Many people have written off their Wii as a dead console. Probably most of the people who haven’t are the ones playing Skyward Sword or the ones still stuck on Wii Sports. At our house, the Wii game that sees the most play is Super Mario Galaxy 2. From the beginning, I’ve played the whole game through with my four-year-old daughter. She controls the player 2 star, and she’s actually a huge help. She can hold monsters still to let me past certain places, shoot star bits out at enemies, and collect 1-Ups and coins that I can’t reach. Having that extra heart during a boss battle makes a big difference. And the bonding is great. Every time we hear the music that goes along with “You got a star!”, we hug or high five. Mario Galaxy 2 is great. A-.

Before I started my father-daughter replay of Twilight Princess, I used the Wii to play through Wind Waker for the first time. Despite the fact that it’s an older game, I really enjoyed it. And while I found the wide-open ocean somewhat monotonous, the stealth bits and context-sensitive combat music were very well done. All-in-all, I may prefer Twilight Princess, but Wind Waker was a stellar game, and it gets an A-.

I really enjoyed the original Zuma. I played a ton of the free online version before buying the Playstation 3 version. When I heard of Zuma’s Revenge, I jumped all over it. I’ve played it a ton, as has my wife. And while she’s much better at the game than am I, we both finished and enjoyed the game. They added a number of really fun mechanics. There are levels in which you slide rather than spin, and levels in which you have the ability to switch between two locations. There are also bosses every ten levels or so. It’s one of my favorite casual titles, and as such gets the same A- that Mario Galaxy 2 and Wind Waker got.

That said, I’m a gamer, and I’ve got the gaming tree to prove it. But whereas I started video gaming around age eight, my daughter has been exposed to video games for the bulk of her life. From her iXL to her Diego game on the Wii to the iPad games she plays, she’s never really known life without video games, as they’re easily as prevalent a form of entertainment as television in our household. (not at issue for this article, but all are secondary to good old books)

When I get home from work in the evenings, I generally have about an hour to spend with my four-year-old daughter before it’s time for dinner and then bedtime. Sometimes, we’ll play her favorite board game and sometimes we play with her Thomas the Train set, but I think her favorite thing to do with daddy is to play video games.

One that we’ve had an absolute ton of fun with is Super Mario Galaxy 2. We played a little bit of the first game in the series together, but I’d already finished the game when she was very young, and didn’t have it in me to start over. Mario Galaxy 2, however, I’ve never played without her. We’re nearly finished with the game, and she’s gotten very good at using the player 2 star to hold enemies still, collect 1-ups and coins, and throw star bits at enemies. She’s only 4, but having her play with me legitimately makes the game a lot easier.

For parents with older kids, reversing the roles might be fun. If your kid can handle those crazy jumps and accurately pilot Mario through a level, let him! Take over the player 2 star yourself and do what you can to help him stay alive.

Mario Galaxy 2 is a fabulous game for parents and kids to play together, but although we’ve loved it, it’s not my daughter’s favorite. Her favorite is Zelda: Twilight Princess. I’m not sure how this came to be, but she’d rather watch my second playthrough of the game than do nearly anything else. When there are areas devoid of enemies, she likes to run around, often as wolf-Link, digging up coins. Elsewise, she loves to watch me navigate dungeons and talk to NPCs

20- Ultima V (Origin, Commodore 64, 1988)
I’m a great lover of computer role-playing games, and Ultima V was the first truly great one I ever played. Before Dragon Age, before Baldur’s Gate, even before SSI’s Dungeons and Dragons Gold Box games, there was Ultima. Ultima V came out the same year as Pool of Radiance, just as Ultima IV had come out alongside Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale.

Initially, I found it amazing that you could attack enemies who were not directly above or to the side of you. You could actually fire an arrow at an orc who was five squares above and two squares over from you! The initiative system was complex: occasionally, one of your quicker characters would attack twice without a slower character getting a turn in-between. It was as if Mr. Fast attacked every 12 initiative segments but Mr. Slow only attacked every 15 segments. I loved that system.

But what really grabbed me about Ultima V was the story. Sure – it had me running back and forth, backtracking all over the huge world map many times, and took me literally years to complete, but when I was fourteen, I had that kind of time. At the outset, I learned that the evil Lord Blackthorne had taken over and was enforcing twisted versions of the eight virtues. Throughout the game, I traveled the world, picked up companions, battled enemies, and learned more of the story. I infiltrated the enemy’s ring of spies, joined the resistance, and learned mantras which let me meditate at the hidden shrines. (once I’d found them) I followed the path laid out in the journal portion of the game’s manual, which had me take a painstakingly specific route in my ship and transfer to a skiff, intentionally going down a whirlpool to enter the underworld. I then followed a river to the location where the Shadowlords had captured Lord British. There, I found Lord British’s amulet.

I undertook similar quests to get his sceptre and crown, both of which were essential. I had to talk to people to learn the magic passwords to each of the world’s eight dungeons, and then traverse each dungeon to the underworld for various reasons. Amongst those reasons was to collect the three shards of the shattered gem of Mondain, which allowed me to destroy the shadowlords. Of course, I had to follow a particular ritual and had to learn each shadowlord’s true name.

All of this took more hours than I can tell you. The story was complex, and I’ve only detailed the parts I remember now, more than two decades later. I spent hours each day for years. Ultima forces you to purchase ingredients for each spell that you cast, and there exist two ingredients that cannot be purchased, only gathered in the wild. You can ride horses, ships, skiffs, hot air balloons, and even a magic carpet – or else travel by moongate if you learn the phases of the moon properly to guide your travel.

More than twenty years later, Ultima V is a more complex game than any other I’ve played since. And I treasure the experience that I had in playing it.

19- Trine (Frozenbyte, Playstation 3, 2009)
If daddy Castlevania and mommy Gauntlet got together and had a child, it would be Trine. Trine is the modern-day evolution of these old two-dimensional sidescrolling platformers and action RPGs. The graphics and the soundtrack are both beautiful, and up to three people can play simultaneously. You get three characters to choose from, and each character is drastically different and has different ways to solve the same problems. I had an absolute blast playing Trine, as you can probably tell by the fact that it’s the only platinum trophy I’ve got on the Playstation 3. I busted my ass finishing the Tower of Sarek on Very Hard with zero deaths.

The game has three characters: Knight, Wizard, and Thief. The Knight has armor, sword and shield. His shield allows him to block attacks from any angle, which is very useful, and he’s got the best direct attack in the game. He can also jump and land on enemies, killing them mario-style. But he can’t swim. At all. In water, he sinks and drowns. The Thief is the best character in the game: she can jump high, grapple from any wooden surface, and has the game’s only ranged attack. And while swinging, if she hits an enemy, she’ll kick for massive damage. The thief is all about mobility. The wizard is the most difficult to use, but can be a lot of fun. When you play the wizard, you have a cursor which can be used to levitate objects or to create boxes and planks. You can drop things on enemies and crush them. This is the wizard’s only attack, which means that when enemies get close to you, you’re pretty much screwed.

The game has plenty of items to collect. Each level has two chests containing magic items. These can be anything from leg armor which reduces damage from hits (only the hits which connect with the character’s legs) to a magic necklace that lets the wizard create an extra box or plank. Each level also has a number of green experience vials. Collecting all of these is probably the most time-intensive achievement in the game, but the experience will allow your characters to go up levels. As they go up levels, the knight, thief, and wizard gain new abilities. which you can select. The knight gains a flaming sword, a magic thunder hammar, and the ability to charge. The thief can shoot multiple arrows or even a flaming arrow. And the wizard can create progressively more items, and eventually a floating platform.

Trine is probably tied with Pixeljunk Monsters for my favorite PSN game. If you’ve got a PS3 and haven’t picked up Trine, I heartily recommend it. It’s also available for PC on Steam.

18- Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo EAD, Nintendo Wii, 2007)
Let’s face it – first party Nintendo games are just good. Whether they’re Zelda, Mario, or Metroid, the games are just good. Mario’s latest evolution is Galaxy, and the games are wildly creative. It’s got levels where you swim underwater or fly, levels where you roll around atop a ball using only the Wii remote’s tilt, and levels where you jump around atop floating planetoids which pull you in with their gravity. In an age of 3d games, Mario Galaxy may be the only true 3d game – it’s often impossible to judge which way is up!

Mario Galaxy has you surfing atop a manta ray, transforming into a giant spring or a bumblebee, and playing in old-school 2d levels. There are boss creatures, hidden levels, and an extra level of replayability created by the comets, which turn levels you’ve already played into silver coin collecting games, sudden-death levels, or a race to collect everything inside a time limit. Mario Galaxy is certainly one of the best games on the Nintendo Wii.

17- Dead Space (Visceral Games, Playstation 3, 2008)
In a time when the survival horror genre has gone out of vogue in favor of games like Doom 3 and Resident Evil 5, Dead Space took a much-needed step in the right direction – backwards towards the survival horror classics of yesteryear. Don’t get me wrong – Dead Space is first and foremost a shooter – but it’s got the survival horror chops that Resident Evil has lost. I played Dead Space only at night, and generally while wearing a good pair of earphones. Good times.

Dead Space is one of the most atmospheric games I’ve ever played. There is no heads-up display to detract from the immersion, and the game’s sound design is amazing. When you enter a vacuum, the only cue you need is the sudden transition to the echoey, disconnected, inside-helmet soundscape that insulates you from the sounds of enemies rushing towards you. In space, no one can hear you scream.

If you know anything about Dead Space, you’ll likely know that in order to kill Necromorphs, you’ve got to cut off their arms and legs. I’ll admit that this mechanic, while novel, is hardly innovative. But it’s certainly no reason to roll your eyes and decide not to play the game. It has so much more going for it. The game’s weapons are the most diverse and fun to use I’ve seen since the last Doom game. The weapon and armor upgrade system involves welding new modules into specific nodes in your armor or weapon for different effects. And the story…

The setting of Dead Space is so rich that I can’t begin to absorb it all. But just knowing that the entire universe out there exists gives me the warm fuzzies. The immersive scenes at the game’s outset when approaching the Ishimura mining vessel really help to put you in character. They’ve gone with the Gordon Freeman silent protagonist approach with the character you play: Isaac Clarke (an amalgam of Isaac Aasimov and Arthur C Clarke) As the story progresses and you restore functionality to portions of the ship that allow you greater access to information about what has gone wrong, you’re gradulally exposed to more story through Bioshock-style audio and video recordings which are played on both wall-mounted displays and on your portable holo-projector which displays a screen right in front of you. You can even walk around while watching the video. Normally the recordings are placed where you’re unlikely to be attacked while viewing one.

I could write a whole lot more about Dead Space, but as this list nears the higher-ranked games, I should struggle for brevity and call it quits for this week.

I should make it clear here that I never got into Super Mario World or Mario 64, largely since I never owned those Nintendo Consoles. I know that those games were huge and everybody and their cat has incredibly fond memories of them, but alas – I don’t. I likewise never played any of the Tomb Raider games. Ever. Obviously, I am defective. Other platformer franchises lacking from my repetoire: Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Laurel & Hardy.

In looking back at my favorite platformers, I’ve got to notice that all but one are 2D platformers. It just seems like the 3D platformers as a rule just don’t work as well. First-person platforming like Mirror’s Edge or the horrible platforming portions in the original Half-Life just don’t work. While third-person platforming in 3D games is generally better, it can fail pretty hard at times. The 3D platforming in games like Super Mario Galaxy and Psychonauts was mostly okay, but the platforming in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed annoyed me so much that I had to stop playing both those games before I’d gotten a quarter into either.

So now, I’d like to share my own favorite platformers, going back as far as the early eighties.

• Jumpman (Commodore 64, 1983)
  
  Jumpman’s great strength was its variety. While in the game’s early levels the premise was as simple as running around, jumping over monsters, and colecting red dots, the later levels got far more complex and varied. In some levels, you had a gun, and the button would fire the gun instead of jumping. One level let you throw lances to kill a dragon. Many levels are very puzzle-like, containing triggers that open or close doors, add or remove sections of floor, or move floating platforms. In one level, you create an explosion each time you jump. And I remember one level that generated clones every five seconds who would follow your exact path in the same way as the shadow selves in Braid – if a clone touched you, you died, so you had to keep moving.All of the above is from memory, but reading through the wikipedia page now, I see that there were 30 levels in the game. I always played on “randomizer” so as to experience the later levels I’d never have reached if I were playing straight through.Jumpman is supposed to (eventually) be released for the Wii Virtual Console, but if you’re impatient, a fan remake is available here.

• The Great Giana Sisters (Commodore 64, 1987)
  The version of this game that my brothers and I always used to play was a hacked version. The sprites had been changed to make them look like Super Mario Brothers. The levels were far far different from the actual Super Mario Brothers game, but they were fun, and they were at some points very difficult. But I was 15 years old. I got very good at the game, and played a lot of it. My brothers and I still have fond memories of inventing stupid names for each of the game’s monsters.

• Kenseiden (Sega Master System, 1988)
  I never owned a Sega Master system, but I borrowed one from a friend for a few months when he’d moved along to some better console – perhaps a Genesis. My favorite game on the SMS was Kenseiden. You played a Samurai, fighting various monsters, spirits, and demons. Each time you beat one of the game’s bosses, you’d get a scroll which detailed a samurai sword technique. You could gain overhead slashes, running cuts, and higher jumps.The game’s sixteen levels also had branching paths – you could skip certain portions of the game and take the path you wanted. I don’t remember seeing this in any other contemporary platformers until Castlevania 3, a few years later.

• Double Dragon 2 (Nintendo, 1988)
  The Double Dragon series is half platformer, half side-scrolling beat-em-up. I’d played the original Double Dragon, and I later played Double Dragon 3, but what I really liked about Double Dragon 2 was the variety of moves available. I suppose I liked the game for many of the same reasons I fell in love with Street Fighter 2. The spinning hurricaine kick was easy. The super uppercut was harder, but still doable 90% of the time. The tough one was the jumping hyper knee.In Double Dragon 2, you could punch your enemy and get him into a headlock. From there, you could give him overhead elbows, knee him in the stomach, or throw him over your shoulder. You could also kick him straight out of the headlock. This allowed you to throw enemies over cliffs, instantly killing even the tougher ones. I used to go through entire levels trying to throw or kick every single enemy over a cliff. It was fun.

• Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse (Nintendo, 1990)
  Maybe it was just because Castlevania 3 was the first game in the series that I really got into, but I absolutely loved this game. Maybe it was because you could pick up extra traveling companions along the way – there were 3 extra characters, and depending on the path through the game you chose, (branching paths!) you could pick up Syfa, Alucard, or Grant. Grant was a pirate character who could climb on walls, Alucard was a vampire and could throw fireballs and change into a bat, and Syfa was a wizard who could cast various spells instead of throwing axes and knives. Awesome.

• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Playstation, 1997)
  I played Symphony of the Night on my Playstation and was immediately blown away. Amazing game. The game’s music was better than anything I’d ever heard. And the addition of RPG elements such as leveling and equipment changed Castlevania in a fundemental way that has carried through in all of its successors. Although I hear a lot of hype today about how Borderlands is changing things up by combining RPGs and Shooters, Symphony of the Night did that more than ten years ago when they combined RPGs and Platformers. They also added in Street Fighter like movements in for casting spells and using certain items’ special abilities. The number of secret spells and abilities in the game is huge. And hidden areas are absolutely everywhere. I don’t think there’s any platformer that I’ve put as much time into as I have Symphony of the Night.

• Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo Wii, 2007)
  Mario Galaxy is the only 3D platformer on this list. While games like Trine and LittleBigPlanet run on a 3D engine, they’re still fundamentally 2D in their gameplay. Super Mario Galaxy is a truly 3D platformer, harking back to Mario 64. The levels are incredibly varied, allowing for flying levels, underwater levels, 2D levels, ray surfing levels, and even a Monkeyball level. The power-ups are equally as varied, and you can complete the game without being forced to complete the 30 most difficult levels. Personally, I only got 96 stars.

• Trine (Playstation Network, 2009)
  
  Yes, I rave about Trine quite often. I love the game. It definitely belongs here amongst the ranks of the best platform games I’ve ever played. You’ve got three characters, each of whom go up in levels and gather loot synchronously, and you can play with two or three players should you be so inclined. The game’s puzzles tend to have more than one solution, so if your wizard dies, it’s likely that you can get across that chasm without creating a magical bridge. Plus, the game has some very doable trophies, and it’s fun for me to think that there’s a game out there other than Plants versus Zombies in which I’m actually capable of getting 100% completion. A platinum trophy? Geez – I’ve never yet even gotten a gold one. Sign me up.

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

I was never a huge fan of the earlier Mario games. I played Super Mario Brothers on the NES and the black and white gameboy, but never got past world 3 or so. I played a few of the later sequels, but probably spent even less time on them. Super Mario Galaxy is the first Mario game that I’ve really gotten into, and the first one I’ve completed. I only got 96 stars, so I didn’t really fully complete the game, but I did see the “ending”. I think the last 20 or 30 stars are really only for hardcore completionists anyway.

Mario Galaxy does some very cool things. Even aside from the wacky powerups, the underwater and flying levels, the ray-surfing levels, and the crazy monkeyball level, there are absolutely tons of really creative and fun aspects to the game. Every so often, I’ll go back and try to get an extra coin or two. It’s pretty hard, especially when you’ve put the game aside for as long as I have.