Ding ding ding!

Metal Gear Solid 3.

Incorrect

StarCraft 64

I have a feeling everyone's hints are harder than last year .

Anyway mine's shouldn't be that hard. A few hours left until I post the game.

Game #44

The theme-music of this game actually appeared to be the unofficial National Anthem of a certain country at some point in time. Due to it's controversy, this song is now banned under criminal law in that country. Despite some controversy here and there, it is a well known game of monumental importance and usually held to high esteem.

Hint for the #43: It's considered by many the pinnacle of the game genre at the very end of the fifth console generation on the most powerful, yet outdated console. It's a game that touches a sport that involves a degree of fakeness and spectacle, but it's still real to me, dammit.

Grand Theft Auto III

No, although that was a great game

Based on the hint I gave, this could have been the answer but no ;) The game I am talking about mixes RTS with RPG elements. You did find the "unexpected" system by the way...

Considering Starcraft, the PC version was very close to my top 50. Never played the 64 version though.

Number 44: Sim City 3000:

I have no idea how many hours I've spent with this Maxis classic, the last really good one in the series, their later efforts turned out "EA'd" at the other end of the production cycle.

The premise is both hard and simple; you start off with a piece of land where you're tasked to found a city, you start off small and build a few stretches of road, a power plant, perhaps a hospital, police station and fire department, you then construct housing, commercial and industrial zones and make sure everyone has water and electricity.
The beginning of the game is always a challenge; it's hard to earn money in the starting phase and you'll likely be forced to take out sizeable loans to stay afloat, and right around the time where you do start earning real money; the citizens will start demanding the more grand things in life such as sports stadiums, huge parks, perhaps subway a system and highways.
Finding the balance between a safe budget and a popular city that actually grows can be immensely challenging and there are a multitude of deciding factors for where and how many people choose to come live in your fair city.
The UI in Sim City 3000 is a lot more sleek than the previous installment and there plenty of tools to muck around with, there is also the option of setting loose a major disaster on your inhabitants and their home should you want to (and, let's be honest here; you want to).

PS: Don't let a fire spread; you'll never get it under control...

Hint for number 43:

This game was made by a developer who has their offices only about one kilometer from where I live, it was in some ways their first real break-out hit and gained a cult following and is still being played today after almost ten years, despite two massively successful sequels having been released in the meantime. It has elements from more than one genre but has its main focus in one of the most popular genres in the world today. Fun fact; one of the most legendary maps in this game, which still lives on in updated forms in the two sequels (via expansions) is, to my knowledge, the only map in such a game named after a real world country. Fun fact 2; this developer had the misfortune, like Maxis above, of falling into the arms of notorious Electronic Arts and has gotten a lot of critique since then.