My Favorite Videogames of All Time (Intro)

I have devoted my life to finding every great videogame ever made and reviewing them here.

Here's how it all started...

My girlfriend of five years left me.  Feeling I had nothing left to live for, I started binging on my favorite escape from reality: videogames.  I had already been an avid, hardcore gamer my entire life, but now that I was spending nearly eight hours a day gaming, I was accumulating an extremely vast knowledge of videogame history.  I decided to combine my passion for gaming and writing and start penning reviews.  Not long after that, I began creating lists of my "favorite games of all time."  Those countdowns soon snowballed into the most gargantuan research project I’ve ever undertaken, for I realized that if I truly planned on creating a respectable list, I needed to become much more familiar with videogames "of all time." After all, I missed out entirely on the first three generations of videogames, quite a few games for the consoles I grew up with and a boatload of contemporary games, considering I hadn’t bought one in years.

Thus began the endless research process, during which I’ve been spending an undisclosed amount of time and money reading about, watching and playing through an enormous amount of games until I finally felt educated and comfortable enough with each generation to throw my two quarters in. Man, if only I had applied this much effort in school...

I’ve decided to make multiple lists; one for each console -- that is, each console I consider noteworthy. Sorry, Virtual Boy. The lists will come one at a time, in chronological order and at great intervals, as this project is proving quite time consuming. But I’ve been constantly fueled by the need to pass on my recommendations, not only to justify my existence. I know too many gamers who play nothing but “new games,” or only games that they grew up with. This is a sin I feel I have to purge. I also happen to know many younger gamers who are interested in games before their time but simply don’t know where to start. Either way, I hope my work here will inspire gamers of the future to seek out games of the past. It’s never too late to play ketchup (I didn’t own an original Nintendo until my twenties).

Three things you should know about me:

1) I’m a console gamer. If you’re into computer games, you’re in the wrong place. Sorry.  I know very little about computers.  Mine have always had less RAM than a pocket calculator. Oregon Trail would probably fry my hard-drive.

2) I’m only a 3-corner gamer. That means I tend to enjoy only three quarters of the videogame genres: I love role-playing games, action-adventures, platformers, puzzle games, party games, racing games, music games, sim games and indie downloadable games, but I tend to dislike most sports games, fighting games, and shooters -- what I deem "casual gamefare."  But hey, art is subjective.  Please note that these lists are by no means my opinion, they’re merely fact.

3) I'm a critical gamer.  I don't just play videogames for fun.  I critique them as an artform -- yes, I believe videogames are an artform.  Anyone who doesn't clearly isn't playing the right games.  My credentials: I've been a lifelong gamer, game designer, writer, musician and artist, and therefor deem myself quite qualified at critiquing a game's gameplay, design, writing, soundtrack and graphics -- although the latter matters very little to me.  I care much more about how a game feels and sounds than how it looks.  When judging a game, I do have high standards but also a very open mind.  I give everything a chance, even the aforementioned genres I tend to dislike.  Despite my tastes, nostalgia does not impair my judgment. Many of the games I adored as a child have received less kind reevaluations today. And every time I play another “new" game, it gets the same chance of favoritism as the games I grew up with.  My current top ten list (which I frequently update) features everything from Lolo to Limbo.

If and when I ever catch up to the modern era of gaming, I plan on publishing a list of my top 100 games in numerical order. 


It all begins here: My Top 10 Classic Arcade Games