Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2013

Welcome to the third annual Super Adventures Screenshots of the Year article, showcasing the 52 greatest screenshots featured on the site this year in semi-chronological order! Well, mostly just ones that made me smile really.

WARNING: certain screenshots may display scenes of a disturbing and graphic nature, though I can at least promise no ZX Spectrum screens this year.

Oh by the way, every time you see a highlighted game title, it's a link to the original article. It's not going to take you off to mobygames.com or something. Not that there's anything wrong with mobygames, not now that it's been put back to its old layout again. Those were a dark couple of months though.

52: BAD RATS

Bad Rats was the first game I played this year, so it makes sense that this haunting image of a doomed cat from the intro should be first screenshot in my list. I guess something about the game had to make sense eventually.

51: PEPSIMAN

Oh damn, this gentleman from Pepsiman is pulling the same face as the cat: the face of a man who's played Bad Rats.

50: SPIDER-MAN 2

A cryptic headline from Spider-Man 2: The Sinister Six on the Game Boy Color. What could it all mean? I'd tell you if I could read morse code.

49: THE CURSE OF MONKEY ISLAND

Here's some nice art from Curse of Monkey Island purely for nostalgia's sake. Couldn't leave Murray and Guybrush out.

48: MARKO'S MAGIC FOOTBALL

I realise now that my entire website exists purely to show this animation from Marko's Magic Football on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

47: SILENT HILL

The resemblance to Silent Hill protagonist Harry Mason really is uncanny.

46: WAXWORKS

From what I can tell from mecha-neko's write up, 90% of Waxworks seems to be about watching this bloke suffer gruesome deaths. I gotta appreciate a game that makes failure just as entertaining as success.

45: BENEATH A STEEL SKY

Here's me screwing up the first puzzle of the game in Beneath a Steel Sky. A Lucasarts adventure game it ain't. Gotta love that Dave Gibbons' background art through.

44: BARBARIAN II

I'm not entirely sure what's going on in this intro to Barbarian II, but I'm pretty sure that it's amazing. The only way this could've been better is if it was the intro to a basketball game.

43: BARBARIAN II (A DIFFERENT ONE)

Here's a fun way to scare the shit out of Amiga owners: give them a terrifying 'insert disk two' animation complete with maniacal laughter that only appears on their version of the game. From an entirely different game also called Barbarian II.

42: THE GREAT GIANA SISTERS

Giana Sisters may have been pulled from shelves for being a bit of a Super Mario Bros. clone, but Mario only wishes he could have title screens as badass as this. Okay maybe 'badass' wasn't the right word.

41: STARGLIDER 2

Nothing funny about this image from Starglider 2, I just love this artwork. Sadly I doubt the spaceship ever actually shows up in the game though.

40: TREVOR MCFUR

Hey this is just like the briefing screen from Star Fox, except the general giving me my orders is a photoshopped photo of a lion instead of a humanoid dog.

Please don't take this screenshot from Jaguar shoot 'em up Trevor McFur as an indication of the general quality of the game though. The rest of it ain't quite so professional looking.

39: POPFUL MAIL

I've played this game on five different systems and I still have no idea what's happening in this scene from the intro of comedy platformer Popful Mail.

38: GO! GO! BECKHAM!

I still can't believe they made a cute GBA football platformer starring David Beckham. How does this even exist?

37: HURRICANES

Speaking of football platformers, here's a looping gif from the Genesis/Mega Drive version of Hurricanes.

36: SPIDER-MAN

They really did keep doing this in the actual game. From Spider-Man on the Game Boy Advance.

35: BLAZEON

I could show the whole intro to arcade shoot 'em up BlaZeon here, but I won't. If you really want to see what the anime spacefighter is shooting at you could always just click the link.

34: KEN'S LABYRINTH

One of the benefits of being a genius game engine designer is that you can put your face on every wall in the level if you feel like it. From Ken's Labyrinth, a commercially released first person shooter created by Ken 'I made Duke Nukem 3D's Build Engine' Silverman.

33: FINAL FANTASY IV

And the 20th screenshot is... the psychotic carrot-shaped octopus from Final Fantasy IV. I love this guy's artwork. I was going to go with the "You spoony bard!" scene, but I eventually came to my senses.

32: HEART OF DARKNESS

I have no idea what's going on here, I wasn't the one who played Heart of Darkness, but it made me smile when I was scrolling through the screenshots.

31: NIGHT SLAVE

Here's a rare shot from Night Slave's cutscenes that doesn't include naked anime girls. It's funny because the game is actually a run and gun platformer featuring giant mechs stomping all over bunkers and battleships.

30: BUBBA 'N' STIX

I couldn't leave a game as well animated as Bubba 'n' Stix out of my list, but I couldn't decide what screenshot to go with either. So here's a picture of an arrow pointing at a tree.

29: LEGEND OF GRIMROCK

You know, considering that it's deliberately trying to imitate an ancient Atari ST RPG, Legend of Grimrock definitely isn't a bad looking game. Click the image if you'd like to see it in a slightly more reasonable 1280x720 resolution.

28: SENSIBLE TRAIN-SPOTTER

I'm not even going to try to explain what's going on in this screenshot from Sensible Train-Spotter.

27: LITTLE INFERNO

For Little Inferno I was planning on showing an epic scene featuring the words 'Super Adventures in Gaming' spelled in burning blocks being blasted across the screen by exploding batteries, but it turns out that I didn't have one that was readable, so you're stuck with this instead.

26: TURRICAN

This shiny metal bloke was waiting to greet me at the start of Turrican on Mega Drive/Genesis. He doesn't look a whole lot like Turrican, but that's okay. Maybe he's actually his cousin or his flatmate or something. There's no rule that says the hero of the game has the be the one on the cover.

25: SAMURAI GHOST

Samurai Ghost's words are cruel, but carry the weight of truth.

24: THE VIOLINIST OF HAMELN

I'll leave you wondering about what you're looking at here, in this screenshot from SNES platformer Violinist of Hameln.

23: FINAL FANTASY IX

AGH! Holy shit Square, I told you not to do that to me!

It's the lovely Queen Brahne Raza Alexandros XVI from Final Fantasy IX.

22: SUPER HOUSE OF DEAD NINJAS

Indie platformers may not be known for their incredible graphics, but every now and again a game like Super House of Dead Ninjas comes along and surprises me. Pure quality. Also yeah you can turn the horizontal lines off if they're bothering you.

21: MCPIXEL

And then on the other hand there's games like McPixel which, to put it bluntly, looks like total ass. In a charming way that is.

20: ZERO THE KAMIKAZE SQUIRREL

CLOWN!

19: GALERIANS

This face that greeted me when I opened up the disc case to PlayStation survival horror Galerians haunts me to this day. Though to be honest I'm more bothered about the fact that it's not a classic arcade shooter. How can a game called 'Galerians' not be a shoot 'em up?

18: TEQUILA AND BOOM BOOM

I didn't play Tequila and Boom Boom myself, but I gotta say that's a pretty well animated horse for 1995.

17: IMMERCENARY

As I've been sticking to only one screenshot per game so far to fit as many in as I can, but I'm making an exception for Immercenary on the 3DO, because what the fuck is up with this game?

16: IMMERCENARY

Hey it's a screaming building with spare eyes, why not? Anything can happen in virtual reality!

15: IMMERCENARY

Meanwhile back in the real world, the hero's diligent FMV support crew displays all kinds of emotions.

14: IMMERCENARY

But mostly just despair and disappointment. Mecha-neko swears to me that this is actually a fun game though.

13: MIRROR'S EDGE

Nothing funny about this screenshot from Mirror's Edge, I just love the look of the place. I love the look of every place in the game, the levels are a work of art.

12: MEGA MAN X4

I wasn't a big fan of the gameplay, but Mega Man X4 has some amazing pixelwork.

11: TOP BANANA

Top Banana on the other hand looks even worse than it plays. Also it sounds even worse than it looks and plays even worse than it sounds.

10: BATTLEFIELD 3

There was only one part of Battlefield 3's single player campaign I really enjoyed and that's when they sat me in the pilot seat of an F/A-18 Hornet. 10 seconds later I realised that I was actually sitting in the other non-piloting seat, but whatever it still looks awesome. Click to make the screenshot big(ger)!

9: BLOOD

Here's the help screen from classic PC FPS Blood, just in case anyone was in any danger of mistaking it for a serious horror game.

8: SONIC ADVENTURE 2

Sonic Adventure 2. At this point in the series even Tails had stopped giving a shit. Oh okay I admit it's not the worst game in the series by a long shot. Not in a world where Sonic 2006 and Sonic 4 both exist.

7: BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY

I originally thought of featuring a few screenshots of Batman standing on rooftops and looking out into the distance, but in the end I figured this one from Batman: Arkham City would be enough. Maybe if 2014 turns out to be a crap year for screenshots I can make a 'Super AiG Batman Rooftops of the Year' post instead.

6: A. B. COP

Hey wait a second, how did this get here? This isn't even from Super Adventures, it's from the A. B. Cop article on VGJunk! A screenshot of this quality deserves all the exposure it can get.

5: LA-MULANA

I honestly wouldn't have predicted I'd be using a picture from indie puzzle-platformer La-Mulana purely because of the visuals, but here you go. This room just looks awesome.

4: MEDAL OF HONOR: ALLIED ASSAULT

We'll never truly know what was going through this guy's mind as he saw me burst in through his door and empty a submachine gun into his face, but in my opinion it was probably bullets. From Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.

3. FALLOUT 2

Here's a screenshot of the cel-shaded 3D Vault Boy from the intro to Fallout 2. I hate you fake Vault Boy!

2. PARODIUS

I had all kinds of ideas of what screenshot to use from Parodius, but in the end I came to accept that it had to be the cat boat.

And the final screenshot is...

1. STAR TREK: 25TH ANNIVERSARY

Spock and Captain Kirk taking the longest and most awkward turbolift ride they'll ever have in Star Trek 25th Anniversary: NES Flavour.

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Here, have some bonus 2013 stats just to drag this out even longer.

This year I gave out 57 Gold Stars, which means 52% of the games I played got one, compared to 32% in 2012 and 12% in year 2011. Obviously I'm not playing enough crap these days.

I also gave out a massive 11 Wins the Prize trophies, that's 1 in 10! Which proves beyond all doubt that I really have gone soft.

Actually, why not have some more stats while I'm on a roll. Here's how well each family of game platforms was represented in the games I played for the site this year:

PC: 39%
Nintendo: 22%
Commodore: 15%
Sony: 10%
Sega: 5%
NEC: 4%
Atari: 2%

Poor poor Sega, I don't know what happened there. Also yes I realise that those numbers only add up to 97%, that's because there's another 3% of games that belong to other game systems and also the ZX Spectrum. Or maybe it's because it's New Year's Eve and I've had a bit to drink, who can really say?

Anyway, Happy New Year and I hope you'll drop by and leave me some comments in 2014 as well (hint hint).