Guessed by Veknoid_Outcast
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the biggest monuments of my gaming life, if not the biggest. I took a while for this franchise, easily my favourite of all franchises, to finally appear on this list and even though this game is not my favourite game anymore overal nor was it the first game I ever played or anything, I cannot deny that I wouldn't have been here if it weren't for this. This made me a Nintendo fan, a Zelda fan, and a gamer. This game can also be credited with creating the template for probably the most critically acclaimed series ever for the next three decades at least and you can't really fault it in any way. For all intents and purposes it is a perfect game, so on second thought, why actually is A Link to the Past not my #1?
Guessed by Veknoid_Outcast
The magnum opus of Sony's best developer, even if I'm not a fan of where they went in the past decade, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves impressed me greatly when it first came out on PlayStation 3. The game's predecessor was cool and I had a lot of fun with it, especially due to the terrible Dutch language dub, but otherwise not truly special or worthy of ending up in a list such as this. This sequel however blew everything contemporary out of the water with its presentation, its set pieces and its gameplay polished to a T, with an engaging story and relatable characters to boot. Successor 'Drake's Deception' almost matches the greatness of this game, and some years I have it included in the list usually in the 40s, but not quite. I guess that collapsing building sequence really got to me.
Guessed by UnderwaterFunktown
When people were laughing about how bad Wii games looked versus the "HD-Twins", Nintendo came with Super Mario Galaxy as their answer. Needless to say, this is one of the prettiest games of that generation, regardless of the lower resolution, cleverly using the Wii's weakness as a strength by only focussing on tiny planetoids at a time. Nintendo's inspiration knew no bounds when they created this masterpiece, still one of the greatest platformers ever made. Its originality sets it apart from all the rest and the soundtrack is stellar. The sequel is pretty much just as great, they really did have too many good ideas to put into one game. However the sequel lacks the Observatory hub-world, which looked beautiful on its own and featured the secret but not so secret backstory as read by Rosalina, who was a great newcomer in the Mario Universe on her own. I really get a whimsical, fluffy uplifting feeling just thinking about this game.
Guessed by Veknoid_Outcast
How can one follow up a wildly acclaimed predecessor other than with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask? Instead of trying to one-up their own earlier game they rightfully decided that they should just make something completely different. For me, this game also is the subject of something different. My aunt had a friend that worked at Nintendo (really, this time), and because my cousin couldn't wait to play the new Zelda, this friend somehow smuggled an early copy home to give to him on his birthday a couple months before release and naturally I came over to witness this. So we started the game and the cutscene showed the Ocarina of Time being stolen by the Skullkid, as you all know, but then when gameplay started we had an inventory full of Ocarinas! Pretty strange we thought. Then, when we grabbed a heart to refill life, Link would instantly die. Turned out this cartridge was glitched, and probably why the family friend could so easily smuggle it home. On the other hand, having this haunted cartridge, really fit the theme of the game.
