Board 8 > Part 2 of The Top 50 Games Every Gamer Should Know About is complete!

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Here it is:

http://betweenlifeandgames.com/2012/05/05/top-50-games-every-gamer-should-know-about-part-2/

In case you missed the first part, here you go:

http://betweenlifeandgames.com/2012/04/27/top-50-games-every-gamer-should-know-about/

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Awesome blog.

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Thanks a lot! You can subscribe by entering your e-mail on the top right, then you'll get an e-mail as soon as I publish something. :)

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[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

Pretty close to how I would have done it, although fewer newer - from #40 to #50 I'd only include Portal and WoW - the others wouldn't be top 50. In their place, off the top of my head Castlevania, Metal Slug, either Gradius or R-Type, a survival horror either Resident Evil or Silent Hill 2, more of the early cRPG's, either Wizardry or The Bard's Tale, Ultima VII, and either Fallout or Baldur's Gate 2.

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Did you even own a Nintendo 64? Skipping over Super Mario 64's delivery of the first great 3D platformer, Pilotwings 64's groundwork of free roaming and sightseeing, Goldeneye's trendsetting of the FPS genre as well as the creation of the console FPS as an actual genre as opposed to bad ports...

Not to mention Quake and Unreal, which spawned engines that probably fuel damn near the entire current generation of video games.

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Good list

N64 was underrepresented though

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More like Top 50 Games Every Gamer Already Knows About

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the n64 did deserve 1 or 2 more games. Probably SM64 and Goldeneye, maybe star fox 64 as well.

With that said, the list overall is pretty damn good. Good blog.

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From the N64 suggestions, Goldeneye could've really made it (Mario already had a representative and I kept it one-per-franchise). There were plenty of FPS games already, though, so it missed the cut. But there were other notable exclusions like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Civilization and Call of Duty. They could've replaced more subjectively picked entries such as Earthworm Jim or Ratchet & Clank, but, at the end, such a list should have at least a bit of personal touch in it.

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Disappointed by the lack of Phoenix Wright

Other than that, good list.

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so

Warcraft 3
Street Fighter 3

do you hate fun games or what

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Are Half-Life: Counter Strike and Half-Life 2 really different series? I know CS was made as a mod, and I assume not by the creators of the HL games, but I don't know if that keeps it free from the rule. I haven't played either yet, so I'm not really knowledgeable on this.

Batman: Arkham Asylum or Bioshock would've been a nice entry near the end of your list. I personally wouldn't have put Kingdom Hearts on there, but that could be personal biases speaking, and I might've gone with Quake or Unreal instead of Duke Nukem 3D. But otherwise a very solid list!

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Phoenix Wright is awesome, but too niche to qualify here. Warcraft and Street Fighter had other representatives. Counter-Strike has got pretty much nothing to do with Half-Life, it just uses the same engine. Yes, Quake and Unreal could've made it, but Duke Nukem 3D's got the charm and legacy they lack.

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I don't think Phoenix Wright is that niche. No more than a lot of the other games on that list. Symphony of the Night, for instance, wasn't exactly a commercial smash. And while that is certainly an important game within its own series, Phoenix Wright is a big reason why adventure games made a comeback this gen. Plus handhelds needed more representation anyway.

But otherwise really good list. Not sure about the most recent picks though. A lot of people would argue that 2D and 3D Mario are separate franchises-Mario itself is more of a mega-franchise consisting of lots of separate franchises (2D, 3D, Kart, RPGs, etc.) which are all their own entities. So SM64 would have been a good placement I feel, especially since it pretty much made 3D gaming viable.

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Separating Mario Kart and the RPGs from Mario platformers is okay, but would I separate Metal Gear from Metal Gear Solid? No. Same for Mario.

It's true handhelds didn't get many games... It just so happens that, aside from Pokemon, there's not much handhelds offer that really competes with stuff on consoles, PC or in the arcades (although arcades are mostly a thing of the past now, sadly).

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Over 1000 total views for the blog now. :)

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I glossed over a lot of the write-ups, but I don't really think it's fair to call Smash 64 "completely basic compared to Melee" or whatever it was you said. Also think you favored the original a bit too much at times... I mean, I certainly see the argument that it doesn't always have to be the best rep for coverage but stuff like Mega Man over Mega Man 2 or Mortal Kombat over Mortal Kombat 2 or Dragon Warrior over... any other Dragon Quest game kind rubbed me the wrong way.

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The top 100 list thingy that I planned to start will come eventually, but unsurprisingly, most of the games on here are on there.

If I were to make up the list from scratch, well, hmm. I can see you're trying to keep it balanced across era and genre, so it's tough to add. Some kind of strategy/puzzle game should be included, though, so I would think Civilization should be an automatic. The only WRPG on there is World of Warcraft, so something non-MMO should have made the list as well, whether that's Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, or whatever else. (Or is that what GTA3 is?) Also a "shooter" (and I don't mean FPS) might have been nice, unless you're counting Space Invaders in there, or arguably Contra.

I'd probably have left the Duke off there; he's noteworthy, but not top-50-worthy. I was never really aware of the existence of KoF until it was basically done, either. However, overall it's a really good list.


If I had to add 10:
51. Civilzation IV
52. Pac-Man
53. TMNT 4: Turtles in Time (would do original arcade, but you have that era saturated)
54. KOTOR
55. THPS 2 or SSX Tricky
56. *some* non-racing sports game...Madden is most obvious choice
57. some highly casual game besides The Sims. Minesweeper would be my pick.
58. Star Fox 64
59. Asteroids
60. Morrowind

And that's just to stick to your spread-it-around philosophy. There's a ton of other games that I think are deserving, although I admit a list of 50 is rather restrictive. If I made such a list, it would probably be inundated with old games, like Asteroids, Joust, Combat, etc.

Lopen, I see your point regarding Mega Man for sure, however, Mortal Kombat II hardly deserves the spot more than the original which was what introduced fatalities and all, nor does any other Dragon Quest compare to the first one in terms of influence. It's not about which games are best in their series.

Azuarc, those are some nice suggestions overall, I considered some of them. Pac-Man's already on the list. :P

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Vlado posted...
Azuarc, those are some nice suggestions overall, I considered some of them. Pac-Man's already on the list. :P

Clearly I was awake this morning when I wrote that.

Kind of surprised by the total snub of adventure games, I would have thought at least one of Monkey Island/King's Quest/Myst/Phoenix Wright would have made it

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"Dragon Quest started the genre"

no experience with Ultima?

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From: neonreaper | #024
"Dragon Quest started the genre"

no experience with Ultima?

Yeah exactly this is why Dragon Quest doesn't really deserve anything special. If you're going to give Dragon Quest some sort of "genre starting props" it doesn't really deserve them. You'd have a better argument giving Dragon Quest 2 (or Final Fantasy if you're going off US releases) the influence props for being the first games where you have a party of guys instead of just one guy-- as I'm pretty sure they actually were the first in that regard.

But my other point there was that there should be what we call a quality floor for some of these things. You're not going to recommend ET for the Atari 2600 for being the first movie licensed game/being a sort of meme for how bad it is... because it's bad. Similarly if you're trying to recommend the grandfather of RPGs you should probably go with the first one that got it something close to right for American audiences in FF1 or DQ2 (or an Ultima game I suppose-- haven't played any just aware they exist).

I suppose I could concede on MK as long as you don't play the SNES version. Genesis with blood code or Arcade are fine. SNES with its spit instead of blood kinda takes away the whole reason MK is MK which is the main reason I was endorsing MK2 over quality.

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Good list overall

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Good suggestions regarding adventure games, especially Myst... Just goes to show how much is still missing even on a relatively big list of 50.

I did say "JRPG" regarding Dragon Quest. Though Ultima could also have been mentioned, I agree.

Dragon Quest was an alright game, especially for its time, I do not agree it should not make the "quality floor."

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A few stanout omissions:

Star Fox: literally had the first consumer buyable graphics acceleration card.

Quake: started the whole professional gamer thing, variations on quake mods are still popular today (Team Fortress), a lot of the online play modes in FPSs were created in Quake. Saving replays made the Quake community the first big speedrun community on the web (for years metroid speedruns were stored on quake websites).

Spacewar (or one of it's variants like Star Control 2). While also not literally the first videogame, it inspired so many of the pioneers to try and take games commercial, and near as I can tell the genre is unrepresented on your list.

Sim City (At least, I don't think I saw it on the list....)

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While I don't dispute that FF1 was better than DQ1, I was aware of DQ long before FF. They had that whole giveaway with Nintendo Power thing, and it got much more early coverage. IMHO, it wasn't until FF7 that I decided it was the superior series. (Of course, which games were only released in Japan has a big something to do with that.)

Yes, there should be a minimal level of quality to make a list, but being the first well-known game to do something significant is also a major factor. I think of Wolf 3D as the first FPS, even though technically Catacomb Abyss came first, and there were some slow blocky wireframe games that came first. As far as I'm concerned, Dragon Quest was the first RPG. I bet something predates it, but I certainly don't know about it.


metroid, I'm betting a lot of people equate Quake with Doom, which is understandable considering the same company made both and honestly they are extremely similar to the casual eye. Quake's claim to fame is primarily its multiplayer, but IMHO it gets outshined in that department by Unreal Tournament. Considering UT isn't a second id game, I'd go for that first. Also, I'm assuming SimCity was left off because Vlado thought it was the same "series" as The Sims.


Anyway, I've started actually posting the list from user voting.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/62750549

Yeah, with Doom on the list, I felt it'd be redundant to also include Quake. And SimCity is not necessarily the same franchise as The Sims, however, I felt listing one of the two was sufficient.

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Final Fantasy got a lot more Nintendo Power hype than Dragon Warrior did. Final Fantasy was long running contender in their power 25 and they had an entire issue dedicated to being strategy guide for it.

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