#24: R.C. Pro-Am (1988)
Platform: NES
Developer/Publisher: Rare/Nintendo
In a Nutshell: Remote-control cars escape from a neighborhood Radio Shack in order to do what they were born to do: race, dammit, race!

Will says: Before Mario and friends tore up the tracks with turtle shells and banana peels Rare practically wrote the book on combat racing with this isometric NES game, littering each and every one of R.C. Pro-Am's tracks with a wide variety of power-ups that allowed players to blow up, disable, and just generally screw over the competition. On the flip side, car upgrades (sticky tires, high-powered engines, etc.) made the racing itself easier.

Now, I have to admit something here: I suck at R.C. Pro-Am. I can make my way through a dozen or so races (okay, maybe less), but I was never one of those people who unlocked the race car or the pickup truck by spelling out "NINTENDO" with glowing letters. My lack of skills didn't stop me from spending hours with the game, and it's now one of the few NES games that I'll actually sit and play if given the chance. Thank your lucky stars, racing fans: Without R.C. Pro-Am, we'd have no Mario Kart. Of course, we wouldn't have 187: Ride or Die, either...



#23: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1988)
Platform: NES
Developer/Publisher: Nintendo
In a Nutshell: Link treads through some bold new territory... with wildly polarizing results.

Brian A. says: NES sequels had a strange tendency to completely switch things up from their predecessors. Super Mario Bros. 2 was a re-skinned Japanese game, Super C added clunky top-down levels that no fan of the original Contra expected, and Castlevania II was essentially a full-blown non-linear action-RPG populated with towns full of idiots. Nobody really knew what to expect back then. But no NES sequel is guilty of such a bizarre departure as Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Not only was it primarily a platforming game, but the overworld itself had gone from being fully integrated with the action to a strange and uninviting map filled with random enemy encounters and hidden perils.

Oh, and the titular protagonist could cast spells and incrementally upgrade his character stats. While modern Zelda fanatics will find nothing strange about that statement, this was a peculiar departure for anyone who expected a traditional sequel to the original Legend of Zelda. For whatever reason, though, it really resonated with me as a kid (it was really ahead of its time when you think about it), and I also found great joy in transitioning from a game where the cast of non-playable characters was relegated to a couple of cryptic geriatrics in caves and into a world packed with characters who all had something to say.