Critics Club IV: The Greatest Game of 1990

[Neon Ignition]

We've gone through four rounds of voting to sift through the hundreds of key game releases from the new decade of gaming in order to bring us to this, the vote where we decide once and for all what is:

The Greatest Game of 1990




Which of the above games are the very best of 1990 and why?

[CMcK]

Got to be Tetris. It’s a timeless classic.

[QualityChimp]

Yeah, I agree with that.
All great games in that list that deserved to be played, but Tetris is so much more than just a good game.
The whole story of how it came to be is fascinating and releasing it alongside the Game Boy was genius.

I can still pick one up and start playing and the world melts away.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm all in on Mario World. For me it was and still is the most replayable game on there

[endo]

Yeah, got to be SMW for me too. As much as Tetris endlessly replayable, so is SMW. Pure joy from start to finish. What a selection in that lot though!

[dataDave]

I can't sit and play Tetris for five hours before wondering where the hell all that time went, so with that in mind I voted for Super Mario World.

[QualityChimp]

I can't sit and play Tetris for five hours before wondering where the hell all that time went

"Just one more line!"
Five hours later.


Sounds like an average weekend!

[JazzFunk]

Hmmmm. Out of that lot, it's a toss-up betwixt DEVIL CRASH* and CASTLE OF ILLUSION. I can't portray quite how magical the latter feels as a platformer. It feels PERFECT. Even Capcom couldn't outdo it.

I still play these games to this day and they are - at least to me - clearly better than all the other games on there.

Maybe bar RAIDEN. RAIDEN is great, always was, always will be.

(*I had the MD version which *may* have come out in 1991...?)

[JazzFunk]

Oh, and F-ZERO.

That's ****ing brilliant, too.

[internetuser]

So many memories of seeing super mario world for the first time

[Atticus]

I like a lot in that list but Super Mario World is just perfection.

[Nu-Eclipse]

City Under Siege isn't even the best game of the ESWAT series, never mind the best game of 1990.

[JazzFunk]

Super Mario World is amazing, too. But the thought of having to go back and find ALL the pathways n' stuff again daunts n' scares me to death.

In fact I haven't even touched it since maxing it out in early '93!!!

Brill game, though. And the use of sound really gave the SNES an instant edge. The sound design is PERFECT in that game.

[JazzFunk]

ESWAT on MD is an almost-great but the rate of firing is just too slow and sparse to make the game truly fun to play. It's annoying. It's like being expected to run a marathon wearing a caliper on one leg.

[JazzFunk]

STILL think the first level city backdrop looks well-lush, mind!