Super Play's Top 600 Super NES Games: #500 - #451

#500: Fang of Edo

49% Decent music (in parts) and a smattering of quite nice bits (though nothing ever really reaches the dizzy heights of 'good'), can't save this one from the dumper.

#499: Super Baseball
Simulator 1.000

49% Too crude compared to the rest [of the baseball games], but the music is nice.

#498: Final Fight Tough

49% While the gameplay, although a tad simplistic, is varied enough to get you hooked, the challenge is a travesty. Many household pets could take up the rather pathetic gauntlet of finishing this game and succeed admirably. Capcom have become sloppy in their old age and need a good slap.

#497: Best of the Best

50% For the most part this is fine. But it's extremely limited in scope, and -- considering that it's essentially just a simple beat 'em up -- it's hopelessly outclassed by the likes of Street Fighter II.

#496: Rocky Rodent

50% Any day now, somebody is going to produce a really frightening statistic about being able to reach the moon, if all the mediocre game cartridges in the world were laid end to end.

#495: Dirt Racers SFX

51% It's a shame that Dirt Racer be compared to Stunt Race FX, but it's an inevitable comparison, and it comes off worse on just about every count. Only budding rally drivers/ram raiders really need apply.

#494: Ren & Stimpy: Time Warp

51% Not just another crap cartoon-licensed platform game from THQ. A crap cartoon-license Final Fight clone instead. Revol! Revol!

#493: Knights of the Round

51% You know the score by now; smashing looks backed up with all the gameplay and lasting appeal of a broken yo-yo. Boo.

#492: Astro Go! Go!

51% Engagingly off-beat, but only for a matter of seconds. Then its true colours as a lazy attempt to copy F-Zero will shine through, driving you to despair.

#491: Super Air Diver

51% This is the kind of game that would look great in the window display of a computer shop, but it's sadly lacking in the gameplay department. Even the most ardent shoot 'em up fan would only be interested in Super Air Diver for an hour or so.

#490: Terminator 2:
Judgment Day

52% A contender for the title of 'Biggest Waste of License Ever'. Heaven knows what the T-800 would do to LJN if he ever saw it.

#489: The Lord of the Rings

52% A stunningly bad effort, saved only by the huge nature of the task and the dedication to accuracy. If the graphics and general gameplay had been tweaked, this could have been a success. As it stands, Lord of the Rings is a pretty apt name. Think about it.

#488: Kick Off

52% Ridiculously flawed, badly programmed but nevertheless reasonably enjoyable (in two-player mode) soccer game. Should be so much better though.

#487: Andre Agassi Tennis

52% Many of the elements of a decent tennis game are here, but they don't gel. It's just not up to the standard of playability and fun you'd expect. After all, Super Family Tennis was written when the SNES first came out, and that beats this hands down. So there.

#486: Eye of the Beholder

52% If you're mad enough on fantasy games to stick your hand in, there's a mollusc of fun to be scraped from the bottom of Capcom's barrel of stinky fish.

#485: Cameltry

52% I dunno, maybe a few camels might have been a good idea after all. A rotating Mode 7 maze game had to be done, presumably, but it's a shame the designers didn't manage something more exciting with the idea. Fun for a very short period only.

#484: Cool World

52% Good looking, and -- on the surface -- complex film conversion that, once you start playing it, boils down into not very much at all. A real disappointment after the likes of Pugsley.

#483: F1 Grand Prix Part II

52% Slick, but very difficult, and for all the wrong reasons. To be honest, these overhead view things are best avoided unless you've got lots of patience.

#482: Lester the Unlikely

52% Rotoscoping or not, Lester The Unlikely is frighteningly mediocre, with nothing to offer but a 10-minute gawp period.

#481: X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse

52% Why do all X-Men games seem to be humdrum horizontally-scrolling beat 'em ups. It's about time they mutated into something a bit more original.

#480: Brandish

53% Definitely one for the die-hards. My faith of Koei not even being able to commission a decent game is re-affirmed. Come back Wizardry, all is forgiven.

#479: James Pond's Crazy Sports

53% Slick and fun -- sort of -- but this isn't really a very sensible way to spend £40 or so.

#478: Super Batter Up

53% Yet another baseball game rolls off the production line, flops to the ground and lies there twitching for a while before quietly expiring.

#477: King of Dragons

53% A sad pastiche of beat 'em up. It run, hack and magic formula just doesn't make the grade. It looks great, but don't be mislead. You may as well cut the characters out of the pages, stick them on card, make the fighting noises yourself and save £50 while you're about it.

#476: Faceball 2000

54% Faceball 2000 is a bit like a piece of bread. It'll sit quite happily in your 'toaster' (er, SNES) for about two minutes, but then it'll pop out and, um ... ah.

#475: The Flintstones: The
Treasure of the Sierra Madrock

54% The game is right out of the stone-age. It's a bit crap as well.

#474: Mickey's Ultimate Challenge

54% Weak design means that this is worth renting for a child on a rainy day, but that's about it.

#473: Super Widget

54% Another dull American game, then -- even the younger players this is aimed at, are likely to get bored very quickly.

#472: Taz-Mania

54% A smashing scrolling road, and a great feel for the original cartoon. But, erm, there just isn't a game in there. Not that I could find, anyway, no matter how hard I tried.

#471: B.O.B.

54% Fun for a bit, but too unoriginal and limited to make a real impression. B.O.B.? NOB, more like it.

#470: Super Ice Hockey

55% It's as if years of development in the team sports sim genre have been ignored in favour of a couple of cheap gimmicks.

#469: The Chessmaster

55% If you're after a chess game for your SNES, your search is over. But you could probably get a pocket chess computer for half the price with no obvious disadvantages.

#468: Evil Sword (Kendo Rage)

55% A very Japanese game, but one whose eccentricities don't make up for slack programming. A shame, as we hoped for a game that lived up to the 'Don't Lose' name.

#467: Full Throttle: All-American Racing

55% Africa can be the cradle of the human species, but you can be sure that, had Full Throttle Racing been left to survive and adapt in the hostile wilderness of millions of years ago, it'd now be extinct. Unlike, say, Street Racer.

#466: Legend

55% Skillfully crafted with cracking graphics and some novel touches. But all that can't hide its true colours as just another humdrum scrolling slasher.

#465: 90 Minutes

55% A football game that's better in one-player than two, and the one-player game's pretty poor.

#464: Super Dunkstar

55% Basketball games need to be extra specially good if they're going to be worth buying at all, and Super Dunkstar simply isn't.

#463: Super Bases Loaded

55% Scruffy and slow, with a strange way of doing things.

#462: Super Chase HQ

55% A badly-made jalopy cluttering up the highways and byways of SNES software. And destined for the scrapper.

#461: Sink or Swim

55% Although it handles very nicely and a bit of thought has been invested in some of the level designs, it's not really doing anything new or pushing the barriers back. I know I'd be sorely disappointed if I'd bought this.

#460: Lode Runner Twin

55% Not flexible to be a real puzzler, Lode Runner Twin is more like Mario and Wario meets Donkey Kong. But not as much fun as either. Two-player mode is alright, though.

#459: X-Zone

55% The best Super Scope game to date, but still pretty dire. So, unless Terminator 2's any good, we're going to light a bonfire and toss our Scopes onto it. Sorry.

#458: Mario Paint

55% By all means buy Mario Paint for the mouse, which will come in dead handy later on, but don't expect to have much fun with Mario Paint itself.

#457: Brass Boss

56% A bizarre looking beat 'em up that's playable in its own little way, but far too derivative to make any sort of splash.

#456: Spawn

56% I fail to see how a company can recoup its development and promotional outlay on such an 'average' game. Surely the artists and programmers could tell what sort of old toot they were churning out as they laboured away. Spawn in just the sort of title you'll ponder over and then walk away from when it's languishing in the bargain bin for a tenner in a couple of months time.

#455: Doraemon:
World of Fairies

56% There's so much Japanese text in it that working out what's going on is nigh on impossible. Progressing ofrom one bit to the next is a matter of luck, and it's always a huge relief when you make it through another negotiation with head view-section bit and into the relative clear of the platform side of things.

#454: Lagoon

56% A dull and generally unentertaining game. There is a little explore-and-discover enjoyment value, but the game mechanics are far too torturous and frustrating.

#453: Boogerman

56% Oh, it's very funny for five minutes, but Boogerman is steeped in averageness. A platformer rooted in the old school.

#452: Art of Fighting

56% It's a beat 'em up, it's not Street Fighter II, and it doesn't come close. What more do you need to know?

#451: Lethal Weapon

57% Sort of alright-ish. But it's the same old story -- there are lots of much better games than this around for the money.