The official Piss All Over Everyone's Top 20 Thread

[Nevermore]

Also, I didn't see anyone put down FF7. Granted, I know US III gets a lot of love here, and I myself am not going to put it down, but still...I still think it's a pretty good game.

You didn't look hard enough.

As for picking the games to list, since any such list is going to be entirely subjective anyway I just picked the games I remember enjoying and playing the most.  Nothing so lofty as whether it was 'groundbreaking' or any other such nonsense.  Did I spend entirely too much time playing it?  Then it goes on the list.

[stray]

No criteria really. Tempest got my number 1 spot purely for nostalgia. It was the first game I can remember, and one that I still like. Also, it has cool sounds.

Street Fighter... Kind of a fulfillment of all of my wishes up to that point. Y'know..like.. Finally! The mothership has landed. I mean... What the hell was before that? Karate Champ? Lame ass Rocky games?

Defender of the Crown had my original 3 spot (I've since replaced it with Uncharted). It was pretty, and offered a lot of variety, and did it all well. Thing is, Uncharted is prettier and does multiple things well too. Maybe a bit too high for a brand new game, but I'm pretty stoked about it at the moment.

Wing Commander 3. Biff, Malachi, Skywalker, and Alex De Large in Space. Nuff said.

[Miasma]

Also, I didn't see anyone put down FF7. Granted, I know US III gets a lot of love here, and I myself am not going to put it down, but still...I still think it's a pretty good game.

At least half a dozen people listed FFVII, it might even be leading III.  As mentioned earlier I put down games which made me think "wow, yes, a game can and should be doing stuff like this" or that were good enough I played them a great deal.

Edit:
I had nothing better to do so I counted them (up to this post's date and barring edits).
Final Fantasy I: 1
Final Fantasy II (IV): 5
Final Fantasy III (VI): 9
Final Fantasy VII: 7
Final Fantasy X: 3

Final Fantasy Tactics: 7

Upon closer examination a bunch of other people put the Intellivision Advanced D&D on too, awesome.  I spent so much time playing that as a kid.  I want a book that makes my crossbow platinum plzkthx.

[Tebonas]

I was making a list and then cut it down in size until it reached 20. The original was at about 60 games at the top of my head, then I thought about what I liked about a game and if another game fullfilled that particular liking in a better way the game had to go. Naturally I had the most raw satisfaction the first time over most of the time.

Sundog, for example was my first "Wow, Computer games can open up worlds to you for exploration, where you are free to do whatever you like" game. It was the first game I sat in the car with my parents on the way home and thought "Wonder what I discover today" instead of "Wonder if I can beat that level".

[stray]

Honestly, I'd have more adventure titles on my list, but I'm holding back so as not to look like a freak (or a housewife).

[Tebonas]

Thats why I put "The Lurking Horror" in there. I could have filled that list with Adventures both Text and Graphics, but I had to choose. Sam and Max, Space Quest and Monkey Island were close at its heel.

[Velorath]

Just wondering, but how are you all determining what you put down?

I could make a list of great games a couple hundred games long at least.  The stuff I put down on the list are games that grabbed me to such an extent that I played them over and over, and could still go back and play any one of them today.  In that respect, there's only a handful of games that I really wish I could have worked into the list somewhere (Blaster Master, Final Fantasy Tactics, Star Wars Arcade, Scorched Earth, Dune 2 and Kings Bounty).  I'm pretty satisfied with my list though, aside from the fact that only 2 games in the last 10 years were good enough to make it on there.

[Ixxit]

Kings Bounty.

I wanted to fit that onto my list as well.  I played the Genesis version so much  that I think the music is permantly etched into my brain.  What an awesome game, so easy to pick up yet endlessly replayable.

[Hoax]

I just want to piss on my list.

I'm having a hard time in quantifying what criteria to use when selecting what to put on my list.

Just wondering, but how are you all determining what you put down? If you look at mine, I seem to be a bit schizophrenic in what I am using to validate my choices.

I mean, FFS, I put down Q2, but I only ever played it twice. Twice.

Also, I didn't see anyone put down FF7. Granted, I know US III gets a lot of love here, and I myself am not going to put it down, but still...I still think it's a pretty good game.

I put down games that were fun above and beyond other games of the similar type or were the best kind of fun.

Examples:
-Mario Kart on SNES' only competitor would be f-zero and that didn't even come close.  I hate racing games like Forza and GT but Mario Kart was a total blast.  The battle mode was awesome too.

-FFVI:  I've wasted a ton of hours playing various rpg's.  I never finish them.  I finished this one.  Also playing a final fantasy game back when I didn't own a single video game system (it was IV I think, the one where you are a shadow knight on an airship at he start) was what turned me into a gamer.  I thought the whole interactive story thing was just so fucking cool. Therefore it would have been stupid not to have a FF title, VI was by far my favorite.

-Portal:  The first and only game during my adult years that I enjoyed even though it had nothing to do with smashing other humans.  Also internet memes are fun & the cake song will be my cell phone ringtone once I get around to it.

Dunno if that helps, basically I picked things that made sense, I had about 32 games when I finished my list.  Things like Chrono Trigger, Puzzle Fighter and Fallout just didn't quite make the list.

[Yegolev]

Did it ever get patched into complete playability? I remember some showstoppers back in the day, but goddamn that game was fun.

I have the latest patch that I am aware of, but I cannot recall if I had that one when I was playing it originally and the appearance of a demon on the battlefield would crash the game.  Unfortunately I have not made any real headway in it since I managed to get it running on WinXP.

[WayAbvPar]

As soon as you have all the kinks worked out, send instructions (in small words)! 

[Ratman_tf]

Just wondering, but how are you all determining what you put down? If you look at mine, I seem to be a bit schizophrenic in what I am using to validate my choices.

Also, I didn't see anyone put down FF7. Granted, I know US III gets a lot of love here, and I myself am not going to put it down, but still...I still think it's a pretty good game.

There are a ton of Pretty Good Games that didn't make my list.  Phantasy Star 2, Fintal Fantasties out the wazoo, Metal Marines (fucking awesome game) Advance Wars, etc...

20 slots makes you prune like a gardener on speed. In a lot of cases I imagined myself holding some of these games and deciding which one to put in the console/PC to play...

My decision to put Diablo down instead of Diablo 2 is one that doesn't even make sense to me. But there's something about the original Diablo that the sequel lacks... and I can't put my finger on it.

[Hutch]

I just want to piss on my list.

I'm having a hard time in quantifying what criteria to use when selecting what to put on my list.

Just wondering, but how are you all determining what you put down? If you look at mine, I seem to be a bit schizophrenic in what I am using to validate my choices.

I morphed "top 20" to "favorites" and went from there.

Some of my choices aren't examples of stellar or breakthrough game development (Ascendancy and Duke Nukem, to name but a few). But I did play every game on the list for hours and hours, and with no one holding a gun to my head.

Others were the favorite from a series. Civ4 beat out Civ2. Pharaoh was IMO the best from the Impressions city building series, of which I have also played Caesar III, Zeus, the one set in China, and the more recent Egyptian themed one.

[lesion]

Who wants to play some Giants multiplayer? ?! ?!?!?!

[geldonyetich2]

Galactic Adventures- the combat was a lot like X-COM, but 10 years earlier. Good game, but buggy as hell.

Damn - I'm sorry I missed this one.  Need an updated version.  Maybe I'll make one, now that I discovered somebody already made the game I've always been wanting to make 25 years ago. 

Ah well, it probably sucks compared to how I imagine it.

[Yoru]

Who wants to play some Giants multiplayer? ?! ?!?!?!

As in Giants: Citizen Kabuto? I would totally hit that.

[Signe]

I've stopped understanding.   

[Tale]

Baulders Gate

@whoever: If you fucking liked it so much, call it Baldur's Gate.

Now go back to using then instead of than and raising your orge fraction.

[geldonyetich2]

Up until I made my list and looked it up on mobygames, I thought one of my favorite games was "The Crescent Hawk's Interception"

[Triforcer]

Again, people, wherefore art Crono Trigger?  The last, best, greatest RPG of the 16-bit era, and one of the top five RPGs of all time. 

Also, Majora's Mask doesn't get enough love.  It is at the bottom of most people's Zelda list, but it is the darkest and most offbeat of all the Zeldas- a great take on the mythos. 

[Tale]

Up until I made my list and looked it up on mobygames, I thought one of my favorite games was "The Crescent Hawk's Interception"

Half the herald angels sing.

Round John, virgin mother and child.

Although my favourite was always our local church's singalong carol sheet. There's one called "As with Gladness Men of Old" with a line "As they offered gifts most rare". Whoever did the typing slipped off asdf/jkl; and typed "As they offered jugts most rare". They photocopied the same sheet every year, generations of kids cracked up laughing.

[Prospero]

Damn Iosgar! I thought I was the only one who played Wheel of Time. Can't say it's in my top 20, but it was a neat blast from the past. The multiplayer in that was cool.

[Jain Zar]

Up until I made my list and looked it up on mobygames, I thought one of my favorite games was "The Crescent Hawk's Interception"

I tried replaying it a couple weeks back.  It wasn't pretty.  Admitted, i had problems with it when it came out.

No mech customization.  (To me taking out this makes  a Battletech game shitty. )
Only 4 or 5 playable mechs. (When the tabletop game had 16 starter designs, why limit us to a couple shitty scout mechs?)
Combat was weak. ( Its too hard to TELL US WHAT WAS HIT AND DAMAGED?)
No real freedom. (Basically you go to every point on the map, read some text.  Yay.)
No genuine character advancement. (Random skill gains in the training levels, then nothing.)
Tons of pointless random combat.
The endgame was one of the worst endgames in a videogame ever.  (Unlock multiple colored doors.  WHAT FUCKING GIANT ROBOT GAME HAS A FINALE WHERE YOU OPEN COLORED AND NUMBERED DOORS?)

Outside of its very nice graphics, there is very little reason to play this game.  There were RPGs before its day that were better.  Compare it to Wizardry, or Ultima, or Might & Magic or Phantasy Star, or Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. 
It comes off very badly.

[Samwise]

Just wondering, but how are you all determining what you put down?

Stream of consciousness -- I thought back over my life and started listing the games that stood out in my memory as ones that I'd happily spent lots of time on or that had made a big impact on me when I encountered them.  I ended up missing a couple that would have been part of a more carefully considered list (American McGee's Alice is one that somehow failed to surface), but overall the list turned out to be a pretty good reflection of my gaming career.

[Hoax]

Who wants to play some Giants multiplayer? ?! ?!?!?!

As in Giants: Citizen Kabuto? I would totally hit that.

Don't we need 3 people then?  One person is the giant, one the space marines and one is the water nymphs or something right?

[geldonyetich2]

"The Crescent Hawk's Interception"

I tried replaying it a couple weeks back.  It wasn't pretty.  Admitted, i had problems with it when it came out.

No mech customization.  (To me taking out this makes  a Battletech game shitty. )

No manual mech customization, but if you go to the engineering shops you can purchase custom jobs for your mechs (which usually involved replacing SRMs with several medium lasers).

Only 4 or 5 playable mechs. (When the tabletop game had 16 starter designs, why limit us to a couple shitty scout mechs?)

To an extent, it actually made good game-design sense they did it this way.  Locust, Wasp, Stinger, and COmmando were all 20 ton mechs.  The Chameleon was sort of a bonus mech if you managed to get it out of the training session alive.[/quote]

Combat was weak. ( Its too hard to TELL US WHAT WAS HIT AND DAMAGED?)

Would have sworn it did this.  Well, I do recall there was a mech sheet you could open up and see what was damaged.

No real freedom. (Basically you go to every point on the map, read some text.  Yay.)

As far as 1988 games go, being able to wander around in your mechs and visit various towns was much greater freedom than most games offer.  There was even a hidden jail complex you could find to liberate an additional pilot.

No genuine character advancement. (Random skill gains in the training levels, then nothing.)

I seem to recall you could train your characters.  It wasn't really advantaged character advancement, but then, neither is the character advancement in Battletech.  Bear in mind that this game actually came out before the Mechwarrior sourcebook was released.

Tons of pointless random combat.

I enjoyed it, so no complaints there.

The endgame was one of the worst endgames in a videogame ever.  (Unlock multiple colored doors.  WHAT FUCKING GIANT ROBOT GAME HAS A FINALE WHERE YOU OPEN COLORED AND NUMBERED DOORS?)

The endgame was pretty much a protracted copy protection scheme.

[quite]Outside of its very nice graphics, there is very little reason to play this game.  There were RPGs before its day that were better.  Compare it to Wizardry, or Ultima, or Might & Magic or Phantasy Star, or Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. 
It comes off very badly.[/quote]
Comparing it to those, it comes off entirely different, I wouldn't say better or worse.

But, in all honestly, I don't expect a 1988 game to have held up that well.

[geldonyetich2]

No genuine character advancement. (Random skill gains in the training levels, then nothing.)

I seem to recall you could train your characters.  It wasn't really advantaged character advancement, but then, neither is the character advancement in Battletech.  Bear in mind that this game actually came out before the Mechwarrior sourcebook was released.

Actually, I was wrong about this.  According to Wikipedia the first edition of Mechwarrior came out in 1985.  Still, I don't think they bothered to integrate the system in there, which was still pretty simplistic by RPG standards (they pretty much just had two attributes to determine how good of a mech pilot you were).

Still, there was quite a Robust advancement system in The Crescent Hawk's Inception that largely revolved around credits, which could be used to upgrade your battlemechs, purchase personal weapons and armor (some fights took place on foot), and purchase training.

[lesion]

Don't we need 3 people then?  One person is the giant, one the space marines and one is the water nymphs or something right?

I don't think every faction needs to be used. Three is still probably too few for anything but some messing around, wah wah. Wah.

[Zetleft]

All this mech talk got me thinking about MissionForce: CyberStorm from Sierra.  That was a great turn based iso-view game.  Game even came with an extra multiplay-only CD in the box so you could give it to a friend for matches against each other, though I don't think I even really used it.  Fun campaign, random maps, customizable mechs and pilots.  Not quite worthy of a top 20 but at least gets an honorable mention. 

[Strazos]

I actually have Giants. I got it as a pack-in once, but I never loaded it up.

[Zetleft]

I actually have Giants. I got it as a pack-in once, but I never loaded it up.

Gameplay was pretty good but the cutscenes were fucking hilarious.   Worth playing just for those. 

[geldonyetich2]

The balanace was kludgy and the game was buggy in several places, but still, I can't deny Giants had that kind of artistic soul to it that many games are sorely lacking.  I wonder how well it'd run on a 2005ish computer.  Games from about that point usually are cursed by being too new to run on an emulator but too old to run compatibility free on many newer computers.

[Yoru]

The balanace was kludgy and the game was buggy in several places, but still, I can't deny Giants had that kind of artistic soul to it that many games are sorely lacking.  I wonder how well it'd run on a 2005ish computer.  Games from about that point usually are cursed by being too new to run on an emulator but too old to run compatibility free on many newer computers.

It ran great on my '04-era XP PC. I haven't tried it out on my new Vista box, which is what worries me.

With 3, you might be able to do a passable meccs v kabuto or reapers v kabuto (with the 2 being on the lesser team), maybe even meccs v reapers, but that'd be less balanced. 4v4 mecc/mecc or reaper/reaper used to be awesome though. And yeah, Giants is one of those games you should play through for the cutscenes and gameplay, although sacrifice the gameplay if need be to make it through the game.

[Roac]

Damnit, I left off TradeWars.  For shame, that was a fucking awesome game.  Who to bump...

Edit: ...God of War it is.

[geldonyetich2]

So some reason, I'm exuberant to see God of War bumped by Trade Wars.