To celebrate our 10 year anniversary I think it's only fair that we do the exact same thing every video game magazine did whenever they reached a milestone... create a top 100 list. So that's what I'm going to do. I've spent the last couple weeks thinking this over and I have a list in front of me that I'm pretty happy with. No one else on earth will be happy with it, but as I always say, "fuck off it's my list and I don't give two shits what you think you little pissant." At least I think I say that.
Also, if you recall I did do a top 28 list a while back. However, that was 5 years ago and many great games have come out since, so even that top 28 has some changes in it. There's a few new games, a few games my opinions have changed on, and there was one really great one that I completely overlooked somehow when I made the list the first time. So rest assured there will be some very noticeable changes.
And it's going to go by fast. Since I've got that new job starting in just over a week, my free time may be reduced, so I'm going to try to get all 100 games posted within the next two weeks. I need to sharpen up my writing since this is a PR job so it's good practice. Writing about insurance benefits and filing medical claims is just like video games right?
100Sonic Adventure
99Kaboom
98Conquests of the Longbow
97Streets of Rage 2
96Lollipop Chainsaw
95Bloodborne
94 Crazy Taxi
93Bit.Trip.Beat
92Wii Ski & Snowboard
91RiverCity Ransom
90Dragon Quest Monsters
89Jones in the Fastlane
88Dark Cloud 2
87Professor Layton and the Curious Village
86MadWorld
85Marvel Vs. Capcom 2
84Torneko the Last Hope
83Crystal Castles
82Space Harrier
81Retro Game Challenge
80Final Fantasy VII
79Bulletstorm
78Rayman Legends
77Super Dodge Ball
76World of Goo
75The Magic of Scherazade
74Minecraft
73Fantasy Zone 2
72Golden Axe: Revege of Death Adder
71Final Fantasy Legend II
70Hotel Dusk
69Splatoon
68Pitfall
67Dragon Quest V
66SteamWorld Dig
65Street Fighter 3: Third Strike
64Order Up
63Hearthstone
62Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge
61Bayonetta
60Galaga
59 Earthbound
58Super Mario Bros.
57Wii Sports Resort
56Pac-Man CE: DX
55Trauma Team
That's a game I always wanted to try. There was just too much to choose from on the ol' PS.
#22. Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
Picking a favorite Harvest Moon is always tough for me. While the series has utterly gone to shit in recent years, there were still a solid 15 years of great games. A lot of them have great memories attached, and there's at least half a dozen whose virtues I could ramble on about for hours, but if I had to pick one to play right now the answer is always Magical Melody. It's very much the pinnacle of the traditional Harvest Moon gameplay and it nails the balance of farming/ranching/social life/exploration better than any of the others, even to this day. The cast is made up almost entirely of familiar faces from earlier Harvest Moon games, even going back to characters from the original SNES version. Even with familiar characters and gameplay, Magical Melody still offered up some ideas that were new for the series in the form of simple quests. When the game would get a little slow and repetitive, these quests would help offer up short-term goals and help get things moving again. For a series that tended to suffer from a slow pace, these quests went a long way in fixing that.
So Magical Melody is my favorite in the series and my go-to anytime someone asks which HM game they should play, but it's also a game that makes me smile on an almost daily basis. The game came out for the GameCube right around the time my son was born. Natsume always offered up plush animals as pre-order bonuses and for Magical Melody they gave a sheep. Shortly thereafter the sheep was given to my son and for one of his earliest portraits, the photographer used it in the picture to help keep him in a good mood. So in my upstairs hallway there's a picture of my son, chewing on a sheep. Harvest Moon: Magical Melody...great nostalgia in many forms.
#21. EverQuest
My first and my last MMORPG. Shortly after I graduated from college, I'd gotten a job, and for the first time had some real disposable income. So naturally I bought a new PC with the sole purpose of playing EverQuest. I'd been seeing it in video game stores for a few months and something about the name and box art called to me. And I'll tell you I got my money's worth out of the investment. For the next three years and three expansions I would play it off-and-on. Then I took a few years off and started playing again. It was always hard to stay away from the game for too long. The world of Norrath was fascinating. It was alive with people living their own adventures while I was living mine. The game had amazingly deep lore. It wasn't unusual for me to spend hours in the libraries of bigger cities or just wandering around some of the more lesser traveled zones just to look around (that usually resulted in me getting killed by some much more powerful creature). My final time with EverQuest was around 2010 and I can safely say that was the final time for me. It had just evolved too much, but I did enjoy that last send off to visit old sites and kill monsters that were once the bane of my existance.
For as many hours as I put into EverQuest, I've got no shortage of fun memories with the game, particularly when I'd play it with a buddy of mine who had two rigs set up in his apartment. But the most memorable moment was the day I got my driver's license revoked. I had been driving on a suspended license (I swear to god I didn't know), and I was pulled over for expired tags (that I did know). The police were naturally very generous and pulled me over and told me they'd be towing my car. I walked and grumbled home and once I got there started drinking and playing EverQuest. Had to kill the anger one way or another. I called my boss and told him I wouldn't be coming in today, but he insisted I just work from home since we had a very important conference call with a web developer for a new project. That was problem because I'd been drinking since 9 AM, and in my drunken state I wasn't able to do much other than focus on killing kobolds and trying to level up. Still I ended up doing the call, but I just couldn't focus. I know I asked the right questions during the call, though I was talking too loudly throughout it, but I had no attention span and literally couldn't remember a thing from it even just an hour later. However, I did get my very precious level up (lvl 14), and i remember that part perfectly clear. As far as the meeting though, when the boss asked me about it later I just said I didn't think we got a lot accomplished and should probably schedule another call, to which he agreed.
At least your boss wasn't a cunt.
You've always made Harvest Moon sound as appealing as GG, Bugsy, et al, make Animal Crossing sound appealing. I'm afraid to try it, because I did try Animal Crossing...
well, for what it's worth I have never liked animal crossing. I've tried it a couple times, and I've never been able to get into it.
But I also didn't enjoy Stardew Valley at all.
#20. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy
For the purpose of this I tried to stay away from collections, but the original Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy deserves an exception for a couple reasons. First of all, the games were collected and remastered to be released as a collection, so it's pretty much the only way you can get it now. More importantly though, these three games are completely linked together. If you started with the third in the series, Trials and Tribulations, you'd almost be lost with as you'd miss out on much of the background and relationships the characters forge with each other. Plus, with the chapter based episodic nature of the series, you can roll from one to the other without feeling like you've started a new game. There's also the fact I love them all, and it's really hard to pick out just one so fuck it, the Trilogy gets the spot.
When the original Phoenix Wright came out for the DS in the West it was insanely hard to find due to a very limited run. While I originally had little interest in some weird lawyer game the shortages gave the game a reputation of a rare gem that you would be lucky to play, and eventually I got caught up in the hype and tracked down a copy. Shocklingly at first, the game lived up to the hype. Investigating crime scenese and then battling it at out in the courtoom was far more entertaining than I ever expected it would be. A large part of that reason was the characters and stories. The way everything was woven together, with plot twists and surprise cameos made it feel like the writing was just too good for a video game. It was all so good that it was really hard to put down and damn near addictive. At the time I was working in an office near Ft. Lauderdale and because of this game I'd taken extra long bathroom breaks in the one very quiet and private bathroom a few floors below the one I worked on just so I could play a little more. It got so bad that thanks to the DS' save state system I'd actually try to play them in my car as I was driving home and stuck in traffic (I never got into a wreck, but that was definitely not my greatest idea).
Since the release of the original trilogy the series has taken a hit in quality. They're still good mind you, but it's clear that there was a well thought out storyline in the original trilogy that the later installments lacked. I've skipped the last couple as a matter of fact, and that's fine. Maybe I'll track them down one of these days. But my real hope that is that in a few more years I forget more and more of the details of the original trilogy so I can go back to it and it will still surprise me with everything it offers.
Objection!