Gamespy.com's "Top 50 Games of All Time"

Alex Bischoff writes "In this article, Gamespy.com rates the "Top 50 Games of All Time" (both console and computer games), including commentary from developers at 3DRealms, id Software, Monolith Productions and others. Needless to say, Daikatana is not on the list ;)."

Comments

Again?

[Kupek]

For those of you who don't visit videogame sites with any regularity, you should probably know that these sites do an "Top $num Games" feature damn near every other week. So don't take this one to be the ultimate judgement of anything, if you think something is missing, it's probably because the few people who came up with it (surprise, surprise) have different tastes than you do.

Teenager games

[Dexter77]

That list seems to be made by teenagers who never saw 80's games. There's no doubt that a person who has played games from the beginning of the 80's till today would've made entirelly different list.
I have to say that I'm more than amused of the choices that made to the list.
It's needless to argue about opinions, but some of those choices were like comparing the LOTR to a comic book.

This list is obviously bullshit.

[Sax Maniac]

I can't find Who Wants To Be A Millionaire or Deer Hunter at all on there. Goddamn elitists.

Some statistics

[CaseStudy]

With any top 50 list, someone's going to complain that games weren't included or were overrated. I think this one's pretty bad, though.

A breakdown by game type:

• Adventure/Interactive Fiction - 39 (but no Sierra games or Myst)
• Action - 1, 2, 5, 11, 12, 13, 18, 24, 29, 30, 32, 38, 40, 44, 46, 47 (but no Pacman or Pong)
• • Fighting - 30 (but no Mortal Kombat)
  • FPS - 1, 2, 5, 12, 13, 18, 24, 29, 32, 38, 40, 44, 47 (but no Castle Wolfenstein)
  • Platform - 11, 20, 46 (but no Super Mario Bros.)
• Console - 10, 11, 20, 28, 38, 48 (but no Super Mario Bros.)
• Flight Sim - 34 (but no Falcon or X-Wing)
• Hybrid - 26, 35 (but no Starflight)
• Puzzle - 19 (but no Fool's Errand)
• RPG - 6, 7, 8, 10, 15, 17, 21, 23, 27, 28, 36, 37, 41, 42, 43, 45, 48 (but no Fallout or Ultima 7)
• • Console RPG - 28, 48 (but no late Final Fantasys)
  • Online RPG - 15, 27, 48 (but no MUDs)
• Simulation - 33 (but not The Sims)
• Sports - none at all
• Strategy - 3, 4, 9, 14, 16, 22, 25, 31, 35, 50 (but no Master of Orion)
• • 4X - 4, 22 (but no Master of Orion, Alpha Centauri)
  • RTS - 3, 9, 14, 16, 31, 50 (but no Dune)
  • Wargame - 49

Statistics by year:

• 1981 - 21
• 1982 - 39
• 1983 - 25, 41
• 1985 - 7, 17
• 1986 - 10, 19
• 1987 - 49
• 1988 - 42
• 1990 - 34
• 1991 - 4, 30
• 1992 - 8, 26, 28
• 1994 - 1, 23, 24, 35, 44, 46
• 1995 - 3, 31
• 1996 - 5, 6, 11, 13, 22
• 1997 - 14, 20, 38, 47, 48, 50
• 1998 - 2, 9, 36, 40, 43
• 1999 - 12, 15, 16, 27, 45
• 2000 - 18, 29, 37

Just from those numbers, we'd expect the highest-rated games to be first-person shooters based in the mid-nineties (Doom, Quake), and the lowest-rated games to be sports games based in the late eighties (Earl Weaver Baseball).

The early games got shafted

[localroger]

WHERE THE HELL IS PONG? Where are the Atari 2600 games?

How can you name fifty games no less without mentioning some of the originals that invented the form? This list reads like a list of the "50 greatest songs of all time" all of which were recorded since 1960.

Despite a couple of nods toward the C64 and Apple ][, this list is hopelessly 90's-oriented. "All-time" indeed! Where are...

• SPACEWAR, the first video game EVER
• PONG, PONG, PONG, and PONG variants like BREAKOUT, the first home video games EVER
• TANK WAR for the 2600, still holds its own with any modern game for quick 2-person play
• BATTLEZONE, first first-person 3d game EVER
• SPACE INVADERS, ASTEROIDS, each owned the world for a couple of years

Meanwhile I've never even heard of some of the games they nominated. Then again, I'm not a "gamer" any more -- guess I got it out of my system when we were still carving video games out of wooden blocks.