David Hellman

After a couple months of disquieting calm, Action Button .net unleashed yesterday the first three entries of its 25 Best Games of All-Time. One is a Genesis game, another is for PS2 and another for PSP. There is so far no ranking for the Mario Kart series, neither for a particular game nor for the series as an indivisible, canonical entity.

Here’s a choice passage from the Castlevania: Bloodlines (abdmn #25) review:

I like to think of the lead designers of the three Castlevania reboots (Super, Rondo, and Bloodlines) as three young men, let’s say sons of the King of Konami. They worked together on the first Castlevania games for the Famicom, and chose different sides when the console war — MegaDrive versus Super Famicom versus PC-Engine — began. The lead designer of Super Castlevania IV was the loyal son, always blindly looking to impress Father. The designer of Rondo was the scholar, the go-getter, the strategist, seeking to prove himself superior to all humans, not just to his brothers. The designer of Bloodlines was the slacker, the one everyone assumes could get ahead in the world if he’d just stop hanging out at the tavern with the local band of hooligans. (He can otherwise rip out a hell of a guitar solo. I imagine he also looked like Johnny Depp in that one movie where he first had a beard.)

What I like about Tim Rogers’ writing, besides its punk-like reckless momentum, is this kind of knowledgeable and idiosyncratic characterization.