Wow, I wish I'd thought of making a topic like this! Thanks for making it!
I also can't believe I didn't get around to adding my faves yet...
Anyway I think it's really hard for me to only pick a few, but here's what I could think of:
Sonic levels! There are so many good ones! I think we all love Sonic levels because of their visual appeal, great catchy music, the rush you get from speeding around them; the general "cool" of it all! Plus, they always have exploration value too; I love the way the level design was where you could choose how you wanted to take the zone (do you want to go up? Do you want to run along the bottom? Perhaps you want to go along there and then jump down and go back to see what you missed?). The additional characters and their unique skills (such as flying and climbing) really added an extra dimension to the levels as well.
Well, I know that the pinball element-heavy levels such as the Casino Night Zone are many people's favourite (including Jeni's), but my favourite levels are probably the Chemical Plant Zone from Sonic 2 and the Starlight Zone from the first Sonic the Hedgehog game. Chemical Plant for the terribly cool music (this and the Mystic Cave Zone music in this game are probably my fave Sonic zone themes), dazzling speed effects (loads of loops and ramps, plus the very-impressive-at-the-time zoom tubes), scary mega-mack (that's the toxic purple goo) almost-drowning moments, and just the very cool look of the zone. Starlight Zone because it always felt like pure magic to me as a child- a construction site high above the city on a star-lit night; Sonic running by as the little red bomb thingys that you can't kill as they explode almost peacefully to the calm music... I really liked the introduction of the fans and the see-saw spring elements too.
Streets of Rage: I like the feel of all the levels (and the music again!) in this old classic on the Megadrive (somehow Final Fight never captured/just wasn't going for that same sense of neon, urban city-cool), but I think my favourite was Round 3 (the beach), just for it's look (rain effects, crashing waves etc.) and the fact that suddenly the normal enemies were getting palette swaps and becoming stronger, which caught me off-guard at first. Or maybe it was Round 7 (the elevator/lift on the side of the building), for the sheer amount of fun you could have chucking thugs over the side, or leaping of the railings for a super flying kick that got a whole gang of them at once. Not to mention that it was amusing to call the police car in, the higher you got, so that you could watch the camera pan all the way to the ground again. Or Round 4 (the bridge), because you could chuck badguys down the missing segments or lure them into slide kicking you and then nudging them off the edge. Round 8 was good too- I loved the "fight every boss again" challenge, with the heroes inching closer to the final fight with Mr. X. as the Sun slowly begins to rise outside. Oh... basically, I love this game
Revenge of Shinobi: Another great 16-bit one by Sega! Ahhh- all the levels are good. They are really atmospheric, and the music for them is once again is perfect! My fave level is China Town, a simple level with not much going on but my favourite anyway, because playing Joe Musashi as he fights the kung fu gangs across the shop fronts and the rooftops of China Town at night made me feel so cool as a child, and the music (again with the music!) made me feel like I was on some grand and noble, self-realising, transcendent quest for justice and all that's good in the world, for putting wrongs right and protecting the innocent. In an 80's sort of way, at least. I just felt like I was with Joe on that long but dertermined journey. Hah, I was a pretty weird child, wasn't I, being that immersed in the games I played? I also like the highway level a lot (complete with speeding cars and lethal ninjas-disguised-as-nuns), and I LOVE the weird bio-skeleton-dinosaur tyranosaurus boss of the factory level.
Donkey Kong Country: Another one with too many to choose from. The first minecart one was very exciting and hard to master at first. I really loved all of the undersea ones (they just had the atmosphere, a nice range of interesting challenges; everything), and I loved the factory ones for the same reasons. Oh, and the jungle! Those levels were beautiful (especially the sunsets over the treetops) and great fun at that- I loved the one where you gwet to run across the treetops on the steel keg and then ride Expresso the Ostrich ("Orangutan Gang" I think). The two individual levels that stick in my head are "Blackout Basement" and the travelling platform one (I think it was "Platform Perils") where your fuel is constantly running out... These two were REALLY difficult and therefore incredibly rewarding to beat, so I remember them really well.
Street Fighter II special champion edition - "Guille Stage", a fighter Jet and two breakable crates, simple but fun.
Ahhh, I never can decide what fighting game stage I like best! I used to like Orchid's rooftop in Killer Instinct... In Street Fighter, there are loads I like 'cause they're really almost too iconic- Ken's docks, Blanka's Brazillian village, Ryu's pretty snow-covered SFA2 stage, Gen's electrically moody SFA2 Hong Kong back alley, DeeJay's cool Jamaican sunset beach rave; and yes, definately Guile's classic Airforce base. But I'm going to say Cammy's original stage, for it's utterly gorgeous (northern lights and all!) but ridiculously unreal depiction of England. And the music of course!
I have one more (like anybody is still paying attention
)...
Ridge Racer Type 4: This racing game was AMAZING! All of the tracks were fantastic, all of the sounds were fantasic, Reiko was fantasic; everything! I love Ridge City!!! Namco weren't just selling a racing game, they were selling a
lifestyle. "Here he comes again, running like the open wind!" (Okay, so at first I was a little bit put out that as the player -the nameless Ridge Racer- they were kind of saying that you were supposed to be a guy, but I really didn't mind too much. Being the Ridge Racer was cool! The bit that occassionally annoys me most is where the announcer says "can
he take the lead?" as you're trying to overtake pole position... I'm always like "shut up with the "he" thing- this is Sylphi Ridge Racer!"). To me R4 was like the perfect urban cool for the modern era; stylish, jazzy... from the breathtaking "fresh feel" of the blue-grey city skyline to the simple CD player in Reiko's clean-look bedroom, this is where I wanted to live! This is what I wanted to be! Eh, where was I? Oh right, favourite level! Well, my favourite levels (or racing tracks, I mean) are Brightest Night and Phantomile. Brightest Night, because it's a cool night time city track and we all tend to love those the best in these games... I think the layout is good (perfectly placed somewhere between being an average to longer length course), and it's cute that it backs onto the Namco WonderEgg area. Plus there are a lot of elements I like, such as the turn on the cobbled road into the small village of shops area, going through the tunnel and coming out the other side (really fast!) off into that huge leap down the hill, the nice smooth drift turn that I do really well at the bottom...
I like the Phantomile even though it is a really short and simple course for the nice increase in speed you build in a perfect race through it, for the awkward tiny nudges of the stick you have to make when going through the tunnel, for the "Hey- there's Reiko!" Exclamation you make when seeing that the girl who's raising the checkered flag is Reiko for the first time because this is the start of the final Grand Prix, but most of all for that hair-raising, I'm-going-to-crash-straight-into-the-wall turn that you'll have to make well for three laps that looks and feels SO GOOD when you are driving drift with a cockpit (1st person) view of the racing action! Wow, best turn in a racing game ever! I also think the raw machine-oil racing music theme that the computer tends to select for this one is really well-suited.
Uh... Looking back, I guess anybody would notice that I really choose my favourite levels for the atmosphere more than anything else... Gameplay is really important, and all of these games have some of the best gameplay ever anyway. The thing is, I already expect great gameplay from my games, so for a level to really draw me in and to become a part of me and my life, if it has perfect atmosphere on top of this great gameplay that's something I'll never forget. I guess that's when the games give me more than great entertainment; when they become an indeliable experience that affects me profoundly, makes me feel something that's hard to explain but that I definately love. A great level is when art, style, design, heart, mood, action, whatever all come together with gameplay to make something really special, a moment, a feeling and a world that exists outside of this one but that you can feel very real in... and maybe take it with you in yours.
(And a good level is an excuse for me to keep writing and writing about something, which everyone knows I don't need a good excuse to do
)