So I sorta stumbled across a site I’ve seen previously which catalogs various top ten video game lists from different publications. I got to reading the site and then noted that the author summarized the results based on how many lists a game appeared on. This is obviously not a perfect summarization because it doesn’t take into account positioning. The author does link to a couple of other people who applied point systems or various other formulas but even there I wasn’t happy with the results because they were based around simple number crunching and not the application of logic.
What got me the most was that a couple of the publications (IGN.com and Electronic Gaming Monthly specifically) were included in the tallies more than once simply because they had released more than one top ten list in the last few years. This seemed wrong to me because while they weren’t necessarily that similar from year to year, they did represent one source basically stuffing the ballot box. Also there weren’t any ratings-based lists on there (most top ten lists are subjectively compiled by an editorial staff—there’s nothing wrong with that it just doesn’t represent the other means of collecting best-of data).
So what I did was take the list, cut off any duplicate source entries using only the most recent one available, added a couple of new sources in, including Metacritic’s top meta-rated games, gave each game a point rank from 10 to 1 based on position (a game ranked as #1 would get 10 points, games ranked #2 got 9 points, etc) and then removed any games from the list that came up with less than ten points total. Here is the result:
- Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (101 points) – I still haven’t played this game. I guess I should.
- Super Mario 64 (80 points) – I played this some when I lived in Texas and bought myself a Nintendo 64 to aleviate some of the occasional boredom from not knowing hardly anyone in the place. You know, it was interesting at the time, but not hardly what I’d consider to be #2 game all time.
- Tetris (64 points) – I suppose I can understand why this game is here, although I’m not sure I’d equate ubiquity with quality.
- Goldeneye 007 (42 points) – The first really viable FPS on a console? Yeah, I’d say that works as #4.
- Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (42 points) – I remember this game being fun but not stellar in the way that the first Legend of Zelda was. It certainly beat the pants off the weirdly incongruent Zelda II, but it didn’t strike me as being among the best games ever. Very good, sure, but tied for #4 overall seems excessive. Maybe I’ll pick up the GBA version and see if I’m just misremembering how good it was.
- Final Fantasy VII (42 points) – I grudgingly admit this game is very, very good. Fanboys seem to forget that it certainly had it’s share of issues and there hasn’t been a Final Fantasy worth playing through since, but it certainly deserves to be somewhere on this list.
- Super Mario Bros. 3 (35 points) – As the only game I’ve ever been so excited about to bother playing an import version from Japan, I’d say I have to agree with this one.
- Super Mario Bros. (34 points) – As with Tetris I don’t know that ubiquity should be confused with quality, but I grant that as far as platformers go it was pretty good in its time.
- Doom (34 points) – I never actually played through this game on the PC. I played a weird Doom/Doom II hybrid on the original Playstation. It was just OK.
- Half-Life (31 points) – This would be much higher on my list.
- Legend of Zelda (29 points) – I would have swapped this with A Link to the Past since my memory says that this game was basically the same as the original only with better, 16-bit graphics. Nice, but not 13 points superior.
- Street Fighter II (28 points) – I spent a lot of money on this game and played quite a bit of it. I’m really not sure why, though. I never really cared all that much for fighting games and I sucked really horribly at SFII. I guess I can see where it deserves a spot on the list, but it wouldn’t be anywhere close to my own list.
- Metal Gear Solid (27 points) – There were so many memorable experiences to be had playing this game. A gem that deserves a better ranking in my opinion.
- StarCraft (21 points) – Let’s see, a game that came out almost ten years ago and is still the most popular game in some countries and has a continuing, active community worldwide? Yep, that sounds like top 30 fodder to me. I enjoyed it for the story as much as the gameplay.
- Resident Evil 4 (19 points) – One of the best games ever. I’d have this higher.
- Final Fantasy VI (19 points) – Another one of my top games. Words cannot express how much I’m anticipating the GBA port of this game. Move it higher!
- Super Mario World (17 points) – It was an okay game, but I could never quite get the hang of the cape and I spent the whole game wishing they’d just bring the Raccoon Suit back. Wouldn’t crack my top 50.
- Chrono Trigger (17 points) – I played this game so long ago that all I can remember about it are that I really, really liked it and that I couldn’t play it enough because it seemed like our whole neighborhood had saved games on our cartidge.
- Tony Hawk 2 (17 points) – I absolutely loved this game for the Dreamcast. Later versions had more and better features, but this one had some kind of X factor that the others lacked that made it utterly addictive. I think I even called in sick one day to play this game. But time hasn’t been so kind to it and while I might recognize what it was to me then, I think it being fairly low on this list is appropriate. Tony Hawk games seem to be the kind that make a stellar first impression but whose quality doesn’t linger.
- Super Metroid (16 points) – Even though I’m loving the Prime series, this is (and may forever be) the definitive Metroid game.
- Quake (15 points) – I barely played more than 30 minutes of the original Quake. It seemed about as boring as Doom was. I got some mileage out of Quake III, but only because of the multiplayer.
- Civilization (14 points) – I played some FreeCiv on Linux, but never actually messed with the original PC game. It’s hard sometimes to play these classics that you missed the first time around because you spend the whole time thinking that it could be done so much better using modern technology.
- Super Mario Kart (13 points) – As much Mario Kart as I’ve played, I don’t think I ever played the original SNES version other than at in-store demo kiosks.
- Civilization II (13 points) – See the Civilization comment above.
- The Sims (12 points) – I can honestly say that despite some ringing endorsements from people I actually trust, I have never played nor really had any interest in playing the Sims.
- Grand Theft Auto 3 (12 points) – For all the controversy, the sandbox style gameplay in GTA3 is still pretty impressive. I wish someone (or even Rockstar themselves) would come up with a similar game with similar quality and attention to detail where you had something more noble to do. I’m thinking along the lines of a truly open-ended role-playing game or a Zelda-type adventure game with a massive world and more or less total freedom. Virtual sociopathy is quasi-amusing for a while, but it’s hard to relate to a thug, you know?
- Quake II (11 points) – I played a little bit of Quake II around the time I was messing with Half-Life and Unreal (the original story based game, not Tournament), but I wasn’t all that impressed.
- Pac Man (10 points) – Some of my earliest memories involve this game, Chuck E. Cheese and being too blasted short to reach the controls and see the screen without the aid of a chair.
- The Sims 2 (10 points) – If you thought I had no interest in the original Sims, apply that double for the sequel.
- Elite (10 points) – I had never even heard of Elite until this little exercise. I had to look it up.
Sources: Nintendo Power 2006, Metacritic 2006, EGM 2005, GamePro 2005, GameFAQs 2005, IGN 2005, The Age 2005, Edge 2004, Retrogamer 2004, Entertainment Weekly 2003, Dorkclub 2003, GameSpy 2001, Game Informer 2001, GameSpot 2001, Computer and Video Games 2001, GamesRadar 2000, Nintendorks 2000, Next Generation 1999, CNET (?).
A few notes on the list, to help fill in your blanks:
Ocarina of Time – I actually have played it (it came with my GameCube), and it’s cool and all, but i actually prefer Link to the Past, which is my favorite in the series (with Wind Waker being a close second). I didn’t get all the way through Ocarina mainly due to time constraints and then basically phasing out of games in general, but it is good. #1 all time? Not in my book.
Link to the Past – I can definitely tell you that LttP is way better than the original game just because of its depth of storytelling. The original game is a classic, don’t get me wrong, but LttP takes that classic world and expands it to a place that is darn near perfect in my estimation. I would definitely have this higher.
Tetris, SMB – I agree that these two are oddly placed. Ubiquity, indeed.
Goldeneye 007 – I was honestly surprised that this game isn’t #1 on more lists. Consider that my experience has been that even utter and complete non-gamers have probably played this game at some point, or are at least familiar enough with it that you can describe an FPS as being “like Goldeneye” and they’ll know what you’re talking about. Maybe my experience is a bad representative sample, but still.
FFVII – I’m not sure why you’re grudged. This was *the* reason to buy a PS1 when it was at its height. It was the best RPG of its generation (though you’re probably right that VI/III is superior) and it set a new standard for RPGs to follow, and most have.
SMB3/SMW – It’s kind of easy to forget how good these games are (and i actually liked SMW a lot, and probably have as fond or fonder memories of it compared to SMB3). SMB3 was an incredible phenomenon in the gaming community – I remember when the movie “The Wizard” came out and it was this huge deal that it had real footage of SMB3. It was like Windows 95 – you had the impression that it was going to change the entire world.
Doom – I don’t know exactly what the big deal was with this game; it’s cool and all, and i guess it probably was the first big hit of the FPS genre. If you want to play it you can do so for free on Linux.
SFII – It is interesting to remember the halcyon days of this game, when it was serious street cred to be good at SFII. And like you, i was terrible at this game and could only watch in awe as people played the masters and were dismantled down at 00 Liquors.
Chrono Trigger – It is a really great game, it really is, but i always have liked Secret of Mana better for some reason. Chrono Trigger does deserve any praise it gets and any ranking on a top ten of all time list.
Super Metroid – When you go through these lists and see how many of these games were on the SNES console, it makes you think that the SNES days were some of the best that gaming’s ever had. Which is probably true. Note how the Genesis, its main competitor, had a lot of solid games but none really that were as truly memorable.
Anyway, that’s all i can pitch in. My memories of other games are either similar to yours or i have less experience with them.
Re: Link to the Past — Okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll start keeping my eyes peeled for a copy of the GBA port and give it another whirl.
Re: Goldeneye 007 — I don’t actually think your experience is non-representative of the truth: Most people who have even a passing acquaintance with a Nintendo 64 have played this game at least once. The thing about it is that I don’t think it has aged particularly well. While it certainly proved that First-Person Shooters were possible on consoles, the control scheme wasn’t ideal. It took Halo to finally get the sensitivity and controls correct on console analog sticks. Likewise multiplayer where 4-player splitscreen was the bee’s knees back in 1998, these days splitscreen is a disgruntling proposition when there are so many games that offer nearly seamless online multiplayer including voice chat. One other interesting aside about this game: I read that the level designers didn’t design the levels the way most developers do, which is to come up with the objective for the mission/whatever and then put the pieces together to make that objective happen in a fairly intuitive way. With Goldeneye 007, they actually built the levels to represent the locations they wanted (probably from the movie) and after the fact they added in objectives, enemies, etc. People have speculated that this made the game world feel more organic and natural as there were dead ends, rooms that served no purpose, and a non-linear type of exploration that was necessary to get from point A to point B since it wasn’t like “I just came from here and there is only one corridor that doesn’t lead back where I came from… this must be the way to go.”
Re: FFVII — Here’s why I’m grudged about FFVII: For one thing the end sequence (which I’ve griped about before) was poorly designed. I was able to fight the boss to a 45-minute stalemate with one character (he had no Phoenix Downs and no life-restoring magic, but he was taking practically no damage from the boss and dealing about as much). I’m sorry, but that just shouldn’t be possible. Also the graphics were pretty painful. Don’t cite the FMV to me, either. Any console at the time could have done pre-rendered backgrounds but the character models were, what, four and a half polygons? Lame. Also a lot of the length and depth of the game came from inconsequential side activities like Chocobo breeding and hunting for annoyingly well hidden super artifacts. What it did have going for it are strong production values, a truly epic-level quest with some good storytelling and a tolerable combat system (especially in light of the atrocities committed against RPGs in later FF installments). But this was also the first Final Fantasy game that should have been called Final Science Fiction because it’s nods to a fantasy setting were strained at best. I suppose that’s a minor quibble, but I did prefer the FFVI approach to incorporating some SF elements with the overall fantasy theme.
Re: SNES — In a lot of ways I do think that the SNES days were the best gaming has seen… but some of that might stem from the relative ages we all were then. I’m guessing a kid who was seven or eight when the SNES and Genesis were the Big Two might not really look back that fondly on those games but being roughly high school aged now will probably have a lot of nostalgia for the GameCube and PlayStation 2 down the road. But either way there were a lot of really solid games for the SNES, so long as you liked certain genres. Sports game fans will probably remember the Genesis as being best of the best… after all, it had the best NHL ’94 version ever.
One more thing on LttP – I think i might still have the cart, although i’m not sure you have a SNES handy anymore. Heck, i have one of those i’m not using too. Maybe i should just ship that to you along with the Magic stuff.
A note on GTA – one idea i had was to have a sort of Deathmatch game, kind of like an FPS only without the First-person and with multiple players. Kind of like playing Tag in a huge city. And with the pedestrians and cars and stuff. It could be like a Twisted Metal/GTA kind of thing, and i think it would be loads of fun.