LogFAQs > #940063033

Waku Waku 7 (Arcade)
Metal Slug (Arcade)
Mortal Kombat Trilogy (PS1, N64)
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (Nintendo 64)

I'm not very familiar with either of the first two games. But Waku Waku 7 has a cute bunny girl. Win by default! (It's also the game I'd prefer to play between the two)

I like the Civ series a lot! I've never played Civ II, but I do like me some old PC strategy games sometimes - this reminds me that Master of Orion 2 got snubbed in this bracket, I'm pretty sure that was 1996 anyway. But it's up against Metal Slug, one of the classics of late-90's arcade gaming, and that's hard to beat, sorry. I love in the show GameCenter CX, when Arino goes to various arcades in Japan and the game they always have is Metal Slug and he always plays it. It's deserving! The animation and style are slick and the gameplay is smooth.

Oh man, sorry, but Balloon-o-rama doesn't look like a winner for me - I don't see much here beyond a... kind of sketchy Breakout? clone. Not really a big Mortal Kombat fan but I have to take it here.

The Carmen Sandiego games are pretty cute and I enjoyed them as a kid but I dunno if they hold up today, I feel like they're a little bit shallow once you get the formula and all the knowledge is second nature. Solid edutaintment fare, Carmen Sandiego herself is a great character, but they're the kind of games I played because they were on the school's PC. Shadows of the Empire doesn't really hold up that great either, I played it recently and... lots of early-3D charm in that one, good and bad. It was an interesting time for Star Wars - this was before episode I, during that time when the Star Wars re-releases were happening, and it was interesting to see like, kind of an expanded-universe game going on here that didn't follow the events of the movies, but it was still cool to play as DASH RENDAR and fight Boba Fett and IG-88 and stuff. Pretty hard and frequently awkward game, but the John Williams scores were really cool to hear about as well-rendered as they could be in 1996 and I do have fond memories of getting to enjoy a Star Wars video game in 3D, although nowadays the novelty of that has worn off a bit. It was one of the first three N64 games I owned (besides SM64 and Cruis'n USA), so it does have some nostalgia value for me.