My Top 5 Games that Aren't RPGs! SuperDerek Top-Scores!
437This is a list of my Top 5 games that aren't RPGs! RPGs are my favorite genre, but I didn't really find them until late into my adolescence. Because of this I developed a pretty healthy love for some other games before RPGs took 100% of my attention away from them. So without further ado welcome back to the return of Top Scores. I am Super Derek and this is my Top 5 games that are NOT RPGs!
I remember back in high-school heading to the local arcade and losing all of my tokens to the Tekken 4 machine day after day. This was the first and last arcade to really hold my attention since the Ninja Turtles Arcade game back at a Showbiz. Slowly but surely I got pretty good! Between Law, Jin and Kazuya I could pull off some pretty fun combos, throws and parrys. But it's been about a decade since then and I have no idea how to play the game anymore! But I still have fond memories of waiting in line to have my tokens taken from me by the game.
Also during my high shcool years, I borrowed Onimusha from a friend of mine because he insisted that I try it out. It's a samurai game where you fight zombie samurai! And it's by Capcom, the guys behind Resident Evil! And Onimusha actually started off as a Resident Evil spinoff, thus the tank controls, but you also get powerful weapons with elemental affinities! This game was so awesome, that as soon as I finished Onimusha 1, I went out and rented Onimusha 2 and then 3 and finished them all back to back to back! Samanosuke is the man! And I keep hoping that some day, Capcom will come to their senses and make another Breath of Fire game. But I just might settle for a new Onimusha. Maybe.
I never had a Turtles in Time machine at my local arcade, but luckily we got an excellent port of the game on Super Nintendo that stole my heart. A friend of mine had Turtles in Time on the Super Nintendo and we played the hell out of that game! Beatemups were always a favorite of mine, between Rival Turf, Brawl Brothers, the Ninja Turtles and Battle Toads games, and Double Dragon, but Turtles in Time was the pinnacle of the genre for the longest time! Until maybe Scott Pilgrim VS The World came out and introduced a lot of RPG mechanics, a la River City Ransom, with visuals by none other than the great Paul Robertson, but something about the nostalgia of spending an entire decade playing the crap out of Turtles in Time makes it hard to shake for the number 3 spot on my list.
Again a game from my High School years comes barging into this list, and while GTA 3 and Vice City were strong contenders, nothing quite feels as good as Grand Theft Auto San Andreas! San Andreas featured a character progressions system, character customization, side-missions, an extremely engaging plot hook for the main story, and EXTREMELY frustrating first-person shooting portions that SUCK! Oh my god I wish I was a PC gamer for this game, playing these missions with a mouse would have made this section child's play! But the game also featured gang territory wars that generated revenue with which you could buy bigger and badder weapons and cars and even car mods! The game borrowed so heavily from western RPGs that it almost feels like a cop-out answer.
But my number one non RPG is Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. There's a long and heated debate going on over whether or not Zelda is an RPG series. And if putting this game at the number 1 spot feels at all like a cop-out, then that might also be telling you a little something about whether or not Zelda actually is an RPG series. And okay okay, for everyone who thinks Zelda is an RPG that I just ticked off, I've got a different number 1 spot, just for you:
Shenmue 1 was a game I reviewed on this channel early early on, before I knew this was going to be a channel devoted to RPGs. I had never played Shenmue before, but had heard it was fun. And it was. Shenmue on Dreamcast was a really magical experience. The game had aspects that haven't aged well over time, such as the lack of a second analog stick for camera control, but the story of tracking down your father's mysterious murderer was really engaging. The game features Virtua-fighter style combat with combos, and a ton of bizarre mini-games like fork-lift racing. The ambient soundtrack and unique setting set this game apart in my mind. There's something indescribable about the game, or at least my memory of playing it. That sense that some mystical force is at play just beyond the camera was inescapable, and really made you want to see what was around that next corner, or tucked away within that TV cabinet. I still haven't touched Shenmue II, and with the remakes coming out later this year, and Shenmue III just around the corner, I think there's no better time to start getting excited about this series again!