With so many “Top” lists going around, I figured I would give a list a shot. Instead of bringing you a Top 10 or 5 of the best games of the year, I decided to bring you a list of my favorite games that I played in ‘09 that didn’t actually come out in ‘09. So enjoy my personal picks, and maybe some of them will inspire you to hunt them down and try them yourself if you haven’t already.

5. Soul Bubbles – Nintendo DS – Released June 2008

For whatever reason Soul Bubbles is a Toys R Us exclusive. I don’t really know who thought that was a good idea, but it is what it is. I happened across Soul Bubbles around June of ‘09 and saw it for a measly 10 dollars. Hearing nothing but good things about the game I decided to give it a shot. Developed by a little company named Mekensleep, Soul Bubbles feels like a modern day version of the cult classic PC and Gameboy game Bubble Ghost. The idea is that the player has to protect a bunch of spirits by drawing a bubble (or bubbles) around them and navigating them through a series of mazes and obstacles. It is a simple concept, but the developers throw a few curve balls throughout the game that requires the player to use their head a bit, like knowing when to split bubbles, suck the air out of them, and eventually mixing them with different elements like water and gas. It is a breezy, often times relaxing game that is worth a serious look. In fact, I just spotted a bunch of them at my local Toys R Us just last night for the same price I bought it back in a June. Check it out.

4. Braid – Xbox 360 – Released August 2008

I have been wanting to write about Uncharted 2: Among Thieves since I finished it well over a month ago. The thing that sucks about putting stuff off like writing thoughts on a game that you finished a while back is that you start to forget certain aspects about it. I’m always against typing up some sort of review coming hot off a game because many times you lose perspective. With a game like Uncharted, it’s easy to get lost in all the glitz and glam since the game plays out like an incredible roller coaster ride. What isn’t there to like about an intense hour long train ride sequence, you know?

So here I am, attempting to write about Uncharted 2 yet again. I haven’t touched the game since I finished it, which sucks because I wanted to at least try out some of the online stuff, and I do have every intention of playing it again on a harder difficulty setting. Unfortunately it’s been so long since I played the game that the whole experience kind of feels like a blur now. I know I loved it, and I know I can’t wait to play through it again, so I guess that is the biggest stamp of approval I can give the game.

If I were to sit here and type up a normal review of the game, it would literally echo what I wrote about the first game. Uncharted is fantastic, Naughtydog has some of the most capable writers, animators and designers of any company out there. The tech in this game is impressive as heck, and the fact that Nate’s character model looks light years better than his old one still sort of blows my mind. So much has already been said about Uncharted 2 elsewhere that I feel like I don’t really have anything new to bring to the table, so why not complain about some of it? I don’t really see anyone complaining about anything from it, because there honestly isn’t much.

Most brawlers these days have more in common with God of War and Ninja Gaiden than they do traditional 2D beat ‘em ups of yesterday like Turtles In Time or Double Dragon. Vanillaware’s latest Wii effort, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, takes the core concepts that fuels today’s action games, and blends them seamlessly within a classic 2D environment, while at the same time manages to throw in a large helping of JRPG, and even a dash of Metroid to keep things interesting.

Since the game is mainly about fighting, you’d hope that it better be good, and in this case I believe Vanillaware nailed it. The game opens up with a quick tutorial showing players every single move available to them. At first it seems a little overbearing, but considering they’re showing you everything (minus special attacks that differ from sword to sword) it only takes a little while to adjust. Within a few hours, most players will likely be whizzing around the screen slashing up ninjas and monks in style. In an effort to add a bit of depth to the actual battles, players must juggle between three swords of choice, each with their own “health” meter. General use of the blade, by either attacking or blocking, slowly wears the meter down, and once it drops, the sword breaks. Thankfully the swords heal on their own, but there are plenty of times where bad guys will snap your blades with a single blow, rendering you almost useless in battle. It takes a bit of time getting used to checking on the different sword meters, but it adds a fun strategic variant to the fights.

The swords themselves all have different strengths and weaknesses, and come in either an easier to use lightweight blade (my personal choice) or a heavier long blade (which takes a bit more skill and patience to use). Outside of battles, which happen randomly like in a JRPG, players have the ability to forge new swords on the fly. Forging said swords uses a combination of souls, which are earned from fallen baddies, and spirit, which is gained from eating and cooking delicious food from items that are either picked up during play or bought from merchants.

As a long time Contra fan, it’s kind of hard to not be slightly let down by Konami’s recently released Contra Rebirth for Wii. Sure, nearly everything is in place that makes a Contra game what it is; lightening fast gun fights, cool boss set pieces, and a (somewhat) hard difficulty with lots of one hit deaths. The biggest issue with Rebirth is that it simply lacks soul. It looks and feels like Contra, but it does little to attempt to further the concepts, nor does it ever find an identity of its own. It just kind of exists, there for fans of the series to try out and think to themselves “Oh yeah, I remember this stuff.”

The game features a very brief five stages, that’s short even by Contra standards. On top of that, the game does a bit of hand holding by offering check points throughout stages and infinite continues as well. I would like to think I’m rather good at Contra games, and I was able to blow through the game in less than 2 hours. I checked my Wii total times, and I played for 40 minutes on Monday, and about an hour today (and I had to sort of relearn Stage 2 and 3 since I already forgot). At 10 dollars, the price is a little steep, especially since players can find longer, better, more challenging and cheaper Contra games through Nintendo’s service by means of Super C and Contra 3.

Then again, the length and price wouldn’t matter if the actual product was rock solid. Unfortunately, after seeing what WayForward did with the series with 2007’s Contra 4 on the DS, a game in which the developers were in love with their source material and at the same time made it their own, it makes it harder to swallow Rebirth’s simple retreading of the formula. All the set pieces you know and love are all here, meaning you’ll be shooting giant hearts, scaling walls while being attacked by large monsters, riding on missles, blowing up the defense towers, and the like. We’ve done all of these set pieces before, and better. The wall scaling part I mentioned is straight out of Contra 3, but it lacks the context, the variety of the fight, and bad ass music from its SNES brother.

Every once in a while it feels genuinely good to be absolutely wrong about something. I have a pretty bad habit of hating on something before I even give it a fair chance, though usually if word a mouth is strong enough, I might give said thing a chance. I can remember making fun of the TV series Lost before I decided to watch it, and now look, it’s probably my all time favorite show. In this particular case, Dead Space, a game released by EA about a year ago, is the latest thing where my preconceived notions about it were wrong.

It wasn’t that I hated Dead Space before playing it, I just had zero interest in it. I had thought the game was nothing more than a faceless and shallow attempt at EA trying to capture and create a new survival horror franchise that they could churn out on a yearly basis. Despite hearing really good things about Dead Space, I was confident that my judgment on the product was right.

About two weeks ago I found a copy of the game for the PS3 new at around 15 bucks at a local Target. I figured I’d bite as there wasn’t much to lose and because my PS3 hasn’t gotten much love this year. While I have yet to finish the game (I’m on the 11th Chapter), I can obviously say by this point that I was totally wrong about the game.

When I decided to get into all this Sega Genesis business, my plan was to try and find the titles that made the Genesis the machine it was. Naturally, I gravitated towards the Shinobi series, a bunch of Sega developed games that I had limited exposure to in the past. From what I have played of the Shinobi games (such as the Tengen port on the NES, and the Arcade version) I didn’t think very highly of the series, but I still wanted to give the Genesis editions a chance.

I had assumed that the Genesis games were simply ports of the Arcade games, but I was surprised to find that this wasn’t the case at all. The first game, The Revenge of Shinobi is a sequel to the Arcade original. The second game, Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi is a spin off of sorts, and while it shares the same name as it’s Arcade counterpart, it’s a completely different game. The third and final 16-bit Shinobi, Shinobi 3: Return of the Ninja Master, is also a Genesis exclusive.

My quest started off with The Revenge of Shinobi as I won it in a lot of games off eBay. One thing that never occurred to me about these games is that they were actually somewhat genre defining. I guess the reason I never liked the Shinobi games is because I wanted them, and expected them, to be like the old Ninja Gaiden titles. When I was younger, I had always assumed that Wrath of the Black Manta on the NES wanted to be like Ninja Gaiden, but as it turns out, it really wanted to be like Shinobi. This more slower paced and deliberate game style also shares a bit in common with the Rolling Thunder games.

Being a parent who is into video games means you’re constantly fighting an internal struggle. On one hand, you look at games like Dora Saves the Ice Princess and Littlest Pet Shop with utter disdain. On the other hand, you know at some point you’re going to end up playing them… and you’re going to have to act like it’s fun. I still try to be somewhat selective in the games I let my daughter play. I’m happy to say I’ve instilled a healthy dose of Kirby, Banjo Kazooie and Mario Kart into her gaming diet. Instead of the latest Pixar movie-license game I’ve introduced her to Wario Land Shake It and Rhythm Heaven.

Still, there comes a time when you have to try out things you would ordinarily avoid. enter Hasbro Family Game Night. Now, I know this is available on the Wii and PS2… but I’m writing specifically about the Xbox Live version. It’s interesting in that you download the game for free and then unlock the individual titles for 800pts ($10) each. To start you have the option of getting Scrabble, Yahtzee, Connect 4, Sorry!, Boggle, Battleship, and Sorry! Sliders. So far, I’ve only purchased Sorry! and Connect 4 as they’re pretty easy for a 4 1/2 year old to play.

At first it might seem kind of stupid to play board games on a game console, you may say to yourself “Why not just play the board game?”. However, after spending some time playing I have to say it’s a pretty genius move. Everything that is fun about the game is intact, you can play it and enjoy it as much as ever… only now you never have to clean up pieces, or set things up. Five seconds and the whole family is playing the game and having fun (mandatory fun, that is).

Plenty of people ignored ExciteTruck when it launched alongside Nintendo’s then new and shiny console. I guess the word “Excite” wasn’t enough for people to get over the trucks that adorned the cover. The game looked generic, but anyone that actually played the game knows it’s anything but that. It also didn’t help Truck’s reputation that game critics seemingly ignored the game, giving it rather low review scores and not saying anything about it. Looking back, I think IGN’s Nintendo team was the only group of critics that actually had anything genuinely nice about the game.

So Monster Games took their second stab at the Excite brand last month in the form of Excitebots. Instead of generic trucks, we now have generic and rather strange looking robots in their place, but I guess the robots were enough to convince people to actually play the game this time around. By comparison, Bots has received far more coverage than Truck, and much more praise too. It makes me wonder, did people even play the original game?

I question this because what we have here is largely the same exact game as Truck, but with a few new modes and tricks to help shake things up a bit. The game is still all about getting the highest score possible by stringing together one crazy stunt after another while flying down (and soaring over) the track at break neck speed. The control has been tweaked and as a result the motion only control feels much more fair and less touchy when compared to Truck.

I’m tired of the fact that Castlevania: Bloodlines for the Genesis gets about zero love in not just the gaming community but the ever so tight Castlevania community as well. It’s always Symphony of the Night this, Dracula X that, praise for the portable releases, love for the classics like Dracula’s Curse and Super IV, but never praise for Bloodlines. The few people I’ve mentioned Bloodlines to lately also pooh poohed it, like it was a Castlevania game that doesn’t count or matter much.

Having just finished it for the first time on an actual Genesis I can say that Bloodlines is one of the finest Genesis games around, and a great Castlevania game in its own right. Sure it might not have the most beautiful art style, especially compared to Dracula X, but it does plenty of things right. The level design in particular is fantastic, especially around the half way point through the game. The third stage is around the point when Konami pulls out all sorts of cool little tricks that no one thought the Genesis was capable of, like a tilting tower ala Super Metroid’s first escape sequence, and cool suedo-3D and perspective tricks. The game also sprinkles in plenty of cool boss fights throughout stages, all of them creative, and most of them making use of neat workarounds Konami figured out to make big animated characters jump around the screen smoothly.

If you often frequent video game websites, you’re probably well aware that the Gameboy turned 20 earlier this month. I’m not going to go into the history of the little portable that could, because chances are all you already know how awesome it was, how Tetris did this and that, and how Pokemon literally pulled Gameboy out of a coma in the late 90s. Instead, I’m going to go the more personal route and run over a handful of the games that I felt really defined my experience with the Gameboy.

Super Mario Land Series

An easy way to get people to buy a Gameboy was to make a Mario game that played on it. Enter the original Super Mario Land, likely one of the top two reasons to buy a Gameboy at launch. This somewhat oddball Mario title, complete with shooter-like stages, was the first game I personally ever played on Gameboy and needless to say, it was love at first sight. Although Super Mario Land may have been the first true Gameboy experience for many people, mine was actually Super Mario Land 2.