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GameFAQs' Own 'Best. Game. Ever.' Contest Launched
XtremeLeader writes "Just days after GameSpy releases its Best All-Time Game competition, GameFAQs answers with a much more interactive Spring 2004 Contest to vote for the best games (you need a GameFAQs account to view the page). Unlike the GameSpy awards, however, this is completely gamer controlled. It begins by a registered user submitting their choices for favorite games (one per system, with more than a few systems), of which any game you want can be nominated. Voting ends at the beginning of March, and the polls are slated to begin late March/early April. The top 64 nominations will be accepted and placed into a series of polls that we get to vote on. Hopefully, this one doesn't have great games like Chrono Trigger thrown into the potpourri category."
As I browsed through the Gamespy game nomations, I kept wondering to myself "Where is Chrono Trigger" only to be offended when it made the misc. category. I was similarly offended that they would list all quake games, but not Half Life.
This is a much better idea than GameSpy's somewhat elitist approach. This just uses raw numbers to determine the best games instead of some wishy-washy "I think my friends liked this one a lot" kind of thing.
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Goldeneye definitely stood the test of time with me, for nearly a year that was the only game I played.
Also listed on that GameSpy page are Star Control II and X-COM, surely two of my favorite games of all time. SC2 doesn't have a ton of replay value (though I've played through it at least 3 times), but I still play X-COM every once in a while.
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I hate stuff like this. It makes the false assumption that the most popular games are the best games. Look at any other medium of entertainment and you can see how plainly false this is. Movies, Star Wars is probably one of the most popular, yet Citizen Kane is "the best" whether you like it or not.
With a poll on gamefaqs there are sure to be a zillion 12 year olds voting for GTA 3 and a million dumbasses voting for FF7. Heck, I'm almost 22 years old. Some of the 18 year olds who are coming into college now never owned an NES and were all about the Playstation. Playstation! Not even SNES! Just as if you've never seen Citizen Kane you can't be a movie critic you can't be a video game critic if you haven't played Zelda 1. Well, I guess you could be a critic, but you wouldn't have any credibility.
Zelda 1 is probably the Citizen Kane of video games. Although Mega Man 2 is #1 in my personal book. PC games? TIE Fighter or Civ2. I mean, it is so plainly obvious which games are the best to anyone who knows their shit.
Really I just wish they would rename the contest to "most popular video game as of right now". As opposed to "best game ever".
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Anyone who reads and pays attention to the site will know that it's very biased towards Sony and Nintendo. PC games and the XBox won't get a fair representation on Gamefaqs. All you have to do is read the discussion forums on Gamefaq's for a while and you'll come to realize this. The site itself may cater to all systems, but the userbase is definately Sony and Nintendo fanboys.
(GameFAQs's user base is primarily RPG-oriented, which makes sense considering that RPGs are the games you usually go to FAQs for, and console-oriented, which is largely arbitrary.)
Best RPG Evar: Legacy of the Ancients -- on a Commodore 64, no less; it's amazing what they could pack in there!
:)
Other than that, and in no particular order, Masters of Magic, Star Control II, Super Mario Bros. 3, Leisure Suit Larry 4*, Final Fantasy V, and Ultima VI...
* Yes, I realize that this game does not exist...
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There is not much you can do to change the mentality of the GameFAQs userbase. They are not going to understand the real games that made an impact on the industry as we know it. I will also agree that they gear more towards RPGs characters than anything else.
That being said, yes, it does boil down to a popularity contest. But I do have some faith in the people who are willing to show what real games were about. We will have to remind them about the times of the SNES, NES, and maybe even the Atari days.
Mainstream marketing is what is driving a lot of the younger crowd that is buying games. That is why the FF series is flying off the shelves, but games like Zelda and SMB are being turned into EB and not being brought again.
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Be sure to pick Grow Can you make everything GROW! and get 20,000 points?
Let's face it, there's no such thing as a greatest game ever. Super Mario Bros 3 was maybe the standard for its time, and before that, I dunno, Pong, but a lot of games nowadays have depth that isn't pinned down by that 16k of memory you could use. Arguably they're better but then they're still not necessarily as enjoyable.
Maybe you could put up a list of games that have the greatest historical significance, but history is written by the victors, ie. the Nintendos of the era and not the Ataris. Whose to say that some games on the TurboGrafix 16 or NeoGeo weren't the best for their time? And how do you even approach this with numbers and different age groups?
Back in the day, there could be some sort of consensus, maybe, because the demographic was similar. But now you have 50-yr olds who play, you have teenagers whose minds have been captivated (I would almost say brainwashed) by Anime and Pokemon. Different people define greatness differently in a game. It's like defining the greatest movies - a futile exercise created by basic greed - the AFI wants you to buy their newest AFI100 DVD or VHS, just as Lucas wants to sell you his newest 6-movie Super Humungo Collector's Director's Extended Limited Edition Star Wars set. Nevermind that Citizen Kane bored me, it had historical significance. People will no doubt continue to do these lists, as companies like GameSpy release Top10 after Top10 so they can keep people interested in going to their site so they can sell ads and subscription and generate new debate. Now granted, I think these current debates are fun, and you might even find a game you hadn't heard of sorting through them. But raw numbers aren't going to tell you what game is best.
Who on earth chose that list of platforms?
I see I can nominate games from popular platforms like the Virtual Boy, but there's no option for the BBC, which only brought us games like Elite and Exile (as mentioned here not two days ago). Ah well, "Computer Misc" here we come.
I wouldn't mind the arbitrary list so much if it was even in alphabetical order...
According to the announcement on the front page of GameFAQs, the contest starts in the beginning of April. For those of you not aware of this, CJayC occasionally does something really off-the-wall to GameFAQs on April 1. Anyone else thinking what I'm thinking?
Best. Game. Ever. == Best. April. Fools. Day. Scam. Ever.
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Have a slashdot poll on the subject. there can be no debate to /. authority!