It's data nuggets like this which make one gamer's project to play and compare each and every Western-released game in the SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, and TG-16 game libraries fascinating.
The man behind this fourth-gen mayhem is Nathan Lockard, a video game and data enthusiast who wrote a book about gaming before working on Nintendo Power in the late '90s.
A veteran of the 16-bit era, he decided that existing datasets were insufficient and took it upon himself to play and score 1,515 games — that's 716 SNES, 704 Genesis, and 95 TG-16 titles — released between 1989 and 1998, recently uploading the entire archive to a blog. (And yes, we know, the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine's CPU was only 8-bit, but the 16-bit GPUs elevate it over the abilities of the NES and Master System, so let's roll with it!)
Assigning a weighted score for Gameplay, Level Design, Theme, Art Style, and Sound Design, which totted up to an out-of-100 review score, Nathan has evaluated the best and worst home console games of the fourth generation, along with a metric ton of mediocrity. The short reviews are presented in note form, with the scores and data gathered from them generally taking precedence over the prose.
So, did this endeavor mean playing every game to completion?
Er, no — that would be unmanageably time-consuming for over 1500 games. Detailing his methodology, every game was given "at least 30 minutes of playtime," with some genres (Adventure, Strategy, RPG) demanding longer. "Any less, and I wouldn't feel I could give a proper evaluation; any more, and I would never finish the project."
What about the best games, then? Well, it seems Nathan has a strong preference for the SNES, with a whopping six games netting the top 100 points (that's Chrono Trigger, Contra 3, Link to the Past, Mario World, Yoshi's Island, and Super Metroid) and Nintendo's console stormed the rest of the top 50. The highest-scoring TG-16 title was Soldier Blade (91) with Gunstar Heroes taking the top spot on Mega Drive with a 90.
You can check out the top 50 ranking in the image below:
That dubious honor gets split three ways between Genesis and SNES, with Dick Vitale's "Awesome, Baby!" College Hoops ("Looks and plays a bit like NCAA Basketball for the SNES, but runs at 1 FPS and the sprite scaling is so atrocious that you can't tell what's happening anyway"), Super Hydlide ("This is the worst Zelda clone, the worst adventure title, the worst game I can remember having played. Complete garbage"), and Pit Fighter ("The first rule of Pit Fighter is we do not talk about Pit Fighter") all scoring a paltry 2/100. Ouch.
We'll have to agree to disagree with Nathan about the Mega Drive sound chip (nothing that can produce Streets Of Rage 2's soundtrack could be "truly awful"), but we salute his dedication to a very specific cause. If you're wondering where a beloved favorite ranks in his estimations, head over to the All 16-Bit blog to see the rankings sorted by console.
