This Old Neon Forum

Round 3: The Saskatchewan Bracket

You can vote for 1-3 games in this poll. Vote carefully—you can't change your votes after submitting them. The #1, #2, and #3 ranked games at the end of the week will move on to Round 4.

1988 - Blaster Master - NES
1993 - Disney's Aladdin - SNES
1993 - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening [DX] - GB/GBC
1994 - Donkey Kong Country - SNES
2005 - Mario Kart DS - DS
2008 - Dead Space - Multiplatform
2009 - Plants vs. Zombies - Multiplatform
2011 - Mario Kart 7 - 3DS
2013 - Shin Megami Tensei IV - 3DS
2013 - Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon - 3DS

You are encouraged to discuss your choices and your reasons for selecting the games you did.

Donkey Kong Country was an amazing platformer with so many secrets to seek out. I almost voted for Link's Awakening, too, but I think DKC wins out here.

Lots of enjoyable games here. But surprisingly for me, Luigi's Mansion 2, is my favourite game here. Excellent game. DKC would be a close second I guess, but I never completed it.

This is a great bracket. If it was DKC2, I would have had a hard time deciding.

I voted only for Blaster Master in this one. It was a beautiful game and super-difficult. There's lots of weapons and items and a pretty huge world to explore. It was way ahead of its time in my opinion. And still fun to play today.

Abstaining. Nothing for me here. A couple of good ones for sure, but this is an easy no-vote bracket for me.

I voted for Blaster Master for the same reasons I mentioned in the previous round. Great use of the NES's graphical limitations to portray flow and movement. Your tank had character. The gameplay was also night and tight, beating similar games in these strange peripheries of platforming out of the limelight.

I also tossed a sympathy vote to Dead Space for accomplishing a couple of core design missions: it scared me with great atmosphere.

Blaster Master was an absolutely brilliant game, very ambitious too. Mechanics, level design, even the intro is quite memorable. The other games in this poll are trash compared to it.

Glad to hear so much Blaster Master praise. I was awful at it as a kid, but come the VC releases, it really opened up for me. It's done so many things that seemed to really push the NES. Really, there's a lot of great games in this bracket. Blaster Master is the only platformer I was willing to vote for here. Sorry, DKC.

Alright you guys convinced me to toss Blaster Master a vote. I'll agree with the points made in praise of the game, and that's worth helping it stay in the race, but there were elements of the game that really irked me.