My Top 10 Video Games

This list was hard, of course. There have been countless games played on many different systems throughout my life. I'm probably one of the youngest people that can say "Do you remember "Pong""? Not only do I remember Pong, but I remember enjoying it. For me, Pong begot Atari...which begot Nintendo....which begot Sega....which begot Playstation...which begot Playstation 2. With the exception of computer games, that's where I've stopped. I always told myself that I could play video games up until age 30. To me, being 30 years old was TOO old to play games. Certainly, my video games playing has diminished, but I still enjoy them. I think the people who USED to enjoy video games will ALWAYS enjoy video games. I know people in their 40s that play video games of some sort. I play them enough to enjoy them, without so much that I can't function as a grown adult. If people of ALL AGES can sit and watch their favorite TV shows for entertainment, why can't they sit and play video games for entertainment? Why can an adult play solitaire on the computer and be normal, but playing football on the Playstation be childish? Hmmm?

That being said, I rarely dust off the old PS2. I'll get into a groove where I'll play it for 5-6 nights a week, and then I don't hook it up for months. That's just how it goes. I'll regularly take a few minutes out of my day when I'm on the upstairs computer to play a few minutes of Crysis. It's quick, it's easy, and I'm back downstairs before anyone can say "Maximum Armor". That's obviously a Crysis reference that only Stephen will be able to get.

I'm going to list my Top 10 video games. I will include a few honorable mentions. One of them is Indiana Jones for the Atari. I saw a couple of clips on Youtube about this game a month or so ago. One was how to beat the game in 10 minutes, and another was a critique calling it one of the worst video games ever made. At the time, I thought it was good. After seeing how to beat it off of the youtube, I realize that I could have never beaten it at that age because there were things you had to do that there was NO way to figure out. For a long time after I got my Nintendo, I remember thinking, "I need to go back and beat that game". Other Atari games I remember liking included Asteroids, Berserk, Missile Command, Atari Football, Star Wars, and ET. I also spent a lot of time playing Atari Baseball with Isaac Smith at this house. I owned the game, but when I visited, I brought it and we played it. We loved it.

Most of the great video games were games I enjoyed playing with other people. I remember playing Eternal Champions with all the fellas in High School and College. I remember playing Blades of Steel and Double Dribble with my dad. I remember pumping quarters into the Double Dragon Arcade game at the bowling alley, playing Michael and Phillip Imbriano. Speaking of Philly, I played a lot of NHL Hockey against him at the Imbriano house. We literally played several 7 games series with his Chicago Blackhawks against my Buffalo Sabres. I played Half Life on the computer with Todd and Kris. Half Life was a groundbreaking game that revolutionized 1st person shooting games....or "murder simulators", as they were once dubbed by the video game haters out there. Good times, as evidence by my memory of them all. Oh yeah...I almost forgot "Romance of the 3 Kingdoms", which was a great war strategy game based in 2nd century China. Todd, Michael, and I played this on my Nintendo for hours.

Anyway, on to the list...



Best Video Games

#10 Twisted Metal 2.....This was a great game that Marc and I played religiously. It was kind of a futuristic car combat game. The game was cool, the action was very good. It was a very engaging game. It really got your blood pumping. The music was absolutely awesome. The first Twisted Metal and 2 or 3 sequels have blown. Twisted Metal 2 was so popular that it enabled the company to keep making newer versions despite the fact that they sucked. That is a tribute to it's greatness.

#9 Mortal Kombat 3.....It was hard to pick one of these Mortal Kombat games to put on this list because they were all good for their time. I'm putting the 3rd one on there. I probably played this one as much as any. We all played it, but I'm sure I played Marc more than anyone else. Kano made his return in this game, and although Baraka wasn't in it, they added the new combo feature which really improved the gameplay. To be honest, I think Eternal Champions was as much fun as any of the other fighting games out there, but it wasn't as popular and didn't garner the attention. They never made another one. They've made 1,000 Mortal Kombat games, though.

#8 Crysis....I got this game (and a wonderful computer to play it on) for Christmas. It was part of what will be my last big Christmas from my parents. An awesome machine to play an awesome game on, and I got to PLAY at Christmas...again...after all these years. And, I played throughout the Winter, Spring, and Summer too. This game might be the most amazing video game I've ever seen, much less played. It's heart pumping action. At some point, I'll play Stephen at this game. It's like Half Life in a way, but an updated version of it. It's like being in a movie. You're out there...with automatic weapons..and you have things you need to achieve. You can achieve them however you want. You can walk around and flank your enemy..you can rush them...snipe them or get close and choke them. You can even drive a vehicle into the midst of them. Total freedom. It's a thrill.

#7 Madden 95....How do you separate the Madden and NCAA games? You can't really. All the EA Sports football games were similar each year they came out. I'm putting 95 on the list because it was MUCH better than 94. All of the games have been better than the previous one, but this one was much better than it's prequel. And, it was the version that was new when I was a freshman in college living in the dorm. Marc, Todd, Michael, Dwight, and I played this game like there was no tomorrow. Sadly, there WAS a tomorrow...and that tomorrow meant classes for which we were too exhausted to pay attention. That's what happens when you play video games until 3:00am. Having the EA Sports Football game this far down on my list is probably crazy, since I've played these football games more than any other kind of game...EASILY, in fact. But, since I've played this brand of football video game for about 14 years, it's hard to separate them all. Obviously, the newest ones are better than the older ones...but I'm going with this one because of the camaraderie we all shared via this game.

#6 Mario Kart.....This was another college freshman game for the Nintendo 64, which I didn't own. I had to play this in Marc and Todd's room. This game was just plain fun. It was so exciting and nerve racking that I was frequently laughing while playing because of the tension. Any minute, you knew you could get your clock cleaned by a turtle shell. It was silly, but it was just fun. I played it over and over and over. It wasn't cool or awesome, but it was just a lot of fun.

#5 Contra.....This game means 2 things to me...Stephen and Thanksgiving. It was an awesome (for it's time) action game that we played for hours. I always felt like it was kinda based off of Predator, slightly. Anybody who played Nintendo games back then know the following...up down up down left right left right B A B A select start. That code turned up in a few games. It gave you 30 lives instead of just 3 lives...and I needed them because your "partner" can steal your lives when he runs out. I think Stephen usually took about 50 of our combined 60 lives.

#4 Bases Loaded....This game makes me think of Summer. It was a wonderful Nintendo baseball game that my dad and I played a lot. The teams and player names were fictitious, and the players used metal bats for some reason that I haven't figured out yet...but the game was one of the best baseball games ever. A lot of my Summer days were spent going from the pool to my room, over and over. It was swimming and then video games and then swimming and then video games. This game was great. It looked good, and the controls were fairly easy to master. Like all good games, the music was pretty good. "PING"...that's the sound of Norkus blasting a "Thousand Hitter" Hinter pitch over the left field wall.

#3 Test Drive 4....A lot of the games I've mentioned involved either Stephen or my dad. This game involved both. It was a great racing game that we played a lot. It was very involving and full of action. We hooked Playstations up and could play the game on 2 different TV's. My dad liked it so much that, after Stephen went back home after that visit, he bought his own playstation and video game. I remember my mom telling me that he was making her sit and watch him play. I find that story hilarious to this day. My mom has that experience in common with most of the young women half her age who are made to watch their boyfriends play video games. The '69 Corvette against the Hemi-Cuda. What's not to like?

#2 Tecmo Bowl.....This game was awesome. It was Madden before Madden. Despite the retarded name, the football was great. The teams looked like the real NFL teams (color patterns), and they had an agreement with the player's association so they could use the real names..but they couldn't use the real TEAM names. They had made up helmets designs, but the actual colors and real player's names. Go figure. A little odd, but it didn't matter. They made Bo Jackson the most explosive player ever...and for some reason, made Cleveland Browns Runningback Kevin Mack with a stiff arm that could send anyone flying all the way out of bounds. Then, there was Lawrence Taylor. It was impossible to kick a field goal against the Giants because he could run through the line and assault the holder before the kicker could make it to the ball. The video game music is very soothing to me. I heard it a lot. It played one tune when one side had the ball, and another when the opponent had it. Also, you heard, "hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut" until you finally snapped it. The violence on the field was pretty funny. The linemen looked like they were fist fighting each other, until all of a sudden one of them would go flying backwards. This game was great.


#1 Final Fantasy 7....Unlike most of the other games which were great because you were playing other people, this one was good all by itself. However, it was so good that you wanted other people to experience it. Some did, and loved it (Jon), some bought it, played it for a few minutes, and never touched it again (Stephen). It's a role playing game that involves lots of characters, background stories, and a great Sci-Fi plot that blends it all together. It would have made a great novel, or a long mini-series..but since it was a video game, relatively few people will ever experience it. There were games within the games, like Chocobo ranching. You could play for hours raising Chocobos to race without ever advancing the plot of the storyline. Like a lot of good video games out there (Double Dragon, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter), this franchise spawned a movie AND this particular GAME spawned a movie in Japan, which I own. The music ingrained itself into your subconscious.
I've played the Final Fantasy games for years. I remember beating Final Fantasy 3 on the Nintendo. I played FF 7 on the Playstation. It was just great, and will never be duplicated again. When it was over, there was no replaying it...for me, anyway. It would have been like trying to rent tuxes and getting your wedding party together to reenact your wedding. You can't do that. It's a one time thing.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I was like everyone else. I was a little taken aback by how old Indiana Jones looked. I knew Harrison Ford was older, but I didn't know that Indiana Jones had gotten older, too. Turns out, he DID get older.

We found how that he actually got to REALLY fight the Nazis in WW2...officially, that is. Imagine how much harder it would have been if the Nazi's had the ark, huh?

At first, I felt it was just a send off, hoping to suck up a few more dollars before Harrison Ford became an invalid. It just didn't seem right. There was action, sure, and I liked hearing about what he had been doing, but everything just seemed too old. I wanted my heroes to stay the same, I guess. I was liking the movie, don't get me wrong....it was just a little odd.

However, before long, I was really enjoying it. It was like Harrison Ford started being Indiana Jones again...probably about the time they got to Peru. Earlier, he was complaining that Mutt was driving too fast on his bike. That didn't seem like Indy..in fact, it was just like Sean Connery in the Last Crusade while Indy was driving the bike. I didn't see the sense in making Indy be THAT old...but they might have had to try to make the young man seem like a risk taker that even surprised Indiana. I'm assuming they want to groom the next generation, so that couldn't make him a weakling through the whole thing. So, who knows? Anyway, they got to Peru and it picked up right where The Last Crusade ended. All of a sudden, I felt like the movie caught up to the standard created by the other movies.

By the time the movie ended, I thought it fit in right along with the other Indiana Jones movies. They did a good job of making things fit together, connecting the dots, and all that.

The movie had some old stand-bys that most of the movies have had...there is a big man that Indy is having a hard time beating who gets killed in a grisly way (propeller blade, crushed by a rolling rock crusher, eaten by huge ants, etc). The chief bad person gets killed in a horrible fashion (face melting off, falling into waiting crocodiles, getting older really fast before your eyes, and having aliens blow up your brain). Chase scenes, crypt robbing, booby traps, graphic death, powerful music, some humor...it was JUST like the other ones. And, that's a good thing.

I thought Mutt did a good job. I can't see building another movie around him as Junior Indiana, but I guess he wasn't supposed to be an expert at everything yet.

There were a lot of good one liners. I particularly liked when Indiana was defending Mutt to Miriam, until he found how that he was Mutt's dad. I liked that whole scene where they were in quick sand....no wait, it wasn't quick sand. It was dry sand or something.


All in all, I really enjoyed it. As time has gone on, I'm liking it more and more and I feel that it was a really great movie.

The NEW ZULU !!!!!!!!

I need accents.....but, actors can pretend to have accents. Still, I want a cast with an UK feel to it. I may need to borrow from Australia or New Zealand.
This movie is tough. It has action, acting, singing, etc. Since this is my #1 movie, I'm going to do most of the characters.

Shard and Bromhead have to be stars, at least as big or bigger than most of the others in my version. Shard as to be tough but thoughtful, Bromhead an elitist but tough and well trained when the action starts. He can't overpower Shard, but he can over ACT Shard. They both have action scenes, and have to be able to play off of each other. Shard needs to be much more intense.

Color Sgt. Bourne needs to be big and tough. I would like the person I select to TRY to have some of the bluster, although I've never seen it out of the person I'm picking. My selection here as been a very tough person in all the movies I've seen him in, and he's tough in real life. Intimidating to both his own soldiers as well as the enemy. Rock solid. I think my actor can do that, although like I said, most of the time I've seen him he's been bullet proof and slamming people's heads into car doors. I want bluster, and had considered trying to find the name of the big bearded fella that used to appear in Kenneth Branaugh's films, but I thought he might be too old at this point.

Corporal Allen is also a tough person. He bullies the soldiers, but bravely fights on after being wounded. He appears throughout the film, from start to finish.

Fred Schiss. What do you do with a Fred Schiss? This was the hardest one out of all. He wasn't from the UK..and HE'S NOT DUTCH, HE'S SWISS. I can plug in a violent American in this role. I considered Steve Buscemi, but his voice is too high. I need a deep pounding voice. I couldn't find one. However, the person I picked is a good actor, and he could "act" his way through it, I belive. He has action sequences in here, to be sure. I know he could do that, because I know he's done action scenes before. We'll have to whip a goatee on him, though. I might back out of this later and pick someone else if the right person comes to mind.

James Dalton was mild mannered. Not much shaking here.

Dr. Reynalds was pretty good. He was very brave, but he was a smart aleck Doctor. I've known a few of those.

Henry Hook. He has the most action sequences out of anybody. Most of the movie is shooting and stabbing...he was shooting, stabbing, wrestling, pushing beds on people, etc. He also had a dry sense of humor.

Rev. Witt has to play a serious preacher and a drunk. He's kind of a lowlife in the end because he sabotages them. I know a great person.

Ardendorf. I've got the perfect person.

Owen has to be funny AND he has to be able to sing. The person I selected can do both, although he is an American. He'll just have to swing it.

Goo-rah. I still don't know the name of this character, but Amy and I have always referred to him as Goo-Rah. He needs to "act", because he has some hearfelt scenes. He really doesn't fit in, and wished he was still a farmer. It doesn't demand too much, but the fella I selected can do it.

612 John Williams was funny at the beginning, and then fought bravely. He went back into the burning building to get Hook out. Brave, and fast, and probably considered "cute". Other than that, he was good friends with Hitch.

Hitch is mostly just a skinny solider who screwed up a lot. He sings a little. He doesn't really fit in. He's funny. He won the Victoria Cross because he fought while hurt, though. He's kind of a clutz, so this actor will need to walk around being accident prone.

716 Robert Jones and 593 William Jones: These two are together throughout the movie. They are kinda malcontents, but they do their job. They both pick on Schiss early. 593 almost stabs the old English man and gets frustrated when he can't get out of the way fast enough. 593 also talks more, and will need to act more than 716.

As a bonus, I picked some Zulus.

Here is my cast:

Zulu King: Cedric the Entertainer
Zulu general : Samuel Jackson
Zulu Dancers : The Black Eyed Peas (or whoever shows up at filming)

593 William Jones - Christopher Eccleston
716 Robert Jones - Colm Meany
612 John Williams - Jude Law
Hitch: David Tennant
Goo-rah: Gary Oldman
Owen: Kelsey Grammar
Ardendorf : Barry Corbin
Rev. Witt: Brian Cox
Hook: Jason Statham
Dr. Reynalds: Hugh Laurie
James Dalton: Ian Holm
Fred Schiss: Tom Sizemore
Corporal Allen: Sean Bean
Color Sergeant Bourne: Vinny Jones
Bromhead: Ewan McGregor
Shard : Viggio Mortensen




Special thanks to Amy for reminding me about the new Doctor Who cast. I was able to use 2 of them. Also, I might have used Branaugh or Daniel Craig, but I had just used them for The Wild Geese.

The NEW Wild Geese

I need British talking people....quick!!!

Just kidding. I've been thinking about these last two for 2 days straight. I think I've got it.
Colonel Faulkner needs to be an actor who can yell, yet be at least a little refined. He has to be a tough man and a drunk. The actor I've chosen isn't a small man, and I can see him doing the yelling scenes because of watching him yell in bridget Jones. He's not done anything like this before, to my knowledge, but he just has to shoot automatic rifles and throw grenades. I can see him doing the intense scene when he's yelling at Richard Harris in the airport tower in Africa. He's good, and I believe he can stretch himself to do the macho stuff.

Rafer was played by Richard Harris, another acclaimed Shakespearian actor. I need one too, that can display humor and be the most loved of the characters.

For Roger Moore's roles, I need a James Bond like handsome actor.

I need a South African character who can be very deep. I've selected someone who has played Germans before. That's close.

And, I need a refined evil man to play Matherson. Elite, arrogant, rich, and evil. Full of himself.

Faulkner - Colin Firth
Rafer - Kenneth Branaugh
Sean Finn - Daniel Craig
Petr - Ed Harris
Sir Edward Matherson - John Cleese


Next, my masterpiece.....ZULU.

I'll have to post it tomorrow morning.

The NEW No time for Sargents

I have to find the perfect actor for Will Stockdale. I can't trust Larry the Cable guy to do it right, although he might could because comedians usually make great actors. He needs to be big, southern, and REAL southern too, not just make believe Hollywood southern.

I have a huge interest in the movie being a carbon copy of the original. However, I don't know if anyone can do it right. I'm going to have to fall back on someone I've already used. I'll have to trust him to do it right.

Will Stockdale = Stephen Root
Whitledge = David Hyde Pierce
Sargent King = Ryan Stiles

The NEW Quiet Man

I need a tough man to be charmed by Ireland. I also need a redhead.
It would take years to find all the bit actors to make this movie great. The movie was carried by the small roles.

One thing the first movie lacked was a serious love interest for women. I guess John Wayne did it for women back in the 1950's, but these days, and actor like that won't cut it. My wife thinks The Quiet Man is merely ok, because she can't see a John Wayne smoking cigs as a love interest.

John Wayne = Colin Farrell (he's Irish to boot)
Redhead = Debra Messing

The NEW Wrath of Khan

Where do you begin? You pretty much have to recreate the entire cast. I'll skip going that far. I'll just do the stars.

You need a dynamic over-actor for both Kirk and Khan. They've got to scream...they've got to drip venom....they've got to ooze passion. They both need to..well, the both need to be able to carry off roles that are social icons that have transcended Sci-Fi. I need might, force, and determination...along with humor..in Kirk. The man I pick to perform Khan has to act the heck out of the role.

Kirk = Bruce Campbell
Khan = Daniel-Day Lewis
Uhura = Beyonce
Spock = Alan Rickman
Bones = Sir Ian McKellen