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95. Advanced D & D (Blue) (Intellivision)
Intellivision games came with a 17 button controller. Each game came with a plastic card you slide into the controller that describes that game's button configuration. I think the system wasn't more of a winner because it was stupidly complex for the graphical interface…unlike the 2600's one button/one stick genius. The D&D series for this system was colour coded, later to be ripped off by Pokemon games. I was too young to care much for back stories, so the manual went unread. I inserted the cartridge and toggled the power on. The game started with me in a lo-fi quake style 3-D setting. Before I could press a button a huge purple blob with horns appeared in front of me, a purple lightning bolt flashed across the screen, game over. Holy crap, this game is worse than ET for 2600! It turns out, you never play the same game twice. The levels are completely random, each level descending further into Hades a-la the circles of Amsterdam in "The Stranger." Sometimes the game would be 60 levels long, and your arsenal would be so deep that defeating the game was a snap. Other times, like my first time, you meet the purple Satan as soon as you enter the game. The replayability of this game was original, and the 3-D interface was unprecedented. I really wish my Intellivisions still worked…
94. Excite Bike (NES)
In the mid-eighties, Excite Bike was the game to play in between trying to save Princess Zelda or hunting ducks. You could race against a friend, the computer, or the clock in this classic game for the Nintendo Entertainment system. It really didn’t matter that there was no one to save or nothing to shoot. Who really cares about ducks and princesses anyway, when you can design your own racetrack, catch air off ramps and knock other riders down with your bike. You know a game is great, when it's followed by successful sequels and Excite Bike is no exception, with Excite Bike 64, and Excite Truck released for the Nintendo 64, and Nintendo Wii, repectively. In bike language, we’d say this game was a 65 mph mile long wheelie, and well deserving of its placement on the Old-Wizard top 100 video games of all time list. Ride on.
93. Ecco the Dophin (Sega Genesis)
 In the battle between 16 bit systems, the SNES for the most part dominated the Sega Genesis because of the sheer amount of memorable games that the SNES produced, and because SNES had a little company called “Squaresoft” on its side. One of Sega’s best attempts at competing with the creativity in SNES games was from Ecco the Dophin. It had a deeper instinct to it than the “hip” and “cool” Sonic the Hedgehog. It also had an aggrandized storyline in it not seen by the likes of many of the games made for Sega Genesis. Ecco the dolphin is an illustrious game that was easy on the eyes and ears. You were a dolphin communicating with your family and other pods in your own “ecco” language. Your journey takes you up to the northern artic ocean to find “Big Blue” who tells you of the disaster of all the marine life being sucked up by sprouts and storms. The main enemy in this game was your breath support, as being a dolphin, you needed to jump for air periodically. Also, this game was more of a puzzle game in which you had to collect clues from other families of dolphins facing the same immanency. Storylines of time machines and food-scarcity evolve as you rush to find the cure to all the seas problems. This game always keeps you on edge and keeps you disposed towards saving that which is bigger than yourself. Sega had trouble making meaningful games like the SNES, but “Ecco” stood out as one of it’s most memorable accomplishments.
92. Willow (NES)
Growing up in the 80's my favourite movies were fantasy-based: Labyrinth, the Dark Crystal, and the Never Ending Story were amongst my favourites. And among the best of them was a great movie by the creative genius of Pre-Phantom Menace George Lucas: Willow. Willow was a stand out movie about a halfing who was drawn away from his sheltered home (a la Bilbo Baggins) to save Elora Danan, a baby girl with a destiny, from the evil Queen Bavmorda who wanted to destroy her. While like most video games based on a movie, Willow didn't quite follow the script of the film it was based on (zombies?), that was more than okay in this case, because this is still a really fun game. Capcom did a great job with this game, and while it may be nothing more than a Zelda clone loosely based off an amazing movie, thats okay too, because if you're going to rip off a game, you might as well rip off the best.
91. Q*Bert (Arcade)
Released in 1982, Q*Bert is a classic arcade game, right up there with Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. The title character is a funny little orange creature, armed with an elongated nose and no arms, he spends his days bouncing around an isometric pyramid-like structure of tri-coloured cubes, changing their colour as he lands on each one. The only goal of this game is to change each cube’s colour from one to another, eventually hitting all of the blocks and moving onto another level to repeat the process all over again. The next level is the same setup, only different colours, and so on. As you advance though this silly game, you must avoid falling objects, which include multi-coloured spheres, which bounce all the way to the bottom of the pyramid structure. Like Chess, where pawns become something bad ass when they reach the other side of the board, the purple spheres change into snakes with their tails curled up like a spring when they reach the bottom of the pyramid. Bent on stopping Q*bert, his enemies are not content to let him alter the pyramids colour, and do anything they can to stop him. Whether or not Q*bert’s colour changing ways are what they have against him is never explained. But, if they get too close though, you can always take a short flight back to the top of the pyramid on one of the spinning rainbow disks that hover along the side of the pyramid. The discs can also be used to bait Coily to leap off the side of the pyramid - a cunning trap.
All of this action takes place literally in the middle of nowhere, atop a pyramid floating amongst the deepest of black intangible backgrounds. Floating in space you think? It may be the closest guess to the truth. If you get too careless, and jump the wrong way, you fall right off the edge and into oblivion. Not even the hugest of nostrils can save you from plummeting down to unknown deaths. This can’t be space, because there’s gravity, but it must not be too strong because the nose on this guy just won’t droop. Running away from the falling objects offers optimal excitement, but when you happen to run into the snake or sphere, Q*bert’s temper comes to light and a little bubble comes up filled with characters such as *$!@*$ as if he is yelling unmentionable words because he’s pissed that Coily landed on his tubular nose. He also mutters some sort of incomprehendable noise when you fall into the thick dark blackness and off the screen. We have a feeling this little creature has a lot of pent up anger, and jumping up and down the neon coloured pyramid is just not enough of a release.
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