Has to do with the rules for the legal games:

• Expansions, DLCs, or anything of the sort will be included with their base game, so you can't list those separately.
• Remakes, remasters, definitive editions, or anything of the sort should also not be listed separately from their original release.
• However, certain remakes that differ from the original significantly are allowed. This includes, for example, the Resident Evil remakes and the Metroid remakes. This works on a game-by-game basis - if you're unsure about a specific title, ask me!

The separation is sure as hell subjective, but I think mZuzek is open to discussion if you want to treat SoulSilver/Heartgold as different games or the Demons Souls remake as the same.

This gave me an idea.  Here are the highest ranked games with the fewest votes.  People that voted for these must have had them ranked very high in their lists.  Although that seems to break down when you get toward the top of the list.

• Highest game with 1 vote: Wizardry 8 at 382
• Highest game with 2 votes: Warcraft III at 214
• Highest game with 3 votes: The Legend of Dragoon at 157
• Highest game with 4 votes: Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia at 118
• Highest game with 5 votes: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic at 107
• Highest game with 6 votes: Tales of Symphonia at 99
• Highest game with 7 votes: Minecraft at 60
• Highest game with 8 votes: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island at 61
• Highest game with 9 votes: Bloodborne at 50
• Highest game with 10 votes: StarCraft at 45
• Highest game with 11 votes: Hollow Knight at 36
• Highest game with 12 votes: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt at 35
• Highest game with 13 votes: Mass Effect 2 at 37
• Highest game with 14 votes: Pokémon Red / Blue / Yellow / FireRed / LeafGreen versions at 46
• Highest game with 15 votes: Xenoblade Chronicles at 22
• Highest game with 16 votes: Shadow of the Colossus at 28

There is only 1 game with 17 votes.  That is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves at 29.  After that we are basically in the Top 20 anyway.

It's just an aesthetic choice, because both have the same name. Both the original and the remake count as the same game - you'll notice there's only one Demon's Souls on the list.

There's a few ambiguous ones like that in the top 100 where I chose to omit information. The Persona games, Xenoblade 2, StarCraft and Super Mario 3D World come to mind. All of these had expansions or alternate versions, and their votes are included in there, but I've kept only the base game name.

Only 5 votes for this game.. I think I should campaign for this one this year.

My favorite went from 4 votes last year to only 2 this time, and it went down YoY on the other list, you should be grateful

I’ll try to replay it this year!

Warcraft III's two votes came in at #1 and #2, it's pretty crazy. It finished well ahead of Warcraft II with only half the votes.

As for some games ending up behind others with fewer votes, even when only considering the highest ranked game of each number of votes, it's just because they had worse votes overall. So for example, Minecraft's 7 votes averaged 8th place on the lists it was in, whereas Yoshi's Island's 8 votes averaged 14th place on theirs. So Minecraft ended up ahead - by one point.

If we look towards the top of the list, there's a good example right near the top with Ocarina of Time finishing ahead of Super Mario Galaxy with one fewer vote. And looking at the spreadsheet, OoT has SMG beat by a big margin, SMG would need at least 3 more high-ranking votes to surpass it.

And yes, I was pretty disappointed with Shadow of the Colossus' placement.

Thanks a lot for your hard work making this list possible mZuzek!
Really like that one can view the results from so many different angles. Was pure joy going through the top games per system and year as voted by the community.
As a series Zelda is hard to beat and Nintendo just dominates the top.

I was surprised Metroid Dread got such a high ranking since it still is a fairly new game. Need to try it out sometime.

Also glad Starcraft made it to top 50. To me that game is the most concentrated form of "cool" anything.
And even another RTS masterpeice Age of Empires 2 just breaks into the top 50.

I have tried many times to get into Zelda BotW, but no, I just don't like it very much. It still sits comfortably at top of the list and I think it will do so for the upcoming years as well. Maybe some votes will go to Tears of the Kingdom instead next time to shake it up a little?

Fun as always and thanks again for all the work put into this!

See, it's already working!

It has been on my wish list to play for a long time.  I'm definitely going to pick it up for Switch, but it is unlikely I play it before next years list.