The official Piss All Over Everyone's Top 20 Thread

[Azazel]

Rise of Nations almost made my top 20 original long list.

Cannon Fodder won over every other RTS out though.

Has ANYONE here played Cannon Fodder? :( :(

It was in one of my early versions of my top 20 but got squeezed out. If we had a top 30 or even 25, it'd still be there.

War. Never had so much fun.

This needs to arrive on XBLA. Now.

[eldaec]

War. Never had so much fun.

War never been so much fun
Go to you brother
kill him with your gun
leave him lying in his uniform
dying in the sun

[cmlancas]

War. Never had so much fun.

War never been so much fun
Go to you brother
kill him with your gun
leave him lying in his uniform
dying in the sun
then we're having fun

[Sky]

Janie's got a gun

[schild]

For those wondering, I have transcribed roughly 3/4 of the entries into clean spreadsheet form. Here's a few things:
 

• A lot of people don't know the developer of their favorite games. Or at least some of them.
• Publisher and developer are two different things.
• There's a lot of games that obviously made the cut due to nostalgia.
• Only one person, thus far, listed 2 games from the same series. Thanks
• Some real surprises on the lists from some people.
• Taking the major publishers into account, someone is going to get the "Corporate Whore of F13 Award." Those being Ubisoft, Activision, EA, Squeenix, Interplay, Microprose, etc. Two of those may not be obvious, but if you think it isn't you don't remember PC gaming in the 80s and 90s.
• Not enough SimCity love.
• You can really tell when people became gamers
• I'm pretty sure there will be many graphs.

[Phildo]

• Taking the major publishers into account, someone is going to get the "Corporate Whore of F13 Award." Those being Ubisoft, Activision, EA, Squeenix, Interplay, Microprose, etc. Two of those may not be obvious, but if you think it isn't you don't remember PC gaming in the 80s and 90s.

Maxis, Broderbund and Sierra baby!

[HaemishM]

Now that I've actually had the chance to play the Orange Box, I'd have to remove something to put Portal on the list. That game is such concentrated win it's painful.

[WayAbvPar]

• Taking the major publishers into account, someone is going to get the "Corporate Whore of F13 Award." Those being Ubisoft, Activision, EA, Squeenix, Interplay, Microprose, etc. Two of those may not be obvious, but if you think it isn't you don't remember PC gaming in the 80s and 90s.

Maxis, Broderbund and Sierra baby!

Microprose. I think I had like 6 games from them on my list.

Remember the good ol days, when you could look at who made the game and feel pretty confident it wasn't a steaming pile of shit? Hell, I remember feeling confident when I saw a game in a flat record album-style box. EA made good shit back then. My how the times change. [/list]

[Prospero]

• A lot of people don't know the developer of their favorite games. Or at least some of them.

Or they are lazy.

[SnakeCharmer]

Or they don't care.

I could totally give a rat's ass who makes/publishes a game as long as it's fun.

[Strazos]

Not the point of the list, asshat.

[Yegolev]

Or they don't care.

I could totally give a rat's ass who makes/publishes a game as long as it's fun.

I submit that you should care, since it will help you determine if a new game will be fun or not.  An example would be Blue Dragon, for which knowing who made it rather than who published it, or even the name of the studio that developed it, would be all you needed to know in order to evaluate the game without even seeing it.  When you realize this, you will have transcended into the realm of the Spiritual Successors.

[Phildo]

It's also good to know when a studio you like has been bought up and gutted by one of the major publishers, so you can avoid their games in the future.

Or, more importantly, you would have known that anything that said Microprose or Sierra in the early-mid 90s was golden.  I'd even go so far as to say LucasArts, for a time.

[Roac]

I submit that you should care, since it will help you determine if a new game will be fun or not.  An example would be Blue Dragon, for which knowing who made it rather than who published it, or even the name of the studio that developed it, would be all you needed to know in order to evaluate the game without even seeing it.  When you realize this, you will have transcended into the realm of the Spiritual Successors.

Sometimes.  For example, Blue Dragon was worked on by two groups, one of which had only a single DS game.  It's worth pointing out that staff change, and quality can be effected by both who leads the ship, and the quality of the (to us) mostly faceless staff that works on it.  You could follow the 'big names' that were attached to Blue Dragon, but there are quite a few big names whose pet projects don't turn out so well.  It's not that it's worthless to look at either or both of these things, only that it's only one ingredient.  Die hard fans my well care about this level of detail.  For most people, reading a couple reviews or checking some consensus poll (metacritic, gamespot's user score, etc) is more than enough to know.

Or you could see that it's a JRPG, decide you don't care for JRPGs, and thus put it into the unfun category.  Doesn't matter who is behind it or how good it rates. 

[Samwise]

[schild]

Finished the spreadsheet. And since people didn't follow directions, I typed it all out by hand. Making it take much LONGER.

7,480 cells.

1. People without dates didn't get entered. People without companies didn't get entered. Whine all you want. After that many things types, I couldn't be bothered to look up shit. Nor could I be bothered to PM a handful of people because the first half of people had almost no one correct theirs (3 of them did).
2. If you listed 2 games from the same series, I took out the one that was further down. I hope you didn't go from 20 to 1.
3. I want to curl up and die. Will work on graphs and such tonight.

[DeathInABottle]

Cool, I was just going to ask for an update.  Looking forward to the results!

Two way late notes about my list:

Based on what I've been reading here, I think that Planescape: Torment, Deus Ex, and System Shock all would've made the cut, had I actually played them.  I'll get around to them some sweet day.  Same goes for Portal.  I don't have a current gen console, and my laptop is ass.

Surprised at the lack of Sierra love, especially for Quest for Glory.  I think ONE other person listed a QfG game, but that was it.

[Jain Zar]

Glad to know I wasted my time doing a top 20 because I wouldn't go find some fucking date of release numbers!

[schild]

Glad to know I wasted my time doing a top 20 because I wouldn't go find some fucking date of release numbers!

Back off, hoss. I asked nicely to the first handful of people and you were one of the ones that didn't respond. Would have taken you about 5-10 minutes at Moby Games. Meanwhile, had *I* done them all, it would've been that multiplied by way too many. Article would have been delayed even further.

[Jain Zar]

I did reply though.  Admitted, it was a very rude reply, but I did respond.

[schild]

Finally figured out how to make very coherent graphs in Open Office. Before they were only half coherent.

I promise not to compare the number of cows in America to the number of people who liked Final Fantasy VII.

Here's a preview:


I'm doing a bunch of other stuff, but organizing the info is a pain in the ass. A Big Pain In The Ass. Article Delayed.

Apologies. I do have the next two days off though.

[Margalis]

I suspect if you charted the age of the respondents you'd find that 1999 was when the average poster was in their prime gaming years. In other words, the chart is probably more a function of respondent age than the actual quality of games.

[schild]

Or 1999 was when Planescape came out. Along with some other huge games.

But yes, you can do a lot of age-range guessing from the charts.

1999:
Planescape: Torment
Unreal Tournament
Everquest
Alpha CEntauri
Soul Calibur
System Shock 2
Homeworld
Age of Empires 2
Dungeon Keeper 2
HOMM 3
Shogun Total War
Counter Strike
Freespace 2
Jagged Alliance
Shenmue
SF Alpha 3
Tekken Tag

So I take it back.

1999 was pretty much just the best year to be a gamer. Period. Regardless of Age.

[Velorath]

Shenmue actually made 1999 worse for me.

[schild]

Shenmue actually made 1999 worse for me.

That's what's called the minority though. Not exactly an argument against 1999 though.

[Velorath]

Shenmue actually made 1999 worse for me.

That's what's called the minority though. Not exactly an argument against 1999 though.

I don't know that it's the minority.  It's not like the series caught on like wildfire or anything (having died with II). 

1991 was a particularly strong year to me, but then I was heavily into RPG's at the time and that year saw the release of Final Fantasy II (IV), 3 (not actually) Final Fantasy Gameboy games, Dragon Warrior III, Might & Magic III,  Pools of Darkness, Death Knights of Krynn, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, and Eye of the Beholder II (among a ton of other stuff like Super Castlevania IV, Super Mario World, Street Fighter II, Monkey Island II, Lemmings, Gain Ground, Captain America and the Avengers, and Battletoads).

Edit:  Also, it looks like 1999 was a great year for PC gamers, but was complete shit for people who mostly played on consoles.

[Endie]

While it would be nice to believe that 2007's upswing in the number of titles named marks a return to form for the gaming industry, I suspect that it's just the Radiohead Effect, so called because it got OK Computer all those album of the century type awards: our MTV-generation, jump-cut, short-focussed brains simply remember more games from 2007, and have yet to play them long enough to find their annoying bits.  So you get people saying "ooo, Portal is the best game evah."

[Velorath]

While it would be nice to believe that 2007's upswing in the number of titles named marks a return to form for the gaming industry, I suspect that it's just the Radiohead Effect, so called because it got OK Computer all those album of the century type awards: our MTV-generation, jump-cut, short-focussed brains simply remember more games from 2007, and have yet to play them long enough to find their annoying bits.  So you get people saying "ooo, Portal is the best game evah."

The flipside to that argument is the nostalgia factor, causing people to remember games from years past as being better than they actually were.

[WayAbvPar]

I suspect if you charted the age of the respondents you'd find that 1999 was when the average poster was in their prime gaming years. In other words, the chart is probably more a function of respondent age than the actual quality of games.

I think this would prove to be very telling. Most of my titles came from my first 25 years of life or so (IIRC), with many falling in the 14-20 years old range. Having the eternal energy and free time of a teenager makes for more enjoyable gaming.

And I didn't have a single 1999 game on my list. At least I don't think I did. In fact, I only played 3 of the ones Schild listed.

[Yegolev]

stuff I agree with

I was trying to say all that except with fewer words.

[Yegolev]

I have thought about the age thing a bit, and also the Radiohead Effect.  I knew the time thing would be an issue with me since I have had less and less free time as I sail towards being a corpse, which is why I try to not use criteria like how much I played it or even how much fun it might have been if it was at a time when I didn't really have anything else to play (Ultima VII, EQ).  It's still subjective but I tried to compensate, and I still think Uncharted is completely awesome, unlike Bioshock which impressed initially but ended with MEH.  I'd still leave Portal on there since in my mind it's been FOREVER since I played it and I still think back fondly due to its incredibly low fluff-to-fun ratio.

This data is probably horribly biased but I still want to see the charts.

[Jain Zar]

Yeah, not that my list is counted, but I am pretty sure not a single game on it was released in 99.
Some GOOD games, but very few great ones.

Lemme check my list... nope.. not even any 98 games on it.  Im not even sure any of them were released in 00 either.

And EVERQUEST WAS NEVER GOOD.  EVER.

[schild]

Yeah, not that my list is counted, but I am pretty sure not a single game on it was released in 99.
Some GOOD games, but very few great ones.

Lemme check my list... nope.. not even any 98 games on it.  Im not even sure any of them were released in 00 either.

And EVERQUEST WAS NEVER GOOD.  EVER.

So, now that you might've changed the outcome, you started looking up years.

I believe folks, we have the definition of irony. Any MMOG on the list probably has more to do with friends made while playing the game rather than the game itself.

Also, the top 15 weened from the entire list is pretty damn impressive.

[Jain Zar]

Nope.  No years lookups.  Just vague rememberances. 
And most of my list nobody else picked anyhow so it really wouldn't have mattered.

Look at em.  I am pretty sure I was alone in most of these choices, especially when it came to franchises.

1: Wing Commander - Origin - PC
2: Warlords 2 - Strategic Studies Group - PC
3: Master of Orion 2 - Microprose - PC
4: Phantasy Star 2 - Sega - Genesis
5: Advance Wars 2 - Nintendo - GBA
6: Defender of the Crown - Cinemaware - Commodore 64
7: Ultima 5 - Origin - Commodore 64
8: Splatterhouse - Namco - Turbografx 16
9: Contra - Konami - NES
10: Castlevania - Konami - NES
11: Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries - Microsoft - PC
12: Card Fighter's Clash - SNK - Neo Geo Pocket Color
13: Pathway to Glory Ikusa Islands - Red Lynx - N Gage
14: Phantasy Star Online - Sega - Gamecube
15: Dragon Force - Sega - Saturn
16: Star Wars - Atari - Arcade
17: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic - Bioware - X Box
18: Fallout 2 - Interplay - PC
19: Dragon Warrior 4 - Enix - NES
20: Wizardry Tale of the Forsaken Land - Atlus - PS2

[Sauced]

Any MMOG on the list probably has more to do with friends made while playing the game rather than the game itself.

VDL was surprised there were no MMOGs on my list, as I've been playing them for a decade now.  But as much as I enjoy the genre, they are not the first thing that pops in to my head when listing "games".