It begins!
You know what? I'm just going to do it. No more procrastination, no more delay, no more shifting the ranking around to accommodate the latest greatest game I've played. No it's time. Time to deliver on a mission I set for myself back in the first glorious age of this blog before everything went dark for a few years. It's happening folks, I am beginning the Top 100 ranking of my all-time favourite video games.
These will be games I've played so if any obvious contenders are not there it's because I never got around to playing them or I did and then forgot about them meaning they probably wouldn't have made the list anyway. It's all entirely my own personal opinion of the games that mean the most to me. It is the sum total of my best experiences in gaming over several decades of playing them. So where better to begin my Top 100 game ranking than by err... the honourable mentions?
Yes let's start there, with the games that just missed the cut. Games I felt I couldn't leave out of this list for a whole number of reasons. There will be further honourable mentions as we delve into the list properly but these will be more along the lines of sequels and spinoffs that could have made the cut. Here are the games that almost got in there, excellent games to be sure but there isn't room for everyone. Everyone behold...
The Honourable Mentions
Super Mario Bros (1985)
Where else could I start and where better to begin? The grandaddy of them all! The big kahuna! The top dog! The game that didn't quite start the story of Mario but certainly would have been the start of the gaming habit for a whole generation of gamers growing up in the late 80's and early 90's. An iconic aesthetic, bright colours, an instantly recognisable soundtrack and a well judged example of game design that does what it needs to do and calls it a day whilst the going is still good.
I may have mentioned around these parts before how my first gaming machines were the quintessentially British Amstrad CPC 464 and the Spectrum that held pride of place in my front room as a child. Machines both close to my heart to be sure but they could produce nothing even close to what I saw when my cousin showed off his new NES to me on a visit one day.
The NES wasn't released in the UK until 1987 and it was pretty much at the end of its life cycle when I got one around 1992-93. Also there was no Internet or word of mouth around these things back then so this game hit me like a lightning bolt at the tender age of eight or nine. Describing the premise feels like putting words to a fever dream. A plumber in a kingdom full of mushrooms saving a princess from a dragon dinosaur thing by stomping bad mushrooms, headbutting bricks and flying down flagpoles.
None of it mattered at the time though and as time goes on and I look back at it, I think my appreciation for this game has only grown even as my tastes moves on to other things. In many ways this is a perfect game and all these years later it still finds its fans both old and new. As a grown up I think I appreciate it more for it's place in cultural history than as a gaming experience but just to be clear on this point, the game is excellent and only a pack of space relegates it to the honourable mentions.
The Battle of Olympus (1988)
From the crowd pleasing favourite to something a little more obscure now. You see it might be hard to imagine now in the age of Steam sales, cheap digital distribution and Game Pass but there was a time when games were expensive, like really expensive relative to what you were getting for the money. As such you didn't have huge game libraries back in the day waiting to be played and the likelihood was you played and replayed your small collection of games over and over again. To this day there are many NES mainstays I've never played purely due to the cost of game cartridges back then and a general lack of inclination or time to play them now. I promise one of these days I will get around to playing the original Zelda and Metroid games but that moment is not now.
Anyhow this is the one and only reason why I played and replayed that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and it's infuriating timed underwater dam level with the electric seaweed and the ridiculous level of difficulty. It's also the reason why I played The Battle of Olympus more than once and perhaps explains why I still remember it with fondness all these years later. A side-scrolling platforming adventure with a light sense of RPG progression about it. You travel through ancient Greece meeting Gods, battling famous monsters of legend and trying not to miss the next jump or die at the hands of the creature who just landed on your head.
This was basically my introduction to the idea of the RPG even if the game wasn't quite an RPG. It has a nice aesthetic with some intuitive exploration that opened up more of the world as you went along. I won't say it was without its frustrations and I do recall there being some grind to collect all the olives you use as currency. Still though this was a game that was refreshingly different to anything else in my limited library of NES games at the time and so it gets a special mention here.
Smash TV (1990)
A game of its time and ahead of its time, Smash TV was one of those games that was on everything back in the early 90's. Whilst I do remember playing the SNES version at some point, I think it was the Amstrad version I owned and which got most of my attention. It's a gaudy steroidal nightmarish game show where you have to fight for your life against increasingly overwhelming odds. It's loud, it's violent, it's intense! It feels like it could have been a tie-in to The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In my memory it looks and feels like a twin stick shooter but those didn't exist outside the arcades at the time and wouldn't be a part of home gaming until the later part of the decade. I think it speaks to how forward thinking the game design is here though. Certainly with the arrival of the noughties this genre would undergo a revival and reinvention especially in the indie space where there is now no shortage of games that feel like they were inspired in some way by Smash TV. I'm only surprised no one has come along to give it the modern reboot treatment at this point but I can only think it's a matter of time.
Kabuki: Quantum Fighter (1990)
Back to the NES and what just might be my introduction to the concept of cyberpunk. This is a moody side-scrolling action platformer and a tale of a man whose consciousness is projected into a supercomputer to fight off a malevolent alien computer virus that is threatening to take over the defences of the planet. Due to your characters ancestry, once he arrives inside the computer his consciousness takes the form of a Kabuki warrior and so off we go to save the world.
Yes it's one of those plot summaries that feels like it came out of a random word generator but this was another solid addition to my limited NES game collection. Your brightly coloured hero whips his long hair in the direction of his many foes throughout a dark biomechanical realm. It was all very involving and immersive for it's time. A relatively short game with some difficulty spikes but there is enough here to keep it all pretty engaging for as long as it lasts. It feels like this is one of those forgotten curiousities these days even though it was developed by nostalgic fan favourite developers Human Entertainment. In any case it's a curiosity and a mashup of ideas that works far better than you might think.
Ignition (1996)
Around these here parts I've opined before about how a good demo can catch the imagination. Such was the case with Ignition, a top down racer that is fairly bare bones by modern standards but which had a charm to it that has stayed with me all these years later. Don't think this one lingered much in popular memory alas but it's worth a call out here.
You pick one of several different race cars and naturally you pick the cop car because it has the siren. You race against a variety of different vehicle types. You boost and drift around corners using very arcade style driving physics and you generally have a good time with it. It wasn't the longest or largest racing game even by the standards of the mid/late 90's but there was something very moreish in the core gameplay here.
I would grab the full game some time later and rather enjoy it however I think it's fair to say I played the demo exhaustively and can still recall with fondness the thrill of racing over the train line in time to avoid the oncoming locomotive and see your competition behind you smash straight into it. Driving games are not typically my thing but this very much was.
NCAA Final Four 97 (1996)
This is a random one, don't think it was the first sports title I ever played but it was certainly the first one I got to grips with and rather enjoyed at the same time. I can't say I'm a basketball fan, I've enjoyed what little I've seen of it but it was something on the outer periphery of my interests back in the hallowee decade of the 90's. Every so often I'll dip my toe into the latest release but by and large it's remained a distant source of fascination with me.
Not so much here of course as this game still lingers in the memory all these years later. It's another game where the demo felt like a whole experience unto itself and some years later I would chance upon a bargain bin discount version of it that I instantly picked up. By all measures it's a simple game compared to the bells and whistles of its modern brethren. It wasn't loaded with features or the best graphics but there was enough here to hook me in and keep playing.
It was pick up and play in the most earnest sense of the term and it succeeds in a way that a lot of modern games do not. The first 'good' basketball' game I ever came across might not be the best one out there but it earns it's spot here in the honourable mentions.
Incubation: Battle Isle Phase Four (1997)
Another pivotal moment in my personal history of playing video games. I believe this was the first turn based combat game I ever played, the first of many as it would turn out as this is still one of my go-to genres even now. I can't say I was a die hard fan of the Battle Isle series and in fact I think this was the only one I ever played. Basic setup is space marine types versus alien types played over successive rounds of turn based combat.
Not a revolutionary concept even at the point of its original release, it was certainly new to me and hand on heart I can't remember playing any games of this type before this one. It clicked with me despite what seemed like a vertical difficulty curve. Now it's not a series that has a foothold in the collective mindset of pop culture nostalgia. For anyone born this side of the year 2000 the Battle Isle series barely gets a mention anywhere these days. It made an impression though with its attempt at conveying grim sci-fi aesthetics in a way that was mostly but not entirely derivative of Aliens.
Honestly I don't think my young brain was quite ready for weighing up everything that goes into making a well calculated turn based strike upon hated alien scum. I remember getting my rear handed back to me with fond regards many a time and I'm pretty certain I never got to the end of it. That said it was a humble, maybe even an understated success by the standards of the time and worthy of rememberance here.
NetStorm: Islands At War (1997)
Man this is a random list isn't it? I feel I can get away with a little of that here though. Here was one of those games that had a novel hook for the late 90's which rings a little quaint today. It's a real time strategy game, you play as a priest of an unspecified god who goes around their island hovering in the sky. You build up units and defences to protect your island from the residents of other islands who are coming to sacrifice you to their gods or somesuch. It all had a vaguely surreal feel to it as I recall.
Chiefly designed to be, get this... an online game played over an internet of sorts, I never actually played it online and mainly stuck to the single player campaign. Honestly it probably wasn't the best example of this type of game even for it's time. I recall it was a little fiddly with a lot of cross crossing paths being built to connect the islands, also some hilariously over the top voice acting for the priest as well.
I'm pretty sure I hadn't played any of the OG Command & Conquer games when I played this so NetStorm may have indeed been my introduction to the idea of real time strategy. So despite its flaws and quirks which endeared itself to me over time it gets the nod here. Certainly not 'Top 100' game material but a novel attempt at something different.
Oni (2001)
Speaking of cherished game memories, I still have clear recollections of purchasing my PlayStation 2 from Toys "R" Us back in what I want to say was the summer of 2001. I remember it coming with a shiny DVD copy of Three Kings starring George Clooney as well as this game from Bungie who incidentally would launch the first Halo later that same year. It also didn't come with a memory card which was sold separately, this would annoy me when I got back home.
Oni is a third person anime styled cyberpunk action game. It had a cool cover, a nice sense of art style for a 3D game and overall an impressive sense of a cold dystopian sci-fi setting. It wouldn't have been my natural first choice for a game to highlight the strengths of the PS2 but thinking back I can't remember if there was much choice available at the time. Certainly better games were soon to come for the PS2 but for a starter this wasn't half bad.
Thinking back on it, it's definitely the aforementioned sense of mood and atmosphere to the whole thing that sticks with me all these years later. The gameplay flowed well and the game overstay it's welcome. In gaming terms it's a neat little time capsule of a world that once was. Of a Bungie yet to reach the heights of superstardom that would come with the arrival of Halo: Combat Evolved. Given Bungie is under the Sony umbrella these days, some kind of retro release or remaster might not be out of the question but perhaps it arrived at just the wrong moment to be widely remembered now.
Also Three Kings wasn't a half bad film.
Battlefield 1942 (2002)
Me and the Battlefield series go way back, all the way back in fact to it's very first entry. It's been a long road when I look back at it. As of typing this out I'm a week or so out from having played the promising Battlefield 6 open beta, I've started playing Battlefield 2042 again as a result after it's less than ideal launch a few years ago. That game followed up Battlefield V which was also not the best game at launch. It's been a rough few years to be a Battlefield fan is what I'm saying. DICE have really struggled to nail the landing even if they always eventually bring their games up to scratch.
But when it's good, it's so very good indeed. Massive scale for a multiplayer shooter was a very novel idea back in 2002. Heck widespread broadband Internet was a novel idea back on 2002. Somehow though it all came together at just the right time to deliver an unforgettable experience. Whether on foot, tank or plane, this was an exceptional game for it's time. I'd played games set in World War II before this but none captured the scale of a theatre of combat in the way this game did.
Yes it suffered from the age old Battlefield problem of traversing a long distance only to get shot at from someone you never saw but the better parts of this game always outweighed the worst. It would be eclipsed by a number of its sequels in the intervening years but it all starts with the inaugural entry back in the days of modest internet connectivity. It's a humble game in comparison to the modern product but it's a worthy one of inclusion even if it doesn't quite make the final cut here.
In Memoriam (2003)
A murder mystery where you have to crack clues, solve puzzles, make sense of a pile of evidence and documentation and read taunting emails from the serial killer sent to your own personal email address. In Memoriam was an original way of tackling the crime genre in video gaming and I can't think any games that have tried the same thing in the same way all these years since.
Think murder mystery mashed up with a copy of Microsoft Encarta, some clunky early internet design and a slight dash of cinematics from the Windows Movie Maker era and you have a loose idea of what this game was aiming at. Truth be told, the puzzles could be a little opaque and it perhaps didn't have the most intuitive design in terms of knowing where or what to do next but I can appreciate this game for thinking big about it's relatively big idea.
The closest thing I can think of on the modern era is something like Hypnospace Outlaw and even then that's a pretty different game. Just think, in the age of widespread pervasive social media what a game like this could look like now? I know we have augmented reality type games now but this felt different from that as well. In the final word In Memoriam is a game that defies easy comparison and probably deserves more than to be a forgotten curiosity but them's the breaks.
Super Monkey Ball Jr. (2002)
You know, putting this list together does reveal that I have not been big on the classic Nintendo franchises. Part of this is due to the aforementioned cost of gaming back in the early 90's and even now, Nintendo is not a company I associate with low cost gaming, especially when it comes to it's in-house properties. Nonetheless Super Mario slipped through because how could it not? Also this curiosity from my treasured years playing my Nintendo DS, Super Monkey Ball Jr.
Actually I think it was a Game Boy Advance game but the back compatibility on the DS was just one of the many reasons why that system was such a winner. As with most series traditionally (but, in this case not exclusively) found on Nintendo hardware, I haven't played a great many Monkey Ball games but the one I have was an absolute winner. The concept is in the title, you are a monkey in a ball and you tilt and move levels to capture all the bananas contained therein.
The concept is simplicity itself and it played like a dream and that's about it for this game really. In incidental news I have recently acquired a Nintendo Switch Lite just as everyone else has moved onto the Switch 2 so maybe I'll get around to correcting this Nintendo deficiency in the not too distant future.
Burnout Paradise (2008)
Burnout is another series I feel like I've been with since the very start. The first three games were highlights of my PS2/GameCube era. Just solid breakneck racing games that ran the knife edge between risk and reward. Not to mention that they all looked great for the systems they were on at the time. As a general rule I am very big on these games and am also a little mystified as to why the series hasn't had a proper new entry that wasn't a remaster in over a decade...
But back to Burnout Paradise, arriving back in the relatively early days of HD gaming this was Burnout in the open world genre. All the racing, all the destruction, all the good stuff on a much larger scale than before. Vicarious vehicular irresponsibility has rarely felt so good. Everything flowed well, it played intuitively, it felt like a model case study in how you take an established property and make it into an open world game.
So yes, it's a little baffling that the series hasn't really done much in over a decade. Apparently it's remaster was pretty good but whether it makes the kind of money that EA considers worthwhile is another thing entirely. I don't play many racing games as a general rule but if this series ever comes back in a major way I'd be well up to see what it could pull off these days.
Hawken (2012)
Robots, mecha, bipedal tanks. There are a lot of ways of referring to one of my favourite things in the world. But if it's a massive walking weapon with a pilot then usually I want to be playing said pilot in a hard fought war of attrition as I look to fill the battlefield with piles of scrap metal. Naturally this is all a way of saying that Hawken was pretty good and that I wish it had more success in its original form.
A free to play online shooter piloting mecha is a winning idea on paper, especially when the person doing the reading is yours truly. Credit to the developers of this game but they really nailed the feel of giant war machines going to war with each other. All the various models felt different, you got the sense of scale but also a sense of speed. The sound and presentation was top notch. It was a winning game in a lot of ways until well, it wasn't.
The game was shut down (at least on PC) only to be relaunched in recent times as a PVE team shooter with heavy monetisation to boot which hasn't seemed to have gone down well with most people. Believe there are fan efforts online to relaunch the original game in some capacity but it's very possible that the game has had its moment come and go now. Shame really, I enjoyed this a lot. It's brief run will keep it out of the top 100 though.
Tales from the Borderlands (2014–2015)
Last one for now and the only example of the episodic game to make the honourable mentions is this effort to inject some halfway decent story and character into the Borderlands franchise. Sorry that probably comes off as rather dismissive when I say it like that. Not taking it back though, I'm not sure I think very much of the storytelling in the main Borderlands games but here I feel like they pulled it off and actually made me care what happens to the characters in a Borderlands game.
Don't get me wrong I've played the first two games and the pre-sequel. I had a good time but it was a good time mainly shooting up the place with the bazillion variants of every weapon you can possibly imagine. I like the general sense of a sci-fi off-world Mad Max-esque planet that's big on insanity and low on subtlety but by and large I didn't come looking for well told stories or character arcs. In turn the games themselves rarely provided much in this vein to surprise me.
Then Telltale Games came along with their standard brand of branching narrative choose your own style adventure gaming and made me invested in some of the characters that inhabit Pandora and it's orbit. It was a neat thing to behold. Nothing radical was changed about the world or it's setting, it's just that someone went that extra mile to populate this world with characters I could conceivably care about. Least for yours truly, that effort paid off and now any Borderlands games I play in the future will have some work to do on this regard
...
There we are for the honourable mentions, at least for now. Doubtless I will wake in the dead of night remembering some oddball curiosity I forgot to list here. Should I be struck by such revelation I will add it to the comments on this entry. Tune in next time for the actual beginnings of the actual top 100 where we might actually talk about games in the actual list...
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