CORRECTION: I misspoke earlier. China Warrior, is the
second-best game on the list. Why? Well, Timeball (Blodia) SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN INCLUDED. Never. Timeball is such a simple, elegant, fantastic action-puzzle game with splendid (if too few) songs in gloriously warm PSG. If you disagree with any of this, you can suck my left one.
This is precisely why Ballistix is the worst game .
I have Ballistix sympathies. It has some of that awesome Psygnosis/SotB atmosphere, it's mindless fun (kind of), it translates well to the TE, and it's two player on the TG. Strategy amounts to adjusting turbo switches for ammo conservation and trying to see what the hell the power-ups are before accidentally running over them.
It doesn't have much depth, but it's easy to play and there's no learning curve or introductory hurdles. Anyone can sit down and experience everything Ballistix has to offer in five minutes. The creators and programmers who ported it succeeded in executing the concept.
The only thing that really ruins a game for me is when the play control is absolutely broken (Impossamole, Night Creatures and Energy are good examples; Darkwing and Tailspin are good enough IMO) or when the play control and/or genre is so esoteric that a normal person (i.e. me) can't learn how to play in under an hour (Super Volleyball, Falcon).
Broken control is certainly the death knell. However, although I agree with most of your examples, I actually don't find Impossamole to be completely broken (or, I'm a masochist). But, that's not important. We have larger issues to discuss:
Ballistix. I actually haven't played this for more than a few minutes over the past few years...but it seems so bland
.
In fact, I don't want to waste another breath on it.