45-Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom (Capcom, Arcade, 1993)
Comparing this updated top 50 list to the list I made years ago, Tower of Doom is one of the few games that has actually moved up. Previously, I’d had it listed in position 50.

Tower of Doom was the best of the 4-player arcade cabinet games. You could play a fighter, dwarf, cleric or elf. You could pick up new weapons, extra arrows for your bow, magic items, and gold to spend in a store between levels. The cleric and elf had a list of spells right out of the Player’s Handbook which improved as they went up in level. Everyone except the elf had a shield that was useful in the same way as the Knight’s shield in Trine. Plus, certain characters had moves that were performed like the special moves in Street Fighter 2. These were bull rushes, rolls, dive attacks, and slides – as useful for evading traps as they were in melee.The game’s combat was far more technical than most sidescrolling beat-em-ups.

There were branching routes in the game, secret areas, and the list of enemies in the game included kobolds, ghasts, troglodytes, manticores, medusa, a beholder, and a couple dragons for stage bosses. That’s the kind of game you’d never imagine having seen in an arcade, and that’s why the game is on my top fifty list.

44-Neverwinter Nights (Bioware, Windows, 2002)
If it weren’t for the Aurora toolset that let you create your own adventures, complete with its complex scripting engine, this game would never be in my list. I viewed the included adventure in much the same way that I viewed Rivers of Light back in the day – as an example of what you could do with the adventure construction set they’d handed you. And I spent long evenings for a year building my adventure, complete with custom music and custom rules for wandering monsters and setting camp. My adventure had four possible endings.

43-Autoduel (Origin Systems, Commodore 64, 1985)
For a game that was released twenty-five years ago, I do a lot of thinking about and writing about Autoduel. And if I could see only one old game remade as a modern video game, this would be it.

The main draw of Autoduel to me was the degree to which you could customize your vehicle. You could create a compact, sedan, station wagon, or van. You could select which tires and which engine to use, and assign armor to the sides and the undercarriage. You could load up with machine guns, recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, flamethrowers, and lasers, positioning them on any side of your vehicle. The game even had smoke screens, oil slicks, mines, and spike droppers.

The best thing is that the game was an RPG. You could take the vehicle out on the road on courier missions, hunts, and missions for the FBI. You’d make money through missions, arena battles, and by selling parts salvaged from other vehicles, and use the cash to upgrade the car you had. Meanwhile, your character’s driving, gunning, and salvage skills would slowly increase.

42-Borderlands (Gearbox, Windows, 2009)

Since Borderlands is such a recent release, I likely don’t have to talk much about it. I’ve written plenty about it on this site already. Great shooter, RPG elements, fantastic art style, multiplayer co-op added quite a lot. Too bad the storyline sucked and the PC matchmaking was broken.

41-Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (Konami, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1990)
I have a very warm feeling when I think about Castlevania 3. Had it been out on the Wii Virtual Console earlier, I’d have bought it immediately. Checking now, I see that it was released in January 2009 – guess I’ll have to go buy it.

Until Symphony of the Night came out years later, Castlevania 3 was the best platformer I’d ever seen. It had branching paths, incredibly creative levels, hidden secrets, and three different playable NPCs with vastly different abilities that you could recruit. Grant the pirate could climb walls, which let you get to a lot of otherwise inaccessible locations. Syfa the wizardress got spellbooks rather than the axe/knife type items that Trevor would pick up, so she could throw fire, freeze enemies with ice, or protect herself with these weird power globe thingies that would spin around her. Alucard was the best. His basic attack was a projectile, and he could change into a bat and fly around.

The levels included factories full of giant pendulums and spinning gears, rivers that you’d have to wade through unless you could freeze the water with Syfa’s ice power, and an amazing level where blocks would drop from the sky, eventually allowing you to climb on them to reach a high ledge. Maybe you had to play it in order to get it, but I loved it.

Make sure to come back next week for games 40 through 36, which include selections from the racing, rpg, fps, and light gun genres.

So here we are at the fifth part of my series on the elements I enjoy most in games. This time, I’ll be talking about games that allow you to create and customize something. The two games that come to mind as having done this very well are the Mechwarrior series and the old Commodore 64 game Autoduel. Both give you the ability to construct vehicles and modify them with weapons and armor, and then ride them into combat.

I haven’t played Autoduel in many years, but I loved putting together vehicles with specifications geared to my own play style. You could select a sedan, a station wagon, a van, or any of a number of vehicle bodies. You’d then select a power plant and a tire type. Puncture proof and solid tires did especially well against spikedroppers. Then you’d place armor on the car’s various locations. If you were planning on charging enemies head-on, you’d put lots of armor up front. If you felt daring, you could save weight and money by not putting armor on the car’s undercarriage, but then if you ever hit a landmine, you were screwed.

The game then let you pick from many weapons, and place them wherever you wanted. You could mount dual rocket launchers on the front, a recoilless rifle on the side, or maybe a flamethrower on the vehicle’s rear. Personally, I was a big fan of the side-mounted laser. I’d just put tons of armor on that side of the vehicle, then drive circles around the enemy and fry him.

If there were ever an update of this game, they could add in turrets, gas versus electric engines, varying traction for different tire types, and maybe even ablative armor, which was always a favorite of mine when we’d play tabletop Car Wars.

In the Mechwarrior series, you select from a number of light, medium, heavy, or assault chassis, and then pile on armor and weapons. Weight is a serious consideration, as each chassis has a maximum weight limit. As you begin to add weapons, the heat they generate also becomes a factor. You can add heat sinks, but they take up more space and weight. Thus, the four limiting factors you have to consider are weight, heat, space, and of course money.

Mass driver weapons such as machine guns and autoguns are a standard, but you need to be sure to add ammunition for them, which takes up space. You can add as much ammo as you like, but should the part of the mech where you’ve stored the ammo take significant damage, the ammunition might explode, causing additional damage.

There are also energy weapons such as lasers and particle projection cannons. They require no ammo, but tend to generate much more heat, and you may find yourself waiting longer in between shots in order to prevent a forced shutdown triggered by excessive heat buildup.

Missiles can also be a good option. They tend to lock on, and thus require less work to aim manually. They require ammo just like mass drivers do, and have the same potential issues with ammo explosions. But they can take up a lot of space and weight, and don’t usually fire as quickly as the other alternatives.

Thus, it’s a trade off. The construction of a mech can be as much fun as playing through the actual combat. When you perfect a build that you really enjoy, deciding to add in jump jets, enhanced radar, anti-missile devices, or any of the other options, playing with that mech can be all the more rewarding.

I’ve always loved these types of games that give you a lot of depth in creating your engine of destruction, and then use them to kill enemies. I haven’t seen a good one in years. Hopefully this lawsuit doesn’t stop the new Mechwarrior game from coming out. I’d love to play it.