#47

 Super Mario Bros 3

NES

1988

One of the things I did for my list this year was going back and reevaluating games. I wanted to rank all the games on my list based on how fun they are today, not how fun I found them when I initially played them.

Despite being over 30 years old and on an ancient system SMB3 is just flat out better than 99% of all the other games out there. What I'm saying is that if you erased all memory of SMB3 and released it today in 2019 it would still get 93/100 reviews across the board from every site out there. It's that damned good. 

What makes it so good? The art direction is killer, especially for an 8-bit game. The only NES game that looks better is Kirby's Adventure. The controls are spot on. The game is actually challenging without alienating the less experienced players. A lot of games these days are either way too easy, or so hard they cater to a select few players that want an extreme challenge. SMB3 not only finds an excellent middle ground, but actively teaches players how to be better by way of slowly ramping up the difficulty. 

We are in an age where small Indie studios are regularly outdoing SNES and NES classics. For this game to be on my list in this day and age is a just a testament to how awesome it is, and how awesome it will remain for years to come. 

#46

Mario Kart 8

Wii U 

2014

Normally I don't like racing games at all. They are too much like sports games, with no video game fun injected into them. They just try to replicate real life, and IMO that's boring. Imagine an FPS where you take a single bullet and die. Or a cooking game where you have to wait a literal hour in game to see your cooking results. Emulating real life in games often doesn't work out at all. It's just unfun.

Luckily, Mario Kart has always been about fun over realism. The ability to shoot your opponents with shells, leave banana peels, shove them off the road, or nuke them with the Blue Shell just adds a delightful brand of chaos to what would have otherwise been another boring racing series. The rubber banding in this game series keeps the action going ensuring that nobody gets too far ahead of the pack. 

Mario Kart 8 just took the MK formula and dialed it up to 11. The graphics are honestly the best the series has ever had, and even puts many games to shame to this day. We've got more tracks, carts, and characters than ever. Now that the game can be taken on the go with Switch it represents the biggest leap in the on the go version of the series ever. 

#45

                Subnautica

PC

2018

Ladies and Gentleman say hello to what is hands down the best 3D Crafting/Exploration game ever made! Subnautica starts you out stranded on an alien planet with nothing but a fabricator and a tablet. The game has a hunger, oxygen and hydration system built into it. Yeah, that's right you have to eat, drink, and breath in this game. You can suffocate, starve, or just go dehydrated while surrounded by water. Thankfully, this game isn't too realistic with these features. The pacing is set up in such a way that you always feel the pain of hunger or parched lips, but aren't terribly burdened by it. You start out in the first hour of the game desperately trying to catch enough food and bladderfish to keep you fed and hydrated. This in turn makes it so much more rewarding whenever you unlock a way to build something that gives you free water or free food. 

And build you can in this game. The game has a building system that puts everything else I've seen to shame. What are you building? Underwater bases of course! These bases come with research labs, ore smelters, solar panels, small exploration vehicles, and some other vehicles that I honestly don't want to spoil for anybody. 

The goal of the game is to dive deeper and deeper into this alien world that you've crash landed on. As you do you'll uncover the wreckage of past survivors and unravel the mystery of why your ship was shot down. The developers just do a damned excellent job of leaving just enough story bread crumbs to keep you going. 

As you dive deeper you'll need better equipment, that can survive the crushing pressure, and dangerous creatures. You'll keep going into the scariest environments you've ever come across. Just imagine what is at the bottom of earth's oceans. Now take that and imagine what it would be in an alien world that is 99% covered in water, with much deeper oceans. Yeah, that's Subnautica.