12. 

Super Mario World - This game blew me away when I first played it.  The level design, the music, Yoshi, the bosses they all are fantastic.  I've played through this game on the SNES and GBA about 12 times in total.  Being told I was a 'super player' was a defining moment in my gaming life.

Number 21

God Hand

God Hand is hard - really, really hard - but fair. It's also pretty much the best game Shinji Mikami ever made, in spite of things that would detract from a review score. It's a game that's about punching people in the face, and that's all it is, and that is what makes it so wonderful. God Hand's design is such that the brave and the bold are msot rewarded, and the difficulty is dynamically adjusted to match the player's own skill level, with rewards being increased as the difficulty does. It creates a perfect economy of skill and difficulty that makes it immensely satisfying to improve one's combat skills.

More, the game plays perfectly. Controls are tight and rock solid, and the best of the best can get through the entire game without taking a hit. Almost no one will do that, and most will die horribly all the time. God Hand does not play around. That is part of what makes it so satisfying when you kick people into space, or in the crotch, or punch them so hard that it kills the guy behind them. It's lightning fast, frenetic, juvenile, ugly, and has a bitching soundtrack. It's pretty much the bestest action game ever made.

And yeah, it's brutal and unforgiving for people who suck, but I'm not one of them, so HA.

People using fanart for banners is going to end up making me insane

Number 20

Final Fantasy IV

This right here is the eponymous JRPG - my first traditional game in the genre, my first Final Fantasy, on and on and on. THis is where it started for me, engendering an affection for games I otherwise may have never touched.

It is worth noting, here, that I am not simply putting this here out of nostalgia - the DS version of this game is brutal, long, and deeply strategic. It's the perfect traditional Final Fantasy, taking itself just seriously enough that its elements of tragedy are properly communicated. The plot is simple enough (in a way), but the particular elements of the story, especially the characters, stand easily on their own. Kain is the star of the show, the original "Final Fantasy bad ass son of a bitch" who begat such characters as Shadow and Auron, and greater than any that came after him. His internal conflict is indicative of the larger conflicts in the game, the problem of the evil within people struggling against their goodness, and his resolution is nothing short of perfect.

Thematically Final Fantasy IV is the tightest and most well-constructed game in the series, and I tend to tune out anyone who tries to claim otherwise. This game right here. Man. And the music! The music.

This is also the part of the list - the top twenty - where each game could be argued to be the best ever. Past here, ordering is almost arbitrary and immensely cruel. Anyone who called FFIV the best game of all time would get my support.

13. WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos/The Frozen Throne (PC)

Is it possible to love a game that you're not very good at? Well, that's the case with WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos and the expansion: The Frozen Throne. I bet you that anyone else that loves this game can trounce me handily if we were to play a match. Doesn't matter to me one bit. This game captured my imagination and my playing time like no game before it. I know for a fact that I've spent over 1,000 hours playing this game... because there's just so much to do. I've played, replayed, and beaten the campaign modes time and time again (every time I uninstall and reinstall the game, I have to go back and beat it. Call it my RTS OCD.), but most of all, I've spent oodles and oodles of time on Battle.net. Not the competitve scene, mind you, but the Custom Games. This, my friends, is where the fun lies. Tower Defense and the plethora of WinterMauls are my favorites (gotta love some PokeMaul), and I'm always looking for a game to play. Poker TD is great as well... I mean, I could just go on and on about the different maps I love to play on in this game. Heck, I even played Dota from time to time... and besides the juvenile players themselves, the game was fun.

Eight year later, and I'm still playing this game from time to time. Kudos to Blizzard for an amazing game, and to the millions of players that have made the Custom Maps area of Battle.net what it is. Who's up for some DBZ Tribute?

40

It's easy to point out Jeanne D'Arcs flaws. And they're quite major depending on what your value set is. Its difficulty is uneven throughout, the writing is poor (as per usual in Level-5 games) and it really doesn't attempt anything new. However, much of that is overshadowed by the game's amazing presentation (namely the hand-drawn cutscenes), great music and gameplay depth; the amount of customization given is seemingly unlimited and the battles early on require a great deal of planning and thought.

Jeanne D'Arc is a solid SRPG. Being that I prefer that genre to most, lands Level-5's underappreciated effort at number 40 on my list.

Number 19

The Legend of Zelda

If you didn't see this coming, you don't know me very well. I played the original Legend of Zelda for the first time in 2007, near the game's 20th anniversary. Like any decent, God-fearing individual, I sat down, took some paper, and drew a grid on it. As I moved through the game I made a map, noting where one could move between screens (so I could plan a path, you see), where items and heart pieces were, directions for how to get through the Lost Woods, all of that. I fought through hordes of enemies the likes of which would make most adventurers crap their pants, collected magic items to make myself stronger, and very slowly made the land of Hyrule into my own realm.

This game is perfect, one of only three games that I would readily give that distinction to. Its design is flawless and fun from end to end, the music never grates in spite of looping so often, and when you finally triumph over evil the feeling of reward is far greater than a video of the ending might lead you to believe.

This game is the progenitor of what may well be the greatest series ever made. More than that, it's a game whose greatness communicates itself more than two decades after its release. I am singular, living proof of that. Among the gloried host of its own series, this game stands proud, unassailable, and will never be too old to be awesome.

39

This game is absurdly fun. In Elite Beat Agents, developer iNiS created a game that had oozed charm; was so intuitive; and that would make you smile whenever you played it. Generally, I appreciate these qualities most in gaming. Elite Beat Agents does a fine job at each of them.

Number 18

Steel Battalion

I dig giant robots.

You dig giant robots.

Chicks dig giant robots.

That said, only I and six other people in the entire universe owned Steel Battalion last generation. It was a mech sim the likes of which had never been seen before, a slavish adherence to reality anchored to a forty-something-button controller that resulted in what was easily the most engrossing simulation game of all time. And it was about giant robots. Giant. Robots.

Every time you started a mission you had to go through a boot-up sequence for your mech that involved flipping a lot of switches in time so as not to overload any systems, a minigame of immense ritual that made you feel like you were a pilot. It's impossible to communicate how immense that feeling is, but I will try: every time I played, it was with the investment that this was my effort, my machine, my life bearing out the results. If your mech exploded before you could eject (and what a nice eject button that was, it glowed and everything), the game would erase your save file. If you died, you died altogether. Death mattered almost beyond reason, and every mission - and some were well over an hour long - became a cautious exercise in survival and tactics. You got good at Steel Battalion or you hated it. There was no middle ground, as death itself became a real threat and the machine you piloted became the conduit through which you could focus your own will.

Can I communicate that? I don't think I can. This game felt real.

I remember the tenth mission. When a heavy enemy mech rounded the corner of an apartment complex, lowering a weapon so large that my own mech would collapse under the weight of it, I nearly had a heart attack. I spent the next three minutes firing directly into the mech's face, desperately timing my thrusts to the left or right to be able to throw off its targeting. When I finally managed to kill that thing the adrenaline left me shaking for nearly half an hour.

Steel Battalion is an altogether singular experience in my time as a video game player. Nothing else is like it. Nothing else compares to it.

Number 17

Super Mario Galaxy 2

No part of this should be surprising. Galaxy 2 is basically like the original, only improved in basically every way. Not only is it a game that I never stop smiling as I play, it's a game that had The Gotta, the rarest and most desirable of all entertainment qualities: you gotta keep going, gotta see the next level, gotta get at least one more star. It wasn't just excellent, it was addictive.

Excellence was the primary defining characteristic, though. Everything about it oozes quality like few other games in the industry, a result of craft so long-practiced and loving that it is not directly comparable to any other level of craft in the medium.

Ah, it makes me so happy to play.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is - I'm willing to say as of now - the best game released in 2010.