1988, Game of the Year

[The_Liquid_Laser]

The 1988 game of the year is Super Mario Bros 3.
The runner up is Mega Man 2.
The master thread for all of these contests can be found here.

What do you believe to be the "Game of the Year" for 1988 and why?  Also, vote on "Game of the Year" for 1988. 

 

Altered Beast  (Arcade)
This popular arcade game had a port that was bundled with the Genesis during its early years.  It also has some meme worth dialogue like “Power Up” and “Rise From Your Grave”.

 

Chase HQ (Arcade)
This vehicular combat game was popular in the arcade and as a port on home computers.

 

John Madden Football (Apple II)
First entry in the extremely popular and long running Madden series.  EA Sports titles were important during the 16-bit era as EA gave more support to the Genesis than the SNES.  The Madden series has sold over 130 million copies as of 2018.

 

Pool of Radiance (Home Computers)
Earlier RPGs were essentially trying to bring the D&D experience to computers and consoles.  Finally in 1988 Dungeons and Dragons gets an officially licensed product using D&D rules.  Pool of Radiance was the first of several “gold box” D&D games in the late 80s and early 90s.  The Pool of Radiance series went on to sell over 800,000 copies worldwide.

 

Robocop (Arcade/Home Computers)
Robocop exploded onto both arcades and home computers in 1988.  The home computer version went on to sell over 1 million copies.

 

Ninja Gaiden (NES/Arcade)
Ninja Gaiden got both an arcade game and a NES game the same year.  The two games are completely different.  The arcade game is a beat em up while the NES game is a platformer.  While the arcade game performed well, the NES game is the more memorable of the two with its storytelling through cinematic cutscenes.

Arcade version:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFwqTePDQXQ

 

Super Mario Bros 3 (NES)
In 1985, Nintendo released the first Super Mario Bros, a game which revived the home console market in the US.  In 1988, just 3 years later, Super Mario Bros 3 would completely put the first game to shame.  SMB3 would go on the sell over 18 million copies on the NES.  It was also featured in the movie The Wizard about 2 months before the game's North American release.

TV Show Intro:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goHwtY2DHMw
Common Commercial:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU80R7jGanE
The Wizard:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TscjsNMvnDg

 

Mega Man 2 (NES)
Mega Man 1 was a brilliant idea for a game, but end result was unpolished.  The game didn’t sell well for Capcom, but the developers wanted to try again, and so they developed Mega Man 2 in their free time around other games.  The end result was much more polished and ended up making Mega Man a household name.  Mega Man 2 became the most popular entry in the Mega Man series (until Mega Man 11) selling over 1.5 million copies on the NES.

 

Keith Courage in Alpha Zones (PC Engine/TG16)
In 1987, a huge electronics company, NEC, decided to enter the home console market with the PC Engine in Japan (or Turbografix-16 in North America).  Keith Courage was bundled with the North American version of the system.

Other (please specify)
If you think another games deserves to be "Game of the Year" other than one of the 9 I listed above, then please vote “Other” and say your game in the comments.  If the "Other" category takes at least 2nd place and no other game gets at least 50% of the vote, then I will do a runoff vote including the most mentioned game(s) from the comments.

The winner of this vote will be decided Friday, Sept 22 at 11:59 EST.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 23 September 2023