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Yes, friends, more than 30 editors located all over the world set aside their ages, allegiances and personal favorites to pick the hundred best videogames that the planet has ever seen! There was fighting, there was mayhem, and there was pizza — lots and lots of pizza.

Now, some of you may proclaim, “but your list is different from the rankings you guys did in 2005!” Well, of course it is people. Plenty of fantastic games have been released since then, and we have plenty of new folks in our ranks to throw in their couple of cents. We’re also not afraid to admit that our tastes change over time too.

Our criteria for creating this list of our picks for the Top 100 Games of All Time are as follows:

• Eligible games had to have been released no later than December 31, 2006 (perspective is a good thing)
• A number of factors were taken into consideration when selecting a winner: How good the game was compared to others of its time, its overall game design, how well it stands up over the years, how influential it has been in the realm of gaming and just plain how much fun we had playing it are all points for contention.
• The list is comprised of single, stand-alone titles and doesn’t include compilations, expansion packs or add-ons.
• Titles with multiple editions such as collector’s boxes, gold editions or direct re-releases have been consolidated into one single entry, with the edition deemed most deserving taking precedence.
• Updated versions of original titles were only included on the list if they were significantly different from their predecessors.

100. Archon: The Light and the Dark

Why It Made Our Top 100 List

This gem for Atari’s 8-bit PCs (and a fistful of other contemporary platforms) is one of the first genre hybrids. Part board game and part action game, Archon mixes fast-paced combat with the slower pace of a turn-based strategy sim.

At first glance, it looks more or like chess. Two armies of pieces on a nine-by-nine grid duke it out to see who takes control of the board first. The difference, or the main one, is that you don’t just move to a space and take a piece. The pieces have to fight for that patch of territory, and each has different combat skills that keep the action interesting.

Individual fights may not always be very fair — the “pawns” are dead meat against most of the back-row pieces — but the game as a whole is neatly balanced. A smart player makes use of his spellcasters (the “kings”) and the layout of the board (each side has an advantage on its own color of square) to score the odd upset victory.

99. Rayman 2: The Great Escape

Why It Made Our Top 100 List

Nowadays gamers are more likely to associate Ubisoft with acrobatic characters in exotic locales and cold-hearted soldiers doing their deadly duty on battlefields around the world. But the standout game for Ubisoft at the turn of the century was something very different, an altogether more vibrant and charming game that learned from the best of the past while adding enough visual flair to make you forget that this wasn’t the most original of concepts.

Rayman 2: The Great Escape debuted on the Nintendo 64 in 1999 and hit the Dreamcast the next year bearing even better graphics and sound. The game saw the limbless wonder scouring his world for four masks that, in true platformer fashion, would help to bring justice to a world overrun by pirates. The sheer thrill of playing the game was only matched by a sense of wonder evoked by the gorgeous levels and the fiendish puzzles. Rayman is no Mario, but that’s no reason to ignore what’s one of the best 3D platforming games is around.

 

98. Quake II

Why It Made Our Top 100 List

Quake II starts off as a nifty single-player campaign to destroy Strogg aliens and their leader Makron before they do the same to you. While the main attraction is fun with guns — machine guns, chainguns, railguns, rocket launchers, and more — there are other objectives as well. Of course, this game’s real staying power (and call to greatness) is the fact that it is one of the most awesome deathmatch extravaganza games ever — the Halo of its time. Twitch and shout, as they say.

When id opened up the source code in 1998 just a year after the game was released, modders were happy campers and the ton of user-created content floating around made the game even better. It didn’t hurt that Quake II had the best 3D engine of the time either.

There are still people out there who know the multiplayer maps better than the layout of their own houses, which says a lot about the game’s staying power. Whether you’re packing the BFG10K or one of its quicker (and certainly still deadly) little brothers, popping around a corner to blow your friend’s face off never gets old.

97. Silent Hill 2

Why It Made Our Top 100 List

The original Silent Hill eschewed the quick shock moments of survival horror pioneer Resident Evil in favor of a constant, never-ending sense of dread that played on the basic human fear of the unknown. The sequel maintained its predecessor’s almost debilitating feeling of fear, but injected a very real storyline of a man who has lost the love of his life yet somehow is called to the misty burg of Silent Hill from a voice beyond the grave.

It’s the storyline that sets Silent Hill 2 apart from both the earlier and especially the later games in the series, mostly because it’s so character-driven. SH2 really explores the concept of what Silent Hill really is and why it’s almost entirely different than what the protagonist of the first game explored introducing some truly gut-wrenching moments that carry major emotional weight. Of course, the biggest thing the game has going for it is scares — specifically the terrifying appearances of Pyramid Head and composer Akira Yamaoka’s score — both of which are indelibly linked to the franchise.

96. Wave Race 64

Why It Made Our Top 100 List

What is it about water? With each new generation of hardware, one of the first things people want to know is how the water looks. In part, you can thank Wave Race 64 for that.

When Nintendo put out the game in 1996 it thrust water to the forefront. Sure, you could just learn the courses and find the best possible routes to the checkered flag, but the unpredictable water and its impressively realistic physics always added an element of variability to every race. You never quite know how the rising swells and choppy surf will affect you and the best you can do is try to read the waves and intimately involve that information in your decisions on the course. Throw in mini-games and some funky unlockables and you’ve got a recipe for a game that made owning a Nintendo 64 from day one a joy.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 6:26 pm and is filed under GENERAL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.