Title Fight For Best All-Time Game Scheduled

Decaffeinated Jedi writes "Title Fight: The Ultimate Gaming Grudge -- a tournament in which gamers can vote to determine the greatest game of all time -- is underway at GameSpy. The rules for the tournament are simple: '64 games enter, one game leaves.' Polls are now open for the qualifying round, allowing gamers to choose titles from a wide range of genres that will eventually comprise approximately half of the 64-game final bracket. Qualifying will last until February 22, and first-round voting will begin on February 23." This is somewhat reminiscent of the GameFAQs Character Battle tournaments, but featuring entire games, not just videogame characters - predictions for the finalists and overall winner are welcome.

Gamespy Voters Need Sanity

[Mukaikubo]

I mean really, just go look at the qualifying 'fights'. Among prominent losers:

X-COM: UFO Defense Nethack The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past

and so on.

Nethack != Interactive Fiction

[OgdEnigmaX]

Whaaa? Nethack is lumped in [gamespy.com] with Infocom games and Adventure...

Re:Gamespy Voters Need Sanity

[Vaevictis666]

This is what happens when you're voting for "best from a category" - if they had done a 20-vote multiselect on the whole list rather than radio boxes on the categories, yes it would've come out different.

OTOH, keep in mind that this is just for half the spots - I'd be surprised if none of the 2nd-runners-up made it into the final 64 in staff picks.

Well, since it's Gamespy

[Snowspinner]

And since Gamespy skews towards newer gamers against Nintendo, my guess is on a GTA3 victory.

As for Nethack under text adventures, well, it doesn't have any graphics?

That or Gamespy is stupid.

Probably the latter.

This is impossible

[superpulpsicle]

How can you group fighting games, RPG, sports, action and everything else in between with one pool of good games.

Not to mention the different age groups.

Catagorization Issues?

[Cebu]

The initial qualifying polls seem to show a certain limiting view already. How this claim to be anywhere close to a good measure of "greatest videogame of all time"?

Granted I do realize this isn't at all serious, but having such odd catagorizations for the initial polls seems odd. We have such wonderfully unrelated qualifying polls such as "8-bit / 16-bit platformers" versus "Mario series" and "Mario Kart series". They want to know which "Pokemon series" game we love the most (or possibly hate the most, or have even seen). Who said anything about "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series" games being some of the best games of all time?

Strange....

Elder Scrolls?

[(trb001)]

I don't see a category that Morrowind would fall under. Granted, it's a new(er) game, but without a doubt one of the most open ended, longest, replayable and fun RPGs I've ever played.

--trb

"best X of all time" contests are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

These kinds of contests are rediculous.

Game experiences are so relative to the gamer, and there are so many conflicting genres, you can't possibly chose any "best game of all time".

You might get away with a genre based "best of all time" contest at least, but even then you're really not going to find one pinnacle title because so many others do different things well.

Re:missing titles

[Mukaikubo]

If Freespace 2 isn't one of the staff picks (It got a Editor's Choice award IIRC), this poll instantly loses all meaning.

"DIVE DIVE DIVE! HIT YOUR BURNERS, PILOT!"

My prediction

[Cecil]

I predict the final to be a bitter, violent battle to the death between the Final Fantasy 7 Fanbois, and the Diablo 2 Drones. I don't think that any other two genres have a strong enough support foundation to make it. And those two specific games are the ones handily leading those genres at the moment.

And I don't think it really needs to be said, but this poll, along with anything coming out of GameSpy makes Slashdot polls look scientific.

Approval voting is such an underutilized concept. It makes sense in most cases in my opinion, but at the very least, it makes sense to narrow down large fields into smaller ones for more targetted voting. What a waste. X-COM should really get at least into the semi-finals, but I suspect it won't even make the qualifiers.

I am probably an elitist bastard, but

[Flyboy Connor]

...I don't think the gaming public is qualified to choose the best game of all time.

Incredible

[Snowspinner]

I just went through all 34 categories, and never once did I pick the winning game.

(Note: In some categories, I didn't vote because I hadn't played enough of the games.)

Mega Man 2 beat by Mega Man X?
Civ2 beat by Civ3?
Quake 3 beat by Quake 2?

Gabriel Knight outperforming Kings Quest's IV-VI combined?
Ultima Online as the best Ultima?

I knew Gamespy readers were dumb, but wow.

Statistical fun

[OgdEnigmaX]

Good point. Now, if Gamespy could record and make the age breakdown of the voting block publicly available, there'd be a lot of fun statisticking to be done.

"Looking at the data here, it's no surprise at all that so few voted for Missile Command [klov.com], only such-and-such percent of the voters were even *alive*, let alone of gaming age, when that was in popular circulation!"

Even for a "Best Game" poll, this is retarded

[Mirkon]

Honestly, it would have been difficult to do a worse job on the qualifying crap. How can you take a single Final Fantasy on one hand, then use the other to decide between Diablo and its own sequel? How is it that only one among the Marios or Zeldas will progress, while an Age of Empires or GTA3/VC is guaranteed qualification? How can you put Chrono Trigger, River City Ransom, and Perfect Dark in the "potpurri" category?

And considering it was mentioned on the front article page, where the hell is Starcraft?

Popularity Contest

[cgenman]

I bet if you took a poll of the best movies of all time of the moviegoers in the United States today, you would find very few instances of films released before 1990. You would find very few art-house releases. You would find very few releases without a lot of blood and / or action. In fact, you would probably find that if you did that movie poll on GameSpy, The Matrix would come out #1.

Why? Because it was popular.

No gamer who has played the genius that was Gunstar Heroes walked away without being impressed, yet the game sold relatively poorly. Now look where it is... losing to duck tales. Castlevania IV was revolutionary for its time, yet it is losing badly to Opera of Tragedy, a clear Super Metroid clone. Dracula X hardly registers on the scale, despite being a truly superior game overall, yet never having had a proper US release.

Pitting Perfect Dark against River City Ransom is like putting Bettie Davis as she is today on a stage and having her mocked by the Star Search talent of the moment for her wrinkles and her frail old body. Clearly River City Ransom didn't hold up very well to the rigors of aging, but in its day it could walk off with any player it introduced itself to. And it deserved to, too.

Many great games aren't on this list at all, yet were truly worthy contenders for their time. Gargoyle's Quest? Strider? Smash TV? Sega's Heavyweight Boxing? Teleroboxer? Einhander? Herizogs Wei? Rocket Knight Adventures? EWJ? Lunar? 7th Guest? Out of this World? Little Nemo? Skate or Die? Puzzlefighter? Tetris MUST be on there somewhere, but I have yet to find it. Castlevania 2 is obviously only under consideration because of Nepotism, but where then is Castlevania 64?

Obviously this poll is an unofficial popularity contest, and an unfortunately limited one at that. Why not just take every game in their index that got higher than a 7.5, and weed them out over the weeks to a true victor using a random distribution system rather than fixed competitors, with players given the option of "never played that." Only the games with the highest percentage of choices would advance, and the cycle would repeat.

That would be fair. This? This is going to be a popularity contest, with the prom queen coming out on top.

Re:My prediction

[BTWR]

Well, to the kiddies today, 1999's Final Fantasy 7 is "nostalgia."

I used to babysit a kid and I asked him if he ever played the original Super Mario Bros. He said "Yeah! I own it!" and he put it in the machine. Sure enough, on the screen comes "It's-a-me... Mahhhhhrio!" - he thought Super Mario 64 was the original Super Mario game!

Re:Not fair

[Tom7]

The Pokemon games were really good. I'd place Pokemon red/blue under as my third or fourth favorite RPG of all time, and I didn't play it until I was 21.

Show poll results before voting = brilliant.

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

I mean really, what fool shows the prior results while you're voting? All it does is skew the voting. Hell, I passed over numerous categories because I could see my choice had 12 votes, and some recent crap thing I never heard of had 3400 votes.

And as mentioned here already, it's obvious most of the voters weren't even alive when the real quality games were popular.

and what's wrong with that?

[mrpuffypants]

GTA3 and Vice city were Really Good games. Just because you may think that an 8-bit game is better back in the day doesn't mean that nothing will ever supercede it.

I can see this same logic applied to FPS games back when Half-Life came out: "Well, just because half-life came out this year it's going to get all the awards while Wolf3D is really a good game as well." Yeah! No shit newer games may get awards...could it be possible that they are...better?!?!

Re:"best X of all time" contests are lame

[Alkaiser]

Did you expect anything less of Gamespy? Especially AFTER they merged with IGN? The Best X of All Time articles makes up 95% of the stuff that comes out of Gamespy.

Re:Elder Scrolls?

[drewmca]

I'll give you longest, replayable, and open-ended. It's all that. It's just not fun to actually play.

Re:Nethack != Interactive Fiction

[WWWWolf]

Yeah, a bit funny. Just about to vote for Suspended, in retrospect probably the most unusual game I've ever played, when my 3 AM brain notices Nethack at the bottom of the list. Good adventure... or the grand adventure. Tough choice. Had to be the grand adventure.

And then I trudged on, puzzled by these odd categories (Best Tony Hawk Game? The one favored by barkeepers as a coaster... The Best GTA Game? "Minor Traffic Violation", bleah, who cares...), and got boundlessly frustrated when the noobs don't know anything about good games (Ultima Online probably going to win when Ultima VII would be around, and freaking Warcraft III taking the jackpot when Warcraft II was the one that really shined, dammit... And by the time Chrono Trigger or whatever the hell it was was trashing Star Control II, I was almost ready to scream "Get a life, you freaking japanophiles", but I restrained myself from doing so =)

more idiocy

[Goldsmith]

Did they even notice that they started off the GTA series with GTA III?

How hard is it to think to yourself: "gee, I wonder if there was a GTA one or two?"

Given all the other games you can vote for, I would like to see GTA one and two in the catagory devoted to the GTA SERIES! Personally (though I realize I'm in the minority) I would have voted for GTA 1.

Re:Incredible

[Maserati]

Civ 3 is far more involved strategically than Civ 2 was. Just the addition of the Culture rating makes it a significantly deeper game. And with Luxuries and Resources, Civ3 becomes a very different game - trade with the AI is much richer. The strategic thinking required for Civ3 is closely akin to Go in how you have to plan out your expansion. You have to cast your net widely, but not leave gaps where an AI could snag a luxury or resource from you.

I played a lot of Civ2. For Civ3...

"Hi, my name is Maserati and I play Civ3"