Your Top 100 Games Challenge

You guys are trumping my list with what I thought would be more esoteric choices, like A Mind Forever Voyaging and the second Gabriel Knight game. Still, cool to see some lesser known games get some love.

Discover the World was an edutainment title which I played on the Apple IIe. It took place during the age of exploration and had the player start in one of five European port cities. Essentially you would buy a small handful of ships, and sail them to distant locations. The primary way to advance was to trade for things like spices and trinkets, and sell them for money upon returning to your port city. Along the way the player had to manage things like water, food, crew, and ammunition.

What was really cool about it (or so I thought at the time) was the ability to chart coastlines. Essentially, upon touching a coast, you could just follow it wherever it would lead, and in doing so draw a map of the world.

Here’s mine:

1 Spelunky
2 Dark Souls
3 Heroes of Might & Magic III
4 Gladius
5 DmC: Devil May Cry
6 Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer
7 Might & Magic IV & V: World of Xeen
8 Soul Calibur
9 Ys: Oath in Felghana
10 Hex: Shards of Fate
11 Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight
12 Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn
13 Super Metroid
14 Wing Commander: Privateer
15 Super Mario Kart
16 Etrian Odyssey
17 Demon’s Souls
18 Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
19 Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
20 King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame
21 Brogue
22 Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant
23 Bayonetta
24 Fire Emblem
25 Civilization IV
26 Planescape: Torment
27 Mass Effect
28 Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
29 The Binding of Isaac
30 StarCraft
31 Super Meat Boy
32 Elven Legacy
33 Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
34 Super Smash Brothers Melee
35 Mass Effect 2
36 Fallout 2
37 Actraiser
38 King’s Bounty: The Legend
39 Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries
40 Desktop Dungeons
41 Viewtiful Joe
42 Valkyria Chronicles
43 Blood Bowl
44 Burnout 3: Takedown
45 The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
46 Knights of the Old Republic
47 Crackdown (360)
48 Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
49 Mega Man X
50 King’s Field: The Ancient City
51 Secret of Mana
52 Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
53 Kona’s Crate
54 Jamestown
55 Final Fantasy V
56 Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen
57 Bionic Commando Rearmed
58 Mario Golf: Advance Tour
59 Ultima Underworld
60 Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes
61 Just Cause 2
62 Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
63 Super Mario World
64 Warlords III: Reign of Heroes
65 Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
66 Cave Story
67 Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
68 Skies of Arcadia
69 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3
70 Zen Pinball
71 Riviera: The Promised Land
72 Master of Orion II
73 Dark Cloud 2
74 Final Fantasy IV
75 Age of Empires II: Age of Kings
76 The Operative: No One Lives Forever
77 Icewind Dale II
78 Bastion
79 Battlezone
80 Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
81 Braid
82 Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
83 Card Hunter
84 Command & Conquer: Red Alert
85 Crimzon Clover
86 Frozen Synapse
87 The Curse of Monkey Island
88 Diablo
89 Freedom Force
90 FTL: Faster than Light
91 GTA: Vice City
92 Star Wars: TIE Fighter
93 Myth II: Soulblighter
94 Super Mario Galaxy
95 Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale
96 To the Moon
97 VVVVVV
98 World of Warcraft
99 Chrono Trigger
100 Psychonauts

In putting this together, I found myself surprised by some of my own choices when pitting fondly remembered games against each other head to head and forcing myself to be honest. Several of the upper spots went to flawed games that just happened to really resonate with me over acknowledged classics, which I wouldn’t have predicted when sitting down to start the list.

I started gaming with the NES and very early PCs, but nothing from that era wound up making the cut. There’s an interesting split where there are a ton of games from my prime impressionable years (age 8-15 or so, corresponding to 1991-98 – which included the SNES and the first golden age of PC gaming, with both having a big impact on me). And then there are a lot of games from the last five years or so. But there’s a significant gulf in between with only a few entries.

In terms of genre, I’m oddly pleased that all of the top 15 happened to be from substantially different genres/subgenres.

There are a lot fewer multiplayer games I’ve gotten really into over the years than single-player, but nearly all of the ones I did play a significant amount of made the list.

My tastes have definitely shifted over the years. There are a lot of RPGs on the list that I would probably have a hard time making time for if they were to come out now, as I’ve become more focused on challenge and randomization as primary motivators, and game length has become more of a detriment with a busier schedule.

This was fun! Thanks for setting up the thread.

For posterity, here are the games that ended up below the 100 mark in my list:

Bioforge
Thief
Dig N Rig
ROM Check Fail
Life & Death
Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?
Eufloria

I want to hear more about some of the unusual games you guys picked!

Thraeg: You had Kona’s Crate at #53! I had heard of it, but I had to look it up to be sure what it was (I would have guessed a JRPG or something). Tell me why a little mobile puzzler got so high on your list!

TurinTur: Abuse?? Aladdin?? Like, Disney’s Aladdin?

nijimeijer: I love that you have Willy Beamish on your list. I ran across it when I was going through lists trying to refresh my memory on old games. I personally remember being disappointed by the gameplay, but the everyday setting was brilliantly different and I love any game with a cartoon aesthetic (hence Curse of Monkey Island being objectively the best Monkey Island!). What appeals to you about it?

delirium: I was sure at first that Star Tropics was autocorrected from Startopia, but apparently I was wrong. Never heard of it. But tell me about these BBS games!

Abuse is great. I finished it 5 times, including the hardest difficulty.

Aladdin? Mmm I think maybe my rose tinted glasses are affecting me, but I loved it as a kid.

What are these games like? I know nothing about them.


Imagine a platform/action game with mouse control (which was pretty novel in that time) with a bit of Doom feel: grey, moody, industrial setting, horrendous monsters and meaty weapons.

Aladdin was just a licensed platform game which in the time it had great cartoon graphics.
But to be honest, I have the feeling I put it in the list years ago to have some more variety in represented genres.

Aladdin had a great version (I forget whether it was the SNES or the Genesis one). It was one of those rare licensed games that actually managed to be excellent.

I’m making one of these lists, but I’m forcing myself to work only from memory, so it’s taking a while.

Yeah, I remember it being good, alas, I’m not the most expert platformer gamer ever, so my judgment isn’t very strong there.
Also, my heart always had a hole for Commander Keen, also in the list. In special 4.

To be fair, I don’t remember much about the game besides its relative difficulty and crazy setting. It hit right as cartoons started pulling away from the 80s vibe, and experimenting with something weirder (I think Ren & Stimpy showed up around the same time). Or at the very least, it hit right when I started getting more into stuff like that, too (I was 13). So it has a fond place in my heart; I played it to death. I’m not the best at adventure games (or at least I wasn’t as a child), despite loving them, so each one took me a fair amount of time to complete. That slow process means a fair amount of them stick with me in memory - if not specifics, at the very least as an impression. Combine that with the unique (for its time) presentation, and there you go.

Here’s a question that I came across during the challenge. How to evaluate a game you played as a child… when it was made for children? As someone who put three or four “Edutainment” titles on his list, I realize “kid’s game” is an insult throughout the community. Yet, to make a game whose primary audience is children and still have it be a tightly designed game strikes me as a design accomplishment.

Sure! For starters, despite appearances, it’s not a puzzler – the challenge lies not in figuring out what to do, but in successful execution of tricky maneuvers. I’d put it conceptually closer to something like Super Meat Boy, with bite-sized obstacle courses for levels, tight time limits, instant restarts on failure, and a simple yet nuanced control scheme.

The tight controls are at the heart of the game, getting the absolute most out of only two inputs (touches anywhere on the left and right side of the screen). The premise is that you control a platform with a crate resting on it that needs to be delivered to the end of the level. Each end of the platform has a thruster attached to it, which are activated independently of one another as your only inputs. So firing one thruster simultaneously lifts that side of the platform and rotates the platform away from the thrust. Firing both at once boosts the platform straight up or whatever direction it happens to be pointing, and leaving both of them off lets gravity bring it back down. The interplay of each input representing a bundle package where lift, thrust, and rotation can’t be isolated from one another is what makes it work so well.

So moving in a straight line from the left side of the screen to the right, the simplest possible action in a platform game, here involves a couple taps to the left thruster to angle the platform to the right (but not too far lest the crate slide off), measured taps of both thrusters to build up momentum and skim along the ground (since each thrust gives both rightward and upward momentum, a constant burn would crash into the ceiling), taps of the right thruster to angle the whole thing back in the opposite direction, followed by bursts of both to decelerate the lateral momentum so you don’t crash into the far wall (and without ignoring altitude and crashing into the ground while making those adjustments), and then using the left thruster to get back to level and finally both to set down in the landing zone so gently that the crate doesn’t go tumbling off. Or if you’re going for speed, a constant burn at a nearly horizontal angle with just enough lift to counteract gravity, followed instantly by swinging around and decelerating at the same angle, which leaves no margin of error and is likely to end in a crash or sending the crate flying most of the time, but incredibly satisfying to pull off.

And of course, the levels get much more complex than a simple straight line. Letting gravity and momentum carry you swooping just under a moving block while burning in a tight circle to align perfectly to catch a launch from an air jet is simply sublime. Most of the levels are fairly simple if you carefully hover-inch your way through them, but the “real game” is in completing them without ever touching a wall and doing them under the lowest time limit, which demands much riskier maneuvers.

Also, “Tell me about interesting/obscure choice _________” is a great idea to generate interesting discussions out of a bunch of lists. So to carry that on:

I can also vouch for Aladdin (SNES version at least) being a perfectly enjoyable platformer, though on the easy side. It didn’t make a huge impression on me, but was in the upper tier of the 16-bit era’s deluge of the genre.

Aladdin is one of my fave Disney movies, that had to help :)

OK then, since I got a request to tell more about the BBS games, and Tele-Arena happens to be one of those games, I will gladly extrapolate. It brings back memories of interesting gaming and interpersonal dynamics from an era that doesn’t exist anymore. Stay tuned!

Aladdin for SNES was much different than the Genesis version. I think most people considered the Genesis game to be better. The SNES version was a completely typical platformer, while the Genesis version was a very good platformer. I don’t quite remember what it was that made the Genesis version so much better. I think there was a bit more exploration and hidden goodies to find, and also I think it was the better looking game. It’s strange that there was a time when identical franchises would spawn very different games between different consoles.

This thread is the best. These lists are very interesting. I’m not committed enough to roll my own so I’d like to co-opt Thraeg’s list which is remarkably similar to what I would probably come up with (I certainly have to check out the games on there I don’t know). I’m intrigued to see Starseed Pilgrim in Nightgaunt’s list. Been meaning to play that, this big a recommendation is the kick I needed. I saw Capitilism Plus on Greatatlantic’s list. I’ve never heard of that game but my god that is the best title of a game I’ve ever seen.

Looking forward to seeing more. These lists flesh out the perspective you’re all approaching games from more than I thought it would. They don’t feel overwhelming to look at because the trends and perspectives shine out pretty well at a glance (with a few odd choices).

Dude, you can’t just leave it at that. If our tastes are that similar, then for the privilege of sharing my list I demand that you at least post an addendum of games I didn’t mention but would have made yours, so I can go check them out.

Heh; Toy Commander is a little game that I don’t think got a bunch of attention at release (except perhaps as one of the first games for the system). When we got our Dreamcast, we grabbed a magazine with a bunch of demos, and the Christmas demo for the game was there. I played it a bunch, so bought the full title.

Essentially, it’s a charming little puzzle actioner where you control various toys vehicles (cars, tanks, helis, planes) across a variety of missions. These sometimes included straight action, but sometimes had puzzle elements. The controls were a bit finicky, as it often used a fair amount of physics in the puzzles (use your little toy car to get up to the stove, then roll three eggs into the boiling water), and each vehicle type had its own set of controls. But each level was fairly unique, and the framing narrative (you’re just a kid playing with toys) worked, despite only intruding into the game perhaps twice.

Something about the game was super charming to me. Whether it was the oversized environments (you were controlling toys, after all), or just the colorful visuals - I loved it. There were ace times for many of the levels, and I played the game repeatedly to master those times and create my own unbeatable scores.

Moreover, it had a split screen mode that lasted us for over a year. You had access to the three major vehicle types in multi, and that created a ton of fun situations. As with any split screen game, the sheer amount of screen cheating created half the fun.

Years after release, I realized who the developers were (a rename\offshoot of Adeline), and I realized why it had the charming atmosphere (same company that made Little Big Planet).

Damn you! Trying to write this is bringing me awfully close to writing my own list. I’d probably add a few Marios (maybe Super Mario World and Super Mario 3D World?), a few Paradox games (EU 4 and Victoria 2), maybe a shmup or two (White Butterfly, maybe Sin & Punishment) and a few MMOs (Everquest and City of Heroes). But honestly, a lot of it would stay the same. (Though I’d have to question your choice of Recettear! 10 seconds of that audio-visual assault of unrelenting unbearable “cuteness” left me reeling.)

Heh, thanks. I did actually include Super Mario World and Galaxy, and am glad to see the vote of confidence in 3D World given that my copy of that and the Wii U to play it on are literally on a truck headed to the local Best Buy as we speak, thanks to their $25 off the system bundle last week. I only started getting into shmups in the last few years (I included Jamestown and Crimzon Clover, and Bug Princess would have been #105 or so), but haven’t played either of those and will definitely go take a look at them. And thanks for the reminder on Paradox – I’ve had CK2 in my queue forever and keep meaning to set aside a few hours to power past the initial learning curve. Think the MMO ship has sailed for me, though. I enjoyed stints in EQ, Anarchy Online, and WoW (#98), but their time commitments are a hard sell with a career and a family, and the rise of universal data collection on everything saps the sense of exploration.

And on Recettear, while I don’t have any particular affection for the hyper-cute aesthetic, I’ll take it over a grey-brown military look any day. It’s there for the mechanics, being one of very few games carrying on the style of Actraiser and Dark Cloud, where you have combative and constructive sides to the game, each feeling distinct and reasonably fleshed out, and with success in each feeding back into the other (In the spirit of ‘metroidvania’ I tried to call this genre cloudraisers, but it never caught on).

And another list:

  1. Thief 2
  2. Baldur’s Gate
  3. World of Warcraft
  4. Baldur’s Gate 2
  5. Diablo 3
  6. Planetfall
  7. Thief
  8. Crash Bandicoot: Warped
  9. Icewind Dale
  10. Battlefield 1942
  11. Painkiller
  12. Lord of the Rings Online
  13. Diablo
  14. Skyrim
  15. Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines
  16. Bioshock Infinite
  17. Pharoah
  18. Might & Magic VII
  19. Trinity
  20. F.E.A.R. 2
  21. Doom II
  22. Dungeons and Dragons Online
  23. Super Mario 3
  24. Rise of Nations
  25. Alan Wake
  26. Icewind Dale 2
  27. Caesar 3
  28. Pinball FX2
  29. Battlefield Vietnam
  30. Crash Bandicoot 2
  31. Transport Tycoon
  32. Shadowrun SNES
  33. Morrowind
  34. King’s Bounty
  35. Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
  36. Neverwinter Nights 2
  37. Guild Wars 2
  38. Psychonauts
  39. Fatal Frame 2
  40. Sanitarium
  41. Titan Quest
  42. Drawn: Dark Flight
  43. Amnesia
  44. Thief Deadly Shadows
  45. Batman: Arkham Asylum
  46. Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal
  47. Clive Barker’s Undying
  48. Limbo
  49. Diablo 2
  50. Planescape Torment
  51. Fallout 3
  52. Gone Home
  53. Sorceror
  54. Bioshock
  55. Super Mario RPG
  56. Condemned
  57. Divine Divinity
  58. Borderlands 2
  59. The Walking Dead
  60. Gothic III
  61. Star Wars (arcade game)
  62. Ultima III
  63. Half-Life
  64. Final Fantasy VIII
  65. Bastion
  66. The Temple of Elemental Evil
  67. Mass Effect
  68. STALKER
  69. Fate
  70. Rollercoaster Tycoon 2
  71. Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
  72. Anno 2070
  73. The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II
  74. Giants: Citizens Kabuko
  75. Papers Please
  76. Dark Cloud 2
  77. The Secret World
  78. A Mind Forever Voyaging
  79. System Shock 2
  80. Super Mario Strikers
  81. The Witcher 2
  82. Medal of Honor
  83. Anchorhead
  84. Dragon Age Origins
  85. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
  86. Little Inferno
  87. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
  88. Sly 2: Band of Thieves
  89. Wizardry 8
  90. Mario and Luigi: Partners In Time
  91. Sacred 2
  92. Recettear
  93. Super Mario World
  94. Civilization 3
  95. Grim Fandango
  96. Alpha Protocol
  97. Mafia 2
  98. Pirates of the Burning Sea
  99. Temple of Apshai
    100.Dark Messiah of Might & Magic

Man, this took forever.

Past #50 or so, things get a little arbitrary order-wise, but I think the top 30 are pretty solidly in the proper order. It seems to be largely RPGs, but plenty of shooters and adventure games and strategy games are represented too.

Many of these games, I’m fully aware, are flawed or even downright not that good but they’re games that for whatever reason I couldn’t stop playing until I’d fully explored them. There’s very little here from my earliest gaming experiences on an Apple II and an Atari. Temple of Apshai and some of the text adventures and not much else. I did manage to find a place for the Star Wars arcade game, into which I plunked hundreds of quarters…and now that I think about it, I should’ve included Tempest and Defender as well but I don’t wanna change the numbers now.

That was a surprisingly fun exercise, even if I’m still thinking of things I should’ve had on, even with 100 games.