Some of My Favorite Games

LAST UPDATED: 1/12/2025

Rather than wait to be asked what some of my favorite video games are, I figured I’d provide a list of a few of my favorites from every era.

This list is not comprehensive and includes a good mix of popular titles and more obscure ones. (I also reserve the right to add to it as other titles occur to me or I discover them through my research!) You will also notice a lot of popular games are missing and genres are under-represented, which I make no apologies for. I also will concede 100% that there is bias and subjectivity here which is reflective of my own personal experiences with games I’ve played and enjoyed.

It’s not intended to be 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die (though there is some significant overlap!); I provide it simply to give you an window into my personal preferences.

I also reserve the right to not remember every detail of a game I enjoyed and to have to be reminded about characters, villains, plot points, mechanics, special features and so forth. I play a lot of games; the specific details often blur together!

NOTE: In places where a series of games doesn’t fit neatly in one era, I’ve selected the era that best typifies it.

The Classic PC Era (1970s and 1980s)

• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Pool of Radiance (1988) - Most CRPGs from the 1980s and early 1990s aren’t really my thing, but Pool of Radiance is so well-designed and has such a wonderful tactical combat system that it’s an easy game to love. It was also the first of the “Gold Box” D&D games that SSI produced and served as the template for many titles that followed (though most aren’t nearly as good). This isn’t a game you play for the story, though it definitely has one centered around the Forgotten Realms region around the Moonsea, but rather a game you play to build up a great party that can handle anything so that when you face that inevitable dragon the game throws at you towards the end, you’re ready for it.

• Alley Cat (1983) - While it’s an obscure action platformer about a cat’s quest to win the heart of a lady cat who’s watching him from the window, Bill Williams's Alley Cat is an amazingly good time both in its Atari 8-bit original form and in the modern (and free!) Alley Cat Remeow edition, which supports 4-player co-op. If you love the idea of jumping into windows and wreaking havoc in peoples’ homes through fun little minigames, this one’s definitely for you!

• Below the Root (1984) - I never knew about this game as a kid, but once I discovered it as an adult, I could understand why those who did play it in their school computer labs loved it. It’s a side-scrolling graphical action adventure game based on the Green Sky Trilogy novels of Zilpha Keatley Snyder from the 1970s, and it takes place in a massive world with a treetop village and a subterranean system of caves. It also has multiple playable characters with different abilities and who experience the game’s story differently. That’s stunning for a PC game from the early 80s, especially one marketed as an educational title.

• The Black Cauldron (1986) - Sierra’s attempt to tie a children’s adventure game in to a Disney animated film was ill-fated; the movie bombed badly and the game was viewed as being too difficult for children and too simple for adults. And yet I love how this game anticipated the icon-based gameplay that would come to replace the parser by using function keys in a contextual way to complete actions. I also love the art design, the setting (Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain by way of Disney), the multiple endings and the humor (by Al Lowe, who designed and programmed the game). In fact, I even prefer The Black Cauldron to most of the King’s Quest games; it’s far easier to pick up and play today.

• California Games (1987) - Epyx’s series of Olympiad-themed games was a lot of fun back in the day, but I particularly loved the theming and challenge of California Games, which my brothers and I played to death on our old PC. Like most games of its era, mastering the controls was half the battle, but once we got those down, we had a great time surfing, roller skating, BMX biking, skateboarding, playing hacky sack and tossing the frisbee around. It’s a shame the sequel wasn’t as good.

• CHOLO (1986) - I loved Battlezone as a kid, and when as an adult I first stumbled across the vector-based CHOLO, I was intrigued. Instead of shooting tanks, I was taking over robots and exploring a city unsafe for human eyes and instead experienced through the perceptions of its robotic inhabitants in a wireframe 3D world. It’s not an easy game to pick up and play, but once you get what it’s trying to do, it’s amazingly addictive.

• The Dungeons of Moria (1983) - I could never make it past the fourth or fifth floor of Moria, but I still loved this ASCII-based Rogue-style dungeon crawler for its depth and complexity as I was growing up. Even today, few games can match what it was able to accomplish on much simpler hardware and with absolutely no graphics.

• Eye of Horus (1989) - I was stunned to discover this Egyptian-themed progressive exploration game (“Metroidvania”) during my research for this series, and while the controls take a little getting used to, it’s a fun experience overall. You play as Horus searching for your father Osiris’s body parts so you can battle Set, and you can turn into a hawk to get around the game’s treacherous tombs. It’s a good-looking game that uses its theme well, and surprisingly, even the DOS port of the Amiga original is still quite decent.

• Hack and NetHack (1982 and 1987) - While Rogue is the true original in terms of ASCII art dungeon crawlers with permadeath mechanics and randomized items, the Hack and later NetHack games took the formula and ran with it, keeping a lot of what fans enjoyed while adding in a ton of other great ideas. Even today, they’re tremendous fun, even if they can be a bit silly.

• Hero’s Quest / Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero (1989) - Of all the Sierra Adventures, the games by Corey and Lori Cole are among my favorites because they’re so open for exploration, so smartly written and so unafraid to throw in random moments of absolutely bizarre humor. The Quest for Glory series begins as a sort of adventure game RPG and takes stops at many different mythological crossroads. While I loved the original parser-based EGA Hero’s Quest and its sequel Quest For Glory II: Trial By Fire, the later VGA icon-based version, retitled Quest for Glory I, was better in nearly every way.

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1984) - It’s one of the toughest high-quality adventure games I’ve ever played, and also one of the only ones I ever completed without the aid of a hint book or walkthrough. My love for the source material (along with the sharp writing from Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams) kept me playing, and even though it took me over a month to get out of the first section of the Vogon ship and another decade (off and on) to actually finish the game, I still love this one.

• It Came From the Desert (1989) - There’s so much to love about Cinemaware’s adventure game loosely based on the giant ant movie Them!, from the moody atmosphere to the ambivalent locals to the first time you actually encounter the ants. The game’s focus on time, the interactions with the townspeople, the fact that the protagonist is a geologist - it all makes for a strange and wonderful adventure. Just stay away from the TurboGrafx-CD version and the unreleased Sega Genesis prototype; they’re not good.

• Larn (1986) - If you wanted to take Rogue and distill it down into a shorter and more focused adventure, you’d get something like Larn, an excellent ASCII art dungeon crawler with a time limit to keep the gameplay down to a single session. It evolves the Rogue formula in wonderful ways and even has a second dungeon (located underneath a volcano!) for those making a run at the endgame.

• Maniac Mansion (1987) - LucasFilm Games was at its best when it was cranking out zany and creative titles, and the non-linear gameplay of Maniac Mansion allowed players to experiment with combinations of six different characters who could achieve multiple endings to the game. The weird horror vibes, the strange sense of humor and the unexpected violence when you microwaved Cousin Ed’s beloved hamster in the microwave made this one a true classic. I remember being horribly disappointed when the Family Channel’s terrible TV show adaptation was nothing like the game, but elated when Day of the Tentacle came out a few years later.

• M.U.L.E (1983) - Danielle Bunten Berry’s economic strategy game is exceptionally clever and designed with multiple human players in mind. It’s also one of those rare early 1980s multiplayer games that can only be an electronic game and would never work in any other medium. Your job is to gather resources and balance supply and demand, and those forces are determined both by the market players drive each turn and also by random events. Even against computer opponents, it’s a ton of fun.

• Paradroid (1985) - I’m definitely late to the party in discovering this game - I first learned about it while researching this series! - but I can definitely understand why it’s regarded as a classic. Andrew Braybook’s action puzzler involves using your basic “influence device” droid to hijack robots with higher numbers so you can shut them all down. It’s a deep, challenging and highly engaging experience that makes creative use of limited graphics to deliver an unforgettable game.

• The Oregon Trail (1971 and 1985) - Like many kids growing up in the 1980s, I played MECC’s The Oregon Trail primarily at school in the computer lab. It was an exceptionally fun educational game that featured enough action, choices and randomization to make each trek feel a little bit different, and it was a lot of fun to have your friends fall ill and die and then leave their tombstones and epitaphs for other students to discover. Even today, it’s a fun game to pull out and play, though it has had many updates and remakes since (and also inspired many video game spin-offs as well as a dedicated handheld game, a board game, a book series and quite a few pop culture parodies).

• Park Patrol (1984) - Activision was mainly known for console games in the early 1980s, which makes this curious little Commodore 64 game about picking up trash as a park ranger all the more interesting. Beyond dodging animals and cleaning up the grounds, you also have to rescue swimmers from drowning and keep ants away from your food supply at the ranger station. It’s surprisingly fun for such a strange concept.

• Planetfall and Stationfall (1983 and 1987) - I enjoy Steve Meretzky’s adventure games as a general rule, so it should be no surprise that his earliest Infocom adventure is one of my absolute favorites. The beginning of the game sets a hilarious tone for the adventure ahead, and the lovable companion Floyd the Droid helps to keep the game from getting lonely. The second game is also funny, but darker and more contemplative, bringing in two additional droids and touching on themes about the relationship between human and synthetic life.

• Populous (1989) - Bullfrog’s debut game is often credited for establishing the “god game” genre. While the sequels take that concept literally farther (the second game is about the Olympians), the original concept of raising up followers and then triggering Armageddon to wipe out the adherents of another deity is still pretty wild, and the amazing interface design (including using an open book on a desk to depict the game’s map) as well as the scope and scale of the first Populous make for a highly compelling experience even today.

• Prince of Persia (1989) - Jordan Mechner’s classic platforming, puzzle-solving and sword-fighting game was one of the best action games on the PC, and I played and replayed both it and its sequel (The Shadow and the Flame) so many times I can remember the paths through each level from memory even today. I didn’t like the third game (1999’s Prince of Persia 3D, which is dreadful due to its tank controls), but its 2003 reboot, The Sands of Time, is incredible.

• Scram: A Nuclear Power Plant Simulation (1981) - Chris Crawford’s nuclear reactor simulator seems almost too simple to play - you actually use a joystick to control the entire reactor - but that simplicity is actually an elegant interface for what turns out to be a rather complex game where the best way to play is to manage your reactor carefully before it melts down. There’s never been another game like it.

• Sid Meier’s Pirates! (1987) - If you enjoy open-ended adventuring, Sid Meier’s Pirates! is so effortlessly easy to play and enjoy that the later editions could only equal it and never really improve upon the formula. While it has a very tedious endgame if you want to see the story through, the real fun is just in taking to the high seas, building your armada and becoming a feared pirate no one can mess with. My favorite of the modern editions is the 2007 PSP conversion of the 2004 PC remake, but the original is still excellent.

• SimCity (1989) - Everything I know today about city planning and zoning came from reading the manual and later strategy guides for Will Wright’s SimCity and its sequels. My brothers and I played the original game to death on our Compaq PC, both building up big cities and then wreaking havoc with disasters.

• Snatcher (1988) - Hideo Kojima’s goofy cyberpunk adventure game started like on the PC-88 and MSX2 in Japan, but the North American version didn’t come out until 1994 as a localization for the Sega CD’s remake. While it’s fairly linear and mostly involves selecting text from menus to interact with the game world, the graphics and sound are great and there are tons of fun references to Kojima’s more famous series, from a pub called “Outer Heaven” (filled with characters cosplaying Konami characters) to an assistant robot called Metal Gear mk. II that helps you throughout the game. True to form for a Kojima game, there’s plenty of weirdness; there’s a rather strange encounter with "Neo Kobe Pizza” that’s quite memorable as well as a moment where you have to shake down a criminal informant who’s dressed like Santa Claus. Kojima’s Policenauts came out the same year as the North American version of Snatcher, and while it’s only playable today using a fan translation, I recommend it as well if you can find it (particularly the Saturn version) - Metal Gear Solid fans will be surprised to see Meryl Silverburgh is one of the main characters.

• Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon (1989) - Roger Wilco’s adventures are all wonderful, but the third Space Quest is a particular favorite of mine because it involves so much meta-commentary on adventure gaming and the broader culture. This was the game where a terminator tracks you down because you didn’t pay for something in the previous game, where you can visit the McDonald’s like Monolith Burger and waste your time with the silly arcade game Astro Chicken or where you discover the ultimate villain has created a cube farm with whip-wielding managers making software developers churn out terrible games. In the end, you rescue the game’s creators (the “Two Guys From Andromeda,” Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe), taking them to meet Ken Williams at Sierra On-Line so they can make games for him. It’s absolutely bonkers, and I love it.

• Starflight (1986) - My dad decided to introduce my brothers and me to Starflight when my mom was out of town and he needed something to keep us busy. We drove around all over the Dayton, OH area looking for a copy and, once we found it, we spent hours creating our crews, mining for minerals and getting blown up by aliens. It was the first CRPG I ever played, and it has long held up as one of the best. I particularly love the game’s story, which is there if you want to find it, but which requires exploration and patience to uncover. The second game is also great, as is the series’s spiritual successor, Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters.

• SunDog: Frozen Legacy (1984) - I didn’t discover this massive space trading strategy adventure RPG from FTL Games until my research for this series, but it’s a really remarkable game about trying to rehab a spaceship called the SunDog so you can help a religious order colonize a planet and win your freedom. It’s a massive game with great non-linear design and easy-to-understand controls and interfaces. That it originally ran on an Apple II is all the more amazing, and the Atari ST version is even better!

• Tetris (1985) - I’d argue Alexey Pajitnov’s puzzle game is one of the greatest video games of all time because it’s something anyone can play and enjoy, but which cannot be played authentically in any physical form. It’s also game whose origins are wrapped in intrigue and excitement, a major catalyst in the legal drama between Nintendo and Atari Games and also one of the main reasons Nintendo’s Game Boy took off as a platform.

• Time Bandit (1985 edition) - I’ll never forget the day a friend’s dad showed me and one of my brothers Time Bandit on his Atari ST. It reminded us of Gauntlet, but it was so much more fun and interesting because of its time travel mechanic conceit and varied level designs. It blew our minds then, and it still holds up today as a wonderful overhead action game.

• Thexder 2 (a.k.a. Fire Hawk: Thexder – The Second Contact) (1989) - The original Thexder by GameArts is an important side-scrolling action game that features a mechanical suit with an automated laser that can transform into a plane. It’s also a chore to play due to its interconnected levels and difficulty spike (though the later Thexder 95 and Thexder Neo PSP remakes fix some of this). The sequel added in distinct levels, additional weapons, save points and a deeper story, making it a better experience all around.

• Trinity (1986) - Brian Moriarty’s deeply poetic text adventure about the nuclear age is a must-play, and I think it’s more successful without graphics than it would have been with them because it forces you to imagine the metaphors it describes within the game’s hub world. While the ending is something of a letdown, the point the game makes is important: we can’t change the horrors of the past, but we can at least delay a terrible future.

• Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (1985) - I don’t know how Brøderbund managed to make an educational adventure game so much fun, but their globe-trotting, crime-solving time management adventure formula worked so well it inspired several immediate sequels, many remakes, two PBS game shows, two animated series and all sorts of books, board games and other media. It was not only a game that taught me a lot about geography, but also the main reason I ever learned how to consult an almanac.

• Zeliard (1987) - US and European PC gamers didn’t get too many action RPGs from Japan, and so we were lucky to get Game Arts’s Zeliard, a side-scrolling action platformer with large maps linked by doorways and a progression system governed by a murky experience system and gear. While the learning curve is tough, the game’s really good once you get into it, and the music is top-notch. Sadly, the North American version has some absolutely awful box art that ignores the game’s anime aesthetic.

The Classic Coin-Op and Console Era (1970s and 1980s)

• Battlezone (1980) - It’s simple by today’s standards, but Atari’s 3D vector tank-driving game seemed like the first step into virtual reality in the 1980s with its smooth scrolling and fast-paced action. While it was often imitated (and sometimes greatly improved upon by the copycats!), the original is a definite classic that’s still fun to play for a few minutes today.

• Bionic Commando (NES version) (1988) - I can’t stand the arcade version of Capcom’s Bionic Commando, but the NES remake is so good I still replay it to this day. The open design, novel mechanics and excellent soundtrack make this one an amazing experience, and there’s even a modern remake from 2008 called Bionic Commando Rearmed for those who prefer stronger visual presentation. The two Game Boy and Game Boy Color games from the 1990s are also wonderful. (Just stay away from the 3D sequel from 2009 and also from 2011’s Bionic Commando Rearmed 2; both are turkeys, and the latter even includes a jump mechanic, which is a cardinal sin for a game explicitly based on not jumping.)

• Castlevania (1986) - It’s hard to define exactly why Castlevania is such a great game; the moody movie monster atmosphere, great soundtrack, exciting boss battles and challenging stage design all sort of gel into one cohesive whole. The original game is plagued with stiff controls and is far too short, but the prequel Castlevania III - Dracula’s Curse is the first high point for the series and fixes many of the issues. Super Castlevania IV, Castlevania Bloodlines and even Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest are also great games, but the original set a strong template for the others to (generally) follow until Rondo of Blood broke the mold with something fresh.

• Dig Dug (1982) - I’ve always had a special place in my heart for this insane game where you dig tunnels underground and blow monsters up with an air pump until they explode. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, and yet it’s so much fun.

• Disney’s DuckTales (1989) - While the pogo stick mechanic adds a bit of a learning curve, Capcom’s take on the Disney Afternoon cartoon resulted in one of the most beloved third party games on the NES, and the nonlinear design, varied levels and awesome music (especially the Moon stage) made for one heck of a game. WayForward’s 2013 remake is a great way to enjoy it today, but the original still holds up, as does its lesser-known 1993 sequel.

• Double Dragon (1987) - Technōs Japan’s follow-up to Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun / Renegade turned out to be a genre-defining game that fused the belt-scrolling combat of their earlier game with a storyline pulled from the world of creator Yoshihisa Kishimoto’s earlier laserdisc game Road Blaster. The result was an absolutely awesome cooperative brawling experience that was widely imitated over the next decade, but rarely equaled. Even the sequels can’t quite match the original’s tight gameplay and elegant mechanics. I prefer the arcade version over the NES adaptation, but I’ve played both a lot.

• Dracula (1983) - This odd Intellivision precursor to the beat ‘em up genre has an unbeatable hook - you get to be Dracula and attack random people passing by! - and even has an amusing two-player mode where players alternate between playing as Dracula and one of his prey. It’s one of my favorites from Imagic, a standout early 1980s developer that made some of the best console games of the era.

• Elevator Action (1983) - Taito’s classic action platformer is a very clever inversion of the Donkey Kong-style game, forcing the player to descend a tower filled with spies and intrigue rather than to ascend to the top of the screen. It also offered some novel mechanics in the day like allowing players to control the elevators or even walk on top of them or below them (at the risk of being squished!). It’s still fun to play today, and I also love its 1994 sequel.

• Frogger (1981) - Konami’s wonderfully simple game about getting a frog across a busy street and a treacherous river was one of my early favorites as a child, and it’s such a good concept that they’ve never really been able to improve upon it with sequels or remakes. What I appreciate most about Frogger is that it’s non-violent and appealing to gamers or all ages and genders.

• Last Alert (1989) - Hero Guy Kazama is sort of like a cross between Super Joe and Solid Snake - he runs around shooting bad guys in an overhead shooter, but he also has to contend with memorable bosses and a bonkers story. It’s one of the few games on the PC Engine CD that made it to North America with full English voiceovers (some of which are hilariously over the top and others of which sound like they were recorded by the localization crew themselves), and it’s a lot of fun.

• The Legend of Valkyrie (a.k.a. Valkyrie no Densetsu) (1989) - What if The Legend of Zelda had been made as a co-op arcade game? Fortunately, we don’t have to wonder, because Namco produced something that’s pretty much that with The Legend of Valkyrie, a game that’s barely known outside Japan despite being absolutely brilliant. Namco released it in English once on the Namco Museum Vol. 5 disc for the PlayStation, but it’s quite playable in any language.

• Mega Man 2 (1988) - I’m going to confess that I am not a major fan of the original Mega Man series, but if I had to pick the game I enjoyed the most, it’d be the one that really got everyone excited. Mega Man 3 is a worthy sequel and the later games brought more of the same, but the second game is where all of the good ideas from the original truly hit their stride.

• Punch-Out!! and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (1984 and 1987) - I’ve long argued that Punch-Out!! and its sequels are more rhythm games than boxing games, and I think that’s what’s at the heart of their appeal. The larger-than-life cartoonish boxers certainly help, though, and the NES’s version of contender Little Mac is so small by comparison to his opponents that every match feels like a David vs. Goliath encounter. The arcade game is phenomenal, and there are few finer games on Nintendo’s 8-bit hardware. and the SNES’s 16-bit Super Punch-Out!!, while less memorable, is also great. Even the Wii reboot and downloadable prequel are pretty great. (I also recommend the 1985 coin-op game Arm Wrestling, a North American exclusive released on the same arcade hardware.)

• Ninja Spirit (1988) - Irem made some pretty great arcade games, and Ninja Spirit is one of their absolute best, featuring four cool weapons, several neat power-ups and some epic moments and boss battles. I never understood why the terrible arcade edition of Ninja Gaiden got so popular when this game was around. The TurboGrafx-16 version is even better.

• Paperboy (1985) - Atari Games’s mid to late 1980s output was incredible, and Paperboy, a game in which you dodge all sorts of wild hazards with your bicycle to deliver newspapers, is an absolutely awesome concept that was executed so well in its arcade incarnation that the home versions couldn’t add anything to improve upon it. I love a game that’s nonviolent, humorous and which features a novel theme, and Paperboy definitely delivers a one-of-a-kind experience.

• Peter Pack Rat (1985) - I first encountered this game at Showbiz Pizza and spent nearly all my tokens playing it. As the titular pack rat, you have to retrieve missing items and bring them home without getting stopped by numerous enemies. The level designs are clever and varied, but what really sold me was the game’s unique soundtrack, excellent animation and interesting mechanics that made my adventures feel less like overcoming a series of obstacles and more like being set loose on a dangerous playground.

• Pig Newton (1983) - Sega produced some amazing arcade games in the 1980s, and this obscure porcine-themed platformer (apparently based on an equally obscure comic strip) is quite fun and clever. Basically, you’re a pig stuck in a tree that hungry wolves are trying to chop down, and you have to bonk them with apples hanging from the branches while you dodge annoying nuts dropped by squirrels and owls that block your way. It’s an amazing-looking game for its vintage.

• Phantasy Star II (1989) - The first sequel to the Sega Master System’s 1987 dungeon crawler dropped the first-person perspective and went with the Ultima-style overhead view for the better. But the game’s story is also distinctive, set 1,000 years after the original game on the world of Mota where a seeming utopia exists thanks to a governing computer system called Mother Brain. The hero Rolf and the mutant catgirl Nei are sent to see why biomonsters are attacking humans, and their initial adventure leads to a darker plot that results in the death of a major character at the hands of her sister, a surprising turn of events where all of the heroes are imprisoned offworld and an endgame twist that is so shocking it’s amazing it’s not better known today. While it’s a tough game that requires a guide, it’s an amazing JRPG that I enjoyed far more than the early Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games.

• Pooyan (1982) - Konami’s cute arcade classic involves a family of pigs defending their young from a group of encroaching wolves by setting up their mother in an elevator and having her fire arrows (sometimes with racks of ribs on the tip) to keep the predators away. It’s a strange yet fascinating take on the Space Invaders style of shooter and an addictively adorable game.

• Psycho Soldier (1986) - SNK’s multilane shooter featuring the purple haired psychic soldier and pop idol singer Athena Asamiya is a fun but fairly obscure arcade game that’s notable for its vocal music track, which is wonderful in its original Japanese but absolutely hysterical in English due to some strange localization choices and a vocalist who seems embarrassed by the whole thing. The game’s action and progression from a ruined city to an underground menace is interesting, and it’s one of the few games from this era that includes continuous co-op play.

• Rampage (1986) - What’s better than teaming up with a couple of friends and smashing your way through Peoria, IL and then beginning a monstrous 128-day rampage around the United States? Not much, it turns out, and Bally Midway proved that point with its epic 3-player arcade game in which you play as a giant monster and destroy city after city with no pity for the people involved. It’s the basis of a long-running game series and even a pretty good 2018 giant monster movie.

• RoboCop (Arcade version) (1988) - Data East was one of the first game developers to absolutely nail the art of adapting a movie into a video game by utilizing 16-bit graphics and digitized sound as well as strong attention to detail. While the game lacks much of the satirical subtext of the film, it absolutely captures the action and the charismatic appeal of RoboCop as a character. There’s nothing quite like that first moment where the game frees you to pull out RoboCop’s Auto-9 from his leg and start blowing away bad guys, and that sequence culminates in an early encounter with ED-209. With the exception of the modern RoboCop: Rogue City, no other game has come close to adapting the RoboCop IP well. The arcade sequel was also a lot of fun.

• Strider (Arcade version) (1989) - Capcom’s amazing arcade game allows you to climb on just about any surface and features nonstop action and epic boss battles in a distinctive world that evokes the Cold War if it’d happened during a cyberpunk-styled future. The 1999 sequel Strider 2 is just as good and goes for broke on the crazy set piece battles.

• Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 (1985 and 1989) - I love both of these popular NES Mario adventures and can still sit and play both of them obsessively. The original Super Mario Bros. is a playground filled with secrets and exciting challenges, and Super Mario Bros. 3 takes the ideas of the original game and then introduces varied levels based on thematic worlds and absolutely wild elements like a frog suit, flying racoon tail, transforming tanooki suit and limited power-ups like the Kuribo shoe and the Hammer Brothers suit. For me, the game’s Giant World was a big selling point since it just looked so crazy in the early 1990s, but there are so many other peculiar nooks and crannies in Super Mario Bros. 3 that the entire game is worth exploring over and over. (I’m still sort of meh on Super Mario Bros. 2, and while I’ve completed The Lost Levels, I’ve also never wanted to replay it.)

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade version) (1989) - Konami absolutely knocked it out of the park with this arcade beat ‘em up that felt like it allowed players to enter the world of the white-hot cartoon show sensation of the early 1980s. The game’s cartoony graphics, awesome boss encounters and 4-player co-op featuring each of the Ninja Turtles made it one of the best and most popular arcade games you could find before Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam took over the arcades. The 1991 sequel Turtles in Time is also great.

• Time Gal (1985) - As much as I appreciate 1983’s Dragon’s Lair, it’s not that much fun to play. The same is true for most other laserdisc games similar to it. But Time Gal is different - it’s a well-animated and fun adventure that breaks its action up into eras ranging from the time of the dinosaurs to World War II to the dystopian cyberpunk wasteland of 2001 or aboard a space station in the far-off future of 2010. The game’s green-haired heroine, Reika, is a wonderful character who’s very capable of handling all the wild things her time travel trip throws at her as she tries to work her way back to the year 4001 (even if her scanty pants outfit suggests she’s a bit of a bimbo). The arcade original is the one to play; the Sega CD version (the only one released in North America) is so grainy and distorted it’s barely playable.

• Time Pilot (1982) - Konami’s awesome top-down aerial shooter is awesome because it’s omnidirectional and doesn’t force you to do anything tedious like take down bases or conduct bombing runs - you just keep shooting and spinning around until it’s time to go to the next level. It was the first game from Yoshiki Okamoto, who’d later be responsible for designing 1942, Gun.Smoke and Magic Sword for Capcom before leading the teams creating Final Fight and Street Fighter II.

• Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother (1988) - I discovered this game during my research and I absolutely love it - so long as we’re talking about the awesome arcade edition and not the dull NES port. It’s a helicopter shoot ‘em up with an absolutely insane level of violence and a really wild soundtrack that features a Japanese song with such inscrutable lyrics that my family believed for quite some time the song went, “Wah-wah-wah, gonna bomb your town! The devil’s all around!” It’s good stuff.

• Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap (1989) - Most North American gamers (myself included) missed out on the incredible Wonder Boy sequel series until fairly recently, and the closest thing many players would recognize today are WayForward’s Shantae games (which adapt a lot of concepts from this game and its sequels, Wonder Boy in Monster World and Monster World IV). The basic idea is that you’re a hero named Wonder Boy who gets cursed by a Mecha Dragon and you’re transformed into a lizardman. You have to acquire other forms (allowing you to traverse new areas in different ways) and eventually retrieve the Salamander Cross from the Vampire Dragon so you can undo your curse. It’s one of the Sega Master System’s best games, and its more recent 2017 remake by Lizardcube/DotEmu is also fantastic. I also cannot recommend its sequels highly enough; they’re amazing and absolutely worth your time to track down and play.

• Wonder Momo (1987) - Namco’s unusual tokusatsu-style arcade beat ‘em up about a superhero girl putting on a stage show for a rambunctious audience of young men is high concept, occasionally cringe and so weird that I absolutely love it. While it’s only be available in Japanese arcades until it was very recently released for modern consoles, it’s worth the trouble track down and play. There’s even a follow-up comic and short animated series about Wonder Momo’s daughter for those who can’t get enough.

The 16-Bit Coin-Op and Console Era (1990-1995)

• ActRaiser (1990) - Quintet’s half-city builder, half-sidescrolling action game is a unique experience with absolutely fantastic execution. The basic idea is that you play as an angel who can raise a legendary warrior from a statue to fight monsters in an action sequence, and then you get to build a village of worshippers before you tackle the rest of the monsters and drive them out for good. Not only is it a fantastic-looking game, but it also has one of the best soundtracks in the entire SNES lineup. It’s a shame the 1993 sequel focused solely on the action and lacked the sim elements that made the original so much fun.

• Aliens vs. Predator (Arcade version) (1994) - Capcom’s beat ‘em up treatment of the Aliens vs. Predator comic books and metaverse is a standalone game that’s a ton of fun, allowing several players to cut down hundreds of alien Xenomorphs using a Predator Hunter, a Predator Warrior, a burly human space marine named Dutch Schaefer with an arm-mounted machine gun and a slender human female named Lt. Linn Kurosawa with swords and pistols. Beyond your standard attacks, every character has unique special moves. It’s one of Capcom’s best, which makes it all the more bewildering that it’s never been re-released outside the arcades.

• Armored Warriors and Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness (1994 and 1995) - Capcom’s modular mecha beat ‘em up is a lot of fun due to its interchangeable parts, even if it feels a little generic due to its emphasis on machinery rather than the men and women piloting the mechanical suits. The fighting game follow-up (from which Marvel vs. Capcom stalwart Jin Saotome derives) is also wonderful, particularly because its oddball cast and off-the-rails villains include characters like Princess Devilotte de Deathsatan IX, a mechanical suit piloted by the Super Soldier SHADE called Final Weapon's Brain - G.O.D. and Emperor Death Satan himself, the owner of the Z-AKUMA mechanical suit, which is exactly what you think it is.

• Boogie Wings (a.k.a. The Great Ragtime Show) (1992) - Even if you don’t like shoot ‘em ups, I challenge you to try this crazy World War I-era horizontal shooter because it goes absolutely nuts after the first level, allowing you to destroy museums full of dinosaur bones, get chased by a Ferris Wheel along a roller coaster track and fight a giant robotic Santa Claus, among other crazy things. You can also hop out of your plan and commandeer vehicles ranging from motorcycles to cars to tanks to elephants and giraffes. It’s one of Data East’s best and wildest games, and it’s an absolute joy to play.

• Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (1993) - Unavailable in North America for quite some time, this legendary PC Engine CD-ROM title transitions Castlevania from its stiff precision platforming roots into a new era where exploration is rewarded, multiple endings are possible and a side character can be used to play all of the levels. Richter Belmont’s mission to rescue several kidnapped women (including his beloved Annette) includes several alternate paths that can change the outcome of the story and even unlock the bratty young Maria Renard, who fights with animal spirits. It’s a great conclusion to the classic Castlevania series, and its 1997 sequel runs with the premise in a new and exciting direction.

• Contra III: The Alien Wars (1992) - I’ve never played a Contra game I’ve enjoyed more, nor have I ever seen this one equaled by anything in the series. While it’s still very much a run and gun game at heart, Contra III adds in overhead levels, climbing sequences, the ability to wield multiple guns at once, huge set piece battles and one heck of an epic final boss fight that isn’t over until the game finally gives up. It’s tough enough without being punishing, and it’s also wonderful as a co-op game.

• Chrono Trigger (1995) - Undoubtedly one of the best JRPGs ever created, featuring an amazing cast of characters, a story that expands the seemingly simple game world into amazingly diverse eras and a final boss that presents an existential threat to everything - and everyone! - you hold dear. That it was created by an all-star team at Squaresoft and includes character designs by Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball, Dragon Quest) as well as a gorgeous soundtrack from Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu is just icing on the cake. The 1999 follow up Chrono Cross is also great, but its huge cast of characters and focus on traveling through parallel worlds instead of periods of time just give it a different feel.

• Crystalis (1990) - SNK’s post-apocalyptic action RPG is similar to the early Ys games, and it’s a surprisingly decent RPG for a NES game. One hundred years after a theromonuclear event in 1997 sent the world back to a mutant medieval age, your job is to stop the evil Draygon and his empire from taking control of a floating tower that was built to prevent another catastrophe, but which can also destroy the world. The game’s elemental magic system and sword mechanics are fun, but it is pretty tough and grindy at times, necessitating a walkthrough if you’re serious about completing it.

• Cybernator (a.k.a. Assault Suits Valken) (1992) - While the North America version is localized to the point of removing connections to the previous Assault Suits Leynos and toning down the most obvious mecha anime influences, Konami’s side-scrolling mecha action game is still a treat and features awesome action, interesting missions and an eminently I-love-to-hate-him villain in Major Beldark. There are even multiple endings based on the outcome of your missions. Sadly, the 1999 sequel is Japan-only.

• Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (a.k.a. Vampire) (1994) - Capcom’s monster-oriented fighting game series is just the right amount of weird to be deeply memorable, and it turned into a testing ground for many mechanics that would eventually make it into Street Fighter’s later games. The anime aesthetic, horror vibe and intense action make the original good on its own, but sequels Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge and Vampire Savior: World of Darkness (also known as Darkstalkers 3 and which had two subsequent revisions with additional names) only made a good thing better. Baby Bonnie Hood / Bulleta is also one of my favorite fighting game characters of all time.

• Dragon View (1994) - I don’t have much fondness for Kemco-Seika’s Drakkhen on either the PC or the SNES, but I love its SNES sequel, which plays like a cross between Zelda II: The Adventure of Link with a 3D CRPG like Betrayal at Krondor, using 3D maps to provide an open world you can roam around. The story’s pretty rote stuff, but the action is great and the music is absolutely wonderful. It’s also far less tedious than most SNES RPGs, which is definitely a plus.

• Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara (1994 and 1996) - D&D as an anime-style 4-player Capcom arcade beat ‘em up? The very idea sounds impossible to pull off, and yet the end result yielded not only a great arcade game, but also an even better sequel two years later. Both feature menu-driven magic and inventory systems, branching paths and authentic takes on the D&D trappings. If you’ve never had the chance to play these two games with a party of your closest friends, either find an arcade cabinet or pick up the 2013 re-release Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, which has both games.

• Final Fantasy VI (released in North America as Final Fantasy III) (1994) - Hands down my favorite of all the mainline Final Fantasy games, in part because it’s absolutely bonkers in all the best ways. The basic idea is that a girl named Terra is being hunted by the Magitek army in a steampunk world because she’s actually a powerful being known as an Esper that will give their emperor greater power, but the story goes off the rails midway through when an evil clown named Kefka gains the power for himself, breaks the world and becomes a god you can then battle whenever you’re foolish enough to take him on. There are so many weird and wonderful aspects to this game including staging an opera that mirrors the protagonists’ story, battling your way through a phantom train or striking out in a wild country called the Veldt where you can not only recruit a feral boy to your team, but also battle just about any monster from the game. It also has some of the best music and wildest characters of any Final Fantasy title.

• Denjin Makai and Guardians (1994 and 1995) - You might think Capcom or Sega deserves the crown for “best beat ‘em up,” but that’d only be if you’ve never played Winkysoft and Banpresto’s duo of Japan-only brawlers. The first game’s console port only has three characters, but the arcade version has twice that, each with their own distinctive and robust set of moves and combos. The second game (which is actually a prequel) has eight characters and is even more amazing.

• Gunstar Heroes (1993) - Aside from Contra III and Metal Slug, I have never played a better run and gun game than Treasure’s Gunstar Heroes, which features varied levels with amazing set piece battles and a wide array of weapons that can be combined to form other weapons. Besides being fast and fluid, it’s also enormous fun both single-player or co-op. The Game Boy Advance sequel Gunstar Super Heroes is also great, and I also recommend Treasure’s 1994 game Alien Soldier.

• Haunting Starring Polterguy (1993) - I had no idea this game existed until recently, but here’s the gist of it: The Sims meets Beetlejuice with a teenaged Bart Simpson lookalike thrown in for the main character. Sounds great, right? Much of the game involves scaring a criminal family out of the homes they move into by doing absolutely terrible things to them, and it’s a ton of fun to watch the game’s goofy animations play out. Surprisingly, this one was released by Electronic Arts solely for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and its lone re-release was as part of the EA Replay collection for the PSP.

• Kirby’s Adventure (1993) - Inarguably one of the greatest games on the NES and also one of the best Kirby games to boot, HAL Laboratory’s follow-up to its Game Boy hit cemented Kirby as a wonderful new character for Nintendo’s handhelds and consoles who was distinct enough from Mario to offer a worthwhile experience. That Kirby’s games were also a bit easier to play and filled with vivid cartoon characters made his adventures appeal to younger gamers, many of whom became long-time series fans. This entry added in many of the series staples that weren’t in the earlier game but which have been in most of the mainline sequels since. The later Game Boy Advance remake Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land is also excellent.

• Legend of the Mystical Ninja (1991) - North American gamers have missed out on quite a few Ganbare Goemon games, and this 1991 SNES classic action adventure title even went as far as to remove references to the Japanese folk hero and replace him and his ally Ebisumaru with “Kid Ying and Dr. Yang.” Ugh. But the game’s still excellent (particularly for co-operative play) and manages to keep a lot of its distinctly Japanese humor and charm. Those who enjoy it should check out the later 1997 and 1998 North American sequels on the Nintendo 64 and Game Boy, particularly since they retain the Japanese names of the characters.

• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991) - The original Legend of Zelda is nostalgic, but not a lot of fun to play today, and I never liked Zelda II: The Adventure of Link even in its heyday. But the third game, technically a prequel to the first two, is where The Legend of Zelda really hits its first peak as a brilliant action adventure RPG, featuring two huge interconnected worlds, massive multi-floor dungeons, an epic storyline populated with all sorts of memorable characters and some of the best music in the entire series. It’s my personal favorite in the series, and its direct sequels (Link’s Awakening and A Link Between Worlds) are also great, as are the games that follow its style (Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages, The Minish Cap, Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures).

• The Lost Vikings (1993) - Before Blizzard hit it big with Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo in the latter half of the 1990s, the company was called Silicon & Synapse and primarily made console games. The Lost Vikings introduced Erik, Olaf and Baelog, three Vikings with different skills who get abducted by an evil alien intending to place them in his intergalactic zoo. As they make their escape, they become lost in time and space and have to work together to return home by solving a series of puzzles that require all of their unique skills. It’s a fun and challenging game with great graphics for its time. Its 1997 sequel, Norse by Norse West: The Return of the Lost Vikings, is also worth checking out.

• Lunar: The Silver Star and Lunar: Eternal Blue (1992 and 1994) - The Sega CD had a surprisingly good roster of JRPGs, but none of them could touch the two Lunar games in scope or storytelling, and playing fully-voiced RPGs with animated cutscenes in the early 1990s was definitely a luxury for North American gamers. The first game follows Alex and his flying friend Nall on a quest to become a Dragonmaster and save the lovable blue-haired Luna from the designs of the evil Magic Emperor, who knows Luna is not what she seems. The second game takes things 1,000 years into the future and features a pair of (literally!) star-crossed lovers and their friends as they attempt to avert the prophesized destruction of the world of Lunar. Both were remade into even better editions on the PlayStation (and The Silver Star had a further remake for the PSP), but the Sega CD editions are still great foundations for an awesome series.

• Mega Man X (1993) - If I am going to play a Mega Man game, it’d be the original Mega Man X, its portable remake Maverick Hunter or its first few sequels. The added mechanics, stronger storyline and more varied level design make the Mega Man X games truly stand out, and while ultimate villain Sigma is not nearly as memorable as Dr. Wily, he’s also less predictable and allows the series to break free from the kiddier aspects of the original Mega Man games.

• Metal Warriors (1995) - It’s hard to believe a North American team from LucasArts created this awesome love letter to mecha anime. It’s sort of like Blaster Master meets The Cybernator because there are many different mechs you can pilot, but you can also get out of them and walk around on foot if you prefer. The splitscreen competitive multiplayer mode is also excellent.

• Monster World IV (1994) - You could call this game Shantae Zero and most gamers probably wouldn’t notice a difference - Asha’s adventures through Monster World look and feel so similar to WayForward’s later series that the game’s amazingly easy to pick up and play today. As the sword-wielding, spiritually-sensitive warrior girl Asha, you team up with your unusual pet named Pepelogoo to platform around a large game world with many distinct areas. While the Mega Drive original was Japan-only for decades, it’s now available in English on various platforms and even has a 2021 remake from Artdink.

• Ninja Baseball Bat Man (1993) - I don’t think I’ve ever played a crazier beat ‘em up than a 4-player co-op arcade game where baseball players skilled in ninja arts beat up literal baseballs with their unique bat weapons as they attempt to retrieve sacred baseball objects for the league commissioner. Even stranger are the boss battles that include an anthropomorphic airplane fighting inside a larger plane, a gang of puppies led by a creature called the “Makeshift Villain” or a battle with a slot machine inside a casino. It has to be played to be believed.

• Ninja Golf (1990) - One of the Atari 7800’s most brilliant games feels like it was born from an internet meme. You play as a ninja who must avoid enemies as he hits a ball across a golf course. When you arrive at the hole, instead of sinking a putt, you throw shurikens at a dragon. It’s a wonderfully silly game that scratches the itch for ninja antics at the pace of one of the least action-packed sports.

• The Outfoxies (1995) - Namco built a brilliant and bizarre competitive battling game involving over-the-top secret agents, destructible environments and amazing levels of carnage. The problem is that almost no one played it. They really should have; it’s amazingly fun and reminds me of the Power Stone games if they had started out as a two-dimensional sprite-based arena battler. Plus, you can be a mad scientist in a wheelchair, a chimpanzee in a suit and hop hat or twin child assassins (among others) as you battle on planes, trains, boats or in all sorts of multi-level locales. It’s a treat!

• Pig Out: Dine Like a Swine (1990) - This amazing and obscure arcade platform game from Leland Corporation is so much fun I’m surprised it’s not better-known today. As one of three pigs (each of whom is wearing a different colored outfit), you have to dodge the Big Bad Wolf as well as other hazards and eat all the food in sight. The single-screen stages are nicely varied and have some wonderful little details, and the whimsical graphics and music add a lot of charm to the mayhem.

• Popful Mail (1994 Sega CD remake) (1991) - I missed this one growing up, but it’s become a fast favorite today, both because it’s highly reminiscent of the humorous fantasy anime series Slayers (which I love) and because it’s one of the best action RPGs of the era, hands down. The characters are wonderful, the villains are memorable, the art, music, animated sequences and over-the-top voice acting are awesome, and the game’s still fun to play even now. The Sega CD version is the only one available in English, but it also happens to be the best one.

• Power Instinct 2 and Power Instinct Legends (1994 and 1995) - The Power Instinct series (known as Gōketsuji Ichizoku in Japan) is one of the best comedic fighting game series out there, in part because it’s built to provide a surprisingly good fighting game experience rather than to just poke fun at the genre. Even so, it’s hard to take the game seriously when the old ladies start whipping out their false teeth or the token magical girl transforms into a risque roller derby champion. The series also has one of the best soundtracks of any fighting game franchise, hands down, often featuring vocal tracks from all sorts of different genres. Fans of these two shouldn’t miss Matrimelee, a later game in the series.

• Pulseman (1994) - Gamefreak is best known as the studio that created Pokémon, but their Mega Man-style action platformer for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive is something that shouldn’t be overshadowed by Pikachu and crew. Sadly, it was only released in North America via the Sega Channel (and later, the Wii’s Virtual Console) and is virtually unknown today. That needs to change, because it’s a stunning game with awesome action and cool electricity-based mechanics.

• The Punisher (Arcade version) (1993) - Capcom’s take on Marvel Comics’s The Punisher as a beat ‘em up hero seems a little silly at first given that the antihero is known for shooting everyone dead. But then the guns come out, and a good chunk of the game involves the Punisher wasting a large assortment of goons and C-list Marvel villains with Sgt. Nick Fury chiding him along the way for all the carnage. The final battle with the Kingpin is a great way to cap off a game that then congratulates you for the body count. Sadly, the single home port for the Genesis is so bad that the arcade version is the only one I can recommend.

• Rocket Knight Adventures (1993) - How is this game not more popular? Ever since I first played Rocket Knight Adventures, I was in love with its impressive graphics, cool gameplay mechanics and heavy emphasis on action, sort of like a fun combination of Kirby’s Adventure, Sonic the Hedgehog and a shoot ‘em up. Sparkster the Rocket Knight is a jetpack-equipped, sword-wielding possum who’s a far better animal mascot than just about anyone who was contemporary to him, and his nasty nemesis Axel Gear is always there to make his life miserable. Despite two sequels (Sparkster and Sparkster 2) and a 2010 revival game (simply titled Rocket Knight), Rocket Knight Adventures seems destined for obscurity. I wish it were better known.

• Shadowrun (1993 and 1994) - The cyberpunk and fantasy mash-up RPG setting of Shadowrun has produced a few good games as well as a few turkeys, but the earliest games, released in 1993 for the SNES by Beam Software and Data East and 1994 for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive by BlueSky Software and Sega are both excellent takes on the paper and pencil game’s ideas. The SNES game is more of an action adventure RPG in the vein of later isometric overhead games like Baldur’s Gate or Planescape Torment while the Sega version is an overhead RPG with real-time combat and a more evolved take on the cyberspace world known as the Matrix. Both are a lot of fun for different reasons. Less impressive is Compile’s Japan-only Mega CD interactive anime version from 1996, which plays like a visual novel and doesn’t really adapt the setting properly. The Xbox 360’s multiplayer-only shooter from 2007 is also not too hot. Later Shadowrun games from Harebrained Schemes, however, are pretty decent.

• Silpheed (1993) - Is it a remake of the 1986 Game Arts PC-88 shoot ‘em up or a full-on sequel? The game never really says, but this Sega CD follow-up is definitely impressive, using clever pre-rendered video footage underneath the polygonal ships in the playfield to create a game that feels like it’s running in full 3D. As a shoot ‘em up, it’s a decent (but quite challenging!) game with a surprisingly distinctive set of levels playing out across asteroid fields, geometric bases, capital ship battles and planetary atmospheres, and the visuals and soundtrack are absolutely incredible for a game from 1993. Sadly, the 2000 sequel (a PS2 launch title made by Treasure, of all developers!) isn’t nearly as good as this one.

• Sonic 3 & Knuckles (1994) - I don’t think Sonic the Hedgehog has ever been better than when you join together the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 cartridge with Sonic & Knuckles to play the long, exciting adventure it provides. Sure, Sonic 2 and Sonic CD are both great, but Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the original Sonic Team at the top of its game. No other Sonic game has come close to being as complete and fulfilling an experience.

• Super Castlevania IV (1991) - Is it a remake of Castlevania or a direct sequel? I’ve never been quite clear. But Simon Belmont’s greatest adventure is one of the odder games in the series, utilizing the Super Nintendo’s rotating sprites and 16-bit prowess to provide a true showcase title from the hardware’s launch window. The gameplay is very different from other Castlevania titles due to some new mechanics involving grappling and swinging your whip in eight different directions and the soundtrack is among the best in the series, particularly with the stunning “Dracula’s Theme” on the first stage.

• Super Mario World (1990) - You know a Mario game is good when it’s included as a pack-in title and people still regard it as one of the best games ever made. Super Mario World upped the ante on everything Super Mario Bros. 3 did well without losing any of the magic, and the result is a game that truly feels like an open world full of secrets populated with levels that advance the storyline and progress Mario towards his goal of rescuing the Princess. It’s not nearly as groundbreaking as Super Mario Bros. 3, but it preserves the wonderfully weird sense of “what will happen next?” as it introduces the ghost houses, the special bonus stages that can turn the world from Summer to Fall if you bother to complete them and, of course, the loveable, ridable dinosaur Yoshi.

• Super Metroid (1994) - This is where Metroid goes from good to great, taking all of the good ideas from the original game and its Game Boy sequel and using the SNES’s improved graphics and sound to deliver an out of this world progressive exploration adventure that is so memorable and distinctive for its time that anything like it was compared to Metroid going forward. It’s still a ton of fun to play today, and the Game Boy Advance sequel and prequel in this vein (Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission) are also highly recommended. The Metroid Prime games also offer an incredible 3D take on the same concept.

• Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (1995) - You may not know the name Yasumi Matsuno off the top of your head, but I’ll bet you know some of his games - Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasy XII, Vagrant Story and Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen. Tactics Ogre’s archipelago setting of Valeria is a bit different from the Final Fantasy games’ world of Ivalice, but it’s also a bit more grounded and political than the world of those games and includes a dark and deeply involved story about trust and betrayal and the nature of war. Unlike 1993’s Ogre Battle, 1999’s Ogre Battle 64 and 2000’s Ogre Battle Gaiden: Prince of Zenobia, which are real-time strategy games, Tactics Ogre is a turn-based strategy tactical RPG that established the style Final Fantasy Tactics would later popularize. The game wasn’t released in North America until 1998 in its PlayStation incarnation, and it was super hard to find. Fortunately, there are also two fantastic remakes: 2010’s Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together for the PSP and the 2022 Tactics Ogre: Reborn for modern consoles. Those eager for more can check out the 2001 Game Boy Advance prequel Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis, which is also decent.

• Terranigma (1995) - Quintet followed up ActRaiser with the action RPGs Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, which are both great. But Terranigma is in a whole other class, detailing the resurrection and evolution of life on Earth as it’s guided by your character, Ark, over many distinct ages. The epic story is extremely unique and involves deeply metaphysical themes centered around a constant struggle between forces of light and darkness in a constant cycle of death and rebirth. It’s a game where the battles between God and Devil are responsible for the world’s wretched state and where there are many shocking twists about characters as their true alliances and identities are divulged. It also has excellent graphics and a wonderful soundtrack. Part of the reason for the game’s obscurity is that for whatever reason, the English language version was released in Europe (where the SNES was less popular), but never the United States.

• Trials of Mana (a.k.a. Seiken Densetsu 3) (1995) - While I enjoyed Final Fantasy Adventure and The Secret of Mana, I absolutely adored the third game, which for a long time was only available in English with a fan translation. Besides the excellent overall story and mechanics, the scope of the story is incredible for a game of this era - you pick three characters (from a total of six) and watch the story play out with a customized introduction for your main character and then watch the main story unfold a little differently depending upon the makeup of your party, resulting in different dialogue throughout the game and twelve distinct endings. The modern remake is fine, but scales back the branches a bit; the original game, on the other hand, is a true classic.

• ToeJam & Earl (1991) - I love Greg Johnson’s affinity for weird extraterrestrial life, and his collaboration with programmer Mark Voorsanger to create a cooperative roguelike console adventure featuring funky hip hop aliens stranded on our planet forced to retrieve the parts for their spaceship while avoiding strange Earthlings is a one-of-a-kind experience that later sequels could replicate but never quite improve upon. I’ve played every game in the series and loved them all (yes, even Panic on Funkotron), but the original is still the best.

• Virtua Fighter and Virtua Fighter 2 (1993 and 1994) - Sega AM2’s evolution on the competitive fighting genre was an odd-looking game when it debuted, featuring polygonal characters, floaty jumps and empty stages. But the foundation for a really great fighting game was there, and even though the sequels looked better and better as they evolved (or tried out really crazy ideas like 1996’s Virtua Fighter Kids), the core gameplay didn’t change much. I love the first game for its surreal look and the second game for fleshing all of that out into a more attractive experience. Both have killer soundtracks by Takayuki Nakamura.

The Multimedia PC Era (1990-1995)

• The Adventures of Willy Beamish (1991) - Dynamix’s classic adventure game looked and played like a living cartoon depicting the world through the eyes of an imaginative (and trouble-prone) boy who has a frog named Horny as his best friend, parents who want to send him to military school and a goal of making it to the Nintari championship. It’s the sort of game where your babysitter turns into a vampire bat or where friendly Japanese tourists turn out to be ninja assassins. If you haven’t played it yet, you should, but I’d recommend avoiding the voiced versions; they’re hilariously bad.

• Alone in the Dark (1992) - The adventures of Edward Carnby and Emily Hartwood began with this unusual fusion of polygonal characters, pre-rendered environments and an H.P. Lovecraft-style horror story fused with Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” As you explore the mansion of Derceto, it’s advisable to run from enemies and try to solve puzzles instead since weapons are scarce and the monsters are deadly. It’s often cited as the original template for the 3D survival horror genre. The first two sequels are great, but subsequent sequels, remakes and a terrible feature film have since tarnished the franchise’s good name.

• Another World (a.k.a. Out of This World) (1991) - Eric Chahi’s masterpiece of rotoscoped animation and polygonal art showed that video games didn’t need full motion video to create memorable worlds filled with excitement and tension. Another World is beatable in a single sitting if you know what you’re doing, but it took me many sessions to figure the game out well enough to get to that point. It’s unfortunate that its direct sequel, Heart of the Alien, is such a letdown, but Eric Chahi didn’t work on that one; he was too busy with Heart of Darkness, a vastly underappreciated game on the PlayStation.

• Betrayal at Krondor (1993) - Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar Saga fantasy novels come to life in this midquel set between A Darkness at Sethanon and Prince of the Blood. It’s a tough but rewarding RPG featuring digitized humans in costumes as the characters, a surreal 3D world built on an aging Dynamix flight sim engine and a plot deep enough that Feist rewrote it as the novel Krondor: The Betrayal in 1998. The game was followed by an actual sequel (by a different development team) called Return to Krondor in 1998 as well as a spiritual successor by Dynamix (unrelated to Feist’s novels) called Betrayal in Antara in 1997. Neither is as good as the original.

• Cannon Fodder (1993) - Sensible Software’s point and click war game is unlike just about any you’ll ever play because it emphasizes cartoonish violence - the game encourages you to make dead bodies hop around like bunnies by continually shooting at them - while also melodramatically mourning the loss of fallen soldiers after each mission. It’s a wonderfully demented and addictive little game that’s still fun today.

• Commander Keen: “Goodbye Galaxy!” and Aliens Ate My Babysitter (1991) - id Software’s original Commander Keen games were the best side-scrolling platformers available on DOS PCs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and chapters 4 and 5 received a graphical update and were released as part of a broader shareware story while Sierra published chapter 6 as a standalone commercial game. Much like Disney’s DuckTales on the NES, there’s a pogo stick mechanic that needs to be mastered to progress through the game, but once you nail those controls, the Commander Keen games are still as good as they ever were. I love that the game’s menu, which is shown on Billy’s wristwatch, even has a 2-player Pong-style mode.

• DarkSpyre (1990) - Few gamers have played this randomly-generated action RPG with a GUI interface and an overhead viewpoint similar to the Ultima VII games by way of Gauntlet, and yet I’d argue it’s a true hidden gem. I don’t usually like dungeon crawlers as a general rule, but DarkSpyre’s emphasis on melee combat and generous magic system give it a lot of variety, and once the game gets going, it’s amazingly fun (though, like most roguelikes, quite challenging!). The follow-up games Dusk of the Gods and The Summoning are also good, but their focus on storytelling, fixed level design and diagonal isometric perspective make them a different experience.

• Day of the Tentacle (1993) - Tim Schafer’s sequel to Maniac Mansion is one of those games that you’ll never forget - it’s so well-crafted and smartly written that it provides both an excellent adventure game experience and many laugh out loud moments. The goofy premise is that the Purple Tentacle drinks some toxic sludge, becomes superintelligent and decides to take over the world. The only way to stop him is for the nerdy Bernard, jittery Laverne and laid-back roadie Hoagie to travel in time through specially equipped port-a-johns and help each other change history, the present and the future. The hyper-cartoony artwork and wonderful music add to the madcap feel, and those who had a CD-ROM drive at the time were blessed with some excellent voice acting to enjoy.

• Descent (1995) - Parallax Software (later known as Volition) was years ahead of their time with this incredible six degrees of freedom shooter featuring true 3D texture-mapped graphics and some of the most nerve-wracking level design of any 1990s action game. The premise of Descent is that you have to fly into robot-infested mines, navigate twisting passageways and blow up reactors while rescuing stranded humans. The catch is that there is no ground or horizon to orient you; you’ll often find a tunnel dumps you in a room where you need to rapidly re-orient to make sense of what’s ahead. It’s an amazing and well-executed concept that resulted in two equally excellent sequels.

• Doom (1993) - I love Doom. You probably love Doom. It’s not a controversial choice. id Software’s monumental shareware game was one of the best reasons to own a gaming PC in the 1990s, and it’s the reason we play first person shooters today. It’s also one of the most moddable games there is and still has an impressive online community making more Doom even to this day. Even co-creator John Romero is still releasing official level packs. Later versions of Doom are also great, including the 2016 remake. Every self-respecting gamer should know and love this series.

• Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (1992) - Westwood Studios didn’t create the real-time strategy game, but they definitely created the template through which the genre evolved. Dune II was a stunning and well-made game for its time, allowing players to choose between three factions to take control of Arrakis in a plot loosely adapted from the Frank Herbert novels and 1980s film adaptation. What made the game unique was the focus on base building atop the rocky sections of the desert maps (limiting players’ ability to expand) while collecting enough spice to build an army and annihilate any opponents. The constant threat of sandworms and the need to focus on skirmishes breaking out across the map in real time added to the intensity. Blizzard’s Warcraft: Orcs and Humans popularly adapted the formula to fantasy and Westwood’s Command & Conquer took the foundations and established its own sprawling science fiction universe. The Sega Genesis port Dune: The Battle for Arrakis is respectable, and follow-ups Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Dune (both of which feature extensive live video cutscenes) are also criminally underrated.

• Epic Pinball (1993) - There were a surprising number of great video pinball games available for the PC in the 1990s, but most of them were best on the Amiga. Fortunately, DOS gamers had the shareware Epic Pinball, a remarkably fun compilation of a dozen virtual tables with a killer soundtrack to boot. While Epic MegaGames published it, Digital Extremes (creators of Warframe) developed it after seeing a partially-finished prototype by Finnish demoscene group Future Crew (whose members contributed to this and other Epic games). Fans of this one should also check out Silverball (by the same creator and released the same year through MicroLeague).

• Escape Velocity (1996) - The Macintosh didn’t have a lot of great original games, but Ambrosia Software’s Escape Velocity space trader was one of the few Mac gamers could lord over Windows and Amiga diehards. The game is essentially an open-ended exploration and economic simulator where you can follow along a pre-scripted story or go your own way, and its two sequels, 1998’s Escape Velocity Override and 2002’s Escape Velocity Nova (the latter of which did make it to Windows) simply built on to the core concept. There have been many imitators and spiritual successors to this series, including the excellent Space Rangers games, Gaia Beyond, 3030 Deathwar, Space Pirates and Zombies and Naev, but I recommend starting with the 2015 freeware game Endless Sky, which replicates a lot of what Escape Velocity pioneered.

• Flashback: Quest for Identity (1992) - Though Flashback is similar to Another World, the amnesiac adventures of Conrad B. Hart were actually designed by Paul Cuisset and take a few more notes from Prince of Persia by utilizing ledges, switches, doorways and jumps to create puzzles for the player to solve. The amount of detail in the sprites and animations is impressive, and the game's varied levels keep things from getting dull. It’s just a shame that the 1995 3D sequel Fade to Black was such a mess; I was really excited for it at the time.

• Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (1993) - Al Lowe is most famous for the Leisure Suit Larry series, but I actually enjoyed Freddy Pharkas much more because it’s not so caught up in making fun of sleaze and instead offers an intriguing (and very silly) send-up of Westerns through the eyes of a silver-eared pharmacist who hung up his six-shooters after a personal tragedy. The game’s theme song is amazing enough, but the fact that you have to cure maladies like flatulent horses and diarrhea outbreaks using your pharmacological skills makes Freddy Pharkas a one-of-a-kind adventure.

• The Incredible Machine and sequels and Sid an Al’s Incredible Toons and sequel (1993-1995) - Kevin Ryan’s long-running series of Rube Goldberg device simulators is a fun and inventive puzzle games that never gets old. At some point, publisher partner Jeff Tunnell purchased the series and kept it going up through 2013’s Contraption Maker. Meanwhile, Sid and Al’s Incredible Toons applied the same basic interface and design to making crazy cartoon contraptions that would make Wile E. Coyote and Itchy and Scratchy proud. Its 1994 sequel, The Incredible Toon Machine, is also worthwhile.

• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992) - This one’s very likely the best Indiana Jones game, following up on the pretty decent 1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade adventure game an original plot as well as an enhanced 1993 “talkie” version that set a new standard for what CD-ROM adventure games could be. Until the sequel films debuted, this game was the fourth Indiana Jones installment as far as many fans were concerned, with a great story about Nazi scientists searching for yet another source of occult power, this time from the lost civilization of Atlantis. There are even branching paths and multiple endings. It’s superb.

• Jazz Jackrabbit (1994) - Epic MegaGames gave Commander Keen a real run for his money with this shareware Sonic the Hedgehog-style action platformer starring a green bunny with a gun rushing through themed world to save his beloved Eva Earlong from the Turtle Terrorists. Beyond its great graphics and smooth gameplay, Jazz Jackrabbit also features a stellar soundtrack. Its 1998 sequel is also great, but has a different feel to it due to its higher-resolution graphics and time travel storyline. The music is great, though!

• Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993) - I never got into the Wizardry games and found a lot of the Silver Box AD&D games rather tedious, but I did enjoy titles like Dungeon Master and Stonekeep that tried to modernize the dungeon-crawling and make the RPGs feel a bit more action-oriented. Westwood Studios’s Lands of Lore was the first one that really hooked me, in part because it was a little weird and also because it had varied environments that didn’t just involve towns and dungeons. Typical of Westwood, it also enjoyed great production values (including voice acting from Patrick Stewart in the CD-ROM version!). The sequels were fun but a little less essential; part 2 involved an annoying transformation gimmick you couldn’t control, and part 3 included some strange new lands to explore, including a Nod base from Command & Conquer.

• Lemmings (1991) - One of the breakout hits of the early 1990s PC scene was this strange little puzzle game by DMA Design (later creators of Grand Theft Auto) where you try to get a group of green-haired, blue shirt-wearing lemmings to an exit before they all expire. You accomplish this by giving them jobs and accepting that quite often, you’ll have to sacrifice some of the little guys to get there. The original game was brilliant, and the many sequels and expansions added to the formula with varying levels of success. (It also produced two 1996 spin-offs; Lemmings Paintball and a platformer called The Adventures of Lomax.)

• Loom (1990) - One of the saddest things about LucasArts becoming the house of Star Wars in the 1990s was the loss of highly creative and innovative games like Loom, a serious science fiction adventure game based around a future culture that uses musical compositions as a form of magic. It included a 30-minute audio drama to provide the backstory to the adventures of 17-year-old Bobbin, a cloaked, hooded figure who had to rescue his fellow weavers from the unfortunate effects of a song that turned them into swans. It’s wild stuff.

• Magic Carpet and Magic Carpet 2 (1994 and 1995) - Bullfrog’s 3D action strategy resource gathering game seems simple enough: as a wizard, you fly around on a magic carpet, build a castle and collect mana gathered from enemies. But the execution of the premise is incredible, and those lucky enough to have a PC to run it in the mid-1990s were treated to not only a fast and fluid 3D game with some neat strategic hooks, but also an amazing multiplayer experience. Both the original and its sequel are excellent and still fun to play today.

• Master of Magic (1994) - Take Sid Meier’s Civilization, add in a second world and some fantasy races and you get this excellent 4X game from MicroProse which combines the civilization building of its inspiration with tactical battles reminiscent of tabletop gaming. The secret sauce here is that you’re a wizard who can utilize magic to turn the tides in these battles with both passive and active spells and effects. It’s amazingly addictive and still fun to play today. I only wish I loved the 2022 remake as much as I loved the original back in the day.

• Master of Orion (1993) - We can debate all day whether the original Master of Orion is superior to its sequel Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares, but one thing I hope we can agree on is that each one is a darn fine game that offer a darn near flawless execution of the “Civilization in Space” formula. If you enjoy 4X games but prefer an outer space setting, Master of Orion and its first sequel did it best in the 1990s and are still only equaled by Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations games.

• MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995) - For years, Activision’s long-promised follow-up to Dynamix’s MechWarrior felt like vaporware, but when the game finally arrived, it proved to be worth the wait, delivering a sophisticated simulation of the Battletech universe and introducing the first video game appearance of the Clans, an elite group of exiles who’d returned to the Inner Sphere to conquer it with their advanced technology. The gameplay, graphics and soundtrack were all impressive for the era and absolutely nailed the mechanics established by the tabletop game system. While there have been several sequels (all of which are pretty good, honestly), none have risen above MechWarrior 2 in what it was able to accomplish by making mech combat at home feel as comprehensive as what someone could experience at a pricey Battletech center with cockpits full of controls.

• One Must Fall: 2097 (1994) - A shareware fighting game native to the PC that doesn’t suck? Somehow, developer Rob Elam figured out how to make it work, and this single-screen robot battler is still tremendous fun because of its varied roster and customizable bots. Once you get used to the mechanics (which are adapted from Street Fighter II but which feature their own quirks), One Must Fall 2097 offers a great career mode and some fun local multiplayer, and Kenny Chou’s soundtrack is very memorable. Even better, the game’s free to play now; the developers released it as freeware in 1999. Sadly, the 2003 sequel didn’t fare as well.

• Panzer General (1994) - The serious wargame for people who don’t like serious war games, SSI’s Panzer General took a page from Daisenryaku and introduced a highly polished and well-presented hex-grid grand strategy experience set across five lengthy campaigns from 1939-1943 covering the invasion of Poland, the North African desert battles in Libya and Egypt, Operation Barbarossa, the Liberation of Italy and the Eastern Front’s Third Battle of Kharkov. It changed wargames forever and established a series that extended into other theaters as well as space and fantasy in the years that followed.

• Sam and Max Hit the Road (1993) - LucasArt’s classic adventure game based on Steve Purcell’s freelance police dog and rabbit duo is one of the weirdest and funniest games I’ve ever played, weaving a strange and compelling mystery out of the idea of visiting roadside attractions around the country. There are so many things to love - the amazingly detailed backgrounds that are loaded with jokes, the included minigames you can buy at gas stations, the use of the psychotic Max as an item to get things moving. The damsel in distress is a giraffe-necked girl from a carnival sideshow, and her boyfriend is a bigfoot who was frozen in ice before he thawed out and decided to go find his own kind at a tiki resort convention. The villain is a country music star who’s barely covering his English accent, and the game even gives him a big song to reveal his evil plot. While the adventures of Sam and Max continued fairly well into an episodic adventure series from Telltale Games, the original point and click adventure is unquestionably one of the best ever made.

• Scorched Earth (1991) - Before Team17’s Worms, the shareware game Scorched Earth was one of the best ways to challenge your friends and family to a physics-based artillery battle where you had tanks shoot at one another with a combination of angle and power instructions. The deformable playfields, the wide range of weapons, the meteor showers and the (editable!) lines the tank commanders would utter gave this game a ton of charm in the early 1990s. Which Scorched Earth wasn’t the first artillery game out there, it was definitely the best until Worms added cartoon graphics and lovable characters to the template. It even inspired a 2003 open source spiritual successor called Scorched 3D that stayed in development for over a decade.

• The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (1990 and 1991) - LucasArts developed a strong reputation for point and click adventures following Maniac Mansion, and the Monkey Island games perfected the formula by leaning into the comedy. Wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood’s adventures through a series of fictional Caribbean islands never actually reveal what the “Secret of Monkey Island” is, but his battles with the evil pirate LeChuck and his attempts to win the affections of Governor Elaine Marley (whose election slogan is “When there’s only one candidate, there’s only one choice), a character who definitely doesn’t need saving but who appreciates Guybrush’s efforts anyhow. The second game ups the ante on the wild stuff and includes a spitting contest, the building of multiple voodoo dolls and a bewildering and unforgettable ending. The next sequel (developed without Ron Gilbert) is also great, and the later games (including the newest one from Ron Gilbert) are fun, but inessential.

• Sid Meier’s Civilization (1991) - I don’t think I’ve ever played a more addictive simulation game than the original Civilization, and even today with numerous sequels and spin-offs as well as countless imitators, the original is still a blast, fusing city building and management with light turn-based wargaming. This is the game that cemented the 4X formula and made it fun to move from the stone age all the way up to the era of nanotechnology and space colonization. It was also one of the only military strategy games of the 1990s to allow players to choose a peaceful path to victory. The sequels all simply build on the amazing foundations this game established with better graphics, more options and various comfort systems.

• SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony (1991) - One of the wildest and most creative spin-offs of Maxis’s SimCity took things down to the soil and explored the world of black ants, allowing players to create a colony that could battle red ants for dominance and eventually take over a human house. It’s the rare game that’s both educational and exciting, and the huge game manual provides a lot of well-researched detail for those who want to know more.

• SimCity 2000 (1993) - Bigger and better than the original SimCity in pretty much every way, this game showed how to do a sequel correctly, and it’s arguably the best game in the series. The isometric (and rotatable!) perspective allowed the game to have a far greater sense of three-dimensionality that was constantly copied by other sim games after it, and the inclusion of an underground layer allowed players to also think about things like water supplies and subway lines.

• SimTower and Yoot Tower (1994 and 1998) - Yoot Saito’s unique tower-building game has inspired quite a few mobile knock-offs, but the original game is still the best. The basic idea is that you build a skyscraper floor by floor and try to keep as many tenants as you can as you stretch up to 100 stories above ground and nine below. The key to the game is understanding how elevators work. Like SimCity, there are also disasters such as terrorists attacking the building. Sequel Yoot Tower adds in many more features and scenarios different parts of the world, such as Toyko and Hawaii. The Japanese version even had expansion packs available.

• Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (1991) - How do you top the meta-craziness of Space Quest III? By sending Roger Wilco into his future and past, of course! An accident with a time machine sends Roger to Space Quest XII: Vohaul’s Revenge II, and even worse, the Sequel Police are chasing him down to correct the problem. Roger’s adventure even dumps him off at an outer space mall at one point. It’s a wild game with many unexpected (and hilarious) twists, not the least of which includes the fact that the actual Space Quest IV only shows up in a cutscene.

• Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters (1992) - Next to Starflight, Star Control II is one of my absolute favorite games in a galactic setting - it’s just so weird and wild that the little moments stick with you as much as the big ones do, and the utilization of the original Star Control’s combat mode makes the space battles fun an exciting. The premise of the game is that you’re trying to save an enslaved Earth from alien invaders using the power of a Precursor ship and a coalition of alien allies you recruit. But the story’s anything but straightforward, and it turns out there are worse things in the universe than the Ur-Quan masters. Given that this game has been available as open source freeware for quite some time, there’s no excuse not to play it.

• Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites (1992 and 1993) - Star Trek works really well as an adventure game, and this duo of multimedia releases even got the original cast to come in and record their voices for new chapters in the voyages of the U.S.S. Enterprise. While it’s a bit slow-paced and leans into the camp of the original show, the space battles are fun and the game’s writing perfectly captures the characters. They’re two of the best Star Trek games you’ll ever play.

• Star Wars: TIE Fighter (1994) - How do you up the ante on Star Wars: X-Wing, the first official Star Wars space sim from LucasArts? You let players experience the thrills of flying for the Galactic Empire, of course, and absorb them with a story that shows what it’s like to serve as the pilot of a TIE Fighter. But what makes the game work is the gray morality of fighting for an evil institution while being commended and rewarded for helping to accomplish important missions like stopping space pirates or putting down an insurrection that may break out into a dangerous war. As you progress, even the Emperor himself takes notice and initiates you into his secret order. There’s never been another game quite like TIE Fighter, and it’s definitely one of the best Star Wars games as well as one of the best games, period.

• Syndicate and Syndicate Wars (1993 and 1996) - Bullfrog’s isometric cyberpunk strategy game is a violent, bloody affair where you create a gang of cybernetic hitmen and work to improve the power of your corporate syndicate by any means necessary, even if it means getting into a shootout with the police, brainwashing pedestrians or hurting innocent civilians. Part of the fun is the open-ended gameplay that spans the entire world. The sequel is just as good, featuring 3D graphics so you can rotate the battlefield.

• Transport Tycoon (1994) - How do you improve on Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon? Chris Sawyer’s ambitious mash-up of that game and SimCity 2000 turned out to be the winning formula, and it’s still fun to play today as you construct a shipping empire made up of boats, planes, trains and automobiles. The Deluxe edition and the fan-made OpenTTD add more features to an already great game.

• Under a Killing Moon (1994) - Probably the best of the Tex Murphy series of adventure games, set in a post-apocalyptic 2042 version of San Francisco where Norms and Mutants live in conflict. The game’s story about a hard-luck detective taking on a Maltese Falcon sort of case turns into something much stranger, and the full-motion video and 3D environments are impressively combined to create a sophisticated adventure game experience that was far ahead of its time. Sequels The Pandora Detective, Overseer and the 2014 revival Tesla Effect are also great, and all of them star Chris Jones as Tex Murphy.

• Wing Commander and Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (1990 and 1991) - If you don’t understand why gamers are throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at Chris Roberts to make Star Citizen, it’s probably because you never played the original Wing Commander games, which fused space dogfighting with cinematic storytelling in a way that gave PC gamers a distinctive action game they could really get excited about. While the Wing Commander games aren’t great as actual simulators, they’re arcadey enough to be tremendous fun and are populated with many memorable characters and a deep plot that branches in different directions depending upon how your missions impact the broader war. The three sequels that came later are also great (and two of them feature Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell in filmed cutscenes as well as awesome Kilrathi puppets!), but the first two games are still my favorites.

• You Don’t Know Jack series (1995 to present) - Jellyvision (now known as Jackbox Games) cranked out what seemed like dozens of You Don’t Know Jack trivia games in the late 1990s, but the reason these irreverent trivia games were so popular is because they went above and beyond simply asking questions by including sharp humor, great production values and a nice mix of trivia questions that ranged from easy to nearly impossible. The series’ trademark emphasis on fusing pop culture and high culture helped make even boring questions fun, and the extra touches, like the game show conceit and the fake commercials that would play after every “episode,” just added to the fun.

The CD-ROM Console and Late Coin-Op Era (1995-1999)

• Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (1996 and 1999) - Silicon Knights created their unique overhead action adventure RPG featuring the vampiric antihero Kain before Crystal Dynamics took the series over with Soul Reaver, and both are definitely worth your time. In Blood Omen, you begin the story as a new vampire seeking revenge as you venture out into the land of Nosgoth and try to hunt down the Circle of Nine, a group of sorcerers who are not only responsible for your death, but also much of the evil going on around you. The story’s twists and turns are pretty amazing and offer a stunning amount of lore for a game from the 1990s, and a surprising facet is that Kain eventually accepts that being a vampire is his true destiny… and the canonical ending to the game leads to Kain damning Nosgoth and becoming its evil ruler. Soul Reaver shifts from the overhead isometric perspective of the original game to a full 3D action experience where you play as Kain’s fallen lieutenant, Raziel, who’s been raised as a wraith 1500 years after the first game and sent to kill Kain and save Nosgoth. The subsequent sequels from the 2000s continue the stories of both characters and add in a lot of time travel to explore the periods in between.

• Brave Fencer Musashi (1998) - An excellent action RPG from SquareSoft that sometimes plays like a 3D platformer, sometimes like an overhead Zelda-style game and sometimes like a conventional RPG with NPC interactions and towns. It also looks and sounds like a kid’s cartoon show, making it very hard to classify. And yet it was made by a team that’d go on to contribute to Final Fantasy XI (including illustrator Tetsuya Nomura) and has a great score by Tsuyoshi Sekito, a frequent Square Enix Collaborator.

• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997) - Richter Belmont (hero of Rondo of Blood) has fallen under the power of a Dracula and has become the lord of Castlevania, prompting Alucard (one of the heroes of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse) to venture in and set him free. But the game shifts away from linear platforming into the progressive exploration style of Metroid, giving Alucard RPG-like stats and forcing him to explore every area of the castle in a non-linear fashion. Even better is the game’s big secret: if you’re disappointed enough by the game’s abrupt ending, you you can unlock a second inverted castle above the original and make your way to the game’s true conflict with a resurrected Dracula, learning far more about Alucard’s nature in the process. The Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS follow-ups that come after Symphony of the Night are also excellent, and Rondo of Blood, which was stuck in Japan on the PC Engine CD for what seemed forever and a half, finally became available in English in 2007 for modern platforms with a PSP remake that includes a fully-playable Symphony of the Night as a hidden game.

• Crazy Taxi (1999) - Sure, it’s been redone many times since, but Sega’s arcade hit Crazy Taxi was a breath of fresh air when it hit arcades and the Sega Dreamcast because it was so simple, so easy to play and so free-range in its sensibilities. I can’t hear The Offspring’s “All I Want” or Bad Religion’s “Them and Us” without thinking of this game and its amazing world filled with people try to get to the Levi’s Store, Pizza Hut, KFC or Tower Records.

• Dead or Alive 2 (1999) - I worry about the folks at Team Ninja sometimes, because they create amazing-looking games with great mechanics, but then include a rather creepy fetishization of their female characters along with big buff dudes to accompany them. Even so, I keep playing their games because they tend to be awesome. Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore was their first game that really hooked me as a launch title for the PlayStation 2, and I still play it today because of its excellent gameplay, Virtua Fighter-based mechanics and incredible-looking graphics. The sequels that came after it are more or less the same thing with even better graphics, but wow, are these games fast and fun to play!

• Guardian Heroes (1996) - Treasure’s multi-lane co-op beat ‘em up is a peculiar title where you raise a warrior from the dead and have him fight alongside you (computer-controlled) as you brawl your way through an epic branching story that can get really unpredictable - you could find yourself storming the gates of Hell or battling the final boss of Gunstar Heroes, and there’s even a way to assault Heaven and defeat God (here called Sky Spirit) himself! The Game Boy Advance sequel, Advance Guardian Heroes, is a decent follow-up, but it’s tough as nails.

• Harvest Moon: Back to Nature and Harvest Moon 64 (1999) - The original Harvest Moon on the SNES really captured my attention when I first came across it because it fused JRPG mechanics with a farming simulation and dating sim. “This is going to be boring,” I thought one night, and then, many hours later, the sun was coming up and I was still playing. As good as the SNES version was, however, the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation follow-ups added in all of the features that creator Yasuhiro Wada couldn’t fit into the original, and they’re probably the best of all of the many Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons games that followed. This is the rare game series my wife loves even more than me; she’s played them all. Despite many sequels and an eventual shift to Story of Seasons, the originals are still only really excelled by Stardew Valley, an amazing homage made by a one-man developer.

• Heart of Darkness (1998) - An amazing and beautiful action platformer from Eric Chahi (Another World) where you play as a young boy named Andy who makes a homemade spaceship and heads to another world called the Darkland on a rescue mission for his dog, Whisky. It’s a weird and wonderful game filled with shadow monsters and featuring some impressive-for-the-time pre-rendered animation and a setting that feels like Another World meets Oddworld. The only bad thing is that it’s very short; despite the fact that it’s a two disc PlayStation game, it’s beatable within an hour or two.

• I.Q.: Intelligent Qube (1997) - A friend of mine once described this strange puzzler as being his idea of what Hell might really be like. I always found that oddly accurate. As a man on a seemingly neverending narrow platform in a space-like void, you clear advancing cubes before they crush you to death. It’s a stressful and challenging puzzler, but it’s also a lot of fun.

• Incredible Crisis (1999) - It’s just a normal day in the life of a Japanese family - father Taneo goes to work, mother Etsuko heads out shopping, son Tsuyoshi heads to the park and daughter Ririka goes to school and decides to cut class. But Ririka encounters a UFO that accidentally hits a bear and causes it to grow into a giant, shrinking Tsuyoshi with its strange rays. Etsuko foils a bank robbery and is kidnapped by the military, forcing her to steal a jet to get home. And Taneo has a series of workplace misadventures involving dance parties, rolling boulders, explosions and a femme fatale on a Ferris Wheel. Somehow, everything works out, and it’s all set to a cool soundtrack from the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. The gameplay is structured around minigames and quick-time events, and while it’s occasionally challenging and sometimes repetitive, it’s never dull.

• Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (1997) - I feel I owe a debt to Klonoa to spread the good news about its high quality, because I once broke a physical copy of the game in half while trying to remove a large video rental sticker overlaid on the game’s CD. That’s one less copy of this excellent Namco 2.5D platformer in the world, and one less person who got to enjoy the titular mascot character’s wind-based attacks, curving backgrounds and dreamlike game world. It’s sort of like Kirby meets Sonic by way of Tomba!; much of the game involves picking up enemies with a ring powered by the spirit of a friend named Huepow and then using Klonoa’s prehensile ears to carry them, toss them at obstacles or use them to achieve a double-jump, and these mechanics give Klonoa some fun and distinctive platforming abilities. While I won’t spoil the surprisingly detailed story, I will mention that the bittersweet ending is one of the most memorable aspects of the game. The PlayStation original is great, but the 2008 remake for the Wii, simply titled Klonoa, is also worth checking out, as is the 2022 Klonoa: Phantasy Reverie Series compilation which includes remakes of this game and its 2001 PS2 sequel.

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) - Nintendo’s translation of the overhead Zelda games into a full 3D adventure is, quite simply, an amazing achievement. While I find Ocarina of Time a bit tedious and slow today, it was absolutely captivating when it was released and definitely set the bar even higher for Zelda games. As much as I liked the games that came after it (including the oddball 2000 sort-of-sequel Majora’s Mask), Ocarina of Time was the peak for the 3D branch of the series and is still rightfully recognized as one of the greatest games ever made.

• Metal Gear Solid (1998) - I don’t think anyone expected this sequel to a semi-obscure MSX and NES game to be such a monster hit, but that’s because gamers outside of Japan really didn’t know what Hideo Kojima was capable of doing. Solid Snake’s adventures through the Shadow Moses compound are simultaneously grounded in reality and incredibly over-the-top; this is a game where there’s an amazing attention to detail when it comes to military terminology and gear, but also a cyborg ninja with cloaking abilities running around. The wonderful characters and philosophical themes live in a world where there’s a soldier brought down by intestinal distress and where a woman’s easily spotted by her swaying hips. There’s so much melodrama and madness in the stealth action Metal Gear Solid provides, but it’s still one of the greatest games of the 1990s. The original is great, but the PC port (based on Metal Gear Solid: Integral from Japan with some cut content) and the controversial GameCube remake The Twin Snakes are both excellent as well. Those who enjoy the more puzzling aspects of the sneaking mechanics should also try The VR Missions, which is surprisingly fun for what it is.

• Metal Slug and Metal Slug X (1996 and 1998) - Nazca Corporation’s Contra-style run and gun game was one of the Neo Geo’s biggest hits thanks to its gorgeous cartoon graphics, excessive levels of violence, memorable soundtrack and incredible set piece battles featuring gigantic bosses and a drivable vehicle (the titular “Metal Slug”). The first game is so good that the 1998 sequel (and its 1999 variant, Metal Slug X) could only really add to the insanity with some wild stuff like venturing into pyramids and suffering a mummy’s curse or eating so much food your character becomes instantly obese. The entire series is enjoyable (culminating in 2008’s Metal Slug 7 and its 2009 revision Metal Slug XX), but the 1990s games are truly special because they laid such a strong foundation.

• Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998) - The first two Panzer Dragoon games are rail shooters that are definitely worth playing, but once you try out Panzer Dragoon Saga, you might also feel like they’re a step backwards. This one is an RPG with a unique style of active turn-based combat as well as 3D areas you can traverse on foot or while riding your dragon. But it also features a great story, excellent 3D graphics for its vintage and a stunning soundtrack. Had it not been locked on the Saturn and been ported to the far more popular PlayStation, we might be talking about Panzer Dragoon Saga today as the definitive RPG of that generation instead of the far more popular (and in my opinion, highly overrated) Final Fantasy VII.

• PaRappa the Rapper (1996) - One of the PlayStation’s early hits was not an action game, but a strangely animated rhythm game from NanaOn-Sha about the adventures of a canine hip hop hero trying to win the affections of an anthropomorphic flower named Sunny Funny as he trained at a dojo with an onion, visited a flea market (or was it a “swamp” meet?), passed a ridiculous driving test with a stern moose, baked a seafood cake with a surly chicken, waited in line for the restroom and then blew everyone’s mind onstage at a rap concert. It’s not a great rhythm game - the hit detection’s lousy and the game conceals the fact that you gain the most points by freestyling - but it’s a wonderfully weird one with a catchy soundtrack and some really peculiar moments. The sequels UmJammer Lammy (1999) and PaRappa the Rapper 2 (2001) are more of the same for those who can’t get enough.

• Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (1998) - Nippon Ichi’s unusual musical RPG for the PlayStation is so sweet and non-threatening that many gamers never gave it a chance, but it’s their loss; this game is bright and cheerful and funny while still delivering a great gameplay experience. As Cornet, a girl who can talk to puppets, you try to rescue a prince who’s been turned to stone by a vain witch, all the while dodging your snooty rival and participating in some fully vocal musical numbers with catchy tunes. It’s well worth a play even today, and the Nintendo DS remake even enhances the game with some extra features.

• Rival Schools: United by Fate and Project Justice (1997 and 2000) - I’ve never been a big fan of 3D Street Fighter, and maybe it’s because Capcom did a better job with three dimensions in Rival Schools, an anime-style fighting game where the students of schools in Aoharu City use their club skills to battle each other as they try to discover who’s been attacking and kidnapping people around town. The original game allows you to duel in teams of two, but the sequel (which takes place one year later) ups the ante by making your duo a trio.

• SaGa Frontier (1998) - The SaGa series made it to North America as the Final Fantasy Legend series on the Game Boy, and we missed the Japan-only Romancing SaGa trilogy of games on the Super Famicom until the first was finally ported to the PS2 in 2005. But on the original PlayStation, SquareSoft dropped the pretense and branded the series properly with the seventh game and gave it a global release. SaGa Frontier is different from the Game Boy games in that it’s largely non-linear and allows you to experience different character stories and boss battles. It also combines many of the best ideas from the previous six games. It’s got some rough edges, sure, but it’s made for people who love to explore and also features a great combat system and a fantastic musical score by Kenji Ito.

• Sakura Wars (a.k.a. Sakura Taisen) (1996) - The Sega Saturn’s mecha strategy game and opera-based dating sim is pretty goofy stuff that also spawned a companion anime series of the same name. But the bombastic theme song, memorable characters, 1920s setting, distinctive mecha designs and battles against Satan (yes, that one!) make for a truly unique game. Sadly, the only way to play the original is with fan translations, and the series was not officially localized until the 5th entry Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love was released in 2010 and the sixth (simply titled Sakura Wars) was released in 2019 as a soft reboot for the series. Here’s to hoping they’re all localized for English-speaking audiences one day.

• Space Channel 5 and Space Channel 5 Part 2 (1999 and 2002) - United Game Artists evolved from Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s AM9 division and created two games: Space Channel 5: Part 2 and Rez, both of which were brilliant. But the roots of the game derived from the 1999 adventures of outer space reporter Ulala rescuing hostages from space aliens by dancing to music (including the iconic theme derived from the old jazz track “Mexican Flyer”). Michael Jackson also makes an appearance in both games as “Space Michael,” though he plays a more prominent part in the sequel. While the series is synonymous with the Dreamcast, the PS2 had a 2-disc release of both games together that is pretty great. The Game Boy Advance remake by THQ, however, is not a game I’d recommend.

• SoulCalibur (1998) - I’ve never liked Namco’s Tekken games that much, but I’ve never missed a SoulCalibur. The weapons-based combat of this 3D fighter has been tight ever since SoulCalibur evolved the mechanics of Soul Edge into something wonderful, and while the series probably peaked around its second or third entry, they’re still fun to play today. The Arcade original is a classic, but the Dreamcast port upped the ante with a deep single-player mission mode that forced players to learn all of the characters’ ins and outs.

• Shin Kidō Senki Gundam Wing: Endless Duel (1996) - Like many North American anime fans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Gundam Wing was the first Mobile Suit Gundam series I ever watched, and the SNES fighting game based on the follow-up OAV Endless Waltz just happened to be fully playable in English and easily loaded up in an emulator around the time the show got popular on the Cartoon Network. Beyond the nostalgia, however, t’s a surprisingly good mecha-based fighting with great graphics and fun implementations of the show’s mechanical designs. It’s also that rare 16-bit era console fighter that doesn’t feel like a downgrade compared to contemporary arcade fighting games.

• Star Fox 64 (1997) - After Argonaut Software produced two SNES Star Fox games (one of which went unreleased until 2017), Nintendo EAD took over and made the definitive version for the Nintendo 64, using the console’s processing power to deliver something fast and fluid while providing enough visual detail to overcome the primitive polygons and frequent slowdown of the previous entries. The added focus on new vehicles (a tank and submarine) and the more sophisticated controls, added all-range and multiplayer modes and improved system for branching paths made Star Fox 64 feel far bigger than its predecessors. Sadly, it’s also never received a worthy follow-up; every sequel since has been compromised in some way.

• Street Fighter Alpha 3 (1998) - It may be an unpopular opinion with fighting game fans, but I think Street Fighter was worse for its transition to 3D graphics, and while some fans really love Street Fighter III: Third Strike and point to it as the peak of the 2D branch of the series, I’d argue that Street Fighter Alpha III is the true high point. For one thing, it has the best cast of characters, incorporating not just all of the original World Warriors but also characters from Final Fight and the first Street Fighter. The storyline is great in building up to the events of Street Fighter II, and there are actual moments of connection between the characters at different points in the game. Alpha 3 also embraces the seriousness of Ryu and Akuma as well as the silliness of Blanka, Sakura and Dan without going into the cringey forced comedy territory that Street Fighter IV, V and 6 can venture into. Plus, M. Bison is the boss, not Gill, Seth or JP. I only wish the 2006 PSP version of the game - which includes the rarely-seen Eagle and Maki - had been released for home consoles with a local 2-player mode.

• Suikoden II (1998) - The original 1995 Suikoden was a loose interpretation of the classic Chinese novel Water Margin which featured the concept of the 108 Stars of Destiny, a recruitable group of heroes and allies who band together to save the world. It’s a really good game that I highly recommend. But if you want to skip straight to the second game, which is the definite highlight of the series, you can always go back and play the first; they’re loosely connected (and you can transfer gear from the first game to the second one in the PlayStation versions), but each offers a standalone story, and Suikoden II’s is, quite simply, one you shouldn’t miss. (Sadly, the three subsequent games decline in quality with each installment.)

• Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (1996) - Capcom’s reinvention of its 1994 Japan-only arcade puzzler Pnickies into a competitive Street Fighter and Darkstalkers-style puzzle game should have been one of those odd ideas that was destined for obscurity, but somehow, the concept worked out so well that the game was still going strong with a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 remake nearly two decades later. It’s one of my favorite puzzle games in part because its selectable characters allow you to find creative ways to punish your opponent with strategic gem drops, and I love that deeper cut characters like Mei-Ling and Anita (Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge) and Devilotte (Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness) made it into the console versions of the game too.

• Tech Romancer (1998) - Capcom’s giant mecha fighting game is evocative of many different classic anime shows about mechanical suits while remaining entirely original. It’s not as technical as Street Fighter II or as bombastic as Rival Schools, but Tech Romancer is still enormous fun because of the scale, variety and sheer destruction it offers. Fans of 2010’s Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars should definitely check this one out, preferably on the Dreamcast.

• Tomb Raider (1996) - The PlayStation was the console that truly helped gaming to grow up, and Tomb Raider’s emphasis on exploring (and robbing!) ancient tombs, encountering lost worlds filled with dinosaurs and exploring the mysteries of Atlantis felt a little more grown up than dressing up as an Italian plumber and tossing a turtle monster off a mountain. What’s more, the game introduced gaming’s first true cover girl, Lara Croft, who not only handled her adventures with gymnastic flair but also packed two pistols and a world-weary attitude that made her seem impossibly cool. The original’s a classic that only got better with its next few installments, and for modern gamers, I recommend 2007’s Tomb Raider Anniversary (and its two follow-up games Legend and Underworld) as a more refined experience. I’m not, however, a fan of the reboot trilogy, which looks great but smacks of “Hey guys, we’ve got to catch up to Uncharted by forgetting everything that made Lara Croft such a great character!”

• Valkyrie Profile (1999) - tri-Ace’s unique Norse-themed action RPG is a peculiar beast at first - as the titular Valkyrie Lenneth, your job is to build an einherjar army of fallen fighters to participate in Ragnarok, fighting along with the Æsir to defeat the Vanir. Much of the game involves flying around over Midgard and descending into places where you can locate over 20 recruitable characters to add to your party. While the action plays like a sidescrolling game, combat is turn-based and built around a fast-moving system. Part of what I love about this game is its oppressive story, which explores the idea how death results in a legacy for those left behind and glory for those who prevail in spirit. This isn’t a game you explore and enjoy; it’s a game you endure in hopes of a greater reward. And if you can manage to reach the true ending, you will find it. The 2006 PSP remake is decent and the PS2 companion game of the same year Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria is worth playing, but the 2008 Nintendo DS sequel and 2022 follow-up Valkyrie Elysium are harder to recommend.

• Vib Ribbon (1999) - While it’s a simple little rhythm game from NanaOn-Sha about guiding a bunny through obstacle courses created by musical tracks, I love the simple aesthetic, the wireframe character Vibri and the really catchy soundtrack by a J-pop group called Laugh & Peace that contains some of the most hilariously inscrutable English lyrics I’ve ever heard, like “You're not a baby on my heart /
  I'm not your Mammy / Do you know? Can't you see?”. I’ve never played anything else like it, and its PS2-era Japan-only sequels Mojib-Ribbon and Vib-Ripple don’t quite scratch that same curious itch for me.

• Xenogears (1998) - Monolith Soft is pretty well-known today for its Xenoblade Chronicles games, but that team started out at Squaresoft working on the incredibly ambitious Xenogears, a two-disc JRPG created by Tetsuya Takahashi (originally pitched as the plot for Final Fantasy VII) which reveals at the end that it’s part V of a massive saga. Fusing martial arts and mecha along with deeply religious and philosophical themes, Xenogears starts out as an RPG that seems to be building towards a big climax… and then the game’s second disc narrates the rest of the story instead of letting you play it. The team apparently ran out of time to create the rest of the game, but the result is an interesting experiment in just how invested a player can be in a complex and labyrinthe story spanning many millennia. Many gamers, myself included, still loved it. It’s a shame the Xenosaga follow-up series wasn’t quite as good, but the Xenoblade Chronicles series has since made up for it.

The CD-ROM and Online PC Era (1995-1999)

• Age of Empires II: Age of Kings (1999) - The Age of Empires games are a bit slow-paced and dated for me today, but Age of Kings is such a well-crafted real-time strategy game that it’s hard not to love it. Few games allow you to play as Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Saladin, William Wallace and Frederick Barbarossa without taking major liberties, and the original expansion pack The Conquerers even adds in Attila the Hun, El Cid, Montezuma and a wide variety of historical battles. After the release of 2012’s HD edition, three new expansions added additional civilizations and units from all over the world.

• Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II: Shadow of Amn (1998 and 2000) - BioWare’s impressive effort to bring Dungeons & Dragons out of the early 1990s dungeon crawling templates and into a more exciting isometric perspective resulted in two great-looking games that adapted the rules of AD&D quite well, but the story and the characters are really what gamers remember them for. The first game features an epic story with an awesome cast of companions (many of whom are voiced by famous voice actors), and its expansion pack Tales of the Sword Coast adds a lot of extended adventuring to an already great game. The sequel ups the ante in every possible way, following up on the promise of the original’s ending by continuing the hunt for the Bhaalspawn plaguing the realm of Faerûn and also adding in a nasty new villain. If that weren’t enough, the second game’s expansion Throne of Bhaal goes even more epic, finally concluding the saga with a big payoff that justifies what may have been hundreds of hours of adventuring by this point. BioWare has made some awesome games since, but Baldur’s Gate and its sequel were the ones that set the tone.

• Blade Runner (1997) - Westwood Studios’ passion project to recreate the 1982 film Blade Runner as an action adventure game wasn’t nearly as popular as you might imagine when it debuted to middling critical scores and disappointment that the promises of a branching storyline and unique playthroughs were mostly window-dressing. Today, however, the game is rightly regarded as an adventure gaming classic that successfully adapts its source material while bringing some new ideas to the table as it tells a story about Blade Runner Ray McCoy (who may or may not be a replicant himself - see what they did there with that name?) that intersects with Deckard’s adventures in the film while featuring many of the same background characters and scenery.

• Caesar III (1998) - Impressions Games created quite a few city-building games set in antiquity or mythology, but I’d argue the perfectly imperfect Caesar III is the high point for their output because it’s addictive in a way the others don’t quite manage. The premise is that you’re the governor for several Roman cities that you have to build from scratch and then make economically viable based on what they’re able to produce and trade. Some places are quite peaceful, but others require you to raise legions and fend off invasions from wild animals and local barbarians. The wonderful graphics, voice acting and music help make the game fun to play, but what grates a bit is a travel system for the citizens that can cause odd effects in your cities and also some very vengeful gods who hate being ignored. Even so, it’s a gem of a game and still fun to play today, as are all of the other Impressions titles in the same vein. (Their other big series, Lords of the Realm, is also worth checking out!)

• Command & Conquer (1995) - Westwood Studios followed up on Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty with a game grounded in the modern era, pitting the NATO-like coalition known as the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) against the terrorist group called The Brotherhood of Nod. At the heart of their conflict was a crystal called tiberium that was fatal to humans, but which could be harvested and used to power incredible technology. The original game was meant to evoke the idea of commanding real-world armies from your desktop, but subsequent entries played fast and loose with the concept, creating an alternate timeline with Red Alert or moving into the far future with later Command & Conquer sequels, the latter of which I’m not crazy about. Even so, Joe Kucan’s evil warlord Kane is still one of the finest villains in all of video gaming.

• Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper 2 (1997 and 1999) - Bullfrog was well-known for its so-called “god games” in the 1990s, but Dungeon Keeper was the first to allow you to explicitly play as an evil character running a dungeon meant to kill off wandering heroes. Like Populous and other Bullfrog games, it somewhat runs on autopilot while you reshape the map, cast spells and build things, but the theme of doing evil makes things so much more fun. The sequel is more of a graphical upgrade than a gameplay evolution, but it’s still great.

• Fallout and Fallout 2 (1997 and 1998) - Interplay’s spiritual successor to Wasteland became so popular that it’s a top-tier IP today, but in the late 1990s when it debuted, it was simply a popular offbeat post-apocalyptic turn-based RPG with a vast open world and a non-linear story. The original game’s unforgiving environments and fusion of 1950s kitsch with nuclear paranoia made for a fun experience, and the sequel’s expanded world and darker story about a descendant of the first game’s protagonist battling the evil Enclave helped to cement Fallout as a series. The later games by Bethesda are also incredible, but the first two are special for squeezing such a compelling game world out of isometric, pre-rendered graphics.

• Grim Fandango (1998) - Tim Schafer’s magnum opus is an incredibly unique adventure game set in the land of the dead (as imagined during Dia de los Muertos) by way of classic film noir detective films. As Manny Calavera, players begin working in a dead-end job as a Grim Reaper before embarking on a quest that takes the hero years to complete and which uncovers incredible corruption in the afterlife resulting in many souls getting trapped along the way to the fabled “Number Nine” train. It’s equal parts funny and profound and a testament to how great art direction and good game design can create an experience that can endure even when graphics are limited in what they can depict.

• Half-Life (1998) - Valve’s foundational first person shooter was one of the first games to really evolve on the foundations Doom and Quake laid down, introducing a compelling story told through scenes occurring in real time. The setting is Black Mesa, a vast interconnected research facility beset by an alien invasion accidentally unleashed by the hero Gordon Freeman and his fellow scientists. It was also the sort of game where government soldiers would show up a third of the way through not to help, but to try to suppress the entire situation and wipe out any witnesses. It was one of the earliest shooters to introduce big set piece battles and AI-controlled companions, and its highly moddable game engine not only delivered a great multiplayer mode but also allowed for the creation of games like Team Fortress Classic, Day of Defeat and Counter-Strike. Modern day gamers should try the fan-created remake Black Mesa, which attempts to evolve the gameplay for the modern era without losing the things that made the original game so special.

• Heretic II (1998) - One of Raven Software’s least-known games is also one of its best, following up on the Heretic/Hexen/Hexen II trilogy with a third-person action game that incorporates melee combat, pole vaults and dodges into Corvus’s arsenal. The game’s story about recovering the Tomes of Power to cure a curse is a means to an end, but the game world feels like something out of Tomb Raider with a fantasy flair. Sadly, the game flopped hard when it released and deserved a lot more attention than it got. But it wasn’t all for naught; Raven recycled a lot of the same ideas and environments in the two Star Wars: Jedi Knight games it published a few years later.

• Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999) - There’s something really special about this turn-based strategy game from 3DO and New World Computing that has never been equaled since, and it’s hard to put my finger on exactly why subsequent Heroes of Might and Magic and King’s Bounty games haven’t been able to scratch the same itch quite as well. Maybe it’s the graphics, which are bold and bright. Maybe it’s the music, which fits the game like a glove. Maybe it’s the wide assortment of factions and races that you can jam together into a patchwork army. Whatever the case may be, it’s one of the most addictive “just one more turn!” games you’ll ever play.

• Homeworld (1999) - The inevitable word that comes to mind for many gamers when they to try describe Relic Entertainment’s outer space real-time strategy game is “beautiful,” and they’re not wrong - Homeworld is a gorgeous-looking game set in the void of space and featuring stunning space battles. While it’s a essentially a resource-gathering and unit-building game with a stationary mothership base, the action takes place a sphere of space in which ships can move three-dimensionally, and the action can be zoomed in or out or rotated around to watch events unfold. The standalone 2000 expansion Cataclysm and the 2003 sequel Homeworld 2 are also worth checking out; the 2016 spin-off Deserts of Kharak is more for fans only.

• The Last Express (1997) - Jordan Mechner created some of the most cinematic platform games of the 1980s (Karateka and Prince of Persia), so it’s no surprise he got into the full motion video craze of the 1990s CD-ROM era. But the game he created, which utilizes rotoscoped animation to tell a real-time mystery story aboard the Orient Express in 1914, is a truly amazing evolution on what other adventure game developers were doing at the time. Instead of providing static scenes with puzzles the solve, the train is populated with dozens of characters with scripted routines that can’t all be uncovered in a single playthrough. There are several alternate endings and some awesome twists and turns. The acting is superb for a game from the 1990s, the soundtrack is excellent and the story is top-notch. The only bad thing I can say about The Last Express is that it’s obscure because its publisher gave up on it within just a couple of months of its release and yanked it off shelves before it could find a following.

• The Longest Journey (1999) - Funcom’s initial game about the adventures of April Ryan through the parallel universes of Arcadia and Stark is one heck of an experience and tells a story that’s unlike anything else you’ve probably ever played… except for its sequels Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Dreamfall Chapters, of course. But the original is the best of the series, featuring a surreal and engaging plot, great characters, wonderful voice acting (a lot of which is nonessential and which was included to give the game world some added depth) and amazing art design. April Ryan is also one of the great protagonists of the 1990s, every bit as interesting as Solid Snake or Lara Croft but quite a bit more nuanced in how she’s portrayed.

• MDK (1997) - Shiny’s next game after Earthworm Jim is a very weird 3D action adventure designed by Nick Bruty (who’d go on to co-found Planet Moon Studios after this) where you play as a janitor named Kurt Hectic who’s wearing a morphing black suit with a sniper rifle for a helmet. Kurt is sent parachuting down to infiltrate six alien Minecrawlers, which are basically gigantic rolling bases he has to take down from the inside. By using a 2D digitized sprite of an actor in a costume in a more surreal 3D world, the game has a distinct look and feel, and the dramatic orchestral soundtrack by Tommy Tallarico is absolutely incredible.

• Outcast (1999) - Before continuous open world gaming became a big deal thanks to Grand Theft Auto III and the Elder Scrolls series, games with interconnected worlds were all the rage, and Outcast provided five different explorable continents that were absolutely vast by the standards of the day. The premise of the game is unique: as Cutter Slade, you enter the parallel universe world of Adelpha looking for a probe that is threatening to create a black hole, but find that your missing teammates are part of the game’s deeper intrigue about why the previously peaceful aliens who inhabit the planet are suddenly at war. The gameplay is a fusion of third person action and Metal Gear Solid-style stealth. The orchestral score, which features the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, is absolutely amazing, and the game was notable in the late 1990s for its unusual raycasting game engine, which was able to produce vivid 3D graphics through software rather than a dedicated graphics card. Modern players should try the updated 2014 version Outcast 1.1 or the 2017 remake Outcast: Second Contact.

• Planescape: Torment (1999) - Aside from Baldur’s Gate and Fallout, Black Isle Entertainment’s Planescape: Torment is one of the most impressive and important CRPGs of the late 1990s, and its focus on storytelling within the unusual AD&D multiverse known as Planescape is unparalleled. As The Nameless One, you awaken with no memory of who you are or what you’ve done, but the tattoos on your body and the friendly floating skull Morte (voiced by famed cartoon voice actor Rob Paulsen!) lead you to recognize that you’re an immortal being with a series of past adventures you probably don’t want to remember. The game goes deep into philosophy and the nature of good and evil, and it has some of the deepest dialogue trees and furthest branching dialogue of any RPG of its era. The game’s endings have been debated for decades, and there’s still a lot of discussion over which fate for The Nameless One is ultimately the “good” one. It’s a stunning and very grown-up game every serious RPG gamer should experience.

• Quake II (1997) - I never really understood the love for id Software’s 1996 game Quake beyond its multiplayer, but man, did I fall hard for Quake II, especially once I saw its pretty colored lighting effects powered by the 3Dfx Voodoo graphics card my brother convinced me to help him buy. The multi-level structure of the single-player game, the weapons (especially the railgun!), the heavy metal instrumental soundtrack and the overall science fiction aesthetic really made Quake II feel like a worthy successor to Doom, and the multiplayer was absolutely incredible for its time.

• RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999) - Chris Sawyer’s take on Bullfrog’s Theme Park rendered the earlier game irrelevant by providing a more sophisticated simulation that allowed players to create not just their own coasters, but also a broader amusement park. Whereas Theme Park was limited in how things could be placed, RollerCoaster Tycoon allowed players to recreate real-world parks by shifting terrain and building detailed replicas of wooden and metal thrill rides. The first two sequels were also fantastic, especially since RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 allowed players to experience their rides in 3D. (Later sequels and spin-offs should be avoided.)

• Sanitarium (1998) - While a lot of adventure games were shifting to full-motion video or featuring digitized actors, DreamForge’s Sanitarium went for the isometric pre-rendered style of games like Fallout and Baldur’s Gate to offer a one-of-a-kind horror experience. You begin as an amnesiac in bandages who wakes up in a frightening asylum, but an encounter with an angelic statue whisks you away to a playground where deformed children are playing and all of the adults have vanished in the wake of a comet. Just when you think you know what’s going on, reality shifts and you find yourself somewhere else… and eventually, find yourself adventuring as someone else. Elements from different flashbacks and stories you experience bleed together and the game’s storylines become wilder and more fantastic, hurtling towards a surprising conclusion that’s very much worth making it to. The original edition was spread across 4 CD-ROM discs and was novel for its rendered cutscenes and voice acting. Both are (sometimes hilariously) dated today, but the story and sheer originality of the adventure make it worthwhile.

• Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999) - If Civilization ever had a true sequel, it’s this game, which features a group of space colonists who splinter into nationalist factions once they reach a colonizable planet near Alpha Centauri and try to build their way to control of the world. The game looks and plays like Civilization II in a science fiction setting, but it’s cleverly designed to be more than that, featuring seven distinct factions with differing philosophies and a science fiction story that evolves over time. the Alien Crossfire expansion ups the ante with alien factions derived from differing philosophies within the Progenitors. I’d argue it’s Sid Meier’s finest game, but it was also one of his lowest-selling despite its quality and excellent reputation.

• Starship Titanic (1998) - What happens when you build a game designed by Douglas Adams with involvement from two of the members of Monty Python, writers like Neil Richards, Debbie Barham and Michael Bywater and film industry production designers with an eye for Art Deco aesthetics? We found out when Simon & Schuster Interactive and the Digital Village launched Starship Titanic to mixed reviews. Players expecting another Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were disappointed, and the game’s small community of fans gave up on defending the title and started hanging around the game’s official forums, role-playing as ship employees. I personally feel the game was the victim of its own hype; it’s not as laugh out loud funny as people expected it to be, but it’s a clever graphic adventure game that will be quite familiar to anyone who’s enjoyed text-based games like Magnetic Scrolls’s Jinxter or suffered through Infocom’s Bureaucracy.

• Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (1997) - LucasArts made Star Wars games feel like they were stepping into the part of the Star Wars universe governed by blaster fire and stormtrooper shootouts with Dark Forces, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before Force powers and lightsabers appeared. While Dark Forces II wasn’t much of a looker for its time, the professionally filmed cutscenes and familiar John Williams score helped to elevate the story of Kyle Katarn becoming a true Jedi Knight who could walk the light or dark side, and the multiplayer mode finally gave people a chance to put those Force powers to use against someone who could actually fight back. The sequels Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, both developed by Raven Software, are also pretty good, but Jedi Knight is still the one I enjoy the most.

• SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle (1999) - Sierra’s answer to Red Storm’s Rainbow Six games was an evolution of their Police Quest: SWAT series that simulates the SWAT experience. It turned out surprisingly well, requiring players to follow police protocols and utilize teamwork to clear hostile areas with armed foes, hostages and innocent people who could be caught in the crossfire. The 2005 sequel SWAT 4, developed by Irrational Games, was also quite good.

• System Shock 2 (1999) -Looking Glass Studios partnered with Ken Levine’s Irrational Games to create a sequel to its ambitious (but very dated) cult classic cyberpunk horror shooter System Shock, and the second game not only offered a more comfortable way to experience the same mechanics but also advanced the story of the evil AI SHODAN, who played a prominent role in creating the hive-mind mutants known as the Many that serve as the main antagonists of the sequel. The game’s RPG mechanics and multiple paths reward creative play and problem-solving, and the story is first-class stuff that ends on a great cliffhanger (sadly never resolved in a sequel). Portal’s GLaDOS may be the more familiar evil AI to many gamers, but SHODAN was the first and is still the best.

• Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age (1998 and 2000) - Looking Glass Studio’s stealth action games were very different from most first-person action games of the late 1990s, and while they didn’t have the greatest graphics, the semi-open world gameplay they afforded was simply incredible for the time. Both games featured excellent fantasy stories intertwining medieval-style faith, steampunk technology and tricky gods into a cohesive whole, and they’re still tons of fun to play today. The third game, Deadly Shadows, was also decent, but the later remake, simply titled Thief, isn’t one I’d recommend.

• Total Annihilation (1997) - I was never that into Blizzard’s StarCraft; I was too busy playing Cavedog Entertainment’s massive real-time strategy game Total Annihilation, which was well ahead of its time by offering robot armies powered by nanotechnology and capabilities for extensive assortments of land, sea and air units as well as humongous canons and superweapons. I also love the sweeping soundtrack, the varied environments and the fact that Cavedog released a bunch of new units as free downloadable content after the game’s launch (eventually included in the expansion packs). The Supreme Commander series, which serves as the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, is also decent, but the spin-off Total Annihilation Kingdoms is a flawed (but interesting!) diversion. Those wanting a more modern experience should check out the open-source Spring RTS engine, which not only offers Total Annihilation-style games, but also awesome standalone titles like Kernel Panic and Zero-K.

• Tyrian and Tyrian 2000 (1995 and 1999) - Jason Emery, Daniel Cook and Alexander Brandon’s 1995 shoot ‘em up Tyrian was a shareware hit for Epic MegaGames, and it’s a good enough game that’s loaded with a surprising number of features that I could recommend it on its own if it weren’t for the fact that its 1999 upgrade, Tyrian 2000, is the definitive version of the game. Beyond the 5-chapter branching story mode (in which you can customize and upgrade your weapons and ship significantly over the course of the game), there are alternate modes of play, minigames and a ship designer. Given that you can get Tyrian 2000 for free on GOG or via the OpenTyrian project, there’s no excuse for anyone not to play this awesome shoot ‘em up.

• Unreal Tournament (1999) - Epic’s Unreal was a pretty game with a so-so story and some half-baked weapons, so it was wise to turn the concept into a competitive multiplayer experience with its first follow-up. Unreal Tournament had so many good ideas and fun levels that I was far more impressed by it than the strangely abstract Quake III: Arena. It also featured some worthy bot opponents (particularly the sinister boss robot Xan), making it a great game for both single-player and multiplayer battles. Its sequels were all good as well, but none was quite as distinctive as the original.

• Worms Armageddon (1999) - Team17’s Worms games are still going strong even today, but their upgrade on the already great 1997 game Worms 2 resulted in the high point for the series - a game so deep and customizable that it continues to have a strong fanbase to this day. The zany weapons, the humorous voices, the goofy animations, the incredible turnarounds, the advanced movement skills, the incredible carnage… it all adds up to an incredible experience that’s far more fun to play multiplayer (via hotseat local play or online) than through the game’s unnecessary single-player mode.

The DVD-ROM Era (2000-2006)

• Alien Hominid (2002 and 2004) - The Behemoth’s first game started out life as a Metal Slug-style Flash game on Newgrounds featuring excessive violence and stylish, well-animated cartoon art by Dan Paladin. A greatly expanded port hit the PlayStation 2 and Gamecube in 2004 and added in all sorts of features such as co-op multiplayer, new modes and minigames. The game’s as tough as any Metal Slug entry, but definitely fun, particularly when you jump on people’s heads and ride them around as you bite their heads off or dig underground and yank enemies down into an impromptu grave. The Game Boy Advance port in 2006 is also worthwhile, and the HD ports (starting with the Xbox 360 in 2007, and presently available on modern platforms) are excellent. I’m not quite sold on the 2023 co-op roguelike Alien Hominid Invasion, however - it’s best played with friends who really love run and gun games.

• Armed and Dangerous (2003) - After Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Planet Moon Studios released a shooting game filled with highly destructible environments and crazy weapons that included the awesome land shark cannon which is… exactly what it sounds like, and hilarious every time you see a shark pop up out of the ground to eat an enemy. The bonkers story is about a misfit outfit of ruffians called the Lionhearts (one of whom is a tea-obsessed robot in centurion armor) that’s trying to steal a mystical book leads to an insane king who wants to turn the world into a theme park. It’s one of those games that just has to be experienced.

• Beyond Good & Evil (2003) - In a year where many good games were ignored, Beyond Good & Evil was one of the most criminally underappreciated because it offered a compelling and highly original action adventure centered around a wonderful story and some great characters. The game’s a cult classic today, and even if we ever do get the long-promised follow-up, I doubt it will ever compare to the simple joy of trying to uncover a conspiracy with your camera so you can save some orphans from a covered-up alien invasion with the help of your adopted uncle, who also happens to be a pig.

• Bully (a.k.a. Canis Canem Edit) (2006) - Rockstar is beloved by many gamers for its Grand Theft Auto games, but I actually loved it when Rockstar Vancouver toned back the violence a bit and focused on simulating a preparatory boarding school with Bully, an amazingly fun open-world game where you play as Jimmy Hopkins, a juvenile delinquent who can either terrorize the school with pranks and bullying or who can reform himself and become an unlikely hero in the battle against the game’s psychopathic antagonist Gary Smith. Because the game allows you to leave the school and explore the neighboring city of Bullworth, the world feels vast, but it’s also populated by unique characters (rather than the nameless pedestrians in the Grand Theft Auto games) who have sidestories you can experience over time if you pay attention.

• Burnout 3: Takedown, Burnout: Legends and Burnout: Revenge (2004, 2005) - While the first two Burnout games were fun with their premise of “drive like a maniac and get rewarded for it,” EA Games published these latter titles and gave developer Criterion Games the funding it needed to really polish the concept up and make it shine. If you enjoy driving at incoming traffic, knocking other cars off the road or tallying up the dollar damage your crashes cause, the Burnout series is for you. The 2008 open-world Burnout Paradise is good too (and pretty much the only one available on modern platforms), but I prefer the mission-driven titles.

• Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001 (2001) - I really enjoyed Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 when it debuted, particularly its team-building “ratio” system that allowed fighters to be used at different levels of strength and its “groove” system that allowed players to select a gameplay style similar to either The King of Fighters games or the Street Fighter Alpha games. The sequel refined both systems and allowed players to choose between six grooves (three based on Capcom games, three based on SNK games) and offered a roster of 44 characters (with two souped-up boss characters on each side added for the console releases). It’s still a pretty stunning fighter today with excellent presentation and tons of Easter eggs and in-jokes to enjoy. Sadly, the SNK vs. Capcom counterpart series was at its best on the Neo Geo Pocket; its 2003 arcade game SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos shoehorned all the characters into a system derived from The King of Fighters 2002 and redrew many of the Capcom characters with bland, low-resolution sprites.

• Cave Story (2004) - What began life as a free game by a Japanese creator named Pixel turned into one of the best progressive exploration (or if you prefer, “Metroidvania”) games of the 2000s. Cave Story has it all - wonderful characters, a fantastic story, excellent action, an intriguing world full of mystery, collectible puppies to rescue and a recurring boss named Balrog who looks like a sentient bar of gray soap and who even gets turned into a frog at one point. The game’s been re-released commercially several times (including in 3D for the 3DS), but the original freeware version is still available and loads of fun to play.

• The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay (2004) - Not being a huge fan of the 2000 film Pitch Black, I was caught off-guard by this Xbox exclusive video game tie-in for it and the 2004 sequel film The Chronicles of Riddick. But man, am I glad I didn’t pass it up; Escape From Butcher Bay is an incredible ride from start to finish, providing a compelling origin story for Richard B. Riddick as he escapes an inescapable prison over and over and over only to be captured and forced to try again as the level of security around him increases. It’s a brutal game that uses stealth as a means of building tension until something incredibly violent occurs. I prefer the original to the expanded 2007 version The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, which adds a second half to the story where Riddick kills his way through a mercenary ship. It’s fine, but lacks the punch of the first half.

• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (2000) - The original Red Alert was a fine game, but I enjoyed the hi-res Windows 95 version of Command & Conquer more because of its odd units and also because every round didn’t end in a tank rush. Red Alert 2 fixed a lot of what I didn’t like and added in some truly great features like fortifiable buildings (giving infantry some actual punch against mechanical units) and adding in some more distinctive units for both the Allies and the Soviets, creating some better-defined styles of play. The expansion pack, Yuri’s Revenge, added in some additionally fun new toys. I wish I liked the full-3D Red Alert 3 as much as this sequel, but I do love its expansion pack Uprising simply because psychic schoolgirl Yuriko Omega is a lot of fun to play with.

• Darwinia (2005) - In the early days of Steam, Darwinia was one of the earliest success stories for digitally-distributed games, and it was so good that it eventually (and a little bit ironically!) received a physical release. It’s a real-time strategy game about the lives of simulated computer people who have to battle rogue viruses. It looks like Tron and features some truly distinctive gameplay. The follow-ups, Multiwinia and Darwinia+, are also worthwhile.

• Destroy All Humans! (2005) - There’s so much to love about Cryptosporidium-137’s quest to retrieve the DNA of his fellow alien Furons from the brain stems of pitiful Earthlings, from the game’s retro futuristic vibe to its interplay between on-foot action (which includes all sorts of fun alien powers) and leveling cities and armies with your flying saucer to its amazing voice acting which includes Richard Horvitz, well-known for playing Zim from Invader Zim, as Orthopox-13, Crypto’s commander who regularly bosses him around in the game. Besides the gross-out humor and the gleefully psychotic nature of the gameplay, Crypto’s eventual showdown with the President of the United States leads to a standout ending. It’s sad the sequels aren’t quite as good, but the original game - and its 2020 remake! - are well worth playing.

• Deus Ex (2000) - Warren Spector’s magnum opus was evolutionary for first person shooters when it debuted, fusing the action RPG mechanics of Looking Glass Studios’s earlier Ultima Underworld and System Shock with the action adventure shooter mechanics of Half-Life. The cyberpunk aesthetic, conspiracy theory storyline, branching paths and globe-trotting stages made Deus Ex an unforgettable experience, and its direct sequel and later prequels are also pretty great.

• Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (2003) - I’m as amazed as anyone that Disgaea is still going strong; when it first debuted, it seemed a little too niche and Japanese to find a strong audience in North America, but I think its depth, humor and endless replayability helped it to find its footing. The core story is a wild and boisterous ride through the underworld as the demon prince Laharl awakens from a long nap and finds that no one fears him anymore, and the game’s most unique aspects (like the stuffed penguin soldiers known as Prinnies, the ways you can force the volatile Dark Assembly to side with you or the fact that you can venture inside your weapons and beat the impurities out of them) really make it memorable.

• The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (2002) - The Elder Scrolls games are somewhat notorious for getting smaller with every numbered entry, and I’d argue Morrowind is the series’ sweet spot in terms of scope, size and storytelling. While I definitely enjoyed Daggerfall, Oblivion and Skryim and have even dabbled in the enormous The Elder Scrolls Online, there’s nothing quite like the weird region of Morrowind and the island of Vvardenfell where the Dunmer (dark elves) reside. The game’s use of text rather than voice acting allows dialogue trees and storytelling to go deeper than the later games, and it’s so easy to get lost in the sidequests and building up your own character that you can forget what you’re supposed to be doing to complete the game. The expansion packs add a new city (Mourhnold) where you have to deal with a Tribunal of deities in a more contained story than that of the core game and a new frozen island called Solstheim as well as the ability to become a werewolf. The original game’s graphics are pretty dated, but you can mod the PC version into something much closer to the later entries. (One day, maybe we’ll see that awesome-looking community-developed total conversion in the Skyrim Special Edition engine.)

• Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (2002) - Silicon Knights shone brightly briefly for some excellent story-based games before flaring out with their bomb Too Human. After Crystal Dynamics took over The Legacy of Kain series, Silicon Knights created Eternal Darkness, a survival horror adventure inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock novels that was infamous for messing with players, including one shocking moment where the game would claim to erase the Gamecube’s memory card. It’s one of the best adult-oriented games the Gamecube had to offer.

• Far Cry (2004) - I had a lower-end PC in 2004 and couldn’t run Crytek’s Far Cry, settling instead for the 2005 Xbox adaptation Far Cry Instincts, which it turned out was an entirely different game with more linear levels, deployable traps and animal instinct predator powers. When I finally did get around to playing the original Far Cry, I was shocked to discover it was (mostly) an open world game with great shooting and gorgeous graphics that absolutely lived up to the hype. The true successor to the game is Crytek’s Crysis, which is best-known for its demanding graphics rather than its gameplay. But Ubisoft’s subsequent Far Cry games took the ideas of this series in a weird and wild direction starting with Far Cry 2, which is a game I both love and hate thanks to its odd malaria mechanic. Subsequent Far Cry games have been fun, but uneven when it comes to storytelling.

• flOw (2006) - thatgamecompany is best known for their later game Journey, but following their student project Cloud, this strange indie game about eating multicellular organisms to grow larger was their first commercial project. It’s a fascinating game that’s very original and quite unique, and it’s also one of the best indie games of the first decade of the 2000s.

• Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords (2006) - Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations was a pretty blatant copycat of Master of Orion, and there are definitely some strong parallels between its sequel and Master of Orion 2. Even so, Galactic Civilizations II is an amazing game that’s probably the best of the “Civilization in space!” attempts because the game is so customizable and allows for so many different ways to play it. It’s sad that the third game shipped in a half-complete state with an eye on selling a lot of DLC and expansion content (to date there are well over a dozen packs available), but I’ve never felt slighted because the second game is still amazingly fun to play.

• Giants: Citizen Kabuto (2000) - Planet Moon Studios broke off from Shiny Entertainment to create this highly original action game that includes three very different factions battling on a surreal and beautiful alien world populated by big-headed creatures called “Smarties.” The game’s biggest moment - quite literally! - is playing as the hulking Kabuto, a giant monster who goes on rampages destroying villages and fighting the space-suited Meccaryns and the alluring magical Sea Reapers. The game’s asynchronous multiplayer mode was full of promise in the early 2000s, and while it was probably too weird to be anything but a cult classic game, it’s still amazing to play today thanks to its wonderful sense of humor and absolutely unique concept.

• Gitaroo Man (2001) - Many seasoned gamers are probably familiar with the early NanaOn-Sha rhythm games PaRappa the Rapper and UmJammer Lammy, but the strange Gitaroo Man by rhythm game studio iNiS is far lesser known. It’s a shame, because it’s a utterly unique game about playing the guitar to transform into a superhero who can thwart an alien invasion with the power of music and the help of his dog. Just when you think you know where the story’s going, it ups the ante with an odd outer space adventure that results in an actual hero’s journey, complete with the return home better for the experience. I love it. The PS2 original and PSP port are equally good choices, and the rockin’ soundtrack is definitely worth a listen.

• God of War (PS2 version) (2005) - Sony has traditionally struggled when it’s come to having compelling mascots for the PlayStation platform, but they found one of the greats in God of War’s Kratos, a raging id of a video game character who spends his first several games hunting down the Olympians and killing them off in an insane quest for revenge and notoriety. The first game, which has Kratos seeking revenge against Ares, is an excellent adventure that fuses intense action with puzzle-solving. The five games that followed it on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3 all followed that formula faithfully, with 2010’s God of War III becoming the biggest and bloodiest chapter of them all. The newer series, which sees an older, wiser Kratos residing in the Norse mythology, is also good, but it just doesn’t get my blood pumping the way the original series does.

• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) - Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto games are all good for different reasons, but Vice City was the first one to provide a meaningful story that went beyond just participating in a murder simulator. The neon-drenched 1980s setting, the excellent writing and characters, the expansion of vehicles to include helicopters and motorcycles and, of course, the incredible licensed soundtrack made Vice City an instant classic when it debuted. It remains my favorite game in the series.

• Half-Life 2 (2004) - I always feel out of my depth talking about Half-Life 2 because it’s so jam-packed full of cool ideas and awesome technology that it’s worthy of a more academic examination than I can ever provide. If you haven’t played it and experienced Gordon Freeman’s adventures through City 17 and his battles with the Combine as he fires up his gravity gun, watches Alyx play with the robot named Dog or makes use of a weapon that allows him to attract giant swarms of bugs, you absolutely need to. The two episodes that follow the game are also great, but just be warned: the long-promised Episode 3 never came out and the series has yet to resolve its story.

• Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (2002) - IO Interactive’s Hitman games have been a staple of stealth gaming since the first game debuted in 2000, but it was the sequel that really cemented the formula that the later games would follow by offering several large levels that encouraged players to optimize the best ways to take out their targets. You can go in guns blazing if you like, but the highest emphasis is placed on breezing in and out of levels like a ghost, never being detected nor suspected. The three follow-ups, Contracts (2004), Blood Money (2006) and Absolution (2012), are all fun as well, but the current World of Assassination series is the one to play if you need something more modern. Even the mobile games, Hitman Go and Hitman: Sniper, are worthwhile. Skip the films, though - yikes!

• Ico and Shadow of the Colossus (2001 and 2005) - Fumito Ueda’s beautiful and contemplative PlayStation 2 games are often trotted out as examples of games that can make people feel real emotions for the characters, and both are deserving of being labeled absolute classics. Ico is about a horned boy who finds himself trapped in a ruined castle where a girl made of light needs to be rescued. Shadow of the Colossus seems unrelated at first but uses a similar aesthetic and vibe to have a warrior named Wander travel a cursed land and defeat a series of giant colossi to try to resurrect his beloved. Both are great-looking games with amazing musical scores. Their sort-of sequel The Last Guardian is also a beautiful and highly underrated game, but it can be quite frustrating to play due to its loose controls.

• Jak II and Jak 3 (2003 and 2004) - I liked, but didn’t love, Naughty Dog’s Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy when it debuted in 2001 because it was a little too juvenile for my tastes. When they decided to make the sequel edgier and darker, my game store coworkers and I made fun of Jak’s new soul patch and menacing scowl trying to make the game more appealing to teenage boys. But then I played the game and… wow. It was significantly improved from the original, offering a much better story, awesome set piece moments, a cool weapon called the Morph Gun and a hub world called Haven City where you could run around and be a hooligan on a hoverboard. The next game followed suit with a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy and some cool new vehicles and gear. They’re still great to play today.

• Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari (2004 and 2005) - Keita Takahashi’s unique artistic sensibilities are dripping from every polygon in the unusual Katamari Damacy, a game where you play as the Prince and roll a giant sticky ball around to rebuild stars that your father, the King of All Cosmos, accidentally knocked out of the sky. With each level, the action gets grander until you’re eventually rolling up entire cities. The sequel, perhaps the finest game in the series, finds the Prince and King reveling in their newfound popularity but also trying to do bigger and better things to appease their fans, including eventually rolling up the entire solar system. Both games are amazingly fun and feature some of the best soundtracks ever recorded for a video game.

• Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil (2001) - One might argue that Klonoa’s first outing didn’t really leave room for a sequel, but Namco tried again anyhow by relocating their unusual mascot to a new world and by updating the graphics to be fully 3D and cel-shaded (though the gameplay is still largely 2.5D, with the exception of board-riding stages). As with the previous game, the soundtrack is also a standout, providing some wonderful melodies that suit the dreamlike feeling of the adventure. The result is an absolutely amazing and gorgeous-looking follow-up to what was already a great platformer, and what’s most surprising is that hardly anyone bothered to play it. Modern gamers should pick up Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, which includes remasters of both titles.

• Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim (2000) - Cyberlore Studios’s unique kingdom simulator is one of those games that allows you to build a city and put its residents on autopilot. Instead of building armies and dispatching heroes, you construct infrastructure, make upgrades and set bounties for heroes to collect once they take care of your neighboring monsters. While the expansion pack was good, the 2009 sequel was handled by a different team and isn’t recommended. The scaled-down mobile version by HeroCraft, while fun, isn’t anywhere near as deep as the original game that inspired it.

• Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 (2000) - I don’t think I’ve ever played a fighting game as disjointed as Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. After a stellar first outing combining two universes and bringing out obscure characters, Capcom went for broke with 52 fighters (including two different versions of Wolverine who look almost exactly the same!) who battle in teams of three amidst strange stages unconnected to any of the characters to the beat of a catchy, jazzy soundtrack and an unforgettable select screen song. The game’s so crazy it really shouldn’t work, but it’s one of Capcom’s absolute best. The sequels range from good (Marvel Vs. Capcom 3) to better (Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3) to “Why???” (Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite).

• Matrimelee (2003) - I’m a big fan of the Power Instinct (a.k.a. Gōketsuji Ichizoku) fighting games, and the series doesn’t get any better than the ridiculously silly Matrimelee in which the Goketsuji clan has to battle for the hand of the young Princess Sissy, a character with a magical box that’s going to ensure she isn’t married off without a serious fight. The zany characters and amazing comedic soundtrack (including an idol group singing about a sale in Akihabara or a sentai-themed song about a man who’s gone broke) make this fighter special, but the fact that it’s actually a competent fighting game with characters from Noise Factory’s 2002 Rage of the Dragons added in helps make a good game great.

• Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (2005) - Before Far Cry and Just Cause swooped in and became the open world destruction series they are today, LucasArts and Pandemic Studios’s Mercenaries was a wonderful guilty pleasure that challenged players to take down a series of North Korean generals - each given an accompanying playing card to help keep them straight - by gathering vehicles, weapons and factions to complete objectives. It’s one of the few open world games where there are three selectable main characters who impact the story in different ways including the awesome Swede Mattias Nilsson, who’s the clear poster boy. The 2008 sequel, sadly, wasn’t nearly as good as the original.

• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004) - Like most players, I went into this game with pretty low expectations after the insanity of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. But I emerged raving about this one, a prequel to the other Metal Gear games featuring Big Boss in his early days as a field agent codenamed Naked Snake. It’s as wild and over-the-top as any Metal Gear Solid title, but what makes it so good is its exceptional cast of characters - particularly The Boss, Snake’s mother figure, role model and mentor, whose tragic story is the true emotional conduit for everything that happens. There are many unforgettable moments in this game, and for all its amazing silliness (from the odd survival mechanics to the James Bond-style theme song to the optional Ape Escape mode), it’s one of the most profound and coherent stories Hideo Kojima has ever produced. The odd-numbered Metal Gear Solid games are definitely the best.

• Metroid Prime (2002) - Nintendo handed off the development of a 3D Metroid game to Retro Studios, and the result was a game that felt like a perfect translation of everything good about Super Metroid into a more sophisticated first person shooter-style experience. It’s not only one of the best Metroid games, but frequently receives praise for being one of the best games of its decade. The Gamecube original’s controls weren’t the greatest (and couldn’t be reconfigured), but the later Wii version and Switch version helped to fix that. The two sequels (as of this writing - a fourth game is supposedly on the way) are also excellent, but quite challenging.

• Mister Mosquito (2001) - Zoom’s strange PlayStation 2 game about a mosquito is very Japanese in its sensibilities (and also scientifically inaccurate in its North American title, since only female mosquitos drink human blood), but it’s also a game that must be experienced because there’s nothing else quite like it. Your job is to suck as much blood as you can from the Yamada family without getting caught while they go about their day, and you can soothe their anxiety by hitting their pressure points before they see and subsequently swat you. Much like the offbeat Katamari Damacy, there’s plenty to see and do in each stage, and part of the fun comes from enjoying the mosquito-sized perspective on the comparatively large home the Yamadas inhabit. Sadly, the 2003 sequel, which sees the mosquito following the Yamada family to Hawaii, is Japan-only.

• The Movies (2005) - Bullfrog Productions was acquired by EA in 1995 and a new studio called Lionhead broke off with Peter Molyneux as its mouthpiece. While he had a tendency to overpromise and underdeliver on his high concept games, his big idea for The Movies (basically, The Sims meets a movie studio backlot strategy game) panned out well by not only creating a fun and engaging sim about movie-making and show business and by giving gamers an animation engine to create their own short machinima films. The Stunts and Effects expansion, released in 2006, even utilized in-engine practical effects to create movie magic. I hope this one gets re-released one day on a storefront like Steam or GOG; it’s a tremendously fun game that deserves a modern revival.

• Ninja Gaiden (2004) - Team Ninja’s remake of the classic arcade game and NES series is an amazing mess of awesome moments mixed with cringey (and often bewildering) storytelling and scantily-clad females, but man, does it look and play like a dream with a level of punishing challenge that forces you to get really good if you want to progress. The Xbox original was a showcase game for that platform, and its subsequent revisions only made a good thing better. I’m less enthusiastic about the sequels, however, which went from OK (Ninja Gaiden II and Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword) to kinda bad (Ninja Gaiden 3) to absolutely awful (Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z).

• Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath (2005) - I’m not a huge fan of the Oddworld games despite their quality simply because the aesthetic and style of humor just isn’t for me. But Stranger’s Wrath, which is a Western-style first person shooter, is a nice deviation from the formula and it’s a game I’d recommend to everyone. The use of creatures you find scattered around the world as ammo for your crossbow is clever and engaging, and the storyline, while a bit silly at times, really gets going as you hunt down outlaws and discover what the Stranger is so angry about to begin with.

• Ōkami (2006) - Clover Studio produced three big games during its short life as a developer: Viewtiful Joe, Godhand and the exceptional Zelda-style game based in Japanese mythology, Ōkami. Sadly, Ōkami did not receive Zelda-like sales despite its wonderful cel-shaded graphics and novel mechanic called the “Celestial Brush” that allowed players to draw calligraphy onscreen to create magical effects. Today it’s a cult classic that is rightly recognized as one of the best games the PlayStation 2 had to offer, but it was disappointing to see it flop in 2006. (Thankfully, Capcom revived it on the Wii and even released a 2010 sequel called Ōkamiden for the Nintendo DS)

• Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (1999 and 2000) - For a long time, North American gamers couldn’t play the first part of this duo of Persona games because it wasn’t localized in English until 2011 for the PSP. The sequel, which was localized for North America, was extremely hard to find and was missing the crucially important first half of the story that explained why protagonist Maya Amano was so important to the seeming antagonist Tatsuya and where all these Persona users actually came from. Now that we can play both entries, I highly recommend them - they’re not quite as accessible as Persona 3, 4 and 5, but they together tell an amazing story that goes a lot deeper into the metaphysical than the later games do, and they also cleave a lot closer to the more sophisticated Shin Megami Tensei mechanics and themes. They also explain some things the newer games don’t, like what the Velvet Room actually is or why Philemon (seen only as a butterfly in later games) is its master.

• Persona 3 (2006) - When Persona 3 debuted, few gamers had any familiarity with the Carl Jung-based psychological series thanks to Atlus’s boneheaded decision to only release the second half of the Persona 2 adventure outside of Japan. Fortunately, Persona 3 was a brilliant standalone title that built on the foundations of the series while smoothing out its rough edges. This was the first game to introduce a calendar to drive the action forward and social links to bond the nameless protagonist to not just the other member of the SEES team he joined, but also other NPCs in the game world. While the gameplay gets bogged down a bit by the tedium of exploring the hundreds of floors of Tartarus, the story is absolutely incredible, featuring some surprising twists and an amazing cast of memorable characters. Sadly, the best version of the game, Persona 3 Portable, has never been translated to the original’s 3D graphics presentation and the FES edition adds in an unnecessary epilogue few Persona fans enjoy. There’s also an anime series called Persona: Trinity Soul that is ostensibly a sequel to the game, but it’s not something I’d recommend to most series fans.

• Pikmin and Pikmin 2 (2001 and 2004) - Shigeru Miyamoto was apparently inspired to create Pikmin by watching the creatures in his garden, and the result is a game that’s simultaneously bleak and desperate while also being colorful and joyful. The premise is that Captain Olimar has crashed his spaceship on a strange world and is able to recruit local plant creatures called Pikmin to help him gather resources and make repairs. The innovative controls and color-coded powers allow the action to function like a real-time strategy game mixed with a puzzle platformer. A few other games have used the same formula (such as the delightful Overlord and the subversive Anarcute), but the Pikmin games stand on their own as true originals that get better with each entry. Pikmin 2 is more challenging and adds in some new colors for additional puzzling as well as a co-op mode with Olimar’s assistant, Louie. The more recent 2013 and 2023 sequels are also fantastic.

• Power Stone 2 (2000) - Capcom’s under-the-radar arena combat game deserved a better fate than being stuck on the Dreamcast (and later, the PSP), and those lucky enough to have played it know that it’s an outstanding competitive game with platform jumping elements, big ideas and lots and lots of crazy weapons as well as bizarre characters who can transform into super-powered heavy hitters once they collect enough of the game’s power gems. This one’s in the regular rotation at my house; it’s a truly remarkable multiplayer experience.

• Prey (2006) - Human Head Studios’s Prey has nothing to do with the 2017 Bethesda game or 2022 film of the same name, and it’s honestly a shame it’s so forgotten today, because it was one of the best and most innovative shooters on the Xbox 360. The basic premise is that you are a Cherokee mechanic and former soldier named Domasi "Tommy" Tawodi hanging out in a bar on a reservation in Oklahoma, trying to get your girlfriend to leave with you, when an alien vessel called the Sphere appears above and begins abducting people. You discover that the ship is a multidimensional fortress that preys upon and enslaves sentient aliens all over the universe, and you have to learn to navigate levels where gravity is relative, portals transport you to other places and your spirit is capable of leaving your body. It’s sort of like Quake II meets Portal with a dash of Turok thrown in, and I’ve honestly never played anything else like it. The game was also notorious for being in development hell for a decade, surviving the collapse of original developer 3DRealms and getting a restart in development in 2001. Sadly, its planned sequel never made it out.

• Primal (2003) - There’s some other universe in which Primal was the influential game it deserved to be instead of a cult classic showcasing the possibilities of 3D adventuring with two distinct characters. Jennifer Tate is a human who enters the realm of Oblivion in search or her missing boyfriend, and her companion, Scree, is a gargoyle who can climb surfaces Jen can’t and who has a wonderfully dry sense of humor to counterbalance her wide-eyed naivete. Jen’s eventual transformation powers allow her to gradually become more capable, but the game’s world requires the two to work together and uses well-scripted AI to make the characters feel like a team. The soundtrack is also distinctive, featuring industrial rock music by the band 16Volt.

• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the Prince of Persia reboot (2003 and 2008) - It’s hard to understand why, but Prince of Persia is one of those series that’s produced some phenomenally popular and influential games (and even a halfway decent feature film!), but which has also struggled to stay relevant despite its quality. When Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time debuted in 2003 with brand new parkour mechanics, a novel method of handling walking on narrow ledges and along walls, and a cool time-reversal ability that allowed its 3D platforming to feel like it wasn’t oppressive and overly difficult, hardly anyone bought it and played it. It was their loss; The Sands of Time was an absolutely amazing experience for its time and its ideas have been endlessly copied since. And yet Ubisoft’s reaction was to make the sequel more edgy and combat-focused to try to build an audience, and the underappreciated third game had to strike a balance between the two styles when that didn’t work. This led to a 2008 reboot with cel-shaded graphics and a magical companion which also turned out to be a really well-made and amazingly good game, but it also failed to attract the attention it deserved, and Ubisoft tried one more time with a movie tie-in before it shelved the series and focused on its new Assassin’s Creed IP instead, gradually working in most of the same ideas while leaving the Prince in the dust. It’s a shame.

• Psychnonauts (2005) - Tim Schafer’s first big game at Double Fine Productions after leaving LucasArts had a fraught publication history with a lot of twists and turns; it’s amazing it ever got released at all. And it shows; the game feels a little unfinished towards the end and also takes awhile to show its brilliance. But the middle - what an incredible middle it is! From the moment you enter the mind of a hideous lungfish and realize that it sees you as a Godzilla-like monster, Psychonauts turns on its brilliant charm and doesn’t let up for most of the rest of the game. The VR follow-up Rhombus of Ruin and 2021 sequel Psychonauts 2 aren’t quite as brilliant, but once you play the original, you’ll still be dying to see what happens next.

• Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando and Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (2003 and 2004) - I enjoyed Insomniac’s 2002 action platformer Ratchet & Clank, but it had many frustrating moments and was a good, but not particularly great, PS2 game that seemed aimed a little too squarely at kids. Not so with the sequels - they kept the original’s cartoon aesthetic, but the titles alone should tell you that they added some edge to the formula along with a ton of incredible weapons that significantly increased the potential for onscreen destruction. Best of all, some weapons from previous games could be imported into the next chapter from a saved file. While storytelling’s not the strong suit of any Ratchet & Clank game, the characters are really well-crafted and fun to watch, and the second and third game greatly evolve Captain Qwark from a buffoonish villain into a true hero.

• Rez (2001) - Tetsuya Mizuguchi is one of my favorite game designers, and his work at Sega’s AM9/United Game Artists resulted in the Space Channel 5 games and Rez, a unique wireframe rail shooter with a Tron aesthetic and a cyberpunk storyline about hacking your way through cyberspace to rescue a powerful AI program named Eden from self-doubt. The music is incredible, and the game’s even better when played in VR. Mizuguchi’s later company Q Entertainment created a 2011 successor called Child of Eden which is also absolutely worth playing.

• Resident Evil 4 (2005) - I don’t generally love the Resident Evil games, but even I’ll acknowledge that Resident Evil 4 is one of the greatest games ever made. I played it when it first came out on the Gamecube and I was absolutely hooked. The slow-moving action, oppressive atmosphere, bonkers (and at times, utterly bewildering) storyline and quest to rescue and protect a teenage girl all fit really well into the Resident Evil dynamic, and when the game takes a big swing with a set piece moment or boss battle, things get really exciting. I only wish the games that followed it understood what made this one so good.

• Shadow Hearts: Covenant (2004) - I wasn’t too impressed with Final Fantasy X-2, a gratuitous sequel that was a little too silly to feel like it belonged in the popular JRPG series. That same year, however, Nautilus released Shadow Hearts: Covenant, an amazing sequel to an underrated JRPG from 2001 and which featured a far more interesting story set in an alternate history where magic was a part of reality. The sequel took place during World War I and established the original game’s bad ending as canon - a peculiar but compelling choice! - and introduced one of the greatest casts of characters in any role-playing game as well as historical figures including Rasputin and Roger Bacon. The game’s Judgement Ring system allowed for fun combat encounters and streamlined the clunky menus of Final Fantasy-style games. It’s a shame so many people missed this one; it’s one of the PlayStation 2’s best games.

• Silent Hill 2 (2001) - The Silent Hill games are something of an acquired taste, but the second game stands on its own and can be enjoyed without knowing anything about the others. It’s a horror game for people who don’t like jump scares or over-the-top gore, but who appreciate the oppressive atmosphere of fog and air raid sirens and psychological horrors waiting in the shadows without ever fully explaining their purpose. If you’ve missed this one and you’re over the age of 17, give it a shot - it’s a surprisingly mature story about love, loss and regret that goes to some really dark places.

• Skies of Arcadia (2000) - If you’ve ever played an early Final Fantasy game and thought, “Hmm, this needs a lot more airship,” then Overworks and Sega’s Skies of Arcadia has you covered. As the Blue Rogue sky pirate Vyse and companions Aika and Fina (as well as a few others), you explore six different continents and try to recover several moon crystals to prevent the evil Valuan Empire from awakening the dark power known as the Gigas and using it to conquer the world. The game’s vast and varied settings made it a standout when it debuted on the Sega Dreamcast, and it was one of the earliest - and best! - JRPGs of the 2000s.

• Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Sly 2:Band of Thieves and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (2002, 2004, 2005) - While Sucker Punch’s original trilogy of cel-shaded anthropomorphic animal heist games never quite achieved the stature of Jak and Daxter or Ratchet & Clank, they’re actually all three excellent and shouldn’t be missed. The first game has amazing art design, great levels and smooth and responsive controls, but it was dinged a bit when it came out for being too short and focused on style over substance; my game store colleagues and I would joke it was “Splinter Cell as a Saturday morning cartoon.” The sequels retain all of the good things about the original but allow you to use the entire team instead of just Sly and expand the game’s length significantly. (The third game was so full of ideas the original release even included 3D glasses for some segments!) I can’t recommend this series enough; it really deserved more recognition than it got. And to give credit to Sony, they tried even to give it another chance with the 2013 sequel Thieves in Time; it’s fine, but it was created by a different team and feels like it’s trying to take an Assassin’s Creed sort of approach with its historical time periods, offering something a bit different from the other games.

• SSX Tricky and SSX 3 (2001 and 2003) - I’m torn by which SSX snowboarding game I’d rather play if I was stuck on a desert island; Tricky was an incredible update to the original SSX that improved it in every way, but SSX 3 added in open world mechanics and some cool new ways to chain tricks together for mega-high scores. Both are great games whether or not you enjoy snowboarding and skateboarding titles; they’re fast-moving, fun and way over the top in all the best ways. The 2005 sequel (introducing skis in all versions and a playable Mario on the GameCube!) is fun as well, and the 2012 remake for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 is way underappreciated. (We won’t talk about the 2007 Wii game SSM Blur, which feels like a half-baked tech demo.)

• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) - Star Wars was in dire danger of losing relevance following Attack of the Clones, and so when this game came out my first summer working in a video game store, I was begging customers to give it a chance, promising them that they were going to love Star Wars again once they began exploring the Old Republic era. Today, it’s regarded as one of the best Star Wars games ever made with one of the best stories outside the original films. It also had a great sequel in The Sith Lords and was the inspiration for one of my favorite MMORPGs, Star Wars: The Old Republic. If you even sort of like Star Wars and haven’t played this one, do so - it’s a bit clunky at first, but once you get past the initial areas, it opens up into an adventure filled with awesome ideas and fun things to do, and it has a plot twist so shocking that it rivals The Empire Strikes Back for its impact on the story. BioWare’s later Jade Empire and Mass Effect games are also very much in this vein and also well worth playing.

• Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse (2005) - I’m not a huge fan of zombie games, but a game where you get to be the zombie? That’s interesting. And Stubbs the Zombie is a wonderfully peculiar creature, built in the Halo engine and featuring the same sort of twisted retro future Americana humor seen in Destroy All Humans!, but with the added bonus that you can throw your endlessly-regenerating organs at your enemies and raise a zombie army of your own. The basic idea is that you’re a traveling salesman who was killed by an angry father after getting caught with with his daughter, but an experiment by a mad scientist causes you to rise from your grave and seek revenge … and the affections of the girl you left behind, who’s all too happy to become a zombie with you. It’s putrid and tasteless and also incredibly delightful.

• Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven (2003) - While this is actually the third game in the Tenchu series about ninja assassins in feudal Japan, it’s the one I recommend starting with if you’re interested in the series because it strikes the right balance between stealth action and excitement. The PS2 original has three characters (Rikimaru, Ayame and Tesshu Fujioka) and continues the rather conventional plot of the original game with an inscrutable and bonkers story that has some hilariously bad voice acting. Fortunately, the stealthy moments and takedowns keep the game fun even when it’s hard to understand exactly what’s happening. The Xbox and PSP ports include extra content and characters, but I still prefer the PS2 original. Sadly, the fourth game, 2004’s Fatal Shadows, couldn’t quite strike the same balance, and FromSoftware took the series over after that and has never quite found a way to make it work.

• Tony Hawk’s Underground (2003) - Everyone has their favorite Tony Hawk game, but I’d argue this one’s the sweet spot that has a little bit of something for everyone. Whereas the earlier Pro Skater entries are all about pulling off sick tricks in level-like environments with no real purpose behind it all, Underground is where the series started adding in an honest-to-goodness story mode and scaling the gameplay to be accessible to both experienced fans and newcomers. Some might argue Underground 2 or American Wasteland are better games, and I don’t disagree! Others might say Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 or 3 are the high points for the series, and I understand the love there as well. But if I were going to play one today, Underground would always be my first choice.

• Tron 2.0 (2003) - Forget Tron: Legacy - PC gamers know that the real follow-up to the movie follows Jet Bradley into his father’s computer to rescue him from the evil FCon executive J.D. Thorne, who’s digitized himself and become a virus. The game plays like a first-person shooter but includes all of the Tron trappings, like a disc weapon you can throw, light cycles you can ride and a cool neon aesthetic to everything inside the digital world. It’s a great game from Monolith Soft and even features Bruce Boxleitner reprising his role as Alan Bradley (rather than Tron, the character he played in the film). I far prefer the PC original to the 2004 Xbox version, Tron 2.0: Killer App, which loses something in translation to the console.

• Vagrant Story (2000) - Yasumi Matsuno’s Valendia (Tactics Ogre) and Ivalice (Final Fantasy Tactics) games are well-known for tactical strategy mechanics and expansive worlds, but the Tactics Ogre spin-off Vagrant Story is a different beast entirely, offering stealth-based RPG combat in the ruins of a fortified city called Leá Monde. The game’s distinctive gothic aesthetic and depiction of dialogue through comic book cartoon bubbles makes it really stand out, and protagonist Ashley Riot wears one of the strangest suits of stealth armor I’ve ever seen, accentuating his look with strands of hair that hang off his head like antennae. But the gameplay’s great, the story is interesting, and the soundtrack is wonderful. With Metal Gear Solid so fresh in gamers’ minds at the time, this one earned the fun nickname of being “Medieval Gear Solid.” It’s not far off.

• Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines (2004) - Most of the games I’ve included as favorites shipped in a complete state, but Troika Games’s Vampire: The Masquerade action RPG (built on Valve’s Source engine) debuted in a buggy and unfinished state that fans had to fix through unofficial patches. When the game’s patched, though? Wow, what an experience! It’s sort of like The Elder Scrolls meets Deus Ex, and it’s by far the best game created for the World of Darkness RPG setting. I admire its clever mission structure and excellent character interactions, but I also love how it uses its small environments to make its game world feel vast by showing just enough of the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles to hint that there’s far more going on than the game actually depicts. The combat’s the game’s weak point, but the creative quests and interesting dialogue make it all worth the trouble.

• Viewtiful Joe (2003) - I’m a sucker for offbeat games with odd mechanics, and Viewtiful Joe’s strange conceit about entering a tokusatsu-style superhero movie and using special effects and time dilation skills definitely fits the bill. The sequels aren’t quite as good as the original, but they were all a fun ride while they lasted. Sadly, developer Clover Studios didn’t make it too many years after this game’s debut; their final game, 2006’s God Hand, is a goofy treat fans of Viewtiful Joe will also enjoy.

• Voodoo Vince (2003) - Clayton Kauzlaric left Cavedog Entertainment (makers of Total Annihilation) to create an Xbox-exclusive platform game where you play as a voodoo doll who beats himself up to harm his enemies. I cannot emphasize enough what an amazing concept that is, and Voodoo Vince makes good use of the idea by offering wonderful level design and art, great platforming, vehicles to drive, a New Orleans jazz-style soundtrack and a snarky sense of humor. It’s a cult classic today, and one I often recommend to those looking for something different.

• Wakeboarding Unleashed Featuring Shaun Murray (2003) - This unassuming extreme sports game is one of the most fun times I’ve ever had with a sport I'd never heard of prior to playing it. It’s sort of like a combination of SSX Tricky and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater where you follow along in the wake of a ship but can release your cable to grind on the environment. The only other wakeboarding game I’ve played is the so-so Wakeboarding HD, which makes Wakeboarding Unleashed all the more special.

• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004-2008) - There are an enormous number of games based on the Warhammer 40k tabletop setting, and most are average at best. But Dawn of War, the real-time strategy series from Relic Entertainment, is not only a stunning translation of the tabletop game’s best ideas into a video game, but also greatly extended by its standalone expansion packs, including 2005’s Winter Assault (which is great), 2006’s Dark Crusade (which is incredible) and 2008’s Soulstorm (which is just OK, but completes the game). I wasn’t nearly as keen on Dawn of War II or III, which are more tactical strategy games than pure RTS.

• The Warriors (2005) - The 1979 film The Warriors is one of those movies that has had a major impact on gaming - particularly the beat ‘em up genre. But Rockstar’s loving tribute to the film is far more than a simple beat ‘em up; it’s an action-packed recreation of the entire movie (complete with voicework from some of the original cast!) along with a significant prologue to provide much more backstory about all of the characters. If you skipped this one because it wasn’t called Grand Theft Auto, you missed out.

• Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner (2003) - Hideo Kojima’s initial Zone of the Enders game was mostly famous for including a preview demo for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty to boost its sales; it was otherwise a short and unimpressive game with a surprisingly lousy story. The sequel, however, was a real gem, tuning up the action and including a much better (and more linear) story along with one of the best soundtracks of its era. You can even play it today in VR, where a good thing looks and plays even better.

The Digital Download Era (2007-2011)

• Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (2009, 2010 and 2011) - Ubisoft was called out for being pretty cynical with its annualized trilogy of Assassin’s Creed games featuring Ezio Auditore da Firenze battling the Borgias and the Byzantine Templars in the Renaissance era, but the trilogy is actually the first peak for the series, featuring some of the best storytelling and environments, even if the final game grafted in a few too many disparate mechanics. The gameplay and the story’s take on the characters don’t quite gel - Ezio comes off as a very charismatic but highly manipulative psychopath with all the bloody bodies he leaves behind - but the games provide a lot of fun exploration of historical settings and aren’t as overwhelming, silly or convoluted as some of the later entries in the series.

• Bastion (2011) - Supergiant Games’s stunning debut is a lavishly illustrated isometric action RPG that would be awesome on its own, but the cherry on top is a narrator who’s constantly commenting on the adventures of the Kid and informing the player about what’s happening in the game world. The game’s story - about reinforcing a walled fortress called the Bastion - takes place in a post-apocalyptic world following an event called the Calamity and challenges the player to think about the nature of war and survival as well as whether the events of the past can be undone or simply need to be built upon for a new future. The soundtrack for this game, which includes some great vocal tracks from composer Darren Korb and collaborator Ashley Lynn Barrett, is also incredible.

• Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) and Arkham City (2011) - There have been a lot of bad Batman games, and I was as skeptical as anyone that Rocksteady could take the idea of putting down a riot in Arkham Asylum and make a good game out of it without relying on tired beat ‘em up mechanics. But not only did they pull it off, but they created such an influential title that many games copied Arkham Asylum’s combat system and storytelling style in the years to come. What’s more, the follow-up Arkham City managed to create an even more compelling experience that introduced some of the foes missing from the first game, all voiced by stellar actors either sourced from Batman: The Animated Series or the best new talent available. I didn’t love Origins or Arkham Knight quite as much, but they’re both solid because the core mechanics of the first two Arkham games are really good.

• Braid (2008) - Jonathan Blow’s Braid was the first indie game that was really on anyone’s radar in the late aughties, and with good reason - it was mechanically inventive, gorgeous-looking, great-sounding and more than a little pretentious. The premise involves guiding a school boy through screens where he can manipulate the flow of time, and it has some wonderfully devious puzzles and tight mechanics.

• Brütal Legend (2009) - Tim Schafer’s heavy metal action adventure got so much hate when it debuted, and I’ll never understand why - it’s one of the most creative and exciting action games of the PS3/Xbox 360 era with an incredible licensed soundtrack to boot. While I get that some players didn’t appreciate the shift from hack and slash action to real-time strategy mechanics midway through the game, the theming and the interaction of these sequences still kept things fun, and the game’s story and world were absolutely incredible. If I have one complaint, it’s that the game’s over before it feels like it should be. Too bad we’ll never get a sequel.

• Castle Crashers (2008) - The Behemoth’s 4-player co-op brawler is arcade-style in its sensibility but RPG-style in its progression, character building and overall replayability - sort of like Capcom’s Dungeons & Dragons arcade games but with more to do. While its famous for its simple cartoon artwork from Dan Paladin, it’s a legitimately good game that offers some excellent levels and bosses. It’s best played with friends as a couch co-op game; there’s plenty to unlock, and there’s lots to see. But best of all, it’s got a great sense of humor that keeps things light and fun.

• Child of Eden (2011) - My love for Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Rez carries over to Child of Eden, which simply evolves the concept into an even more spectacular rail shooter. While the storyline is a little less coherent and there’s a heavy emphasis on introducing Lumi, the fictional singer for Mizuguchi’s band Genki Rockets, the visuals and the music are out of this world, including big boss battles with an outer space whale that turns into a phoenix, a humongous flower you peel apart petal by petal and a duo of red and blue running men created by two colliding planets who lead you to a giant satellite that has to be destroyed. It’s a trip, and definitely worth trying out with the Xbox 360’s Kinect mode or the PlayStation Move controllers.

• Critter Crunch (PS3 version) (2009) - Capybara Games’s beautifully animated puzzle game was technically a mobile game before it rose to prominence on the PlayStation 3, but the PS3 version is the first one people really noticed because it involves a cute little character who seems like he belongs in a Studio Ghibli movie that eats an entire food chain’s worth of critters and then barfs rainbows into his child’s mouth. It’s simple, but man, is it fun.

• Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2011 and 2016) - It was a gutsy move for Eidos-Montreal to take one of the greatest cyberpunk action RPG shooters of the early aughties and update it with a prequel series a decade later. While the storyline isn’t quite as good and Adam Jensen is no JC Denton, the art design, skill trees, stealth and action mechanics and soundtrack are all really excellent, and the second game improves on the concept in every way by offering more distinctive environments, a deeper storyline and a more nuanced set of characters. Sadly, the second game teased a sequel that seems like it’ll never happen thanks to current owner Embracer Group cancelling whatever the developer had in production.

• Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010) - A post-apocalyptic take on the classic Chinese story Journey to the West by Ninja Theory, starring Andy Serkis as Monkey? It sounds unbelievable even now, but it happened and it was a surprisingly good game. Though the story goes in quite a different direction than the source material, Trip, Monkey and Piggsy make a compelling team, and the gorgeous graphics and 3D puzzle platforming mechanics make this one a wonderful experience all around.

• Fallout: New Vegas (2010) - Bethesda’s reinvention of the Fallout games worked pretty well with the great east coast-centered Fallout 3, but then some of the original series creators came along and repurposed ideas from their cancelled sequel to the older Interplay games (codenamed Van Buren) and created what I’d consider to be the definitive 3D Fallout game with New Vegas. While it was notoriously buggy at launch and even today feels a bit awkward due to the limitations of its graphics and game engine, the storyline is deep and involves a lot of fun twists and turns, and the game world offers some nice callbacks to the precursor series Wasteland, which Brian Fargo would reboot a few years later.

• Flower (2009) - The second commercial game from thatgamecompany is the one that most closely resembles their original project Cloud by placing the player in a nonviolent setting and encouraging the creation of beauty and growth rather than death and destruction. It’s a one of a kind game that everyone should experience.

• GRiMgRiMoiRe (2007) - Vanillaware’s debut game for the PlayStation 2 is one of the most lavishly-illustrated real-time strategy games you’ll ever play, and also one of the more unique thanks to its two-dimensional tower-based stage design and emphasis on streamlining resource gathering. It’s sort of like Magic: The Gathering meets StarCraft by way of a cutesy anime series about a school for magicians. The impressively sprites (some of which fill the entire screen!) and amazing-looking interface truly have to be seen to be believed.

• Heavenly Sword (2007) - Sort of a cross between God of War and Devil May Cry, Heavenly Sword was a showcase title for the PlayStation 3 developed by Ninja Theory and featuring some smooth action and excellent graphics for its time. Even today, it’s pretty stunning, and the game’s story (which includes Andy Serkis as the villain King Bohan) is above average, featuring some great boss encounters and a wonderful setup for the power and curse of the titular heavenly sword.

• Just Cause 2 (2010) - While it has a laughably awful story and a ridiculously over-the-top protagonist, that’s not why you play Just Cause 2. The game’s main feature is its physics engine, which allows for then-unparalleled levels of destruction in an open world game. When you add in a grappling hook that allows you to defy the laws of physics and a huge (and gorgeous) open world jam-packed with things to explode and places to explore, Just Cause 2 is an amazing experience. The sequels, while also good, feel a little bit scaled back from the insanity of part 2, but they do improve on the storytelling a little bit while adding in new features.

• The Last Story (2011) - After the good but not great Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey failed to set the Xbox 360 playerbase on fire, Final Fantasy fans were beginning to wonder of Hironobu Sakaguchi still had the magic touch. But then Wii gamers started raving about The Last Story, a game released in Japan, Australia and Europe with a full English dub but not, for reasons publisher Nintendo will probably never explain, released in North America. A fan effort led to the game’s release through Xseed, and while it wasn’t a commercial hit coming so late in the Wii’s lifecycle, it was definitely a critical one and is now a cult classic. The fast-moving gameplay reminds me of a combination of Vagrant Story’s stealth and Final Fantaxy XII’s real-time combat system, but it has its own quirks, particularly since the game uses the awkward Wiimote and Nunchuck combo. The real joy of the game is its characters, who make an otherwise stock plot a lot of fun and who help protagonist Zael to make the most of his combat abilities while also evolving into memorable mercenaries as the game goes on. The voice acting, supplied by a stable of European actors not normally heard in English-speaking games, helps make these characters more distinctive.

• Limbo (2011) - Playdead’s debut indie progressive platformer uses light and shadow to tell an amazing and wordless story about a boy who’s searching for his sister in a strange, gray world full of dangerous spiders, shadowy boys setting traps and a polluted city full of pitfalls and hazards. It’s not a long game, but it is a great one that’s only surpassed by its 2016 follow-up, Inside.

• Mass Effect (2007) - BioWare’s decision to create a science fiction universe somewhere between Star Wars, Star Trek and the political intrigue of Babylon 5 resulted in one of the best action RPGs of a generation - and one of the best-looking, too, with phenomenal art design and awesome-looking aliens populating a universe on the brink of extinction thanks to the return of a synthetic race called the Reapers. I’m that rare person who prefers the first game over the subsequent sequels, but I like and recommend them all. Even Andromeda wasn’t too bad.

• Mirror’s Edge (2008) - The idea of a “first person parkour” game seemed a little out there in the grimdark, military-shooter heavy PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era, but DICE absolutely nailed it with Mirror’s Edge, a bright and exciting game that takes place atop a futuristic utopian city where couriers called Runners transport illicit goods and private packages by staying out of view of the cameras and monitoring systems by leaping across skyscrapers and making their way up stairwells, atriums and construction sites. As Faith Conners, you stumble upon a conspiracy that sends you running for your life away from an increasing police presence everywhere you go, and since you have limited combat abilities, much of the game is spent avoiding foes by finding exits and dodging gunfire. The story’s a little weak (and ends on a never-resolved cliffhanger), but the gameplay is amazing with a quite fitting soundtrack.

• Mortal Kombat (2011) - The ninth entry in the long-running series reset the universe and retold the story of the first three games with some key differences. While it’s not a perfect fighter by any means, NetherRealm’s love for the characters and storytelling chops (which really took off in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe) redefined what a Western fighting game could look and play like. The sequels and the DC Comics Injustice games are also fun, but the modern Mortal Kombat is a high point for the series.

• NieR (2010) - Almost nobody cared about NieR when it first came out, and it’s not hard to understand why - its ugly North American protagonist, weird story and relationship to the unusual Drakengard games made it seem like a title destined for the bargain bin. And yet some gamers and critics looked past first impressions and discovered the game’s true depths in its multiple endings and adjusted perspectives on subsequent playthroughs, calling the entire game’s premise into question. That it also had one of the best soundtracks ever created for a game wasn’t lost on fans either. Thankfully, its 2017 sequel NieR: Automata received a lot more attention, and that even led to the Japanese original version (with a much more attractive hero) to get a 2021 release for North America as NieR Replicant.

• Odin Sphere (2007) - Vanillaware’s origin story begins with the obscure Japan-only 1997 Saturn game Princess Crown, a cult classic from Atlus Kansai that serves as the foundation for this spiritual successor by the same director and art designer, George Kamitani (who’d cut his teeth previously at Capcom). Odin Sphere introduces a brand new story, setting and characters, but offers much of the same side scrolling action gameplay along with some incredible illustrations and humongous bosses; it’s one of the most visually striking 2D action games you’ll ever play, and it’s surprisingly long given its lavish-looking production values. In 2016, Vanillaware released an excellent PS3/PS4/Vita remake called Odin Sphere Leifthrasir which offers HD graphics and many improvements to gameplay that simply add more to an already great game.

• Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (2010) - There have been many attempts to reinvent Pac-Man, but none has been more successful than this entry, which focuses on time trials and making use of a new mechanic called the “Ghost Train” to maximize your score. It’s still a game I fire up and play when I have some time to kill, and while it can be frustrating to make a stupid mistake and ruin a good run, it always pushes you to do better the next time.

• Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden (2008 and 2012) - Persona 4 was an amazing follow-up to Persona 3 that switched the emphasis from saving the world during the Midnight Hour to a group of backwater teens trying to solve a murder mystery involving the metaphysical “Midnight Channel,” a strange reflection of the cognitive world that would ultimately end in someone’s death if the heroes didn’t rescue them. While the ultimate mystery does have its issues due to an out-of-nowhere twist, the game, its concepts and its characters are just so likable and well-crafted that it’s easy to overlook the logical issues. The superior 2012 Golden edition (originally released exclusively for the PlayStation Vita) also adds in a significant subplot that fleshes out the metaphysical world and explores the idea of building empathy in a fairly unique way.

• Plants Vs. Zombies (2009) - Popcap Games made a number of excellent casual titles before it was absorbed into EA Games, but its crowning achievement was its utterly original lane-based defense game Plants Vs. Zombies, an insanely awesome concept for a game that just about anyone could pick up and enjoy. That the series is still around today shows its staying power, and it was so well-suited to digital downloads and touch screens that its humble origins as a PC game are overshadowed by its presence today as a mobile mainstay with console shooter spin-offs and a long-running (and still popular!) comic book series for kids.

• Portal and Portal 2 (2007 and 2011) - The original Portal was one of the first short games designed for digital download to enjoy blockbuster success thanks to its cool physics-based puzzles, wonderfully subversive story and brilliant end-credits theme song featuring the maniacal AI system GLaDOS singing about her brush with death at the hands of the player. Valve’s sequel upped the ante in every way possible, introducing a deeper story, far more physics toys to play with and a second showdown with GLaDOS that resulted in the player finally escaping Aperture Science for good while GLaDOS continued her endless experiments with bots driven by AI cores. While the Portal games feature some brain-melting mechanics and puzzles, the darkly comedic tone is what makes the series so special.

• Rayman: Origins and Rayman: Legends (2011 and 2013) - The original Rayman games are great and rarely seem to get their due for being easily as good as anything Nintendo ever created. And yet Rayman Origins improved on the concept so much that it made the earlier games feel obsolete, and its sequel, Rayman Legends, rivals only Super Mario Wonder for cool and creative ideas despite being released 10 years earlier. Both are amazing fun and well worth playing.

• Red Dead Redemption (2010) - Rockstar’s foray into the Wild West by way of Capcom’s quirky Red Dead Revolver seemed like a questionable idea in 2010, but we all know how that turned out; Red Dead Redemption is often cited as one of the best games ever made. While I find the game’s shooting the least exciting aspect of it, I appreciate the well-told story and the vast stretches of open terrain that allow the game’s open world to really breathe. (The silly Undead Nightmare zombie expansion is also surprisingly good for what it is.) The 2018 prequel Red Dead Redemption 2 is also great, but I found myself enjoying it less and less as I played it because I knew where things were heading.

• The Saboteur (2009) - Pandemic Studios was sadly shuttered after a run of really remarkable games in the 2000s, and The Saboteur was their swansong. It’s a beautiful open world game set in Paris in World War II where you play as an Irishman named Sean who’s recruited to help the burgeoning Resistance movement kick out the Nazis through acts of sabotage and subterfuge. What’s most remarkable is the way the city begins in stark black and white but gains color as you free the different districts. The story is great too.

• Spelunky (2008) - I adore Derek Yu’s Spelunky because it’s one of the best platformers this side of Super Mario Bros. as well as being endlessly replayable due to its roguelike design. If you can make it past the mines (no small feat!), hold on to your fedora, because it’s a wild game full of secrets, and even when you think you’ve completed it, there’s far more to uncover. The 2020 sequel is also great, but I’d recommend mastering the original first because the second game was built to give those who poured thousands of hours into Spelunky a real challenge.

• 'Splosion Man and Ms. ‘Splosion Man (2009 and 2011) - I’m a sucker for a game with a good sense of humor, and the ‘Splosion Man series is brimming with it. The premise is that you’re a lab experiment gone wrong and you can jump higher or impact the world around you by exploding. You can master the mechanics and play though the game’s 50 levels or choose “The Way of the Coward” put on a pink tutu and rush through it. The sequel continues the story with improved mechanics and new bosses and ends with a live-action video showing the two characters getting explosively married. It’s great. If you enjoy these games, I also recommend the lesser-known Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley from the same developer, Twisted Pixel Games. I’ll definitely include it in this series when we get there.

• Stacking (2011) - Double Fine’s adventure game about Matryoshka stacking dolls is one of a kind and utilizes its unique conceit to tell a great story and provide some amusing puzzles that often involve stacking several layers of different dolls with different skills into one another. I adore its toybox aesthetic, its charming cleverness and its incredible creativity.

• Star Wars: The Old Republic (2010) - I’m not a fan of MMORPGs where I’m forced to interact with other players, and so BioWare’s sprawling MMO set in the Old Republic era of Star Wars was a perfect fit for me - its eight core character stories and generous expansions pretty much left me alone to experience most of the game by myself while I chatted with fellow players about Star Wars. By the time I did join a guild and start trying out the multiplayer content, I knew the game in and out and was ready for some interaction. Given that it’s free to play and has some of the best Star Wars storytelling you’ll ever find with an amazing cast of voice actors bringing the highly engaging characters to life, I recommend The Old Republic to everyone. A small one-time purchase upgrades you to “Preferred” status and unlocks all of the expansion content for each of your characters (including the return of Revan and a significant battle with a third faction from another section of the galaxy!), and you can play for months without needing to invest a single cent more.

• Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People (2008) - Fans of Homestar Runner have had no shortage of official games to play thanks to the Brothers Chaps and their fictional game company Videlectrix, but it took Telltale Games to get an authentic adventure game set in the universe of the web cartoon with all of the characters, in-jokes, subplots and Easter eggs a fan could hope for. There are so many laugh-out-loud moments in the game’s five episodes that even casual fans of Homestar Runner will be amused, and the episodes that seem like they’ll be the least interesting turn out to be some of the best in the collection.

• Superbrothers: Swords & Sworcery EP (2011) - When indie games were just starting to gain traction as a legitimate subset within gaming, this mobile title impressed with its detailed pixel art, moody story and awesome prog rock-style soundtrack by Jim Guthrie. It’s since been ported to PC and is absolutely worth a playthrough. If you can’t get enough, Superbrothers also did a set of levels for the PlayStation 3 and Vita’s Sound Shapes set to another album by Guthrie.

• Terraria (2011) - I’m not a huge fan of Minecraft, but I’ve plunked hundreds of hours into its two-dimensional equivalent. Terraria’s awesome assortment of weapons and items, cool biomes and challenging boss battles make it a fun game to play through again and again, and the descent from an overworld into the literal hell of the underworld beneath you is quite a trip. A long string of updates (particularly for the PC version) have made a good game even better since its release.

• Toy Soldiers and Toy Soldiers: Cold War (2010 and 2011) - The premise of Toy Soldiers is that you control a small set of toy units in a tower defense sort of setup while waves of enemies come after you, but that’s selling the game short since all of the units are controllable and the best way to win is to set up good defenses and then really help your side out by taking control at key points. The original is set in World War I, but the sequel adds in more modern equipment, including helicopters and musclebound commandos! Both are absolutely fantastic, and while they originally debuted on Xbox Live Arcade, they can be played on the PC today.

• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009) - Naughty Dog’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was a great showcase title for the PlayStation 3 and a return to the sorts of wild adventuring Tomb Raider had been famous for a decade prior. But the sequel went wild with everything that made the first Uncharted work so well - big puzzles to solve, great character interactions, a compelling plot about finding Shangri-La and exceptional set piece moments. Uncharted 2 also added in an addictive multiplayer mode that emphasized climbing and using the vertical scale of levels to your advantage. The third game was a good follow-up, but the fourth game is the only one that can match Among Thieves.

• Valkyria Chronicles (2008) - It’s hard to classify Sega’s cel-shaded tactical war game series - it’s not exactly a turn-based strategy game because you can control your characters’ movements like those of a 3D action game, but it’s also not a real-time strategy game because there really are turns and action points to think about. The game’s environment and story are inspired by World War II’s European theater but take place in an alternate world where technology is more advanced than it was in the 1940s and the descendants of powerful ancient race have special Valkyria powers. I’ve never played anything quite like it, and it’s reminiscent of the Fire Emblem games if they were combined with something more active like Ghost Recon or Sniper Elite. The 2010 and 2011 PSP sequels, both of which require fan patches or special means to play, are also excellent. 2018’s fourth entry is available on modern platforms and is pretty good, but feels more like an expansion to the tougher side of the first game than a true sequel. (The 2017 RPG spin-off Valkyria Revolution, however, is not so hot.)

• Wet (2009) - I never understood the apathy towards this stylish third person shooter from Bethesda and future Dead by Daylight developer Artificial Mind & Movement/Behaviour Interactive; it’s a lot of fun and has some really wild moments. The basic idea was to create a hyper violent John Woo-style action game with a sword-and-pistol carrying antihero named Rubi Malone who specializes in “wet work” - a euphemism for getting messy and bloody. Perhaps it’s because Rubi is unlikable and the storyline twists around without ever feeling rooted in reality that the game didn’t electrify critics, but the action is really good, the graphics evoke a grindhouse feel and the original soundtrack is awesome, featuring a number of rocking vocal tracks with a distinct sound. The voice acting is also great; actors like Eliza Dushku, Malcom McDowell, Alan Cumming, William Morgan Sheppard, James Sie and Kim Mai Guest give great performances.

• Where is My Heart? (2011) - This strange indie game from Danish developers Schulenburg Software and Die Gute Fabrik first appeared on the PlayStation Minis line of games for the PS3 and PSP and offered a unique platform game about a family of monsters with different powers who have to work together using their personal powers to get home. It’s similar in concept to The Lost Vikings, but with the conceit that the screen is broken into disparate pieces that require paying careful attention to where one border might cause your monsters to appear elsewhere. It’s the sort of game that will break your brain (and occasionally, your heart with its sad little characters!) but it’s worth the effort and only takes a few hours to complete.

The AAA Boom and Indie Renaissance Era (2012-2020)

• Assassin’s Creed Origins and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (2017 and 2018) - I’m a big fan of ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, the Peloponnesian War era, the conquests of Alexander the Great and the rise of Julius Caesar, so these games scratch all the right itches for me in allowing me to explore antiquity either as a charismatic Medjay desert ranger bent on revenge or as a mercenary who’s in no real hurry to resolve her story as she sails around the Greek world with Herodotus at her side. As with the best open world games, the main story is the least interesting part of what’s going on; the sidequests, exploration and emergent moments are what keep each game fun, and I’m glad the development team found ways to work in myth and legend without ruining the historical setting.

• Astro Bot: Rescue Mission (2018) - My absolute favorite VR game feels like Sony’s sleeker answer to Nintendo’s Mario games, and it’s absolutely one of the best experiences a VR novice can have with a PlayStation VR headset because it doesn’t require any hand-waving or aiming - just controlling a virtual character in a larger than life world that completely surrounds you as you try to rescue other bots from locations scattered throughout the game’s universe. The graphics are unbelievable, the boss battles are incredibly epic and the soundtrack is one of my all-time favorites. Team Asobi’s other showcase games - The Playroom, The Playroom VR and Astro’s Playroom - are all free and definitely worthwhile as well, but Astro Bot: Rescue Mission makes an argument that they ought to be a lot more prolific in creating premium content.

• Baba is You (2019) - Don’t be fooled by its simple graphics and weird title - Baba is You is a very sophisticated puzzle game where you have to break or rewrite the rules of the level to be able to win. You do this by manipulating simple instructions so that, for example, if “floor is lava,” you can simply remove the “is” and make the floor safe or perhaps replace “lava” with the word “win” to complete the level simply by taking a step. It’s a fiendishly clever puzzle game that’s filled with surprises.

• Battleblock Theater (2013) - The Behemoth’s couch co-op action platformer has an unusual conceit - you’re a castaway from the S.S. Friendship who’s forced to compete in dangerous platforming missions for an audience of evil cats who demand more and more danger as the levels go on. The platforming is well-crafted and challenging, and the storyline is full of juvenile gags that suit the cartoony flash animation aesthetic. The narrator and master of ceremonies, Hatty, is played by Will Stamper (who’s also featured in the developer’s later game Pit People) and adds a lot to the game’s bizarre humor.

• Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe (2017) - Have you ever wanted to play a cooking game where you get to hunt for your ingredients while your soup is simmering? Battle Chef Brigade makes that unusual dream come true, and its wonderful world, colorful cast of cooking characters, excellent fusion of sidescrolling action, crafting and puzzling and very likable protagonists Mina and Thrash make for a one of a kind game that shouldn’t be missed.

• Battlezone: Gold (2016) - Rebellion Entertainment makes some solid lower-budget games, and it’s no surprise that their take on the oft-remade and copied Battlezone found a way to bring the series into virtual reality Tron-style without losing what made the original arcade game so special. The simple premise is that you’re piloting a super tank through a procedurally generated world broken into missions where you shoot down other tanks, destroy bases or take over generators. In VR, the game is appropriately arcadey and feels really immersive. On a flat screen, the effect is lost, and while the action’s still good, I recommend playing the VR edition if you can for the full effect.

• Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, Ritual of the Night and Curse of the Moon 2 (2018, 2019, 2020) - Forget Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - the true heir apparent series to the classic Castlevania games comes from long-time designer Koji Igarashi and developers Inti Creates and ArtPlay. Curse of the Moon and its sequel are both tributes to the 8-bit Castlevania games that include swappable characters and simplistic (but satisfying) gameplay. Ritual of the Night, on the other hand, is a full-on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night-style game that feels like a proper follow-up to titles like Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia. Don’t let the lack of a Belmont or Dracula fool you - Bloodstained has almost everything that made Castlevania such a great series along with some new ideas that allow it to break free from its horror movie trappings and endlessly recycled enemies.

• Borderlands 2 (2012) - Gearbox’s cooperative looter shooter sequel is a truly great game that takes everything great about the original Borderlands and then improves upon it with a far better villain (Handsome Jack), a more memorable story and a significantly bigger game world with varied biomes and dangerous flora and fauna. Even though the vault hunters of the second outing are a little less memorable than the previous cast, the inclusion of the original game’s characters as major players in a plot helps to keep things familiar, and the sharp humor and satirical tone of the game makes the twists and turns interesting even when the game goes out of its way to oppose your progress. I particularly enjoy this game in VR, but it’s great on just about any platform. Sadly, every other Gearbox-made Borderlands game that came after this one is vastly inferior, but Telltale’s Tales From the Borderlands shouldn’t be missed, particularly since it continues Handsome Jack’s story.

• Crypt of the Necrodancer (2015) - I’m terrible at this game, but I still love it - a roguelike dungeon crawler based around staying on the beat and using the rhythmic moves of monsters against them? The heroine is even named Cadence! It’s a perfectly-executed concept that amazes me every time I play it, and the soundtrack is top-notch. The 2019 spin-off Cadence of Hyrule - Crypt of the NecroDancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda is also wonderful.

• Deception IV: Blood Ties and Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess (2014 and 2015) - Tecmo’s Deception/Kagero/Trapt series has been around since the PlayStation, and they all share the same basic idea of setting traps in a castle and then luring heroes to their doom. The latest entries are my favorites, with each featuring a daughter of the devil who is working to further evil in the world. One of the most fun aspects of the game is triggering traps in sequence that earn Brutality, Magnificence or Humiliation awards, and given that some traps include things like banana peels to knock heroes down, iron rakes to smack them in the face or giant yo-yos to slam into them, there are plenty of great options. These newer entries also include trapmobiles such as a train track you can slam enemies into with predictable results or an armed chariot machine that circles a courtyard and whomps on foes that land its its path. It’s sadistic fun that’s reminiscent of Dungeon Keeper, but with a distinctively Japanese flair.

• Dead Cells (2018) - I mentioned elsewhere that Rogue Legacy is essentially Castlevania - the Roguelike with a slightly different theme, but Dead Cells is the roguelike that actually went and got the Castlevania license for its 2023 DLC pack (which doesn’t quite match the look and feel of Castlevania’s best games, but is still a lot of fun). Not that it needed it - Dead Cells is a fantastic game on its own right and provides a great-looking, well-animated take on the roguelike genre with big, varied stages and a biological horror aesthetic.

• Dishonored (2012) - I love stealth action games that are done well, and Arkane Studios, which is one of the spiritual successors to Looking Glass Studios, delivered a truly original one with Dishonored, which is sort of like a cross between Assassin’s Creed and Thief: The Dark Project with heavy influence from Herman Melville and Stephen King. The idea is that you’re a disgraced bodyguard named Corvo Attano who becomes an assassin after being framed for the death of your Empress. A mysterious being called the Outsider gives you magic powers, allowing your to cut your way through a bloody tale of revenge that should end in placing the Empress’s daughter on the throne. But the game’s DLC is where things get even more interesting by telling the redemption tale of Corvo’s enemy, Daud, and his fascinating counter-perspective to Corvo’s adventure. The 2016 Dishonored 2 and 2017 Dishonored: Death of the Outsider are also fun, but they feel a bit gratuitous and are mainly there to advance the lore.

• Distance (2018) - I’m not a big racing game fan, but slap on a cool Tron aesthetic, an awesome soundtrack and VR support and I’ll at least give it a look. Distance is an indie arcade racer with an honest-to-goodness science fiction story to tell, some cool mechanics (including flight!) and style to spare. I played it on a whim not expecting much out of it and was shocked at just how good it was - and doubly so with a VR headset, which makes the game amazingly immersive.

• Donut County (2018) - It’s both a silly game about sucking things into an ever-growing hole and also a meditation on how video games lead to an enormous amount of collateral damage; what more do you want from a game where the villain is a raccoon named the Trash King? The simple but engaging mechanics (equally good on mobile devices and consoles/PCs) and the wonderfully told story make Donut County an easy recommendation for anyone.

• Dragon Ball FighterZ (2018) - There have been far too many Dragon Ball Z games that have tried to approximate the feel of watching the anime, but most have fallen short in some way. Arc System Works, on the other hand, knocked it so far out of the park with their take on the franchise that it’s hard to imagine anyone doing it better. It’s one of the few Dragon Ball Z games to have a story that’s not trying to retell the anime story, and its fusion of all the eras of Dragon Ball (including some of the goofier movies and GT) is absolutely perfect. My only gripe about this game is that the DLC for all the extra characters is so darned expensive.

• Dragon’s Crown (2013) - Vanillaware comes by its distinctive take on Capcom’s Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom honestly; lead designer George Namitani worked on both it and Dragon’s Crown, for the latter of which he also provided the amazing (and controversial) over the top Frank Frazetta-style fantasy character artwork. It’s a stunning beat ‘em up game with co-operative play, six customizable character classes, branching levels and tons of secrets to locate as well as some wonderfully-constructed boss encounters. The original was on the PS3/PS4/Vita, but the 2018 PS4 update Dragon’s Crown Pro is probably the best one to play.

• Drakengard 3 (2013) - It’s common knowledge now that NieR was a spin-off of one of the bad endings from the 2003 game Drakengard (known as Drag-on Dragoon in Japan), but a lot of series fans don’t seem to realize that the same team that built NieR also created Drakengard 3, a prequel to the first Drakengard that features an absolutely wild story about a vengeful woman named Zero and a baby dragon named Mikhail who are trying to slay the Intoners, a magical gang made up of Zero’s five sisters. Oh, and Zero has a flower stuck in her eye for reasons the game only sort of explains. Like NieR, it’s meant to be subversive and even comical at times, but the narrative is more straightforward and the action (as with all of the Drakengard games) is cribbed from the musou-style hack and slash titles like Dynasty Warriors with dragon sequences from Panzer Dragoon added in. I’m stunned it’s not more popular today given Yoko Taro’s stature as a game designer and the popularity of the composer team Keiichi Okabe, Keigo Hoashi, Kuniyuki Takahashi, and Kakeru Ishihamafor for the NieR soundtracks; it’s the very definition of a hidden gem.

• Electronauts (2018) - It’s less of a game than a music-making experience, but Electronauts remains one of my favorite early VR titles all the same because it provides a wide variety of tracks to tinker with by using digital drumsticks to provide intuitive controls for remixing a huge library of electronic tunes. If you enjoy Tron-like visuals by way of Daft Punk, you’ll have a blast with this one, especially if you just need to chill out with a game where there’s no real objective but your own satisfaction.

• Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (2013) - Far Cry 3 was a great-looking game with a baffling story, and when Ubisoft Montreal decided to use the game’s engine to offer a shorter, sillier take on the gameplay set in the neon-drenched “future” of 2007, they struck gold with a wonderfully fun and profane first person shooter where your hero, Rex “Power” Colt can even flip his cybernetic enemies off with the press of a button. Unlike most Ubisoft games, it’s a shorter and more focused affair that doesn’t feel overstuffed and thus doesn’t have a chance to overstay its welcome. The synth soundtrack by Power Glove is also wonderful.

• Fez (2012) - One of the greatest games of the early indie game era was also one of the most controversial not because of any fault of its own, but because of its creator’s contentious relationship with the gaming community and an initially glitchy console build. Anyone who skipped it then should absolutely play it now - it’s a brilliant 2D platformer where you rotate the game world in 3D to alter your ability to progress, and it’s best described as feeling like a Mario game crossed with Tetris with a world and puzzles reminiscent of Myst. What’s more, it completely lives up to the standard of those influences, offering a well-designed and engaging experience that’s often challenging, but always fun.

• Frog Fractions and DLC (2012 and 2020) - What at first seems like a browser-based parody of educational math games from the 1990s becomes so much more when you begin to upgrade your frog’s arsenal and realize there’s an entire universe to explore with a story that goes into very unexpected territories. While the original is free (and even available on Steam rather than browsers since its 2020 release), there’s a DLC item you can buy to give your frog a hat… and to change the story entirely with a more modern and reflective take on the entire experience. In 2016, developer Twinbeard also released Frog Fractions 2 as an alternate reality game that led to fans ultimately discovering the actual game was hidden inside indie release Glittermitten Grove, but I’d argue the sequel was a “for fans only” affair that was a little too esoteric to capture the spirit of the original.

• Gris (2018) - An absolutely gorgeous puzzle platformer from Spanish developer Nomada Studio that absolutely must be experienced, Gris tells the tale of a girl who loses her voice, falls to a gray world below and must ascend back up to the sky by bringing back color and retrieving lights that grant her abilities. The girl is also being followed by a fearsome black creature that threatens to swallow her and trap her forever, but she’s also helped by statues of a mysterious woman. It all turns out to be a stunning metaphor for grief and loss, and it’s one of the most gorgeous side-scrollers I’ve ever played with an excellent soundtrack to match.

• Hades (2018) - After a diversion into something different with the mythological sports RPG Pyre in 2017, Supergiant Games showed off the promise fans of Bastion and Transistor knew the developer was capable of with the absolutely awesome isometric action roguelike Hades, set in deep Greek mythology and challenging players to take on the role of Zagreus and to try to escape from both his father Hades and the underworld realm commonly named after him. Beyond the excellent action, the game also has a gripping story and yet another awesome soundtrack. One interesting thing about Hades was that Supergiant released it in early access and really listened to fans to tweak the game up in the two years before its final release in 2020. The sequel is slated to begin early access in mid-2024.

• Hitman: World of Assassination Trilogy (2016 - 2021) - Io Interactive’s Hitman games have long offered a fun playground in which you can take out targets using a variety of methods, and these three most recent games, initially released as the standalone reboot trilogy of Hitman, Hitman 2 and Hitman 3, are now lumped together in a single game called World of Assassination. What’s amazing about these games is their sheer sense of scale - each location is enormous, often populated with dozens or even hundreds of individuals who are scripted to react to the events around them, and the locales include environments like huge fashion shows, big racing events, city riots and cities under control by warring drug cartels. If you go in guns blazing or engineer a huge catastrophe, people will flee in terror. If you manage to take out your targets silently without being detected by anyone, you can earn the challenging “Silent Assassin” achievement. What’s more, every location has multiple objectives that create fun opportunities for replaying things to see how they could have gone differently. There’s even a sniper mode where you sit far away and have to take out a series of targets quickly before they run away. It’s a blast.

• Horace (2019) - Like a lot of people, I ignored Horace when it debuted and wasn’t too interested in playing an indie game that critics were describing as “the best platformer of 2019” when that genre was starting to feel pretty irrelevant. When I finally did settle down and give it a try, however, I discovered one of the most wonderful indie games of the decade, a 7-year labor of love from creator Paul Helman who not only used the time to showcase a tremendous love for video games and popular culture along with classic forms of art but who also remembered to make a great game as well. Horace is surprisingly lengthy and also quite challenging, but it is absolutely worth the effort. It ought to be regarded as a classic itself.

• Horizon: Zero Dawn (2017) - You won’t see The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on this list; I found it sort of tedious, to be honest. But it might have been because I had already enjoyed Horizon: Zero Dawn by the time I got around to it and found Aloy’s adventures better than Link’s in pretty much every way. Beyond the cool premise of hunting down robot dinosaurs in a post-apocalyptic future where everything is bright and overgrown, Aloy’s story is really interesting, unfolding from a very simple tale of a village outcast into a sprawling science fiction rumination on the potential for unfettered technology to turn all life on Earth extinct. The voice acting, characters, graphics, soundtrack and open world are all top-notch, and the things you can accomplish in this game with your wide variety of bows and cables is truly impressive. Plus, like The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, the game’s many quests involve so much more than simply fetching things or killing enemies, and the side quests are often just as interesting as those in the main storyline.

• Iconoclasts (2018) - This unassuming progressive exploration (“Metroidvania”) title starts off a bit slow, but once it gets going, it’s really something special. The setup is that you’re a mechanic named Robin who has to use her wits and her wrench to survive in a world overrun by a totalitarian religious order called the One Concern devoted to a deity called “Mother.” The game’s cast of characters and twists and turns make the story and varied environments fun and interesting to play through, and the boss battles are especially memorable.

• Inside (2016) - I enjoyed Playdead’s shadowy platform runner Limbo, but I absolutely loved Inside, a surreal and strange game in the same vein that must be a metaphor for something (my money’s on cancer or some foodborne illness, given the shocking ending). The graphics are stylized to create a constant sense of tension, and the genuinely terrifying moments avoiding a strange and deadly female creature underwater are unforgettable. But the puzzles are also excellent, giving each sequence a sense of progression so that you’re not just trying to master jumps.

• The Invisible Hours (2018) - While it was originally a VR exclusive, this intriguing game from Tequila Works doesn’t require a headset any longer (though it definitely benefits from having one!). It’s a murder mystery set in the mansion of Nikola Tesla, who dies in the early moments of the game. Is Thomas Edison responsible, or perhaps one of the other guests, each of whom has a dark secret that can only be uncovered by watching carefully as you see what they’re doing in their private moments? It’s a stunning game with many fun secrets to uncover and a cool time-scrolling gimmick. If you like this one, I also enjoyed The Sexy Brutale from the same developer.

• Journey (2012) - The highest profile thatgamecompany release is also widely considered to be their best game, providing an exciting and emotional voyage across a series of landscapes towards a destination that isn’t quite clear, but which is absolutely worth reaching. The graphics and soundtrack are top-notch and give the game a lot of character, but the unusual social aspects of the PS3 original really made the game special.

• Mark of the Ninja (2012) - If you like your ninja action stealthy and stabby, Mark of the Ninja is an absolute blast, forcing you to cling to shadows and pop out at unexpected moments to take down unsuspecting guards. Though Klei Entertainment designed the game to look like a Saturday morning cartoon (very much in the style of their earlier Shank games), it’s super gory and not for kids. The game also follows Hitman 2: Silent Assassin’s lead by scoring individual levels and rewarding pure stealth, pushing you to do better with each attempt. The 2018 Remastered edition is the most complete and best-looking version.

• Marvel’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2018 and 2020) - Insomniac Games took the best ideas from a number of classic superhero games (Batman: Arkham Asylum, inFamous and Spider-Man 2 among them) and rolled them all together into an amazing open-world action adventure that takes place in a stunning recreation of Manhattan where the web-swinging feels authentic and the story suits Spider-Man perfectly. The Miles Morales expansion (also sold as a standalone game) adds a brand new story more personally focused on Miles and his growth not just as the second Spider-Man under Peter Parker’s tutelage, but also as a son, a friend and a nephew to the people in his life. Both are among the best superhero games ever made.

• Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain (2014 and 2015) - Those who never played the PSP’s 2006 game Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and 2010 game Metal Gear Sold: Peace Walker might have been a bit confused with this later console-focused Metal Gear Solid duo of games, both of which take place during the 1970s MSF era and 80s Diamond Dogs era and involve characters and storylines that tie heavily into the portable games. Not wanting to waste his characters, Kojima crams in many callbacks to past and future games, often by giving familiar faces new names to catch the player off guard. Ground Zeroes was (rather cynically, in my view) released a year early as a standalone budget game and felt like a sophisticated demo prologue meant to tease what The Phantom Pain could do. But when The Phantom Pain came out and both games could be played together, gamers experienced a huge and impressive stealth action saga that features some of the most refined and exciting action in the series… as well as some of its most bewildering and circular storytelling. It’s both a stunning anti-war epic and a stealthy deconstruction of itself and the whole Big Boss mythos, featuring themes drawn heavily from Moby Dick and a heavy use of mirror-like plot elements to convey dual purposes for just about everything you experience. I really recommend playing Snake Eater, Portable Ops and Peace Walker before these two, but even if you don’t, you’ll have a great time and enjoy the fabulous cast of characters and unique-to-the-series game mechanics. Just be prepared to put up with a lot of the normal Hideo Kojima nonsense, including constant credits scenes that try to make every mission feel like the next episode of a TV show, a way-too-long prologue, a misogynistic male gaze applied to a wonderful female character and tons and tons (and tons!) of out-of-nowhere plot twists, many of which are never fully resolved. Also, there’s a Metal Gear with a whip like the Lord of the Rings Balrog and a group of foes who resemble the Borg from Star Trek. It’s the best and worst of what Metal Gear Solid has to offer.

• Mirror's Edge Catalyst (2016) - Rather than continuing Faith and Kate Conners’ story from the 2008 rooftop runner Mirror’s Edge, DICE delivered a reboot that erased the mobile tie-in prequel game’s origin story, and while the result was polarizing, it’s still a fascinating game, primarily because it translates the linear mission-driven action of the original into an open world that gives you many alternate routes for getting around the roofs and structures of a city filled with gleaming skyscrapers. It’s clear DICE spent most of their time working on the awesome movement system and impressive game world because the story and combat are the game’s weak points; critics roasted it at the time for being bland. But as an open-world playground, it’s an incredible experience that’s distinct enough from the typical Grand Theft Auto, Ubisoft and Bethesda-style open world designs that it shouldn’t be missed.

• My Time at Portia (2019) - I’ve played many of the Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons games over the years (as well as the excellent Stardew Valley), but I’ve usually gotten bored with them. Not so with My Time at Portia, a similar sort of game where you go through the daily motions of farming, inventing and interacting with the local townspeople, but one where there’s also an action mode that has you descending into mines to find old junk you can repurpose or where you go into desolate areas and actually battle monsters for rare resources. I enjoyed this one to the end, and I have high hopes for Pathea Games’s sequel My Time at Sandrock, which has been in early access for quite awhile now.

• NieR: Automata (2017) - The first of Yoko Taro’s games to defy the odds and become a megahit, NieR: Automata probably owes a good chunk of its success to its alluring protagonist, 2B rather than its absolutely bonkers story and crazy genre-bending gameplay, which encompasses third-person action, shoot ‘em ups, platformers and bullet hell run and gun segments at different points. Like NieR, the game has multiple endings that require separate playthroughs to experience, but people were on to the trick this time and were able to reach the game’s surprising ending, which requires an actual sacrifice to experience fully. The music is also as good as or better than the score for NieR, and that’s really saying something.

• No Man’s Sky (2016) - I enjoyed this game even before beleaguered creator Hello Games decided to support it with an extremely generous long tail of patches and updates. The chill vibe of exploring a universe so massive you couldn’t possibly see it all made the core concept fun, but the improvements that now allow you to own a fleet of ships, build enormous bases and travel the galaxy through portals you create makes a good thing better. And when you add in exploring the entirety of the simulated galaxy using a VR headset - wow!

• Persona 5: Royal (2016 and 2019) - There has never been a more stylish and exciting JRPG than Persona 5, and there probably never will be again. Aside from Persona 2’s duo of games, this one is the closest to any of the Shin Megami Tensei titles from which the Persona series is derived, featuring staple elements such as a Tokyo setting and negotiations with enemies along with the social links, calendar-based progression, high school studies and sweeping metaphysical storyline the Persona games are known for. The original is great on its own, but Royal is the definitive edition. Both have killer soundtracks, fantastic art design and an amazing cast of characters.

• Orcs Must Die! 2 (2012) - Tower defense games are a dime a dozen, but tower defense games where you get to play as a hero helping to stop invading creeps are a rarer beast, especially when they’re in full 3D and feature exciting Deception-style traps you can place around the game world. The original Orcs Must Die! delivered on this concept perfectly, but the second game went so far as to offer a new chapter centered around the first game’s villainess while including all the maps (and traps!) from the original. Robot Entertainment released a third game in 2020 exclusively for Google Stadia, and while it’s since been released for other platforms, it lacks the fun and excitement of the earlier ones.

• The Outer Wilds (2019) - I had a hard time knowing what to make of this quirky physics puzzler from Mobius Digital when I first played it, in no small part because it was released the same year as the snarky RPG The Outer Worlds and that game overwhelmed a lot of the coverage of this similarly-named title. But they’re quite different, and The Outer Wilds is far more memorable in the end. The central conceit is that your peaceful planet is about to be destroyed by a cosmic event and you are caught in a time loop trying to puzzle out how and why it’s happening and, more importantly, how to stop it. The story is anything but predictable, and as you explore the galaxy in 22-minute bursts, you discover all sorts of weird and wild things going on that change your understanding of pretty much everything you think you know in the earlier portions of the game. I highly recommend this one.

• Pistol Whip (2019) - I’m generally hesitant to slap a VR headset on someone and have them start playing a shooter because most of the best games are just too complicated for beginners. But Pistol Whip is a great showcase title - it’s a rail shooter with levels set to music and set up so that anyone who can point a gun can have a great time with it. Best of all, the soundtrack (made up of licensed indie music) is really something and has several different themes - science fiction, western, ninja, cyberpunk and more - to make each compilation of tracks fit a particular mood and aesthetic. It’s like Superhot VR meets Beat Saber in all the best possible ways.

• Rain World (2017) - Once again, I find myself asking, “why isn’t this game better known?” This amazing survival exploration game puts you in a dangerous pixel art world where you control a slippery little creature called a Slugcat that has to find food and safety between toxic rain showers. What makes the game so compelling is how dangerous the world outside is - exploring often requires a heavy calculation of risk and reward, but it’s also absolutely necessary to progress and forces you out of your comfort zone. The art, sound and music are excellent, and the initially challenging controls create a distinct and very engaging experience that’s well worth seeing through. Videocult’s 2023 Rain World: Downpour DLC pack breathed new life into the game by adding five new campaigns with different slugcats, making a great thing even better.

• Rec Room (2016) - While this game is breaking out of its VR roots lately, the original idea behind Rec Room was that players could experience a virtual rec center populated with all sorts of social activities ranging from dodgeball to laser tag to frisbee to paintball. That premise still holds, but the game’s gotten more sophisticated in the years since its release, adding in extensive user-generated content and crossovers with popular IPs as it’s sought a mobile and flat-screen audience. It’s still one of the best VR games out there (and it’s completely free!), so I recommend it to anyone with a PSVR, HTC Vive or Oculus/Meta Quest headset.

• Return of the Obra Dinn (2018) - After playing the bleak Papers, Please, I was a bit hesitant to try out Lucas Pope’s follow-up, a game that looks like it was intended for the Apple Macintosh and which tasks you with reconstructing a mass murder aboard a ship. It’s slow at first, but once the game gets going, it’s genuinely surprising and features some really neat time-based mechanics as you work to identify the sixty people who were aboard and understand why so many of them never made it back alive.

• Risk of Rain 2 (2019) - Hopoo Games’s Risk of Rain was a nice side-scrolling roguelike with distinctive pixel art, but the second game is a full 3D action shooter that impressively converts the sidescroller’s mechanics to a different style of play without losing the fun in the process. The basic idea of each stage is that you need to locate a teleporter to move on to the next and then battle a gauntlet of tough enemies while you wait for it to charge. You can gather weapons, experience and power-ups first to make the task easier, but the enemies level up as time goes on, making risk versus reward a constant consideration. It’s a frantic shooter with stylish graphics, cool weapons and devastating boss battles.

• Rogue Legacy (2013) - It might not look like a Castlevania roguelike at first, but having played this game a lot, let me tell you - Rogue Legacy is exactly what Castlevania would feel like as a roguelike. The premise of the game is that you play as a succession of knights venturing into an ever-shifting castle to defeat a mysterious boss. But beyond the premise, there are tons of secrets to find and lots of ways for the game to really push and challenge you. The 2022 sequel is also quite good.

• Sayonara Wild Hearts (2019) - I adore everything about Simogo’s incredible rhythm action game, from its stylish lofi aesthetic to its amazing vocal soundtrack to its inventive mechanics to its surreal and intriguing fantasy tale of heartbreak and love (which I’ve always interpreted to be about a girl working her way back through the trauma of breaking up from past relationships via music and art rather than the official game story). The on-rails sequences remind me a lot of Rez, but the game’s constant motion and shifts between modes of transportation keep things fresh. The boss battles are amazing - one involves a three-headed wolf! and another involves entering virtual reality! - and lead to a stunning endgame refrain where everything is flipped around to achieve an awesome outcome. When the fact that Queen Latifah serves as the game’s narrator is its least remarkable quality, you know you’ve got something special.

• Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse (2014) - Naming the best of WayForward’s Shantae games is tough because all of them - even the Game Boy Color original! - are really great games that are easy to pick up and play. But Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is as good a starting point as any because it includes all of the best characters from the series as well as a story where Shantae has lost her powers (thanks to the events of the previous game) and has to get them back, along with some piratey items that give her an extra boost along the way. Even the story is great, pulling Shantae and her nemesis Risky Boots together in a quest to stop the Pirate Master from returning to life. Fans of the series should also check out Monster World IV and its remake Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World, which are clearly the inspiration for Shantae’s adventures.

• Sniper Elite III, 4 and 5 (2014, 2017, 2022) - While I first encountered Rebellion’s Sniper Elite on the Xbox back in 2005, I never really got into the series until the more recent titles, the latter two of which are open-world games similar to the Hitman series, but the former of which is a great game in its own right. All of them involve super sniper Karl Fairburne fighting his way through a Nazi plot during World War II, and while the games are a tad more realistic than other World War II games where you can acquire a sniper rifle (forcing you to think about ballistics, range and timing to line up those perfect shots), they’re quite fun and even go as far to reward you with a bullet cam and X-Ray view of your best shots connecting with an enemy’s internal organs. The action is slightly more cerebral than your average shooter because you have to think about cover and vantages a bit more strategically, and the objectives often have you scoping out the best paths for sneaking instead of just murdering everyone on the map. As ridiculous as it is to play a game where a super sniper is taking down entire bases full of Axis troops during World War II, there’s nothing more satisfying than lining up a perfect shot and timing it with the boom of an artillery cannon to make yourself undetectable. If I had to pick one to recommend, it’d be part 4, which has the best blend of everything that makes the series great. For those who complete the trilogy, the earlier Sniper Elite V2 is also worthwhile and takes place closer to the end of the war. Karl Fairburne’s adventures also continue into the Zombie Army Trilogy and Zombie Army 4, which reveal that all of his efforts to stop the Nazis were for naught as Adolf Hitler orders for the dead to come back to life. They’re surprisingly fun for what they are.

• SOMA (2015) - While it fits squarely between a linear survival horror underwater adventure and the dreaded “walking simulator” (two of my least favorite categories of games), SOMA is still an excellent horror adventure game with a neat story and excellent production values. The many twists and turns in the story are genuinely shocking the first time around and the answers to the game’s central mysteries are quite cleverly telegraphed as you play through so that their final revelations feel satisfying and earned. It’s also not too scary or fast-moving, which makes it easier to recommend to those who hate jump scares and getting cornered and beaten to death by horrific monsters.

• Sound Shapes (2012) - Sony has funded quite a few games that serve as platforms for community content, and Queasy Games’s Sound Shapes was a particularly interesting experiment in fusing music with sidescrolling flick-screen mechanics. Perhaps the most unusual thing about the game, however, is that you play as a sticky ball (sort of like the spider ball in Metroid II: Return of Samus) and navigate levels both by jumping and by clinging to surfaces. The game’s default levels (presented as an anthology of albums by different indie game developers) are quite a lot of fun, and I particularly enjoy “Corporeal” by Jim Guthrie and Superbrothers, which has a similar sound and feel to Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.

• Splatoon, Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3 (2015, 2017 and 2022) - I can’t help but admire Nintendo’s stylish series of turf control shooters, which are both incredibly creative and amazingly distinctive. The basic idea is that in some far-off future, shapeshifting creatures that evolved from squids are battling it out with inky weapons in a stylish world filled with rock music and high fashion. The game’s focus on small arena battles that only last a few minutes keeps things focused, and the core gameplay is so good that all three games are really just variations on a theme. Plus, the art design and soundtrack are just amazing.

• The Stanley Parable (2013) - What began as a tongue in cheek narrated exploration through an abandoned office complex has since evolved into one of the most subversive comedy games out there, and to say too much is to spoil the fun. Suffice it to say that what begins as a story with a narrator telling you what to do can quickly turn into a reality-bending adventure about fate, control and the possibilities (or lack thereof) of free will.

• Stardew Valley (2016) - What began as an indie game in the style of Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons became the modern equivalent of it, to the point that even the creator of the original Harvest Moon series has praised it. Even more impressive is that it’s almost entirely the work of a lone developer, Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone. If you enjoy farming sims, life sims or just chill games where you can plot your own path and fulfill your own objectives, Stardew Valley has you covered, and if you want to have deep and meaningful relationships with the characters around town and a sort-of-ending where your grandfather’s ghost assesses your performance, it’s got that too.

• Star Trek: Bridge Crew (2016) - For a Star Trek fan, there is nothing like sitting in the captain’s chair of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 and taking charge of your crew, and this VR game absolutely delivers on the promise by allowing you to command the classic era Enterprise as well as the Kelvin timeline U.S.S. Aegis or (with some DLC) the Next Generation era. It’s far from a perfect game, but it’s still a lot of fun if you have a VR helmet. It’s far less impressive on a flat screen, and for that experience, I’d recommend 2002’s Star Trek: Bridge Commander instead, as it’s a better game all around.

• Statik (2017) - I have no idea why Tarsier Studios’s Statik isn’t a better-known game; it’s one of the best PSVR exclusives I’ve played, featuring a brilliant set of puzzles you solve by looking at the strange devices covering your hand and the impact that they have on the rooms around you when you begin flipping dials, switches and knobs. The story is enigmatic and provides its own puzzles to uncover, and the production values are top-notch. Fans of subversive puzzlers like Portal should check this one out.

• SteamWorld Dig: A Fistful of Dirt (2013) - I have enjoyed all of the Steamworld games to date thanks to their strong design and excellent production values, but the original is still my favorite because it’s so highly polished and just about the right length for its concept. As the steambot Rusty, you dig below the Western town of Tumbleton to work your way towards a series of subterranean worlds, each of which adds to your understanding of the world above. The gameplay and overall concept are fantastic, and it’s simple enough that just about anyone can play and enjoy it.

• Superhot (2016) - It’s been fun to watch Superhot evolve from a simple indie concept into one of the best games on VR platforms, and the simple conceit is this - you play as a series of mind-jacked individuals who awaken under a hacker’s control and starts killing everyone in the room with whatever’s handy. The catch is that the game’s action only moves when you do, giving the action a strategic feel. The simple graphics make it all feel wonderfully surreal and the crazy action has gotten better and better with every evolution. The Mind Control Delete standalone expansion and the VR remake (which has different mechanics and challenges since you stand in one place) are also absolutely worth playing.

• Superliminal (2019) - If you’ve ever been gripped by a dream where reality begins shifting around, you’ll love this puzzle adventure, which is sort of like Portal 2 but in a world where reality and perspective are constantly shifting around like the world of The Stanley Parable. Many puzzles require you to think intuitively and to apply rules that only make sense in the game’s twisted sense perspective and optical illusion. It’s well-made and a lot of fun.

• Super Mario 3D World (2013) - The Wii U’s Mario game was underappreciated when it debuted because it was on one of Nintendo’s least popular consoles, but as a follow-up to the also great 2011 game Super Mario 3D Land on the 3DS, it upped the ante in some wonderful ways, providing a charming and creative assortment of levels, an addictive Captain Toad puzzle minigame (which resulted in a wonderful standalone spin-off called Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker) and many fun boss encounters. It also got Peach out of the role of being the damsel in distress and allowed her to be one of the onscreen characters. The Switch port also includes a novel Bowser’s Fury mode that offers a short but interesting open world Mario experience.

• Super Mario Odyssey (2017) - I’ve never been a big 3D Mario fan, but Super Mario Odyssey was so weird and wild that it grabbed me in a way that Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy did not. The art design and aesthetic are all over the place, taking Mario to places unlike any he’s ever visited before (including a battle with an actual fantasy-style dragon who feels as out of place as the human princess in Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 did). But the neat capturing mechanic with Cappy the hat and the brilliant set piece moments like the New Donk City celebration or the Honeylune Ridge escape make this the 3D Mario game that sticks out best in my memory.

• The Swapper (2013) - Facepalm Games created this atmospheric puzzle platformer where you are stranded on a derelict space station and use clones of yourself to be in more than one place at a time and swap between them to change your point of control. The storyline is surprisingly deep and makes good use of the setting and science fiction premise to give the gameplay some weight, and the endgame presents the player with a moral choice that leads to two very different endings.

• Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016) - Naughty Dog could have ruined the Uncharted series with this entry by killing off Nathan Drake, Sully or, even worse, both characters to try to bring an emotional close to the story. But instead, they absolutely stuck the landing with arguably the best game in the entire franchise as Nathan and his brother Sam work together to try to find the fabled pirate utopia of Libertalia and fulfill their destiny as descendants (or are they?) of Sir Francis Drake. The environments are amazing, the set piece moments are jaw-dropping and the voice acting and overall sense of adventure are unparalleled. The game not only goes in unexpected directions but respects its protagonists enough to give them a fitting ending that doesn’t result in a funeral for anyone. It’s fantastic. The spin-off Uncharted: Lost Legacy is also excellent.

• Undertale (2015) - Toby Fox’s adventure RPG is rightly celebrated for being a wonderful and subversive indie game with memorable characters, creative combat mechanics and an exceptional soundtrack. Like NieR, you have to play it at multiple times to really understand what the game is doing, and it’s always a delight to return to it. I haven’t put the time into the follow-up series Deltarune yet to know how I feel about it, but if it’s half as good as Undertale, it’s still worthwhile.

• Tales From the Borderlands (2014-2015 over five episodes) - Telltale Games really struggled to find its footing after the Sam and Max and Tales of Monkey Island adventure games ended, and they went all-in on licensing popular IPs to create some pretty impressive stories within them. None was finer than 2014-2015’s episodic Tales From the Borderlands, which not only introduces a very lovable cast of new characters and expands upon the fiction of Pandora and the corporations exploiting the Vault Hunters, but which also continues the story of Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2. There’s so much great writing in this adventure along with amazing humor and one of the most epic shootout sequences ever put in a game - all accomplished with finger guns! - that it’s hard to believe this game wasn’t a mega-hit. The soundtrack is also phenomenal and provides a strong emotional crescendo at the end of each chapter. It’s too bad the 2022 sequel New Tales From the Borderlands (created by Gearbox, not Tellltale) was such a turkey.

• The Talos Principle (2015) - Croteam is best known for the Serious Sam budget shooter games, which are… fine. But this philosophical puzzler is one of the best since Portal 2 at presenting a series of three-dimensional challenges to resolve, often involving positioning mirrors to redirect lasers, making use of fans to blow boxes around or hitting switches at just the right time to be able to walk through gates. It’s a wonderful-looking game that feels smart because it loves to interject thoughts and ideas from religious and philosophical traditions, even if it makes the story a bit pretentious at times. Even so, it’s an interesting and exciting way to use your brain. The DLC pack, VR edition and 2023 sequel are also well worth playing.

• Thumper (2016) - It’s rare to see rhythm games that lean into horror, and Thumper is a particularly peculiar game that uses strange imagery, a dark ambience and a sense of oppressive speed to have you run a scarab down a never-ending, roller-coaster like tunnel and battle distant threats with precise movements that power up your electrical charges. I first played it in VR and loved it, but it’s equally great on just about any platform, including mobile.

• Titanfall 2 (2016) - Respawn Entertainment’s attempt to build a big IP with Titanfall fell flat, and the series is doing much better with the pivot to Apex Legends these days. But Titanfall 2 is still a very special game that includes an amazingly cool (if a little short) single-player story jam-packed with cool ideas and a fantastic multiplayer mode. Given that it’s often on sale for a couple of bucks, I recommend this one to everyone.

• Torchlight II (2012) - What if a dungeon loot clicker like Diablo actually valued your time? Runic Games provided a compelling answer with the single-player Torchlight, and the sequel adds in multiplayer plus everything needed to make the game feel like you can keep playing it for a very long time (solo or with friends!) thanks to its extensive content and GUTS editor. The 2020 Torchlight III, sadly, is a turkey originally developed as an MMO and then shoehorned into a sequel that’s just not worth playing.

• Towerfall: Ascension (2013) - My family loves this amazing 4-player single screen arena combat game which originated on the ill-fated Ouya but has grown steadily since. It’s so simple and easy to teach other people to play that it’s in our regular rotation when we have visitors over, but it’s also the sort of game that rewards skillful play and which fairly balances things out to keep the best players from winning easily every round. The Dark World expansion adds more of an already awesome thing.

• Transistor (2014) - Following the surprising success of 2011’s Bastion, Supergiant Games knocked it out of the park again with the unique isometric action game Transistor, in which a voiceless singer named Red wields a giant sword that narrates the adventure and which accepts programs to give her special powers as she makes her way through the city of Cloudbank trying to stop the Camerata, a group of officials who want her dead for some reason. It’s a gorgeous game with a spectacular soundtrack - one controller button even allows you to have Red sing along with the background music! - and definitely one of the most polished indie games you’ll ever play.

• The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (2015) - CD Projekt Red’s third Witcher game is a masterpiece that not only makes the two before it obsolete, but which serves as an excellent follow-up to the series of novels by Andrzej Sapkowski (which I enthusiastically read while playing this game). It’s the sort of game where a seeming sidequest can turn into a major portion of the plot or where an initially insignificant character can become a trusted friend over time. While it takes some time to get into, once the game opens up, it’s a truly stunning experience that shouldn’t be missed. The two DLC expansion packs are so good that they are also must-plays, offering compelling new stories that don’t take away from what happens in the main plot and which continue to offer much more of an already great game.

• The Wolf Among Us (2013) - While fans of Bill Willingham’s Fables comics are split on whether or not the video game adaptation nailed the original story’s tone and world or merely repurposed it for something else, there’s no question that Telltale Games’s The Wolf Among Us is an amazing episodic adventure series with wonderful voice acting, a compelling mystery and truly memorable takes on the Fables characters. If you like your fairy tales R-rated, your villains horrific and your protagonists gravel-voiced, you’ll love this game. (We’ll see if the upcoming sequel manages to approach the original’s quality.)

• The Unfinished Swan (2012) - Giant Sparrow’s first game was a really impressive concept, starting players out in a world where they had to paint the walls to be able to see the boundaries and then introducing a complex and magical action puzzle game with a storybook tale to uncover and many cool mechanics to enjoy. Their 2017 follow-up What Remains of Edith Finch is also excellent, but it’s a linear narrative adventure (or “walking simulator”) rather than a puzzle game.

• Velocity 2X (2015) - If you’ve somehow missed this shoot ‘em up that flawlessly fuses overhead vertical scrolling shooter sequences with sidescrolling on-foot base infiltration sequences and a touch screen teleportation mechanic, then you need to seriously check this game out. It’s fun even if you don’t like shoot ‘em ups, and the challenge is more about puzzle solving than anything else.

• Wasteland 2 (2014) - Brian Fargo was the founder of Interplay and the director of the original CRPG classic Wasteland in 1988, and so it was only fitting that he’d be the person to revive the series through his newer publisher, inXile Entertainment, through a popular Kickstarter campaign. The game promised to provide a more traditional tactical, overhead-based alternative to Fallout (created by many of the same folks) with a different kind of story about the adventures of the Desert Rangers in Arizona and Los Angeles. It’s a huge and absorbing game that’s even better in its 2015 Director’s Cut edition. The 2020 sequel Wasteland 3 is also good, though it feels a little different in tone as it takes the action to Colorado in a battle against a warlord known as the Patriarch.

• X-COM: Enemy Unknown (2012) - The original turn-based strategy X-Com/UFO games by Mythos Games and MicroProse are wonderful follow-ups to creator Julian Gollop’s earlier Rebelstar and Laser Squad games, but Firaxis Games’s remake made the stagnant X-COM series better in just about every way, most notably expanding the gameplay to suit console players and mobile devices. Beyond the wonderful turn-based strategy gameplay, there’s also a great sim element where you build your secret base and expand your team and their capabilities through research and development. The excellent expansion pack and the sequel are also well worth playing, taking the new series into unexpected directions.

The Modern Era (2020-Present)

• Astro’s Playroom and Astro Bot (2020, 2024) - You know a game is good when it’s a pack-in title that defines the system it comes with, and such is the case with Team Asobi’s Astro’s Playroom, a 2020 extension on their free Playroom games and follow-up to the stunning 2018 Astro Bot Rescue Mission. The game has you go onto an adventure into your PlayStation 5 for some well-designed platforming fun that makes the most of the PS5’s controller, complete with many fun references to past PlayStation hits. But Astro Bot takes things even further, launching Astro and 300 of his friends into space with their PS5-shaped starship, which runs afoul of a green alien (cheekily colored like the Xbox logo) who steals the CPU and sends them plummeting to a dusty world where Astro launches a base of operations to rescue his fellow bots and relive some of the greatest moments of PlayStation history. It’s amazingly good stuff, with bright graphics, another tremendously fun soundtrack and an engaging combination of PlayStation nostalgia and present-day fun. It’s as good as any Mario game I’ve ever played, but also something with such a sleek and cool design sensibility that only Sony could publish it.

• Balatro (2024) - The hype around this game got so wild it was hard to believe that a simple video poker game with random roguelike elements and mischievous joker cards and boss battles with onerous conditions could really be that good. But it is good, and oh, is it addictive - the sort of game you’ll play and replay and think about playing even when you’re not because it has the right fusion of skill and luck-based mechanics that force you to think carefully and try to maximize your chances with every new run. The game’s lone musical track is also tremendous and adds heavily to the pleasant, laid-back casino sounds of the experience.

• Boomerang Fu (2020) - The simple concept of this game - colorful anthropomorphic food items throwing razor-sharp boomerangs at one another in arena combat situations - sounds like it might be a bit too family-friendly to be fun, but Boomerang Fu has just the right mixture of skill-based play and utter insanity to be fun for all ages and easy to recommend. We play it regularly at my house.

• Cloudpunk (2020) - I love a good cyberpunk game, and Cloudpunk absolutely nails the atmosphere of a rain-slicked, neon-colored night world with dreamy synth music playing in the background and flying cars buzzing by overhead. It’s really just a taxi-driving and delivery game, but the blocky voxel aesthetic, the unusual plot and the sense of oppression in the game’s enormous city of Nivalis makes for an engaging adventure. The DLC pack is also a must-play that adds a significant new chapter to the story. I will warn that the voice acting for the main game and DLC is a bit cringey at first, but it grows on you.

• Cocoon (2023) - I wondered why we had yet to a follow-up to Playdead’s Inside, and it turns out it’s because the lead designer, Jeppe Carlson, left with Jakob Schmid and formed a new company called Geometric Interactive to work on this highly original isometric puzzle game. Like Inside and Limbo, it’s a completely wordless experience that never explains what is happening or why, but the gameplay is so good and the puzzles are so well-designed, gating areas you don’t need to visit and focusing your attention on the ones you do, that wonder takes the place of any descriptive dialogue. It’s a stunning achievement, and a game everyone should play.

• Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) - I’ve never understood the hate for CD Projekt Red’s sprawling first-person action RPG, and even though the game is objectively better in its final 2.1 update than it was when it launched, it was still amazing upon release in telling an ambitious story, offering a lot of fun sidequests and absolutely nailing the cyberpunk aesthetic and vibe. The music, the art design, the awesome characters, the open world environment of Night City, the attention to detail, the mature themes, the wild atmosphere and so much more make Cyberpunk 2077 one of the best games in the niche of cyberpunk open world action adventures. Ignore the haters and play it if you haven’t already; it’s honestly pretty great. (Just avoid the PS4 and Xbox One versions; they never should have shipped in the first place.)

• Evan’s Remains (2020) - If you’ve got a couple of hours to while away, I highly recommend this beautiful and melancholy puzzle platformer about a girl named Dysis who has been sent to search an uninhabited island full of mysterious monoliths in search of a once-in-a-generation prodigy named Evan who’s gone missing. To say more is to spoil a pretty incredible experience that unfolds as you play, and the platform puzzles are just the right level of challenging to give you some decent gameplay to go along with a rather surprising storyline.

• Genshin Impact (2020) - I’m no fan of gacha games or freemium titles, nor do I tend to recommend games so shamelessly derived from another popular title’s formula (in this case, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). But Genshin Impact is the real deal - an absolutely massive and fun-to-play action RPG set in a compelling game world populated by memorable characters, distinctive environments and fun questlines. The graphics are gorgeous (even on mobile devices), and the music is from one of the best and biggest original soundtracks I’ve ever heard in a game. Even if you only play a fraction of what the game has to offer, you can enjoy a significant amount of the experience for free without needing to buy heroes or grind away your time.

• Good Job! (2020) - I love a game with great art design, and Paladin Studios absolutely nailed the sterile office aesthetic in this isometric physics puzzler in which you complete tasks as a little black icon of a man in a corporate setting in which everyone is just as faceless and lazy as you are. While I generally don’t enjoy physics games where it’s easy to accidentally complete a level just by causing chaos, there’s something cathartic about smashing water coolers with forklifts and using electric cords to slingshot chairs around the office.

• The Forgotten City (2021) - Nick Pearce’s amazing first person adventure game started life as a Skyrim mod with the Dwemer (dwarves), but a smart Unreal Engine reboot to bring it into a historical Roman setting helped expand its scope and allow the characters to grow and expand. It’s an absolutely amazing experience with well-written characters and a neat justification for its time-loop conceit. I also love how it explores the philosophical idea of the golden rule both literally with its world-ending curse that turns everyone to gold and in more abstract ways.

• Half-Life: Alyx (2020) - Yes, the hype (and frustration) is real; Valve may not be able to count to 3, but they can sure make a great prequel to one of the greatest games of all time that’s designed for a VR platform only a subset of gamers will ever own. Half-Life: Alyx shows the potential of VR in ways that other developers are still catching up to several years later, and it’s a well-made full-length game within the Half-Life 2 universe that provides a welcome return to the oppressive environment of City 17. If you invest in a PC-compatible VR headset like the HTC Vive, PSVR2 or Meta Quest 2 or 3, this game should be one of your first purchases.

• Hi-Fi Rush (2023) - Tango Gameworks wanted to do something different from survival horror after The Evil Within series, and boy did they deliver with this Saturday Morning Cartoon fever dream that plays like a PlatinumGames action title mixed with an on-the-beat rhythm game like Crypt of the Necrodancer or BPM: Bullets Per Minute. It’s a brilliant middle ground between all of that, featuring a fun story, great graphics, an awesome soundtrack and combat that rewards rather than punishes for hitting the inputs at the right time. Anyone who played Transformers: Devastation and loved the aesthetic and ideas as much as the license will have a blast with this one.

• Horizon: Forbidden West (2022) - Aloy’s story didn’t really need to continue after the excellent ending to her first game, but taking her west into a new area containing the ruins of Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles (among other places) allows for some fun new adventuring and a lot of new tribes of people to encounter. As before, the giant robots are really the star attraction here, and Aloy’s expanded arsenal allows for many awesome battles with mechanical monstrosities that require some strategy, understanding and reflexes to take down. The game’s DLC expansion pack is also great and provides a far better final boss battle than the one included in the core game.

• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2021) - It’s somewhere in between the comics that inspired the feature film series and the movies themselves, but you know what? I really like Eidos Montreal’s take on the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the game is definitely worth playing. It’s a little shootier than an Uncharted game and focuses on team dynamics instead of cover-based play, but it’s definitely in the mold of Naughty Dog’s epic action adventure series, from the wonderful character dynamics to the intelligent and interesting story to the gorgeous level design and use of color. Plus, it does Adam Warlock right, which is a big opportunity the films missed out on. The 2017 adventure game Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series is also good if you want more of the Guardians, but it’s unrelated beyond sharing the same license and characters.

• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (2023) - I wish all sequels could be as good as Spider-Man 2; it’s double the size of the previous Spider-Man game and provides just as much fun since it frequently involves switching back and forth between Peter Parker and Miles Morales as part of a grander story with specific arcs and stakes for both characters. The plot deviates significantly from the traditional comic book canon and puts a new spin on Venom without introducing Eddie Brock, but the web-swinging is as fun as ever and the reinvention of Mary Jane into a more capable hero this time around is a welcome change.

• Metaphor: ReFantazio (2024) - Where do I begin? This fantasy RPG from many of the same creative forces behind Persona 3, 4 and 5 and Catherine is absolutely one of the best fantasy role-playing games I’ve ever played, fusing the addictive time mechanics, combat archetypes and social bonds of the Persona games with an absolutely gripping story about what happens when a powerful sociopathic cynic murders the king and leaves a deeply flawed, racist, segregated society under the thumb of an oppressive religious order while it tries to figure out who will take the throne and what sort of world can be built by the king’s successor. The artwork is amazing. The characters are incredible. The monsters are impressive. The turn-based combat system’s fast-moving with a great interface to boot. The world is huge and a joy to explore. And the music - oh, the heavenly music, which is some of Shoji Meguro’s best (and that’s really saying something)! I love this game so much and can’t wait for the inevitable, well-earned sequel.

• No Straight Roads (2020) - Why isn’t this game better known? Metronomik created one of the few games out there that fuses a world inspired by rock and roll (and many other forms of music) with a distinctly Malaysian flair intentionally included by its directors out of love for their home country and culture. As the firebrand singer Mayday and the laid back drummer Zuke, you adventure through Vinyl City and take down the music acts more popular than your band Bunk Bed Junction so you can rise to the top in power and influence and wage a rebellion against the city’s evil EDM label. Oh, and the soundtrack is just incredible, as is the unique (and often, quite funny!) voice acting.

• The Plucky Squire (2024) - The premise of a hero getting kicked out of his own 2D storybook and into the 3D world is pretty irresistible, and while The Plucky Squire isn’t particularly tough and is laser-focused on progression rather than exploration, it’s still a wonderful experience with excellent visual design, fun minigames integrating shoot ‘em up sequences, Rhythm Heaven, Punch-Out!! and Puzzle Bobble and the incredible kingdom of Artia that’s loaded with amusing artistic references. It’s a fantastic game everyone should experience.

• RoboQuest (2020) - “A Borderlands-style roguelite with a dash of Doom” is the best way to describe this incredible first person looter shooter, but it really has to be experienced to be appreciated for what a tight and amazingly well-crafted game it is. As the titular robot, you embark into danger zones and blast other bots, collecting loot to upgrade your arsenal and help you build a better starting kit. It’s an awesome and addictive shooter that features a fun cel-shaded aesthetic, great boss battles and a cool synth-rock soundtrack. While it started out in early access in 2020, it appears to be complete as of this writing.

• Severed Steel (2021) - It’s like the developers started with the premise, “what if The Matrix was a first person shooter?” and then went nuts with it. Severed Steel is a first person shooter where you can use parkour, time dilation and crazy acrobatic moves to blast through legions of bad guys in a slow-moving ballet of bullets. It’s endlessly replayable thanks to its challenge modes and has an awesome neon cyberpunk aesthetic and soundtrack.

• Super Mario Wonder (2023) - Nintendo has produced a lot of great Mario games over the years, but few have captivated me like Super Mario Wonder. Every time I thought I’d seen the game toss out every trick it had, there’d be a surprise waiting around the corner. It’s easily one of the best entries in the series and a great reminder of why Mario continues to be the top-tier mascot of platform gaming… though I do wish the endgame lived up to the promise of the earlier stages.

• Supernatural (2020) - While Supernatural is actually a fitness platform that contains Beat Saber-style routines along with boxing, meditation and stretching, it’s so much fun to play that I count it as a game. Rather than putting you in a Tron-like corridor, Supernatural has you standing amidst some of the most beautiful places in the world focusing on spheres that appear out of portals in sequence with licensed music tracks while a virtual fitness trainer (an actual person who was filmed in 3D so they can appear in the world with you) cheers you on. It’s a bit pricey since it requires a subscription, but there’s nothing else like it.

• Tchia (2023) - Awaceb’s Breath of the Wild-style adventure is set in an archipelago inspired by New Caledonia, and it’s an absolutely gorgeous and relaxing game where you play as a young girl who can possess creatures and objects, strum the ukelele to alter the game world or use vehicles or a glider to explore the game’s unique world. It’s not nearly as action heavy as the Zelda game that inspired it, but it’s a better game for that, focusing instead on good sidequests and fun character interactions as well as a joyful sense of wonder and exploration.

• UFO 50 (2024) - It’s not just one game, but a collection of 50 games in 8-bit style that are presented as a collection of vintage games for an obscure (and fictional) gaming console, but which are really creations from a team of six developers led by Spelunky creator Derek Yu. Each title evokes games you may remember playing in the past but with its own twist, and most of them are really fun while some of them have hidden qualities you’ll discover if you stick with them. For those who need more, there’s a deeper story to discover and there are fun connections between the games to encounter. What’s more, many of the included games are set up for couch-based multiplayer, meaning you can explore them with a friend!

Handheld Games (1990-2020)

• Advance Wars, Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising and Advance Wars: Dual Strike (2001, 2003 and 2005) - The Famicom Wars series didn’t make it to North America until the Game Boy Advance was released, but what a way to make an entrance! Advance Wars was instantly one of the most addictive games on the handheld, and the next game upped the ante by adding one new unit and yet somehow felt like a significantly upgraded sequel. The Nintendo DS edition is arguably the best of the three, building on the great foundations while upping the presentation. Sadly, the next Nintendo DS game in the series, 2008’s Days of Ruin, ditched the cheerful anime aesthetic and continuing storyline to offer something darker and more violent. Gamers didn’t bite, and it effectively killed the series.

• Astro Boy: Omega Factor (2003) - Treasure teamed up with Sega’s AM3 "Hitmaker” division to create one of the best and most beautiful games on the Game Boy Advance, and those who haven’t played it absolutely should, because it’s not only a great adaptation one of the foundational series of manga and anime, but also a fantastic beat ‘em up shooter in its own right with incredible boss battles. The story reconfigures many ideas from different Astro Boy incarnations into a cohesive whole, and even if you’re not familiar with the source material, the game feels like a complete adventure.

• Car Battle Joe (2001) - Ancient’s unassuming faux-3D vehicular battling game starts out a bit like Pokémon by way of Mad Max - as the young boy Joe, you strike out in a wimpy car that you use to battle other, better cars to earn money for upgrades that boost your RPG-style stats and capabilities. While the story is entirely predictable (you begin trying to follow in the footsteps of your father before finding an evil threat to face), the action is great and the game’s really fun.

• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (2003, 2005, 2006, 2008) - What an astounding run of games! Konami’s follow-ups to Symphony of the Night started with the pretty good Circle of the Moon and the polarizing Harmony of Dissonance, but things went from good to great with Aria of Sorrow, which introduced Soma Cruz and a more contemporary setting for the revival of Dracula’s castle. The direct sequel Dawn of Sorrow and the related game Portrait of Ruin were criticized for their anime style, but were still wonderful games. And Order of Ecclesia offered something so different many people compared it to Simon’s Quest on the NES. All four are amazing entries in a beloved series and are well worth playing today.

• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2010 and 2012) - The Danganronpa games have had a bit of a slow burn since their initial release - the North America localizations didn’t arrive until 2014, and didn’t really get popular until the anime and manga adaptations did - but it’s not because they’re low in quality. The first two games feature two high school killing game murder mysteries presented in a style similar to the more serious Spike Chunsoft escape room series The Nonary Games, but the games are considerably less serious thanks to the antics of the psychotic robot bear Monokuma. I won’t spoil the story other than to say these games have one of the best and most unexpected villains you’ll ever encounter and that the goofy cast of characters really grows on you. While I wouldn’t list them among my favorites, the action-heavy companion game Ultimate Despair Girls and the inessential sequel Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony are also worthwhile if you just can’t get enough, and there are several anime series to fill out the story details the games gloss over.

• Dissidia: Final Fantasy and Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy (2008 and 2011) - While the PlayStation version of 1998’s Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring is famous for including several characters from Final Fantasy VII, the Final Fantasy games didn’t get a proper fighter until 2008’s PSP exclusive Dissidia: Final Fantasy, which selected one hero and one villain from each numbered game through Final Fantasy X and threw them together into a battle between order and chaos. The game’s large 3D arenas, air battling mechanics and peculiar system of building up damage with one set of attacks before actually inflicting it with another made for a unique experience, and once I got past the learning curve, I spent months playing the original just because it was so much fun. The sequel adds in characters from XI, XII and XIII as well as some additional characters from earlier games like Kain (Final Fantasy IV), Gilgamesh (Final Fantasy V), Tifa (Final Fantasy VII) and Laguna (Final Fantasy VIII). It even somehow makes Final Fantasy XIII’s Lightning interesting, which is more than I can say for her trilogy of games. Sadly, the big screen 2015 arcade follow-up, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, is trainwreck of a fighter that’s best avoided, even in its later console and PC forms.

• Donkey Kong (Game Boy) (1994) - If you thought the 1981 Donkey Kong game couldn’t be improved upon, you really need to check out this Game Boy remake, which not only has Mario returning to rescue Pauline from the stubborn ape, but also includes Donkey Kong, Jr. as a character helping do his dad’s dirty work. It’s an utter delight and provides a strong foundation for the later Mario vs. Donkey Kong series on the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and 3DS.

• Every Extend Extra (2006) - Kanta “Omega” Matsuhisa released the puzzle game Every Extend as freeware in 2004, but Q Entertainment took it and made it into a full-fledged commercial game for the PSP two years later. The premise is that you have a bomb you have to explode with just the right timing to cause a chain reaction across the screen, but much like its sister game Lumines, the simple mechanics are greatly enhanced by stages with shifting music and backgrounds. While the learning curve’s a bit steep, once you master the mechanics, it’s one of the PSP’s best puzzle games.

• Gravity Rush (2012) - It’s so strange that Bioshock Infinite and Gravity Rush came out within a year of one another, because both feature a number of similar ideas despite being executed extremely differently. In Gravity Rush, you play as a girl named Kat who’s trapped on a floating city that has large portions trapped in dimensional rifts. Fortunately, you have the power to change the direction of the force of gravity, allowing you to do all sorts of wild things to manipulate the world around you. The story gets a great deal weirder from there, but the gameplay really holds up. The game was intended to be one of the PlayStation Vita’s killer apps along with Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Tearaway, but it never quite took off despite using the handheld’s abilities quite cleverly. The PS4 port is fine, but not nearly as special as the Vita version. The 2017 sequel, which was only on the PS4, is a bit better suited to the console experience.

• Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (2008) - Capcom decided to ride the wave of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney’s surprising popularity in the West by publishing a similar game for the PSP, PS2 and Wii adapting the Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law cartoons from Adult Swim into a collection of irreverent courtroom adventures. It’s an adventure game through and through, but it’s voiced by the show’s cast, filled with the same zany humor and marked by the same illogic that causes court cases to go in unexpected directions.

• Half-Minute Hero (2009) - Do you ever get tired of playing JRPGs and grinding for hours and hours? What if you could complete one in 30 seconds or less and send that latest dark lord packing? That’s the conceit of the subversive and highly amusing Half-Minute Hero, which of course pulls out some tricks to stretch that 30 seconds a bit longer with the help of a greedy time goddess. Even so, you’ll blow through many sequels (complete with credits!) before you reach the game’s conclusion, and then there are several different modes to try that include different mechanics, a 3-second adventure and a very challenging (and game-concluding) 300-second mode. The original version was released for the PSP, but you can find the 2011 PC remake and the sequel (never released on PSP in North America) on Steam.

• Jeanne D'Arc (2006) - I’ve played a number of games by Level-5, and while they’re always beautiful (whether it’s Rogue Galaxy or Ni No Kuni or Yo-Kai Watch or Professor Layton), they’re often missing a certain something to make them truly memorable. That’s not the case with the PSP’s Jeanne D’Arc, a very odd concept for a tactical strategy game - retelling the story of Joan of Arc in a magical, demon-haunted world where Jeanne wears power armor and isn’t a martyr - but an amazing one all the same, featuring wonderful characters, awesome animated cutscenes and a true gut-punch of a twist midway through the game. The gameplay is a fusion of Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics, but it stands apart from those games as well with its unique ideas and pseudo-historical setting.

• Kirby’s Dream Land (1992) - The Nintendo Game Boy never really had a dedicated mascot character, but it might as well have been Kirby, HAL Laboratory’s pink puff who’s gone on to star in many games since. The original game still holds up as a solid experience and features many of the mainstay characters and mechanics of the series.

• The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (1993) - It’s amazing that Nintendo managed to create a worthy follow-up to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Game Boy of all platforms. And yet they not only did so, but made the game so good that the 2019 Switch remake barely changed a thing. Link’s Awakening is a dreamlike experience where the rules of reality are fast and loose (there are even several allusions to the Super Mario Bros. games!), but it’s absolutely incredible as a portable game and one of the very best Zelda titles, featuring a vast world to explore, an engaging trading minigame, a river rapids arcade sequence and a memorable world filled with great characters. For those who enjoy this one, I also highly recommend Capcom’s 2001 follow-up games The Oracle of Ages, The Oracle of Seasons and 2004 Game Boy Advance game The Minish Cap as well as the Nintendo’s 2002 Four Swords game bundled with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the Game Boy Advance. I’m a little less enthralled with The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS, but it’s still worthwhile if you’re a fan of A Link to the Past. I won’t say the same for Tri-Force Heroes, though; it’s trash.

• LocoRoco and LocoRoco 2 (2006 and 2008) - Perhaps the cutest games ever released for the PSP (and maybe any handheld ever!), the LocoRoco games task you with collecting little blobs and merging them into bigger blobs as you tilt the screen to move them through the levels. As you go, they sing, and it’s such a colorful and joyful experience that I can’t imagine even the grinchiest of gamers withstanding cracking an involuntary smile while playing it.

• Lumines: Puzzle Fusion, Lumines II and Lumines: Electronic Symphony (2004, 2006, 2012) - I am still playing Lumines two decades after first experiencing it on the PlayStation Portable, and I have yet to get tired of its simple but addictive puzzle mechanics. The Zen-like state it provides keeps me busy enough to open up my higher cognition to think about other things, and on the rare occasion that I manage to entirely clear the screen, I simply take a deep breath and get back to work trying to do it again. My favorite game in the series is actually the second one, which is also the least available today, but all of them are good. (The console versions, less so - there’s something about this game that begs for the intimacy of a handheld device.)

• Mario’s Picross (and its many sequels) (1995 to present) - Jupiter Corp.’s Picross games are based around logic puzzles called nonograms that reveal pixel images within a blank grid. The original Mario’s Picross (the first released in North America) is as simple as the concept comes, but it’s also the most effective at providing sheer puzzling joy. Beyond the many sequels just like it, there are also two 3D Picross games for the Nintendo DS that will absolutely break your brain. I highly recommend them.

• Metal Gear Solid (a.k.a. Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel) (2000) - The Game Boy Color is home to one of the best Metal Gear games there is, a non-canonical alternate sequel to Metal Gear that plays a lot like the MSX2’s Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake with its own storyline, artwork and mechanics as Sold Snake infiltrates Outer Heaven once more. Most players missed this one, but it’s absolutely worth the trouble to locate and play; it’s a clever game with fun boss battles, a surprisingly involved story and a unique cast of bizarre villains.

• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010) - If you’ve played Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain, you’ve essentially played the end of the story Peace Walker started. In 1974 in Columbia, Big Boss (as Snake) is running a mercenary unit called Militaires Sans Frontières (“Army without Borders”) that gets drawn into a Costa Rican conflict involving a nuclear project called “Peace Walker” that turns out to be yet another progenitor to the Metal Gear project… and also driven by an AI control system based on Snake’s original mentor, The Boss. The game turns out to be a deeply reflective chapter on the folly of nuclear deterrence through mutually-assured destruction and is one of the more coherent and interesting Metal Gear entries. It also does a fantastic job of transforming Snake into the Big Boss of the earlier games and introduces the same Fulton air recovery system and base building that make The Phantom Pain so much fun as well as the best CQC system of any Metal Gear game. The cutscenes also feature excellent artwork from the tie-in comic book series illustrator Ashley Wood. If you’ve missed this one (and let’s be honest - most Metal Gear fans have!), you should play either the PSP original or the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 remaster.

• Meteos (2005) - Q Entertainment’s Nintendo DS puzzler is about launching little creatures called Meteos into space before they can fill the screen. The game’s reliance on the dual screens of the Nintendo DS (and the stylus on the bottom screen) makes it hard to play on an other platform, but on the original hardware, it’s a blast. It’s a unique and somewhat stressful game that somehow made the translation to 2007’s Meteos: Disney Magic, which is far more chill while retaining the same mechanics.

• Metroid: Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission (2002 and 2004) - I consider these the trilogy prequel and sequel to Super Metroid, as both games have a very similar style of play to the older landmark title. Zero Mission is an extended remake of the NES Metroid and adds in an additional battle with the Space Pirates where Samus loses her power armor for a bit. Fusion is a more frightening game where Samus is involved in a biological accident with the X parasite where an evil version of her suit called the SA-X begins wreaking havoc while she’s stuck in a new creation called the Fusion Suit that is only keeping her alive thanks to a vaccine created with Metroid DNA, making her vulnerable to cold but able to absorb the X parasites she encounters. It’s a fantastic adventure with a deeper story than most Metroid games. Up until 2021’s Metroid Dread, it was also the canonical end of the Metroid storyline.

• Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (2009) - Capybara Games’s fantasy puzzler is a really wonderful game with excellent graphics and a neat cast of characters despite being part of the lesser legacy of the later Might & Magic games from Ubisoft. The mechanics are deep enough to make you think without becoming overwhelmingly challenging, and the storyline keeps things moving as a group of allies are separated during a demonic invasion and have to battle their way back together. It’s been re-released on several platforms since its Nintendo DS debut and is always worth playing.

• Ninja Five-O (a.ka. Ninja Cop) (2003) - If you combined Shinobi with Bionic Commando, you’d get something like this awesome Game Boy Advance hack and slash platformer from Hudson Soft. As ninja cop Joe Osugi, you have to stop terrorists and rescue hostages, but the thrill is in the robust game mechanics, which really allow you to feel like a super-powered ninja warrior. As publisher, Konami did next to nothing to promote this game and didn’t even bother to release it in Japan, and as a result, it enjoys a cult classic status today among gamers and collectors alike.

• The Nonary Games / Zero Escape Trilogy (999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Zero Escape: Virtue’s Reward and Zero Escape: Time Dilemma) (2009, 2012 and 2016) - Spike Chunsoft’s series of character-driven visual novel meets escape room games is similar to the Danganronpa series, but more serious in tone with deeper characters and more complex motivations to explore. The first game is all about suspense, so the second game reduces the tension a bit and goes for broke on the storytelling, resulting in what’s generally regarded as the best game in the series. The third game, developed by Chime, is a midquel set between the other two games, and while it has its faults (particularly its lazily animated cutscenes, which are somehow worse than the visual novel style of the other games), it’s still really good.

• Patapon and sequels (2007, 2009 and 2011) - There’s nothing else like Pyrmaid and Japan Studio’s Patapon games, and I’m honestly stunned that they don’t have a larger following today, because all three are absolutely awesome. The premise is that you’re a deity who commands an army of shadowy little characters called Patapons on various military campaigns where they wield swords, spears, bows and other weapons; others ride on mounts or even use magic. To make them advance or attack, you have to hit the correct drumbeats on the rhythm of their march, and doing it well enough and often enough puts them in “fever” mode where they become even more powerful. The original is great, and the sequels are even better, but all three games are best played in sequence so you can master the mechanics and really excel as the difficulty increases.

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and sequels (2001 - 2004) - The Japanese visual novel series Gyakuten Saiban (“Turnaout Courtroom”) was first released for the Game Boy Advance and didn’t come to North America until 2005’s Nintendo DS version was localized. It wound up being a hit, however, enough for Capcom to release all of the games in the series and begin localizing new ones starting with 2007’s Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The first three are still my favorites, featuring the underdog attorney Phoenix Wright as he tries to aid his clients through the twists and turns of a courtroom where the moronic judge will entertain any silly argument a prosecutor makes. To win, you have to make your case airtight.

• Rebelstar: Tactical Command (2005) - In the wake of X-Com’s demise after its original series fizzled on PC, Codo Technologies decided to bring back Julian Gollop’s earlier Rebelstar turn-based strategy games for the Game Boy Advance with a fresh coat of anime-style graphics. While the GBA had no shortage of strategy games available, Rebelstar rose above the crowd by featuring tight mechanics, a good interface and refined design. Sadly, it didn’t attract much attention (its terrible box art didn’t help), but it was one heck of a turn-based strategy game for anyone who bothered to play it.

• Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins and the original Wario Land series (1992 and 1994 - 2001) - Those who’ve missed out on Nintendo R&D1’s take on the Mario series should really give these games a try - they’re not only brilliant in their own right, but they introduce Wario, the meaner, greedier, nastier counterpart to Mario who takes his turn as a villain before he becomes the antihero of his own platforming series. (Even 1995’s Virtual Boy Wario Land is great, and it’s definitely the best game on that ill-fated platform.) Wario is about as subversive as Nintendo gets, and his adventures definitely are worth experiencing.

• Tearaway (2013) - Media Molecule is best-known for LittleBigPlanet and its sequels and spin-offs, but I actually found Tearaway to be their best gaming experience, in part because the game was designed to showcase all of the wild potential for the PlayStation Vita handheld. The game’s papercraft aesthetic, wildly imaginative world and clever use of the handheld’s front and back touchscreens and cameras really leads to an adventure unlike any other. While the game was rereleased for the PS4 as Tearaway Unfolded in 2015 with new features and an expanded storyline, it was missing that spark that made the Vita version so special.

• WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! and sequels (2003-2023) - The only thing more compelling than playing as Wario in a greedy hunt for treasure is playing a game where Wario has decided to create a bunch of cheap knock-off microgames to make himself rich through video game sales. The addictive nature of playing a collection of bizarre games that take half a second to explain and mere seconds to complete truly has to be experienced to be understood, and Wario’s surprisingly large cast of oddball and misfit friends gives the game a lot of heart. The many sequels are also typically wonderful, and the Nintendo Wii U’s oddball 2013 entry Game & Wario is terribly underrated.

• The World Ends With You (2007) - One of the quintessential games for the Nintendo DS is also one that’s struggled in translations to other platforms. The idea of this game is that your character has died and is taking part in something called the “Reaper Game” in Shibuya, a spiritual battle atop the real world goings-on in the stylish and hip Tokyo crossroads. You control two characters at once - one on the top screen and one on the bottom, and you chain their attacks together. The story, art design, music and characters are all distinctive, and the gameplay, while a bit of an acquired taste at first, is one-of-a-kind, especially in its original Nintendo DS incarnation. The 2021 console sequel NEO: The World Ends With You is also great.

• WTF: Work Time Fun (2005) - It’s so easy to write this strange PSP game off as a WarioWare clone and be done with it (and many critics did!), but it’s actually a fairly unique minigame compilation with a devilishly subversive story and a collection of ten unlockable tools ranging from a calculator to a flashlight to a bunch of different ramen timer videos. There’s no WarioWare game where you play demon-approved minigames about being a drunken mayor trying to cut a ribbon or where you have to guess a girl’s number at the bar, nor is there any where your basic starter minigame has you putting caps on pens to earn meager amounts of money to unlock other, better things to do, like collecting mushrooms in traffic or spotting ghosts in photos.

Games That Are Popular But Which I Personally Don’t Love

I felt I ought to include a few that gamers rave about with a very brief justification about why I don’t care for them. I’m sure this list will lose me some readers who thought I had good taste up until now, but that’s OK! Part of having preferences is also being able to articulate what you don’t like and why. The important part is that you’re able to accept that others may disagree.

These games and series are all very popular for a reason, and even I have bought and played a lot of them! They’re just not my thing.

• Animal Crossing and its sequels - I… guess I just don’t get it? I’ve played (and enjoyed!) many similar games like The Sims, Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley and My Time at Portia, but to me, Animal Crossing and its sequels feel like games more full of restrictions and annoyances than possibilities. You’re tied to an actual calendar to progress, there are no options for romance, many events happen randomly and most of the characters (especially in the later games) have little to no story, while some move away if you don’t check in often enough. I get that folks enjoy the slow-paced Tamagotchi aspect of checking in daily to see what’s new around town, but that’s not how I like to play games, especially when there’s no objective or purpose beyond my own satisfaction.

• Battletoads (NES) and most of its spin-offs and sequels - Rare’s cartoon mascot action game was quite popular when I was a kid, and I really wanted to love it. Unfortunately, it’s a tedious slough that has a nearly impossible third level, and it only gets tougher from there. Even with an emulator allowing me to save my state, I find the game unenjoyable the further I get into it. While I love the creative ideas, the execution is awful. Later games in the series make some improvements, but must are still dull, and the 2020 revival game manages to be both stupid and boring with awful attempts at humor and overly repetitive beat ‘em up action that’s way too difficult for a game with such a cartoony aesthetic. The only Battletoads game I actually enjoy is the 1994 Electronic Arts arcade version that no one played - it’s actually pretty decent!

• The Call of Duty series - I remember playing the first Call of Duty and enjoying it on the PC two decades ago. It was a well-made World War II shooter with a fun multiplayer mode. Fast forward to the present day and it’s become a religion for its most devoted players; to the rest of us, though, it’s a series that’s only really produced a handful of legitimately good games. As tactical-based shooters go, I still think CounterStrike is the series to beat, and I’d rather play a Sniper Elite game for World War II action or a looser, less competitive Battlefield game for the chaotic multiplayer experience.

• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, its sequel and its handheld spin-off - When you consider that Lords of Shadow began life as an original IP until Hideo Kojima stepped in and offered to help MercurySteam make it into a Castlevania reboot, it becomes clear why Lords of Shadow feels so different from the games it’s trying to evoke. None of the 3D Castlevania games except Curse of Darkness are good, but Lords of Shadow feels like an entirely different God of War-style game grafted onto the Castlevania IP. The storyline is about God and Satan and only features vampires a little bit, but the DLC turns Gabriel Belmont into Dracula in one of the worst plot twists ever. I cried foul from the start, but critics loved it when it debuted; thankfully, it’s not nearly as well-regarded today. The sequel (in which you play as Dracula) is even worse, and the handheld spin-off lacks the precision or timing to feel like a true Castlevania adventure.

• Dark Souls, Demon’s Souls, Elden Ring and other Soulslikes - I guess I’ve been playing FromSoftware games a lot longer than many gamers because I never found an Armored Core or King’s Field game that I liked. I also disliked Eternal Ring and Evergrace/Forever Kingdom on the PS2 and considered them some of the worst launch titles available. Even the Xbox-exclusive Otogi games (which I actually do like!) were a bit of an acquired taste for me. When Demon’s Souls came out, I thought it was interesting in the way it integrated multiplayer, but way too punishing to be fun. Then when the hype around Dark Souls started swirling, I gave it a try only to find that I hated its repetitiveness and unforgiving difficulty that made every attempt at progression into a difficult trial and error grind. Clearly, the Souls games resonated in a big way with many gamers, and I genuinely feel bad for not liking them. It’s odd to have to sit an entire subgenre out because you don’t enjoy the mechanics, but I unfortunately have yet to play a Soulslike I’ve really enjoyed - yes, even Nioh and Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor aren’t really my thing! - and I’m always glad to be done with them. The genre’s clearly not for me. But all the same, I’m glad FromSoftware has gone from being an under-the-radar developer to one many hardcore gamers love; good for them!

• Diablo and its sequels - I enjoyed the first Diablo for a little while, but the single-player game was repetitive and felt like a clickfest to me, and I never got into the multiplayer since it was full of cheaters. The second game was much improved, but I still found it exceptionally boring and grindy after a spell and started rolling my eyes almost immediately at the pretentious and overwrought story. I could never get into the third or fourth one. They’re just OK. I honestly prefer Torchlight II, Titan Quest, Nox and Path of Exile and console games like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, Champions of Norrath, X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. They all have many of the same limitations, however, and few are games I’d consider favorites.

• Earthworm Jim and Earthworm Jim 2 - Oh, how I’d love to be able to say I love Shiny Entertainment’s Earthworm Jim, because I appreciate so many things about it - the creative concept, the wonderful animation, the great rogue’s gallery, the distinctive levels and the wonderfully weird musical score. But the problem is that I’ve also played both games and find them to be tedious and boring, often requiring rote memorization to get through and many moments where it’s easy to die or hit a hazard because the lush environments have lousy collision detection. I enjoy watching others play these games (and also love the cartoon show), but they’re vastly overrated as good gaming experiences. Oh, and the less said about Earthworm Jim 3D, the better.

• Final Fantasy VII and most of the games that followed it - I was as excited about Final Fantasy VII as anyone when it came out, but I just couldn’t get into it once I actually played it. I eventually completed it, but I struggled to stay interested. The story feels like two different games smashed together and it took about a decade of follow-ups, prequels and related media to make any sense of the convoluted plot. Compared to Final Fantasy IV, V and VI, the gameplay is dumbed down and the tone is too dark and angsty without assigning any specific arcs or motivations to its antagonists. (Who Sephiroth is at key moments of the game, what he wants and why he wants it are still vague even today and requires a lot of consultation from other sources.) Yes, the characters are cool and memorable, and I do love the soundtrack. But even the modern remakes just don’t do it for me. I also didn’t love Final Fantasy VIII, X or X-2 due to their emphasis on love stories, and the less said about XIII and beyond, the better. Meanwhile, I feel IX and XII are pretty good, but not as great as the earlier titles, and I’m not into MMORPGs enough to enjoy XI or XIV. I’d much rather play Xenogears, Suikoden II, Shadow Hearts: Covenant and the Persona games than any of the later Final Fantasies.

• Fortnite - My son’s a big fan of Fortnite, so I definitely have been lobbied repeatedly about the immense appeal of this battle royale shooter. But everything that initially made Fortnite interesting to me - the cartoon aesthetic, the creative environment, the buildable fortresses, the scope and scale of the game - has given way to a focus on the very young community and, more specifically, how to get them to get their parents to give them money to buy extra content. I know it’s one of the most popular games there is. I know the LEGO mode is pretty cool. I know it’s one of the main crossroads for pop culture and gaming culture. I’m grateful Fortnite allows Epic Games to have the throwaway money to give away free PC games every week on their digital store. But even with all those positives, the game itself feels better suited to kids than seasoned gamers like myself.

• F-Zero and its sequels - I played F-Zero on the SNES quite a bit when I was younger, but I just never understood why it attracted such a passionate following, especially once the far superior Wipeout games debuted. The SNES game lacked the fluid feel of a more sophisticated arcade racer, and the N64 and GameCube sequels sacrificed graphical quality for speed (the arcade counterpart was the only version with the horsepower to do the concept properly) while the Game Boy Advance sequels are just continuations of the SNES edition. I also can’t fathom why Switch fans would want to waste their time with F-Zero 99. Ah well. At least we got this awesome OCRemix song out of it.

• Halo: Combat Evolved and sequels - So, full disclosure - I actually used to really love the original Halo and recommended it to a lot of people in the early 2000s. What made the first Halo so groundbreaking was the feeling that PC-quality gaming was finally possible on a gaming console. Halo 2 added online multiplayer, dual-wielding and plasma swords while Halo 3 added the Forge to allow players to create their own maps. But from there? The series has felt stagnant for the last decade and a half. I still feel the first three games (plus the spin-offs Halo: Reach and Halo: ODST) are all decent console shooters worth playing at least once. Even so, Halo 2 was where the series’ pretentious story and repetitive nature started to bother me, and it only got worse as they went on and Bungie divested itself to go work on Destiny instead. Halo 4 and 5 are, in my estimation, complete trash, and Halo: Infinite still looks and feels like a half-finished game built around a new grappling hook mechanic (which is, I’ll admit, fun to use!) and a banal looter shooter about hunting down a minor villain from Halo Wars 2. And before you ask, nope, I’m not into Destiny or its sequel either.

• The Last of Us and its sequel - I’ve seen The Last of Us described as one of the greatest games of all time, but I’m honestly not sure why anyone would feel that way. It’s true that I loved this game at first, but the more I reflected upon it, the less I liked it. The controls are loose and the combat is terrible, often necessitating trial and error gameplay. The crafting is annoying and makes the game tedious. The storyline is bleak and needlessly brutal in the first game and then, in the sequel, leads into a suffering simulation that ruins anything I enjoyed about the characters. Yes, there are some magical moments like the zoo animals escaping in the first game, and I do enjoy Joel and Ellie and the creative setup that tries really hard not to be about zombies by introducing a plague caused by parasitic fungus. But at the end of the day, it’s just another clunky zombie game with above-average production values. Telltale’s The Walking Dead adventure games offer a better story and there are many zombie action games with better gameplay, like the Left 4 Dead series or Resident Evil 4.

• League of Legends and DOTA 2 - I’ll never understand the appeal of MOBAs, and the toxic communities surrounding both League of Legends and DOTA 2 has always kept me away. I tend to avoid free-to-play games because they inevitably become pay to win or become such a grind that they require hundreds of hours of devoted clicking while relying on teammates who can make or break your game. I also don’t like to have to replace my mouse regularly. I will, however, give props to Riot Games for a great Netflix series (Arcane) and some fun K-Pop (K/DA).

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I don’t actually hate this game, but I was really annoyed by people treating it like the greatest game ever made when, in reality, it’s just a scaled-back Zelda adventure with an open world that’s not nearly as interesting or compelling as the one from the open-world game that inspired it (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) or the games contemporary to it (namely, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and Horizon: Zero Dawn). It’s not even as good as other Zelda games; the dungeons are too simple and rely on physics engine puzzles rather than actual problem-solving, and the breakable weapons annoy the heck out of me simply because they’re a nuisance mechanic with no real benefit to the player. Tears of the Kingdom is better, but still not my thing because it turns Breath of the Wild’s core ideas into Scribblenauts-style solutions so that even the expanded dungeons don’t feel like they were designed with actual solutions in mind. I get the appeal to gamers who aren’t used to open world games or who can’t play things that are M-rated like The Witcher III: Wild Hunt or Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. But for me, no thanks; many of the better games Breath of the Wild has inspired, like Tchia and Genshin Impact, are much more my speed.

• Minecraft - I bought into Mojang’s surprise indie hit when it was in its very early days, and I definitely got my money’s worth exploring a virtual blocky world for about 100 hours and crafting all sorts of things as I built a virtual castle into the side of a giant hill. But as the game’s evolved, I’ve found it less and less compelling as the competition has caught up, and my most recent return to it was simply to explore my previous worlds with a VR headset. I get why it’s popular, but I’m surprised people are still playing it over a decade later. I’d much rather play Terraria.

• Myst and its sequels - In the 1990s, Cyan and Brøderbund’s Myst was an absolute phenomenon for casual gamers who’d just bought multimedia PCs and wanted to see what they could do. For those of us who’d been gaming for awhile, however? It was a total snooze, featuring abstract puzzles, dull gameplay and scant storytelling in a genre that already had far better games from the likes of Sierra On-Line, LucasArts, Adventure Soft, Access Software, Trilobyte and Westwood Associates. What I found most frustrating at the time was how Myst was the subject of endless think pieces about how adventures like it were destined to be the future of gaming. A decade and four sequels later, the formula was so stale that most gamers didn’t even notice Myst V: End of Ages came out in 2005 and concluded the series. Only occasional games like 2016’s The Witness have managed to stir up interest in this niche of adventure gaming, and the 2021 full-3D (and VR-capable) remake of Myst came and went without much fanfare.

• Overwatch and its sequel - I must sound like I really hate Blizzard, but they have the distinction of making many games that enjoy a cult-like popularity without really clicking for me. Overwatch shipped feeling like it was half a game and it got super popular despite much of its content having to be patched in later on. The ideas and gameplay were good, and once the roster filled out and balances were put into place, the game started to feel like it was finally worthy of the hype. I’ll even give Blizzard credit for originality this time - the playable heroes are wonderfully varied and have a fighting game level of characterization and backstory. But then Blizzard decided to go and ruin things with a mandatory upgrade to Overwatch 2, which tinkered too much with the mechanics, returned the game to feeling half-complete without the promised single-player mode and made my purchase of the original moot as it shifted to free-to-play. That killed my interest forever.

• Pokémon (series) - I have owned and played a non-trivial number of Pokémon games and offshoots, and while they’re amusing and even occasionally addictive, I have yet to play one that I’d consider a truly great game. The original Pokémon Red and Blue were definitely nice surprises, and Pokémon Crystal is probably the best of the original games and the closest to the definitive classic Pokémon title. But the mainline games continue to be slow-paced and tedious, encouraging heavy grinding and making players sit through lengthy and repetitive battle animations. Most of the modern games also have far too many systems and subsystems in place to try to augment the stubborn simplicity of the core gameplay. My son still loves them; I’ve outgrown them.

• Roblox - My kids love it. I can’t stand it. The janky games full of cheaters, the endless shakedowns for Robux, the exploitation of creators, the rampant copyright violations, the never-ending supply of adolescent griefers… I could go on, but you get the point. I’m probably too old to enjoy Roblox, and I’d much rather play the vastly superior Rec Room in VR instead.

• Street Fighter III and V - I can ignore a bad sequel here and there, but Street Fighter III and V are complete trash. The premise behind Street Fighter III was to reset the series with a brand new roster that only saw Ryu and Ken returning to face new face of the series Alex, new protégé Sean and the absolutely terrible idea for a boss Gill (who’s half water and half fire and who can resurrect himself with his super. Ugh.) It took two revisions to get that game to a point where anyone liked it with Third Strike. And then, after righting the ship with Street Fighter IV, Capcom released the incomplete and wildly unbalanced V and spent years fixing it and trying to win back the community. Even so, the art design is terrible, the single player story is almost nonexistent and the roster is full of filler. No thanks.

• Super Smash Bros. and its sequels - I am still stunned that Nintendo and HAL Labortory’’s brawling party game is not only going strong two decades after it started, but also has an enduring competitive fighting game scene to boot. I’ve never been clear on why. The Smash Bros. games are terribly unbalanced brawlers that require a huge amount of skill to play well and which also require turning off most of the features and maps to play competitively. They’re great for casual gamers who just want to press buttons and see familiar characters do cool things while turtle shells whiz around and Pokémon unleash attacks, but their overstuffed rosters and overwhelming amounts of onscreen action make the Smash Bros. games a little too chaotic for me to play seriously. I see them more as a digital Nintendo museum that highlights some of the most prominent titles of Japanese gaming… and also the Ice Climbers and Balloon Fight, both of which I’ve never particularly enjoyed, but Nintendo sure doesn’t want me to forget.

• StarCraft - I’m kind of surprised that after copying Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty whole cloth and then brazenly reskinning the gameplay with elements lifted from the Warhammer tabletop game setting to create Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Blizzard didn’t subsequently get busted a few years later for appropriating the Warhammer 40k setting for StarCraft. (They also seem to have avoided a trademark dispute with the Starcraft vehicle brand!) Somehow, gamers have a blind spot for Blizzard’s lack of originality, and I won’t deny StarCraft is a quality game that helped pave the way for global eSports. But I will say I got bored with it pretty quickly in the 1990s and moved on to other things. The sequel (initially released in a money-grubbing episodic format) left me feeling exactly the same way, and fans were so vocal about wanting the original back that Blizzard had to re-release it.

• Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider - You know what Tomb Raider game is truly awful? The last one that CORE Design made, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, which debuted in 2003 and felt like an exercise in seeing how irritated a developer could make their most devoted fans. But at least it stayed true to the character of Lara Croft and didn’t feel like a pale imitation of Uncharted minus the freewheeling spirit of adventure. The new series tries to reinvent Lara Croft by shrinking her bust size and pouty lips, making her less self-assured and giving her horrible military-style villains to face instead of exploring the weirder and wilder sides of the mystical ancient world. The over-the-top cover girl of the 1990s needed some reinvention to stay relevant, but this wasn’t the way to do it. I’m hoping the next set of remakes gets back to the Lara from Tomb Raider Anniversary, Legend and Underworld, who expresses a genuine love for the adventures she has and who isn’t afraid of anybody.

• World of Warcraft - I enjoyed the Warcraft RTS games to a point (and the third game’s saga of the fall and rise to villainy of Arthas Menethil was truly excellent), but I never really got into the lore or the aesthetic. I also despise multiplayer games that require me to set my schedule around what the game wants me to do. Therefore, I never had much interest in World of Warcraft and still don’t to this day. I know it’s a special game to many folks, and I respect that. But it’s not for me.

• Just about any game not listed above from the following categories - That’s not to say all games in these genres are terrible or anything like that; they’re just generally not for me.

  • Dating sims / Otome and Hentai / Adult games (with the exception of more subversive fare like Hatoful Boyfriend, Hate: An Analogue Story and Doki Doki Literature Club)

  • Deck-builders

  • Dungeon crawlers in the style of Wizardry

  • Idle clickers

  • Jump scare horror

  • Match-3 copycats and other casual puzzle games

  • MOBAs and Auto Chess-style games

  • Most military shooters

  • Most MMORPGs

  • Most MUDs

  • Most zombie games

  • Non-combat flight simulators

  • Sports management simulations

  • Technical simulators (flying, driving, racing, etc.)

  • Time management

  • Tower defense

  • Walking simulators

  • Wargames and historical turn-based grand strategy games

• Just about any sports, boxing, racing or wrestling game - They’re just not my thing, and while there are plenty I like, there aren’t many I love.
  
  A few I do enjoy include:

  • Baseball Stars 2

  • Blades of Steel

  • Fire Pro Wrestling

  • Final Lap Twin

  • Galactic Wrestling: Featuring Ultimate Muscle

  • Mario Sports Mix

  • Mutant League Hockey and Mutant League Football

  • NHL 94 and 95

  • Pro Tennis: World Court

  • R.C. Pro-Am

  • Rock and Roll Racing

  • Rocket League

  • Sensible Soccer

  • Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe

  • Super Baseball Simulator 1.000

  • Super Dodgeball

  • Super Mario Strikers

  • The Wipeout games

Remember, This List is Incomplete and Ever-Evolving.

Should I add other games to my list above? Chances are, I probably will! I’m always discovering great games I missed, and some are bound to become new favorites!

Be sure to check back from time to time to see if I’ve updated things. And don’t forget to subscribe to this newsletter to learn more about the Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played!