Top 10 Games... of all time. And prove why.

#1 The best game of all time is Chess... heres why:

1. Its been around longer then most games, including video games
2. It can never be masterd
3. It's different every single time.
4. It always offers a programming challenge to programmers
5. It will always have a large following

#2 Chris, by that argument Go is even a better game than chess, since it's been around for a lot longer, is purer from a logic perspective, is even harder to master, has less set patterns than chess because it uses identical playing pieces, is also a challenge to programmers, and has always had a larger following than chess :)

I suspect the original poster means vidgames :)
And there is no way anyone can prove why his top 10 would be the ultimate top 10, way too subjective ;)
Loaded question, hehe

#3 Well... I dont think the point is to get an unbiased answer...

I have never heard of Go... I will look it up. If what you say is true then I would agree with you. Thought it sounds too good to be true.

And... a game is a game. Vid or not. Besides... chess is now a video game as well...

#4 1. Everquest:

Its nickname "Evercrack" does it justice. Any game that addictive is a stroke of genius.

It was revolutionary, it took what people have been doing, combined different ideas in an innovative idea and application of that idea and acheived what none had up until it. It spawned the slew of MMO games we see today.

Yes it sucked, yes I love it, and yes I hate it too =p I still have the desire to play that game, lol.

I think the biggest strength of it is how they made you feel like you were truly earning something. When you leveled yor character, got rare items, saved up money, did market manipulation and rich, maxed out tradeskills, whatever... in just about everything in that game it felt like you were truly "earning" something. Something you want and can show off, feel proud about, compare to others lesser and greater, lesser to give yourself a boost, greater to motivate you.

Yes it aquired titles like "Levelquest" "Ratquest" etc ... but 98% of those came from those who were addicted to it lol. Truly a love hate relationship.

It started with two guys proposing to Sony... it ended with roughly 30 people on the team. I followed it since roughly 2 years before its release. Amazing development. Also despite the status its gained now, with its humble origins of two guys with a game idea, it proves that a truly great idea with a small team can lead to greater things :)

That game truly was a masterpeice in my opinion. They went wrong in so many places but it still was a blast to play. It also was the first, so truly it isn't fair to compare it to later generations of MMO's. EQ 2 on the other hand can be compared. That leads to my second choice.


2. Everquest 2:

Yes my number 2 is Everquest 2, cheap answer, not in my opinion. The tradeskill system in this game is amazing. I can just play working on tradeskills and be satisfied lol. Some other aspects are very good to, how easy it is for people to start. The quest system is great, simple and easy to follow. The journal system is great, one thing that inspired me to develop my Torque DB journal system. Though the ease sometimes feels like a watered down and sugar coded EQ, now that my time is extremely limited I am quite fond of that experience. It lives up to its predecessor while still being its own creation.


3. Breath of Fire 1 and 2 (SNES):

Not too many people know about this game. This was my favorite game of all time until EQ. BoF 2 was the first game I played with multiple endings! The ability to make choices in the game that truly effect your experience. You build a city and as you adventure you get the option to invite certain people to live there. The thing is there is only a certain ammount of slots and certain people will only go to those certain slots, so you never know if you invite one person if you'll miss out on another person later. These people would set up shop and sell you powerful weapons and armor, do other things that you can't get anywhere else. You also get to choose 1 of 3 different building styles. This was way back on the SNES even!

At one point in BoF 2 you can fight an enemy a certain way that will change the way the game is, change the ending, and give you a floating city! If you fight the enemy normally then it just goes on normally. Its amazing how subtle that option was.

The stories were great in both of them and the second one linked itself to the first one in subtle little ways that I had never seen before... truly a masterpeice with gameplay aspects ahead of its time! In many ways I still think these are the greatest games ever made



Well theres my first three at least.

#5 Go information. Fun game! I love Chess, too. I suck at them, but they're great games. I suck at Majong, too. >:-{

Regardless, the point isn't how cool gaming history is, but our all-time favorite games.

My list is a bit odd, and based on a few different things than some people's. I also have trouble putting them in a categorical listing numberically since some of them rise and fall when looking at different aspects.

Ultima IV
The inclusion of morality-based gameplay was a first as far as I know. It took it outside the concept of alignment which basically had been a means of determining whether you could wear "dark armor" or "light armor" or use a "sword of evil +3" at an advantage or disadvantage, and gave it world-relevance. Plus, I could gain an eighth in valor, all the money I ever wanted to purchase 99 of every regeant and get to level 8 by standing on a bridge and pressing space bar to kill Trolls. Which is a plus, I guess.

King's Quest III
While the King's Quest games have a strong place in my heart, III was the one that I felt completed a new storyline experience (as opposed to the traditional storyline that I'd been playing in action games and interactive fiction and RPG's). The combination of spell ingredients, consisten adventure gameplay, and a fun storyline was perfect for me. The Perils of Rosella is extremely close for an original and fully realized story in an amazingly realized environment.

Radiant Silvergun
I'm a huge shooter fan, but this is the one that I keep coming back to. I play it several times a week. I can jump in and play for pure enjoyment. I suck at it, too. You'd think that after this many years, I'd be good, but no. I suck. But I love it. It's one of my favorite gaming experiences ever.

Super Mario Bros
SMB was one of the most addictive platformers that I've ever played. I remember how pissed (and relieved in some sense) when I saw that they'd changed 6-3. It became so much easier. And it cemented the Mario platformer empire, of which I have loved every game since. I enjoyed Mario Bros, but it reminded me of a number of arcade games at the time. SMB broke that mold, IMO.

Devil May Cry
Devil May Cry was the action game I'd been waiting for for a long, long time. It not only had an intuitive control scheme, excellent camera system, but a ramped level of difficulty which catered to both hardcore and casual players.

Street Fighter II
I suck so hard at this game, but I love it. As a fighter, just just feels "right". And that right feel has been with most of Capcom's fighters since. It's also played into other 2D fighters's timing systems. King of Fighters, Vampire Savior, Guilty Gear, etc. I love them all, but I see SFII as a strong influence on the entire 2D fighting genre. Plus, as bad as I suck at it, I'm better at it than I am most of the other titles. ;)

Sin and Punishment
S&P is a rail shooter by Treasure (Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, Dynamite Heady, Sillhouette Mirage, etc). Not only is it my favorite rail shooter (with Panzer Dragoon Orta and Rez vying in second), but it's an amazingly realized one. It does have the some of the worst voice acting in videogaming history, though (Martian Gothic beating it by a landslide).

M.U.L.E.
Mutliplayer strategy love-fest. Space War and other text-based multiplayer games had nothing on the fun-factor of M.U.L.E., IMO.

Enchanter, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker
While this is a series of interactive fiction games, I love their advancement in character and story. The Zork games had some of this, but these felt more complete. Later Infocom games like Quarterstaff (party-based interactive fiction...wha?) and Beyond Zork captured this as well. Games like Witness and Beyond Zork are among my favorites as well. Looking Glass's Wonderland was an amazing interactive fiction experiment as well.

I'm sure I'll come up with more as I think about it. These were just off the top of my head.

#6 Best games of ALL TIME? Boy, this is impossibly broad.

* Go - yes. Played by more people than play Chess --- but mostly Asian. It's got even simpler rules, but even more complex strategies. And it's not solvable by brute-force like Chess is.

* Chess - another one that's withstood the test of time.

* The Prisoner's Dilemma - this is more of a 'problem' in Game Theory than a real game in and of itself, but its permutations are endlessly fascinating and of great value to anyone who is serious about game design.

* Monopoly - A modern game that has survived the decades and has enjoyed endless "modding" by fans. I am not a huge fan, personally, but it's obviously appealing.

---- OKAY, now narrowing things down a bit to JUST computer, videogames ----

* Pong - not the first videogame (or even the first coin-op arcade game), but it's the game that launched an industry.

* Pac Man - Simple and fun, and it took the industry into mainstream consciousness.

* Crowther and Woods "Adventure" (AKA "The Colossal Cave Adventure") - It launched a genre, which survives today in the form of a (precious few) graphical adventures with similar tongue-in-cheek humor, MUDs, the evolutionary derivative of MUDs (the Massively Multiplayer Online Games), and of course all RPGs. And the game is still amusing and fun.

* Civilization - MASSIVE, cross-gender appeal, it was one of the first games that attracted a "casual" audience to what was otherwise a fairly hardcore game

* Galaga - Cloned up the wazoo, but it's elegant, simple shooter gameplay hasn't really been topped yet. The thing is still a blast to play and remains a favorite. It may not be perfect, but it has become the template for "shoot-em-ups"

* Doom - Duh. Almost as influential as Pac-Man in mainstreaming gaming, it was the game that exposed the potential for first-person perspective, "You are there" (or, to borrow a term from the era, "virtual reality") gaming to hundreds of thousands of people who wouldn't touch a flight sim with a 10' pole.

* Super Mario Brothers - After many had dismissed videogaming as a fad, little Mario (the re-dubbed "jump-man" from the Donkey Kong series) brought it back with a vengeance. He fascinated a generation with cute, pretty graphics, extremely tight gameplay, and a ridiculous quantity of secrets that players struggled to learn in an age before Internet spoilers.

* Ultima IV - One of the highest points in RPGs. If it was simply the evolution of a great series, it would have been but a footnote. But in Ultima IV, Richard Garriott broke new ground by creating a story that not only depended on what the player did, but how he did it. It brought morals and ethics into play without being heavy-handed or religious. It added a dimension to the mix beyond "kill all the monsters between yourself and the ultimate bad guy" that has been borrowed from by modern games, but never really exceeded.

Well, I guess that's twelve. So I can't count. There are tons more, but those are the first ones that popped into my head, so I guess that makes them the most significnt. I'm not saying they are perfect or even "The Best" - but something made them great, and in my mind it is how they blazed new trails, achieved accepted excellence, changed the industry, gained widespread appeal, and/or have stood the test of time.

I should note these aren't my FAVORITE games by any means. I'd put Mule, Ultima Underworld I, Falcon 3/4, Ms Pac Man, Master of Orion, Baldur's Gate II, Gran Turismo 3, Final Fantasy 7, and others on that list in front of many on this list.... but I wouldn't call them the "greatest," simply because in many cases they stood on the shoulders of giants in front of them.

#7 Fallout 1 & 2

In my opinion probably two of the most balanced games ever created. No matter how you configured your characters stats you could still play all the way through the games and the experience was different and fun each time.

#8 If you are talking video games, and PC games in the "modern" era then I'd say these should be up there: (sorry for short reasons, I don't have much time)

1. Doom- Nobody had ever made such a thing before, addicted millions and brought the FPS to life.

2. Quake- Basically the same as Doom, however brought along the "multiplayer" component.

3. Baldur's Gate Series - Rich in story, and in fun.

4. Fallout Series - Play the game however you want to play it, and it doesn't have to be a medievel 'fantasy'.

5. Half-Life series - Redefined storytelling in the FPS game.

6. Warcraft series - Orcs vs humans never gets old, from the RTS to the MMORPG.

7. Grim Fandango - You have to play it to understand.

8. Civilization series- Build an empire..

9. Ultima Series- From Ultima 1, to Underworld, to Ultima Online.

10. The Sims Series - Even if you don't have a life, you can have one on the computer.

Other Games: Starcraft, Deus Ex, GTA series..... and more....

#9 StarCraft

Balanced, addictive and fun.

#10 @Stefan - I dunno what you've been smoking if you think Starcraft is balanced, at least against the AI. :P

#11 Did anyone notice that posts magically disappear from time to time? Because I did... and not just when they're deleted...

#12 Quake
It defined the term 3D First Person Shooter. It is also the longest running multiplayer game in history, with a still active community. Coming up on 10 years very soon. I'll always be proud to have remained an active part of this community the entire time.

#13 Chris,

Bah yeah the AI cheated but I totally forgot about that when I typed my post :p
But multiplayer was wonderful!

#14 Wing Commander
Although Elite was technically the first space sim, WC was the first mass distributed space sim. It opened up the doors for the space genre.

#15 Day of the Tentacle: genius adventure game. Innovative and so funny. I loved this one and keep thinking it's the best game of all time. Perhaps playing it again would break the joy nowadays ;)

#16 @Ben
I've tried to do that before, going back to a game I loved. All I can recommend is dont do it, you will just ruin your memory of it.

#17 I think any Zelda game deserves to be on any top 10 games of all time list. (With maybe the exception of "The Adventure of Link" or those crappy CD-i games.)

For me, growing up with the Zelda franchise has been my inspiration to make games. Watching how the games have progressed graphically and story wise has been a real treat. If I had to pick one greatest game of all time I think it would be the new Zelda game that's coming out. I think its going to be hands down one of the greatest games of all time. (right up there with "Ocarina of Time")

Another game I really enjoy and I think is often overlooked is Landstalker for the genesis. That game had such a fun story and great graphics for the time. It was like an isometric Zelda game with harder puzzles. I would kill to be able to find a genesis and an old Landstalker cartridge.

#18 @Todd
Interesting since I have a number of games that I've gone back and played (things like Bard's Tale, Ultima IV, Ultima VII, Wizardry, Zelda, Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter II, Robotron, etc) and greatly enjoyed. And yet I enjoy new games as well. I can understand how revisiting old material for nostalgia sake can ruin the memory of the original experience, but I've had extremely positive experiences with revisiting old Sierra games, LucasArts games, Origin titles, old EA RPG's, etc.

@Zach
If you kill me, you'll find my Genesis with Landstalker in it on the shelf below my Saturn and Dreamcast.

#19 @Zach

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=62053&item=8191837484&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

There ya go buddy.

#20

Quote:@Ben
I've tried to do that before, going back to a game I loved. All I can recommend is dont do it, you will just ruin your memory of it.

Funny - I haven't had that problem. Yeah, some games definitely look better through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgic memory, but I've gone back and found that many of my old favorites STILL have what it takes to rock. Some require you to get over the shock of the antiquated graphics, but once you can see past it - the wonderful experience you remember is still there.

It's like going back and seeing some of the old classic black & white movies.

I played Ultima IV after finishing Ultima VII many years ago - a huge step back in graphics at the time. It was WONDERFUL. I've recently gone back to playing some old DOS games in DOSBox. "Epic Pinball" is once again one of my favorites. And Ms Pac Man & Galaga have aged really, really well...

But just like every black & white music wasn't a "classic," there were lots of crap games that aren't any better 10, 20, 25 years later...