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Japan's Top 100 Games
Next Generation has a piece with the Top 100 Games of All Time, as voted by the nation of Japan. From the article: "1. Final Fantasy X (2001) 2. Final Fantasy VII (1997) 3. Dragon Quest III (1988) 4. Dragon Quest VIII (2004) 5. Machi (1998) 6. Final Fantasy IV (1991) 7. Tactics Ogre (1995) 8. Final Fantasy III (1990) 9. Dragon Quest VII (2000) 10. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)"
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
* my favorite isn't on the list, so it can't be "right"!
* the list is biased toward older / newer / console / PC / handheld / RPG / arcade / puzzle games!
* the list doesn't mean anything, lists like this never do (of course they don't)
* oh man, I completely forgot that game, that was fun.
Lists like that are compiled regularly. It's hardly news, but hey, if it reminds you of a game you haven't played in years or lets you know of a gem you'd never have known about otherwise...
Tactics Ogre? Final Fantasy Tactics was much better IMHO. Maybe they thought the list was getting a little too heavy with Final Fantasy titles? TO is a fine game, but FFT is superior IMHO.
I read the internet for the articles.
7 of the top 10 games of all time was made by Square or Enix... says a lot about this company, and about the type of games the Japanese culture tends to enjoy.
Asashoryu Sumo 2006 (or 2005, 2004, 2003)? Yes, those sumo games that come out every year are fantastic, each better than the last. Not at all like the Maddan or FIFA series.
No Castlevania, No Contra, No Metroid, No Mega man? Kungfu was ok, like it was the final scene of Game of Death the movie, but there are better games even for its era.
God spoke to me.
No Katamari listed in the top 100 Japanese games? Outrageous! We are most displeased!
Where was cousin Ace? Playing Animal Crossing (#43)?
We have no idea what you are talking about.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I know this is a popular vote, so it's going to be heavily skewed to whatever is recent and flashy, but still...
I'm both scratching my head at the voters for placing FFX at #1 and thanking them for putting FFX-2 down at #32.
That's pathetic. Not a single FPS on the list? Only two PC games that I can see (Wizardry and SimCity?) Only a two sports games I noticed (Gran Tourismo 4 Super Family Fun Baseball Pro Gold Happy or whatever.) Do they sell video game consoles over there as "RPG Machines?" or something?
Comment of the year
OMFG! 7 of 10 games in the list are Square-Enix! They must have like totally biased the results somehow!
Or maybe Square-Enix just made some really good games?
Recall Blizzard in the PC world... every title in the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series is in the top 20 sellers of all time, and most won Game of the Year awards across the board.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
No Shaq FU --- This japanese style fighting game was what they designed the SNES for!!
I think, based on the list, which shows people rating all the FF titles about the same, that some form of slate voting must have occurred, with people ranking all "their" versions of their game 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,...
Unless people who play Animal Crossing and Pokemon (both Japanese) tend to be too young to vote in this poll.
I've noticed people frequently do ballot-stuffing when we have film festival voting here - it's really obvious, because you get something like 500 votes of 5 (best), and maybe 30 votes of 1-4, spread evenly, but the total attendance was only 600, and usually less than half of an audience will ever vote (much lower, actually).
Anyone from Japan offer any insight into how this voting was done?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
While we played Doom I & II, Quake, Heretic, Wolfenstein, Unreal
they played Final Fantasy, Zelda, Dragon Quest
its a culture thing.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
The real winners here are Roman Numerals.
Amazing Im guessing a good chunk of that would be on America's gaming list, though not all of it of course. There were a lot of people over here that liked FFVII, i think more than FFX.
This list is yet another good example of east-west differences in gaming. If you look at the list, the biggest group are games that are heavily story-driven, but which don't give the player too much freedom. In fact, I found only one typical Western game on the list, Wizardry, which placed 66th. This doesn't mean that eastern gaming culture is bad; it's just different. However, with the proliferation of Japanese consoles in the US, resulting in larger numbers of Japanese games here, the eastern culture seems to take over the western one in gaming, at least on store shelves. It is no wonder then that whenever a western-style RPG is released (Arx Fatalis, Gothic, Morrowind), it creates a very fierce following of people who are starved for more freedom in their games.
WOAH WOAH WOAH!
s /
Final Fantasy Tactics was a direct rip-off of Tactics Ogre. Not only did they directly steal the gameplay mechanics of the game, they actually used the key development staff from Tactics Ogre on Final Fantasy Tactics. Check out Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Tactic
If Tactics Ogre lacked- if you're talking about the Playstation version- it's because it was a port of the original Super Famicom game. So compared to FFT, it was clunky, and the load times were irratating. But the game was several years old before it got a port!
But, FFT was incredibly derivative, AND it had a linear storyline. The best part of Tactics Ogre- if you gave it a chance- was the fact that the story allowed you to make choices that affected your path in the game. There are VERY few games that have given the player such control over the story, and for that at least, the game deserves to be on the list.
Besides, FFT only allowed you to take 5 people into combat (vs. 10 in Tactics Ogre). How tactical can you get with 5 characters?
Having Final Fantasy stamped on something doesn't make it better. No more so than adding Mario.
Insert the biggest middle finger here you have ever seen.
29. Kingdom Hearts II (2005)
I still have to wait another 22 days for this to come out in the US.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
... and the most important of these would be the amount of time that the voters like to spend playing games. In the linked-to list, it's clear that the voters spend *much* more time on games than I prefer.
I would much rather see a "top fifty" list compiled where the voters do not like to spend any more than five hours per week on games. I would expect titles like Wario Ware, Inc and Katamari Damacy to be close to (or in) the top ten.
...but their Hentai RPGs have zero gameplay. Most of them don't even care if you can't read Japanese, just keep clicking until you see the scene you want. If they'd put more work into it, they could easily sell an English version.
Considering how much I like RPG games, I'd have thought that there would be more overlap. But I guess it boils down to 1) me being in the US, and therefore mostly playing games popular over here, and 2) being a mostly PC gamer rather than a console gamer.
Though I have to wonder if we're talking about the same Wizardry game. The one I'm thinking of came out in 1981, not 1987. The wikipedia article talks about some Japanese console versions of the game, so maybe that's where the confusion comes from.
Nice to see Tactics Ogre and Ogre Battle on the list at (7)! and (45) respectively. I am not so sure about the rest, but those two definetely belong on the list.
I think this list gets better recognition and merit than the typical lists compiled by 1Up, Gamespy, or GameSpot due to the fact that this is data is a reflection of a market that isn't the English-speaking Western market that we're a part of.
Just take a look at that list. Most of the games listed are role-playing games and/or games developed by Japanese developers. This data tells us numerous things about the electronic gaming market in Japan and certainly reflects attudinal differences between us and them. They don't like action games as much as we do, they certainly don't like first person shooters as much as we do, a market loyalty or dynasty appears to exist with Japanese developers as they do with foreign developers, and they really seem to like their RPGs.
It certainly explains why the X-Box 360 or PC gaming, both having strong Western predilections, isn't doing as well in Japan as they are across the Pacific...
According to http://www.the-magicbox.com/ last time Kingdom Hearts II was on the top 30 list (feb 6 to feb 12), it sold a total of 1,088,607 copies. According to the newest (feb 20 to 26), where Animal Crossing DS is number 5, AC:DS has sold a total of 1,957,677 copies.
This does not correspond with TFA.
I'm kinda disappointed Boong-Ga Boong-Ga didn't make the list.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
The Japaneese all have one thing in common: their disdain for all games and consoles not japaneese. The reason Microsoft is suckin a big nut in sales in japan is their loyalty. The reason Square-Enix rules the top 10, is because they are based in and cater to Japan. Their games and future ideas all comes from what sells well in Japan. The gamer market is incredible in Japan, as almost everyone (if not everyone) has a console of one form or another. Quality of games is therefor much better, because they have precident and expectations to overcome. Sadly in america, games are treated as the bastard child of our economy. They are a plague that right wing legislative cigar smoking monkeys want to abolish. They are blamed for corrupting our youth and blah blah blah. What's corrupting our youth is the bullshit content and hours of crap that most of our games consist of, especially so far in the "Next-gen" wars. Games today in america suck, and I for one am tired of the same names spewing forth 17 different versions of the same game, just with a different sub title. Story telling, and game quality have all gone downhill with the increases in the push for graphics.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
Does anyone know if Famitsu magazine is available in USA/Import in English version?
Thanks in advance.
8 out of 10, actually.
:)
Since they technically own the rights of the Ogre series too
Linkage right here. Surprised to see no other comments have picked up on this yet.
All hail our Square Enix overlords.
Never heard of Machi though, and I would have put Chrono Trigger a bit higher.
If it doesn't take an hour of random repetitive turn-based monster battles to walk from one edge of the continent to the other, it's not a game I'm willing to waste my time with.
Honestly, I didn't think FFX was that great. If it was on the PSX, or the other games had been on the PS2, it wouldn't have gotten anywhere NEAR that kind of recognition.
The Japanese version of Tactics Ogre was originally released in 1995 on the Super Famicom / SNES, many years before Final Fantasy Tactics came out. Considering that its graphics and interface were nearly on par with many PS titles (besides the pretty summoning and magic effects, even FFT really doesn't outdo it), and that the gameplay and class system of Tactics Ogre was arguably superior to FFT, it's not hard to see why Tactics Ogre was considered a more groundbreaking and influential game than FFT in Japan.
The US version of Tactics Ogre only came out on the Playstation, IIRC slightly AFTER the FFT release in 1998. I never played the PS version, but I understand it was basically a direct port from the SNES version. It's easy to see how Tactics Ogre could appear to be a shallow rip-off of FFT to a US fan, when it was actually a groundbreaking game that later went on to be essentially repackaged as FFT.
I don't find it too big of a surprise that the list is full of Final Fantasy titles, but the order was a bit of a shock:
1. FF X
2. FF VII
6. FF IV (Released in west as FF II)
8. FF III (NES - Not released in west until much later)
15. FF V (Not released in west until much later)
22. FF VIII
24. FF IX
25. FF VI (Released in west as FF III)
60. FF II (Not released in west to my knowledge)
63. Final Fantasy
Seeing the original rated lower than ANY of the sequels was a surprise, but nowhere near as big of a shock as seeing FF VI handily beaten by FF III, IV and V! FF VI (later released as FF III in the west) is often considered to be one of the masterworks of the 16-bit era... at least over here. What gives with that?
I can see that FF IV, being the first 16-bit FF title, and FF VII, being the first fully 3-d FF title, were more "revolutionary" titles at their times, but I thought that FF VI had the best in terms of overall polish and presentation based on the technology available. It's really a surprise that it wouldn't immediately come to mind if asked to name a favourite title of all time. Makes me wonder exactly how that survey was taken.
1985 - 2 entries - avg rank: 54
1986 - 4 entries - avg rank: 59.75
1987 - 5 entries - avg rank: 61.6
1988 - 4 entries - avg rank: 58.5
1989 - 3 entries - avg rank: 62
1990 - 8 entries - avg rank: 53.62
1991 - 4 entries - avg rank: 44.75
1992 - 8 entries - avg rank: 37.87
1993 - 4 entries - avg rank: 75
1994 - 6 entries - avg rank: 52.16
1995 - 6 entries - avg rank: 31.16
1996 - 4 entries - avg rank: 46.25
1997 - 4 entries - avg rank: 59.5
1998 - 6 entries - avg rank: 28.83
1999 - 2 entries - avg rank: 24.5
2000 - 5 entries - avg rank: 46.2
2001 - 3 entries - avg rank: 41.33
2002 - 5 entries - avg rank: 51.6
2003 - 2 entries - avg rank: 51
2004 - 8 entries - avg rank: 55.75
2005 - 7 entries - avg rank: 65.42
Year with Lowest Avg Rank: (1999)
22. Final Fantasy VIII (1999)
27. Valkyrie Profile (1999)
Year with Highest Avg Rank: (1993)
45. Ogre Battle (1993)
78. Torneko Mysterious Dungeon (1993)
80. Streetfighter 2 Turbo (1993)
97. Secret of Mana (1993)
I have to give them credit since this poll actually spans 21 years of gaming with no individual year with more than eight games (8% of total list)!
Years with Most Games Listed: 1990, 1992 and 2004 (each with eight)
8. Final Fantasy III (1990)
14. Dragon Quest IV (1990)
35. F-Zero (1990)
58. Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei II (1990)
61. Super Mario World (1990)
77. Super Monaco GP (1990)
82. Final Fight (1990)
94. Saga 2 (1990)
11. Dragon Quest V (1992)
12. Far East of Eden 2 (1992)
15. Final Fantasy V (1992)
20. Streetfighter II (1992)
53. Romancing Saga (1992)
59. Shin Megami Tensei (1992)
64. Puyo Puyo (1992)
69. Super Mario Kart (1992)
4. Dragon Quest VIII (2004)
26. Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004)
40. Dragon Quest 5 (PS2 remake) 2004
62. To Heart II (2004)
71. Monster Hunter (2004)
75. Gran Turismo 4 (2004)
76. GTA: Vice City (2004)
92. Tales of Rebirth (2004)
One interesting aspect is always how much more popular Dragon's Quest is in the Japan as compared to the US. While Dragon Warrior is a popular series, Final Fantasy is definately more well-known and traditionally was better marketed. However, you can see that DQ is strongly represented in the list and actually has a lower average rank (though that's three less games).
Years where one or more Dragon Quest games were released:
2004, 2000, 1995, 1992, 1990, 1988, 1987, 1986 (9 games listed; avg rank: 18)
Years where one or more Final Fantasy games were listed:
2003, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1997, 1994, 1992, 1991, 1990, 1988, 1987 (12 games listed; avg rank: 24)
indeed..