I’ve been think­ing for quite a while about the idea of the “greatest games”. What makes a truly great game? In my mind, it’s not just a matter of how fun the game is, or how much replay value it has (although that’s impor­tant). What was it’s impact on the gaming indus­try as a whole? How inno­v­a­tive was it? Do I still remem­ber it ten years later?

I’ve put together a quick list of qual­i­ties that I think a great game should have:

1. Inno­va­tion in it’s genre
2. Originality
3. Replay value
4. Just plain fun

Video games seem to be a dime a dozen these days, and hon­estly, most of them suck. I can count on one hand the number of games in recent years that were amaz­ing. I’m talk­ing about games that I would make me buy a system just to play. This whole idea struck me when I first started play­ing Kata­mari Damacy. It was with­out a doubt the absolute best game I’ve played in a long time. Every­body I know loves this game, includ­ing non-​gamers. Hell, my Grandma thought it was great.

So what are the top ten games of all time? So far, I’ve only been able to think of four def­i­nites and two maybes that meet my stan­dards. It’s prob­a­bly no coin­ci­dence that all of these games have mul­ti­ple sequels. Here they are, with­out fur­ther ado:

The Definites

Katamari Damacy

I already talked about this game a little bit. Quite simply, it is the most orig­i­nal game I’ve seen since prob­a­bly the birth of video games. All you do is roll over things and get bigger. The con­cept is so simple (and weird), yet it’s so much fun. The game also presents end­less amounts of odd­i­ties in the cities and towns, story line and sound effects. Every time I show this game to some­body whose never seen it before, it’s like redis­cov­er­ing it all over again. The sound­track is great also.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

This game puts it all together and wraps it up in a neat little pack­age. Although this is actu­ally the fourth install­ment in the GTA series (I think), it’s the first one that really brought every­thing together. The Scarface-​style sto­ry­line is great as is the 70s-80s theme. The game is long, immer­sive and chal­leng­ing, with tons of side games. I also love how well the radio sta­tions tie into the theme of the game.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (1 or 2)

Tony Hawk com­pletely rev­o­lu­tion­ized the genre of XTreme sports video games. Does anyone remem­ber what those games were like before Tony Hawk? I do, regret­tably. They were ter­ri­ble.¹ Tony Hawk was truly the first of it’s kind, and it was amazing.

I have a tough time decid­ing whether it should be Tony Hawk 1 or Tony Hawk 2 on the list. The orig­i­nal was the inno­v­a­tive title, but the second one greatly improved on it by adding the abil­ity to string tricks together using wheel­ies. You could also use this same argu­ment to include Tony Hawk 3 since it intro­duced reverts, allow­ing you to basi­cally string an infi­nite number of tricks together.

Tetris

I don’t really have much to say about this one, except come on, it’s Tetris.

The Maybes

Super Mario Kart

I just loved play­ing this game when I was a kid. It was a fun and goofy racing game to play with friends. Oh the joy that came from wait­ing until your best friend was just about to cross the finish line to win the race and then hit­ting them with a red shell.

Secret of Mana

I still love this game. Actu­ally I own it, but not a Super Nin­tendo to play it on. This prob­a­bly isn’t the first action RPG game released, but I do think it’s got to be one of the best.

What Else?

Okay, so Super Mario Kart and Secret of Mana prob­a­bly shouldn’t even come close to making this list. They just happen to be two of my favorites. But what other games should? What about Super Mario Broth­ers? Isn’t that one of the first side-​scrolling action games ever? Should we go back even fur­ther? Pong?

I still haven’t been able to pick a game from my per­sonal favorite genre, RPGs. There should def­i­nitely be one on the list, but which one? There should prob­a­bly also be a sports game (Madden?), one of those bloody shoot­ing games, and maybe even an MMO (World of War­craft?).

What else have I missed? I think there should be some­thing about the Wii in the list. The Wii def­i­nitely qual­i­fies as inno­v­a­tive, but is there a game for it that is truly amaz­ing yet? I’m not so sure.

So, I guess I’m stuck here. I’ve picked four games so far. What do you think should round out the rest of the list?

1. Except for maybe Skitchin’. How often do you get to hang on the the back of a car while hit­ting a fellow com­peti­tor over the head with a crow­bar?↩