeming simplicity belies its rich sophistication. W hen Capcom decided to revitalize the classic Mega Man franchise five years ago, the development team at IntiCreates looked to Mega Man 2 for inspiration. And they took a startlingly literal approach to this, too, not only deliberately creating Mega Man 9 with the look and sound of an NES game but also stripping the hero's skills down to the basics as they existed in MM2, before the third and fourth games added sliding and charged shots. Why the aggressively reductive approach? As the developers explained it, they wanted to restore the series to its former glory, so they looked to the one entry in the long-running series that most fans describe as their favorite. Mega Man games are practically a guarantee of a good time, but amidst dozens of solid entries and a handful of genuine masterpieces, Mega Man 2 stands above the rest. It is, very nearly, a perfect creation.

The Essential 100, No. 73: BioShock Posted: 20 Aug 2012 03:00 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO Essential 100, No. 73: BioShock Cover Story: Fearless creation contributed to an unforgettable setting. U ntil recently, I couldn't quite pinpoint why I consider BioShock to be the most engrossing game of this current generation. It wasn't because of the expertly told story, populated with dense characters and an unforgettable twist. Nor was it the expert combat that melded FPS twitch-reflexes with the sort of creativity that comes from an RPG. Even the remarkable feat of constant tension that oscillated between active and passive horror wasn't the thing that pushed it over the edge for me. Despite all of these elements being ahead of the pack, what Ken Levine and the folks at 2K Boston (now Irrational) did with BioShock that impressed me the most was the simple act of creation. Unlike most game worlds, this was not a space created for me to enjoy; Rapture was a living, breathing city, and I was merely a visitor to its crumbling ruins.

The Essential 100, No. 74: King's Quest Posted: 20 Aug 2012 01:39 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO The Essential 100, No. 74: King's Quest Cover Story: A crucial moment in the etymology of adventure games. B y age 6 I'd developed a clear video game vocabulary, speaking the specialized language of momentum. I started in 1986 on Atari 2600 games like The Empire Strikes Back and onto the NES with those early, nail-bitingly difficult games like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Mega Man 2. Success in video games was a dialogue of timing. Know when to jump, when to shoot, and never stop exploring. The root language of exploration was the only thing that prepared me for attempting to speak Roberta Williams' language when I started playing King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella in 1988. The iconic adventure game designer's signature series was wrought in complex, often counter-intuitive thoughts and it expressed itself in strange ways. I knew how to speak video game Latin the first time I played King's Quest IV. Williams' game wasn't Latin though; it was French, a descendant of the root language that was idiosyncratic and weird. Quick reflexes and attention weren't enough. King's Quest was a romance language that required you to think. You couldn't just make Rosella climb out of the whale's belly in King's Quest IV (though it was certainly a challenge in and of itself). You had to also figure out how to use that feather to tickle the leviathan's uvula to make it cough you up. What's more, you actually had to figure out precisely how to tell the game to do that with actual words, not the press of a button or D-pad. It was complex, heady, terribly frustrating, and revelatory when you succeeded.

Cover Story: 1UP's Essential 100, Part Two Posted: 20 Aug 2012 12:31 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO Cover Story: 1UP's Essential 100, Part Two More of the most important games of all time, as chosen by you! Last month, we kicked off our Essential 100 series with its first chapter, a series of retrospectives on the games ranked from 100 through 76. This week, we continue the countdown with our second installment, which covers numbers 75 through 51. Every day this week, we'll publish another five retrospectives (in sequence) counting down your picks and ours. The rankings in part one seemed to inspire a bit of criticism, which is almost inevitably the case when countdowns and rankings are involved. But in this case, that negativity is misplaced, because these rankings are everyone's choice! The Essential 100 is easily the most democratic thing that's ever happened at 1UP. Both the readers and the creators of 1UP came together to build this list. If you don't like the results, it's as much your fault as it is ours!

The Essential 100, No. 75: EarthBound Posted: 20 Aug 2012 12:04 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF AUGUST 20 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART TWO The Essential 100, No. 75: EarthBound Cover Story: This personality-packed RPG created an enduring Internet community. V ideo games may be a commercial medium (by and large), but greatness and success often don't go hand-in-hand. Some truly wretched games have made a great deal of money over the years, while genuine masterpieces have crashed to failure as commercial disasters unable to find an audience. Nintendo's EarthBound epitomizes the latter category. Nintendo clearly pinned big hopes on the game before its launch. It had already seen significant success bringing Japanese console RPGs to the U.S. and convincing restless American children to sit in front of their televisions and read rather than simply blowing things up; Dragon Warrior (née Quest) grabbed plenty of attention if not sales, and based on sales figures published at the time, Final Fantasy originally sold better in the U.S. than in Japan. EarthBound must have seemed a sure thing: The latest Nintendo-published RPG ditched the fantasy setting for a world that resembled a fever-dream America. What kid wouldn't want to go on an adventure in their own backyard with their dog, their best buddy, and the girl next door?

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