Lurker > Naye745

it was really sold with the edit of the episode where shan was given a really grand exit
but she was definitely the lynchpin of a ton of different relationships here, and it's gonna be a big deal where all the pieces fall next week

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i really do think it has to be ricard or deshawn though. xander's edit since the tiffany boot has been "gonna scrap close to the end but fall short" and erika was just invisible far too long to really be a threat. i'd almost say liana has a shot if she can somehow sneak through everyone else but i think i'm reaching there

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shan was the star of the season and i'm sad to see her go - weirdly feels kind of like a rupert-in-pearl islands exit where i'm left wondering where the season goes from here
and possibly it's akin to sandra taking the win down the homestretch with ricard (admittedly, this is what i'm rooting for)

their dynamic was a blast and that was a great episode - for all the toys and trinkets this season has tried to dole out, they haven't played a huge part in much of anything so far, which is for the show's benefit i think

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my inclination is that the story is "everyone recognizes that going with shan is against their best interests, but they do it anyway"
and week by week we are proven how badly this is going for everyone else

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i have a feeling that the storyline this is all building up to is deshawn having made a mistake here by not taking out liana - and that shan is gonna get him first because he went against his instincts to play it safe. evvie was clearly consistently willing to work with him and would have been much more on his side versus liana with shan but he wasn't willing to flip (or couldn't get danny behind it)

sometimes it's stretching to try to solve the edit but if shan wins this all seems very very reasonable

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might come across as gross but i'm so over liana and wish she had gone for a lot of reasons tonight

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i think this season has made a lot of mistakes (and dear god too many advantages) but has still been very good in spite of itself. obviously a lot of that is that the cast is very very good and has delivered pretty much nonstop

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good stuff - i feel like there's quite a bit of variety and fun stuff here despite mega man being a series with a reputation of a certain style of music (hi mm2 wily 1)

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dang i was hoping this banger would make it to #1

honestly might be my all time favorite mega man track, how is it so good

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i'm just happy one of my favorite 'underloved' mm tracks made it this far

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hell yeah, claw the gap back toward momo

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mega man soccer makes the top 10!

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quick man is my least favorite of the mm2 themes. that doesn't make it bad at all, but i'm surprised to see it make it this high over stuff like needle man and charge man

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that hook in charge man's intro really is just splendid. plays really well with the level itself too

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to be honest mega man 4 has a weird samey quality to the sound design to me and it's not among my favorites. pretty much everything there is 'good' but there's nothing exceptional. so its elimination well before, say, 2-3-5 seems very reasonable.

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my feeling the entire day has been: god this rules so damn much

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galaxy man and flash man seem about right (concrete man is a better theme than both though, imo)

not nearly as big a fan of quick man, so i'm interested to see where that lands in the overall ranking

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heat man's loop is just too short for me to put that highly. it's a good loop but i think it needs another section - for me it's the weakest robot master track in mm2 (though obviously that's stiff competition)

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those are some rockin' drums in burst man's theme

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metal man is the only one i think deserves to be higher up. snake man and wily 1 are good but mm3 is overrated anyway lol :)

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hot take: i love the time capsule that is the mmac title theme because it's absolutely the kind of generic dance remix that was popular in 2004. it's not a great song, but i think you're selling short how catchy and satisfying that was back on its release

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tornado man and we're the robots are both good but don't seem out of place around 50ish

i'm with nee - losing bubble man this early is a crime lol

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mm9 wily 1 is a fine enough theme, but a great stage. sometimes i feel like that earns these tunes some extra brownie points, whether that's right or not
and plant man mm6 seems like it could absolutely be a late-stage wily theme, which is interesting - mm6 music is better than i remember - maybe i'm once again conflating the game (fine, forgettable) with the music there

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i'm still following this one, but wanted to pop up and say i really love mm4 wily 2 and wind man mm6!
i think mm4 wily 2 is used in stages where you basically do nothing other than go to some boss fights, so it loses some charm for not being particularly relevant. great tune though

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excited for wigs to finally reveal his obvious #1 game, majora's mask

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good pick!

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6. Super Metroid (SNES, 1994)
The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace...

Super Metroid is the grand-daddy of its genre - the item-collecting, map-traversing extravaganza that singlehandedly served as the launch point for hundreds of games inspired by its design, structure, and ethos over the following 25-30 years. While the game obviously owes itself to the original Metroid, in both theme and concept, Super Metroid blows away the original in both the scope of its world-building and narrative. It's got significantly more flexibility in movement, items, and abilities, but it also expands on planet Zebes itself. And its abilitiy to combine all of its individual elements so perfectly and expertly is arguably why it managed to so thoroughly captivate fans both then and today.
Super Metroid has one of my favorite game origin stories - after playing through a handful of the then-recent Metroids in my Senior year of high school, I knew I had to get my hand on Super Metroid and give it a go, despite not owning an SNES. It seems quaint now, but getting online and going through ebay to purchase games seemed so daunting back then, and I was excited as hell after getting a reasonably priced secondhand SNES and Super Metroid in separate purchases. But when the cartridge arrived, I was still too impatient to wait for the system to make it, so I bugged one of my friends to let me borrow his console. And man, to this day, I don't know if I have had a single gaming experience where the expectation and anticipation was so high but absolutely delivered in every way. I plowed through the main storyline in a couple days, spent more days and many hours scouring the map to try and hit 100%. After exhausting every avenue I was willing to reach and getting to a close 97%, I looked up the last few power-ups online, and then immediately shifted into playing through the game again with 100%, to master the game and to get better and better speed times. I think all of the Metroid games lend themselves to this sort of replayability through their game length, difficulty, and open-endedness. But Super Metroid seems to have this aura about it that makes it reign supreme - there's a reason why it still holds the de facto prime time spot by default in just about every AGDQ marathon. Even many casual players will absolutely be compelled to try to beat the game, in some way, pretty quickly - perhaps to see the ending where Samus removes her suit, or maybe just to challenge themselves; it's a game that lends itself to this rinse-and-repeat play approach.
While there are many games that predate Super Metroid (and the Metroid series) with non-linear progression and open exploration, none of them manage to nail the balance of difficulty, atmosphere, and gameplay as perfectly as Super Metroid, which is one reason why it's such a distinct influence to so many later games. While SM carries over many of the items and even areas from Metroid 1, Samus' control and movement is significantly upgraded; she can shoot diagonally and vertically, jumping and running are faster and more fluid, and the powerups themselves serve all kinds of modified, enhanced, or entirely new purposes. Additionally, Super Metroid employs the player with a whole smorgasbord of hidden abilities - moves like wall jumps and shinesparks are taught only by some cute alien critters in secret rooms - and others still like bomb spreading, charge combos, and the crystal flash are entirely buried by the opening demo roll and even then require some arcane button combinations to pull off. On one hand, I could get some criticism for the game not just telling you what you can do, but there's something brilliant buried here - a game that is absolutely completable with none of these "extra moves", but that provide depth and complexity for people interested in learning it. It's a much more complex version of Cappy in Mario Odyssey; there's the tantalizing idea of executing more impressive and tricky moves, but it's completely unrequired to just play and beat the game.
Super Metroid's other big boost is in the story and atmosphere - while Metroid 1 and 2 had a large maze of relatively indistinct rooms and areas, Super Metroid makes each area and many individual rooms feel unique. There's still the occasional indistinct bombable wall housing a secret, but these are not explicitly required to progress the game, and the game itself actually provides you a tool (the X-Ray Scope) to find these off-the-beaten-path powerups. And the soundtrack is such a masterpiece, from its epic intro and ending themes, to its quiet ambient tracks, to the absolute bangers (such as Pink Brinstar and Lower Norfair - both iconic enough to get remade in the Metroid Prime series). Really, from top to bottom, every piece of Super Metroid feels artisanally crafted to fit a purpose - story beats are explicitly mentioned at the outset, but only drip-fed through contextual clues for the entirety of the gameplay. The varied worlds - underwater Maridia, vegetative Brinstar, fiery Norfair, etc. - are filled with distinct, colorful gameplay elements and enemies. And the way that all these graphical ideas seamlessly blend with the actual gameplay itself - loads of critters and objects and terrain that interacts with your growing arsenal in a bevy of ways - is such a triumph of the vision of Super Metroid; it knows exactly what it wants to achieve and manages to pull it off.
When reading up on some articles while writing this, I found a retrospective written in 2014 about SM's intro sequence and its achievement in game design, and in the comments section delved into a discussion about how "ahead of its time" Super Metroid was, and of course remarking of its inspiration to the Castlevania series, and other games like Shadow Complex. What feels so wild to me is that, even with that vantage point two decades after the game's original release, we had still yet to see the release of games like Ori and the Blind Forest, Axiom Verge, or Hollow Knight. Super Metroid was so grand and special to achieve outstanding praise for its forward-thinking concept, and we hadn't even seen some of its finest successors yet.
I'm sticking this classic just outside of the Top 5 to delineate what I think might be the "best game ever made" from my absolute personal favorites. Obviously the lines intertwine quite a bit there; there's no hiding from my own taste. But I do hold up Super Metroid as such an achievement in gaming, that blows me away just how effortlessly great it is, that I wanted to appropriately write out a tribute to its success, and "cap off" this section of the list.
Just, uh, pretend that I didn't stop for 2 weeks to get here.

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good game

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and its definitely a series worth playing if you havent, especially if you have Dual Destinies already installed on your 3DS and havent got around to playing it yet.

hmm i wonder who this could be referring to

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i still think there's some good stuff in the new seasons; imo the stretch from like 19-26 is a much worse overall stretch than say, 33-present, despite the faults of modern survivor

if you're interested in watching more survivor i support the idea of just picking a season and if it bores you after a few episodes just move on to a different one

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7. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, 2007)
Our story begins a very, very long time ago with a young girl.

SMG is probably the perfect demonstration of the ways in which the mainline Mario series continually manages to reinvent itself. After the relative disappointment of Mario Sunshine, Galaxy shifts its focus onto more "traditional" linear levels rather than vast worlds to explore and search for secrets. Of course, there's still some hidden power ups and stars at points, but the game is much less about the movement capabilities of Mario and moreso about new abilities and wildly creative levels. And here I'm still burying the lede just a little bit - the game's levels are composed of loosely connected planetoids with their own gravitational pull. This gimmick has so much creative potential, at times it feels like Galaxy just scratches the surface of what sorts of challenges and ideas are possible. And gameplay-wise, it's smooth as hell; the camera shifts between following behind the player or in a fixed spot as the situation demands. The controls are relatively simplified, too - you can get an extra jump to adjust any misfires with a wiimote flick, but there's very little additional complexity versus say, Sunshine or Odyssey.
But the #1 thing that sells me about SMG1 is its theme; y'know, the whole space thing that's sold by its very title. There's a lot of stuff done really well by centering Mario around a space theme: it introduces Mario to characters and environments not really touched upon by the series before, it allowed for the creation of the traveling-between-planetoids and gravitational madness that comprises the bulk of the gameplay, and it gives the game a distinct aesthetic, as evidenced by its visual presentation and music. And wow, the soundtrack is still absolutely stunning. There's the breathtaking triumphal tracks like Gusty Garden and Buoy Base, Good Egg and Melty Molten; and there's serene and beautiful tunes like Space Junk, Gateway, and the Comet Observatory; and everything is fully orchestrated, capturing the grandeur and impressiveness of the games themselves. It's a testament to how fully baked the concepts of SMG are that all of the individual pieces really do feel fully realized - the music heightens the tension of the individual stages while bringing out the themes of the game's setting and story.
I also feel a little compelled to address Galaxy vs. Galaxy 2, since nearly everyone who has placed 'em thus far has essentially paired the two or found it impossible to interchange the two. I do think the games very much are complementary to one another - as I said earlier, Galaxy had so many ideas to explore that 2 felt almost essential. I think gameplay-wise, they're pretty close; I like the ways SMG2 expands on some of the more novel concepts briefly demonstrated in Galaxy 1: ball rolling, bubble blowing, motion-controlled races. I also think some of the 2D-fixed levels really cleverly expand on things like Bee Mario movement and gravity swapping. And although I take issue with some of the execution, the extra 120 Green stars are a much better post-120 Star bonus than SMG1's "uh...play everything again, but with Luigi I guess?" That said, I still rather prefer the base structure of SMG1's levels - I like their fleshing the worlds out with more individual stars, and giving each one two comet stars, as it helps delineate the "main" areas and flesh them out as full-on worlds. There's also just the tendency of the sequel to just sort of copycat some of the original at times (and of course, some of this is intentional): there's replicated versions of a lot of SMG1's big levels, like Gusty Garden, Freezeflame, and Good Egg Galaxy. And I find SMG2's hub area oddly frustrating - there's what amounts to basically a giant level select screen, which I think is generally good, but you're constantly broken out of it to interact with fairly unnecessary elements on the "Faceship". It's a frustration that they didn't just fully commit to a full-on level select instead of trying to preserve some of the Observatory's hub-area structure with a star bit bank and a handful of random unnecessary creatures to speak with.

All of this is well and good, and enough to place Galaxy firmly near Odyssey or 64 on my list with the best 3D Mario games. So I'll apologize in advance for delving into some deeply personal stuff to cap off why this game means a lot to me specifically, and ended up pushing its way into my Top 10.
I've struggled with depression for most of my adult life - it's something I've worked on a lot and found a lot of ways with dealing with, but something that never really goes away and something I accept will be with me in some capacity for the rest of my life. For that and all sorts of other reasons, I gravitate toward games where atmosphere and ambiance are heavily emphasized. And on that note, I particularly love space as a theme (see: all the Metroid games on the list); there's something unique about its sense of isolation and tranquility that feels like it replicates some understanding of what it's like to deal with a thing as weighty as depression; a sense of loneliness and emptiness that is also beautiful and captivating. And Galaxy, for a lighthearted Mario game, bakes in these themes constantly and effortlessly. I know there's some amount of personal bias here, but there are too many cues here for me to be completely projecting. The game's soundtrack, as mentioned beforehand, shifts tone often between sweeping grandeur and quiet simplicity - and some of the most notable points, such as the introduction tutorial before the first "actual" level, are punctuated with these more subdued tunes. There's also an entirely optional section of the game - Rosalina's Library - which is a beautifully illustrated children's storybook ostensibly about Rosalina's origin story, set to a quiet somber score, that is simultaneously both lovely and tragic. The fact that the designers included such a feature in the game, where Galaxy 2 is constantly pushing you into plowing through more new stages, shows the tonal shift between the two games. Galaxy 1 is much more interested in an all-encompassing experience - letting the player bask in the game's setting and world as much as necessary while moving through its various challenges. I think there's something to the fact that my favorite music piece in the game plays during a one-off level with only two stars in it, and it always feels like one of the best parts in the game, despite being little more than a footnote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z29bt-wjS88
As I didn't own a Wii, I missed out on this game for a decade before getting the chance to give it a go in early 2017, and I would argue (among other things) it's why I've been brought back into gaming after being mostly out of it for quite a few years. It blew me away by its ability to overwhelm me with emotion - whether through its soundtrack, gameplay, atmosphere, or (usually) some magical combination of the three. It was a game where even despite being so much more linear and limited in "explorability" relative to its 3D predecessors, made me want to scour every corner of its worlds for secrets, just to bask in the glow of its perpetually imaginative worlds and music. I don't think I can ever totally replicate the feeling of playing this for the first time, but it still always stirs up a little bit of that sense of wonder and joy inside me on any replay. And that's something special, and very close to my heart, that only a few things can or will ever manage to muster.

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8. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES, 1992)
May the way of the Hero lead to the Triforce.

In the Link's Awakening writeup, I rambled a bit about how my favorite Zelda game can swing from time to time based on what kind of game I'm looking for at a given point. Wind Waker has my favorite atmosphere, Link's Awakening has my favorite story, and both A Link Between Worlds and Ocarina of Time are really strong. But A Link to the Past is the one that I can break out, at any point, and have a blast. It moves along at a great pace, it's got a great selection of items and variety of enemies, and a decent level of difficulty that isn't overwhelming or exhausting. It basically set the standards for every Zelda game to come after it until Breath of the Wild; for Zelda, Link to the Past is the series' Super Metroid - it builds off the concept of its predecessors but brings it to a modern design philosophy that not only shaped the rest of its series but its overall genre, for decades to come.
Link to the Past establishes the structure that would come to be associated with Zelda, breaking from the more aggressively non-linear and open-ended "where the f*** do I go?" philosophy of Zeldas 1 and 2 for the NES. The very opening of the game is basically a tutorial sequence introducing you to the gameplay and dungeon structure while generating atmosphere by playing out the opening beats of the story in real time, set to the backdrop of a dark and stormy night. It showcases its flashy 16-bit graphics while redefining what exactly a Zelda game is. And like I've said, it seems so rote nowadays because this is the Zelda that made the standard - it hits all of those notes perfectly.
And the game is just stuffed full of...stuff. I don't think it's a flaw of Zelda 1 or anything, but I always get the feeling that the overarching sense of mystery and uncertainty and lack of direction was to pad the fact that it's not a particularly huge game with tons of variety - there's lots of screens and 9 dungeons, but they're fairly samey most of the time - and is meant to pad the game's length with its cryptic nature. ALttP is just crammed full of stuff - there's 11 full dungeons (and 1/2 more if you're counting Hyrule Castle) each with their own unique themes, structure, and bosses. You have an overworld full of varied areas and caves with secrets and treasures - and a second one, as A Link to the Past's Dark World was a clever way to add game length and variety to the experience, while also hiding its own set of secrets within the parallel universes. And it's a testament to how good the concept was that its been borrowed by other game series (Hi, Symphony of the Night inverted castle and Metroid Prime 2 Dark Aether) to solid effect as well. There's also a great set of items here (one of the absolute best in the series), both classic (bow, boomerang, hookshot, hammer) and original (Ice and Fire rods, Cane of Somaria, Quake/Ether/Bombos medallions, and many others) that have a ton of useability - they don't feel like they exist solely to solve a couple of puzzles, but can be employed against all manner of enemies and scenarios.
I want to make note of the recently-popular Link to the Past Randomizer, a custom mod of the game that shuffles around all the game's items (or items or entrances or whatever else, if you're brave enough), using logic to ensure it can be completed. It's both a huge portion of my own enjoyment of the game (I'm not good or fast, but I've done at least 10+ seeds in the 4 years since I've discovered it) and a testament to the quality of the original. As I said before, the items are top-notch, and getting them at different times in the game lets you discover creative and novel ways to use them. And the game's structure feels enhanced, not weakened, by the possible differences in order of dungeons and secrets when you're getting everything in a different order.
A Link to the Past is just one of those games that nails everything - the story and atmosphere are straightforward but handled expertly; the amount of options and variety in the game is outstanding for a game of its time, and still holds up excellently today; the gameplay is sharp and the control is fluid and natural. I remember discussing "greatest games of all time" with a friend of mine (who happens to be a World Record Cuphead speedrunner) a few years back, trying to come up with a relatively objective answer to the age old question, and when he quickly threw out A Link to the Past, I found it hard to argue. It broke ground, it does everything well, and it plays so smoothly and easily. While the rest of my list are games I have a more personal connection to, and I tend to favor more intimate experiences when doing this ranking, I still couldn't put ALttP any lower than this, and that, for me, feels like the truest testament to just how damn great it is.

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oh yeah for sure, there are tons of awful stages in ultimate

mostly just that pokefloats gets weirdly canonized as something magical when nobody i ever played melee with was ever particularly interested in it

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you know what stage was always pretty bad? pokefloats

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9. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega MicroGame$! (GBA, 2003)
There are all types of games in this Wario collection, and they're the best in the world!

WarioWare was definitely one of those games that I (and possibly the public at large) didn't quite know what to make of when it was released right in the middle of the GC/GBA era. Off the heels of compilation games like Game & Watch Gallery and mini-game extravaganzas in the Mario Party series, WarioWare boasted "microgames" and a really bizarre aesthetic that combined...Nintendo nostalgia and gross humor? It seemed like a game that didn't really know what it wanted to be. Funnily enough, though, I think WarioWare always had that part nailed, and it was the public that just hadn't seen anything quite like it before. Five (or more, depending on what you're counting) main games later, and WarioWare still is absolutely the same as it's ever been - innovative and energetic and absurd and brilliant, and there's nothing like it at all - and despite my love for the series in its entirety, the original is the one I'm always coming back to, year after year, to best my high scores just one more time.
The game's internal premise is that Wario, watching TV on the couch, catches a news report of a hot video game selling mad numbers, and schemes up his own game as a means of making big bucks. Of course, he's too lazy to do any of the work himself, so he offloads it onto his "friends", the motley crew of characters that comprise most of the game's stages. (Wario heads the introductory and final levels.) Externally, the game is about clearing series of "microgames", three-second challenges that give a quick command (Jump! Run! Dodge!) and the user has to complete a simple task, which will demand no more than the D-Pad and/or the A button. In the story levels, you've got about 15 or 25 per level, culminating in a slightly more complex boss mini-game. Clear all 11 story stages, and you beat the game, hooray! Of course, that's not really where it ends, because WarioWare is, for the most part, an oldschool arcade "high score" game in disguise. After clearing any stage, you can replay it, but it will last infinitely (well, scores do cap out at 999), and the goal is just to keep going as it gets faster and more difficult. There are also a handful of extra unlockable challenge stages, and a few endless versions of some of the microgames. There's even several actual arcade-style games, such as remade versions of Sheriff and the Mario Paint Fly Swatter mini-game, along with original games like Pyoro and a full playable version of NES Dr. Mario (retitled Dr. Wario, of course) that add a lot of depth and replayability.
But it's the main stages that are the real winner - the merging of the aforementioned high score-game sensibility with the unique (and constantly randomized) microgames builds a challenge equal parts execution and reaction time. And as a player gets more intimately familiar with every detail of the microgames, and is able to progress farther and farther into a stage, their ability to remain focused and anticipate is as keenly tested as it was at the beginning. The concept here isn't that any of the individual games are very deep or even particularly interesting, but they encompass such a broad range of challenges that the possibility of the next moment is always going to keep you on your toes, physically and mentally.
And I think it's lovely that a game that can absolutely get stressful or overwhelming, in theory, doesn't take itself seriously in any capacity; the game's lead is Wario, for goodness' sake. All of the story missions are varying degrees of absurd and silly - Mona's stage has a monkey throwing banana peels using a VR headset to keep chasing cop cars at bay so she can speed off to work on time. And while I adore the character designs (even if some of the in-game art is downright ugly, which is of course fitting anyway somehow) I have even greater reverence for the inside-jokes that span both the game itself and the entire series, ranging from an abundance of stages about picking noses to a doofy little sit-up guy who appears when you successfully saw a log in half.
WarioWare is one of those games that I don't expect everyone to really love, and it probably seems a little out of place in an all-time top 10, but I still have yet to play a game that does anything quite like it. While it has the same vague structure as a classic arcade game, what I love about it is that it doesn't feel like you lose at the end of a stage when it's simply gotten too fast to do anymore (this excludes the "play a single game over and over until you fail four times" mode, which is by far my least favorite part of any of the WarioWare games). Your game overs feel fair, but also tantalizing in a "I know I can absolutely do better" kind of way. And the original game just seems to have the perfect balance in its stages (okay, Orbulon's is too easy and I have gotten 999 on it, but the rest of the game...) that makes me return to this one more than the more novel Touched, Twisted, or Smooth Moves, or even the outstanding compilation of Gold. I've put in hundreds (possibly even a thousand) hours into the original, and hey, I have some pretty good scores that at least rate well enough with some of the leaderboards I've found online. WarioWare's portability and the ability to jump in and out of games quickly makes it something perfectly suited to my gaming tastes, and undoubtedly, there's gonna be a time when I get lost into it all over again.

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10. Pokmon Gold/Silver/Crystal (GBC, 2000)
Strong Pokmon. Weak Pokmon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled trainers should try to win with their favorites.

I don't know if there's any game with a weight of expectations upon it greater than that on the first Pokmon sequels. Gold and Silver had the burden of carrying the franchise forward, of proving that it was more than a passing fad, and of establishing Pokmon as a gargantuan franchise for Nintendo, along with Mario and Zelda, for the rest of time. And holy heck, did they deliver. I'm not sure if there's any game in the series that has fully realized its potential as much as Gold and Silver, which was one of the few games to really tackle just about any little thing that the fans were clamoring for and go for it completely.
Gold and Silver bumps up the number of monsters, adds new moves and types, and gives players a whole new region to explore and discover. But it also builds upon a ton of the concepts set out from the first game: the game is canonically a sequel to the events and characters from Red and Blue, so you have things such as recurring Gym Leaders and Elite Four members, characters like Bill and Professor Oak who play a role in the story, and of course Kanto itself is accessible after reaching the Hall of Fame for the first time. But I also love the way that the new Pokmon are handled - some of the earliest monsters like Hoothoots and Sentrets are pretty common, but a ton of the new monsters are hidden in odd locations, or via new mechanics like Headbutting trees or smashing rocks. This gives the Johto dex a feeling of an evolving understanding of the Pokmon universe, one that runs parallel to the way the storyline is presented in-game. Even now-common creatures like Marill and Snubbull were confined to extremely rare encounters in Gold and Silver.
And there's just a ton of extra added stuff to the mix. There's an in-game cell phone (PokGear) that you can use to dial up trainers for rematches and for hints to rare monsters. It's the first game in the series with a built-in internal clock, which allows for Pokmon spawns, evolutions, and events to vary by time of day or day of the week (and drained the heck out of the internal save battery, which is why it's basically impossible to find a working Gold/Silver cart now). There's a ton of optional side-dungeons, with varying challenges and rewards, and two big ol' hideouts for the game's main legendaries (both of which can be caught in either of the two games, as well). The amount of stuff packed into the cartridge is famously known for Satoru Iwata doing some mad genius programming to find a way to squeeze Kanto into the game. (And seems sadly impossible now, given the relative dearth of content in modern Pokmon games.) Crystal version also adds the first version of the Battle Tower, to add a little extra content to the single-player experience. I'm including Crystal here because it's my favorite version of the three, though its differences from Gold/Silver are far too sparse to demand a separate entry.
And then there's just the personal stuff. Johto is one of my favorite game regions: I still find it impressive the way they sold the area's traditional Japanese architecture through basic 8-bit graphics, but it works. Gold/Silver has many of my favorite monster designs, of course including my perpetual namesake, and a lot of really neat evolutions and ideas that expanded upon the potential of the original games. And it's the first Pokmon game I got the chance to get super hyped up over; while I had known some about what Red and Blue were before I played them, Gold/Silver were games I agonized over for as long as some bare-bones screenshots and monster reveals were out there. (Remember Pikablu?) I played a ROM of the Japanese release all the way to the Elite Four, where I accidentally talked to the Abra guy who teleports you back to the first town for some reason (which is absolutely hilarious in retrospect). I pored over every detail of the new creatures, the new areas, and the new Pokmon card sets, before the US release finally happened and I played it every day for months. When Pokmon Crystal dropped on 3DS Virtual Console a few years back, I played that for the first time - and actually went through with completing the game's in-game Pokdex (via trades with the Red/Blue VC releases, using some wild glitches to get a 'legal' Mew and completing everything else legit).


And as much as I'll defend what Sword/Shield did right, as much as I still do love the Pokmon series despite its problems, that was my favorite experience with the franchise in the past decade.
For me, Gold and Silver are the games that not only define my formative experience with Pokmon and video games, but still stand out on their own as just awesome and thoroughly replayable adventures. I'll point to the prior writeup of Red/Blue for all the ways I think the games are still eminently playable in 2021, with the added caveat that Gold/Silver fixed a lot of the terrible issues with balance and broken/useless moves and mechanics. I also think that HeartGold and SoulSilver are the best remakes they've ever put out, too, owing to the high quality of the source material but also the amount of effort they put into lovingly recreating the Johto region and all the crazy stuff they added there as well. (Battle Frontier! Pokathlon! Follower Pokmon! Safari Zone! A fully-fledged Kanto! The Pokwalker!) If you don't count it as cheating, you can sort of lump those in there with this entry, since a lot of the same great stuff about original G/S/C, plus more, goes with that.
That being said, this is a top-ten game regardless and felt like the perfect way to kick off this section of the list. I think this whole project is about a combination of games we adore but also an encapsulation of our personal experiences through games, and Gold/Silver seems essential for me in capturing a certain part of my life that will always stick with me.
Top 5 Favorite Johto Pokmon: Slugma - Lanturn - Lugia - Wooper - Murkrow

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"every possible order"

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it's an underwater adventure ride

Pre-Top 10 Roundup:
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)
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?)
20. Kirby Super Star (SNES, 1996)
19. Super Mario 64 (N64, 1996)
18. F-Zero X (N64, 1998)
17. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, 1997)
16. Pop'n Music [series] (Arcade, 1998-present)
15. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB, 1993)
14. Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA, 2004)
13. Pokmon Puzzle League (N64, 2000)
12. Super Mario 3D World (Wii U, 2013)
11. Pokmon Red/Blue (GB, 1998)

-Breakdown by Decade-
1980s: 5
1990s: 30
2000s: 36
2010s+: 19

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it's an underwater adventure ride

hell yeah utah jazz, good man

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it's an underwater adventure ride

I think it's gonna be more like Super Mario Galaxy vs Galaxy 2 where the consensus was the sequel was just the first game but more polished and streamlined and perfecting the level design.

consensus take sucks here too, smg1 is still a superior product to its sequel tbqh

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i suspect breath of the wild 2 will be less popular (and well-rated but less critically received) once it's released but there will be a trend to overhype all the ways it was "actually better" in the same way majora's mask has gotten vs ocarina

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just wait for the cycle in 10 years where breath of the wild is listed as overrated when that opinion becomes too boring for the listicle writers

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for some reason i feel like the trend in these lists is to aggressively undersell the traditionally most popular, best-in-the-series game and just write it off

and honestly i pretty much just disagree with it full stop. ocarina is somehow despite being the most popular gamefaqs game for like 20 years now underrated, it's wild

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it's an underwater adventure ride