To celebrate our 10 year anniversary I think it's only fair that we do the exact same thing every video game magazine did whenever they reached a milestone... create a top 100 list. So that's what I'm going to do. I've spent the last couple weeks thinking this over and I have a list in front of me that I'm pretty happy with. No one else on earth will be happy with it, but as I always say, "fuck off it's my list and I don't give two shits what you think you little pissant." At least I think I say that.
Also, if you recall I did do a top 28 list a while back. However, that was 5 years ago and many great games have come out since, so even that top 28 has some changes in it. There's a few new games, a few games my opinions have changed on, and there was one really great one that I completely overlooked somehow when I made the list the first time. So rest assured there will be some very noticeable changes.
And it's going to go by fast. Since I've got that new job starting in just over a week, my free time may be reduced, so I'm going to try to get all 100 games posted within the next two weeks. I need to sharpen up my writing since this is a PR job so it's good practice. Writing about insurance benefits and filing medical claims is just like video games right?
100Sonic Adventure
99Kaboom
98Conquests of the Longbow
97Streets of Rage 2
96Lollipop Chainsaw
95Bloodborne
94 Crazy Taxi
93Bit.Trip.Beat
92Wii Ski & Snowboard
91RiverCity Ransom
90Dragon Quest Monsters
89Jones in the Fastlane
88Dark Cloud 2
87Professor Layton and the Curious Village
86MadWorld
85Marvel Vs. Capcom 2
84Torneko the Last Hope
83Crystal Castles
82Space Harrier
81Retro Game Challenge
80Final Fantasy VII
79Bulletstorm
78Rayman Legends
77Super Dodge Ball
76World of Goo
75The Magic of Scherazade
74Minecraft
73Fantasy Zone 2
72Golden Axe: Revege of Death Adder
71Final Fantasy Legend II
70Hotel Dusk
69Splatoon
68Pitfall
67Dragon Quest V
66SteamWorld Dig
65Street Fighter 3: Third Strike
64Order Up
63Hearthstone
62Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge
61Bayonetta
60Galaga
59 Earthbound
58Super Mario Bros.
57Wii Sports Resort
56Pac-Man CE: DX
55Trauma Team
I can certainly agree with that on Super Castlevania IV. I played that game to hell and back on the SNES and also on the Wii and Wii U VC and now I also have it on the SNES Classic Mini. Yeah the music in that game is absolutely fantastic.
#52. Fortune Street
Monopoly? Fuck that shit. Monopoly is for alzhemiers patients and toddlers. Fortune Street.... now that's where it's at. Seriously, I don't know why people go so damn intimidated by this game. It was like Monopoly with an added feature that let you invest on other players properties. That one little change was genius too. You could share in an opponents increased wealth when they started developing their property AND if you sold off your investment at particular times you could also crash the value of your opponents property. It was fantastic. Cut-throat financial gaming with Dragon Quest and Mario characters. I'm sure I would have lost a few friends in the process of playing this, if I ever could have gotten my friends to join in. I can't tell you how many hours I spent playing this on the Wii, but it definitely ranked up there with my most played Wii games. Might need to revisit this in the near future...
Super Castlevania 4 is definitely a defining Snes game. That's one of the games I always think of when I think of that console. A great showpiece...and it just has that Snes feel to it.
Love CV4. Fortune street sounds cool. Loving the write ups.
#51. Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
I don't think Nintendo ever gets enough credit for their art direction in games. Critics will jerk off all over indie pieces of crap like Playdead for making Limbo or ThatGameCompany for Journey. But Nintendo is consistantly breaking out innovative art styles, and the Wind Waker is probably the ultimate example of that. People shit their pants when they first saw kid Link instead of the all growed up mature version from the N64, but once people started playing it and seeing how good this game was in motion, every shut their collective pieholes. When I first got to the end of Super Mario Bros. 2, the final scene had this cartoon-like scene of Mario sleeping in bed, and I always wanted to see a game that looked that good the entire time. When I saw the Wind Waker, that was the first time I really thought the dream had come true. And it certainly didn't hurt that the game was super fun (minus that triforce hunting segment towards the end). Some people didn't like the sailing, but I loved exploring the seas. Those moments when you'd be surrounded by nothing but blue, and then discover something floating in the ocean was always a great moment. Oh, and it's got the best Ganon of the entire series.
#50. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
There is something to be said for familiarity. GTA:III was good but I found the violence and storyline off-putting. Then Vice City comes along with Ray Liotta, the greatest music of the 80's, and a setting ripped straight out of South Beach where I had recently started hanging out in real life and suddenly I'm sold!! Seriously, I can't emphasize how important these things made the game to me. My wife, who lived on South Beach for years would sit next to me while I played and point out which areas Rockstar directly lifted from the real world, and proceed to tell me which buildings were hotels she lived in or which places were restaurants she worked in. And yeah, while there was a lot of gratuitous violence this was really the game that proved that we could have good R-rated video games. Watching Tommy Vercetti float around town forging and breaking alliances to get whats his was a hell of a lot of fun... and maybe killing prostitutes was kind of fun too.
Vice City was badass. I'm all about the 80's and I wish we could go back there so I wouldn't have to witness the nonsense of the modern day. So anything in this setting is an instant plus. When you add it to GTA of all things, it's just a match made in heaven.
Two fantastic games, way too low on the list. These next 50 must be amazing.
#49. The Dagger of Amon Ra
Dear god the lengths I went through to play this game. The Dagger of Amon Ra was the sequel to this great mystery adventure came called the Colonel's Bequest and when I saw this was about a mystery involving an Egyptian display at a museum I was sold. It wouldn't be that easy though. When I first bought the Dagger of Amon Ra, my PC wasn't powerful enough to run it so I returned it. A friend later told me about "boot disks" and how they could help me run it. This time the game started, but still didn't run well enough to play for long. A year went by and we upgraded the family computer so the first game I bought for it was Ra. Unfortunately that copy had a disk error and the game froze about 20 minute into it. FINALLY the 4th copy worked. And remarkably, through all of that the game still lived up to my hopes and expectations. Though I'm pretty sure my local PC store thought I was up to something nefarious given how many times I bought and returned it.
Anyway this is a point and click adventure game that doubles as a classic Agatha Christie styled mystery. The cast of character gets starts off in the double digits and over the course of the story people get off'ed one by one until there's not too many left. It sort of helps you figure out who the killer is, provided you don't get yourself killed in the process. Anyway it was a real unique story that stood out amongst the very crowded adventure game market. Even it's 1920's setting made it feel like something very special, and it actually inspired a lot of interest in the decade in me. As far as the game itself, it might not have been the most fair game in the world, as you really had to play the game through twice to figure out "whodunit" and actually get the motivation behind it. But hey that just meant more replay value, something that a lot of PC adventure games don't give you.
Love the stories that go with these.