CCIV: Game of the Year 1995 - Round Six

[Neon Ignition]

Time for the sixth round, just now not only hitting the middle of the decade but also the middle of the full list of games the year unleashed upon the market. Above lies the next round of sixty games:


Which of the above games is amongst the best of 1995?

[Asura]

Two real stand-outs here.

First is Manx TT Superbike. I think, of the Sega Model-2 racers of the 90s, this one gets the thin end of the wedge because it's a giant in the presence of titans, what with Daytona and Rally and even stuff like the Ridge Racer games of that era. Then you stack that with how the home version was fine but not great, and even the arcade version had several variants, and you really needed to play the expensive one with the articulated bike, not the Hang On-style bike...

But if you got the chance to play that, on manual gears, the game was just sublime. So fast, and the handling was fantastic, and it was incredible to be able to play that and watch the real TT, and see how they'd recreated that real location in a way that videogames were only just starting to do.

Second is Mechwarrior 2. This was my first proper experience of the Battletech franchise (my only prior was the shortlived cartoon show earlier in the 90s), and it's a real poster-child for how a bit of narrative care can elevate a game. The game itself is really quite simple; you pick (or customise) a battlemech, and go on missions with it; but the missions are really quite basic - you go from NAV point to NAV point in quite sparse terrain, destroying targets, surveying targets, destroying opposition, giving limited orders to your squad... Despite the simplicity, it's really quite gripping, with surprisingly good music, spoken voice-overs and comm chatter, and written contexts you can read for each mission that enriches the world. Its sequel, Mercenaries, managed to do even more with similarly crude tools.

Both fantastic games.

[Neon Ignition]

There's a couple I like in this list but again none I'd vote for. 2007 this ain't!

[Hirst]

Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend is probably more well-known as Side Pocket 2, which is a great little game (with hilarious badly-acted live action FMV sequences).

[QualityChimp]

There's a couple I like in this list but again none I'd vote for. 2007 this ain't!

Yeah same.
I don't want you to think your post isn't being read, though!

[Asura]

It's a shame I never got to play Magic Knight Rayearth at the time; I think I would've loved it.