1989, Game of the Year

[The_Liquid_Laser]

The 1989 game of the year is SimCity.
The runner up is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The master thread for all of these contests can be found here.

What do you believe to be the "Game of the Year" for 1989 and why?  Also, vote on "Game of the Year" for 1989. 

Golden Axe  (Arcade/Genesis)
Golden Axe was released as a hit arcade game near the beginning of 1989 and before the end of the year it was ported to the Genesis/Mega Drive.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade/NES)
Two different TMNT games were released in 1989, one in the arcade and one on the NES.  Both were wildly successful.  The arcade game was a 4-player beat em up that became Konami’s best selling arcade game ever.  By the end of 1990, TMNT has sold over 25,000 cabinets in the US and Europe alone and they still couldn’t keep up with demand.  On the NES, TMNT was a single player platformer where you could switch between the 4 different turtles.  The NES version sold over 4 million copies.

Prince of Persia (Apple II)
First entry in the long running Prince of Persia series.  This first game was initially a commercial failure in the US, but after releasing in Japan and Europe sales picked up.  Prince of Persia went on to sell over 2 million copies by 1993.

Sim City (Home Computers)
Developer Wil Wright designed this open-ended, sandbox simulation game about building and managing a city.  Sim City went on to inspire a long line of games beginning with the word “Sim”.  It was also commercially successful selling well over 300,000 copies on computers and another 2 million on the SNES.

Ducktales (NES)
Capcom does a fantastic job turning this Disney IP into an NES game.  Ducktales went on to sell over 1.6 million copies on the NES and over 1.4 million copies on the Gameboy.

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (NES)
Castlevania kicks it up a notch in this third installment.  Here you can choose to play one of 4 characters at a time: Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, Grant Danasty, or Alucard, the son of Dracula.  The Netflix series “Castlevania” was inspired by this game.

TV Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPjY_1BlWpg

Bonk’s Adventure (PC Engine/TG16)
First game in the Bonk series which was the main platformer series for the PC Engine/Turbografix-16.  This game was also ported to the NES and Gameboy.

Phantasy Star II (Genesis/Megadrive)
Sega’s main RPG series enters the 16-bit era on the Genesis/Megadrive.  The storyline was much more intricate than what was available on 8-bit systems, and the 6-megabit cartridge was the largest cartridge that had ever been on a console at the time.

Super Mario Land (Gameboy)
The Gameboy gets released in 1989 and consequently gets a Mario game.  Super Mario Land would go on to sell over 18 million copies.

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 Sunday, Sept 24 at 11:59 EST.

 

 

 

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 25 September 2023