all time favorite video games 15-14

We're in the top 15, and this will be my last post for at least two days. My parents are bravely trying to avoid closed roads and high winds and snow to make it up to visit us. The lure the UP 200 Dog Sled Races is just too much... In other news, Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers was at NMU yesterday night. As I was still too sick to get to work, I left the house for the first time in three days to go and see him. He was rather funny. Not too rude and crude, and a great sense of improv-ed jokes as he went along. He ripped us for having him in the volleyball arena and a good time was had by all. I posed some pictures and videos on Facebook earlier today.

15. Tecmo Bowl (NES)
Tecmo Bowl is without a doubt my favorite main sport sports game of all time. Main sport being baseball, hockey, basketball, and football. I just realized that one of each type made the top 75. Generally speaking though, Tecmo Bowl is NOT our highest ranked sports game on this list. Puzzled? Soon you'll have your answer. Tecmo Bowl is a great blend of easy to use controls and...uh...graph--no...uh...play opt--no, not that either...hmm... Well, truthfully, Tecmo Bowl is only great because of how damn easy it was to play. The graphics suck. You get to choose a grand total of four plays on offense and (gasp!) the same four plays on defense. Truthfully, I hate football in general, much less games based on football, but Tecmo Bowl was so accessible that a guy could fall in love with it even though he couldn't tell you names of the positions in the game.I always play as the 49ers, due to the strengths of Joe Montana, Jim Rice, and Ronnie Lott. Why, you ask, are there only 12 teams in the game? Who knows. Why are there only nine players on each team? Who cares? All I know is that this game is damn hard to stop playing once you start. Sure you can usually kill the computer 56-18 or so, but that's the fun of it! You can block most field goals, intercept a few passes a game, and break tackles in the meantime. This game had it all. And don't even get me started on those beautiful 8-bit starlets that are the halftime cheerleaders...

14. Super Mario World (SNES)
The Super Mario games for the NES were good, but Super Mario World was better. The world was bigger, the powers greater, the enemies cooler, and above all the graphics rocked. I remember being at a friend's house and watching him play one of the mini-dungeons where you fight the Koopas on the fence looking thing. When he tapped the wall and spun around behind the foreground, I nearly shat myself. How was this possible? Video games were changing, and Mario was leading the way once again. The story was unique and not set in the Mushroom Kingdom, but rather in Dinosaur Isle. Yoshi was introduced in not one, two, or three, but four colors.
The bosses were unique as well, with the tradition of the Koopa Kids from Mario 3 carried over to this much grander scale. What really separated this game for me was the multiple ways you could clear stages. New paths would open up and the overworld would literally change. Did you remember to find the Top Secret area? Some of the stages were excruciatingly hard, but all of them were beautiful. This was a great game and also a great two player game, with Nintendo conveniently allowing a good player to support a bad player by giving them extra guys. And just when you thought you had beaten all the stages, the Star World opened up. And after you whooped that, the Special World opened up. The Special World is still one of the hardest collections of stages ever seen. This ranks as the highest Mario game on our countdown.

UP NEXT: A Gamecube remake of an old PSX game and an N64 sequel to a popular SNES game...any guesses!? Any games you think are still to come?