• Top 100 Video Games

  

  Written by Zeromage 226 Comments
  Last Updated:: February 1, 2009

  50. Blaster Master (NES)

  Growing up as a kid in the 1980’s, every action figure you could buy had some sort of vehicle you could purchase separately. This vehicle inevitably had several awesome guns attached to it. My parents never bought me these ultra expensive accessories and I was forced to build them out of some combination of constructs, legos, or sticks. Then came Blaster Master …

  Not only was the game based on one of these impossibly awesome vehicles, but the driver was a kid! Unless you were one of those kids who went out and bought the later-released novel, there was pretty much no back story to this game. There was a kid, some messed up looking frog in a jar, something radioactive and green, and then you were driving this hopping, shooting, all-terrain vehicle. Remember getting out of that car for the first time? When was game play ever that advanced? It was like magic, until you realized that if you were hit with anything, or even tripped and fell, you were a goner.

  There were impossibly bad “end-guys,” as there are in any good game, who (a la mega man) bestowed awesome powers for your truck when defeated. Blast through some aliens and find a tiny doorway, now you’re no longer tiny or side scrolling?! What is this? The best of Mega man, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda. This game would be ranked higher on the list if there was any discernable plot to go along with the awesomeness of the game play, but we can’t deny it’s still one of the greatest games ever.

  49. Final Fantasy 2 (SNES)

  Final Fantasy 2, in many players opinions, was the black sheep of the main series. Contrary to what most people say, this is a damn good game, as it introduced us to many great characters, such as Cecil the knight, Rydia the Summoner, and my personal favorite, Kain the Dragoon. Also, FF2 introduced us to Square’s Active Time Battle (ATB) system. And come on, the scope of the story is just as massive as any other Final Fantasy game to come afterwards, and just as creative also. Playing Final Fantasy 2 will make you nostalgic for the golden age of RPGs, when better stories were more important than better graphics.

  48. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

  Was there ever a game that embodied more multi-player fun than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game? Four players could all work simultaneous in extirpating the nefarious Krang. The levels were large, the punches were large, the bosses were large. Everything about this game was large. You would walk through levels with flames coming up from below you. Shredders minions would attack the popular shelled heroes from all angles. With 4 players, everyone had to take their part of the screen. The melee that would consistently ensue in TMNT made it one of the best arcade games of all time. There was something always going on, and lets not forget about the cut scenes. The cut scenes showed a depth not seen in arcade games at the time. Seeing the distance to Krang’s lair would seem enormous for the arcade gamer. The simplicity of the game was also an added bonus to the strengths that TMNT encompassed. There was only a joystick and two buttons to use for each player. You could jump and attack. You could also combine these two buttons to do a jump attack. This simplicity made it easy for anyone to play the game. Anyone from all the corners of the local arcade could join in on the endless side scrolling melee. The colors of the game was also another noticeable strength in the overall design. The video screen always popped out with bright colors from all points on the screen. There wasn’t too many weakness with this game aside from the tacky music which you couldn’t hear at a louder arcade anyways. TMNT would swallow many quarters throughout its existence. These above points are just some of the reasons why.

  47. Baseball Stars

  Baseball Stars was the first sports game where you could create your own team that would be saved after the console was off. This was revolutionary for the time. Sports games now are made or broken on the quality of saved teams and seasons. The game itself was simple. You could throw curved balls, slow balls and fast balls. The batter could move in the box. A simple baseball game you think? For the time, Baseball Stars was state of the art. You could see fielders from different parts of the screen. This created a heightened suspense for the first baseman trying to tag out an opposing player. Baseball Stars was also the first baseball game that had a mercy rule. Ten runs ahead in the first inning and player two would be feeling like he wanted to be the first player. The graphics to Baseball Stars was solid and the non-MLB teams were surprisingly creative for the time. Baseball Stars is the original great baseball game.

  46. Sim City (SNES)

  As the name suggests, in Simcity you get to build your very own virtual city, but unlike the later installment of the game, Simcity 2000, you have fewer options and fewer ways to customize your city. You basically have a choice of three types of zones, Residential, Commerical, and Industrial, as well as Police Stations, Fire Stations, Seaports, and Airports. Besides power plants and transportation, that’s pretty much it. But, as with many games on our top 100 list, its the simplicity of the game that makes it so good. There’s very little attempt at realism (how many real life cities have you ever been to that have 90 police departments? – and the citizens still complain about crime!) but regardless, the game is not meant to be a training program for real life mayors, or an educational game about how real cities are built, its meant to be fun. And on this level the game was a complete success. I remember spending hours upon hours, days upon days, and even weeks upon weeks trying to get to 500,000 people so I could get a statue of Super Mario. That was the ultimate goal in this game, and it always seemed just out of reach. I can’t remember how many cities I built where I got up to 400,000 people. You needed to build the most efficient city, using every square foot on the map, and not only that, but you had to find the map with the least amount of water, so that you could squeeze out another 1,000 people here and there. Games that breed that kind of obsession are the kind of games we were looking for when we put together our top 100 video games of all time list.

  45. Tecmo Super Bowl (NES)

  Without a doubt the best football game ever made, and you could only choose between 8 plays! This game goes to show how much simplicity dominates complexity in video games, not to mention the fact that you could throw a 110 yard hail mary with 5 seconds left on the clock to win the game and leave player 2 stunned, jaw dropped to the floor, mumbling to himself “you can’t do that in real life!”; and that is just it. This is not simply just some “real” football game. It expands the limits of reality. This is football for those with a big imagination and the desire to throw a football much farther than they ever could in real life.

  44. River City Ransom (NES)

  RiverCityRansom was an excellent fighting game for the NES back when fighting games were starting to become redundant. Instead of a traditional “double dragon” fighting sequences, we were given more freedom with River City Ransom, to go back to territories once covered, to retrace our steps to shops with items we may need, and to play the game in more of a random order than a linear “level by level” sequence. The story involved having to save a girl from high school bullies who they have captured in the apex floor of the high school. The high school works like the castle of Castlevania, while all the streets work like all the outdoors on the way up to the castle. The high school enemies that Alex and Ryan come across have defined, variegated personalities, like “Tex” with his big bad acrimonious parlance and Ivan with his obvious foreign diction. The two player mode in River City Ransom should be the paragon for fighting games. No taking turns between levels or lives, just 2 players both active on the screen fighting the refractory bully’s of River City. This game is also lengthy in duration showing its further sophistication analogous to a great RPG. As a Nintendo game, River City Ransom was a massive step ahead from all the games before it. We saw that great games can often be more sophisticated, putting more control in the players hands, letting them decide where they want to go and what they want to do at any moment. Techno’s made some decent games for the NES like Double Dragon and the hugely fun Dodgeball. River City Ransom will remain the lost classic in Techno’s repertoire.

  43. Battletoads (NES)

  Battletoads may have reminded one of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES, except Battletoads was ten times better. This was one of the first games for the NES, and home gaming in gneral that utilized a variety of battle scenes independent of side-scrolling fighting. You rode on a surf board through an underground labyrinth, climbed up a level of seemingly infinite stairs, and rode a helicopter up through an entire level. It was this creativity that made games interesting and nuanced. The sounds were addicting, especially the uppercut sound where the enemy would go flying into the screen when executed. Head butts too, sounded pleasantly truculent. The two player mode was one of the best two player formats for the NES system, first and foremost, because you played together at the same time, not taking turns through levels. Why did anyone ever think this was going to be fun anyways (MARIO!)? While the game could be illogically difficult at some points and illogically simple at others (not following a “normal” sequence of increased difficulty), the game was always a welcome experience, especially in two player mode. Surprisingly there was never a Battletoads 2, instead we were left with the dung of “Battletoads and Double Dragon”.

  42. Castlevania 2

  Castlevania 2 was always an underrated game, much like Zelda 2 as a sequel to its precursor. This is unfortunate as many people won’t have the opportunity to play this incredible game that was one of the scariest games to play in video game history. Days would change into nights and the most nefarious monsters would do more damage than the day time monsters. The towns were desolate with townspeople epitomizing borderline mania speaking in strange proverbs and walking around slowly in cloaks. The music throughout the game was haunting. It’s not as if you felt totally at ease when visiting towns in Castlevania 2. The environment always stayed tense throughout the game. This game was a pure success at making a game as morbid as possible.

  41. Star Fox (SNES)

  Star Fox for SNES was a 3D flight simulator like none other before. Flight simulators always can be boring with no storylines, no interesting characters, and barely any movement on the actual flight screen. Star Fox is not one of these games. There are specific levels in the Lylat solar system that you can choose depending on the difficulty level you’re interested in playing. You’re accompanied by comrades throughout the game who have their own diction and dialogue with Fox McCloud. Another interesting twist on this 3D flight simulator is the ability to change speeds throughout a level. You can thrust forward and break at your own control. Simulators before would keep your aircraft moving at the same speeds, making for the most boring game playing imaginable. The graphics were a huge step up from past gaming with Star Fox utilizing the new Super FX chip that sped up the movement of the graphics. The levels were decorated with a variety of themes, from the bucolic environment of Corneria, to the insidious darkness of Venom. Star Fox opened up flight simulators to a whole new audience, of all different age groups, and was so successful that they decided to continue the series after this SNES installment.

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226 Comments

1. #1 Bladerunner says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 4:09 pm

   Terrible list imo.I realise this list is your opinion, and i respect that. Im just pointing out that my opinion differs from yours vastly

   1) Its a whore-fest of old games, lots of true modern classics were ignored. No half life 1,2, gta, resident evil, call of duty, fallout, civilization? Seriously???!!

   2) Toe jam and earl? give me a break….

   3) Not a single fricking N64 game? Majoras mask?! Mario 64?! Goldeneye?! Perfect dark?! OCARINA OF TIME?!!!!!! sheesh

   3) Just ONE ps2 game in the entire list? no shadow of the colossus? no okami? no gran turismo? no god of war? OMG

   4) Correct me if im wrong, but i dont think i saw a single racing game in there… wtf?

   I do agree with most of the top 20 though. Chrono trigger, Castlevania:SOTN, Zelda LTTP…. epic games
2. #2 Dopeycunt says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 9:36 pm

   Seems like the author does not have a whole lot of experience playing catalogs of games on different systems, and probably stuck to Nintendo systems when he was a kid. Only the big-name (obvious) Sega titles are here, and a distinct lack of PSX, XBox, and PC games.
3. #3 Wolf says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 10:12 am

   …dodgeball beat DigDug?
   already bad things happening and im only on page 1
4. #4 Wolf says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am

   Ducktales made the top 20?…
5. #5 dude says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 12:19 am

   while this list may not be well rounded (at all), it makes for a pretty good reference on which old roms I should be investing my time in.
6. #6 pd says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 9:45 pm

   so your saying nhl 94 and a dodgeball game are better then say castlevania iv and contra 3 bullshit and there two games off the top of my head.
7. #7 Justin says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:45 am

   I didn’t know N64 was such a crappy system.LOL.What an ass list and an ass website. Terrible what you are putting into these viewer’s heads.
8. #8 Justin says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:50 am

   Oh and I also forgot to LOL @ having Madden 2004 on there without NFL 2k5.Props for putting Star Craft on there though,best game ever made.
9. #9 Azelfknight says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 8:44 pm

   Zelda 2 is the worst Zelda ever…just saying.

   This list is okay, but with way to many old ripoffs of each other in the platforming department. A link to the past is one of my favorite games and glad others recognize it too, but so many good game aren’t on this list that it makes me shake my head. Here are games that deserve more credit, in no order, Halo, Ocarina of Time, Fallout 3, WOW, Mario Kart 64, and more…
10. #10 pelham123 says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 11:05 pm

    It’s nice to see a more personal top 100 list for a change, an enjoyable read. Cheers!
11. #11 Fedricco Rabaya says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    Hey people can someone tell me the Mario game when the story is about a dream of Mario? There are 4 characters to choose from: MArio, Luigi, Princess and the Mushroom kid.
12. #12 Salo says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 2:48 pm

    Super Mario 2.
13. #13 nick says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 6:56 pm

    good list, but you guys really need to play golden sun.