10. Sam Roberts Band

Sam Roberts is Canada’s answer to Oasis. It wasn’t their first album that established them with the power of Oasis (although their 1st album certainly had quality songs on it). It was their 2nd album “Chemical City”, specifically the first song off the album in the name of “The Gate” that took the Oasis sound and gave it a Canadian Rustic aesthetic to it. It’s as if a bunch of lumberjacks were listening to Oasis for 5 years and then started a band. It’s hard to think of a band that comes across as earnestly as Sam Roberts. Sam Roberts’ lyrics are as heart on sleeve as they come without ever falling into banality. Sam Roberts passion is unlimited. All their songs are on a quest for infinite spirituality and their sound is as huge as their quest sounds. One listen to Chemical City and you will understand the importance of this band.

9. The Space Monkeys

The Space Monkeys flew under the radar in the late 90’s influenced by a ton of music but their Manchurian roots were undeniable. Much like Kasabian, they took the pulse of Oasis and quickened it with acid house. Their first track off their debut album “The Daddy of Them All” in the name of “Acid House Killed Rock n Roll” is a raucous speed drenched song with Richard McNevin-Duff singing with more vitriol than Liam Gallagher at times. This song setup the rest of the album full of great songwriting across the board and factory-records-beats behind all the great melodies. Equally Oasis, The Roses, and The Happy Mondays; The Space Monkeys never got the recognition they deserved, but their debut album is of great importance. It will be rediscovered some day by a generation of kids looking to find bands that mean more to them than Oasis. They may find it in a band like The Space Monkeys.

8. The Strokes

The Strokes were a maelstrom for rock music when they released their first album “Is this It”, more specifically their first single “The Modern Age”. The last time a song was this hypnotic was Oasis’s “Columbia”. This song grooved with the best rock music ever released. It was hard and slow at the same time. Lead Singer Julian Casablanca crooned like a Jersey singer from the 50’s. The sound of the album was aesthetically on the level of Oasis’s “Definitely Maybe“. When a band captures this spirit it shows a direct signification for being timeless. The rest of the album followed suit with even stronger singles like Last Night and Hard to Explain. If you were in college when The Strokes came out, it would mean your memories of that time would always be tied to this album, and this is just their first album. They would continue the quality of their first album with “Room on Fire“ and more specifically “Under Control“; finally a song that dudes could think about girls to without feeling so fucking gay. The album “First Impressions of Earth” transformed The Strokes into an even further musical powerhouse showing a technical musicality that surpassed every band on this list. The Strokes will be remembered for some time to come. They have yet to release a bad album and is unlikely they will in the future.

7. Travis

With the release of “All I wanna do is rock”, it was pretty evident for the time being who was going to have filled the shoes of Oasis. This song was sung by Fran Healy with the exaggerated snarl of Liam Gallagher. One wonders how much Liam Gallagher must have wished Noel wrote this song for him. It wasn’t just their first album though they gave Travis their importance. It most importantly came from their 2nd album “The Man Who” which was filled with some of the best singles of 1999. “Writing Reach You” was a ballad that you could listen to without feeling sick. Their was a purgatorial sense of tragedy to the song and the chorus was catchy, but in a very curious way. It wasn’t predictable, but incredibly satisfying to listen to. Certainly having Nigel Godrich behind the boards on this album helped with the amount of great songs on this album. Travis continued to consistently make good to great albums all in the footsteps of the great Oasis.

6. Idlewild

Idlewild has the production pomp of Oasis but took the sometimes effortless stream-of-conscious lyric writing of Noel Gallagher and brought it into an caustic critique of modernity that was neither political nor cultural, but much more metaphysical. Attacks on self-identity, post-modernism, and thinking in general were enveloped by stellar musicianship that was abrasive and sung with fire by lead singer Roddy Woomble. Oasis for intellectuals? It would be more accurate to call them the Oasis for James Joyce and Jean Genet lovers. Roddy Woomble made the sound of Oasis sound much more poetic without losing any of the bite of Oasis’s vocal delivery and sound. Check out their album “100 Broken Windows” to see how strong of a band Idlewild are.

5. New Pornographers

Whether A.C. Newman admits it or not, he was influenced by Oasis. One listen to the incredible “Twin Cinema” (one of the best albums of the decade) will show a taste for perfect pop that was very much it’s own sound though. Listen to “Sing me Spanish Techno“, “Bones of an Idol“, “Jackie Dressed in Cobras“, and the song “Twin Cinema” and you will find a band operating under a very classic mode of songwriting but integrating it in less obvious changes and chord progressions than the rest of the bands on this list. It wasn’t just Twin Cinema though that makes The New Pornographers an important band, it was their debut album Mass Romantica with incredible songs throughout the whole album. “Letter For an Occupant” and “Slow Descent into Alcoholism” are some of the most catchy songs of the decade but they don’t sound like normal pop songs at all, but certainly operate under the traditional structure. This slight bending of the rules of what quality songwriting is puts The New Pornographers in their rightful place as one of the most important bands since Oasis.

4. Coldplay

Coldplay has been called every derogatory term by the indie crowd from generic to bed-wetter’s, to soft. You’re not getting away from the fact that Chris Martin writes great songs. This is undoubted, and anyone who questions this quality in Coldplay doesn’t listen to music for good songs. Chris Martin consistently spreads his love for Oasis by covering a song from every new Oasis album that comes out. The highlight of them all though was his live version of Liam’s songbird. For better or worse, Coldplay took the pure songwriting quality of Noel Gallagher and made it even more crafty and pop, but never enough to be considered a “guilty pleasure” except by the queer indie crowd. No one is arguing “Yellow“, “Lost“, “Talk” (Regardless of it’s obvious Kratwerk affectations), “Shiver“, “The Scientist“, and “In My Place” are not great songs. You just cant argue that these are not great songs after only 1 or 2 listens. Oasis paved the ground for this songwriting craft that had to always reach a certainly quality.

3. The Thrills

Like many bands on this list, The Thrills took the pure songwriting quality of Oasis and put it into their own sonic style. In the case of The Thrills it was the sunkiss sparkle of Southern California that made a bunch of Irish boys leave their country to live in southern California soaking up the sun and all the influences around it from smooth relaxed backup vocals to lyrics about the “Big Sur” and the California sun. Their sound wasn’t timid. It was mastered hard, it was layered pretty heavily. This band may have come across sonically and aesthetically as breezy and laid back, but their ambitions and songwriting were as big as Oasis’s. It had to be. They toured with Oasis multiple times. Noel Gallagher was seen whistling and singing “Big Sur” by himself walking to the supermarket one day in London. The ultimate approval for any band.

2. Kasabian

Kasabian IS the most important band since Oasis. They have carried Oasis’s bravado to a new level and layered it with a newage-electronica that sounds like a combination of Oasis and The Chemical Brothers. All their songs have grit and sass known to the best Oasis songs. Lead singer Tom Meighan spews out vocals as resonant as Liam Gallagher and as loose as Shaun Ryder. The lyrical output of Serge Pizzorno is that of a boxer fighting a heavyweight, not some small personal battle against personal demons but a fight to take over the world. This shits like a Martin Scorsese film. Kasabian is like Napoleon on the battlefields and even more ruthless, on par with Vlad the Impaler which they actually wrote a song about (the best song on their new album). See them live and you will seen one of the best live shows of your life. Pure Energy, pure groove at wall of sound levels. Kasabian is the true heirs to Oasis’s crown.

1. Oasis

For better or worse, Oasis have still made at least average music into the new millennium. Their album “Don’t Believe The Truth” still showed that they could make a rock album better than any rock band in the genre today. They still tour non-stop selling out stadium everywhere they go. With the additions of Andy Bell and Gem Archer to the band, Oasis has become a force to be reckoned with. The only band that could compete with them is the Oasis of the 90’s so it makes sense that Oasis’s only competitors are Oasis themselves. The only band that can come close to their crown is Kasabian listed at number 2 and they haven’t put out enough albums yet to take Oasis from the kings chair. Hate to say it, Oasis are the best band since Oasis.

10. The Jayhawks – Blue

The modern ballad of country music belongs to The Jayhawks in Blue. This is country that went pop without sacrificing quality. The loose acoustic delivery was augmented by Mark Olson and Gary Louris’s pop country vocal delivery that relied heavily on both traditions. The chorus flys on this song which everyone knows who has heard it. The piano is charmingly country in it’s ragtime delivery (the piano delivery that country music always borrowed from ragtime music) and the lyrical sentiment is simple. Blue is a simple song. The Jayhawk’s in general are a simple band but they’re always pleasurable to listen to proving that simplicity still has it’s place in music and songwriting regardless of how much it’s been used to create regurgitated modern music. Blue epitomizes this quality for simple song craft and a heart-on-sleeve sincere delivery.

9. Drive By Truckers – Never Gonna Change

The Drive by Truckers took country music and made it the most rock it had ever been. This is shown nowhere more clearly than “Never Gonna Change”. The music and lyrical theme stayed within traditional country but the overdrive was pushed to toughen up the sound that it never experienced before. Hard driving guitars replaced light sounding slide guitars and soft heartbreaking vocal deliveries. The Drive by Truckers were a band let on the loose of their creative desires to modernize country into something much more rock and consistent with it’s context. Traditional country could actually retain it’s original sentiment in the Drive by Truckers without sounding antiquated by their insistence on raw power in their live sound that was never sacrificed on record.

It wasn’t until “Blacklisted” did we hear the power of Neko Case’s voice and soul.  This second track has a depth unknown to whatever is called “real country”.  The vocal is as expansive as a country voice has ever been when the chorus hits.  The haunted backup vocals bring in an element to the country medium that it was once afraid to touch because it didn’t like touching anything that was haunting and not limited to to usual country tropes.  Neko Case’s entire output can be seen as an expansion of country music with a grit and determination that tradition contry music thought it owned.  Take one listen to “Deep Red Bells” though and the listener will realize where the real balls are are in country music.  In this case, it took a women.

7. Wilco- I Must be High

Little known fact about Wilco. They made a straight up country album in their first album A.M. Coming from his previous band Uncle Tupelo, Jeff Tweedy took the some of the “down-south” out of the alt-country Uncle Tupelo was making and infused it with the best aspects of pop/rock music. With the help of the recently deceased Jay Bennett, Wilco created a classic example of alternative country for the 90’s that everyone forgot about when their subsequent album “Being There” was released. The country slowly faded into more rock and then eventually into experimental and folk with Wilco. While this music was arguably Wilco’s best, their first album with this first track still remains as classic sounding as the first listen. The song is loose, Tweedy’s gritty voice favors the style of country more than his former band mate Jay Farrar who’s more traditional country voice couldn’t cut through a mix like Tweedy’s could. This song is perfect example of relaxed country music doing what it does best; making the listener loose.

6. Old 97’s – Won’t be Home

A strange progression for the Old 97’s. Starting off as cow punk, then becoming straight up pop (with only the most subtle hints of country) and then finally arriving at the alt-country they were always tagged with their album Drag It Up. The glossy production (for it’s credit that created some great singles on Fight Songs and Satellite Rides) was gone for a live produced album that started off with this blistering country anthem. Country Shuffle and Rhett Millers effusive delivery were kept in check for an honesty owned by country music. Maybe it was Miller’s vain attempt at going solo (that financially failed) that made him realize that quick success was diametrically opposite to the honesty that makes memorable music, or maybe it was just the band hitting their musical apex that created this intense delivery, whatever it was, it was Old 97’s finest moment.

5.Ryan Adams- To be Young

The first song in Ryan Adams rollercoaster ride of a solo carrier, this established Ryan Adams has the figure mark of a form of country that was always straying from it’s roots much in the vein of what Gram Parsons was doing in the 60’s. The themes were simply never “good” but the taboo notions that were raised to the forefront much from the rock star life style that these country influenced songwriters were living. This attitude is displayed perfectly on this rambunctious opener by Ryan Adams. Not only was the style in the lyrics, but it was in the production as a whole. Ryan Adams vocal was loaded with a noticeable delay that made the music sound bigger than country ever sounded before. It simply sounded like the wild ride that Ryan Adams was about to embark on; a ride that hasn’t stopped and has had as many twists and turns than one person could possibly handle.

4. The Byrds- You ain’t going nowhere

The Byrd’s went from the most noticeable psychedelic pop band in the late 60’s to a band immensely inspired by the country music of the south-western style exposed by Gram Parson’s and co. His accent was mimicked in this song. It must be said that this song was originally written by Bob Dylan, but the Byrd’s took it and made it into something completely different; a form of country that was smooth and relaxed without sounding lazy. The rhythm section was undoubtedly influenced by classic country with a slight hint of folk. Like The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Byrd’s (specifically on this song and album) paved the way for a new country that was more representative of it’s original intensity than it’s more popular offshoots that repeated the same themes with the same style from the late 50’s and early 60’s. There’s a sense of purity in this song not heard by anything in the modern country era.

3. The Flying Burrito Brothers – Devil in Disguise

If there was any song that so defined what would become of creative country in the future, it would be this classic by the Flying Burrito Brothers vocally delivered by alt-country’s favorite and most tragic son, Gram Parsons. His country voice wasn’t low and rumbling without inflexion. It had hints of psychedelic pop to it that gave the genre of country a new flexibility unknown to it until the emergence of The Flying Burrito Brothers. Not only was the vocal inflection different, but the style was more creative and lyrics covered more details on what made the female the ‘Devil in Deisguise’, rather than just generalities that everyone experienced, these were personal experiences in this song. This creative leap by the FBB’s created a space for country music to evolve into something that more than just country fans could listen to.

2. Uncle Tupelo – Slate

By far Jay Farrar’s best song ever written, the nostalgia of this song and “Anodyne” in general proved to be consistent with the fact that this was their last album. Slate was folk and country without ever sounded exactly like either genre. Jeff Tweedy’s back up vocals sat perfectly with Farrar’s big country bellow. No percussion (except for tambourine); just a driving acoustic and a fiddle, with Farrar lyrically at his best and most reflective. Slate is one of the few songs that uses the fiddle in a folk style that accomplishes not sounding overly sentimental. The song just moves forward reflectively without having anything for looking back. The nostalgia on this album and this song isn’t one that brings-people-together, but feels a way without necessarily wanting to….or not wanting to. This is what makes Slate one of the few nostalgic songs that can be listened to, because it’s wasn’t it’s intent to be that way.

1. Beachwood Sparks- Silver Morning After

That no one knows about the Beachwood Sparks is a crime. Do they care? Probably not, and this is why this band can create such great music. Obviously inspired by the innovative country that was being made in the late 60’s spearheaded by the Byrds, The Beachwood Sparks took this innovation and put it into clean production with unparalleled musicianship. This song is mysterious, distant, and somewhat confused (in lyrical substance, not in it’s musicality). “Alternative Country” is an inappropriate tag to place on this song and band. “Post-Structural psychedelic country pop” may work better if the tag wasn’t so long which is to the credit of the band. Regardless of the individuality of the band’s sound, there was something very country about it and heard best in this song. There was a slide guitar, but it was everywhere. There were slide guitars being layered over other slide guitars and soaked in delays along with a vocal delivery from somewhere in purgatory. This is the best country has done for itself in it’s new version started in the early 90’s. This band is the band to follow. There is no other that is bending the ideas of country while still retaining it’s best pop instincts from the past.

The live versions of this song are full of Jim Morrison pontificating on solipsistic poetic themes.  Then comes the song.  One of the more boring songs of all times, but for some reason immensely popular.  It’s hard to image a chorus as dull as Morrison’s delivery of “Come on baby light my fire”; not just vocally dull, but just as lyrically dull.  The only thing interesting about the song is the resonant funeral organ that’s fortunately mixed as high as Jim Morrison’s limited vocal capacity.  Still, instrumentation aside, nothing could save the song from being just a very regular song.  It is regular at it’s core.  It doesn’t move fast nor slow.  It doesn’t want to do anything other than be bored with itself.  This works to some songs advantages.  The La’s for example were masters at this, but Light my Fire just comes across as plodding psychedelia.

9. Radiohead – Creep

Radiohead are a great band (as you can see on our Top 10 90’s Bands list) but this song is too representative of the early 90’s (American culture at it’s arguably worst moment).  Oh so much pain, too much pain.  I suck, beat me up (I’m already being beaten up).  Oh the irony, “I wish I was special”.  Wait, you mean that you never took this as Irony in what Thom Yorke was delivering?  No wonder why you were getting your ass beat and listening to this song.  No wonder why you were getting overjoyed by sneaking out of the house and drinking with all your other loser friends relating to each other in your pretend suburban nightmares.  Oh the misery of it all!  Wasn’t Euthanasia legal back then?

8. U2- I still Haven’t found what I’m looking for

This song sucks.  Wow.  U2 have two places on this list.  It’s not their fault though that their shitty songs are over appreciated by a insipid mass.  What the fuck is Bono looking for?  Why does he keep wondering that there is something to look for.  Who gives a shit?  This gesture I guess is supposed to be spiritual.  You know, you’re at a low point, a mid-life crisis and you don’t know what you’re looking for in your life so you get in your car and start crying as this song comes on.  Isn’t that what you see on the TV?  People going in cars crying about things that don’t matter.  Oh, now I know why you like this song so much, because you can be endless searching for the sake of being emotional just like the people on the TV!

7. Drops of Jupiter – Train

Uh Oh.  That piano beginning.  This is when Train were going to be taken seriously for the first time.  Part modern country, part pop, vastly mainstream.  Lyrics mixing the elements into pseudo-poetical form.  The formula is all there.  And just when you thought the formula wasn’t need in any other formulation, you have the ending with the endless Na’s.  This was really a great song.  It was like every other song that had to be heard of as good.  This had to be a good song like all the other songs that had to be good.  It had strings to it sweeping up into the final chorus.  When will these gestures ever become exhausted?  “Si seulement une nation de philosophes a existé” – Rene Descartes

6. Van Morrison- Brown Eyed Girl

Poor Van Morrison.  All those above-average songs and only remembered for this one “party song”.  Hyper happy, hyper soulful and never possible of being disliked (“What’s wrong with you man! This is Van Morrison”!).  A chorus everyone can sing too.  A chorus a monkey can sing too.  We can all sing together in Brown Eyed girl; Man, Woman, Child, Monkey, Grasshopper.  Everyone, cmon, lets get altogether, arms around each other….here comes the chorus…..SOCIAL EJACULATION!  You made it in western society.  You sang an obvious song with obvious people at an obvious place.

5. Nirvana- Smells like Teen Spirit

It wasn’t Kurt Cobain’s fault that this song was overrated.   It wasn’t a bad song.  It was transformational for a generation and deserves credit for this movement that was heard in the song.  But it wasn’t transformation for anyone else, at least it wasn’t supposed to be if children (also including “adults”)  could only find the will to create their own identities from the knowledge of their absence from a past presence.  Their different context couldn’t be understood as being absent from this time when every time they flipped on VH1 or MTV there some goon saying “This song changed music”.  Platitudes and tropes; the artistic stabilization of what was always meant to be forgotten.  If only Cobain could live in that world, he would still be alive today.

4. Greenday- Good Riddance (Time of your life)

Meta-emotional in delivery.  It’s a time for graduation.  Graduation from high school, and if you go to a below-average college, another high school style graduation.  An endless amount of nostalgia pricking at the bellows of forgettable memories, or unforgettable memories that would be forgettable if not for the neurotic impulse to self-define in every single event that happened in one’s life.  Greenday must feel the same as the high school graduate.  Judging by their hair styles now (How old are they now, mid 40’s?) they’re still on the brink of finishing their final class and earning that final C in the “general science” class, the class for…you know…people who don’t take Physics or Chemistry.  The time of their lives, your life, the most average life.

3. U2- Beautiful Day

This song is a pile of tricks.  It’s exploding  predictable chorus is trick number 1, and it’s not that it’s a difficult trick to perceive.  It’s difficult for anyone who sees U2 as anything other than “great”; an impenetrable band who writes only quality music. Well this song is complete shit.   The chorus isn’t even catchy.  With an entrance and soar in the production at least make it catchy.  Instead it’s a big pile of shit.  It’s come downs and massive builds up back and forth.  It’s wedding songs for couples who think they’re different from those other wedding couples who play “cheesy” music.  U2 cut the cheese on this song.  Some people just aren’t smelling the stink.

2. The Long and Winding Road- The Beatles

Paul McCartney’s masturbation session in Burt Bacharach tropes could only sound as boring as it’s intent.  One wonders who can listen to this song consistently.  Certainly one can come across this song in the Beatles catalogue and hear McCartney’s immense insecurity of never having written a song as good as John, but to listen to it again?  This is highly improbable unless one feels they have to like the Beatles because they are afterall “The Beatles”.  This song is slow, lacking in any passion, lacking in everything that makes a song good.  It just moves on record waiting to be heard because it was written by someone in The Beatles…but by the weak songwriter in The Beatles.

1. The Pixies – Gigantic

Fucking boring ass bassline.  Some ugly ass whining in back.  Some stupid ass talking about “everyday” bullshit in the guise of importance.  Shitty ass production.  Predictable guitar noise, more predictable overdrive in the chorus.  A repeating chorus with poor and obvious insinuations.  The same thing again.  Complete trash.  The instinct of Indie music epitomized.  The diminution of everything musical from centuries past.  Not only one of the most overrated songs of all time, but likely the worst song ever put to record.

10. Krautrock

Krautrock is a peculiar genre in the fact that it spawned great music that was not ashamed to admit that it was influenced by the Krautrock genre.  The difference was, the modern musician sped up the trance that was supposed to happen in Krautrock, and created forms of trance, whether in the genre of house or rock in general.  Going back to the “oldies but goodies” though, one has to endure a session of a Neu album, unless of course one wants to put on inconspicuous background music.  If that’s the case, there’s much better played elevator music  for this like Johnny Mandel  and any lounge music in general.  Just as long as it’s not Nickelback, it will serve as much better background music.  But something about sounded interesting, so of course it had to be good.  Interesting is relative, and so then Krautrock can be recognized as good while being the last thing anyone would listen to.

9. Modern R and B

Modern R and B has been the butt of many a comedian’s joke.  The pseudo-suave beginning with the protagonist speaking in a soft urban voice either expressing his “infinite” love of the other, or repenting from his sin of cheating on her.  It’s  from here that cheese blasts into pure comedy with strings swirling up to ostensibly capture the moment of the lovers highest affection for the other…or his phallic-mania masquerading as “love”, a term as ungrounded and relatively used as “God” and “Presence”, even more so than the later because of the cultural acceptance of the idea as a grund (primoris res).  Grounding of ungrounded ideas aside, the cheesiness of modern R and B is all pervading.  It’s  not just in the music, it’s in the videos too.  Hulking men professing love.  The dichotomy between physical strength and spiritual Eros?  In the West?  No, this isn’t Greek antiquity.  One is a mask for the other.  Which one you ask?  Last I heard the world population is growing exponentially.

8. Modern Blues

Traditional blues, the blues of Robert Johnson and Chuck Berry are undoubtedly the precursor to any form of pop music in general and should be privileged for because of it.  That musicians can continue playing what was played 70 years ago however is not strange to a culture whose fever for archiving anything that at one point was considered “good” is obsessive.  The absolute bore of listening to blues now after this many years is overbearing.  That musicians who play the style are not bored by it must find their motivations for playing the style in other grounds other than enjoying what they’re playing.  Pleasing an elderly audience?  Pleasing a younger crowd who parasitically followed an elderly audience?  Pleasing a dingy bar with people who like this style?  Something is going on with “Pleasing”, but it doesn’t have anything to do with music.

7. Punk

Punk music was always on it’s way with the flexibility of pop music starting from the 50’s.  It was only a matter of time that a group wouldn’t like it’s surrounding context because it appeared to a majority as “successful”.  Instead of personally doing away with the concept of success, and more importantly with what was considered as success, punk music found it’s grounding in not expressing it’s own psychological neuroses, much for the sake of finding it’s own success, because it couldn’t find it in it’s own context.  Now, this attitude is understandable at it’s inception.  For the reason of novelty  alone qualifies the act of punk, but that the genre so parasitically attached itself to anyone picking up an instrument is the problem of the style.  For anyone, any child, looking for an identity now, they can find it in a context they don’t currently occupy and chances are, never will.  Much like emo, without an appropriate subject for the musician, there’s an imaginary subject made up to exert one’s energy towards.  This making up of a subject to “rise against”, to always oppose itself too, sounds as flat as the notes being played in the genre.

6. Pop Metal

When you look on you tube under the term “Speed Metal” and “Grindcore” you find clips of adroit fans incessantly attacking what is perceived as fake Speed Metal and Grindcore.  Not coming from a Metal background, I can’t tell the difference but one thing came over my mind when listening to the music being compared, but what I do know is that these people have probably have so much disdain for pop metal that they don’t even consider it music.  While I would probably have different reasons for disliking Pop metal than a Grindcore purist, the singular complaint would probably be analogous.  It’s soft shit that tries to sound hard.  It doesn’t matter how big a bassist’s biceps are, if he’s still playing soft music, he’s soft.  The feigning for grittiness in bands like “Dead by April” and “A Day To Remember” is obvious.  No amount of tattoos can save either band from sounding like Ben Stiller in Dodgeball.

5. Mainstream Country

Modern Country is at least noticeable when it comes on the radio.  It only take less than a half a second to switch the channel because the sound of this emetic genre is so unpleasant.  It’s ultra polished, if not the most polished sound on modern radio, even more so than modern Hip Hop and R and B.  The goofy southern accent singer talks about what he usually talks about.  The ideas are too obvious to point out without feeling guilty of stating something so obvious.  Mainstream Country is the money train, where people go to relax and gain a sense of “home-goingness”, whatever that means…being at home, not moving, doing what your neighbor does, getting in a fight with your neighbor for a slight oscillation in personality that is perceived.  This music doesn’t move and doesn’t want to move.  It sits as comfortably as a patient with dementia in a retirement home.

4. Hip Hop

While Hip Hop’s roots were the grounds for some hypnotic grooves unheard of until its point, it was it’s aging form that became grossly overused.  No longer were good beats a matter for the modern Hip Hop musician, but was simply the objectification of sexual intercourse in every possible way; as if sex had not already lost it’s ostensible taboo in the 80’s with Madonna and other “express yourself” artists.  Of course maybe this was the “true” lifestyle of the hip hop musician.  Coming from the context of the Ghetto gives one the authority to do whatever they want, because after all they come from shit, so we must sympathize with this shittyness by simply being empathetic, meaning not having the right to see modern Hip Hop as absolutely unsubstantial and lacking in an power subtle enough to win for itself a legacy of class.  Bring on the leveling of culture through political correctness.  Hip Hop must deserve its privileged place as the thin line between money and caveman.

3. The Nickelback Genre or Mainstream FM “rock”

The Nickelback genre of music is so obviously a bad genre that even those who say they like it know it’s really bad.  If it’s randomly playing on FM radio in the backyard of raised ranch  backyard BBQ, people will hear it in the background and not say anything about it.  Only some will ever say they like the song, and will be convinced otherwise in a matter of seconds if they so easily can be grabbed by something so vacuous.  No one could even admit to liking the song on the grounds of a guilty pleasure.  It’s neither a pleasure nor a guilty pleasure to listen to, but a guiltless bad pleasure.  You’re just listening to a very definite idea of “bad” when listening to Nickelback and every band that sounds like them.  Unfortunately for a linguistics that would like to transcend the binary opposition of bad/good, it has to face the patent obviousness of bad in the Nickelback genre.  It’s powerfully bad.

2. Emo

When the luxury of a culture reaches it’s apex, the energy not being used by those who are unconsciously enjoying the luxury is often displaced into disingenuous forms.  In the case of Emo, this inappropriateness comes from an effusive (more accurately termed ‘mawkish’) reaction to one’s opulent surroundings.  This space for effusion is without an object.  The searching for an energetic object in this empty space creates a form of music that is strictly maudlin in character.  It’s maudlin for the sake of being maudlin.  Within an empty space, the effusion for any object in general to ruminate over creates unsubstantial objects for the sake of subjective yearning.  Romeo and Juliet, by prose and by time, lived within a context; this context was appropriate for their excessive yearning, the context of the late 20th century however was never appropriate for the type of yearning known in Emo.  No one seemed to  tell the self-identifying “Emo fan” that “it’s called life”.

1. Indie

The worst thing to happen to the elegance and taste of Pop music was Indie music.  The nauseating compulsion for every band to label themselves as “Indie” now is not difficult to understand.  The underlying premise of Indie music was unchecked creativity for the sake of itself.  The interest that one could muster into these bands would have to take thousands upon thousands of listens to “understand”; another premise of the style (that it was always and already in need of having to be understood).  Unchecked creativity is not guilty for some anachronistic, obscurely Christian idea of emptiness, but guilty of never having to think that creativity is in need of being checked.  The amount of bands that stemmed from the idea of “Indie” music was enormous just for this reason; because anyone could pick up any instrument, make any noise they wanted and it would be deemed as “good”, because anything that’s expressed is automatically “good”.  You no longer had to be a musician, no longer had to write good songs, no longer had to do anything other than to strike a note on any instrument to be privileged as  “innovative”; that bastardized term that has undermined the soul of inherent quality.

10. Mac Fans

Macintosh computers are the popular kids of the computing industry. They are shiny, pretty, never get sick, and all generally look the same. For those with the money and with little computing ability they are great computers. The average Mac fan on the other hand is quite the opposite. They are the arm chair liberals, dirty stinking hippies, you know the type. The white kid with dreads, the hippie girl with a trust fund, your average coffee shop customer who loves to type in public over the latest latte flavor. These people are so annoying and only bought their computer because it fits into their pre-determined self image. When asked why they love to recite the TV commercials; “Oh they are so intuitive” or the ever popular “They never get viruses.” There are plenty of reasons to use a Macintosh; the proprietary hardware and software guarantees, better integration between the two, faster graphic computing ability, and simple one version OS to name a few. But that’s not why these annoying people buy them, they just love their pretty little shiny thing and love to tell people about their self righteous purchase.

9. Star Trek Fans

Star Trek is a great show, it has good plot lines based on intelligent problem solving, and it also has terrible fans. They are the bullies of the nerd world. They have their own conventions, their own languages, and they don’t like anybody else liking the thing that they love. In fact when the show Babylon 5 came out Star Trek fans were so incensed that someone would create another science fiction series that they began to attack the creator of the series. In one such event a virus was sent to him disguised as his a drawing from his toddler son. The virus destroyed his hard drive and left behind a Easter Egg claiming “Star Trek Rules”.  When Next Generation came out fans were also angered that someone other than Kirk was allowed to command the Enterprise. Star Trek fans live behind this ‘how dare you’ attitude that prevents anyone from doing anything that changes the status quo of the Star Trek universe. If they had it their way the only series ever would have been the original one, the only captain ever would have been Kirk, and nobody who doesn’t already speak Klingon would be allowed to watch the show. In fact most of the show would be in Klingon. Once again the fans of the show ruin the show. The only revenge us normals have on them is the new movie which was geniusly directed by JJ Abrams. I almost jumped out of my seat when watching Vulcan explode. No revenge could be sweater on the obsessive Star Trek fan then making the thing that they love a popular summer block buster. I mean who would have ever expected that Spock and Uhura would have a secret romance brewing. Yes the Star Trek fan is a terrible person but now that Star Trek is hip and Vulcan is destroyed perhaps their days will be numbered.

8. Heavy Metal Fans

Heavy metal fans are a lot like hardcore gamers. In fact if you drew a Venn diagram of hardcore gamers and heavy metal fans they would intersect quite a bit. Where some people drowned their sorrows in their parent’s basement by playing video games, some go out to heavy metal shows, dressed in the stereotypical all black, and mosh or headbang. When you think about moshing, its just a bunch of guys rubbing on each other, which, if you think about it, is kind of gay. Just like the hardcore gamer there are very few girls at these events, as most girls don’t like heavy metal. This further frustrates the heavy metal fan and leads to further violence amongst them. The heavy metal fan also likes to claim that they are railing against the life of the common man, the average, or the normal people. They do this by dressing exactly the same, wearing the same color, growing their hair long, and doing whatever they can to become indistinguishable from the next fan. This little contradiction never cross the heavy metal fan’s mind. Sadly, we here at OW love a number of heavy metal bands and have been to a number of heavy metal shows. Oddly enough we dressed in our typical jeans and a t-shirt where the most unique people at the show. One time I had to go straight from work which had me where a white polo. For those who don’t know white is the only color that can physically harm the heavy metal fan. Anyway I got a lot of bad looks at that show.

7. Pokemon Fans

Anyone worth their salt knows that these games were just one gigantic marketing campaign aimed at loosening the wallets of parents with young kids. We here at OW love Nintendo, but these ‘games’ are so stupid even we can’t support them. Each game is exactly the same and named after a different color, mineral, or gem. What’s worse is that the kids who loved Pokemon when they were young have now grown up and the brainwashing hasn’t worn off with time. They still swear up and down that these games are the greatest things ever and some even dare to refer to them as RPG’s. None of them have the ability to see that somewhere in Japan a marketing team came up with the most brilliant sales pitch ever. “Gotta catch em’ all.” And believe me they did. The caught all the games, all the action figures, all the playing cards, the t-shirts, the shoes, and just about anything else they could get their grubby, brainwashed hands on. None of them realize that each game is the exact same thing, that the cartoons, action figures, stuffed animals, and playing card game were all released at the same time. None of them realize that the simple catch phrases, bright colors, repetitive plot lines, and simple stories where only aimed at furthering their addiction. Nope they are all so stupid, so brainwashed, and so young they can’t see beyond the perfectly aimed marketing that they still, to this day think that pokemon was just a good game.

6. Dave Matthews Fans

Have you ever been to a Frat party? How do you feel about Birkenstocks? Backwards hats with curved brims? Greek letters? Chugging terrible beer? Keg stands? If the answer to each of these questions is resoundingly positive, then you may be  fan of the Dave Matthews Band. What is more interesting is that DMB is actually a talented band, with a  world renowned drummer, bassist, and saxophone player. Oh they also have this gigantic dude that plays violin. I don’t know if he is any good, and I don’t want to be the guy who tells him otherwise. In any case we here at OW generally like this band but boy do we hate the fans. They are either insanely obsessed or drunks looking for a party. Or sometimes both. We have even heard of DMB fans who will only listen to DMB because they claim nothing else is even worth it. Further research has even shown that there is an on going feud between DMB fans and Blink 182 fans. Why is completely beyond us. Going to a DMB show is like watching every jock, frat boy, and sorority slut get so hammered they forget they were even at the show. But don’t worry they have pictures on facebook to prove they were there.

5. Star Wars Fans

Some people worship God, others Allah, and others the dark lord himself. Star Wars fans, on the other hand, worship only George Lucas and accept everything he does as infallible perfection. The only movie that Lucas hasn’t ruined is his first original creation American Graffiti. And believe me if he could find a market for greaser action figures, the stores would already be packed. No Star Wars was ruined with twice for us at OW, first with the stupid remakes that added all sorts of crazy computer graphics in the background, and secondly with the prequels. We here at OW haven’t been able to watch anything Star Wars since viewing those tragedies. Yet the average Star Wars fan doesn’t see anything wrong with anything George Lucas does, in fact, they lap it up. ‘Hey look, he added Boba Fett into the scene even though he doesn’t need to be there and it really doesn’t make sense that he is there.’ Not only do Star Wars fans love these terrible creations, they will also buy anything with the Star Wars logo on it.  This includes; action figures, t-shirts, cups, costumes, shoes, curtains, underwear, soda cans, comic books, novels, pens, shoe laces, posters, fire places, pillows, dehumidifiers, carpets, coffee tables, no I’m not just naming things I see in my living room, and the list goes on and on and on and on. The worst thing about Star Wars fans is that they are the ones that ruined the thing they claim to love. Because they never held Lucas up to any type of scrutiny he has been able to roam free doing anything he wants ruining people’s childhoods and making money hand over fist while he does it. Star Wars fans are the mindless sycophants of the science fiction world and they have ruined the creation that they hold so dear.

4. Hulk Fans

In the world of comic books, there is no one more annoying fan than the Hulk fanboy.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with Hulk.  He’s a great character within his somewhat narrow boundaries, and when written properly he serves as a brilliant bridge into explorations of how the mind works and how we determine our basic humanity.  The problem is the fans who want to make Hulk into something he’s not.  No, he couldn’t really beat Superman, and that isn’t a bad thing.  He has so much more going for him than the Man of Steel as a character, though.   Unfortunately his full potential is never realized, as most writers use him as a big monster, going on mindless rampages until the real heroes take him down.   This is the reason most Hulk fans are about as dumb as he is.  The worst Hulk writing tries to bring him down to that level: just a big angry strong brick, with no complexity or torment, basically just a walking power set ready to smash anything in his way.   Hulk fans believe he can defeat anyone if he gets angry enough, I have even seen a thread on a forum where someone actually posted that the Hulk can return from being erased from reality by punching back into reality. I recall another Hulk fans even saying that the Hulk could defeat Galactus if he gets angry enough!  It is the biased stupidity of Hulk fans that I hate.  Its really the fact that both the Hulk and the Hulk’s fans think he’s unbeatable even though that is clearly not the case.  I don’t even mind delusional people as long as they aren’t trying to cram their delusions down my throat, and Hulk fans are notorious for this.

3. WoW Fans

I’m really not sure what I could say about World of Warcraft fans that South Park hasn’t already. They love this game as much as… say a crack head would love crack. They live, eat, and breath this game, and then inside the game they live eat and breath. In the real world the are generally disgusting slobs, far from the actors portraying them in the commercials. Are we to truly believe that playing World of Warcraft will make us as cool as William Shatner or that Shatner, with a very busy acting schedule would have time to play this game. When you hear about someone who started playing this game the inevitable reaction is “Oh, that sucks” as the realization sets in that you will never see that person again. When you hear of someone quitting the inevitable reactions is “Really! I’m glad to hear he’s getting his life back in order.” At a recent staff meeting, after the customary feats of strength and tale telling, we decided that  OW is going to open the first ever WoW rehabilitation center. All of the chairs will be extra big, the couches will have extra springs, and there will be no junk food, no TV, and certainly no internet access. We’ve decided that we can cure you in about six weeks at the nominal fee of $1000/week plus the cost of food. We may like to make fun of these people but were also happy to fix them…for a fee.

2. Phish Fans

What’s the difference between a  DMB fan and a Phish fan? Drug use. Your average DMB fan drinks a lot of beer, smokes some weed, and depending on how rich and white they are, do a little coke. Your average Phish fan is on everything from LSD to Heroin almost all the time. Where the DMB fan wears clean pressed button up shirts, the Phish fan might change cloths once or twice a year and generally walks around smelling like patchouli oil. Which, by the way, barely covers up the constant weed smell, since they smoke pot like cigarettes. Much like the DMB fan they are obsessed with all things Phish. OW has even heard stories about fans doing Heroin because lead singer Trey Anastasio was doing it. The difference being they were dirt poor, couldn’t afford it, and generally don’t have jobs. Much like the DMB fan, we here at OW enjoy most of Phish’s albums but, once again, there fans are terrible people who try to pretend it’s still the seventies. If it wasn’t for this band the tie dye industry would have disappeared years ago. Yet despite OW’s best efforts people still buy these terrible t-shirts.

1. Sega Fans

Sega fans can be summed up in one simple word: delusional. Let’s look at the facts; Sega has only had one successful system, it’s most famous character is an obvious copy of Mario, and has gone out of business at least once. They were so bad at making video games systems they had to quit. Despite this Sega fans still think that this is a good company. They still think that Sega is better than any other system. This obviously makes no sense, since, at the time there are no Sega systems. They failed. In order to save the company from complete destruction they had to start making games for their arch-enemy Nintendo. Sega has been reduced to a mere video game production company. Still the average Sega fans worship the failed company. This is equivalent to supporting the failed the candidate, following the loser of the war, or living in the burned out house. None of this makes sense. The average Sega fan however refuses to recognize that they worship a fallen hero. We here at OW have made it our mission to save these people from their own stupidity however, to date, we haven’t been able to recover any of them. This may because they are just too far gone, their minds warped, there bodies weak and frail, and their sanity completely lost. Still we refuse to give up. Eventually they will realize that even their own leader doesn’t own a Sega system and the halls of Sega fan HQ are hollowed. Eventually the light that is OW will bring these lost souls home where they can find whatever gaming system they so choose, as long as it’s still in business.

10. You beat World 8-1 in Super Mario 3 without using a P-wing or a Cloud
This level is the reason they made the P-Wing and the Cloud. If you have a P-Wing, this is the time to use it. There’s no better level to fly over than this one. If you don’t have a P-Wing, use a Cloud. And if you don’t have a Cloud, good luck. You’re probably going to end up smashing a bunch of controllers before you beat this level. Not only are there hard jumps, Pirhana Plants, and Bullet Bills in this level, but there’s even a Boo Buddy! Apparently this level wasn’t hard enough with the standard over world enemies, so the game designers decided that it was necessary to put a random ghost in the level as well. Can someone tell me WTF a ghost is doing in this level? Besides the randomly placed Ghost, you have to make it over two almost impossible jumps in this level. The first is the pit you have to jump over with a Red Paratroopa flying in it, and two cannons on the other side. Almost immediately after getting past that jump on your tenth try, you’re faced with yet another leap of faith as you have to jump on a music box to cross another wide chasm. If you can beat this game without a P-wing you’ve probably spent as much time as we have playing Super Mario 3.

9. You Beat Street Fighter 2 with Zangief
Street Fighter was a great game. The amount of time DestructoMaximo and I have spent playing this game is enormous. All those characters to beat the game with and all the two player action that could be had in this game made for one of the best fighting games in history. Play the game with Zangief though, and the player was in for one of the most difficult fighting games of all time. Zangief was slow, had no shooting power and excelled in no area except for basic power, which was useless in a game with fighters as diverse as Ryu and M.Bison. Congratulate yourself if you conquered Street Fighter with Zangief. It’s something even the most adroit players can’t accomplish.

8. You Beat Bubble Bobble By Yourself

The only reason anyone has ever beaten Bubble Bobble is because you get infinite continues.  Nobody could beat this game otherwise. Even with infinite continues few people could beat this game by themselves. This game is very easy to learn how to play, and you might not even get killed for a few levels. And then pretty soon you die and it hits you like a ton of bricks.  And you keep dying.  A lot. Remember how you once had a score of 300,000? Well, those days are gone. Each time you start over the score resets. There will come a point for everyone when they hit the challenge wall, and it will be a lot sooner than you’d expect from a game that has over 100 levels’ worth of play. I think for me it was around level 20.  It will probably be even sooner if you’re playing by yourself. The difficulty curve is way too steep for this game.  And if you do make it to level 100, you have to get past Super Drunk.  To wake him up you need to drink the potions at the top of the screen. The potion makes you spit lightning bubbles (60 will take out Super Drunk). If you have no friends, Passing Super Drunk will not give you the happy ending (This is evident after several hours of eye-glazing solo-play. You beat that sh*t and get a screen saying “This Is Not The Happy Ending). Let’s recap: If you’re going to get to the final stage of Super Drunk, you had best be drinking the sh*t that makes you spit hot lightning straight from the bottle. If you drink alone, you might pass Super Drunk, but it will not be a happy ending. There are some important life lessons for you here, kids, I suggest you heed them wisely.

7. You got to Friday in Paperboy

Being a paperboy might be easy in real life, but in the video game world its one of the hardest jobs out there.  One would think that being a professional spy or maybe a hit man would be one of the harder jobs out there.  But compare how easy 007 is to Paperboy and you’ll see just how wrong you are.  Anyone who tells you that they love this game has no idea why they love it. Maybe they liked getting knocked down after the 3^rd house on the left by movers moving glass that they cannot get up on the curb for the life of them. Maybe they liked spending days and days of game play just to get to the end of the first day with the shitty bonus level that somehow turned from a street into a skateboard park with poorly designed skateboard ramps in the vein of the poor designs of Skate or Die. I have no idea why anyone would like a game this difficult. If getting by Monday was difficult, just trying getting by Tuesday and Wednesday. These were each about 10 times more difficult than Monday exponentially. Paperboy was a tiringly difficult game. Any game that you had trouble getting by the first level on had no business being recognized as a great game. Some gamers will try to convince you they got to Wednesday and even Friday, but you can be sure that most of these people are liars. Something about the cover of this game screams “simplicity”, but that has nothing to do with the fact that its extremely difficult to get half way down the street in the first level with the neighborhood elements being thrown at you. If anyone disputes these claims, they can send us their own personal video of playing paperboy and getting to Friday.

6. You beat the first level of Ghosts n’ Goblins

Some games start out easy and then gradually get harder.  In other games the first level is nearly impossible to beat.  There is no game that exemplifies this upshot from sheer difficulty like Ghosts ‘n Goblins. 1/8th through the first level you’re surrounded by mounds and mounds of enemies. As you’re walking as your character, you’re basically surrounded by a force field of enemies coming at you from every possible angle. Okay, maybe if you had a lot of energy or someone decent armor, you could take the level one onslaught of nefarious enemies. As you walk, you see you do have armor, looks like pretty strong armor, until a weak ass looking bird swoops down, barely hits you, and your armor comes flying off. Not even faux-Halloween armor is this poor. I’m pretty sure that if a bird touched a plastic armor suit that you wore for Halloween, it wouldn’t come flying off. As your worthless armor comes flying off, you’re left with an almost-naked character who is left with nothing on except underwear. Q: Who wears nothing under armor? Am I inept to mid-evil tradition or is there something completely untenable about someone wearing nothing under armor? You’re basically left naked running around in the wild with a force field of petulant enemy’s surrounding you at every second. This stultifying game play leads you to give up after 1 to 2 minutes making you feel like shit and making you retire to much more germane games with more sane difficulty levels. If you were one of the few people who made it to level two, consider yourself to be one of the elite in the gaming world.

5. You’ve landed on the aircraft carrier in Top Gun once

Ever try landing on the aircraft carry in Top Gun for the NES?  When landing your plane on an aircraft carrier, you are given terse directions from your “command screen” which you follow. If you follow the directions 100% perfectly, you will have about a 5% chance of landing the plane. I have personally seen the plane landed once. I remember that eventful day. I was at a friend’s house and four of us were watching my friends’ father trying to overcome this insuperable task. The first time we saw it land, we had a party. I remember looking over at one of my friends who may have been crying out of joy, that the annoyingly impossible task could be circumvented. The excitement lasted until the end of the next level where we all knew it couldn’t happen again, and it didn’t.  The dogfights are easy and the missiles given to you in the fights are smartly efficient enough to create a moderate difficult level in the sky. The rest of the game is easy, but try landing on the aircraft carrier and you are thrown into one of the most difficult moments in video game history. It’s one of the greater accomplishments in life itself.

4. You beat Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!

Mike Tyson’s Punchout was actually moderately difficult to play through. Certainly, fighters such as Glass Joe and Don Flamingo were no challenge for little Mac. As one became good at this game, one could beat the likes of Mr. Sandman and Super Macho man easily and with a little practice. It was the last boss in Mike Tyson though that we witness one of the most difficult moments in video game history. One was amazed by how one small uppercut by Tyson could take Little Mac to the ground gasping for breath as Doc smiled on. Could a  final boss really be this hard? Where was the gradual increase in difficulty level that could get you ready for this domination? Certainly, it wasn’t Super Macho Man regardless of how powerful his Tornado punches were. It wasn’t Don Flamenco part two who had the stamina of 10 men. Nothing could get you prepared for having to dodge oddly timed uppercuts by the Bronx basher. Timing down Tyson’s uppercuts was beyond challenging. The gamer had better hope he had a game genie where one punch to an opponent could knock them down, or infinite stamina so that Tyson’s punch no longer had any impact. Take away the cheats, and one had to time all the uppercuts perfectly which was unbearably difficult.  Tyson could be beat with hours and hours of practice. Still, Mike Tyson is one of the most noticeable signifiers for “Difficult Boss” in video game history. Every gamer is struck with fear in having to battle an opponent who could spell game over for you in 1 hit.

3. You beat Contra without the code

Contra contained the most conspicuous cheat code in gaming history and for good reason. We won’t go into the code because we know its already inculcated into every gamer’s brain beyond any doubt. Why is this code so well known though? Could it be that Contra was so hard that it became a staple for anyone who even attempted to start their journey in the game? This is precisely the reason why any code becomes imprinted on the human genome. It’s to bad too, because Contra is actually one of the finer moments in early gaming history when one knew they could waste 30 lives on a level. Take away this ability though, and you were doomed to the first level, maybe the second if your practiced it for over two months. Once you were in the second level you were pretty much lost to the electric shocks and countless enemies throwing bombs at you. The game after the second level just starts getting good too. The third level as the waterfall level in the game has one of the most perfectly abject bosses in gaming history. The gamer who thought he was good enough not to use the code would never be able to experience this boss, instead, throwing his controller to the wall in the event of being hit by the guns coming out of the ground in the first level. Contra today is known as a great game because it has become accepted that to play it in any casual fashion requires the code. The gamer does not feel remorse at having to play Contra with a cheat because he knows everyone else has to and that there is no one on earth who can possibly come close to beating the game without the code. One wonders if the creators of Contra ever knew how hard it would be to conquer the game without the code.

2. You’ve beaten Super Mario the Lost Levels

This game is near impossible. If you can beat this game you are beyond great. We here at OW have all beaten this game and we are all great. There isn’t anything easy about any part of it. Except the beginning when you press start after that it’s all work. This game is unlike modern games which are all easy. That’s right, all modern games are easy. And stupid. This game however is hard for the sake of hard. You truly have to become a master of every aspect of Lost Levels. You have to wear your controller down until it becomes ergonomic through erosion, not ergonomic by design. You have to live eat and breath Lost Levels until the very end and only then will you be a master of video games. Nay only a few have completed this quest, but they shall live on in the halls of eternity. Where they shall eat not but the finest meals, drink not but the finest wines, and sleep on not but the finest linens. Actually nobody will really care and it won’t really affect your life in any way at all. Trust us we have a religion based on us now.

1. You Beat the Turbo Tunnel Level in Battletoads on Your First Try

10. Has to be either a first person shooter, or third person shooter

This is obviously the most hardcore way to play a game. If you can’t be it in real life why not pretend on your parent’s TV? The shooter allows one to pretend they are walking down the street and killing everything that you see. Which is often the dream of the hardcore gamer. And what’s better than pretending to see through your own eyes while killing, well imagine pretending being a handsome soldier, a handsome car thief, a handsome warrior, or some other type of handsome person that you aren’t in real life. You never see the main character in any of these hardcore games as a fat slob who gets winded when running, has terrible acne problems, needs a wardrobe that doesn’t include t-shirts with stupid sayings, lives in his parents basement, and has never touched a real girl. No the hardcore game is everything the hardcore gamer wishes he was, everything he rails against, and everything that makes him cry at night. The first and third person shooter embodies this idea in the fullest capacity of this theory. Here is a place where they can act out all of their fantasies in a way that not only rewards them but also releases all their pent up virgin aggression.

9. Has to be rated M

Hardcore games are almost always rated “M” for mature.  The Hardcore gamer only likes video games that are excessively violent so that casual gamers, like older people or little kids, either don’t play them, or aren’t allowed to play them.  It also makes them feel more “hardcore” because they are playing games with excessive gore.  Games like Killzone 2 are marketed to overweight hardcore gamers who enjoy these overly violent games because they help them take out the frustrations they have with the real world by blowing up people in the virtual video game world. This is because the hardcore gamer’s real life is constantly beset by setback after setback.  So these excessively violent games are a form of stress relief for these downtrodden social outcasts.

8. Discourage innovation

If a hardcore game is anything, it’s not original. Why bother? The best way to make a sale is to just update the graphics, change the story slightly, make it WW2, or if it’s already WW2 make it the future where robots have taken over the world (or are at least giving their best effort), and if it’s already the future make it the ancient past, where you have to battle giants of some sort. Then add in some new weapons, change the color of the armor, or make the main character shave his head. Of course, if his head is already shaved then grow his hair out. Now if in the first game he was a part of a team, then in the second one he should be by himself trying to find his team who were captured. Also if you have a tank in the first game then you will obviously have a super tank in the second game. Now if the game was originally in the future the sequel has to be in the past. If the game is the first in the series then you have to take all the good things from the most recently popular games, add them together, subtract the year it was released and add that many guns or swords, then, finally make sure the game isn’t too different so as to not upset the gamers your trying to sell the games to.

7. Must have spent over $1,000,000 on marketing

Millions of dollars goes into hyping up each new hardcore game to epic proportions.  The game developers buy up ad space on sites like IGN and Gamespot, who will then review these games and give them either “five stars” or a “ten out of ten” and will eventually call each one the “game of the year” at some point.  The goal is to make the impressionable hardcore gamer feel like he has to own and beat the game before any of his online buddies do.  This way he will already be a master of the game before they even buy it, and when they play against each other online he will be able to easily dominate them, thus making the hardcore gamer feel like he has accomplished something in his otherwise meaningless existence.

6. Your health must auto-regenerate as soon as you take cover

We all like being better at things than other people.  We always have.  And the one thing that the hardcore gamer thinks he is better at than other people is video games.  But are they really better at video games than normal people, or do they just spend a lot more time playing them?  Hardcore gamers like their video games to be long and involved, but not necessarily hard.  They like the games they play to take 20+ hours to beat so that casual gamers who actually have lives outside of video games will never be able to beat them.  And yet at the same time the hardcore gamer wants to be able to beat these games himself, so they can’t be too hard, just really long.  Let’s face it, dying isn’t fun.  These games have to be easy enough so that the hardcore can win and thus feel better about himself.   One way to make video games easier is to have your health meter automatically regenerate whenever you take cover.  This makes the game take longer, while at the same time making it easier.  In Contra you didn’t have a health meter.  One shot and you were dead.  That’s why the hardcore gamer usually prefers modern games over the classics.

5. Should have some sort of multiplayer mode where 12 year olds can talk in l33t speak

All hardcore games have an online multiplayer mode.  This is where hardcore gamers get most of their social interaction.  To deal with that fact that they are social outcasts, hardcore gamers have invented their own language. In one of the most childish reactions a group of people could have, they further force their own isolation by creating a useless and annoying language. Leet speak allows groups of “hardcore gamers” to bash on their most hated enemy, the casual gamer, without the casual gamer even knowing its happening. This is important, as the average casual gamer is far more physically fit and could easily beat the living hell out of a hardcore gamer, should they be found out. Leet speak further makes the hardcore gamer feel special. Every waking second reminds the hardcore gamer that they are in fact gigantic wastes of life, but at least there is one thing that the average person can’t figure out. I mean who could possibly crack the complex code that is leet speak? I mean replacing vowels with numbers, I don’t get it, but then again I’m not a “hardcore gamer.”

4. Must appeal to 12 year olds. (lots of guns and boobies)

The average age of your typical hardcore gamer is 35, we have done vast amounts of research and this is the number that our monkey comes up with time and time again. The average living quarters of your hardcore gamer is 33% parent’s basement, 33% parents attic, and 33% above parents garage. Again our fact checking kittens have run these numbers repeatedly and no variation has been seen. What’s more interesting is that our psychological research team has found out that the average maturity level of your hardcore gamer is roughly 12. Therefore a game which would appeal to the hardcore gamer must appeal to a 12 year old. What do 12 year olds think about, well mainly boobies. Therefore the easy marketing tactic is to place lots of scantily clad women into hardcore games to attract as many hardcore gamers as possible. We here at OW find it interesting that despite all the hardcore gamer’s ranting about how un-intelligent your average person is the average hardcore gamer is generally attracted to the same things. The same basic human principles motivate them, however, they are so socially retarded they are unable to act on them. Hence video games based on violence and mayhem. Your average 12 year old loves running around building forts, smashing stuff, and generally getting into mischief. The average hardcore gamer is a 12 year old trapped in a giant sweaty body with little social interaction and lots of video games. Therefore a game deemed hardcore must have lots of things that a 12 year old would love.

3. Can not have any colors other than brown, green, gray, red, and black

“Hardcore” games almost always evoke brooding aesthetics not only in theme but in appearance. You don’t even know where you’re going in some levels in these games, but at least you’re comforted in knowing that you have a big gun to randomly shoot in the dark at enemies that you can barely see. It helps to have a mode on your TV that brightens up your screen. It also helps to have glasses on when playing these games. If you don’t have either, expect to walk around these games like you were a blind person. Cashing in on the conditioned spookiness of the dark never came so easy for video game makers as it does in the modern hardcore game.

2. 80% of the budget should go toward the graphics, give the rest to marketing.

The more realistic and dark the graphics in a game are, the more likely it is that it will appeal to the hardcore gamer.  To the hardcore gamer, games with graphics that are too cartoonish (like most of the games on the Nintendo Wii, for example) will appeal to the casual gamer crowd, and so no matter how much fun these might be games to play, a true hardcore gamer would never admit to enjoying them.  So when designing a game for hardcore gamers, companies like Valve and Guerilla Games spend as much money as they can on making the graphics look as realistic as possible, with minimal effort put into the actual gameplay itself.  As we saw earlier, the rest of the budget for these games goes to the excessive marketing in order to hype them up to epic proportions so that the hardcore gamer feels like if he doesn’t buy the game and beat it before all of his friends do, he’ll lose all of the respect of the hardcore gaming community.

1. Everyone on N4G likes it

If you need to know the status quo in the gaming world where do you go? N4G. Here you can talk about Kill Zone 2, Kill Zone 2, or how much better Kill Zone 2 is than Kill Zone 1. This is the website where everyone goes to be different by completely agreeing with each other on all the major gaming issues. Can’t get a girlfriend, live in your parents basement, kind of smell bad, have acne problems? Then go to N4G. Sure there may be some argument as to the degree hardcore, but if a game is recognized as good by the crew over at N4G then you know it’s hardcore. How does a population of people who claim difference should be celebrated, that the popular people are all just clones of each other, that girls only like the same jerk, stand out? Well they go to N4G and agree on everything. And what happens when something different actual does come along? Well they shun it. They won’t let it sit at their lunch table and they call it mean names. In a sense they do what all the bullies at school do to them. You see the hardcore gamer is only skin deep; granted the skin is greasy, red and blotchy, and very pale. The hardcore gamer just wants to fit in, therefore they all like to agree with each other.

30. Ninjis

The Ninjis made their first appearance in Super Mario 2. It was assumed that they were minions of Wart, subsequent games, however, taught us two lessons; first the Ninjis would work for Bowser, which means must have been some sort of mercenaries, and second that they had some strange ability to cross between the dream world and the real world. That makes them more powerful than Freddy Krueger in my book. I would also imagine that they had tons of training, the title “Ninji” was most likely not given out to anybody. You probably had to be shaped like a star previously as well. I think it would be difficult to have to mold yourself into one afterwards. An office poll shows that these guys have the same coolness that Boba Fett had before Lucas ruined Star Wars. They are just rare enough that it give them a mystique of awesome. Thank God Lucas doesn’t run Nintendo.

29. Shy Guys

The shy guys are an odd bunch. They also made their first appearance in Mario 2 as agents of Wart, though like the ninjis they apparently were able to leave Subcon as they appeared in subsequent games. Much like the koopa troopas they came in a variety of colors and abilities. Some would walk off cliffs to their death, while others had the good sense to turn around. They never seemed all that shy as they would head right toward which ever character you would happen to be playing at the time. Like most of the enemies in Subcon they were easily dealt with and could be used as a weapon against each other. A rather humiliating experience I would imagine.

28. Piranha Plant

You have to give Bowser credit for these nasty little plants. All of us here at OW have owned a venus fly trap at one point or another and we all have similar stories of failure. No matter what you did they always died. Bowser on the other hand had one growing in practically every pipe in the entire game. We don’t know what he did, but I would love to find out. They also came in a couple of different flavors; the timid green ones, the fearless red ones, fire breathing versions, some that walked and spit spiked balls, some that jumped, and some that flew. Mario had to think twice before jumping down a pipe because most likely a hungry piranha plant was waiting for him.

27. Boss Bass

Boss Bass was found in Mario 3 in the third water world. He was annoying not just because he could eat you alive, but because every time you killed him, he came back. This eternal recurrence ability made him one of the more powerful enemies in all of Mario 3. Shells and fireballs could destroy him, but he would be back in a second waiting for a platform to lower so he could eat you alive. Spending entire levels trying to avoid this bastard proved to be one of the most controller-breaking moments in Mario 3. Give me the whistle. I don’t want to have to face this fish over and over.

26. Triclyde

Triclyde was a boss in Mario 2, and one of the most difficult at that. He was much more difficult than Wart who could be beaten with mere vegetables. This three headed snake inhabited Mario’s land of dreams, spewing the most powerful fireballs in the game at him. If you knew how to skip levels by finding warp zones you wouldn’t have to face him. If you didn’t though, you would be facing a boss as difficult as Ridely from Metroid. Triclyde was the most nefarious looking boss in all of Mario 2, and for good reason when experiencing how hard he was.

25. Ludwig Von Koopa

The eldest of the Koopa kids, Ludwig von Koopa was the king of Pipe World in Mario 3. One wonders why he had a different last name than the other Kooplings, but no matter, he was one of the most difficult final bosses to face on the conspicuous airships at the end of each level. He was quick, and he threw out his wand smoke rings faster than most other kooplings and just looked freaking mad. A little known fact about Ludwig was that he was also a composer. What kind of music did Ludwig compose? With his first name you could probably infer that he tried to make classical pieces like Beethoven, but we never hear. Maybe he created the whole soundtrack of Mario 3. Maybe this was his greatest legacy.

24. Rocky Wrench

This devious demon was first introduced to the gaming population in Super Mario Brother 3. These characters are some seriously sneaky bad guys, with an orange furry coat and black shells, and sporting the ability to burrow inside objects and pop up when ready to attack. Their primary target being Mario or Luigi, these menacing little maniacs armed themselves with an unlimited supply of shiny heavyweight wrenches. Tossing them through the air, the wrench would keep an impeccable straight line towards Mario’s face, disobeying all laws of gravity and air resistance. Not only were these wrenches shiny and sneaky, they were doubled up and spinning at a high velocity, for an extra hard hit. Found in the wooden airships or tanks, these mole-like enemies would pop up, lid still balancing on their head, throw their evil wrenches and pop back into their hole quite quickly. Jumping on these enemies’ heads the split second before they burrowed back down to safety is an especially fulfilling action. Watching them fall down below the airship or tank off the screen is just icing on the cake.

23. Boomerang Brothers

Its obvious that these guys are Australian. Nobody can handle a boomerang like the Aussies. It also means that they are the descendants of criminals the British government not only wanted removed from society, but actually did remove from the country. That being said these dudes must be bad ass. We first met them in Super Mario 3 when Bowser must have conscripted Aussie turtles to supplement his otherwise vast army. Sadly they weren’t all that tough. They used boomerangs that were comically too big and also too slow. I would have used small fast ones, that way Mario wouldn’t see what’s coming. Then again the Aussies aren’t know for being the smartest bunch, let alone the Aussie turtles.

22. Mouser

What needs to be said about a larger than life mouse with a bomb fetish who feels the need to wear gloves, glasses, and boots, but no undergarments? This lovable bomb throwing rodent was introduced to the public in Super Mario 2 as a Stage Boss standing in the way of Mario as he attempts take Subcon by storm. While his attempt to blow Mario to bits usually ended with Mouser being blasted by his own bombs, his grasp on our memory still emains intact. Mouser was also a regular on the Super Mario Brothers Super Show acting out as King Koopa’s second in command. The show gave him a bit more personality, having him speak with a German accent and plaingy dress up with the Koopa Klan, depending on which “Mushroom Kingdom World” they happened to be in. So to all you fans of Crazy Naked German Bombers, this is the character for you!

21. Buzzy Beetle

Buzzy Beetle. The name is synonymous with “fire-proof”. Every gamer knows that the only difference between Buzzy Beetle and a regular Koopa Troopa is that Buzzy can’t be taken out by fireballs. One wonders what the logic was behind making beetles impervious to fireballs, while turtles and mushroom men weren’t. Granted its not like these guys really look like any beetles I’ve ever seen anyway, but they sure were tough once you got them spinning.

So here you have it. DestructoMaximo’s top 10 movies of all time. Ever. Without question.

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10. Labyrinth

About once every ten years, Bowie comes out of hiding to show everyone he is still the coolest man alive. In the 00’s, we had Zoolander, where Bowie walks into the underground walk-off like some god of hipness to offer his hand in judgment. In the 90’s he teamed up with Trent Reznor, at the height of his relevance, to collaborate on “I’m Afraid of Americans,” a sentiment held by the entire world and most Americans. But it was in the 1980’s that Bowie cemented himself as the epitomized cool of my generation’s youth. He sported a perfectly feathered and blow-dried Euro-Mullet and looked like some half-lion, half-drag queen. Bowie the goblin king kidnapped a baby and creepily juggled a glass orb while leading the kid’s sister through his Jim Henson created labyrinth of Muppets to prove she loves her baby-brother enough to earn him back. We don’t really know why Bowie wants to keep the baby so badly, but it’s strangely Jacksonesque to watch him dangle the little brat over the Escher staircases in full creepiness. I still break into a “Dance, Magic Dance” number every once in a while for my wife. IMHO, The coolest Bowie was the transgender goblin king, but I’ll let you judge for your selves.

9. Ghostbusters

When I was 5, my dad took me to my first movie. When I was 6, that movie came out on VHS, and I rented it every Friday night for about a year. That movie was Ghostbusters. I can’t really tell you why it was such a great movie. I never (even at 5) thought Sigourney Weaver was particularly hot. Rick Morranis as a supporting character was a dumb choice, but an 80’s comedy prerequisite. It may have been the idea that scientists could drop their boring research and become adventure heroes (this fantasy got stronger as I aged and became a scientist). It could have been the complicated brotherly dynamic between the ghostbuster team. It could have been the underlying theme of ridding NY of its negativity in order to release its seedy demons (a theme that was, unfortunately, smashed into our skulls in GB2…to horrible results). But really, I think it boiled down to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man being awesome and hearing the word “ass” on screen. What do you want from a 5 year old?

8.  The Life of Brian

I want to start out by saying it is not obligatory to include a Monty Python film on a nerd site, this movie deserves to be here. What if you were born on the same day as Jesus, right next door, and were constantly mistaken for the messiah? The very idea of having to spend your life in the shadow of Jesus is hilarious and sad. Have Monty Python tackle the subject and you have comedic perfection. After all, “Life’s a piece of shit, when you look at it!”

7. A Beautiful Mind

If any of you have read this (looooong) book, you know what a feat it was to get it turned into a movie. Quite frankly, I can’t come close to understanding how this was pitched to a studio. “Um, we have this antisocial genius who is an expert on game theory. He was a recluse for years due to crippling mental illness, and oh, he won the Nobel Prize in economics. Can we turn his life story into a movie?” John Nash is absolutely a genius, if you’ve read any of his work on game theory you know that already. His recent outspokenness on how Keynesian economics has destroyed the fabric of the US and how we should revert back to the gold standard brought him back into the intellectual mainstream and put this movie back on my top 10 list. Read the book, read his papers, then watch the movie (if you haven’t done the first two, do them and watch it again).

6. Godfather

When family is involved, everything is personal. When my little brother was sniped with a bb gun by the neighborhood bully, I reluctantly went to his door, pulled him out of the house, and told him if he ever bothered my brother again I would make his life unpleasant. That night I crawled into their yard ninja style and shut their power off. In the Godfather, Michael returns from the war intent on living a normal life. His father runs the most influential mafia family in the states, and is intent on having Michael take over the family business. Much like I was happy not interacting with my asswipe bully neighbor, it took the pride-filled defense of my family to get me involved. When Michael’s father was gunned down after refusing to put a hand into the drug racket, Michael had no choice but to take the situation into his own hands and involve himself in the family in order to avenge the attack on his dad. Sometimes you need to readjust your moral scale in order to wage war against the greater of two evils.

5. E.T.

What’s the first thing you think of when you see Reese’s Pieces (ooh, a piece of candy!)? Or when your ancient grandfather points his shaky finger at something he’s cranky about (ouch)? How great was it when you first heard a pint-sized Drew Barrymore utter the words “penisbreath?” This movie made every boy (and probably girl) from my generation ride their bikes (ah, memories of my awesome star wars huffy) off of home made ramps imagining cruising weightlessly across the moon. Aside from this awesomeness, the movie also taught us not to fear aliens, lessons about racism, that feds should be hated (a point reinforced years later when my freaker friends had their towers confiscated, shutting down our BBS), and that sometimes your parents aren’t perfect. In short, E.T. is awesome. A collector’s edition of ET dressed up in a sundress greets you as you walk into my house.

4. Raiders of the Lost Ark

This movie invented the adventurer stereotype, making all re-watchings pale in comparison to that first time in the theater. Adventure bound history nerd, Indy, is hired by the government to find the ark of the covenant…the literal holy grail of archeologists. He has an obligatory arch nemesis who is content to let Indy do all of the footwork so he can steal the ark. If this weren’t enough, there is also a band of Nazis he gets to foil on the way to the ark. Did I mention a hot lady who starts off hating him until the sexual tension boils over? We could replace the ark with the destruction of the Deathstar, the Nazi’s with the Empire, The nemesis with Jaba (or Fett, really), and the leggy blonde with the rebel princess. Whatever, the equation works, the direction works, and Ford works Han without the MF.

3. Fellowship of the Ring

Long ago ZM and I used to run around in the woods located behind each others’ houses. Each were deemed Mirkwood, and we often had to fight dragons, orcs, and spiders. These novels were, and quite possibly still are, one of the greatest series of books ever written. When I first heard they were being made into live action movies I was a bit nervous, but what Peter Jackson did was nothing short of miraculous. Each scene had the perfect feeling. The Shire was happy and cheerful, Rivendell was magical and foreign, and everything felt and looked exactly as it should. Peter Jackson was able to do something Lucas could only dream of, making a movie with CGI feel real. Lucas’s graphics are corny and cartoonish, while Jackson only uses them to enhance the scene, make things look more epic, and draw you further into the picture he is painting. Quit oppositely Lucas pushes the viewer away. Now there are a few scenes I take issue with, the shield skateboard in Two Towers, and sliding down the oliphant’s trunk as it dies in Return of the King, but the rest of the movies are so great that I have chosen to overlook them. Also interestingly I’m not scared of the prequel to this movie, I’m sure Jackson will best Lucas in that respect as well.

2. Empire

“No, there is another.” With these words, spoken by Yoda to Obi-Wan immediately after sending Luke off on a death mission and telling him to sacrifice his friends for the sake of their cause, I was transformed into something new. Why would Yoda, a good guy in my 8 year old mind, tell Luke to let the other good guys die Was Lando a good guy? My boys were just ambushed by the Empire in Bespin! Was Boba Fett bad, or just trying to do the job he was hired to do? It seemed as if no one was all good, and no one was all bad. Even Luke had much anger in him, much to learn he still has as he throws away the rest of his training…at least we know Vader is definitely all bad. For the first time in my young life there was a gray area. Before Empire there were good guys and bad guys. Friends and enemies. Autobots and Decepticons. Professor X and Magneto. You get the point. Now there was something new, people were more complicated. I started to like Han more than Luke because of his relative badness. I went through the awkwardness of puberty for 20 years, but when we learned that Luke was Vader’s son, I knew it had taken me 2 hours to become a man. I went into the kitchen and gave my dad a hug, and then I checked to see if his arm was mechanical.

1. Braveheart

Braveheart is the first and only movie I have openly cried watching with my friends as an adult. It was ok, they were crying too. We didn’t cry when young William’s father was hauled back dead from battle, or when his wife’s throat was slit by the English in the middle of the village. Those events made us William Wallace. They filled us with all of the raw rage, power, and FTM do-or-die that pumped through William Wallace’s veins as he trashed (and mooned) the English in epic bloody broadsword wielding battles. Like watching a football game we all roared at the TV during those fights. We all high-fived when he finally got to toss the beans to Princess Isabelle. But it was the unexpected, heart wrenchingly defiant scream of FREEDOM as he is being publicly disemboweled that we all noticed the streams of tears on each other’s faces. I am 7/8 Swede and 1/8 Scott, that 1/8 was very proud by the end of this movie…burn it.

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10. Super Punch Out! (SNES)

The progenitor to “Super Punch Out” was of course, “Mike Tyson’s Punch-out” for the NES which is one of the better games of all time in its own regard. But for all that the original offered, the Super NES version doubled in enjoyment adding more ingenious characters and circuits than the former. The playability increased more too with the controls responding seamlessly to your hand movements. All the fighters were endowed with iridescent colors and personality up the wazoo. Mad Clown was the most evil of evil clowns you have ever encountered in or outside any video game. Super Macho Man was the goofiest of bodybuilders you could ever encounter showing off his muscles at any chance he could get. Masked Muscle was so fun to look at that you actually enjoyed having to fight the nefarious Mexican heavyweight. While the personality and design of the characters were expedient for making all ages enjoy this game, it was the final boss in “Nick Bruiser” that appropriately scared the player into reconsidering the bout as Bruiser slowly walks to the middle of the ring to fight you. You hear each stomp as his boots traverse the canvass to meet Mac face to face. More additions to Super Punch Out include a time trial mode where you attempt to beat the best in the world by knocking down your opponents in record time, some fighters in 10 seconds or less like the infamous “Gabby Jay” who reminded the player of the weakness of Glass Joe. All these qualities combined to make Super Punch Out a slightly more enjoyable game than the original, and if we creating our top 100 list with this first and foremost in mind (enjoyment factor), than Super Punch Out must edge out the original, even if the original firstly brought in the great idea.

9. Illusion of Gaia

From the title screen, you hear a Wagnerian sweeping crescendo signifying an aggrandized adventure ahead. On top of that, you see a picture of the world from outer space. Yes, Illusion of Gaia was a game of world significance. You traveled the world seeking out myths that have been discovered throughout time in the real world, from Mayan culture to Chinese culture, in an investigation to the whereabouts of your journeymen father who was lost at the Tower of Babel. The story along the way is invigorating and often romantic with multiple people falling in love. You’re even cast out at sea for a prolonged period of a time with a princess who becomes stricken by the grandiose nature of the sea, where she stops becoming nagging and starts eating the fish you catch for her. Illusion of Gaia as an RPG is much more like “Zelda: Link to the Past” than a Final Fantasy three. There is no traditional experience build up and turn-taking battles, instead the protagonist “Will”, will gain experience by beating all the enemies in a room and will do so in real time fashion, something much preferred for adventure game players than the former style. Throughout the adventure, you have the option of changing into different warriors like “Friedman” and “Shadow” who you need to use to get past specific areas in the game. The towns are filled with a varied cast of interesting people who all are informed by their indigenous cultural “memes” that help you with information to pass on to new areas, and give you a sense of a Romanized world-view, that you will remember past completing this game. Illusion of Gaia is often overlooked within the great games in RPG history. This is a mistake as the story line and game play are absolutely superlative.

8. Super Mario World

Super Mario World for the SNES was one of the first games developed for the new system, and showed off all the new advantages of a 16 bit system. Boss’s would fly at your screen taking up the whole screen, 3D imagery stood out from the world map showing much more depth in graphic technology at the time, and worlds were larger with more memory in the cartridges for the new system. Super Mario World utilized all these extras in the jump from 8 Bit to 16 bit. Super Mario World for SNES was mostly like Mario 3 for Nintendo, except there were even more hidden areas to uncover and much more radiant looking enemies to contend with. This game had a style and entertainment value of its own distinguished from previous Mario’s. Yoshi was a great new addition, as you could ride him around and gulp enemies Tony Robins style, along with spewing out fireballs in a quicker fashion than Mario ever could. Also conspicuous in this game was the stereo imaging of the sounds and the music utilized by the new 16 bit technology that made a drastic effect of the mono-auditory technology of the 8 bit NES. Bowser was bigger and better than ever with a massive helicopter shooting projectiles at Mario from all angles. In the end, Super Mario World was another great Mario game with the additions of the new systems technology. The importance of all new Mario games on new Nintendo systems though was that none of the greatness of the original Mario was ever lost, for all the spice and progression of technology. Nintendo understands that what first and foremost makes a good game is creativity and imagination.

7. Super Mario Kart

Mario Kart for the SNES made the Nintendo market even more massive then it had already become. Being able to take all your favorite characters from old school Mario and using them on intricate race tracks proved to be one of the more enjoyable moments for the SNES. Most people picked Mario to race with because he wasn’t weak in any category specifically. Using Bowser though was for only the best racers. His weight would make it hard to accelerate, but if you could avoid obstacles his acceleration speed was the best. The music was also a strong point in Mario Kart. This soundtrack would be sought after like the best SNES RPG’s. The Mario Kart legacy would first start with this SNES game.

6. Secret of Mana

Secret of Mana is without a doubt one of the top 5 RPG’s ever created and easily in the top 10 games ever created. It was a Squaresoft RPG for SNES, meaning it was going to be one of the greatest games ever created with the kind of thought put into it that a great philosopher would put into his magnum opus. Great RPG’s have the character of reading fiction, but having absolute real-time interaction with the book your reading. Playing this game is on par with reading “the lion the witch and the wardrobe” for the first time. Right away, from the cover of the game, you could tell that this game was going to be incandescent and massive in breadth. Three heroes overlooking a massive tree in the middle of a massive forest served as the game cover. The largeness of the theme would be equaled by the actual game itself that was huge, but never ever boring. The big advantage that Secret of Mana has over other RPG’s is the multi-player action that was never found in RPG’s afterwards. You could play this game with two other people and take it on habitually with them, after school, and even on Friday nights when everyone else was gearing up for banal pseudo social hour time. It’s unbelievable to think that no other RPG afterwards utilized this power, and understood that there are groups of people who want to go on massive RPG adventures together. For some reason, the RPG theme is understood as primarily single-player. This is a mistake by the creators of these games that “Mana” cashed in on. Every single tune in this game is memorable, which makes you wonder why every single tune in new games are never memorable. Every single land in this game is filled with beautiful, distinctive themes, which makes you wonder why RPG’s on new systems, with all the new technology involved, pale in comparison to the impact of this 16 bit installment. There’s a little saying that goes “It’s not the Arrow, it’s the Indian”. This may be the best example of that maxim in gaming history. One could write about this game forever, but it’s not to be understood by what others write about it…

5. Donkey Kong Country

Rare took the Donkey Kong brand name and transformed it into one of the strongest adventure games for the 16 bit medium. In DKC, you had the freedom to move back and forth between levels and play multifarious side games. Meeting your family along the way proved to be a creative and imaginative leap for the Donkey Kong. Getting to talk to DK’s cranky grandfather or his cool surfin’ buddy gave the DK brand name pizzazz and nuanced not seen in any adventure game before, let along the Donkey Kong series. DKC was also a big leap in terms of graphics. Rare took traditional 16-bit graphics and made them into the most innovative graphics for the 16-bit era. Donkey Kong looked as colorful and animated as ever throwing barrels and pouncing on chompers. Rare took an already successful series and made it even more successful, an accolade which is recognized in our top 5 video game developers of all time.

4. Super Metroid

The only bad thing about Super Metroid for the SNES are the hand cramps you will get from playing it so much. In Super Metroid, the successor to Metroid for Nintendo and Gameboy, we see Samus back on Zebes fighting old enemies from her prior outing; Craid and Ridely are back, not to mention the plethora of new space pirates trying to get a lock of Samus’s flowing hair. The suspense of this game has been unmatched by any other. As you are about to fight Craid, the music in the room before changes to the somberness of a Beethoven Sonata, and you come across a previous journeyman being eaten up by space insects. This type of engagement with the player is often lost in the “high-tech” musings of current video game makers. Between the valence of the soundtrack and the emotional ending where “you-know-who” comes to save you, you are in for a one of the most amazing video game experiences of your life. When playing this game for the first time, know that you will never be able to play ii for the first time again…

3. Final Fantasy 3
Final Fantasy 3, yes 3, is one of the greatest RPGs ever made. We here at OW refuse to adopt the Japanese numbering order. If anything Japan should have to re-write their numbering to fit the order of release here. You see OW bleeds red white and blue. And as any true American knows we are the greatest country every, if you don’t think so we’ll invade you and force our culture on you. Japan should truly decide whether the numbering they use is worth it or not. We’ve invaded bigger countries for less. Anyway I digress. This game is awesome, it’s one of the first games where the bad guy actually wins and it has an incredibly interesting plot. You can all but pull yourself away when you have to return to the real world.

2. Chrono Trigger

The theme music for 600.AD is perhaps the most recognized RPG theme in RPG history. Hit up Youtube now and you will find variegated renditions, from the simple piano mimicry, to obscure oboe afflatuses. This is just the music though…There’s also the game…made by “Sqauresoft”, which means it’s impossible that it wasn’t a great game. The theme of Chrono Trigger was arguably the best, most thought out idea for any RPG ever made. Taking advantage of the idea of the chronology of actual world history, you were to adventure across every span of the world’s totality, even to the “end of time” which gave you goose bumps knowing you were on the brink of timelessness. The creators of this game must have been reading Hegel before and during the development in this game, as creating a game with the theme of personally following out the logic of history, was surely an ode to Hegel’s essential philosophical insights. Philosophy aside, this game was effulgent and munificent in its delivery. The entire game, you think that the last boss is Magus, until you beat him and realize that he becomes one of the members of your party. Its here you realize how much time you spent playing this game, and how much more time you will have to spend to get at the real ending. Like all great RPG’s, this game had a series of fake endings, where you could play the game 15 hours and get a bad ending with the world being destroyed, to be completely unsatisfied in your “accomplishment” up to that point. The realization that you have more times to explore with their own massive story lines in these lands led to a feeling of grandiosity, the hallmark of all square soft games. Chrono Trigger is up there with Final Fantasy 3 and Secret of Mana as some of the best accomplishments in gaming history. It’s with this knowledge that one then wants to understand what was going on in the minds of the creators of these games. To make games like this required inspiration and muse not needed in modern game making that merely requires “sex appeal”. Video games did have a golden age. Chrono Trigger represents that golden age…

1. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past is the perfect game. Its got the unlikely hero, the pretty princess, and the evil villain and his countless minions. As well as a great story, parallel universes, side-plots and quests, a place called Death Mountain, was one of the first games that would change the character when you got new weapons/armour, a boomerang, a better boomerang, chickens, a mysterious forest, a sword in the stone, a triforce, a secret society of underwater mermen, running, fighting, jumping, puzzles, more princesses, monsters, mayhem, graveyards, secret passages, bombs, better bombs, running shoes, magical wands, a tranquil town, you can catch butterflies, fairy babes, a simple map/with tons to explore, and on and on…

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