no guesses for my #1?
I honestly thought someone would have gotten it already. I'll go update my list and post it here. That should make it obvious.

See, I like when People know me. Pokemon Crystal or more specifically Pokemon heart gold / soul silver is my favourite game of all time!

Crystal is my favourite game, but the remake is the superior version of it so..... HG :D

#6 Super Mario Bros. 3

Why did it make the list?
Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best platformer game ever made.  Some people even say it is the best game ever made, period.  I can’t really argue with these people.  I can only say that platformers are not really my main genre and that is why I can only put this at #6.  But to really explain why this game is so awesome, I will have to go back to the original experience.

Original Experience:
Please humor me for a moment.  I would like you to think about your favorite game of all time.  Think about what it was like when you first played it.  Perhaps this was a game you played as a small child or a teenager.  Think about how you felt playing this truly amazing game.  Now imagine that another game came out that was a lot like the first game only far better in every way.  That is what it was like to play Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time.

In order to understand why Super Mario Bros. 3 is so great, you first have to understand why Super Mario Bros 1 was so great.  Super Mario Bros. 1 was the best home console game ever when it was first released.  It blew away every Atari 2600 game.  Pitfall was the best-selling Atari 2600 game.  Try playing it and SMB 1 back to back, and you will see what I mean.  Super Mario Bros. 1 resurrected console gaming from the dead.  That is how good it was.  Also, everyone who owned an NES in the 80’s played SMB 1.  It was the symbol for both the NES and home gaming in general.  Then Super Mario Bros. 3 came out.  It blew everyone’s mind. 

It definitely blew MY mind.  When SMB 1 came out it seemed huge.  SMB 3 was bigger.  SMB 3 had 8 worlds, but with a lot more stages per world and bonus levels and an overworld map.  You could even skip stages on the map if you wanted to, and that was fine because there were just so many stages.  SMB 1 had really fun power ups.  SMB 3 had more power-ups, better power-ups.  You could friggin’ fly for the very first time.  Then later in the game you can get the Tanooki suit, which is an even more powerful flying suit.  And there are even one time power ups like Kuribo’s shoe.  SMB 1 was a game full of secrets, like hidden blocks and vines and warp tunnels.  I would spend hours in SMB 1 just looking for all of the secrets in each stage.  SMB 3 had even more secrets, far more secrets and better secrets.  It still had hidden blocks and vines, but now you could fly into the sky and find even more secrets.  And you have to even go a very good ways into the game to even discover that there is Hammer Bros. suit power-up.  For all the time I spent looking for SMB 1 secrets, I spent so much more time looking for SMB 3 secrets.

All of this is here to try to put to words how truly amazing Super Mario Bros. 3 really is.  And yet words cannot fully describe it.  They made an entire Hollywood movie theater film just to market this game, and somehow it still seemed under hyped. 

With all this praise I am giving SMB 3, someone may wonder how I only rate this as #6 on my list.  All I can say is that my top 5 games are more personally tailored to my tastes.  If I were to judge solely by objective standards, I think I would have to put SMB 3 at #1.


How does it hold up today?
Graphically, the game uses dated 8-bit NES graphics.  The gameplay, however, is unmatched.  Games just do not get better than this.

#5 Heroes of Might and Magic 2

Why did it make the list?
There are a lot of great turn based strategy games on the PC, but this one is easily my favorite.  It also helped me answer the question, “Where do great games come from?”  Very often a great game looks at another really good game, throws out most of the gameplay and keeps only the very best parts, then dials the best parts up to 11.  For example, Master of Magic is a very good game, easily in the top 2% of games I’ve ever played.  But my favorite part of Master of Magic is really just getting a hero together with some really good fantasy themed troops, and then going around stomping every enemy to the ground.  This is essentially the gameplay behind Heroes of Might and Magic 2.

The basic gameplay for HoMM 2 is that you use your fantasy armies to fight against the other guy’s fantasy armies and eventually conquer his town(s).  You build your side up by developing your town(s) in various ways: generate more gold, or get better troops, or a better mage guild or better town defenses, or etc….  Then you send your heroes out with troops to capture resource generators (like mines).  If you get enough resources that lets you get even better town upgrades.  This cycle continues until you are ready to capture the enemy’s town(s).  Of course, while this is going on the enemy is doing the exact same thing that you are. 

The basic gameplay is extremely fun, but I also like how the game can make you feel overpowered.  There are two towns: the Wizard and Warlock, which have the 2 most overpowered units in the game: Dragons and Titans.  On top of that the Wizard and Warlock heroes are the most powerful heroes, if they are high level and you have a fully upgraded mage guild.  This is balanced by the fact that the “weaker” towns like the Knight and Barbarian actually become powerful a lot faster.  Controlling either type of town can make the player feel powerful.  Obviously, if you are walking around with some super kickass troops and ultra-powerful spells, then you feel awesome.  But also if you have a barbarian and manage to take down one of the more powerful cities, then that is also pretty badass. 

Another way that HoMM 2 balances things out is by having 3 types of troops: melee, flying and ranged.  These three types form a very loose Rock, Scissors, Paper type of game.  Ranged units clobber slow melee types, flyers can go anywhere on the map and tend to be stronger than ranged units, and melee are even stronger than flyers.  I say this is a very loose Rock, Scissors, Paper, because there are also 6 levels of creatures in each city and each level gets progressively more powerful.  Skeletons may be a melee unit, but they are really only strong compared to the other level 1 units and get clobbered easily by any level 6 unit. 

If this game has a flaw it is that the Knight’s town doesn’t have much variety in its troops: mostly melee.  The Barbarian city is technically just as weak as the Knights, but they have more troop variety than the Knight and therefore I have a lot more fun with them.  This game has 6 different types of towns, and I have tons of fun with 5 out of the 6, the Knight being the exception.

There was originally quite a huge fan base around the Heroes of Might and Magic series.  Most prefer HoMM 3 more while some (like myself) prefer HoMM 2.  I will concede that game #3 is a better multiplayer game, but I always played these games in single player mode.  These were essentially pre-internet games.

Original Experience:
I remember being in a game store and my friend’s girlfriend came up to me and asked, “Which of these games would my boyfriend like more?”  One of the games was a computer version of Risk and the other was Heroes of Might and Magic 2.  I could tell just by looking at the back of the box that this was a far better game, so I recommended it.  Fast forward two months and his girlfriend is extremely mad at me.  My advice was far too good.  We spent most of our time playing this game together, while she wanted him to spend most of his time with her. 

How does it hold up today?
The game has somewhat cartoony graphics, and I think this is one thing that turns people off.  The gameplay of this game is fantastic though.  The only other strategy game which can compete is Heroes of Might and Magic 3.  I prefer the ultra-powered feeling of HoMM2, but for multiplayer HoMM 3 is the better choice.  Both are fantastic games that I would recommend to any fan of PC strategy games.

It's not, actually. It's Professor Layton and the Last Spectre.

I got confused because this game is also about a mysterious village. And they translated the title for the Dutch version, so I didn't know what the English title was.

 Time for more hints:

 #4 In North America, this spinoff game was released just a few months after the series' most successful entry.

Hint 2: The story of this game is about two childhood friends who took two very different paths as adults.

Hint 3: This is a turn based tactical RPG.

Hint 4: This is a PS1 game.

Hint 5: This game had two sequels.  Although this is a PS1 game, the sequels ended up on Nintendo handheld devices.

 

#3 “Since man first walked upright, he has looked to the stars and wondered, ‘Are we alone in this cold corner of space? If something is out there, would it be friend…or foe?’ What would this Earth man think if he could see a desperate space ship, fleeing at a speed faster than imagination? What would he think if he saw the impact of powerfully potent neutronic missiles upon its fragile frame? What would he make of the strange pod that ejected from the ruined remains, just in time to avoid its mysterious inhabitant’s destruction? And would he gape in wonder at the dozen or so strange canisters that burst from its hold and fell towards the atmosphere of our guileless globe? What emotion would pass through his mind as he observed these selfsame containers as they passed through our atmosphere and fell upon the surface of an unsuspecting metropolis? So many questions and so few answers…until now dear viewers…until now….”

Hint 2: This is a real time tactical RPG.

Hint 3: This PC game pays homage to silver age comic books, especially those created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Hint 4: The developer of this game is actually more well known for a game about an underwater city dedicated to Objectivist philosophy. 

#2  I want to give you the whole picture
Yeah, I'd love to tell you more
The girl Messiah was your lover 
or maybe the girl next door?
The first one died and she can't come back
Because she's like no other
The other went in and brought you back
Which will be your lover?

Hint 2:  This game comes from a well known series.  However the ROM for this entry is approximately 700 times larger than the ROM for the previous entry. 

6

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2

• Windows PC
• 2002
• Construction & Management Simulation
• Chris Sawyer Productions

If there ever was a game that needed to count play-time, it is 'Rollercoaster Tycoon 2'. It's a shame I will never know, but I have undoubtedly put many thousands of hours into it, which likely makes it my most ever played game. There's really just two other contenders. I still have many of my saved-games from the very beginning, dozens and dozens of them and there's more added to that list on a fairly regular basis though certain parks alone take hundreds of hours to build.

A game which I played so regularly for such a long time has got to be good, and it is placed high on the list, because it is. The player is unlimited, and you can build anything you can imagine. The only downside is that the world didn't stand still, and advancements have been made in real life in ride-technology in the last one-and-a-half decade since the game's release that isn't possible to replicate in the game without some doses of imagination. It doesn't spoil the fun however.

Even with those thousands, maybe even ten-thousand, of hours of playtime, I barely completed a single scenario. They're not interesting; the sandbox-mode, and the limitless design possibilities that come with it is what it's all about, and I've gotten very good at it. Even without the use of the many available user-created content and hacks. In fact, what you see in the screenshot is vanilla, and mine.

#5
Usually, either it's predecessor or it's successor get more credit for things, but this game actually invented a lot of this great series' mainstays like the collect-a-thon and trading side-quests, a musical instrument with different songs for different purposes, mini-bosses, a guide character and a certain mini-game.

#6
A remake that made the original game completely worthless.