Guessed by @S.Peelman

The end-all be-all of videogames as far as child me was concerned. If I was making these lists since I was born (ok that sounded less stupid in my head), A Link to the Past would've likely had the #1 spot for longer than any other title. Maybe it's something to do with me not having any Nintendo consoles for nearly two decades after the SNES, meaning I missed out on having my mind blown by the 3D Zeldas, but even back then, I remember not being particularly impressed whenever I saw Ocarina of Time at a friend's house or whatever.

Another thing I remember is my brother deciding to trade our SNES for a Game Boy Color without my consent, meaning I never got to finish this as a kid. It was several years later when I finally played through the whole thing, somewhere in my mid-teens. I kept looking up walkthroughs whenever I got stuck (likely a consequence of not playing much Nintendo over my childhood, didn't do much thinking in the games I did play), and every time I said "how the hell was I supposed to know that?", I'd remember having done that as a kid with no English knowledge. Back then I was too scared of the dungeons and stuff, so I usually kept exploring the overworld even knowing I wasn't making any progress. It didn't matter. Kids play games to have fun, not to make progress.

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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

Mind blowing barely begins to describe the feeling of playing Portal for the first time. That mostly applies to the first game, to be fair, but while that one was almost like a prototype, a little experiment, this here was a massive game with a fully fledged out story, tons of mechanics and types of levels, environments, and it's not like it had a shortage of ways to blow your mind all over again. It never ran out of them, actually, because even after the main story, you can just go into the user-made levels and have an infinity of insane puzzles. And there's even a co-op campaign that is also surprisingly great. Honestly there isn't much to say about Portal 2 because it's just so flawlessly good, and everyone knows it. So I'll just leave it here.

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Guessed by @Machina

The best transition from 2D to 3D in any game franchise. Metroid Prime honestly had no right being good, given how its developers had basically no proven track record, and how they had a super tight deadline, and how it put Metroid in first-person, which no one could've expected and certainly no one thought was a good thing. It's frankly inexplicable how good this game is. It's ridiculous. It's an absolute masterpiece. Seasoned developers would've struggled to make a 3D Metroid game this good if given several years of to develop it. Hell, its graphics still look great and it's freaking 20 years old (holy shit I'm ancient). I have no idea how this came to be, but I'm grateful that it did, and Retro Studios later proved it was no accident by making two fantastic sequels (hopefully the next one continues to impress).

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Guessed by @Machina

I probably need to update the number of playthroughs there, because this game is so damn fun, I keep replaying it whenever I've nothing else better to do. And to be fair, there isn't ever much better to do than playing Metroid Dread. And beyond how fun it is to play, there's so much else it gets right. The whole vibe and atmosphere, the intense encounters with the E.M.M.I., how it handles the first appearances of living Chozo, with just enough of them to be satisfying without ruining the mythos. The level design that always keeps you on your toes, never sticking to a predictable formula, the awesome boss battles that make you use all the tools at your disposal while not forcing any specific way to defeat them - and how when they do go down, their deaths are always so strange and unsatisfying, you can't help but spend the rest of the game thinking maybe that enemy is still gonna come back... It's how this game picks up a storyline dormant for almost 20 years, now being addressed by a different studio, and makes it look effortless, like they picked up right after Fusion was done. It doesn't lose its way at any moment, it's not interested in pandering to nostalgia, it knows exactly what it wants to be, and it's Metroid 5.

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Guessed by @Machina

This game is magical to me. There's no other way to describe it. I remember rushing into the store that Saturday morning, bringing it back home, and getting teary-eyed upon booting it up (and then learning that it went out of stock all over town until the next week). It sounds a bit silly honestly, because nowadays it's easy to forget just how big of a deal it was for Pokémon to go 3D. And while we all grown to take that for granted, I still get emotional whenever I start playing this again, because it's such a special game.

Speaking of which, I did actually replay it this year, though it barely feels like it because it was in early January, which feels like a longer time ago than last year. I was going on a trip and decided I wanted to take the 3DS and play a randomizer of Pokémon Y. But when I turned the game on, I realized I'd screwed up the modding stuff, and was left with the vanilla game for the whole trip. Oh well, guess I have to replay this same game for the millionth time. I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed it as much as the previous playthrough, but in all fairness, most of the negative feelings I had while replaying it were just frustrations over where this series went after X & Y, not issues with the game itself. I mean, basically there are things I wish this game was better at doing, but I give it a pass because it was the first step forward in a lot of those things - I expected the franchise to then continue moving forward, rather than taking steps back, but anyway.

X & Y are amazing. I'll always love them dearly, and I'll always feel sad for those who don't. It has one of my favorite soundtracks in all of gaming. In Pokémon terms, it has my favorite region, and my favorite cast of creature designs by far. It was a game I spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours in, because of how much fun it was to breed competitive teams and battle online. It was everything to me for a while. And after that while, it has stayed in my heart forever. Honestly it's hard to explain why I love it so much, but I do. And I'll never let the internet tell me otherwise.

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Guessed by @Darashiva

Games don't really ever come any better than this.

This was a monumental step forward for the industry, a game more immersive and more cinematic than most games made since it, never mind before it. It it amazing on its own, but it also elevates the entire Metroid franchise, at the time composed of two not-so-great games, and truly feels like the climactic ending to a trilogy that didn't even matter before it, a saga it basically created on its own. The first two chapters of the trilogy becoming almost more recognizable by their brief appearances in the prologue of Super Metroid, than the actual games were.

Honestly there isn't even much to say about it. If you look up the definition of the word 'masterpiece', it's gonna say Super Metroid. I think all of us here have played it. If someone hasn't, you should fix that. And maybe replay it after that, because this game is always great regardless of how many times you've beaten it - I'd almost argue later playthroughs are even more fun than the first, because of the crazy sequence breaking and all that.

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Guessed by @Darashiva

The game that finally dethroned Super Metroid as the king of the genre it created, 23 years later. And deservedly so.

Hollow Knight was the first Metroidvania that took me longer than 10 or so hours to finish. I used to believe the genre had shorter games by necessity, that they would inevitably get stale or boring if they went on for too long. Then I played this, a game that took me well over 40 hours to finish, and it only kept getting better and better and better.

It actually even starts a bit slow, I'm not sure I would've gotten into it if I didn't conveniently get a cold that made this the perfect game to play on the Switch while I stayed in bed all day. By the time the cold was gone, I was totally caught up in it and closing in on what I thought was going to be the halfway point of the journey - it was more like the end of the tutorial. After that, it just keeps finding new ways to surprise you, to expand on its world, and on its lore, it goes deeper and deeper seemingly to no end, but eventually it does end and it's an incredible ending too. It's got very little in the way of cutscenes or dialogue, but it has a great narrative owing much to how well it does visual storytelling. Honestly, living in this world was an unforgettable experience and one that continued to amaze even several playthroughs in.

And if all goes well, it won't be the only Hollow Knight game on the list come this time next year.

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Almost done catching up, sorry for the big spam there.

Instead of posting another hint for #7, I'll just post the hint for the next game and say that both of the games here are from the same franchise.

Still four games left, so here's another set of hints.

#4 

-Perpetuate the cycle or break it

-Your journey begins locked away in an asylum

-"With fire came disparity."

#3

-For 32 years, the path to earth has been lost

-The Shivans return

-You're a pilot in the alliance

#2

-10,000 years after the war that freed humanity

-The main character has spent the previous five years searching for the monster that killed his parents and destroyed his village

-He returns to his new home village at the start of the game after five years, only to find it destroyed and his childhood friend taken captive

#1

-Contains numerous references and allusions to the series' past

-Starts with some of the characters putting on a stage play

-The play is only a cover for a kidnapping plan

Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 is correct!

Okami, is not correct though.