@Pablos102030
You're not alone dude, I think that not only is that the best game on ps2, no disrespect to Okami, it's one of the best games ever.

unrelatedly, for PC 1990's I would have AOE2, I still play it online with my friends almost every week, it's just so well balanced and deep.

@stroypa
The problem with your concept of calling American football "yankee ball" is that such a name would make everyone think of baseball b/c the yankees are the most consistently dominant team. And I don't want people thinking about baseball when they're talking about American football b/c baseball sucks.

I've been reading GR for quite a while, but never a member. That just came to an end...

Portable Ops. Portable Ops! Portable Ops?!

Honestly, that game is right up there with Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. Okay, so it's not broken, but it's one of the absolute worst games I've ever played. And yes, I finished it all the way through, kicking and screaming.

Chains of Olympus blows it away. MORE IMPORTANTLY: Patapon annihilates both LocoRoco and CoO.

Beyond that, it seems this entire 7-page list is teetering on the absurd, I'm a little suspicious that it's intentional.

"unrelatedly, for PC 1990's I would have AOE2, I still play it online with my friends almost every week, it's just so well balanced and deep."

@zim831

That's exactly why I think trying to choose the two most influential pc games of each decade just doesn't work.

Many, many games were influential in their own ways....the AoE series definitely had a profound impact on me in the mid to late nineties, but so did Warcraft 2, Star Wars: Tie Fighter, the original Diablo (although I think Diablo II was more influential), and several others.

He should have chosen one per genre per decade, or left the pc completely out of the list.

That's just my opinion though. Anyways, I love nostalgia inducing articles.

Who knew when I was a young tyke exploring Hyrule in a Link to the Past, I would still be thinking back fondly to those times 17 years later.

Im sorry..but...this list I cannot agree with. HOnestly Gears of War as best 360..nah man I gotta say Fallout or GTA 4 man, and as for n64...wtf man why no Ocarina of TIme man!? WTF!? Dude you ALL remember spending countless hours playing it!! Man I love both Golden Eye AND Mario but I love zelda more..

A fascinating list. Well written article with adequate explanations. Some safe choices, some a bit controversial. It's tough when there are many different criteria often mutually exclusive about what constitutes a "greatest" game. Kudos especially for choices Mario3, Link to the Past, UltimaIV, FF7, Okami, and Zork. A few of my alternate suggestions:

First of all, no mention of Amiga??? My choices would be:
1. Faery Tale Adventure (1987): a huge gameworld, haunting BG music, memorable locations, WAY ahead of its time
2. Defender of the Crown (1986): great showcase for Amiga's vastly superior graphics to other systems at the time

NES - Ninja Gaiden: side-scrolling action was challenging and top-notch, but the real treat was the groundbreaking dramatic cut-scenes

SNES - Chrono Trigger: this classic just never looks or gets old

Super Famicom - Super Momotaro Dentetsu DX: great times for you and three friends, that is if you have a lot of time on your hands and can read Japanese

PC 80s:
1. Maniac Mansion: still a cult classic
2. King's Quest IV: KQ3 was my personal favorite of the series, but IV was more groundbreaking with its graphics, female protagonist, real time events, use of sound cards, etc.

PC 90s:
1. Doom II: addictive, simple, satisfying, and helped introduce multiplayer gaming to the masses. Half Life perfected this genre.
2. Ultima 7 Parts 1 & 2: although VI was my personal favorite, VII was more groundbreaking in setting the standard for all future RPG's with a highly detailed gameworld, interesting characters, a dark and complex storyline, and a great intro

C64: Impossible Mission II

PS1:
1. xenogears: FF7 deserves the title, but this one can't go unmentioned
2. Gran Turismo 2: huge improvement over the original in so many ways, and the Japanese version has in my opinion possibly one of the best video game intros of all time


PS2:
1. Shadow of the Colossus: proof that art can be gaming
2. Kingdom Hearts: proof that genres and franchises can be merged with excellent results

As for all the newer systems, I say give it another 5~10 years and then see which games are really memorable. Thanks for the article.

leroybr@gmail.com

gears of war 2 is btr dan gears 1, so y did they put gears 1? & also how is the crappy rock band in front of halo 3???

@schizmillion
because although GoW 2 was incredible fun and just all round awsome they did state

"we judged these based not just on how good the games are, but also by how significant or meaningful they are for their respective platforms." GoW was hugely significant because it did something original. GoW 2 just improved it.

Also Halo 3 was great fun but as much as i hate to admit it, the story was... disapointing and the online did get a little old after a while where as rockband constantly has Downloadable content so unless you refuse to pay a few pounds (or dollars) you probably wont get bored. *braces for fanboy impact*

This is a lame list. It's like someone just put it together in few minuets. -.-

Ok, I like Metroid as well on the SNES, but what about Chrono Trigger? It's one of the best games ever on the SNES! And Link to the Past deserves it's spot.

I gave Need for Speed on 3DO a horrible review when it was new. I got hate mail for months. I guess time has proven me very wrong.

I really strongly disagree with GTA San Andreas as best PS2 game. Heck, I still don't see why it got around a 9 in most game rating sites. Oh my... the story was great, the characters had personality thanks to the terrific voice acting, but as was said in other comment, there were many bad things in it. The gym body fit system was a boring grind, even though I liked the clothing customization part. The whole spraying/horseshoe/oyster/picture and whatever more "extra" content you have to search for was extremely dull. I couldn't bring myself to hunt down items in the towns, that's extremely boring. Some mini games were also repetitive, i.e. the dancing that happened a lot with girlfriend dating (and was necessary for 2 or so missions), more of a grind than anything (and I thought grind was restricted to MMORPGs). Some "skills" were very boring to raise, like the lung capacity that was required for a mission, basically means you had to dive, wait and then gather more O2, and do it for a lot of time - hell this was just bad design, a timesink. The car driving, bike driving, motorcycle driving skills were also time-consuming big time, and to be honest I couldn't feel the difference between having the skill maxed or not, so why RPG-i-fy the game in first place. You could beat the game having this skills less than 30% prorgression because they were just that much timesink material. Some missions were also disappointing, look at the "Zero Missions". Turf battles were extremely shallow and boring, the game just threw at you waves of NPCs begging to be slaughtered, and to some extent, certain hoods were too small and it was hard to even start a gang war, you'd have to wander back and forth and pray to find enemy gang members, this could be simply solved with more uniform hoods, as bigger ones which solves the issue. Plus to do the last mission, you would have to capture many hoods, so it's even worse than if it would be just an optional feature. To be honest, Vice City presented a leap from GTAIII regarding many faults of its predecessor but San Andreas just presented us a bigger game, and tried to turn the game into more character progression fluff, content to be looked for, more minigames, but imho it wasn't even necessary, I'd find more indoor content more interesting than that. Yet the game still have good soundtrack, nice vehicle variety, many "random town events" that make it look less static, which is nice and as I said, very good story. But I wouldn't call it an extremely good game, and not a chance name it the game of the platform.

I had a timex sinclair *old person* bahhh
Who picked Mario over zelda on the 64, really?

The sadest thing is i have a lynx, the sadder thing is i have a lynx that hasnt been played and 10 games that are still sealed!! none of which are on this list, i reckon (despite it being multiplatform) timesplitters 2 should have been up there, the gamecube's version was my favorite, and sonic 2 now that game gave us platforming and physics!!! take a leaf out of the history books sega give us sonic 4 pleeeeease!

WHERE THE HELL IS HALO 3?!

There, I sead what you were all thinking.

Thanks for the Zork catch guys. Definitely accurate.

Sure wish you'd mentioned MicroProse, esp. in connection to the C-64. That company had so many great games on that platform.

had no idea there was so many different consoles

Gears! Get in! and here was me being cynical, thinking Halo 3 (bleh) would get it!

I'm showing my age with this one:
*sigh*
Yar's Revenge also had a bitchin' comic book included.

agreed: Halo 3 is just Golden Eye on Steroids. Golden Eye Started a Revolution of gaming....man the multilplayer with Duel RC-P90's....oh man...if they made an N64 ONLINE i would play EVERY DAY for the Rest of my Life.