Lurker > Naye745

i'm not surprised to see it here, but it's honestly the most far-off from my personal rankings so far. all i can say is i hope cydney gets her due as a great character (as i'm sure there will be barrels of love for aubry and michele) and a great player; despite all the returnees they've already brought back from 32, there are still quite a few good options, and she's at the top of the list.

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Really sad. The recurrence of her cancer was announced not too long ago and she was beloved by her fellow castmates. Just very sorry to hear this.

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somehow watching the latest rhap survivor season ranking (gabon) unearthed some unexpectedly fond memories of the season. i have to say, gabon is pretty damn great and perpetually underrated

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i enjoyed the foley entry

and i also think he's too blinded by what survivor "used to be"
there's a ton of valid criticisms of modern survivor, but i think there's plenty of ways the show has evolved that are for the better. hot take or not, we really don't need shit like thailand anymore.

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11. Pokmon Red/Blue (GB, 1998)
A world of dreams and adventures with Pokmon awaits! Let's go!

I have to credit Pokmon for getting me into video games as a hobby. Unlike most of the rest of the users in this topic, I was not super into video games as a kid; I liked some sports titles, sim games, and Mario Kart, but wasn't really into platformers and RPGs like my brother was. But Pokmon basically turned that around single-handedly - the allure of collecting a bunch of things got me addicted to the video game, which got me into the card game, at which point it had devolved into an obsession that has lasted in some capacity for the rest of my life.
Red/Blue are probably the simplest of all the games in the series, but they still have a nice structural arc: up through the first few gyms, you're basically traveling along a linear path, but around arriving in Celadon City and getting the Flute, things start to branch out. By the time you get the Surf HM, you have a few different routes to go and some optional side-areas, before it starts to converge at the end. Despite all the graphical enhancements of later games, and it's relative visual blandness, Kanto is still one of my favorite Pokmon regions simply due to its simplicity, solid design, and noteworthy landmarks.
There's always the question of how well they stand up compared to modern games; the originals lack a lot of quality of life features that make later titles (especially the most recent Let's Go remakes) a lot easier to jump into. But I think the originals still hold up pretty solidly - HMs still kind of suck, for sure, and having a hard item cap on your inventory that includes key items and TMs makes you take extra trips to the PC, which is a hassle. Still, the games themselves are simple enough and all of the core mechanics shine through and are still engaging - you can replay trying to use a challenging set of monsters, or rotate with a team of creatures you've never used before, or try to get through with one type of Pokmon, and all of that is still a great time. And it's also got one of the better randomizers out there - going through a remixed game with a wild assortment of monsters and moves is just a blast.
There's not a lot I can add about Pokmon Blue (that's the version I owned) that hasn't been said by everyone else and is not part of the collective experience we all kind of had as kids when these games came out. (I know some of you are younger, but most of us Board 8ers are 30ish now, heh.) Red/Blue might not be the best games, and the nostalgia goggles sure do carry things a long way, but they're also games I've played and replayed over and over; I've done randomizers, speedruns, bingo battles, and challenge playthroughs, from the early 2000s until today, and the game still totally holds up for me. There's something about the classic formula of the Game Boy Pokmon games, with their minimalist sprite artwork, their bare-bones combat menus, and their actually-reasonable-to-do Pokdex size, that still stands head and shoulders above the rest. (And I've played and enjoyed every mainline game in the series to this day!) Of course, Red and Blue aren't the only Game Boy-era games, and there's one that just manages to eke it out...
Top 5 Favorite Kanto (Original 151) Pokmon: Farfetch'd - Venusaur - Ninetales - Haunter - Fearow

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reading through this list, the more i am reminded of how god awful season 6 was, and how much i want there to be a re-working of the ending, end of evangelion style

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13. Pokmon Puzzle League (N64, 2000)

I've teased a "favorite puzzle game" in a few prior writeups, and here it is. In Puzzle League, or Tetris Attack, or Panel de Pon, or whichever incarnation of this game, you're attempting to line up three (or more) or the same icon in a row, vertically or horizontally, to clear blocks off of the screen. Doing so will send some amount of garbage to the top of your opponent's screen. Cleared space will cause the blocks above it to drop, potentially creating more lined up icons, resulting in a big chain of cleared blocks if you're either clever enough to set it up in advance or quick enough to react to what's about to fall. Your cursor is only limited to swapping two blocks horizontally adjacent to each other, so there's a bit of a learning curve in what kind of options are possible, but it's still quite easy to pick up.
While games like Tetris and Dr. Mario are largely built on single-player endless play, with multiplayer modes kind of built up around the existing structure, Panel de Pon feels truly designed for head-to-head versus matches. At any point, you can manually rise another row of blocks from the bottom; also, any garbage blocks you receive will turn into normal single-square icons once you clear anything touching them. This means that you can, and will, have a giant wall of blocks across your screen at some point in a versus match, and unlike Tetris, having an ugly stack near the top is not a death sentence. The game's built to engage in a back-and-forth war of attrition until one player makes a crucial mistake or is overwhelmed. While it absolutely helps to be able to make big chains and combos, a scrappy player can go a long way by just moving quickly and keeping themselves alive. I feel like the dynamic of the game - both balancing big-scoring moves and short-term threats - is like a very basic fighting game, but of course with the charm and inherent challenge of being a puzzle game.
Pokmon Puzzle League is probably the best version; at least, it's the one most easily suited to multiplayer play. There's a unique 3D mode where your 6x12 grid becomes an 18x12 cylinder, which never showed up in any of the later GBA or DS ports. There's a whole host of modes - endless mode for practice; puzzle mode to solve fixed challenges in a set number of moves; story mode to face off against cpu opponents; and line clear mode to race to clear out a section of blocks as fast as possible. The game's theming itself is a weird one too, as it's based solely on the Pokmon anime, and was first released in North America, featuring songs from the U.S.-produced 2.B.A. Master soundtrack rendered in MIDI form. It also has a boatload of memorable sound clips from the playable trainers/Pokmon themselves. (Good battle! When you're hot, you're hot! Aww, poor baby!)
But man, it's all about that core gameplay. Wigs and I had a bunch of close matches against each other at Magfest one year. I have a friend who always plays me very close when we break this (or Tetris Attack) out. When the Switch Online release of the original Panel de Pon came out last year, I was playing it daily for months. There's something about puzzle games that when they click, and you're playing just right, nothing in the world feels quite like it. (Honestly, it's kind of comparable to nailing a song in a rhythm game, but I digress...) If Nintendo ever gets around to bringing over a new version, or maybe (now I'm dreaming) in a PuyoPuyo Tetris-style compilation, it'd be an instant day 1 purchase without a doubt. For now, this N64 gem will have to stand as the definitive version of the best puzzle game ever made.

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14. Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA, 2004)

It's the game on this list I've beaten more than any other, the expansive remake and reimagining of the original Metroid. Zero Mission has to be one of the most breezy and enjoyable games to play through - basically every time I go through it, I just want to start over and go again. For a game that's only gonna be 5 to 10 hours tops on your first playthrough, that's almost a necessity, but like I said, I've gone through it a multitude of times (I want to say at least 40-50), so it's well worth its value.
Zero Mission really isn't reinventing the wheel as far as a Metroid game goes - it uses roughly the same controls as Fusion, which are a streamlined version of Super Metroid's - but instead of pivoting in a different direction like Fusion, it safely steers into standard conventions. Zero Mission's got the usual array of powerups, bosses, and moves - wall jumps, bomb jumps, and shinesparks are all included, and they're easier to pull off than ever. And sequence breaking is not only somewhat encouraged here, it's actively built into the design in a lot of places to skip big items or segments of the game on replays. As a remake of Metroid 1, you've got pretty standard boss fights - there's a couple of alien baddies added here and there, but mostly you've got souped up versions of Kraid, Ridley, and Mother Brain.
Of course, I'm burying the lede a bit - the game turns significantly after you reach the Metroid 1 ending (blow up Mother Brain and escape the planet). There's a lengthy stealth section where you infiltrate the Space Pirate base in the now-iconic blue zero suit, regaining your suit and all your powers, and take down the true final boss. It's certainly very distinct and a jarring departure from everything up until that point. I do enjoy it, and though it's probably my least favorite section of the game, I do appreciate the attempt to try something different with the remake and its structure. And hey, it's only a short segment before you're back to rolling in a ball and blasting away enemies with beams and missiles and collecting power-ups and such.
The game's difficulty is pretty friendly, but it has a built-in time attack mode which keeps your best records for both any% and 100%. (This was before most of us even knew what a speedrun was!) There's also unlockable "endings" with unique pictures for a bunch of conditions; you can beat the game with as low as 9% of items, and doing so with 15% of less on both normal and hard mode gets you a unique picture. The difficulty is definitely there if you're looking for it; on my last playthroughs a year ago, I went through all the different picture-unlocking categories, and 15% hard was absolutely brutal.
But that's really it - unlike Link's Awakening, which was so heavily about the intangibles and the power of its story and themes, Zero Mission is just an incredibly satisfying and pleasant game to run through. It's got a really solid soundtrack, of course, and nails the Metroid atmosphere totally well (I still adore the game's cute reference at the end credits), but it's up here this high because it's a game I never get sick of playing through. The aforementioned runs I did last year - I think I did 9 relatively casual completions of the game in all its different difficulties and completion states - happened in the span of just over a week. There was a point when I had broken this out after a while, where I would wake up and literally beat the game in a couple hours before going to work. I can't think of any game, even the ones ahead on the list, that has brought me that kind of addictive start-to-finish playability, and Zero Mission is always going to feel a certain kind of special just because of that.

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15. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB, 1993)

Link's Awakening is one of my favorite games in a series that I have all sorts of varying feelings about. I don't pretend that Zelda is one of my favorite series; there are some games I absolutely hate, there are plenty I found fine but forgettable, and I still haven't played some of its biggest entries. (I'll get around to Breath of the Wild some day...) My "favorite" changes depending on what I'm in the mood for, and what strikes my fancy (at least, among a few that I really like), but Link's Awakening always manages to end up in that conversation, which still manages to impress me for an original-release Game Boy game (and one that doesn't even have Zelda in it at all).
What always impresses me about Link's Awakening is just how much better it is at being a Zelda game than most of its contemporary Game Boy games were at pulling off versions of their series. Metroid 2 is a decent game but really struggles to perform on the hardware, and both Super Mario Lands (especially the original) weren't really up to the standard of the NES Marios. But Link's Awakening, on the first try, nails both what makes Zelda great AND how to handle (and maximize) the Game Boy system itself. Going back to the single-screen rooms and map squares of Zelda 1, but retaining the comprehensive story and world-building of A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening loses very little relative to its console counterparts.
Because it's a Game Boy game, it definitely has to get creative to maximize the amount of stuff in game, but it does a pretty solid job: there's eight full dungeons that don't feel like they had to cheapen their difficulty or limit their size to be fully realized. There's a handful of unique mini-games that were expanded upon in the Switch remake, but still feel good on the Game Boy. You've got a pretty robust set of items and collectibles that may be a little short of A Link to the Past but feels close enough. Plus, there's a lot of unique things that make it stand out, too: its main item, Roc's Feather, which lets you jump around like Mario, but in a Zelda game; a pet dog you get to follow you and gobble up baddies (but only for a brief time); an in-game store that you could actually swipe items from (as long as you don't mind being called a THIEF). Gameplay never feels like it's too much of a struggle, even with the Game Boy's limitations, because the designers structured the game around those limitations, and gave the player enough options and space to handle what's going on.
But look, there's one real reason why Link's Awakening is here, and while all of the above stuff is relevant, it's all about the story. Sincerely, I think Link's Awakening, a cute, relatively short, black-and-white-dot-matrix-Game Boy game, has the best story of any video game I've ever played. It's not the deepest or the most complicated, but it's extraordinarily moving; I have failed to play through Link's Awakening without being brought to tears at one or more points during the game. I think there's something absolutely brilliant about the way that the game's designers made the story so intimate and personal - swapping the epic grandeur of the console games for a quaint little island - for a game that most players would be playing in the palm of their hands. For those not familiar, here's the summary: Link gets caught in a big ol' thunderstorm, his ramshackle raft capsizes, and he ends up washing ashore on a mysterious island where everything is not as it seems. From there, you encounter all sorts of charming characters, notable among them Marin, the girl who finds you washed up on the beach. From there, you're doing all sorts of fun Zelda stuff, beating up monsters and solving puzzles in dungeons, to collect a series of musical instruments in order to wake the Wind Fish. See, the monsters haven't always been here, but have been showing up recently, and apparently waking up said fish (who resides in a big ol' Yoshi egg at the top of a mountain, of course) will solve that problem.
(BIG OL' UGLY SPOILER BARS incoming:)
What unfolds from here basically flips the conventions and expectations of the series: you're actually stuck in a dream - one that is somehow shared with the Wind Fish itself - and the farther you progress the game toward the ending means you're pushing ahead the demise of the dreamland's residents, who you've grown closer to over the course of the game. So instead of pursuing the game's end via some noble resolve to vanquish evil (okay, there's some of that), you're actively confronting the melancholy and bittersweet nature of having to end something that you don't want to end. It's simple, it's sweet, and it's magical - as I said earlier, that it managed to be pulled off by a Game Boy game, of all things, maybe makes it even a little more special.
And for possibly all of this, it's why this is always a tough one to rank for me - gameplay-wise, it's very good, but I'd have a hard time saying it's any better than A Link Between Worlds, something I placed almost 50 spots below. But it call comes together amazingly; it's just such an exceptional experience whenever I pull this one out for the second, third, fifth, tenth playthrough, that I still feel like I'm shortchanging it by putting it only in 15th. Anyway, basically every game left on my lists is an absolute all-timer; it's probably why I've had such a miserable time trying to write everything from here out without feeling like I've missed something important. Only three more to go (since I skipped to do 3DW) to the top 10!

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i agree on keamy - i'm not sure what exactly it is about lost that made a one-note villain so compelling, but i think it's basically what y'all said; he cuts through the shows endless nonsense and actually gets something done. not my favorite by any stretch but i think his presence is at the core of why i think s4 is generally quite good and consistently compelling.

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16. Pop'n Music [series] (Arcade, 1998)

Pop'n music is probably one of the weirder rhythm games to have achieved a substantial amount of success. The rest of the series that got started in the first couple years of Bemani's existence had fairly straightforward concepts: DDR (dance simulation), beatmania (DJ simulation), and GuitarFreaks/DrumMania (guitar/drum simulation, of course). Pop'n music, though? A cartoony game with 9 big ol' hamburger-sized buttons to smack in time with music doesn't really attempt to be a simulation of anything we're humanly accustomed to. Despite this, pop'n music ended up being one of the most popular Bemani games (at least for a while), likely because it was so different. Before there were a swath of games devoted to vocaloid idols, pop'n was one of the main games to license popular anime themes and J-Pop tunes, and it put them in a colorful and attractive package for the folks who might've been a little more intimdated by something like beatmania.
Of course, pop'n itself is a deceivingly difficult game - at it's highest levels, it's on par with the most difficult rhythm games out there. Both reading the patterns of nine buttons on the screen, and handling the movement along the large controller, is a lot to handle.

The game's unique controller, though, makes the experience extra-satisfying. Smacking the large buttons around when you're racking up a big combo feels extremely good; it's one of my favorite tactile things in all of rhythm gaming.
Pop'n's other "thing" is its vast array of wildly different music. Outside of the aforementioned anime and J-Pop covers, pop'n has a ton of distinct tunes, all (up until pop'n 21, at least) labelled with a unique genre, starting with actual things (J-POP, TRANCE, LATIN), and quickly devolving into absolute nonsense (COWBOY? HYPER JAPANESQUE 2? DRM'N FRY??? SET'S BEAN?!??). Each song comes with its own unique character (okay, some are reused or recolored in later games, but still!) that has animations for winning, losing, reaching a full life bar. And it's all rendered in the very distinct pop'n music art style (that would basically have fans losing their minds after it was changed to a more anime-like style in pop'n 22 - so much that it's basically been completely reversed by this point, and that was like 5 years ago.) that is endlessly endearing and charming. The whole game, really, is just so lovely and compelling as a package, and it's a testament to how damn good the early Bemani stuff is that series as distinct as DDR, beatmania, and pop'n all got such a thorough level of attention to their aesthetic, theme, and structure, to make them into something iconic, and not just set dressing. Also, shoutouts to Koujirou, my absolute favorite pop'n character, the best birb of all time, who I will absolutely sift through the character select screen of every new release to find and choose.

My experience with the game was largely confined to a handful of plays at anime conventions and comparable events before a friend of mine picked up a full arcade cabinet around...2014 or 2015? The machine was a little old but still in good condition, and running pop'n music 16 PARTY (I didn't intentionally do this, but I'm glad this entry turned out to be #16 on the list for that reason, heh.) which he later upgraded into the most recent version, Sunny Park. (pop'n 21 - yes, every Bemani game must have an absurd name/subtitle now.) At that point I dove headfirst into the game and found myself continually surprised by the depth of gameplay, the satisfying variety of music, and the ever-present drive to get to the next level. I always find that feeling to sort of "top out" in rhythm games (I'm not obsessive enough in a certain way to care about being one of the best players in the world or anything), but I managed to get up to clearing quite a few level 46 songs (difficulty ranges from 1-50) before I just kind of moved onto other stuff. (I hadn't even totally plateaued at that point!) And per usual, sifting through this writeup made me immediately want to play the game a whole heck of a bunch.
I don't have a ton else to say - pop'n is a good rhythm game, and a cute rhythm game, and I like both of those things - so I'm just gonna throw a big wall of songs that I either love or that have super memorable charts.
Favorite song picks:
So good!! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdz9NaHyaE
[STAR HERO] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyN0-R9wAQE
Be Happy! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul1DiBVXuyc
Goofy charts/songs:
[Set's Bean] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xrBDCG3XWg
[Drm'n Fry] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RxNvlfbA7U
Favorite tunes:
7 Colors - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs1J3ouZXhM
Illumina - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95OFD0421ZA
[PATHETIC SKA] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4bR56jZiCY
the keel (Nu-Style Gabba mix) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL-dol-0KMU

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season 4 is great! and i mean, come on, even if you don't like the season 4 story arc, saying there's nothing worthwhile when "the constant" is on that season is absolute nonsense

also jack is perhaps the one character who gets a solid and appropriate ending. hooray!

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17. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, 1997)

I think there's a phenomenon in critical writing of video games where a somewhat-flawed game that historically was lauded as "best in the series" or possibly "best game ever" gets hit with an extra degree of criticism and negativity later on in its lifetime. The best, and most clear example of this, is Ocarina of Time, most likely due to the degree of praise it got immediately upon release and the general overall quality of the rest of the Zelda series. Symphony of the Night is another that feels to me to have hit this phenomenon - it was such a definitive and impressive reinvention of the series upon its release that it totally shifted the dynamic of the series, ushering in the "Metroidvania" era, and quite possibly single-handedly dooming all the failed attempts to bring the series to 3D. (Okay, it's probably that most of those games were hot garbage.) So despite a number of folks who would love to tell you that the best Castlevania game is Aria or Dawn of Sorrow, Order of Ecclesia (ew), or possibly one of the classic linear games like Castlevania III or Rondo of Blood, I'm gonna double down on SotN: I think it's still, easily, the best game in the series in 2021, and despite its "flaws" it still has more than enough charm, creativity, and great gameplay to back it up.
Symphony of the Night has a lot of obvious strengths: its merging of the Castlevania universe with the open exploration of Metroid works perfectly; instead of a linear progression of fixed stages, you have the entirety of Dracula's castle with which to explore, fight enemies, and discover secrets. Additionally, SotN adds on a RPG-style leveling system - enemies give experience points, and enough will level you up, giving a buff to combat stats. This has the benefit of allowing the player to progress past difficult challenges in multiple ways - you can grind up levels, you can keep taking your shot at the combat, or you can seek out extra items, armor, weapons, or health to make progress in a different way. SotN's protagonist is Dracula's son Alucard, and unlike almost every prior Castlevania protagonist, a Belmont with a whip he is not. Alucard comes with a sword, shield, and armor, but they're swiped from you early in the game and you have to acquire (or re-acquire) items and skills to make progress. It has a good balance of customizability and familiarity in its sense of progression, and it works very well.
SotN is also a game with a previously unprecedented level of cinematic flair, for both the series and for 2D action games. The game opens with the ending battle of Rondo of Blood: Richter confronting Dracula, wonderfully campy and beloved voice-acted banter (What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets!), and a user-controlled rendition of the final battle against Dracula. It's followed by a long expositional text scroll accompanying intense, dramatic music, then drops the player into the main game proper with a fancy screen-scrolling swoop into Alucard dashing toward the castle - it's a hell of an opening 10-15 minutes, and sets the stage for the type of game that SotN strives to be. But it's not just the opening - the game fills its chambers with clever nods to the rest of the series, little hidden easter eggs (like the confessional booth in the Chapel that attacks you, or the usable binoculars along the outer wall), and lots of little atmospheric touches. Among all the Metroidvanias, I think SotN's castle is the most comprehensively realized - it feels the most built like an actual structure, and feels the least like a connected series of copy-and-pasted rooms (usually). The game's incredible soundtrack adds some depth here, too - the symphonic quality music brings a level of seriousness and intensity to the experience. And although it might not be as memorable as the opening, the rest of the voice-acted dialogue scenes are still hilarious and charming.
I'll make a quick mention of the game's weaknesses, too: its enemy and area balancing is all over the place; throughout the game, there are bosses that are wickedly hard for the level you are roughly going to be at, and just as many that are comically easy. There's an optional boss that is ridiculously tough to conquer without a ton of items or a very cheesy strategy, while Dracula himself is...not very hard. And there are some insanely overpowered weapons that make most of the endgame a joke. There's a few too many items that exist solely to lazily block progression and force backtracking (gotta go to one end of the castle to get the Blue door key to unlock a blue door at the other end), and others that just feel extraneous (an item to see enemy names?). And as much as I love the campiness of the game's dialogue, it comes across as very silly and is not particularly well done.
Still, though, I think SotN pairs its addictive and engaging gameplay with a ton of charm. There's something to be said about a game being perfectly balanced and even - I think it's important for, say, a fighting game, but in a single-player experience I think some unevenness is not only acceptable but actually good. I think it's nice to find something that's super-overpowered (especially when it's not just handed to you) or to grind out an especially tough boss fight. Having the experience be so much less homogeneous and streamlined makes it feel more real, or at least in this case, less cookie-cutter than some of its GBA and DS successors. And SotN is the introduction of the "fake-out" ending for the series, too: the storyline sets you up to a confrontation between Alucard and the turned-evil Richter Belmont at the top of the castle, but that's only the false or "bad" ending: to reach the entire second half of the game, you have to dig your way into the lowest reaches of the castle to find some hidden items and secrets. It's a little obtuse (and said second-half of the game isn't great), but it's such a memorable way to engage the player with the game's universe: it's not just a restructuring of linear levels into a nonlinear order, but actually shifts the experience with and around those areas as the game goes on.
This was supposed to be a lot shorter of a writeup, but I think all my rambling helps me bring home my point (for my own tastes at least): SotN is not only such an outstanding game for its time that helped set new standards for the series and its genre, but it's also full of unique quirks and charms that really help it stand out among later releases. If Super Metroid can reasonably be considered the game that birthed Metroidvania as a genre, SotN is the one that brought about the name "Metroidvania" itself. And while other Castlevania games (or Bloodstained) might have tightened up the formula, there isn't one that has as much ambition, grandeur, and brilliance as Symphony of the Night.

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even the pre merge had some decent people - vince, chelsea, and jason would be great
and there's a lot to be critical of about missy but she definitely brought a lot to the table - she'd be polarizing in a much different way were it not for the dan mess, and i STILL don't really blame her for that

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i mean we can't ignore the stain of dan on island of the idols but that cast was also absolutely stacked, i genuinely think it ends up being a top 20 fan season if kellee had played one of her idols at the merge tribal (or especially if he got dumped instead of jason linden at the elaine steal-a-vote tc)

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i do feel like san juan del sur is gonna get way undersold by rhap though, hope i'm wrong about that one

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i still love 31 and 33, which are undoubtedly going to end up closer to my take in rhap rankings than in your list

not that that's an inherently good or correct thing or anything, but i won't get to experience the same frustration as with hhh heh

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it's funny, i think i was less bullish than both you and inviso on HHH at the time, but even i would say it's EASILY top 20 without the garbage ending, and i still have it near the top of the 20s. that cast is absolutely loaded, and i'm really hoping it gets the proper justification it deserves, rather than just a cursory "fire twist bad, chrissy/devon were robbed"

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if there's something i'm learning about the survivor fandom from the rhap lists, it's that they place waaaay too much emphasis on having a "good" winner for these rankings

the fire making twist in hhh sucks, but if you think any part of that season was worse than caramoan or ghost island, you're out of your goddamn mind

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18. F-Zero X (N64, 1998)

It is fall of 1998, and I'm with my family in a Best Buy, trying to decide on which current-gen console we're going to invest in. It's a few months before Pokmon, and Nintendo, and video games as a whole all start to take over my life, so I'm mostly excited by the thought of playing the latest NCAA Football entry on the PlayStation. My brother is much more drawn to the upcoming release of Zelda on Nintendo 64, and as the one with much more interest in gaming (at the time), and the one with actual money (and seniority), he convinces us to go with it. But obviously we had to have a game to go with it, as Zelda wasn't due out for another couple of months. Memories of how exactly we landed on F-Zero X are hazy, but as someone who liked their experiences of both Mario Kart and Wipeout, it was a pretty safe choice. And thus my two-plus-decade long love affair with the F-Zero series, and its...sadly paltry selection of games, began.
F-Zero X made a lot of sacrifices visually to run at a constant 60 fps (very uncommon among N64 games) - it's backgrounds are hazy, there's very few non-track elements on the courses, and it's just generally quite ugly. But the gameplay is so, SO smooth. F-Zero's claim to fame is always its absurdly high speed, and as such its perfect framerate is almost essential in capturing that so well. As a bonus, it misses out on the problematic N64/PS-era "texture hell" graphics - its minimalist courses make it very clear where hazards, walls, and boosts are along the courses, and it still holds up exceptionally well to this day. X also nails so many other aesthetic elements that you can forgive its graphical limitations: the stylistic comic-book themed characters and menus, the incredible heavy metal soundtrack, and the ridiculous robot voice effects (YOU'VE GOT BOOST POWER! POUR IT ON, YOU'RE WAY OUT IN FRONT!! YEAAAAH, THE FINAL LAP!!) all stand out so distinctly in my memory.
X also introduced a number of novel innovations, most of which would quickly be adopted as standards for the series. Boost power allows you to deplete your power gauge for a temporary speed boost, rather than just earning one per lap as in the SNES edition. A full 30 racers compete on a track at the same time, earning points for placement in each course across an individual cup (and that also means 30 unique vehicles and drivers to play as and unlock). Vehicle attacks such as the side-swipe and spin are added here, and you can earn extra lives in a cup race by taking out enough opponents. There's even some novel additions like the X Cup (comprised of six randomly generated courses) and Death Race (take out the other 29 cars in a looping course as fast as you can) that only appear here, but are just as enjoyable.
But the game's courses are the huge stars here: they're outstanding technical roller coasters that really make the most of the translation to a 3D environment. You've got big jumps, little jumps, steep banked turns, loops, corkscrews, half-corkscrews, tubes, half-pipes, full-pipes, all flying at you at over 1000 km/hour. There's a giant oval course with near-nonstop boosts, there's a course with a staircase of deadly jumps at the end, there's a course that's almost entirely a treacherous halfpipe with no walls, there's a course shaped like a giant hand - every one of them kicks ass. But unlike Mario Karts, F-Zero is an uncompromisingly fair game; you don't get power-ups or items to work your way back in front, you've got to do it all on your own racing merit. And there's no Lakitu to save you if you drive off an edge or fly off the course from going too fast; you lose a machine and have to try again. This makes multiplayer perhaps a little bit less accessible to new players, but also makes competing for fast times and high scores extra compelling. I only beat a couple of the staff ghosts back in the day, but a good friend of mine conquered them all and regularly submitted times to fan-created online leaderboards. The courses are so wonderfully crafted that it feels good to optimise every last turn, jump, and boost to perfection, and then do it again.
And though I made a brief reference earlier, I can't end without mentioning the game's incredible music. X has so many awesome and memorable tunes, and its guitar-laden tracks feel so tonally different to what you might expect from video games of the era. There's something extra special about the combination of headbanging metal to precision high-speed racing - it just works and the whole game leans into it perfectly. The guitar arrange edition soundtrack, released in Japan, is one of my all time favorite video game soundtracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnp2c4wl7Y
For a period of my teenage years, I listened to this thing nearly every damn day, and popping back in now and hearing a couple tunes is just an absolute treat.
There's only one racing game that has managed to capture my heart in the same way as this one, and it shares a heck of a lot of similarities, but we won't be seeing that on the list until the top five. Playing its courses feels just as wonderful as it did back in 1998 - and if you haven't played this one by now, shame on you. If I'm willing to concede that Mario 64 "holding up" is debatable, I'll hear no arguments for X - it's certainly ugly, but it still runs like a champ and absolutely kicks as much ass as it ever did. I could ramble on forever (guess I sort of have) about F-Zero, and why Nintendo should be held criminally responsible for not giving us anything in the series for the past 15 years, but we'll always have X as a beautiful gem of a game, and I'm so thankful for that.
Top 5 Courses: Sector Beta - Red Canyon - Port Town - White Land - Silence

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tbqh i think they wrote themselves into a corner with both the time travelling stuff but also the constant refrain post-season 1 of "there's a plan for all of this" and "no supernatural explanations".
like if s6 had properly resolved as a full-on time travel story and they had to retcon and revise some stuff along the way, we'd all have been much better off for it

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maybe its just continuity in branding, but with all the other ports and remasters i find it interesting that they went with "hd" in the skyward sword port's title, if it's only a standalone

this rumor would make sense if they're bringing them all over across the course of the year

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this sounds cool as hell, i'm intrigued!

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19. Super Mario 64 (N64, 1996)

This might be a stretch, but I think Mario 64 might be the most influential platformer ever made. Obviously, its real competition here is the original Super Mario Bros., a game so ahead of its time it basically revived the home video game industry all by itself and set the template for countless games for the next decade. But I can't put into words how crazy it was that Mario 64 was the first true 3D game ever put out for a Nintendo console - if you traveled in time from the early 90s, post-Mario 3 and World, you'd have expected the series to have evolved into 3D Land/World-style games, and not the open-ended collectathon it actually ended up being. But that design single-handedly set in stone the formula (much like original SMB did) for platformers for the next decade - and I'd say its structure and philosophy still have effects to the ethos of platforming games, Mario or not, to this day.
It's almost impossible to talk about just about any game from the early 3D era without asking that most notorious question: "Does it still hold up?" I think Mario 64 has a very complicated answer there, and I fully admit that as someone who played the snot out of this game back in the late-90s/early-00s, I'm gonna have a biased response, but I'm still gonna defend its honor and say, "Yes, absolutely, it does." Graphically it avoids the mistake of so many of those early 3D games - washed-out colors and muddied textures I love to colloquially name "texture hell" - by keeping things simple. As a result, yeah, it's a little ugly by modern standards, but you can (with a few exceptions) see where boundaries are and what you can stand on. The controls are not without their complaints: the camera absolutely sucks and gets in the way in some key moments, and Mario's little animation when trying to turn around does its best to constantly get in the way of precision movement. But so many of the moves introduced here set the standard for 3D Mario; the triple jump, the sideways flip, the long jump, the backflip: all of these became staples of pretty much every subsequent Mario game. It's easy to look at something like Mario Odyssey and be critical of all the ways 64 is limited, but 64 set the standard for most of those moves to begin with. And within its own confines, 64 still feels very good. You can make complex maneuvers, there's a lot of options in mobility, and mastery of the controls allows for the player to demonstrate and leverage their own skill fairly.
For a lot of the Mario series, the movement is the star of the show, and it certainly is a huge part of the game's success here. But its levels are almost as important, and I think they still hold up exceptionally. Within these worlds, Mario 64 is just brimming with oodles of charm and creativity. Most of the game's 15 main levels are large, thematically distinct, full of secrets to explore, and allow you to face challenges in whatever order you encounter them. The stars themselves are a mixed bag of excitement, but really bring out the possibility that the next main collectible could be just around the corner. And even some of the more benign challenges, like luring out a scary eel or riding a loch ness monster-type creature, are wonderfully memorable. 64's main collectibles - each stage's 8 red coins and 100 coin star, aren't too brutal either. (Despite sort of creating the "collectathon" standard Rare's platformers would get notoriety for, 64 itself really isn't that bad with demanding you scour every corner for hidden items.) After a handful of levels, the red coin challenges themselves get more unique with their structure. And there's still a lot of great little details about navigating the first Mario 3D world even now - the slide levels are delightful, scaling tall mountains still feels great, and the little touches in areas like Big Boo's Haunt are as charming as ever. Even small touches, like the game's title screen and Peach's castle, bring a playfulness and personality outside of the game's main levels.
Ultimately, 64 is a game I still adore coming back to (once again, there's some bias here); despite the disappointments and complaints of 3D All-Stars, I was more than happy to have a slightly-upgraded copy to play portably on my Switch at any time. Whether 70 or 120-star, backwards long jumps or no, 64 just feels wonderful to drop back into and re-experience - it's that same magic that all my favorite Mario games bring, the value of just plowing through great levels with outstanding replayability because they just feel so good to move around in. And despite my reservations, I'm still dumping this one in the Top 20. Maybe it's because of its importance, maybe I just can't get over how much I loved it 20+ years ago, but I'll always hold SM64 in the highest regard.
Top 5 Levels: Wet-Dry World - Cool, Cool Mountain - Hazy Maze Cave - Whomp's Fortress - Tick Tock Clock

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i'm interested in seeing takes about some of the endgame stuff in lost - i still don't entirely know how i feel about it after all these years

with kate i would rate her higher but i'm not going to argue with the concept; the writers clearly didn't know what the hell to do with her as a character but continued to put her at the center of everything and as a result she ends up being incredibly unlikeable with an incomprehensibly disjointed storyline

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nes controller sucks ass

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this sounds sick as hell

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Forgive me for putting this out of order, and rambling like a goof, but this one's important.

12. Super Mario 3D World (Wii U, 2013)

Today is Friday, February 12, 2021, which means that Super Mario 3D World (+ Bowser's Fury) is currently available for Nintendo Switch. If you don't already own the Wii U version, and you like Mario games or platformers even a tiny amount, you owe it to yourself to play this game. It's an absolute gem of a game, buried by the failure of the Wii U and the then-disappointment of not being an open sandbox-style game like Mario 64 or Sunshine. I'm willing to go out on a limb and throw out the hottest of takes - I think it has the best level design of any platformer Nintendo has ever made. Better than Mario 1, 3, World, Galaxy, DKC games, whatever other stuff I can't remember. And while I think some people's platforming tastes are always going to trend to the aforementioned open-ended sandboxes of 64 and Odyssey, for my money 3D World has them both beat.
Mario 3D World starts you off with a pretty standard opening, but from the jump the structure is just a little bit different. Bowser's captured a princess again - but it's a group of fairies from the previously-unknown Sprixie Kingdom, instead of Peach. Your first level is a fairly straightforward grass level - but it's built around the game's new big power-up, the Super Bell, which turns you into a cat that can climb up walls, dive in the air, and claw at enemies. And returning for the first time since Mario 2 is its full roster of variable-control playable characters; you can select Mario, Luigi, Peach, or Toad, each with comparable skills to that game, like Peach's mid-air float and Luigi's high jumps. The level design quickly departs from the norm, too; in World 1 you have the standard grass and underground levels, but also a trapeze-hopping circus level, a level riding atop a water-surfing dinosaur, the introduction of Captain Toad, and a boss fight against Bowser where you kick explosive soccer balls (!) into his oversized pimped-out car. (!!)
It's this absolute bombardment of unique ideas that defines Mario 3D World, for the entirety of the game. There's just so many different and immensely creative levels that jumping into a new stage and seeing what it has to discover is such a joy. It feels very much from the Super Mario Bros. 3 school of level design, where each stage is so distinct and memorable, that upon a revisit through the game, you'll constantly be saying "Oh man, it's that level!" with enthusiasm. And it carries this momentum the entire way through; when you think they can't possibly come up with something new, there's something around the corner possibly more brilliant than anything you've seen yet - a power-up that multiplies your character into multiple copies, a Mario Kart-themed high speed race level, a Kuriboh's Shoe-styled giant ice skate to ride around in; it still throws me for a loop how stuff I remember so distinctly is so far along the game's main worlds.
There's a ton of stuff to collect here - each stage has three green stars and a stamp, and you're credited for landing atop the flagpole at the end - but most of it isn't entirely necessary to progress (though you do need certain amounts of stars to open some stages and worlds). There's also multiple hidden postgame areas, including a final world with two brutally difficult challenge levels that rank among the hardest things in any Mario game since the NES. It's extra stuff to do for those who want it, but I think the individual level designs largely stand out on their merit.
I think there's a trend to sort of canonize games with more open-ended design and philosophy, like Breath of the Wild or Mario Odyssey, as the ideal method of structuring and imagining a game. And like I said up front, there's clearly a huge subset of Mario fans who vastly prefer this style of game to the disjointed levels of 3D World or Galaxy. But similarly to 2D and 3D, I think it's really important to recognize the strengths and the place for both of these approaches. With Mario 3D World's fixed-camera streamlined levels, the game can more precisely tailor the kind of experience for the player and the level design itself can be tighter and more varied. Because the game places limitations on the kind of things you can do in each level, it gives the freedom to take greater creative risks with what a level can do; conversely, with the ability for a player to go just about anywhere and do anything, the structure isn't going to be as tight and the experience not as controlled. It's this attention to nailing every detail in each level that sets 3D World apart from just about every other platformer - there's so little wasted space in each carefully crafted stage that you're always going to get a pretty complete experience of its constant newly-introduced concepts and challenges.
And all of this wonderful gameplay is backed by one of my absolute favorite video game soundtracks. The Mario games have always sounded great, and Koji Kondo has delivered so many memorable tunes across Mario and other series in his career, but even with all that, this masterpiece might be the greatest track he's ever composed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkizz-EzmPA
I'd argue Nintendo would at least put it up there, too, since it got dropped into nearly every Mario Maker 2 and 3D World preview or update video. There are just so many memorable tracks, and so many unique ones constantly being introduced across its multitude of levels, that just help to make the entire experience so distinct and special.
In 2017, I managed to run into both of my absolute favorite gaming experiences of the past decade, obviously by playing through games that had been released well before that year. Super Mario 3D World was one of those memories, and by far the biggest surprise. When I jumped into the co-op mode with a friend halfway into the game, I wasn't expecting something much more memorable or enjoyable than any of the New Super Mario Bros. games. But quickly I started to fall in love with the cleverness of the game's ideas and level design, and be impressed by all the different things on display. And when I ended up running through the entire game solo, I was just blown away by how much I loved every single part of it. Even grinding through hundreds of lives to complete the game's brutally difficult final level didn't test my patience or leave me feeling hopelessly frustrated - the game is just so damn good that I couldn't wait to keep giving it another go.
It's rare for me, at my current age, to get so immensely emotional or excited about any individual thing anymore - I'm just not wired to find something as the new greatest thing ever like I was when I was a teenager. But I'm sitting here getting choked up listening through a playlist of the 3D World soundtrack, and getting excited about rolling through the whole thing again later today, because it's just such a wonderful joy of a game and I adore it so much. When Nintendo gets a game just right, at least for me, I don't think there's any company in the industry that can come even close to matching what they can do with the medium - and Super Mario 3D World is the perfect representation of that particularly wonderful brand of magic.

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20. Kirby Super Star (SNES, 1996)

Kirby is such a wildly malleable character. He's got linear games with methodical progression (Adventure/Dream Land series), radical departures from traditional platforming (Canvas Curse/Epic Yarn), and a vast array of spin-offs. (Pinball Land, Block Ball, Air Ride, Dream Course, etc.) There's a lot of potential with a character who is basically just a blank slate and can transform into exactly what you need him to be! But the one game in the series that I feel like maximized on this potential (and took him beyond a novelty) is Super Star, by a significant margin my personal series favorite.
As with much of the rest of the series, Kirby swallows up enemies and copies their abilities, with the usual Fire, Ice, Beam, Sword, and others among the array of powers. Each power, however, has a robust moveset of several button input combinations that produce different effects, making almost all of them valuable for a significant amount of situations. As such, KSS is a game that plays at a much quicker pace than its predecessors and gives you the toolset to deal with it - you're a much beefier and more effective Kirby in just about every situation. You can also easily play this one cooperatively; you can use a power to spawn a partner character that can be controlled either by a human or an AI, and both features work pretty great.
The structure of the game is a pretty big departure, too - instead of one lengthy adventure, there are 6 independent "games", each its own self-contained adventure with different rules. Spring Breeze is a short retelling of Kirby's Dream Land 1; Dyna Blade is another mostly linear adventure, but with some hidden secrets; and Gourmet Race is a 1-2 player challenge where you're racing off against an opponent to reach the finish line first in a series of courses, but with the caveat that you score points for all the food you eat along the way.
The best parts are in the last three games, though. Revenge of Meta Knight follows a linear storyline of Kirby infiltrating Meta Knight's Halberd airship, interspersed with dialogue between Meta Knight and his minions along the way. It's charming but challenging, backed with some of the best music tracks in the series, and some really memorable boss fights.
Great Cave Offensive has Kirby traveling across a giant interconnected maze of rooms, collecting as much treasure as possible along the way. It's perhaps my favorite mode of the game, and arguably the predecessor to Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. Finding the right powers to use to reach a hidden treasure or get past an obstacle is really good here; as I said earlier, you're going to generally have something pretty useful, and not be stuck with a completely worthless ability for a long time just because you need it to get through a door.
Milky Way Wishes is great, too - twisting the formula a bit, you're not getting copy abilities through enemies, but instead via statues hidden behind doors (there's usually a couple of these in each level). Once you get a statue, you can break out that ability any time, so you slowly accumulate power over the course of this mode, and it just feels really satisfying to reach a new permanent ability. Plus, this has the best ending and boss fights in the whole game.
There's just a ton to like here - each game is reasonably short, so it doesn't wear out its welcome before its mechanics get too tedious, and breaks up the action well. I think this sort of structure just suits Kirby well in general; there's always a point in basically any of his other longer adventures where the game kind of loses steam and seems to run out of new ideas, but here it stays fresh consistently. The new powers feel much more suited to a faster-paced action game than the more constrained options from prior titles, and I think the series in general is better for it - it lets Kirby's mechanics and movement really shine for the first time. While I can see why someone would prefer Canvas Curse or Nightmare in Dream Land, Super Star captures what I always wanted from a Kirby game.

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whatever rating the critical consensus ends up at is inevitably too low

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80% Completion Round-up:
100. WarioWare: Smooth Moves (Wii, 2007)
99. Unreal Tournament (PC, 1999)
98. Pikmin 2 (GameCube, 2004)
97. Crypt of the Necrodancer (PC, 2015)
96. Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (GBA, 2004)
95. Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1, 1998)
94. Time Crisis II (Arcade, 1998)
93. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA, 2003)
92. DJ Max Portable (PSP, 2006)
91. Zany Golf (PC, 1988)
90. Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch, 2019)
89. Contra 4 (DS, 2007)
88. Mega Man 5 (NES, 1992)
87. Super Castlevania IV (SNES, 1991)
86. The Oregon Trail (PC, 1993)
85. TimeSplitters 2 (Multiplatform, 2002)
84. Fat Princess (PS3, 2009)
83. Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS, 2007)
82. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (Multiplatform, 2000)
81. Pokmon Go (Mobile, 2016)
80. Final Fantasy IV (SNES, 1991)
79. The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (GameCube, 2004)
78. Super Mario Bros. (NES, 1985)
77. Mario Tennis (N64, 2000)
76. Chip's Challenge (PC, 1990)
75. Elite Beat Agents (DS, 2006)
74. Bust-A-Move (Arcade, 1994)
73. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS, 2006)
72. Crystalis (NES, 1990)
71. StepMania (PC, 2001)
70. Tetris & Dr. Mario (SNES, 1994)
69. Minesweeper (PC, 1992)
68. Mario Kart 64 (N64, 1997)
67. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii, 2010)
66. Pokmon Picross (3DS, 2015)
65. F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (GBA, 2001)
64. Metroid Fusion (GBA, 2002)
63. Pikmin 3 Deluxe (Switch, 2020)
62. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS, 2013)
61. FIFA 98: Road to World Cup (PC, 1997)

60. Resident Evil 4 (GameCube, 2005)
59. Celeste (Multiplatform, 2018)
58. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GameCube, 2003)
57. Pikmin (GameCube, 2001)
56. The Sims (PC, 2000)
55. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch, 2020)
54. Sound Voltex [series] (Arcade, 2012-present)
53. Tecmo Bowl (NES, 1989)
52. Q*Bert (Arcade, 1982)
51. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (PC, 2020)
50. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS, 2005)
49. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U, 2014)
48. Super Smash Bros. Melee (GameCube, 2001)
47. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch, 2018)
46. RollerCoaster Tycoon (PC, 1999)
45. Everybody's Golf (PS4, 2017)
44. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64, 1998)
43. Okami (PS2, 2006)
42. Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole (Genesis, 1993)
41. The Jackbox Party Pack [series] (Multiplatform, 2014-present)
40. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GameCube, 2004)
39. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii, 2007)
38. Mega Man 2 (NES, 1989)
37. Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Genesis, 1994)
36. WarioWare Gold (3DS, 2018)
35. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES, 1995)
34. Pokmon Platinum (DS, 2009)
33. Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (PS1, 1999)
32. Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (GameCube, 2003)
31. Pokmon Trading Card Game (GBC, 2000)
& Pokmon Card GB2 [JP] (GBC, 2001)
30. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GameCube, 2003)
29. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch, 2017)
28. Final Fantasy VI (SNES, 1994)
27. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2, 2004)
26. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (DS, 2005-2007)
25. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GameCube, 2004)
24. Mario Party 2 (N64, 2000)
23. Dance Dance Revolution [series] (Arcade, 1998-present)
22. Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)
21. Reflec Beat [series] (Arcade, 2010-present?)

-Breakdown by Decade-
1980s: 5
1990s: 23
2000s: 34
2010s+: 18

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21. Reflec Beat [series] (Arcade, 2010-present?)

Reflec Beat is a rhythm game with a particularly interesting and troubled history. Back upon its launch in 2010, touch-screen rhythm games were en vogue, following the success of DJ Max Technica, and it received immediate success in Japanese arcades. After a few years and several versions with beefed up song lists and improved player options, it had become one of the most popular and successful games of the BEMANI series. Additionally, (along with jubeat) it had a home version app for iPad, at the time when tablets were also at their peak. Of course, as touch-screen functionally became less novel, its popularity waned, and after several attempts to inject some life into the series, Konami rebooted the whole franchise with its final game - a bizarre, RPG/fantasy-themed version titled with the long-winded Reflesia of Eternity. Inexplicably, this version had removed all previous content aside from a handful of licensed J-Pop and Anime theme songs. Despite a really good initial songlist, some great menu themes (Thanks, DJ Totto!), and slowly drip-feeding the old songs back into the game, the bungled launch basically killed the game right from the release. Technically, the series is still alive, somewhat (I guess Reflesia of "Eternity" was somewhat prophetic) - at least, before the pandemic, they were still popping out bundles of 10 old/returning songs every other month or so - but it's essentially dead now, despite only making it about 7 years or so between launch of its first and final game, and actually being rather successful (and not just a general failure like Museca or Beat Stream).
With the history lesson out of the way, the era where it was a basically-dead game is actually where I come in. I had touched the iPad version once or twice and maybe played a round at a convention, but had no real interest or experience with the game until about...2017? A close friend of mine bought the game at a pretty solid discount and I decided to try to get into it, and despite my reservations, I quickly got hooked. The game's concept is a sort of rhythm game ping-pong where you're knocking notes back and forth between yourself and the other player. By the most recent version, you can turn off seeing opponent targets and have a healthy set of speed mods to avoid cluttering the screen. In that state it's a lot more straightforward - you're trying to hit the notes as they approach the target line. The gimmicks here are that because of the game's structure, where they'll land on the line is somewhat randomized, and sometimes they get sent to you at tricky angles that can be tough to read on the fly. Additionally, there's a higher row of green targets - these are always fixed in position, but are difficult to manage (and read) along with the notes flying toward the bottom row. In practice, you can learn to read everything fairly reasonably, but it takes a decent bit of getting used to.

The game is full of BEMANI polish, though; the game's sound design is really good and surprisingly important - without physical sensations, like the click of a button, touch-screen games can suffer from a lot of design problems, and the series cleverly bakes all that into the design. The ping-pongy nature of the "theme" makes its loud clacking sounds when you touch or hold a note feel perfectly smooth, and also gives you audio feedback to your hands. It's great! The series' mascot, Pastel-kun, a purple mouse, is arguably its most lasting legacy (maybe the mountain of songs it's since ported to other games), and he's great and I'm very sad that his game is dead.

It's also, like DDR, a game where getting an 100% score is absolutely achievable, and even beyond that, getting near-perfect scores and max combos feels like a solid milestone. Because "clearing" a song only means to achieve over a certain score percentage, you're really trying to optimize your play of a single song rather than just beat the hardest level. Again, it takes a potential foible of touch-screen play (mashing on the touch screen might be a bit too effective at cobbling together a clearing score) and turns it into a strength. It's also got a very good soundtrack - at its peak, there were a lot of fun events bringing in bespoke content, and the game's nature as a genreless structure lends itself to a ton of varied and interesting styles of songs. Hell, even the last-gasp final version still got a bunch of really outstanding unique songs.
In 2018 and 2019, I probably put hundreds of hours into Reflec Beat, solely on my friend's cabinet. I have a ridiculous spreadsheet tabulating my high scores for all of the game's 500+ songs on all of their difficulties; I've successfully cleared the whole game (not particularly impressive) and gotten the max rank (S - >98% score) on all the 11-difficulty songs (difficulty scales from 1 to 15). I'm pretty good, but there are definitely some better players than me; of course, the nature of it being a dead game means that there's not an extensive level of competition. But it's a good enough time for me that just finding stuff to improve on is enjoyable enough - pre-pandemic, I was always looking to tackle a handful of score thresholds on different difficulties at any point visiting my friend's place.
Rhythm games are probably my favorite game genre; there's still a couple of big ones left on this countdown, and I have the tendency to get addicted to them pretty much instantly if they speak to me in any capacity. But to round out the "first 80" of my list, I really wanted to show some love to a gem of a game that's sadly been lost to the machine of the industry - a black sheep of a game that gets blamed for problems it didn't start, and for faults that weren't its own. Sorry, Reflec Beat, you were too good for this world.

Here's a quick endcap list of some personal Reflec Beat favorites:
City Never Sleeps - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XpZbWF4MUY
Proluvies - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27dq4x246bs
Eira - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcZbfzMD5yU
Towards the Horizon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMEG65kBDDk
Anemoitierai - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlBtqDUCi5k

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22. Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)

My favorite Squaresoft RPG, and the only one I've actually beaten! Chrono Trigger is gonna be on a lot of these lists, and probably most of them have played it more recently than when I plowed through it back in 2005. So I'll leave this one pretty short instead of trying to dig out a ton of details from the depths of my memory. Chrono Trigger follows the time-traveling exploits of our silent lead, Crono, who accidentally ends up backwards in time after a demonstration of a time machine at the fair zaps him and his friends to the past. From there, you slowly uncover a story through a boatload of different timelines, encountering a wide range of new party members and foes - standard RPG stuff but in a novel setting.
And that's kind of the thing with Chrono Trigger - I don't think any of its individual parts are particularly mind-blowingly good, but everything is so solid and executed perfectly; it's something I think is true of a lot of SNES classics, really. Combat is excellent; there are a lot of varied options and each party member feels distinct, but it's not needlessly complex. Random battles are all triggered from visible encounters on the world map, allowing you to dodge battles when you don't want them and to handle enemies methodically when you explore a new area. The story is compelling and charming, and the characters are very appealing, but nothing's made more complicated than it needs to be - it doesn't want to overwhelm the player with complexity, letting its beautiful areas and set pieces stand out that much more. And I need to add a cursory mention of the game's soundtrack, which (also like a lot of SNES classics) holds up outstandingly well, and has a number of all-time great tunes.
I think Nee was the one who, in his writeup, talked about how Chrono Trigger is outstanding at its pacing. And especially for an SNES-era RPG, pace is a huge deal - so many games of the time didn't really navigate difficulty well and forced you to grind like mad or were far too easy after a point. Chrono Trigger moves the plot forward expertly, and very rarely demands any degree of level grinding. Even the game's many alternate endings and side quests are a good example of this, too - the game tailors its experience of what you want from it to how much you're even interested in doing, and doesn't hide any of its most important details around this.
Chrono Trigger's just a solid game, perhaps the most solid at just nailing all its core concepts and their details so well that the package can't help but be a thoroughly enjoyable experience. If I was more keen on JRPGs in general, or had some grand childhood story about it (I actually didn't play CT until I got a copy of the PS1 Final Fantasy Chronicles compilation in 2005), it'd probably be a Top 20 finisher. Sorry, Nick, it's still a great game!
Top 5 Characters: Ayla - Robo - Magus - Crono - Lucca

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23. Dance Dance Revolution [series] (Arcade, 1998-present)

This game has had a greater impact on my life than any other video game, and probably any other thing entirely. Almost all of my friends are folks I've bonded with through DDR, met because of DDR, or know because of someone I met through DDR. Almost all of my annual trips and plans are events I'm attending because of these people, or the rhythm game community at large. It's hard to say how radically different my life would be without DDR, because almost everything in my adult life arose from its existence. For that, this game will unquestionably always have a special place in my mind and heart.
But alas, this is a video game ranking list, and I'm still (to some degree) trying to sort these games out on their merits and my appreciation of them as games. Let's start here at the top - DDR was, as it was for many people, my entry to the world of rhythm games as a whole. The main conceit is very simple: step on the four arrow panels in time with the on-screen indicators in rhythm with the music. I was godawful at first, but caught on to at least the basic levels of charts quickly enough. Like many of the other BEMANI games, the interface is clean and enticing, and the gameplay is simple to understand but hard to master. I have an especially strong affinity for the old mixes of DDR (1st through Extreme) as they're emblematic of the era I grew up during, and I think the music is at its best. But the modern games are great, too; in the past five years, there's been significant distribution of DDR A and DDR A20 in America through major arcade chains like Round 1 and Dave & Busters, along with Konami eAmuse (online score tracking) support, that has given a growth of popularity to the game again.
A key part of why I really fell for DDR (and BEMANI games in general) is its timing system - your timing accuracy is measured with every step, and your score is heavily dependent on having precise rhythm, not just being "close enough" to keep a combo. DDR, especially, is simple enough that achieving a 100% score is very difficult (on the hardest levels) but not at all impossible. Back in the mid-2000s era of DDR Extreme, there were a handful of players who had managed a AAA (all Perfects) on every song in the game on their hardest difficulties, and many of us were at least trying our best to work towards a portion of that goal. I'm a fan of many games where setting a high score is the goal, but the achievement of trying to pull out a perfect run is a special feeling, and it's done so well here. Even modern games, which added an extra, tighter tier of timing, are still often measured by scores of "all perfects" before going to the full 100% all marvelous scores. (Some ridiculous players have still done this on many songs.)
At a certain point (likely after a while of playing tons of StepMania) I got much more interested in hand-based rhythm games and never really got back into DDR. I'll still play it at an arcade every now and then, and it's still excellent, but I'm just not into it like I used to be. That said, I still follow the scene because I have close friends who run tournaments and play almost daily. I have many friends who own their own machines (either DDR or In The Groove) and play on a near-daily basis. I love going to tournaments to see people, hang out, and enjoy the competition; were it not for COVID, I'd undoubtedly have trips to several of these events planned for this year. Community has been and always will be pretty central to my experience of rhythm games, and it's intertwined with my feelings of DDR. I don't think there's much else to ramble about here, but I love a nice list, so here's a quick trip through some of my favorite DDR songs from the ages:
IF YOU WERE HERE (2nd) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYAMwKWpMPo
Midnite Blaze (5th Mix CS) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSbeyqSeLvc
DO YOU REMEMBER ME (6th Mix) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgSpTd1uOIw
DRIFTING AWAY (7th Mix) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHij1cvheb0
Can Be Real (DDR SuperNOVA) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Amcbsx1znQ
Come to Life (DDR A) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzmf938z8j0
Neutrino (DDR A) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unIhFGn6QMg
Right Time Right Way (DDR A20) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgGaPJRZUEI

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did you even get the song of cyclones smdh

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24. Mario Party 2 (N64, 2000)

Immediately upon its release in 1999, I was in love with the Mario Party series. The combination of board and video game, and its delicate balance of luck and skill, combined with the varied mini-game challenges, was an immediate winner (and a huge success). I've played every mainline game (1-10, Super) and the DS release, and I've enjoyed all of them in some capacity, but Mario Party 2 is still easily my all-time favorite. I figured it would be too difficult to try to figure out exactly how many of these games I really wanted to place in the Top 100, so instead I set aside a spot as ostensibly a series entry, and I'm putting MP2 in because it's undoubtedly the best.
Mario Party 2 sets right nearly every complaint about the original, and adds several new features that would become series staples. Obviously, control stick-rotating games got nixed entirely. Punishing mini-games like Bash N Cash and Crane Game are either removed or revised to have a fixed payout. The boards rely far less on big swings of punishment and even when they have potentially damaging mechanics (like Space Land's mega laser or Bowser Land's parade) there are many opportunities to swing the event in your favor and lots of time to plan ahead. Items and Item Mini-games make an appearance, and while they're important and relevant, there's a good balance - they're not as overwhelmingly baked into everything like the capsules/orbs from 5-7. Duel and battle mini-games also are added, giving opportunities for big swings directly from mini-games, rather than through Chance Time or the boards themselves. And the themed boards with character costumes and story sequences are lovely, charming, and add a bit of color to the board play itself.
The mini-games in 2 are great, too; it's the only MP game (not counting the trainwreck that is Top 100) that extensively brought back games from prior entries, and although its a bit of a mixed bag, they generally improved upon most of the original designs. And basically all the iconic games are here - Bumper Balls, Bombs Away, Hexagon Heat, Shy Guy Says, Face Lift, Slot Car Derby, and many others. There's something to be said about the charm of jumping into a Game of MP2, where everything is familiar - basically everyone I play with knows the games and the boards really well, so it gets super-sweaty and competitive fast.
There's not a lot to complain about with 2 - I think you could reasonably argue that sequels had better mini-games, more content, better balance, or more variety - but it does everything so effortlessly well, that even its hang-ups seem like such minor annoyances. Undoubtedly, there's a little nostalgia here; MP2 was the first MP game I bought, and I have only played 4 anywhere near the amount I did this one. But as I said, every part of the package is just very good - it's absolutely a significant amount greater than the sum of its parts because it does every little bit well. And I think there's no coincidence that fans of the series keep wanting the games to return to the roots of this game: its board designs, structure, and mini-game style; it's such a memorable classic that still holds up excellently.
Top 5 MP2 Mini-games: Hexagon Heat - Bumper Balloon Cars - Face Lift - Shell Shocked - Speed Hockey
Top 5 Mario Party (series) games: MP2 - MP6 - MP3 - MP9 - MP4

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25. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GameCube, 2004)

The first Paper Mario sequel, before Nintendo decided to tank the series by going out of their way to systematically remove everything that everyone liked about the games. This game, though, takes everything that people liked about the original and brings it back, and ups it to 11. The game length is more than doubled, there's a whole host of extra collectibles, a ton of extra sidequests and NPCs, and a beefy 100-floor dungeon challenge that you can totally ignore, but why would you?
This game has what I think is the absolute best RPG combat system I've ever played. It takes the core of Paper Mario 1's mechanics: turn-based battles where your attacks (and defending opponents' attacks) have a timing element to them, allowing you to do (or prevent) more damage via a good button press, or a spin of the control stick, or whatever little challenge the game has presented to you. In addition, TTYD adds an extra set of hidden timing inputs, called Stylish commands, that you can use to add some flair to your attacks (it earns extra star power for your special meter) and feels so good to pull off. There's also a "live audience" that throws items (yay!) or hammers (boo!) at you, and you have to react to avoid damage; and a roulette mechanic that can earn you big bonuses if you match 3 symbols in row. (Just don't get the Poison Mushrooms.)
Layered atop all of that is the game's badge system, which returns from Paper Mario 1 and is beefier as well. Badges offer unique attacks, or special powers, or simple power bonuses, that can be equipped for a fixed number of points. Like health and flower points (akin to magic power), you can get more badge points upon leveling up, and unlike Paper Mario 1, there's no maximum and it's almost always worth it to go crazy to do insane shenanigans with badges. You can get infinite amounts of many of the basic badge types, so with the right amount of BP and the proper setup, you can apply some insane strategies. (and they're very worth it for the aforementioned 100-floor dungeon slog.) It feels so customizable, so replayable, and yet like the first game, so simple to play and satisfying to move along. Battles flow really smoothly, and there's no lengthy tutorial sequence here - you're given action commands and can start doing crazy stuff pretty much right out of the gate.
Where I rate TTYD much less than its predecessor is the story and pace of the game. TTYD is far more ambitious, and in some cases, it pays off in spades. Chapter 3 is centered entirely around becoming a fighter in a colosseum-style series of battles, ranking up on a ladder to reach the top and attain the Championship belt; it's one of the standout portions of the game. Chapter 5, meanwhile, is a meandering wild narrative trainwreck (in a good way), starring a tragic widowed Bob-omb, two eloping Piantas from the game's Pianta Mafia, an obnoxious smug sea captain, and a talking pirate skull. There are also portions of the game where the length feels stretched - Chapter 2, 4, 6, and 7 all have notable parts (MSG mentioned some of these) where the game feels padded with unnecessary backtracking. There's also plenty of sections where puzzle solutions feel like a repeat from the first Paper Mario game. That's not specifically counting things that feel like direct references, just several areas where ideas seemed to run out and they just pulled something back from the first game again.
TTYD is such a strong package that despite its flaws I still tossed it into the Top 25 without much thought. It's a game I could pick up and run through for 20-30 hours easily at any time; its battle system is so addicting and satisfying, and also so variable, that it's just a blast to go through. I think there's not really any mystery with the way I've worded any of this that Paper Mario 1 is also gonna show up on the countdown later, and I can dig into more of why these two games are such a blast there, and what unique charms really bump that one ahead of this. But TTYD is still great and more than holds its own. And sadly, as I mentioned at the start, the series really never would come close to these heights again, despite the obvious strengths of these two beloved games.

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26. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (DS, 2005-2007)

Like most of Board 8, I got sucked into these games in the mid/late-aughts, taking in all the memes and reacting in real-time. I think my Trilogy character ranking is still preserved with everyone else's who made a list on the B8 Wiki, so you can laugh at my terrible takes for all eternity. Because of the nature of the "PW fandom" and all three games themselves encompassing a complete story, it didn't really feel right to separate any of the three games from each other and try to figure out where on the list was right for JFA or T&T, or whatever. Despite any individual preferences between the three, they just belong together here. Plus, the game's sold as the whole trilogy now for Switch and 3DS, so I'm not even cheating. Hooray!
The premise of Ace Attorney is simple and novel - you take on the role of a rookie defense lawyer, helping clients by gathering evidence during investigations and calling out lies and inconsistencies during trial. Each game has 4 or 5 cases, with their own unique defendants, witnesses, and prosecutors that mix things up over the course of the series. Gameplay-wise, it's pretty straightforward; investigations play out like classic point-and-click adventure games - you navigate dialogue trees with other characters, look for things in the background of scenes, and try to give the right items to the right people (or give the wrong ones repeatedly looking for funny dialogue lines). The courtroom stuff is a little more creative; you're generally cross-examining a witness, trying to prod them for holes in their testimony, and (usually) showing some piece of evidence that contradicts a specific line of dialogue. It's neat, it's punctuated wonderfully by the games' beautiful soundtracks, and it clearly worked well enough to get the series 6 games and inspire several spin-offs.
What makes Ace Attorney more than just a charming novelty is its story. I'll admit, I was not sold on the game at first - I liked the premise, and the first few cases were definitely fun and (mostly) silly, but I still thought the game was kind of popcorn-y nonsense more than anything. Then, case 4 happens. The stakes get raised dramatically, the drama is ramped up significantly, and maybe most importantly, the game takes itself far more seriously and proves it can match that with its writing and gameplay.
While there's certainly room for the memey characters and goofy dialogue in the series, it's the ability to craft a compelling and continuing narrative throughout the trilogy that makes the series unforgettable. Your core characters - Phoenix, the sometimes-fumbling rookie lawyer; Edgeworth, the smug prosecutor; Gumshoe, the bumbling detective; and Maya, your childish kid-sister-like partner - all have layers of character developed over the course of there series to become something far greater than those basic summaries. Many of the series' characters confined to one game, or even one case, really stand out too. It's a testament to the writers of these games that so many of these characters are both fairly straightforward in terms of knowing "who they are" within a few lines of dialogue, yet they're full of complexity and depth.
And I even love how each game has its own narrative feel. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (1) introduces both the main characters and confronts you with their pasts and backstories, culminating in the case that brings the history of Phoenix, Edgeworth, and Maya to a head. Justice For All (2) agonizes over the meaning of justice and being a lawyer, reckoning with the weight of "bad guys" whose motivations are much more muddled and absolutely wrecking you with the best case of the series. The unforgettable finale puts Phoenix into an impossible situation at the start, squeezes you in the middle with an impossible moral dilemma, and tops it off with a climax that is full of twists and characters pulling out their best moments. Trials & Tribulations (3) digs into the past with two of its trials, while finishing off the series with a gargantuan finale that brings back most of the core cast and satisfyingly wraps a bow on the series.
It's impossible for me to go back and listen to the game's soundtrack, or watch a video of a huge PW moment, without getting choked up and emotional. It's a game that feels very important to a certain point of my life, and is just full of lovely characters and stories that I'll always remember. It's a difficult challenge to rank something like this on the list (yeah, okay, this is sort of a redundant comment by this point) where the gameplay is significantly secondary to the story itself (though the two work in tandem here to manage the game's pace) and so I'm just ducking it out of the Top 25 as a good finale to this portion of the list. If for some reason you haven't played any of these games, you genuinely owe it to yourself to at least play through the first one, up to case 4, because it's just so beautiful and great and special.
Top 5 Cases: 2-4 - 1-4 - 3-5 - 1-5 - 3-4
Top 5 Characters: Edgeworth - Phoenix - Maya - Gumshoe - Von Karma

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28. Final Fantasy VI (SNES, 1994)

While I'm not a big Final Fantasy fan (or RPG fan in general), this is my favorite of the series. The battle system is still pretty standard, but moves along at a nice pace, and each of the game's many playable characters feels distinct and interesting. The story is great, too - it's compelling and not overwrought with needlessly convoluted crap like basically every JRPG post-FF7. And on that note the game's length is really good, too - once again, not unnecessarily padded like most modern JRPGs.
The big draw for me here is the awesome cast, a true ensemble where you could reasonably argue for like several "main characters" in a game where at least 5/6 of the characters have significant story arcs, and a few others have pretty solidly developed stories, too. I'm a sucker for the ensemble cast (It's why I loved Lost so much - well, before they blew the ending) and it's a big draw for me here. In a game where you can and will choose different selections of characters throughout, it's nice to see so many of them get big parts, rather than just being accessories to the main's plot. The game's branching-story arcs, when your party splits off into groups and you take control each of them for a section of the story, are the highlight of the narrative. It's really neat to see different groups interact and to have the space to give these individual plots airtime rather than reducing them to an afterthought. And FF6's big villain is maybe not incredibly deep, but he's very good and memorable nonetheless.
Honestly, after 2/3 of the game, I'd probably say this is my favorite JRPG game ever. Sadly, the final third is...a very weird and structurally jarring turn - the World of Ruin segment. Conceptually, it's very neat - you jump ahead in time and have to reunite your party starting with a single character. You're catching up plotwise to what everyone's been up to and dealing with the ramifications of the, uh, "significant event" that led to there being a place called the World of Ruin. In practice, the game just loses a ton of its cohesion and kind of feels like a mess. There's still neat stuff here, no doubt - the storylines are well told - but unfortunately it also comes at a point when you gain access to giving espers (magic spells, basically) to every character, and it makes the whole endgame rush unfocused and homogenous.
You may discount my take here, because I lost interest and never made it to the top of Kefka's tower. But by that point, I felt like I had already gotten through the meat of the plot and there was nothing left other than to just check off the box of "beat the game", after grinding some levels to get the right espers for all of my party. It's disappointing, because all the rest of the awesome stuff is still great, but losing steam (and focus) by the end means I'm putting it below the other SNES Squaresoft RPG that I think is pretty rad. Sorry, FF6!
Top 5 Characters: Cyan - Celes - Sabin - Shadow - Mog

27. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2, 2004)

Back on entry 51 (Fall Guys) I did a nice little ramble about violence in video games, and my general distaste for it. I figure there's no other way to properly dunk on myself than to include (and rate higher) a Grand Theft Auto game on the list. Of course, the violent stuff is never particularly compelling here - the novelty of stealing cars and running over people and battling cops and whatnot is as good as it is in any of the other GTA3-era games, but it's not what sets this one apart. The story and setting is really great; 2004 was just the right amount of time to look back at early-90s west coast rap nostalgically and translate that into a video game, and the game really hits all the right notes. After the relatively simple beginnings of dodging crooked cops and fighting rival gangs in Grove Street (not-Compton!) of Los Santos (not-L.A.!), you're given access to a huge swath of map space that is nothing but coastal roads, small rundown towns, and empty hills and forest. From there the story introduces a bunch of ridiculous characters and missions, many great, some awful (the flight school and RC plane missions are so brutal), but just full of variety and color.
I love all the different stuff that you can do in this game; it's chock-full of different mini-games and tons of customization options, from RPG-esque stat leveling to character customization via haircuts, clothes, and tattoos. But man, it's the huge map that wins me over here. Having a world map that includes not one, but three major cities to f*** around in, each with their own style and stories and mini-games and such, is bonkers for a PS2 game from 2004. It's still pretty great for a game now. And all the little spaces in-between - the podunk towns, the oceanside roads, the varied geographical features and hidden enclaves, it's all just so satisfying to wander around in. If the Wind Waker writeup taught you (or me, I suppose) anything, it's that I'll absolutely eat up anything that does the feeling of traveling justice, and this game nails it too, in a much more grounded way. (Turns out driving a vehicle around for 30 minutes in a robust video game engine is pretty great.)
And hey, somehow I wrote a couple of paragraphs about a GTA game without even talking about shooting someone. I deserve a medal.

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Recap:
HM01: Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS, 2017)
HM02: Alpine Racer (Arcade, 1995)
HM03: WarioWare: Twisted (GBA, 2004)
HM04: Halo: Combat Evolved (XBox, 2001)
HM05: SimTower (PC, 1994)
HM06: Kirby Air Ride (GameCube, 2003)
HM07: jubeat [series] (Arcade, 2008-present)
HM08: Meteos (DS, 2005)

100. WarioWare: Smooth Moves (Wii, 2007)
99. Unreal Tournament (PC, 1999)
98. Pikmin 2 (GameCube, 2004)
97. Crypt of the Necrodancer (PC, 2015)
96. Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (GBA, 2004)
95. Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1, 1998)
94. Time Crisis II (Arcade, 1998)
93. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA, 2003)
92. DJ Max Portable (PSP, 2006)
91. Zany Golf (PC, 1988)

90. Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch, 2019)
89. Contra 4 (DS, 2007)
88. Mega Man 5 (NES, 1992)
87. Super Castlevania IV (SNES, 1991)
86. The Oregon Trail (PC, 1993)
85. TimeSplitters 2 (Multiplatform, 2002)
84. Fat Princess (PS3, 2009)
83. Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS, 2007)
82. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (Multiplatform, 2000)
81. Pokmon Go (Mobile, 2016)

80. Final Fantasy IV (SNES, 1991)
79. The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (GameCube, 2004)
78. Super Mario Bros. (NES, 1985)
77. Mario Tennis (N64, 2000)
76. Chip's Challenge (PC, 1990)
75. Elite Beat Agents (DS, 2006)
74. Bust-A-Move (Arcade, 1994)
73. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS, 2006)
72. Crystalis (NES, 1990)
71. StepMania (PC, 2001)

70. Tetris & Dr. Mario (SNES, 1994)
69. Minesweeper (PC, 1992)
68. Mario Kart 64 (N64, 1997)
67. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii, 2010)
66. Pokmon Picross (3DS, 2015)
65. F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (GBA, 2001)
64. Metroid Fusion (GBA, 2002)
63. Pikmin 3 Deluxe (Switch, 2020)
62. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS, 2013)
61. FIFA 98: Road to World Cup (PC, 1997)

60. Resident Evil 4 (GameCube, 2005)
59. Celeste (Multiplatform, 2018)
58. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GameCube, 2003)
57. Pikmin (GameCube, 2001)
56. The Sims (PC, 2000)
55. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch, 2020)
54. Sound Voltex [series] (Arcade, 2012-present)
53. Tecmo Bowl (NES, 1989)
52. Q*Bert (Arcade, 1982)
51. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (PC, 2020)

50. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS, 2005)
49. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U, 2014)
48. Super Smash Bros. Melee (GameCube, 2001)
47. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch, 2018)
46. RollerCoaster Tycoon (PC, 1999)
45. Everybody's Golf (PS4, 2017)
44. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64, 1998)
43. Okami (PS2, 2006)
42. Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole (Genesis, 1993)
41. The Jackbox Party Pack [series] (Multiplatform, 2014-present)

40. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GameCube, 2004)
39. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii, 2007)
38. Mega Man 2 (NES, 1989)
37. Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Genesis, 1994)
36. WarioWare Gold (3DS, 2018)
35. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES, 1995)
34. Pokmon Platinum (DS, 2009)
33. Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (PS1, 1999)
32. Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (GameCube, 2003)
31. Pokmon Trading Card Game (GBC, 2000)
& Pokmon Card GB2 [JP] (GBC, 2001)

30. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GameCube, 2003)
29. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch, 2017)

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29. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch, 2017)

A few times on this list, I've commented that the mainline Mario platformers are one of my favorite video game series of all time. Well, it's time for that comment to come good: Odyssey is my fifth-place Mario platformer, meaning I've somehow managed to cram five of these suckers into the top 30. Not bad, Nintendo. Mario Odyssey is the grand return to the open-exploration style of 3D Mario adventure pioneered by 64 and Sunshine, and it's done in grand style. Instead of using a hub world to travel to various areas and selecting story missions, though, you're just sent along a linear progression of open-ended worlds, with some amount of main-story goals, but with a whole host of objectives and challenges to find and tackle at your leisure. This game's mcguffin of choice is "Power Moons" (in lieu of Power Stars or Shine Sprites), and provided you've collected the requisite amount in one kingdom, you can progress to the next one in line. There are a couple of branching paths and a couple kingdoms where you must complete the primary story objective, but outside of that you can basically do just about anything.
Of course, what's a Mario game without great movement? I don't think it's controversial to say the control in Odyssey is the best ever in a Mario game. Mario's companion, Cappy, can be thrown in the air to be bounced off of, allowing for tricky maneuvers, satisfying double-jumps, and on-the-fly aerial repositioning. In addition, the game's core mechanic lets you take control of various enemies, from Goombas to Cheep Cheeps to those goofy Coin bag guys from SM64. Some definitely work better than others, but the best and most inventive ones stand out as exceptional new ways of control within an already stellar-feeling game.
And I'd be remiss to forget about the game's incredible musical set-pieces, which are both uncharted territory for Mario yet feel absolutely at home in his universe. The game's de-facto theme song, Jump Up, Super Star!, plays alongside a simple platforming challenge of climbing red girders and dodging barrels themed around the original Donkey Kong, in the finale of what I'd say is the game's centerpiece kingdom, New Donk City (a.k.a. Metro Kingdom). It's beautiful, it's surprising, and it's mirrored by a similar vocal-themed portion at the game's ending.
So why am "only" placing this at 29, as the fifth-highest Mario, with all this quality and praise? I think some of the game's biggest strengths end up being its biggest weaknesses. The game is packed with Power Moons - there are 880 available to be collected if you want to "100%" the game, but only 124 are needed to complete the main story, and just 500 to unlock the final challenge level. Because of this, there's a lot of very "fillery" challenges, and almost an obligation by the game to complete a checklist for each area of the challenges that are required - each kingdom has to have two Koopa race moons, a purchasable shop moon, a hint art moon, etc. It makes the whole experience, after the first playthrough, feel a lot less memorable and more homogenous. The sheer density of its challenges sprinkled across the kingdoms makes each one feel a little less noteworthy and impactful. Look, it's undoubtedly a minor complaint - I've put over 100 hours into the game; I've collected all 880 moons multiple times and beaten it with just 124 multiple times. I've learned speed tricks and watched far too many hours of speedruns. But the four Marios I have ahead of this on my list all just have more memorable and standout level designs. The challenges they create feel more fully baked because the levels are structured around them, not just as a hub for however many things they could find room to fit. And for me, that's what I found I ended up preferring. And hey, despite this, I still ended up giving this game 29th, which is saying a lot!
Top 5 Kingdoms: Metro - Sand - Lost - Lake - Bowser's
Top 5 Captures: Pokio - Uproot - Cheep Cheep - Tropical Wiggler - Meat
Worst 1 Capture: Yoshi (boooo...)

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30. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GameCube, 2003)

I absolutely love to travel. Under normal circumstances, I'll take a decent-sized trip out to somewhere else in the world (okay, usually within the United States) at least five times in a year. I don't like to be confined to the same place too much; it stresses me out. (Thanks, covid.) Anyway, despite obviously wanting to do something wherever I'm going to, I have some of the best times on these trips just being in-between. I like having to exist not at a destination but just going, just being somewhere that isn't filled with requirements and restrictions and whatever. Sometimes I'm with friends having absurd conversations, sometimes I'm jamming to music, sometimes I'm just enjoying the scenery on whatever Ohioan road I've ended up on, but it's a feeling I can't quite capture in any way other than through this, and I dearly miss it right now.
Aaanyway, video games??? Right, there was a point to this. This feeling is Wind Waker in a nutshell - a game where a main complaint is all the time spent sailing, kind of doing absolutely nothing? I think it's the best part of the game. Sure, there's a lot to go over about the core gameplay stuff, so let's tackle that before sailing back to my main thesis here. Wind Waker has really good combat - its simple parrying mechanics make for solid maneuvers, and its dynamic enemies make rooms filled with lots of varied foes (and there are quite a few of these) a lot more interesting and enjoyable than, say, Ocarina of Time. The story is super charming and memorable; it undoubtedly follows along the same structural path as Link to the Past and Ocarina, but does so with its own unique and lovely characters and storylines, and culminates with one of the most satisfying endings in the series. The dungeons and bosses are one of the weaker parts here, though there are still some memorable bits - Dragon Roost Cavern is a "first dungeon", and the Forsaken Fortress is really neat in both of its iterations as both a stealth-focused challenge and later a more traditional Zelda dungeon. And the game's graphical style still holds up brilliantly almost 20 years later, pioneering cel-shaded visual styles for years to come.
But none of those things are why I put this game into my top 30. It's about the game's sense of exploration and wonder, and travel. It understands that a game experience can be more than just advancing to the next screen full of enemies; simply getting to the next unknown destination and waiting to see what it's going to have (regardless of how novel or thrilling said place actually is) will be a joy in and of itself. And it's baked in so well structurally into the game; mechanically, sailing feels pretty fluid (Changing the wind can be a little tedious playing the GameCube SD version, but even then you get a little novel control with tacking against the wind.) and there are lots of incentives to explore the ocean and just see what kinds of treasures or items you'll uncover. The triumphant main sailing theme is a brilliant piece, almost necessary to embolden your journey and give it a certain weight. When you're going to be sailing around a lot, you need its music to be impeccable. And thematically, Zelda games always bring about a sense of epic adventure, and the vastness of the game's scope is amplified by the nature of Link's small-village island life in the intro. I can't think of any Zelda game (Hey, I haven't played Breath of the Wild, so hold the counter-arguments there) or even any other video game that uses its central travel mechanic and gameworld in tandem to give a sense of scope as significant as Wind Waker pulled off for its adventure, and I just love that part to bits. Regardless of any of the (valid) complaints about WW's tedious triforce hunt, mediocre dungeons, or repetitive format, it's always going to have a place in my faves for that alone.

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31. Pokmon Trading Card Game (GBC, 2000)

When I initially cobbled together the picks for this list, I just picked out 110-ish games and started trimming the list and ended up just squeezing this one in the top 100. At that point, I was just sort of working my way from the bottom and picking games out that I liked the least of everything left, adding in some gimmicks along the way. This one kept surviving the cut, and after a discussion in the discord about this game's killer soundtrack (seriously, the card battle themes are so damn good) it kind of flooded back a whole bunch of feelings of how much I loved this game. So, here we are, it somehow dug its way up to my 31st favorite game of all time.
Pokmon TCG follows along with the mainline games' narrative, only with a Mad Libs-like replacement of some of the nouns in its story: You want to be the best [card duelist] of all time, so you challenge the 8 [club leaders] to earn their [medals] in order to face off against the four [grand masters] and beat your snotty blue-colored rival. It's obviously super-familiar territory, but I would say the game doesn't demand anything more than a flimsy structure to justify its core game loop of collecting and battling with cards. And there's a pretty solid variety included - 226 plus two near-impossible-to-get promos, encompassing all 151 Pokmon from the time. The difficulty is not particularly hard, but there's something satisfying about building a championship-level deck and absolutely abusing the NPCs for their neverending supply of booster packs. The implementation of the card game is really good as well - most of the information you need is in front of you on the main screen, and having played a heck of a lot, I've gotten pretty good at quickly using the game's shortcut commands to access whatever information I need from the there. As mentioned earlier, the music is great - and it's important, because you're going to hear it a lot. If it weren't exceptional, it would definitely grate quickly, but given that it still holds up for me despite the number of hours I've put into this, you know it's good. I'd say at the very least this battle theme (especially the absolutely bonkers breakdown at 1:43) holds up with the best of any of the main series Pokmon games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCOKTfkXykE&t=9s

What, there's a "Pokmon Card GB...2"??? Surprise!!
31 (redux). Pokmon Card GB2 [JP] (GBC, 2001)

Baked into my love of TCG for Game Boy, it's the Japanese-only sequel, simply Titled "Pokmon Card GB2". It's an almost-100% strictly superior sequel to the original game - there's nearly double the cards, bringing in the Team Rocket set, the Japanese "vending machine" sheet cards, and a bunch of new promos. There's a second world map, in addition to bringing over the one from Card GB1, that more than doubles the game size. There are collectible coins you can swap between (instead of just using the default Pikachu). There's a full Game Corner-style area with a bunch of unique challenges. It makes the most of being fully-GBC exclusive and adds more color to the card art. In the wake of Pokmon Crystal, you can choose between a boy or girl character. The 2nd island has a bunch of challengers who add special rules or deck construction requirements to their match. (This one's both good and bad sometimes.) When you beat the game, there's an extra set of challenge decks (pictured above) based on the major archetypes from actual competitive play. (And they're actually kinda difficult!)
If you've ever enjoyed the original even a little bit, you owe it to yourself to give the sequel a go; it's so much better than it has any right to be, and it's a shame it never made it stateside. I assume the proximity of its launch to the GBA, along with having only a couple Johto Pokmon cards (despite being after Gold/Silver's release), doomed it from ever getting localized. But boy, is it worth it. One of the most underrated Pokmon spinoffs, too - I always see heaps of love for the decidedly mediocre Misery Dungeon games and the charming but miniscule Snap, but this one stands up with the absolute best.

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33. Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (PS1, 1999)

Harvest Moon is such a tricky series to explain. Historically, it's all over the place - it was very unusual when it first landed stateside in the mid-90's, got the market overflown with a glut of games after its popularity boomed in the 2000s, and then retreated to near-nonexistence once Natsume killed it off/it got replaced by Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley. What made the best versions so compelling was their fusion of different game genres: the economic engine-building and optimization of a simulation game, combined with the personality and wit of a dating sim, mixed with the quaint pastoral charm and "live your best life" ethos of Animal Crossing. I didn't discover the series before Harvest Moon 64, but Back to Nature was "the best Harvest Moon", according to my PlayStation-owning friend (I only had a 64). Turns out, he was right (for my money, at least) and once I did end up getting a PS1 a year down the road I immediately picked up a copy of this classic. And, to be fair, for the developers it seems to be the case as well, as it's been remade in two separate instances, for GBA in the mid-aughts and recently under the Story of Seasons moniker for Switch.
Why is BTN the best? For one thing, it simply has much more content than its N64 counterpart (with which it shares most of the character sprites). You can do daily digging trips into the mine; there are a ton of more crops to get; the animal husbandry is more involved; the cookbook can actually create real recipes; the farm upgrades are way more substantial; and probably quite a few other things I've since forgotten. The townspeople have more significant daily schedules - they'll actually move out and about in the town in different hours, instead of just teleporting from one place to another. And I think they get the most out of the characters as well; they're a little more fleshed out here than in 64.
Ultimately, though, the core gameplay loop is just a dang good time. Days go pretty quick and you can easily get lost for a few hours just knocking out a ton of farming tasks and maximizing your profits. There's a ton of hidden secrets, some of which you might discover just by playing around, many which I only learned by looking up detailed guides on GameFAQs. And I think for all the charm of an Animal Crossing and the depth of a sim game, it's the personality of this game, and the fusion of both of those aspects, that wins me over the most. Harvest Moon: Back to Nature tells the story of your character over the course of its game, and how you ultimately ended up being successful and winning the choice spouse of your dreams (or not). It's got a narrative bent to it that is both heartfelt and satisfying. I ended up docking this one down a few spots because it has just been so long since I've gotten this game out, but I still do love the hell out of it. Maybe one day I'll get around to giving Stardew Valley a shot...

32. Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (GameCube, 2003)

As alluded to in my writeup for Everybody's Golf, there was one golf game ahead of it on the list. Here it is! Toadstool Tour might not be a particularly unusual choice for best golf or even sports game, especially from a Nintendo fan, but I still have to say how surprised I was by the extent to which I enjoyed it.
In 2011, I picked up this (and Kirby Air Ride) from an old-used-games store when I was looking for some affordable GameCube games, and I ended up playing it for, like, three months straight. I grinded through the single-player mode, unlocking all the courses, completing the Par-3 course challenge, doing all the ring shots (after looking up a few of the hardest ones), and getting the Star-power for every character. I busted out multiplayer with friends. Sometimes I just dipped into the game to do a quick tournament with a character I didn't use because plowing through a course in 20-30 minutes was such a blast.
While I can understand the golf purists preferring some of the "missing" characters and features from N64's Mario Golf, the speed and smoothness of play in Toadstool Tour, combined with the active options for ball spin, make this one just feel like such a step up in terms of play quality. And the courses are especially memorable - the first couple are fairly straightforward but you can throw down some ridiculously low numbers once you get the hang of 'em. The second pair feature particularly treacherous sand bunkers and water hazards. And the last two are themed around Peach's and Bowser's castles, respectively. They're filled with novel gimmicks, like pipes, Thwomps, and Boos, but in a way that doesn't seem exceptionally unfair - they're just different types of hazards you have to navigate in this universe, and I think that works pretty well.
There's some other fun/annoying stuff in the package (the multiplayer has a feature where you can obnoxiously "taunt" the player currently on-turn, throwing giant text boxes all over the screen before they start their shot) but it's really all about the gameplay here. I'm hoping if they bring a new Mario Golf to Switch they can capture this energy (and not end up spinning into more Mario-themed gimmick moves like Tennis Aces did), but regardless, this game will always stand as a testament to video game golf greatness.


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34. Pokmon Platinum (DS, 2009)

The first Pokmon mainline entry in the top 100! (And yes, not the last.) If I were to split the different generations into eras, I'd throw 3rd, 4th, and 5th together as the "prime" of the series. Starting with Ruby/Sapphire, natures, abilities, and the modern form of IVs and EVs were introduced; all three gens have improved graphics that really allow them to create comprehensive game worlds while retaining the charm of sprite-based battles; and all three have a ton of extra content and features that are (sadly) missing from the more recent games. But atop the heap from that era, for me, is Platinum, a game with lots of personal charm and a ton of stuff I just absolutely love.
Let's just dump a bunch of reasons why I love Platinum! I think Sinnoh is the most interesting and enjoyable region of the series. It's got very good "Metroidy" design from the outset - a lot of areas that you can see but can't get to, and directions you can't go for a while to get excited about. There are a bunch of optional caves and challenges you can dig into if you like or avoid entirely. And there's the huge mountain plonked in the middle, criscrossed a couple times as you progress; flanked on the north by a beautiful snowscape (and a bop of a music track); and finally climbed near the end of the storyline to face off against Dialga/Palkia/Giratina (in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum respectively). The underground is almost unnecessarily huge but is full of mazey tunnels and feels like an ambitious and memorable spin on the Secret Bases from Ruby/Sapphire. I love the 4th gen Pokdex; there's a ton of personal favorites there along with a lot of neat evolutions to older mons. And man, there are some of the absolute best Battle themes in the entire series here, led by the Team Galactic theme and Cynthia's battle.
Platinum itself also adds awesome content and fixes a lot of its predecessors' issues. There's the return of Battle Frontier from Emerald, a little more streamlined this time but still challenging and worth the investment if you're into the battling stuff. The regional Pokdex actually has all of the new evolutions obtainable within the main story and not bafflingly thrown into the postgame. The Distortion World is a weird and interesting "final boss challenge" (?) for lack of a better word, thrown at you between the final fight against Team Galactic and the challenge against Giratina. The pace-of-play issues from Diamond/Pearl are much improved here as well, though it's still a little slow, relative to the first two gens at least. There's a lot of other little improvements, too - extra postgame content like Gym Leader rematches and Tutor moves are welcome additions.
Ranking Pokmon games relies a lot on personal preference and the timeframe in which you played them, so it's kind of hard to feel like there's any significant amount of objectivity here. But I do think Platinum really upped the ante on what could be expected from a "third" game, and really worked to both improve its predecessors' experience while reinforcing its strengths. And hey, I have to do something to take down the abundance of Black/White love in this topic. :)
Top 5 4th Gen Pokmon: Bronzong - Carnivine - Drapion - Glaceon - Mismagius

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36. WarioWare Gold (3DS, 2018)

I've said it a few times already, but I love the WarioWare series. Each game carries over a unique control scheme, a boatload of new microgames, and a ton of quirkiness and offbeat humor. After the first few games, the series took some detours into a custom game maker (D.I.Y.) and a small Wii U Gamepad-themed minigame collection (Game & Wario), before returning to the classic formula with WarioWare Gold in 2018. Gold is a "greatest hits" compilation of sorts, with an even distribution of games between Standard, Touched, and Twisted controls. Cleverly, some games have been repurposed - a game from Twisted might be re-invented as a Touch-control scheme; a boss game from the original is reinvented as a short microgame; and a Game & Wario multiplayer game is reimagined as a Boss challenge here.
The game is also just a love letter to the entire series, chock full of fun references to all sorts of minor characters and critters from the entire series' run in both the games and the story cutscenes. All the main characters from the series get their own story sections, and there's a ton of extra content too: mini-games (like Pyoro) both new and revised from the whole series, and extra modes (like "Gamer" from Game & Wario) make an appearance. And there's a swath of neat endless challenge modes that are often playable in any of the three game styles or Ultra, which bounces between any of the three control schemes from game to game. The level of content is such a step up from prior series entries, with the same endlessly addictive gameplay.
The only real complaint is that the multiplayer option, while totally fine and enjoyable, is pretty bare-bones, especially relative to the whole compilation. But it's just such a satisfying game for a WarioWare lover and just a real treat for anyone who's ever enjoyed the series even a little bit. The only real shame here is that it came out so late in the 3DS run (and after the Switch dropped) that it didn't get nearly the attention and love it deserves.

35. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES, 1995)

Yoshi's Island may be Super Mario World's sequel by title (in the US, at least), but it really feels like it has more in common with Donkey Kong Country and other similar collection-heavy platformers than it does with the mainline Mario games. With beautiful graphics, unique gameplay, and a ton of hidden secrets and extra mini-games, Yoshi's Island really stands out relative to most of its platforming contemporaries, especially from the SNES (and prior) era. The levels feel distinct and often have some sort of unique gimmick or mechanic that helps them stand out from the core mechanics of eating enemies and tossing eggs. The structure is also super solid - you can plow through levels directly to reach the end, or spend time collecting every flower and red coin and unlocking the secret stages and mini-games.
It's also a game with an absolutely lovely soundtrack, which adds to the game's aesthetic perfectly. There's just something very relaxing and satisfying about playing through a Yoshi's Island stage - it's a game whose presentation invites you to leisurely explore and take in the new stuff the game is consistently throwing at you. That said, there are definitely some tricky levels and somewhat frustrating challenges (at least when going for 100%s and playing the secret levels) but especially for its time, it is rarely too punishing and there are plenty of in-game rewards to keep your lives up or give you extra power-ups.
Interestingly, I've never really gotten into its sequels (I played Yoshi's Island DS and the demo of Crafted World) - they were fine, but failed to live up to the charm and creativity of the original. And thus, it stands alone here as the top "Yoshi game" (whatever that really means) on this list.

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38. Mega Man 2 (NES, 1989)

The game that set all the standards for the Mega Man series: 8 robot masters, extra "movement items" (though they wouldn't be Rush until the next game), E-tanks, some sort of Dr. Wily fakeout at the end. I think you could pretty easily make the case that MM2 isn't the best of the NES Mega Mans, but to me it has the most charm. Its stages are distinct and satisfying, and its weapons probably the most memorable (and oft-repurposed; how many times have we seen some sort of time-stopper?) in the series as well. MM2 also has some really awkward stuff, too - Metal Blades are mega-OP, Wily Stage 4 is a trainwreck and can (essentially) softlock you out of your lives, and despite improvements from MM1 the game is still full of wonky glitches. Somehow, most of that still comes across as even more charming and gives the game a little more personality relative to, say, MM4.
The best quality of MM2, though is its legendary soundtrack. There's something about the experience of playing through a platformer game that has a varied and exceptional soundtrack - just a vibe about rolling through the game at a clip and rocking to all the tracks - that makes it truly stand out. There have been and are going to be a lot of these kind of games on the list; I like platformers and I like music games, so, no surprises there. But MM2 (and the Mega Man series as a whole) is near the top of any list in that regard. It's a great platformer, it's got good pacing, and the music takes it to another level. Wily Stage 1 is the tune that always gets the most love, but shout outs to Air Man (my fave track), Bubble Man, and Metal Man as well.

37. Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Genesis, 1994)

Speaking of games with killer soundtracks, here's my top Sonic game: the (perhaps cheating?) combined S3&K. Sonic 3 & Knuckles basically ups all of the previous games' features to 11; here's a laundry list of some of those best qualities: There's 12+ worlds worth of levels; both stages have a boss. There's two special stages: one found atop checkpoints to gain extra power-ups, another hidden in big rings across the various stages to get chaos emeralds; said bonus stage (Blue Spheres) is the best and most complete mini-game in the series. The game itself is a lot more cinematic: there are cute little Knuckles cutscenes in the stages, little transition scenes between the game's levels, and there's stuff like the snowboard bit at the beginning of Ice Cap Zone which basically flows like a cutscene. The levels are larger and feature more branching paths and hidden secrets. There's new power-ups (elemental shields!) and lots of new gadgets and gimmicks. I can see why someone would prefer either Sonic 1 or 2, but 3&K just feels like the complete package after two games trying to figure out how to get the most of the series - sort of like MM2 finding the series ground after the original (MM1's a much worse game though).
And of course, that soundtrack! Ice Cap Zone might be my favorite Sonic level solely due to its music. But Hydrocity is right up there, for basically the same reason. And Flying Battery, Launch Base, Lava Reef, Sky Sanctuary...even the Sonic 3 multiplayer stage music is absolutely killer. Sonic has always had good soundtracks, no doubt, but for a game that is all about going fast above all else, having the whole experience be a total vibe feels like exactly what Sonic is and should be. (I'd say it's a big part of why City Escape is remembered so fondly in SA2!)
S3&K goes bigger than the series even came close to before (I guess that's why it's in two actually separate cartridges) and sticks the landing gloriously. Maybe it's why we didn't get a good 2D Sonic for another two decades or so; they just couldn't top the series' perfection.

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nick's just mad he can't grind for 10 hours to get past the hard parts of metroid prime games

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40. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GameCube, 2004)

Metroid is my favorite video game series. Here's a brief summary of the rest of my top five and their biggest strengths:
WarioWare - most creative
BEMANI rhythm games - most addictive
Mario platformers - most influential
F-Zero - most impressive
Metroid's best strengths are a little harder to pin down; I undoubtedly love "Metroidvania" style games but it's not the games' formula I find most appealing, it's their immersion. Metroid games (at their best) hit a great balance between the sci-fi/space themes and their sense of isolation - it's Samus against the world. I'd say most of the folks on this board probably got into the 2D games first, but I started with Metroid Prime and worked backwards. And it's the Prime series that still stands out as my favorite subset of the games, for reasons I'll go into over the course of their three entries. (Yep, all three made my top 40.)
Anyway, Prime 2 stands out as the biggest outlier in the trilogy, breaking away from a lot of the series' conventions in order to distinguish itself from the original. The game takes place on the planet Aether, split into two planes of existence due to some rift in space or whatever. Essentially this creates a Link to the Past-style Dark world version of the entire game world (helpfully named "Dark Aether") where Samus takes damage constantly, unless protected by the light of a safe zone. This also points out another big difference in Metroid Prime 2 - the game is hard and unforgiving. Many of the game's bosses are in Dark Aether, and demand some management of health and the safe zones (or in the case of the above-pictured Boost Guardian, there are literally no safe zones). There's also more complexity here, too - your individual beams have ammunition along with the usual missiles and power bombs - and in each of the main areas you've got multiple keys to track down and collect before gaining access to that area's boss.
On that note, Prime 2 is a much more linear game than the first, largely keeping you confined to each of its sub-areas in one period rather than demanding more complicated backtracking. There's an obnoxious key-gathering final quest that, unlike Prime 1, can't be completed in any way before the very end of the game. The difficulty can border on frustrating, and the ammo management isn't terrible, but also feels somewhat unnecessary. In a lot of ways, I like that they tried to experiment with breaking from convention with Prime 2, but because of that I also think it's the series' weakest entry. It has great highs, though: Sanctuary Fortress is one of the best video game areas ever designed; the Prime series' debut of the Screw Attack is possibly the coolest power-up in all of Metroid; and the entire game ending sequence is absolutely fantastic. Prime 2 isn't perfect, but it's still a masterpiece.

39. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii, 2007)

And hey, here's Metroid Prime 3. I had a tough time separating Prime 2 and 3 - they both don't quite live up to the original, but both have lots of unique strengths, and are fully satisfying games on their own. I actually didn't end up playing Metroid Prime 3 until this past year (I largely missed out on the Wii and Wii U eras of Nintendo) and despite expecting to be disappointed or underwhelmed, I absolutely loved it. I was impressed with how well the game holds up visually (all three of the trilogy do) - the team at Retro Studios consistently blows me away with their ability to craft both exceptionally compelling Sci-fi worlds that both feel at home in the Metroid universe and also feel good mechanically. I found myself just enjoying the process of checking out every new room, scanning around for places secrets might be buried and making notes of what items I'll need to come back with later - the kind of thing that is the hallmark for Metroidvania games in general, but rarely done as well or as immersively as in the Prime series.
MP3's biggest weaknesses are largely up front: the game starts with an overwrought sequence of Samus checking in with a Space Federation commander at the Valhalla spaceship, and there are lots of motion-control tutorials and weird dialogue sequences. Even the game's first "main" area in Norion is mostly an on-rails experience shuttling you through the core story beats. But once the plot is laid out to you and the game opens up it's a nonstop flood of Metroidy goodness - there's secrets to find, in-depth lore if you're interested in it, and lots of fun visual and gameplay bits to keep you compelled the whole way. Structurally, it's a lot like Prime 2 - you've got three main areas of the game, there's some backtracking involved (but not much), and you have a final key-collecting quest baked in at the end. That final quest is much cleverer this time around though; it's built into the floating wreckage of the Valhalla ship that you started the game on, and can be tackled in chunks (with several secrets hidden) from the middle of the game. The motion-controlled shooting also feels great and opens up the game for more complex aiming, though the game is definitely the easiest of the Prime trilogy. Overall it's a really satisfying experience, and made me really excited for what Prime 4 could be, whenever it comes around.

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rhap ranked edge of extinction as #36 and while i think its a not-good season, i actually think the ending is pretty rad and satisfying, and everyone's too low on it for that (bad) reason

the main problem is that the edit sucks and kama are the most important people in basically everything that happens post-merge and we don't ever learn about them in lieu of more of rick devens. i hope rob and co. do a decent job of getting to this point but i'm not holding my breath there

still seems weird to me that this season is placed below ghost island or caramoan

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