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mZuzek on 07 January 2023
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Okay, took me a bit, but I also got some stats from my list, here goes.

Let's start off with the guessing game. This is the most important, of course. This year I changed the hints up by making them all just audio-based (something I'd been thinking of doing for many years, actually) and if there's one thing I learned, is that I greatly overestimated yall's audio memory. But anyways, here's the ranking:

11 guesses: @Ultrashroomz and @UnderwaterFunktown
7 guesses: @Darashiva
5 guesses: @Machina
4 guesses: @drbunnig and @Mnementh
3 guesses: @S.Peelman
2 guesses: @coolbeans and @kenjab
1 guess: @Angelus and @Metafee

That's right, it's a tie! I don't think that had happened before, not with my lists at least. And certainly wasn't something I expected to happen, especially when Ultrashroomz was guessing essentially every game at the beginning of the event. UnderwaterFunktown left it very late too, coming in clutch with two top 5 guesses. Also, if the total numbers there add up to 51, that's because both @Mnementh and @Darashiva were credited with the #2 guess (don't expect me to hand out double guesses too often!).

Now looking through the list itself, here's some interesting bits...

  • This was by far my worst year for new entries, with only 4 making it in (a tied all-time low). Of those 4, only one made the top 20 (also a tied all-time low), and it didn't exactly stroll into it, seeing as how I had it lower down the list for a while until deciding at the last minute to raise it to #20. The new entries this year were Death's Door (#40), Splatoon 3 (#33), Hades (#30), and Alien: Isolation (#20).
  • As only makes sense with few high-ranking entries, it was a remarkably stable year for the high end of my list, with 8 out of the top 13 games seeing no change year-on-year, and the top 17 games were the same as last year's top 17, with only a few moving no more than 2 spots up or down.
  • This stability wasn't necessarily reflected in the list overall, however, with some games seeing significant change year-on-year - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask rose an impressive 13 places to make it to #24, while at the other end, the steepest decline is a tie between Persona 5 Strikers (#49) and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (#41), both of which went down by 10 spots.
  • Three games came back into the list after missing out last year: No Man's Sky (#50), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (#46) and Splatoon (#34). This is tied for second-most unranked games coming back, only in 2015 were there more (which is only expected with it being one of my earliest lists too).
  • Since seven games came in, seven games fell off. Of those, Hyper Light Drifter and Biomutant had the most graceful exits, finding their way into the Honorable Mentions. The other omissions were Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Mario Odyssey, Bayonetta, and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker's Memory.

Alright, time for the platform breakdown. I'll just put a number below the platform number and y'all know that means how many games on each one. Not much room to spare here

SNES N64 GC Wii Wii U Switch GBC GBA DS 3DS PS1 PS2 PS3 PS4 X360 MD PC
2 3 3 6 6 15 1 2 2 5 1 2 2 2 1 1 14
  • While the PC barely failed to overtake the Switch overall, it is easily the system with the most "exclusive" games (as in, games I only played on one platform) on the list, with 10 out of the 14 it had total. Meanwhile, out of the Switch's 15 games, only 7 were listed with the Switch as their only platform.

And here's the highest ranked game for each platform (to avoid repeats, I'll only consider the platform I enjoyed each game the most on):

  • SNES: Super Metroid, #9
  • N64: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, #24
  • GC: Metroid Prime, #12
  • Wii: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, #5
  • Wii U: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, #7
  • Switch: Ōkami, #2
  • GBC: Pokémon Gold & Silver, #23
  • GBA: Metroid Fusion, #22
  • DS: Pokémon Black & White, #17
  • 3DS: Pokémon X & Y, #10
  • PS1: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, #43
  • PS2: Shadow of the Colossus, #6
  • PS3: Persona 5, #4
  • PS4: Thumper, #19
  • X360: Portal 2, #13
  • MD: Sonic the Hedgehog 2, #46
  • PC: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, #1

To close this out, here's the yearly and decade-based breakdowns. Here's the list of years that had multiple games listed, and which game ranked highest from those years.

  • 1997: 2 games – Highest: Star Fox 64, #28
  • 2002: 3 games – Highest: Metroid Prime, #12
  • 2004: 2 games – Highest: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, #25
  • 2006: 3 games – Highest: Ōkami, #2
  • 2007: 3 games – Highest: Portal, #31
  • 2010: 2 games – Highest: Pokémon Black & White, #17
  • 2011: 2 games – Highest: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, #5
  • 2014: 3 games – Highest: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, #18
  • 2015: 2 games – Highest: Ori and the Blind Forest, #21
  • 2016: 3 games – Highest: Persona 5, #4
  • 2017: 6 games – Highest: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, #7
  • 2019: 2 games – Highest: Astral Chain, #16
  • 2020: 4 games – Highest: Ori and the Will of the Wisps, #3
  • 2021: 3 games – Highest: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, #1

2017 is unsurprisingly the year with the most games, but I'll admit I hadn't realized just how many games from the last few years had found their way in. But I've always been more biased towards newer games, as evidenced by the numbers for each decade (and I'm sure many are judging the complete absence of anything 1980's from this post, outside of the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack that is):

  • 1990's: 7 games
  • 2000's: 13 games
  • 2010's: 22 games
  • 2020's: 8 games

Also, just a quick shoutout to Super Metroid, which at #9 is my game of the decade for the 1990's (it being the only game from 1994 on the list means it didn't show up on the yearly breakdown up there).

And also another shoutout to Hollow Knight at #8, the only game from my top 10 to have been omitted from this post so far because it always ended up behind something else on each breakdown (it used to be above Breath of the Wild until last year, too).

Okay, think that'll be all from me. This post got way longer than I expected it to. Looking through those lists of previous years to see how this one compares makes me realize this year's list (2023, that is) will be my 10th time on this event. It's a great way to feel old, but hey, getting older ain't all that bad. Has its plus sides for sure. Anyways, have a nice year everyone!

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