ILX'S 100 GREATEST VIDEO GAMES EVER

^nerd bracket

http://i-eclectica.org/wordpress/wp-content/my%20images/People/ActHoffmanRainman.jpg

#90: Super Mario Bros 2 (1988)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Super_Mario_Bros_2.jpg
http://www.ugo.com/a/worst-videogame-sequels/images/3.jpg
Developer:Nintendo EAD
Publisher:Nintendo
Original format:NES
Highest position:#10, Jordan Cohen

OKAY! First one of my picks, ridiculously underrated. I spent a small fortune shovelling pounds into one of those Play 10 machines in The Mint in Hull in about 1990 to play this fecker. Completely groovy movement dynamics and didn't really feel like any previous game at the time. Oh how smug I felt when I picked up the first egg and threw it back at that little Dino-looking motherhugger.

Like many another game, all fun completely evaporates when you get to the twat-bastarding ice level.

SMB2? It was kinda disappointing at the time for me (compared with the still epic SMB1), but still leeched months of otherwise wasted time away. I don't remember if SMB3 made the list, but if so I probably voted pretty high for it.

oh and KOTOR is fabulous and you don't have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy it, I don't think.

I really liked Super Mario 2 too, though 3 was obviously even better. I remember reading from somewhere that Super Mario 2 was actually a totally different game in Japan, but the characters were changed to Mario/Luigi/Toad/Princess, and it was then marketed as Super Mario 2 in Europe and the US. This was because the original Japanese Super Mario 2 was basically just Super Mario with new levels, and people thought it wouldn't sell as such in the West.

It's a remake of this game:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yume_K%C5%8Dj%C5%8D:_Doki_Doki_Panic

for the record, i had lots of fun playing wolfenstein 3-D back when it came out.

#89: Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon (1991)
http://content.answers.com/main/content/img/amg/games/drg000/g011/g01172b9e5b.jpg
http://www.ellosnuncaloharian.com/164/imagenes/pantallas/big/eyeofthebe2_2.png
Developer:Westwood Associates
Publisher:SSI
Original format:PC DOS
Highest position:#9, HI DERE

Don't know, never played it.

I'm enjoying how many sequels we're putting in this list!

This is also my shit. But in English, obv. Still got a big pad of half-centimetre squared paper full of level maps, which is half the fun. The Eye of the Beholder games crossed some kind of fun threshold, taking the nerd thrills of Bard's Tale and that Pool of Radiance stuff I could never be arsed with and finally making it a pleasure to actually play. Sure Dungeon Master might've got there slightly early, but that game's just a little bit arid compared to the fleshed out plots and puzzles of this one. II is my pick of the series, but they're all sweet.

I suspect mine and Dan's high placings for this might've been the only votes it needed to chart?

i voted fairly high too. version i played wasn't in spanish but was awesome.

Oh and really I guess this game is still more or less linear but it moved a good way towards making you feel you were free to explore.

In general I'm fairly anti-linearity but pro-storytelling, a lot of my big picks are about the trade-off between those two play elements.

NV, Monkey Island / Lucas Arts fan?

#88: Lords of Midnight (1984)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/LordsOfMidnight.jpg
http://www.zzap64.co.uk/images/screenshots/Lords_Of_Midnight,_The.gif
Developer:Mike Singleton
Publisher:Beyond Software
Original format:Commodore 64
Highest position:#4, Catsup Dude

First game on the list I voted for! Also maybe the first game I ever played for a day non-stop, back when I was eight or something.

I like the first 2 Monkey Island games, a lot, haven't played the others. Didn't really get into any of the other Loom-type games. Back in the early 90s I totally loved point and click, but something about the endless "click-read amusing description-collect object-repeat" seems pretty boring a lot of the time now. One of the reasons I couldn't be arsed with Maniac Mansion - multiple characters = too much pixel hunting to get my head around at the start. I feel like the learning curve on that one in particular is harsh.

I would LOVE to play Doki Doki Panic.

3rd game in a row I voted for. Thought my 9th place might be the highest vote - good work Jon. Lords of Midnight was an obsession for me when it came out, it totally cracks the non-linear story code, maybe the first game to ever do that. Of course it was a hell of a lot easier to win via the adventure game route, aka Morkin Goes for a Walk Up the Side of the Map. But it was the wargame that kept dragging me back, because waking up one morning and looking out of your castle to see an endless line of bad guy armies stretching to the horizon and no reinforcements in sight was fun fun fun. Also the Mongol-looking dude with the round helmet and the pony was HARDCORE

NB playing this on emulator/remake is a big pain without that lovely plastic keyboard overlay.

F'reals Lords of Midnight on the Spectrum was definitely one of those leaps forward where you were just like HOLY SHIT WE'RE LIVING IN THE FUTURE

Mike Singleton is still programming now, y'know? If someone can tell me if "Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows" is worth seeking out, feel free to do so.

True sign of a great RPG game is if you can enjoy it whilst not actually giving a shit about fantasy fiction. LoM succeeds in spades w/that.

You've got the Lords of Midnight format as Comm 64 but it was o.g. Spectrum.

Lords of Midnight was the first game where I thought, FUCK this is massive, a whole world! Elite was the next after that.

True sign of a great RPG game is if you can enjoy it whilst not actually giving a shit about fantasy fiction.

60 Megaton truth bomb. Mrs V finds it very hard to understand that I don't really give a shit about pixies and goblins.

Actually I think she understands perfectly well, she just likes ripping the piss.

I lost touch with Mike Singleton after Midwinter which seemed painfully over-complicated and probably needed a nice keyboard overlay.

#87: Double Dragon II - The Revenge (1988)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/DD2_Flyer.jpg
http://www.gooddealgames.com/articles/Double%20Dragon/Double%20Dragon%202.gif
Developer:Technos Japan Corp
Publisher:Technos Japan Corp
Original format:Arcade
Highest position:#13, Euler

lol for shit games I sure spent plenty of arcade money on the Double Dragons. There's no actual skill at all involved in playing these, is there?

Euler is gonna be one of the CAMRA dudes on this thread, isn't he.

Oh man, I don't think I ever played this one. They had the first Double Dragon at Godfathers Pizza in my town, which for a while was the only pizza place we had. All I remember: "Oh shit two Abobos!"

#86: Master of Magic (1993)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/Master_of_Magic_boxcover.jpg
http://www.ibiblio.org/GameBytes/issue21/greviews/momrev02.gif
Developer:Simtex
Publisher:Microprose
Original format:PC DOS
Highest position:#2, Euler

Don't think I've ever even heard of that. Looks like it lives up my alley.

That Double Dragon II cover has it ALL! Whipping gutterpunk women in the face, ball and chain, exposed asscheek, full moon, angry subhuman swinging a club, helicoptor!

oh fucking AAAA I love Master of Magic; I too do not care about pixies and dragons but I still play this bastard and love it...it's worth emulating DOS or windows for.

Master of Magic is like Civ but with spells and pixies and shit...you get to build cities but each race has special buildings and offensive units they can build; and you create heroes who can level individually and eventually beat entire armies by themselves...and like Archon you get to play the combat, not just sim it like in Civ.

Diablo 2 = another one I haven't played. Got the first one, liked it in short doses, but the gameplay is essentially "click left mouse button as quick as you can". Hope they varied that up a bit for the sequel.

They didn't. But it was still fun.

whoa what is CAMRA? google pops up Campaign for Real Ale which I know about from other sources but I don't get the reference? B/c I do like real ale but mostly I like kicking the shit out of bad guys in video games. And Double Dragon has that in spades. I don't think skill's required, no, but sheer visceral bloodlust is. And back in the day this was as realistic as it got, which was cool: baseball bats rule (is that the CAMRA part?).

Euler did you ever play Fantasy General? Another example of the fantasy gubbins having nothing to do with the awesomeness of the game itself.

(The CAMRA thing was a joke about you repping for Old School, Trad fun. It's pure love tho, honest.)

Man, I tried to play Lords Of Midnight just now, I had no idea what was going on. I gotta sleep and then work, but I'll have something to kill a bit of time when I get home.

yeah I love the old school and the new school and I feel the love, no prob

I don't know Fantasy General, no, sorry, but it sounds nice---although it sounds hex-y, and the closest I got to playing through a hex-type game was Europa Universalis, which wasn't really that hex-y.

Yeah Fantasy General is Panzer General with a different tile set, really, so it's a turn-based wargame but I think that series just blends the playability versus deep strategy mix just right - easy to pick up, hard to master, as some old board game used to say.

actually it's funny, a lot of the games on the list are old school but are a different old school than I was into, because I didn't have a PC or commodore or TI or whatever, just an Atari and then a Colecovision and then NES. Once I got a PC in 1988 I was all about Chuck Yeager Flight Sim and Earl Weaver Baseball for many years, but I doubt they crossed over the pond much (well, that and Bard's Tale, which I suspect will come up later in voting).

#85: WipEout 2097 (1996)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/WipEout2097Cover.jpg
http://www.vpltd.com/images/wopic_02.jpg
Developer:Psygnosis
Publisher:Psygnosis
Original format:PlayStation
Highest position:#3, Ledge

yeah one of my friends is a trainspotter type for the Panzer General company, he researches old German tanks and updates their stats for them. At least he makes a little coin from that kind of aspie nonsense.

Oh man I remember the time I played the first Wipeout, it was on a Sega Saturn. That first time I hit the first big jump in the first level = GAAASSSSSP!!

I only played the original Wipeout, never 2097, but all I remember from it is how dramatically the walls would slow you down. You'd glance at the corner at the screen and find out you were going 928 km/hr and life would be good, and then one nick on the wall, and it was all over.

Even better, from 1994...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b16upFloYak

I remember kind of being frustrated that PC would never get a Mario game, and the side scrollers were close approximations but I kind of remember controller lag being a big problem for a long time. Maybe I am mis-remembering but now that they have emulators and know all about frame lag and stuff it makes a lot of sense. You were just never going to get that SMOOTH scrolling, that instantaneous controller feedback, etc. Going back and playing console games on the original equipment, the smoothness of everything is very apparent.

wow this is a pretty sick list. no pokemon games tho?

ha, wow, we had ABUSE and I'm sure I played it a lot but that longplay video is triggering no moments of memory, no familiar music or sound effects or anything. you see one minute and you've basically got it. i remember it being ... playable? sooooo gray and ugly-looking.

Abuse is 96 though.

What about speccy/commodore/st/amiga games, do they count as 'pc games'? That's my only chance of input pre gen 5.