Looking at the game released that year, the best game was probably Bomberman. Not entirely sure of all the games released that year.

Mario Bros was released that year but it was the first Mario game with just the single screen, so not the best game. Super Mario didn't come out until 1985.

Born in 1976, so there wasn't much more than arcade games, do they count? Well, it seems there was a game called Colossal Cave Adventure for the PDP-10 computer(?). Guess I'll go with that. It's a text-based adventure game. Yay.

I dunno, Backgammon maybe? This thread reminds me of just how old I am.

You're forgetting an excellent game and my pick for game of my birthyear: Super Mario Land.
I loved this game as a kid, played the heck out of it, and still have a virtual console copy downloaded onto my 3DS.

Tough choice between Super Mario 64 and Super Mario RPG.

Yes, it's the Gameboy one. I was a Nintendo kid, so Mario was a big chunk of what I played. Now you've got me curious about those Sega game given that Golden Axe was pretty good and you've ranked Revenge of Shinobi above it.

Video games were still in their infancy in 1976 (the Atari 2600 was still a year away from even being released).  From what was released that year, I guess I would say Breakout.

I think DQ VIII.

Archon: The light and the dark