Gamespy.com's "Top 50 Games of All Time"

Alex Bischoff writes "In this article, Gamespy.com rates the "Top 50 Games of All Time" (both console and computer games), including commentary from developers at 3DRealms, id Software, Monolith Productions and others. Needless to say, Daikatana is not on the list ;)."

Maniac Mansion

[blogan]

What? Maniac Mansion didn't make it onto the list! That game was great. Pick your characters and depending which characters you pick, you solve the game differently (they all have special talents). I think the only combination that didn't work was picking the two people that could repair the phones, because the phone repairing required another talent. Alot of the game was thinking, but some of it was how fast you could react (such as going into the kitchen and running from Edna to not get caught and then just walk through the kitchen).

If only they'd come out with Maniac Mansion 3.

Again?

[Kupek]

For those of you who don't visit videogame sites with any regularity, you should probably know that these sites do an "Top $num Games" feature damn near every other week. So don't take this one to be the ultimate judgement of anything, if you think something is missing, it's probably because the few people who came up with it (surprise, surprise) have different tastes than you do.

Teenager games

[Dexter77]

That list seems to be made by teenagers who never saw 80's games. There's no doubt that a person who has played games from the beginning of the 80's till today would've made entirelly different list.
I have to say that I'm more than amused of the choices that made to the list.
It's needless to argue about opinions, but some of those choices were like comparing the LOTR to a comic book.

Re:Maniac Mansion

[polar red]

I completely agree ... lucasarts did make some very good games, of which none were on the list :
maniac mansion, day of the tentacle, the monkey island series... And I have the distinct feeling most games mentioned weren't older than 5 years. I guess they only interviewed very young people who didn't even touch a C64 in all there lives.
My number one game of all time is and will ever be Maniac mansion.

Jumpman

[rknop]

Did anybody ever play Jumpman from Epyx on the Commodore 64? I loved that game. Spent many hours playing it back in high school.

More recently, I was sad that Myth II didn't make it to the top-50 list.

-Rob

What a joke

[dh003i]

Please, what kind of "top 50" list is this? they mentioned freaking DukeNukem and Quake -- blatent take offs of Doom -- but left out the best vehicular shooter game of all time, Descent? Descent is hands down a much more revolutionary and realistic game than its land-bound counterparts Doom, Quake, and DukeNukem. Why do I say that? Well, first of all Descent took the first person shooter genre and turned it upside down on its head -- literally. Secondly, Descent's graphics were revolutionary for the time: it was really the only game at the time that really looked 3D. Not to mention, the AI in Descent I(and the rest of the series) is arguably superior to any AI in any other 1st person shooter games. Most impressive, though, is the very realistic perception of physics in the Descent series: when you bump into something, it FEELS like you've bumped into it. Unlike in Duke Nukem or Doom or Quake, where when you bump into something, the legs of the character keep on moving, and it feels like you've just hita squishy force-field or something.

And also, where is Tomb Raider? Tomb Raider was also a revolutionary game, though buggy. It really pulled you in, because you felt like you were actually on some archeological dig.

Bah.

[Snowfox]

That list is painfully biased toward first-person shooters where action games are concerned. I'm not a FPS or strategy fan, so about 2/3 of that list gets a huge yawn.

Let me give props to my faves -

Give me Paradroid 90 on the Amiga. Give me Uridium on the C-64. Give me Attack of the Mutant Camels on the C-64. Give me the NES and Turbo Grafx 16 ports of Galaga. Gate of Thunder and Lords of Thunder on the Turbo Grafx CD are so beautifully perfect they'll bring tears to your eyes, and Super Star Soldier on the Turbo Grafx quite possibly has the most perfectly tweaked play of any shooter ever.

I loved Tempest 2000 on the Saturn (I'm biased - I wrote half of that and most of Tempext/X3 on PSX.) A&E was sweet and very replayable on the Apple ][, but not half as replayable as Lode Runner on the same. Jump Man was great on every platform, and cloyingly cute as it is, Flicky may have been the best Genesis game.

Re:The early games got shafted

[Kupek]

Well no shit you're not going to recognize the games if you don't play them anymore. If there was a "Top 50 Greatest Basketball Players of All Time" list, and you don't follow basketball, would you expect to recognize everyone on the list?

I'd also like to point out there is a big difference between the greatest games of all time, and the most influential games of all time. A list of the influential games will likely have the games you're listing.

Bias

[worldwideweber]

I saw a little bias towards first-person shooters here. Personally, I am willing to admit that one first-person shooter should have been on the list, but that many on the top 10?

Also, not a single sports game on the list? I think any tennis game (or its simple predecessor PONG) should have been given a nod.

And ZELDA is the best game ever :) !

Re:Bah.

[Snowfox]

Bomberman.

No game list is complete without Bomberman, and I left that off.

Until you've had a bunch of guys over for beer and Bomberman, you haven't had fun.

Go with Bomberman or Bomberman '93 on the Turbo Grafx. '94 and later, and the SNES ports go overboard on the features and ruin the simple skill-based fun of the game.

The early games got shafted

[localroger]

WHERE THE HELL IS PONG? Where are the Atari 2600 games?

How can you name fifty games no less without mentioning some of the originals that invented the form? This list reads like a list of the "50 greatest songs of all time" all of which were recorded since 1960.

Despite a couple of nods toward the C64 and Apple ][, this list is hopelessly 90's-oriented. "All-time" indeed! Where are...

• SPACEWAR, the first video game EVER
• PONG, PONG, PONG, and PONG variants like BREAKOUT, the first home video games EVER
• TANK WAR for the 2600, still holds its own with any modern game for quick 2-person play
• BATTLEZONE, first first-person 3d game EVER
• SPACE INVADERS, ASTEROIDS, each owned the world for a couple of years

Meanwhile I've never even heard of some of the games they nominated. Then again, I'm not a "gamer" any more -- guess I got it out of my system when we were still carving video games out of wooden blocks.

Pong?!?!

[Spy Hunter]

Dude, you guys yelling "Where's Pong?" need to get a clue! Pong is *not* one of the best games of all time! It gets kind of boring after a while. Pong was the first; it was influential, groundbreaking, innovative, visionary, and even fun in small doses. However, that doesn't make it the best game of all time. The best games are the ones that are the most fun!

I think compiling a list of games that are more fun than Pong wouldn't be too hard. Now, if the list was of the most important games of all time, I'm sure Pong would top the list.

HE IS RIGHT

[thopo]

God Lord, i didn't even noticed it. But you are right. And it is a shame the game is not on the list. I've played this game forever on my C64! I didn't know you could save the game so i had to start i new game every time and unfortunately the day is quite short and me and a friend of mine probably replayed it 50 times until we finished it :)
Oh my, that brings some memories back.

Re:The early games got shafted

[Lac]

I'd also like to point out there is a big difference between the greatest games of all time, and the most influential games of all time. A list of the influential games will likely have the games you're listing.

I'm posting late so I will get ignored, but...

You are sadly missing the point that many of the games he mentions were great. Case in point: Pong. I play way too much video games and have been groosly interested in the topic for quite a while. And you are sadly mistaken to gloss over Pong. Pong is an amazing game in its own right. It is amazingly simple, but so is soccer when you think about it. And Pong has something that almost no other game has: it is perfect.

Think about it. Think about the games you love. Any one of them could be improved upon: better AI, more balanced weapons, better thought-out multi-player, smoother game-play, more involving story-line, etc. None of this applies to pong. You could implement AI for it and Pong would gain 0 appeal. The same goes for the graphics. If they were better, they wouldn't be perfect. The original graphics are perfect because they are simple, effective and don't matter.

Readers will think I am being funny. I am. But I truely believe what I just said: Pong is quite possibly the only perfect game in videogame history. (And in any case, how could a not-so-great gane become one of the most influential ever? Hogwash.)

Chrono Trigger

[dragonmaster_zoc]

I just can't see how this game was passed over and yet so many of the Ultima games made it. I mean, I played those, but they were nowhere near as pleasing as Chrono Trigger. The exception is Ultima Online, which I consider a very good game, and it only gets 48!