Not too long ago, I brought you my “Top Ten Video Games of 1987“. Now it’s time for me to unleash my “Top Ten Video Games of 1988″ on you. 1988 was an interesting year in games and in the world. We saw Dan Rather clash with George H.W. Bush on television concerning Bush’s known role in the Iran-Contra scandal. Who would have known that we’d still have a Bush in the White House twenty years later? Hustler won their case against Jerry Falwell in the Supreme Court. Although it was a satirical story made up by Hustler, one still has to wonder if Falwell had sex with his mother in an outhouse. The world may never know!

Oliver North along with John Poindexter were indicted on conspiracy charges against the United States (North went on to found organizations such as the Freedom Alliance, where they used the skills of Jack Thomspson, the lawyer all gamers love, to go after Ice T and the song “Cop Killer”). Kirk Gibson hit perhaps the most memorable home run in World Series history. 1988 was certainly a very interesting year, but let’s talk about the games…

Here are my picks for top ten video games of 1988:

1. Dragon Warrior 3 (NES)
   
2. Mega Man 2 (NES)
   
3. Bionic Commando (NES)
4. Ninja Gaiden (NES)
5. Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)
6. Contra (NES)
   
7. Shinobi (Arcade)
8. Phantasy Star (Sega Master System)
9. John Madden Football (Apple II)
10. Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)

You are probably wondering why I didn’t find room for Zelda II on the list. Honestly, I wasn’t a big fan of the game. I felt it was stretched out too long, the game wasn’t put together well and was nowhere close to the great game we saw with the original Zelda. Despite my feelings for Zelda II, the NES certainly dominated my year in gaming. I was still more of a Sega guy at the time, but they really had nothing to compare to NES games of that year.

Dragon Quest III was certainly the greatest video game on 1988. According to Wikipedia, the game is the single reason why the Japanese government outlawed releases of Dragon Quest games on school days. Of the ten games I listed, Dragon Quest III is perhaps the most timeless. It’s as fun today as it was 20 years ago.

Whale image via Shirt.Woot

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: Apple II, Clash, Contra, Dan, Dragon, game, George H.W. Bush, Hustler, III, Jack Thomspson, Jerry Falwell, John Madden, John Poindexter, Kirk Gibson, NES, Oliver North, Quest, Sega, Simon, time, Top, United States, video, wasn, world, year, zelda, Zelda II

Too cheap to buy the full retail version of SoulCalibur IV?  Well, this week’s FREE demo is a nice appetizer to the main dish.  Also, The Last Guy looks pretty cool, but stay here for review.  Other than that the two Warkhawk Add-on’s are the other updates worth noting.  Enjoy your last update in August!

Downloadable Games

• The Last Guy ($9.99)

Add-on Content:

• Rock Band DLC
  • “She Does” - Locksley ($0.99)
  • “Don’t Make Me Wait” - Locksley ($0.99)
  • “Don’t Make Me Wait” - Locksley ($0.99)
  • “All Over Again” - Locksley ($0.99)
  • Locksley Pack 1 ($2.99) - includes: “All Over Again,” “Don’t Make Me Wait,” and “She Does” by Locksley.
• Warhawk Fallen Star Pack ($7.99)
• Warhawk Booster Combo ($15.99)

Game Demos

• NHL 09
• Soulcalibur IV

Game Videos:

• SOCOM Confrontation Extraction trailer
• LittleBigPlanet Leipzig “Sackzilla” Trailer
• Motorstorm Pacific Rift Leipzig Trailer
• PAIN Trauma Mode Trailer
• GT5 Prologue Play the Pros with Tanner Foust!
• Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway Machine Gun & Bazooka Video
• Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway Squad Gameplay Video
• Facebreaker Audition Video #1
• Facebreaker Audition Video #2
• Facebreaker Audition Video #3
• Madden NFL 09 Gameplay Trailer
• Madden NFL 09 Madden Moments Trailer
• Madden NFL 09 Play Call Trailer
• Top Spin 3 Player Creator Trailer

Movie and Blu-ray Trailers:

• Quantum Of Solace
• Prom Night

PS3 Wallpaper:

• (2) The Last Guy
  

Via Blog.PlayStation

written by Juan Perez \\ tags: All, are, Ares, August, band, Blu-ray, Brother, buy, call, combo, Combos, Content, cool, Creator, Demo, DLC, download, Downloads, Edition, Enjoy, Facebreaker, Facebreakers, Fallen, free, game, game games, gaming, GUI, gun, guy, Hell, Highway, Include, Leipzig, LittleBigPlanet, look, Looks, machine, Machines, Madden, make, Makes, making, mode, MotorStorm, movie, Movies, NFL, NHL, night, Pacific, Pack, PAIN, play, Player, Playstation, PlayStations, Pretty, Prologue, Retail, retailer, Rift, Rock, Soulcalibur, Spin, Star, Stars, Stay, store, Than, Top, Tops, Trailer, update, Updated, Updates, version, Via, video, Videos, wait, Waiting, Wallpaper, Warhawk, Week, Weeks, WIth, worth

For some reason our eNews & Updates form at the top of the site wasn’t working, but we have it fixed for your viewing pleasure. If you’d like to receive updates from our site, this is the easiest way to get them. Subscribing to the feed will send our daily content to your inbox, which is a lot more convenient than having to check an RSS feed or browse the site each day. We’d still appreciate a comment here and there though. You can use the form at the top right of our site or the one I posted below. Thanks for checking out our site!

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: com, Content, Feed, form, inbox, Kezins, Live, pleasure, reason, site, Top, Updates, wasn, way, working

This hasn’t been the most exciting week in video game news, but there’s always something worth checking out. If you want to send us an article link in the future, feel free to send it to tips@kezins.com. We read articles from hundreds and hundreds of game blogs each week, but we’ll always miss something. It’s not possible to catch every story out there. If you have a site you’d like us to check out, feel free to contact us. Here’s our picks for the top news in video games for the weekend:

Register To Vote On Your Xbox 360?!

Confirmed: There will be no PS3 price drop in 2008

Red Alert 3 Beta Opens

Games Convention 2008: Games Convention’s Most Ignored Games

LAME and TERRIBLE Video Game Endings - Second Edition

Blizzard’s Newest Cinematic is Truly Epic

Top 10 unique game controllers

Rumor: Some Rapper Has An Xbox 360 Phone

Wii Shortage: Shrewd Marketing or Flawed Supply?

Square Enix to reduce time it takes to kill FFXI mega bosses

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: article, Beta Opens, checking, com, Convention, future, game, hasn, link, news, something, story, Top, video, Week, Xbox

It looks like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is back on top and they might stay there a while this time. I have a feeling the that the top 5 list will not change much until we get deep into September. I am slightly surprised with the popularity of Bionic Commando: Rearmed on the Arcade. While it’s a cool game, I still feel like the PS3 version is superior (due to the better d-pad). Perhaps when we get our hands on the new 360 controllers, my opinion will change on that.

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
2. Halo 3
3. Grand Theft Auto IV
4. Gears of War
5. Madden NFL 09

Top Arcade Titles (full version):

1. Bionic Commando: Rearmed
2. Fable II: Pub Games
3. Braid
4. Geometry Wars Evolved 2
5. UNO

Source

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: Arcade, Bionic, call, Commando, Duty, Live, Modern, Rearmed, Titles, Top, Tops, version, Warfare, while, Xbox

Each week, thousands and thousands of interesting video game related posts hit the net. We try to read as many as we possibly can here at Kezins. In an attempt to filter through the trash, we plan to post the ten most interesting posts from various sites each weekend. This weekend features stories from Kotaku, GameDaily, Exophase, Arstechnica, Wiibrew, Engadget, YouTube, VGG, 1Up and Gaming Today. If you’d like to send us news tips to more great stories, feel free to email us at tips@kezins.com.

Parents Let Kid Drop Out Of School To Focus On Guitar Hero

Nintendo DS Gets Homebrew Twitter App

Top 25 Enemies of All Time

Hacker Runs Blu-ray Backups From Hard Drive On PS3

Sony rising: PS3 Opens Up Lead On Xbox 360 In July

Setting up your Wii for Homebrew

The Wii finally gets DVD playback — no thanks to Nintendo

The weirdest Video Game that you will EVER see - Chou Aniki

The Best Atari 2600 Games You Never Heard Of

Akuma Joins Street Fighter IV Cast

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: attempt, Chou Aniki, Exophase, filter, game, GameDaily, Hero, homebrew, Kezins, Kotaku, net, Nintendo Wii, Top, Trash, video, Week, weekend

It took a while for us to compile a list of the 100 greatest video games of all-time, but it’s finally done. Starting today, we’ll be publishing the list one game at a time until we get to #1. #100 was a tricky choice, considering there were hundreds of games that deserved the spot but didn’t make it. After careful consideration, we went with ‘Shadow Hearts: Covenant’ from the Sony PS2.

The game was developed by Nautilus and published by Midway in 2004. It was a direct continuation of Shadow Hearts and the second official game in the series. While it wasn’t the longest RPG, it still provided you with about 35-50 hours of gameplay.

What really gained my attention with this game was the nearly flawless and addictive battle system. That combined with an interesting group of characters, good visuals and a great soundtrack, it made for one hell of a game. While the game could have been improved in some minor areas, it was certainly one of the best RPGs released for the PS2. Let us know what you think about this game!

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: All, choice, consideration, Covenant, didn, game, list, make, Shadow, spot, time, Today, Top, video, while

Sure, being at Wimbledon 2008 is cool.  You can see all your favorite athletes up close and personal, eat ice cream, and watch several matches in one day in the rain.  To me, that’s overrated!  Why not control them from your fingertips, in the comfort of your basement.

Top Spin 3, looks to have something that Virtual Tennis lacked…”Classic Legends”.  With old school players like Boris Becker, Bjorn Borg, and Monica Seles ‘Top Spin 3′ is the first to bring back retired players.

You can bet your bottom dollar, Kezins.com is looking forward to pulling up our socks, tightening up the orange bandana and squeeze into those short shorts to swing the wooden spoon on top of some clay.  Okay, okay play tennis.. geez!

You’d think rank boosting would have finally slowed down, but it’s still a common thing taking place on Halo 3. There are even people making money out there helping others boost their profile to the top of the ranks. I’m not sure why Bungie and Microsoft do not consider rank boosting a cheating offense. Boosting completely throws off the natural balance of things and is not fair to the players who actually earn their merits.

For some reason, I thought the Gilbert Arenas cheating incident would have sparked Microsoft and Bungie to take more steps against boosting, but apparently it’s just something that’s too much trouble for them to get involved with. I’d like to know what everyone else thinks about boosting and cheating in games. Do you think Microsoft and Bungie need to take more steps and ban these bums that are ruining the games for everyone else?

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: Balance, Boosting, Bungie, cheating, Demand, everyone, Gilbert Arenas, Halo, Microsoft, money, offense, place, profile, rank, thing, Top

Now that I’ve dated every possible girl in GTA IV, I have made my pick for “top girlfriend”. It wasn’t really a hard choice, considering there’s some real negative aspects to most of the women you will date in the game. If you haven’t gotten deep into the game, keep in mind that some of the following information may spoil the story for you.

Continue reading »

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: call, Carmen, Chick, choice, game, Girl, Girlfriend, GTA, health, Kiki, mind, money, Niko, Online, phone, something, Spoiler, Top