I drew this up last week and have had it sitting in a Notepad window for a couple of weeks. Thought it was time to share it, if only to be able to close that window.
Here are the games that constitute my “personal gaming canon.” Perhaps the term I should use is “ludologic canon”? That makes me feel super pretentious though.
All right so here’s the games. First of all, a list of games that I think should be in anyone’s gaming canon. In other words, they are both very high-quality games, and very important games (at least for their time). And of course, I love them. In no particular order:
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- Silent Hill 2
- Myst
- Riven [Myst 2]
- Fallout 1
- Fallout 2
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- Tetris
- The Sims 2
- Braid
- Super Mario Bros.
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Super Mario World
- Half-Life
- Half-Life 2
- Portal
- Team Fortress 2
- Counter-Strike
- Goldeneye: 007
- Deus Ex
- Grand Theft Auto 4
- Starcraft
- Shadow of the Colossus
- Flight Control [iPhone]
And now here are some more which are solidly in my personal gaming canon… but which I’d understand not being on someone else’s list.
- TIE Fighter
- Dr. Mario
- Super Mario RPG
- Super Mario Kart
- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
- Torchlight
- World of Warcraft
- Master of Orion
- Urban Dead [browser-based MMO]
- Mega Man 2
And that’s it. I’ve finished every game on this list (of the ones that are “finishable”) except for Deus Ex and Fallout 2 (I got to 90% on these and never finished them for some reason); GTA4 (which I’m still playing, albeit very slowly); Torchlight (also still playing, intermittently). Also, I never hit max level in WoW, though I did pass level 60.
Of course, this list probably says a lot about my own glaring blind spots in gaming. I’ve never played a Civilization, or a Metal Gear Solid… I never played a Diablo game (despite getting the Battlechest for free when I started at Blizzard) – I decided to play Torchlight instead to educate myself on the genre, and ended up loving it.
My award for “Most Perfect Game” goes to Zelda: Ocarina of Time; no game has ever achieved what it set out to do more completely or consistently (though Braid and GTA4 are close contenders on that one). My personal, subjective, biased favorite (i.e. I fell in love with it during my personal “golden age of gaming”, and may love it more than it deserves) is definitely TIE Fighter (with Goldeneye hot on its heels).
For those wondering why Fallout 3 isn’t on here, it’s because I haven’t played very much of it (and the fact that it hasn’t sucked me in the way the first ones did might be a sign that it doesn’t belong on here, or just a sign that I have very little time to actually play games anymore).
That is all. Maybe I’ll write posts in the future elaborating why I love some of these games so much…?
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Update: Added Shadow of the Colossus.
(I never came close to finishing Ico, though I know I really should – in any case I don’t feel like I can honestly put it on my list.)
Hmm, I’ve been ignoring a couple of major game spaces that I shouldn’t.
For instance, the iPhone. Flight Control was my game of 2009, straight up. Added it to the list.
Which reminds me that my game of 2005 would probably be similarly surprising for some: Urban Dead, a browser-based MMO. What can I say, it was an extremely fun, surprisingly addictive text-based MMO based almost entirely around PvP of some form, and in which you could roleplay a zombie. How is that not awesome? Added it.
How, you may ask, could I have forgotten Mega Man 2 for so long, given my Quick Man avatar? This is a good question that will baffle scientists for years. It’s added now.