Ocarina of Time — Best Game Ever?

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the best game yet made, according to a list compiled by readers and writers of the lauded British gaming magazine Edge. Their list of the hundred best games ever is top-heavy with Nintendo titles, a full five out of the top ten being released to a Nintendo platform. Obviously, this sort of thing can get contentious, and CNet's Crave blog spoke up quickly with a contrary opinion. "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is truly a masterpiece that should be thought of as one of the greatest games ever created. But to call it the greatest game of all time is a serious misstatement. Unlike Super Mario Bros., Ocarina of Time was released in an era where video games were booming and sales were on the rise. Simply put, everyone was playing video games, and the game was the best of its time. But no other game in history--Ocarina of Time included--was able to save an entire industry from almost guaranteed destruction the way Super Mario Bros. did, and it is for this reason that we should all give ol' Mario and Luigi credit where it's due." Let's hear it, then. What game deserves to top a list of the 100 best games ever made?

Comments

Counter-Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

Is clearly the best game ever made. With billions of player mins per month and timeless gameplay, it seems that CS will never die. How many millions of people still play Mario bros?

Re:Counter-Strike

[nebaz]

How many millions of people still play Mario bros?
I do.

Re:Counter-Strike

[LandoCalrizzian]

It still doesn't compare to the number of hours spent playing Super Mario Bros. Counterstrike can't even come close to the number of children(boys AND girls), teens(men AND women) and parents(men AND women) who were drawn to SMB like a moth to a flame. In 15 years, I doubt you'll find many people who keep a computer around just to play Counterstrike or it's sequels.

Nintendo is arguably the only developer(hardware and software) to stay true to the original idea of Video Games as a source of fun instead of pimping it out to gain control of the home theater market. Sony is starting to lose it's way and Microsoft is Microsoft.

I am not a nintendo fanboy but I do respect the Old School.

Re:Counter-Strike

[gerbalblaste]

A game populated (seemingly) exclusively by teenage boys with unbearably high pitched voices who use more profanity and racial epithets than a clan rally? best game ever? Clearly.

Re:Counter-Strike

[Trogre]

Which is well and good for people who like those kinds of games, but some of us like games to be sophisticated simulations that give a sense of immersion as if we are actually in a new environment. Back in the 90s this used to be called Virtual Reality, or Quake :) Currently such games are often still labelled FPSs or flight sims and for that no console even now comes close to a PC.

And please don't bring out the old strawman that every FPS player is a pimply case-modding adrenaline junkie. You may as well say that everyone who drives a decent car is a boy racer.

Sure I like the odd 1992-era candyland bubblegum game from time to time and that's when I break out my console, but for my style of serious gaming let's just say I'm apparently not Nintendo's target market.

Re:Counter-Strike

[IdolizingStewie]

Two!

Re:Counter-Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are to judge a game on how many hours are played, you shouldn't forget Starcraft. That game is even older.

Re:Counter-Strike

[Goaway]

We know you're fat, but you still don't count as an entire million of people.

Re:Counter-Strike

[CastrTroy]

With the Wii, Nintendo may be getting closer to VR than any other game system ever has. Remember VR Headsets, Force feedback controls, and all those other things that you never see around anymore? Well I for one think the Wiimote is the best progression we have towards actual VR. The fact that you can swing it like a golf club, or a tennis racket, or a baseball bat, and have it do the same thing on the screen is kind of exactly what people looking for VR have been dreaming of for a long time. It's not much of VR if you're just pushing a bunch of buttons but you happen to have a set of VR goggles.

Re:Counter-Strike

[CastrTroy]

Walk up to 100 random people on the street, and ask them if they've heard of a video game, called Counterstrike. And if they have heard of it, have they played it. Now ask the same about Mario. Seriously, I know that Counterstrike is a good game, but apart from the people who do play it, most people have never even heard of it.

Re:Counter-Strike

[Kam Solusar]

Walk up to 100 random people on the street, and ask them if they've heard of a video game, called Counterstrike.

I really advise slashdot users not to do this. I wouldn't take long until the cops arrive to investigate the calls about this pale, strange person talking about killer games...

Re:Counter-Strike

[FLAGGR]

Twilight Princess is just Ocarina done up for the next generation. It's like the special edition star wars. Sure, it is obviously a sequel, has a different story and different temples etc, but it is a spirtual remake. If you played Ocarina as a kid, you will be smiling ear to ear when you revisit places like Zoras Domain. It really is OOT with awesome graphics (no, it's not GoW - it's not the texture sizes polygon counts and shaders that matter - it's the art of it, the scale. It looks like a real world and is big. Oblivion got the big part, but it doesn't look as good as TP by a long shot - it is bland and boring.) The original bits in TP are awesome as well. I want to warn you that the story development... stops for a bit... part way through the game. Nintendo doesn't have enough balls to one-up OOT, so they crippled it a bit. Basically, TP exists because of OOT, it is basically a tribute to it.

Re:Counter-Strike

[maxume]

That's a lot of voices in your head.

Re:Counter-Strike

[Cadallin]

Precisely what I was thinking. FPS enthusiasts usually come in two types: the graphics whore, and now the Drunk Frat Guy who discovered deathmatch with Halo and thinks Microsoft invented the FPS. The Trouble is, both of these are tiny niche markets, yet they dominate the direction of the industry, that is, if you listen to the hype machine and ignore who's raking in the sales and profits. I wish the gaming industry would discover the long tail theory. There's plenty of ready made markets that could support titles in the range of $1million to $5million in development costs, and they go completely ignored. If some companies would start producing really slick, well polished, 2D Adventure, RPG, and Strategy games, they would probably meet with a lot of success without much outlay.

Re:Counter-Strike

[MadMidnightBomber]

Er, three sire.

Best of All Time is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Final Fantasy VII is the best game of all time :)

Re:Best of All Time is...

[casualsax3]

Here's what's going to happen to your post: You're going to get modded flaimbait or troll, and some people will respond and tell you that you're too young and you've never played Final Fantasy VI, then they'll mention the subpar translation and the rushed third disc... Then someone will mod you funny just because, and then someone overrated just because you've got points... But then a few people will come along and remember how they felt playing VII for the first time, when they first visited the Golden Saucer and found minigames as deep and fun as other *complete* PS1 games, the chill they got when they were under the sea in the submarine - stopping dead in your tracks as you saw Emerald Weapon lurking in the distance for the first time, and the epic theme you were treated to just sitting on the world map marveling at the most fantastic soundtrack Uematsu has ever written - and you'll be modded up.

Re:Best of All Time is...

[khephera]

Nethack. I'm still playing the DOS version.
And I'm a female :)

Re:Best of All Time is...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean you play a female character, right sir?

Re:Best of All Time is...

[CrazyJim1]

Sorry. I'm completely incompatible with you. I play Angband. We come from different worlds.

Psychonauts

[cyberon22]

Psychonauts got in at 99? I would have pushed it into the top ten, but it's good to see that the game hasn't been completely ignored. I wonder how many people have actually played it.

Re:Psychonauts

[bakura121]

I wonder how many people have actually played it.

I played it and absolutely LOVED it! I'm happy it made the top 100, but it surely deserved to have had a higher ranking.

Re:Psychonauts

[NMerriam]

It's an extremely standard grade platformer all the way through, with absolutely nothing special about the way it plays that separates it from the rest. Only its presentation really made a big difference.

I tend to agree. Psychonauts is certainly one of my favorite games ever, but it isn't one of the best games of all time. It's simply unusual for a game to be so perfectly executed and pretty much flawless in every way, and then on top of that have so much great character, personality and entertainment. But it didn't really offer any new, exciting game concepts, it simply delivered to an astonishingly high level of polish.

Half-life

[Riverman5]

Half-life goes at the top of my list.

Re:Half-life

[arth1]

Half-Life is too short. Like the games it build on (Doom and Quake), it's a relatively short adventure. Impressive, yes, but short. I doubt many people spent months of actual playing time with it -- they either completed it, and spent a few hours more fooling around, or they gave up.

For finite games, I would think the original Tomb Raider has racked up way more man hours of play time, not to say anything about Super Mario, and, yes, Zelda.

For open-ended games, I can't think of many that were more addictive than Elite. And yes, that is old school. If you missed it the first time around, too bad - it won't appeal to those who think anisotropic filtering makes a difference. It's wireframes, and your imagination does all the shading much better than any graphics card can.

Anyhow, it's hard to say what the best game of all times is. Di gustibus non disputandum est, and all that. What's clearer is the Biggest Flop of all time. It has to be Daitakana.

*Art, going back to play "A Mind Forever Voyaging"...

Re:Half-Life

[optimus2861]

without question half-life. It was the first game to have mod tools for the fans that were freely available as well as an actual effort behind them to ENCOURAGE mod-making, it was the first to make such a business model succeed on a massive scale, and encouraged the proliferation of community involvement in games, eventually resulting in what some would call "Web 2.0".

Say what? Where were you when Doom was released, and in the years that followed? Doom had thousands of user-created custom levels, graphics, total conversions, out on the net by the time Half-Life got released. No computer game before Doom got that kind of community; I'm not sure the concept even existed prior to Doom. While it's true that id themselves didn't provide much for tools beyond the first .. darn, I forget what it was called. Node-builder? It was what "compiled" a WAD file into a usable form that Doom could play, IIRC. Anyway, id did specifically design Doom to be user-expandable and wrote right into the license that users could do it, spelling out the terms.

Half-Life mods, particularly Counter-Strike, may have proved to have more staying power, but they built on the groundwork laid for them by Doom.

Re:Half-life

[arth1]

Mea Culpa. You're absolutely more pretentious than me! :-)

Re:Half-Life

[Kingrames]

Like I said, there were games before it that were moddable, but Half-Life really caused the biggest explosion in fan-driven community efforts.

When the #1 most-played online multiplayer game in America is a MOD for half-life, you know something is up.

And that doesn't even begin to tap into the vast collection of mods and user-created content for the game.
Like I said, Quake and Duke Nukem had lots of user-created content, but when you compare the communities for the games, you'll see a huge difference. Why? I don't know and I don't care. But it's there.

I was here when DOOM was released, and made my own episode for Duke Nukem, since the editor was fun and easy to make stuff with. But Half-Life was HUGE. Much much bigger than DOOM or Quake or DN3D. As much respect as I have for the classics that came before it, I'm not about to say that they, and not half-life, are responsible for half-life's huge commercial success.

To do so would be illogical. As illogical, as, say, spelling DOOM without proper capitalization.

BLAZEMONGER!!!

[Shadow Wrought]

By far the best game ever was Blazemonger. THousands of levels, nerve shattering graphics, nothing has even come close to matching its intensity.

Starcraft

[Magneon]

Obviously...

Re:Starcraft

[Rebelgecko]

I definitely have to agree with Starcraft. Despite being 10 years old, it still has a huge fanbase, especially in South Korea where it is played professionally and where some of the players make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. This very second over 24,000 people are playing Starcraft online.

BGOAT

[Reason58]

You can't say something is the "best" without defining what you think those qualities are that make something best.

Storyline? Gameplay? Graphics? Sounds? Replayability? Uniqueness?

Re:BGOAT

[Plekto]

Wasteland was great, but the game that broke the RPG wide open was the Ultima series. Before that it was nethack-ish games that lacked a persistent environment, real character development, or a decent plot. Now, Ultima III was good, but the best of the series and the one that made everyone at the time(and I mean *everyone*) was IV. It essentially was Final Fantasy VII in scope and play. A decade earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_IV
1985. Nothing for almost a decade surpassed it in quality and scale.

*quote from that link*
"In 1996 Computer Gaming World named Ultima IV as #2 on its Best Games of All Time list on the PC."

It didn't even make the top ten - which is how you know this "list" is a joke. And Final Fantasy VII was what - way near the very bottom? The thing still commands $60 a copy on Ebay.

DNF!!

[binarybum]

Duke Nukem Forever will most certainly be the best game of all time

  This is so friggin' obvious that even though the game is not yet complete, it should still easily have made #1. I demand a recount!

Re:DNF!!

[llamaxing]

can we please skip Florida's votes on this one?

Print View

[GroovinWithMrBloe]

For people who don't like clicking next 100 times. Print View

Yes

[sycomonkey]

The answer is yes. Ocarina of Time has every element that makes video gaming such a rewarding and engaging pasttime. It was revolutionary, and it is still fun to this day.

Re:Yes

[plunge]

I have to disagree on the last part. I've actually by coincidence been playing through it recently, and I don't think it holds up all that well: the controls and concept were neat for its day, but compared to modern versions the controls are clunky and the world sort of shallow: way way too much of the game feels I'm playing through busywork to get to the good stuff. It also doesn't help that the game is so dark: I have the brightness turned up all the way on my tv, and I still can barely see anything at night or in some of the more annoying temples.

What's with the sequels?

[Jazzer_Techie]

There are a lot of sequels on the list, often coupled with the omission of the original(s). They omit both Doom and Half-Life, while charting Doom II at 78 and Half-Life 2 at 4. Honestly, that just doesn't make much sense.

Re:What's with the sequels?

[G-funk]

Coz doom 2 was better than doom, and ditto for hl2? The list isn't "revoltionary" or "groundbreaking" games, it's "best".

Huh? Is This Only Console Cames?

[Plekto]

There seems to be an utter lack of PC titles from the 70s, 80, or most of the 90s.

Elite? Command and Conquer? Doom? Temple of Aphsai? Ultima IV? Zork?(anything by Infocom?)...

Or any other systems of note. Marathon? Tempest?(the original), Defender? Mortal Kombat? The list of things that they didn't even include is amazing. Almost as amazing as the just that made most of the top twenty.

Nintendo games

[gustgr]

Titles released by Nintendo usually do not have that super-duper-ultra virtual reality and graphics effects, like those for Playstation or X-Box, however, they are FUN. You don't need fancy and world-like effects with physics simulation to enjoy a title, you just need to be entertained by the plot and by the universe it immerses you. Nintendo is an odd company on that issue. I love their titles above all else.

I would not consider only Ocarina of Time as the masterpiece of Nintendo, but it is a hell of a game. Very fair list.

It's obvious!

[Carnildo]

Best games of all time? E.T. and Custer's Revenge, of course!

I learned the other day...

[TerranFury]

...that the South Korean Air Force has an official Starcraft team.

I'd say that getting your videogame elevated to the status of stadium-worthy spectator sport is a pretty huge achievement. Blizzard's Starcraft is surely up there.

(This is complicated only by the fact that it has so many worthy competitors from the same era: Age of Empires is the first that comes to mind.)

Re:I learned the other day...

[xmod2]

It seems to me that having a 'stadium-worthy' game would really limit your ability to innovate on the sequel without pissing off the entirety of South Korea.

I recall reading that what Koreans wanted most out of Starcraft II was more Starcraft with better graphics.

this deserves a poll

[wizardforce]

The sims series wins hands down as a series if you look at how many people play it. starcraft wins because you cant beat the sound of zerg being slaughtered in a poorly planned attack mario bros because of the fact that people still play it halo because of the fan following warcraft doesn't need an explanation spore is going to win if what they say about it is true

Re:this deserves a poll

[Anonymous Coward]

Nethack, because it used punctuation.

missing more than a few

[guysmilee]

• diablo
• diablo 2
• starcraft
• war craft 1 & 2
• ultima
• space harrier

Crave Misunderstanding

[Dunx]

What criteria are you using to measure greatness?

The Edge piece is quite clear that it is looking for games which are still worth playing now.

The Crave posting misunderstands this point and brings in an entirely different criterion.

I don't actually agree with either article (I don't remember Mario mattering that much in Britain, and I didn't like Ocarina of Time much), but the Crave piece just seems like pointless disagreement with the basis of the Edge article.

Re:Crave Misunderstanding

[Lewisham]

Mod parent up!

Every single article I've read about this poll gets confused and doesn't mention that it is a poll on games that must stand up today, which is why Pong or Doom aren't in the Top 10. Which of course, has lead to everyone to go off on a tangent and say silly things like "Mario Bros 1 should be number 1" and things.

This wasn't helped by the BBC deciding to choose a misleading headline and then burying this information at the bottom. I guess "journalists" don't read past the first two paragraphs anymore.

Super Mario 64

[mushadv]

Perhaps even more innovative and just as fun, but with wider appeal.

Metroid Prime and Mega Man 2 hit #2 and #3 on my personal list, respectively.

One of the best

[Jerry Rivers]

Deus Ex gets my vote.

Re:One of the best

[StillAnonymous]

Yes! I was just playing NOLF the other day. The game is just all-round superb.

It's got a decent graphics engine with nice lighting.

Nice positional sound which helps if you like a stealth approach.

Stealth gameplay is great, enemies hear you when they should and don't have cyborg vision so you have a fighting chance.

There's a variety of ways to complete missions depending on whether you like stealth or full out combat.

Creative level design.

The storyline, dialog, and characters are hilarious.

One of my favourite FPS games of all time.

Re:One of the best

[Zeio]

I second that. I would say Ocarina of Time is one of my top 5 games, its awesome, I play it once a year or so in an emulator, and I hated all the Zelda games after it. It should be extended with more content. They ruined it with the follow on games, in my opinion. It was an impossible act to follow, really.

Deus Ex is the best game ever. [Deus Ex 2 was one of the worst]

I miss Deus Ex. I wish there were like 10 sequels using the exact format and an updated graphics engine.

The awesome voice acting and huge amounts of immersion content made that game just awesome. The inventory system ruled. The skill system ruled. The game could be played many ways and the whole things was just good.

I would say for console, Ocarina of Time and Super Metroid are the best console games that come to mind. But I have a long list of console game I really like.

I really also like Herzog Zwei a lot and wish they would come out with a sequel to the awesome and fun Kid Icarus.

Billy Madison says:

[TheDarkener]

Kid: Mortal Kombat, on Sega Genesis, is the best video game ever.

Billy Madison: I disagree, it's a very good game, but i think Donkey Kong is the best game ever.

Kid: Donkey Kong sucks.

Billy Madison: You know something? YOU SUCK!

Re:Huh? Is This Only Console Cames?

[spoco2]

Look at who it's compiled by.

ALWAYS look at the source of any 'list', 'survey', or stats.

This is Edge, it's by far a console heavy magazine, they only really have PC there to try and make 'everyone' buy it.

No, they're not an unbiased source for this sort of list.

I far more trust the opinions of sites like http://gamespot.com/ or the like, as they have true PC sections.

Re:What's with the obsession of "BEST"?

[arodland]

Because that one isn't very interesting, or fun. "Best" is good for an interesting argument, discussion, flamefest on slashdot, whatever. "Most popular according to polls" is just a bunch of numbers. The best argument you can scare up is to insult the polling techniques. :)

Idiotic.

[Intellectual Elitist]

Most "Top Anything" lists are silly and miss a number of obvious choices, but this list is downright idiotic. I give them points for including games like Gitaroo-Man and Tempest 2000, but some of the omissions and especially the ordering they chose are just obscene.

Virtua Tennis 3 better than Robotron? Nights Into Dreams better than Tomb Raider? Darwinia, Super Monkey Ball and R-Type Final making the list while classics like X-Com and Fallout are nowhere to be found? Don't even get me started on the timeframe and system bias evidenced here. What a joke...

Re:Idiotic.

[DigiShaman]

I'm suprised Herzog Zwei or Star Control didn't make the list.

RE 4 at #2??

[KIFulgore]

Pffft, what a crock. The Resident Evil series did more to destroy clean 3D movement in games than any other series. I can't forgive the series for that. Mario 64 and Metroid Prime both blow away RE4.

And SMB belongs in the top 10.

Ocarina of Time is right where it belongs, at #1. It's funny the reviewer says "to call it the greatest game of all time is a serious misstatement," because as we all know, video game ratings lists are Serious Business (R).

UK gaming rag ignores Bullfrog???

[*weasel]

No Magic Carpet.
No Dungeon Keeper.
No Theme Hospital.
No Syndicate.
No Populous.

Furthermore: No X-Com, No Ultima IV and No Fallout.

Almost all lists like this are complete pap, but you simply cannot omit 5 top-50 titles and 3 more that are easily top-10 contenders. Not when you're presenting a list like this with a straight face. I know we bag on gaming 'journalism' for being a joke, but this isn't even funny.
It's just kinda sad.

Best Game Designer...

[Franklin Brauner]

Best game seems too subjective to choose any single title, but I'm of the opinion that Shigeru Miyamoto is without compare in the industry, both for his artistic achievements, and how well he has advanced the grammar and cinematic language of interactive storytelling. For sure one of his titles deserves to be on the top of any list.
--
Franklin Brauner

I can prove it's not the best

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I don't know what is the best game. But there was another game for the same platform as Ocarina that was better - GoldenEye.

Top 10

[Bibz]

is top-heavy with Nintendo titles

Here it is, for those who don't want to click all 10 pages :

01. The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
02. Resident Evil 4
03. Super Mario 64
04. Half-Life 2
05. Super Mario World
06. The Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past
07. Halo
08. Final Fantasy XII
09. Tetris
10. Super Metroid

Re:I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT HORSECOCK!

[MrHanky]

Mod parent up. Very insightful propagation of horsecock meme.

Something is seriously wrong with this list...

[Murrdox]

This list is one of the worst "Top 100" I've ever seen.

The flaws are many and frequent.

How could you have a top 100 list of games that completely excludes ANY Bioware or Black Isle Studios games? On top of that, there's no homage to some clear classics and pioneers of gaming, such as Zork, or Hero Quest. Only a brief mention is made for Monkey Island.

The fact that the vast majority of the games on the list were made after 2000 says a bit.

Re:Something is seriously wrong with this list...

[AndyboyH]

You obviously missed the part about Edge saying they're rating games that are still playable now. Not that they're technologically playable - I'm sure there's like 3 billion java SpaceWar applets (and after all, that was the first video game (AFAIK) which should almost certainly give it a position in the Top 100) but that they're still enjoyable by today's standards.

As in little Joe Bloggs who never lived through the 80s, and didn't know the pleasure of blowing on cartridges to get them playing on the NES or listening to ZX spectrums screech as they load - this is the set of games he should play to get a feel for gaming heritage.

Personally I'd have loved it if Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri was in there - however I know that playing it now would be fun, but it has essentially been bettered in most if not all respects by Halo.

Having revisited Mario 1 last weekend (emulated via Mario All-Stars) I can kind of feel that they're right. Games now are far more expansive - they're a different prospect. (I still have foremost respect for Mario - and I'm of the opinion that Mario World should be higher than Mario 64 - but that doesn't blinker myself to the fact that people demand more from games now than they did when I was a kid playing an hour at a time after school)

Re:Nethack

[dbitch]

Amen! If you look at the breadth of play and the immersion and the replay value, Nethack has to rank up there in the list. I think Salon did a decent article on why Nethack has survived so long and has such a fanatical userbase; I chalk it up to the fact that I've had a version of Nethack installed since the first day I touched the game, so 15 years of basically constant Nethacking. I've played other games (Diablo, etc) but only Nethack can still make me forget to sleep. I always compare games like WoW and such to Nethack: sure, it's got fancy graphics and is immersive, but would I be able to play this game for 15 years and not get bored? The answer so far is no.

Solitaire!

[Wordsmith]

Um, dude. Solitaire. Win 3.11 edition. Before they ruined it with fancy graphics. Back when it was pure.

Elite

[Roger W Moore]

I don't know how popular this was outside the US but Elite will definitely get my vote for most game play ever per Kb of memory. The old BBC cassette version packed it all into less than 32Kb of memory via creative use of the built in random number generator. I've never yet seen a game that was so far ahead of the competition.

Re:I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT HORSECOCK!

[falsified]

Great, so I spend two consecutive days at work actually doing work and I miss some sort of horsecock Slashdot inside joke? My timing blows horsecock.

Re:Did the UK never see Deus Ex?

[Clazzy]

Of course they did, PC Gamer loved it to bits and still call it a classic of the FPS genre. Deus Ex came in at 29, a shocking crime unfortunately. And System Shock at 64 too...

The whole thing seems to look like they picked 100 games they liked then gave reasons why they liked them and only really orded the top 10 into an actual list with an obvious bias towards Nintendo games. How they managed to miss off Command and Conquer, Knights of the Old Republic, Worms and various others is beyond me.

Top 100's are subjective; but this one has holes.

[Cordath]

Top 100 lists are something that are pretty open to criticism. Nobody's top 100 is the same, nor should they be. However, this particular list fails to mention an unsettlingly large number of the "obligatories" that all top 100 lists should have at least a few of. While this is evidence that the author didn't just troll other top 100 lists and cherry pick the titles he had played, it's also evidence that his gaming experience has some rather gaping holes.

Obligatories from the RPG category:
- *Anything* from the Baldur's Gate series?
- Planescape: Torment?
- Knights of the Old Republic?
- Dragon Warrior?

From Strategy:
- Some of the Civ sequels show up, but where's the original?
- Master of Orion?

Other must-haves in any top 100:
- Tie Fighter
- Privateer, or at least *something* from the Wing Commander world?
- Grim Fandango? (The list is in dire need of more classic lucasarts adventure games)

There are plenty more, but this is the point at which I get lazy. :p I'll leave it to others to list off other "obligatories".

Isn't nitpicking top 100's fun on a slow news day?

uh.. X E N O G E A R S

[nealrs]

Seriously, how could they forget Xenogears? Sure, it had a lot of cut scenes - but it was amazing. The 2nd disc was obviously abbreviated, but it was the highlight of my entire PSX collection. I am somewhat horrified it is not on the list.

I simply have not been able to play videogames since Xenogears, nothing has come close. RPGs, RTS, shooters, etc, nothing.

Glaring Omissions

[jpatters]

They correctly honored several classic arcade derivatives including Tempest, Robotron 2084 (twice) and Pac Man, but if they are going to include Dig Dug in that list (Mr Driller) than they should also include Defender, Galaga and Joust. There is no excuse. I would also argue for I Robot as a pioneer in 3D, even though they only sold like 500 of those.

As far games that are not classic arcade derivatives, I would also include Master of Orion and Crazy Taxi.

Pointless, but fun nonethless.

[VenomPhallus]

I think this thread proves the ultimate futility of trying to compile an authorative top 100 - nobody will ever be happy. The purpose of these things is to generate a bit of chat (which clearly it's doing), and to maybe introduce people to games they've not played before. Any criteria is going to be flawed; there's no way of empirically measuring the quality of a game. Look how divisive something like Killer 7 can be - some people think it's definite top 10, others wouldn't see it even near the list.

That said, it's a good list, I think. It's a mix of the obvious and the less obvious. The articles on the games (in the mag itself) are really well written, and they seem to have set out to avoid the predictable cliches that you're probably sick of reading about any of the Best Games In The World...Ever(TM). And actually, it's quite nice to read a modern take on the games I've played over the years.

I don't think it's meant as a dictatorial "if you think this isn't the best 100 games ever, you're wrong" read, more a collectors item and a conversation starter.

Missing blue hedgehog

[theeddie55]

Sonic should have been in this list somewhere (near the top), being the defining character of the Sega Mega Drive(Genesis) the best selling console of the 16bit generation.

Re:Huh? Is This Only Console Cames?

[Clazzy]

It's still possible that the original was better than the sequel, maybe? C&C and Red Alert I still play to this day, Generals got boring after a few weeks and I'm slowly losing interest in C&C3 already. Worms 2 played better than Worms 3D and I even dug it out about six months ago to play against some friends on it. Deus Ex may have had an outdated engine and crap AI but it was and always will be miles better than the sequel.

The lasting appeal of a game is what makes it deserving of a spot in a top 100. In ten years time will people still play Doom 3? Would you go and dig out your copy of Doom 3 and give it a play with fond memories of the game? Doom got something right, mindless blasting of demons and monsters. Doom 3 did well too but didn't capture the same atmosphere as Doom did back in the day. Regardless, Doom 3 is a totally different game to the original anyway.

Dai-friggin-Katana!

[monopole]

John Romero made you his beyoch!! and you just don't want to admit it!

wolfenstein enemy territory - the clear winner

[hxnwix]

Freed from the constraint of costing money, this game obviously floats to the top.

I'm not talking about Hindenburg-esque floating, either. I'm talking panzerfausts flying straight up until they explode at the edge of the universe. I'm talking cosmic panzerfaustage tearing space & time a new asshole. I'm talking about the best fucking shit you've ever turded out your bunghole after eating spicy food and then some. A veritable big bang of gaming ferocity and artillery raining down upon gibbing newbies.

Half-Life

[Kingrames]

without question half-life. It was the first game to have mod tools for the fans that were freely available as well as an actual effort behind them to ENCOURAGE mod-making, it was the first to make such a business model succeed on a massive scale, and encouraged the proliferation of community involvement in games, eventually resulting in what some would call "Web 2.0".

Nothing in the history of gaming has impacted the WORLD in the way that it did, and for that reason I'll say that it was the best game ever.

You may claim that other games did it better, I might even yield to the idea that the BUILD engine with Duke 3D should have the title, or maybe even quake or quake 2, but those games didn't succeed in luring in the mod community and fostering its growth as well as Valve did with Half-Life. The mod community for Quake 2 seemed to be just a thing that popped up around the game, but Half-Life actually welcomed it in and put effort into it.

This truly was the beginning of the real internet we know today, and marked the point in history where the community surrounding a game became just as important as the game itself.

I cast my vote for Half-Life, not any Zelda game. While Ocarina of Time was exceptionally well made, and possibly flawless, it IS possible to do more. And many games have.

Best game I can't get past the first stage!

[Bob of Dole]

I've played most of the other zeldas, and I've bought Link to the Past at least four times. I'm a huge Zelda fan, and I was playing Twilight Princess within 3 hours of its release...

But I can't get past the first area in Ocarina of Time. I've tried, many times. I've seen the game played through (My brother loves it + Speedruns), so I know how good it is and how great a game it is, but I cannot get over the framerate in the first scene.

I don't know how Nintendo dropped the ball on this one. A little slowdown is acceptable during a large boss battle where there's hundreds of explosions and enemies going every which way, but in THE FIRST ZONE? A zone with, let's count them, ZERO enemies? (One if you use the starfox cheat, but that's it)
It just tells me it's only going to get worse from there.

But all this "Best Game Ever!" publicity is great, really. Maybe it'll inspire Nintendo to remake the game, on the Wii...

Re:Bah!

[Teancum]

I was going to suggest the original Cruther's ADVENT, but Space War does beat ADVENT by almost (not quite) a decade.

The classic Oregon Trail (mentioned just a bit ago here on /.) on a mainframe would be in a similar league of hard core classic games. I also remember another fun one what was global thermonuclear war, where you played the part of the USA going after Russia in a full out nuclear war lanuching MIRVs, ICBMs, and Bombers against Russian cities. You "won" if you could wipe out the Russians before you lost everybody in your own cities, and it introduced to me the ideas of overkill and megatonnage.

This list also missed the whole 8-bit microcomputer era, so I'm not surprised they missed even earlier classics.

Re:Congratulations

[falsified]

I did? I thought I was just clueless about an existing lame Slashdot inside joke. Now I'm clueless about my own lame Slashdot joke? Dammit.

Re:Congratulations

[azav]

Well, you know what that means don't you?

3. PROFIT!

In Soviet Russia, horsecock profits you!

++elite

[ink]

Elite is an incredible game.

While we're on the subject of Commodore 64 goodness, what about Psi 5 Trading Company? I LOVED that one.

OT/Meta: Horsecock trolls, etc.

[Kadin2048]

I'm not entirely certain, but I think the "Horsecock" meme might have gotten started over on K5 ... at least, it seems to be more prevalent there, and I saw it there before I ever saw it on Slashdot. (In fact, there is a post on K5 asking people to up-mod the GP.)

At any rate, it seems like it's been a while since I've seen a new troll on /.; while the lack of trolling is undoubtedly a good thing overall, I have to admit that I got a fair bit of amusement out of the old GNAA/Hot Grits/Stephen King/priorities posts, at least initially. But then they all seemed to disappear, whether because of the moderation system working, or a mildew epidemic in basements somewhere, I'm not sure.

Glad to see that the universe is back in balance.

DNF

[GodGell]

Am I the only one who finds it funny that Duke Nukem Forever is abbreviated to 'DNF', which in racing terms means 'Did Not Finish'?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ocarina of Time

[Stefanwulf]

I just took a break from getting my ass kicked by the boss of the Shadow Temple...and I have to say OoT really holds its own today, at least as far as I'm concerned. I played Twilight Princess first, and it is a more polished game, with more attention paid to detail, but there are a lot of things about OoT that I'm loving. The atmosphere is excellent and the dungeons are really challenging, but in a way that keeps me coming back. Yeah, the textures look like a late 90's game, but hey, the color pallet in SMB looks like a mid 80's game, and mario's head has some serious stairstepping going on. I still love them both, however, because they both get the job done, convey what they need to, and display exemplary design.

At what point did we loose the ability to distinguish between graphics being dated and graphics being poorly done?