The best game series ever made has to be halo. All the halos would be in my top ten list.

Also, I just went through my favourites list of all 50 entries as well as all of my runners-up and I have to say...there's a reason I've been so active in the whole 'console war' nonsense and why exclusives seem to matter so much to me.

Almost every entry on my list is either an exclusive or heavily associated with one brand in my mind/backlog/history. I have so many pokemon, Mario, Zelda, and other Nintendo exclusives on my list. In fact, of my top 50, 17 of the slots are Nintendo exclusives with a handful more that are heavily associated with Nintendo for me. Like all the Mega Man games (4 more entries), My favourite game of all time Final Fantasy 6, and a handful of others. when it comes to PlayStation, 7 of the entries are PS exclusives with a tonne more I associate with PS because they were exclusive at one point (Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and Guitar Hero II). And I also know based on how my current backlog is looking that Final Fantasy VII Remake/Rebirth, God of War Ragnarok, and Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West will also likely end up on this list. Plus Demon's Souls Remastered is like, my #1 honourable mention and I literally only omitted it because I had to chose between it and Sekiro and I think Sekiro is the slightly better game.

The closest thing to an Xbox game on my list is Cuphead, which I played on PS4/5 and Switch.

so it's less 'boo hoo I hate Xbox and therefore they suck at exclusives', it's 'I have always found exclusive games to be more interesting and stand out better and Xbox's output has never really catered to me'.

Even today, I find I mostly only LOVE exclusive games with a sprinkling of Fromsoft, indies, and Red Dead Redemption. Most of the games I'm excited for, the games with the strongest and most appealing identity, are almost always exclusives. I don't find most multiplatform games too engaging because they always feel like mass market products instead of artistic endeavours. Usually. Not all the time but most of the time.

I just feel that games like God of War 2018 and Breath of the Wild are doing more to advance the medium of games than the latest Call of Duty or EA Football or Far Cry. I don't think multiplatform games are inherently bad I just personally never get too attached to them because they feel less like art and more like a product to me. with some exceptions, of course. Not all exclusives are good and not all multiplatform games are bad, I just find the most interesting games to be the one meant to sell consoles, not sell copies?

So yeah, that's really why I am so obsessed with exclusives and why I always bring it up when arguing quality. for most of my life, my gaming experience has been defined by exclusive titles, mascots, franchises, and the like. It's why people think Halo when they think Xbox. IT's why people think Mario or Link or a dozen other characters when they think Nintendo. IT's why people think about Kratos or Ratchet or a dozen other characters when they think of Sony. Exclusives give a platform an identity and that identity will define your tastes.

it's not just me, either. I notice a LOT of other lists have a lot of exclusives. When I look at 'best games of all time' lists the top is almost always dominated by exclusives (And Rockstar games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.) IT's why exclusives matter.

Like, two of my all time favourite games were Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII. One was at the time a Nintendo exclusive, then the franchise migrated over to Playstation and I followed. Final Fantasy VII was the main reason I allowed myself to get into Playstation when I was solely in the Nintendo camp in 1997. Halo is also why a lot of people went to Xbox in 2001. Exclusives sell consoles, they give a platform its identity, and are more likely to be driven by artistic merit, therefore creating a better connection with their audience.

One thing I noticed when creating my top 50 games this year is games that are good but not better than a similar game did not make the cut.
I like Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 but prefer the first one and so the other game did not get a place on the list.
Same with Mario Maker, Smash Bros, Pokémon Snap (yea, I actually love that game) and a few others.

It all comes done to what game I would like to play. If I want to play an Advance Wars game I will pick Dual Strike for example. But in a world where dual strike does not exist I can see that advance wars 2 is a better game than something like RC Pro Am II.

What I'm trying to say is that if my top 50 would be of games I consider better than other games instead of what games I could se myself play again, the list would be very different. Better games that is pretty much the same thing will invalidate other also great games simply be making them redundant.

I'm kind of with you on this. I mean I wasn't here yet for the big PS360 battles but my list does contain mostly exclusives (or at least games that started out as exclusives before being retro-ported or remastered or whatever). I think it's because those are just much more memorable due to indeed their uniqueness and innovation. I just re-checked my list, and in fact the only console centric multiplat on there is Guitar Hero 3 at #33. I do have many PC games though, most in fact, but even those are mostly primarily a "PC game" like city builders, if they are not also exclusives as well.

Interesting. I never came there, because I initially in the 90s played on PC and then slowly fell off gaming, until Wii and DS pulled me in. But at this point it weren't the exclusives alone, I hadn't played for many years and never console before, so that games there felt different.

Anyways, my recommendation would be to try out indies. They can give you the feeling of uniqueness, as indies aren't bound to bosses telling them chasing all the same trends, instead they can follow their quirky ideas. I am not saying every indie does that, but you will find that more often. The investment into them is also smaller than into AAA games, so it is simple to just drop a game that turns out to be a stinker and go on to the next. You don't need a modern PC, because many of the indies don't use most modern tech, but you should play on a PC, because even now that consoles have more indies than ever before, there is no comparison to the vast amount of indies available on PC.

Even with indies with year I had a lot of fun, notably 20 minutes till dawn and Against the Storm. I also played this year indies from a few years ago like Vampire Survivors or Rise to Ruins. And since I made this list I played Oxygen not Included, Factorio and Pony Island. Many of these games are a big change to console games, so if you want to take smaller steps an experience closer to what you know from console, I would start with games like A Short Hike and Graveyard Keeper, also very worthy games. I see you are not a completely stranger to indies with Cuphead and Terraria in your list, but seem mostly to stick to games that are similar to older console games like Yookah-Laylee, Axiom Verge and The Messenger. I would say try to step out a little out of your comfort zone and try PC indies like the ones I mentioned (some of them are on console, successful ones like Vampire Survivors). Maybe you feel fresh experiences outside of console exclusives.

Alright, it's been over for almost a week already, but here's the statistics for my list.

• First, here's the table of platforms and years. This lists all the platforms I own and have and have played games for (hence why some have '0' (favourites) while other consoles are omitted altogether);

In total this makes 19 games (originally) on a Nintendo system, 5 on a PlayStation system and 3 on a SEGA system, alongside the 'others'. With this, Nintendo as a whole wins, however with 17 PC games on my list, PC wins as an individual platform. That platform does however have the advantage of superseding 'generations'. When including the macOS platform, with 6 games, due to both being a personal computer platform, the total for this category rises to 23 games, almost half the list. The console with most favourites is the N64 with 6 games in the list.

The list is heavily centered around the 1990s and 2000s with a total of 46 of 50 games between them. The 1990s win overal with 26 games, among them the #3 and #1 game. Going deeper into this, looking through the list, most of those 90s and 00s games are from the second half and the first half of those decades respectively, an era I'd like to call the Golden Age of Video Games. The single 1980s game is 'Soccer' on NES (the black-box game) at #46.

The Legend of Zelda wins as most featured franchise with 6 games, among which the #1 game. After that there is a 4-way tie, however for the Mario franchise I didn't count 'Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island', which would give Mario a definitive 2nd place finish with 5 games. The order of the franchises in the 4-way tie is by highest game of that franchise in the list. The Star Wars franchise's highest game is at #2, Mario's at #3, Sim's at #8 and Total War's at #24. This means that Total War led as franchise with most entries for most of the list, while the Legend of Zelda franchise only took the lead during the list's Top 10, with it having three entries in the Top 10.

• Next, records for oldest, newest, highest, biggest movement, most games;
  • Oldest video game: #46: Soccer, NES, 1987
  • Newest video game: #10: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, WiiU, 2017
  • Number of newcomers: 0
  • Highest newcomer: -
  • Number of re-entries: 6
  • Highest re-entry: #30: Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, PC, 2000
  • Biggest climb year-on-year: #17: Call of Duty, PC, 2003 (#27 > #17)
  • Biggest drop year-on-year: #32: SimCity 3000, PC, 1999 (#15 > #32)
  • Most games of year: 1997, 1998, 1999; 5 games
  • Most represented generation: 6th; GameCube, Dreamcast, GameBoy Advance, PC + macOS (releases during 6th console generation); 15 games
  • Number of genres: 19
  • Most represented genre: Construction simulation, Adventure; 7 games
  • Average age of all games: 24 years; 2000.0 (=January 2000)

The list seems quite varied, there are plenty of genres represented and multiple years have an equal amount of games included. However the average age of the list is fairly old. This is because most games are from around the year 2000. There are some big climbs and drops this year. This is probably because this year I used a ranking engine to come up with the list this year. The top 12 or so of the list however stayed true to earlier iterations. There were no newcomers, but due to the ranking engine, there were quite a few games that returned after being absent for the previous year(s). This also meant some early games from the 80s and 70s, that have been included in previous years and were subjectively important to my personal development have now been dropped from the list this year. Overal, the 6th Generation of video games is represented most times in the list, however this is due to including PC and macOS games that were released during the era of the 6th console generation. If these are excluded, the 5th Generation of video games easily wins.

5. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
There is something oddly compelling about this game. Many RPGs take themselves too seriously, and even the ones that don't, rarely reach the insane goofiness of this title. But somehow it strikes the perfect chord with me. The humor in this game had me laughing at every other piece of dialogue. Fawful is not the most intimidating villain Mario and the crew have ever fought, but he's easily the most amusing. And the battle system is just so much fun. Action-command RPGs are my favorite style of RPG and this game delivers the best Bros Attacks in the series. Bowser is smoothly worked into the battle system and being able to swap between fighting as him and altering his cartoonish biology as Mario and Luigi brought a great 'team effort' to the boss battles. Turning Kaiju-sized was also great fun, although I'm glad they didn't overuse the mechanic. Even as fun as it was it's hard to put into words exactly why I love this game, but something about put a smile on my face every moment I played it, so that will have to be enough.

4. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Gone was the waggle tech, gone were the tikis, gone was the single health barrel rocket that was the bane of many player's existence. Retro looked at a good game in 'DKC Returns' and thought 'we can do better' and they did. The theming of artic creatures in viking style ships invading and conquering the kong islands is great. It opened up a ton of level variety without it ever feeling odd or out-of-place. But big credit has to go to David Wise for bringing the soundtrack to life with some of the best video game music out there. It didn't matter whether it was the ominous harp and horns of the viking fleet in the opening, the surfer rock of Busted Bayou, the harmonica and strings of Windmill Hills, or the African folk music of Grassland Groove. Each one nailed their respective levels and even had subtle little changes depending on where you were in the levels, like changing as you went underwater. And despite the improvements to QoL Retro did not make this game any easier than its predecessor. It was just as much of a challenge and joy to earn 100% completion.

3. Super Mario Odyssey
A few games ago when talking about Mario Galaxy, I spoke about how movement is the core of a Mario game. Odyssey is the one that did that best. Running, jumping, rolling, flipping, and more moves are at your disposal and they feel so fluid and natural that is unreal just how much fun it is to simply explore each level. And each world is a sandbox just waiting to be explored with collectibles and characters of all kinds to uncover. I'd have enjoyed this game even if that was all there was to it. but the ability to possess other characters really opened up the gameplay possibilities even more, giving insane amount of variety to the challenges. The music here was good too, but i have to give a special shout-out to Jump-up Superstar for being such a perfect encapsulation of the spirit of a Mario game, jazzy, high energy and just a good time from start to finish. And the game did have a hell of a finish. Not the final fight with Bowser, although that was fun too, but the final secret level, the dark side of the moon. Once you gather 500 moons and conquer that challenge, you climb the flagpole of the skyscraper, the lunar landscape spreads out before you and Cappy, your companion through the whole game, reminisces with you about everything the two of you have been through until you finally finish the climb and collect 4your prize. It's a quiet, poignant ending to such a wild-ride of a game and I loved how bittersweet it felt to know something I had loved so much was done.

2. Twilight Princess HD
It might be cheating a bit to specifically list the remaster, but I had already loved this game and the remaster fixed what few flaws it had. The tutorial was shorter, the tears of light missions streamlined, waggle tech was gone, and hundred little QoL improvements were made. But all of that was icing on top of the cake. Where Majora's Mask and Windwaker had experimented, Twilight Princess returned to the formula of Ocarina of Time and executed it in a darker and more mysterious world than we had yet seen in Zelda. Zant had a terrifying and otherworldly aesthetic, commanding the screen in all of the early cutscenes. His shadow creatures were alien and unnatural and it gave weight to a world invaded and conquered nearly overnight with only a single province on the edge of the kingdom resisting. But the story aside the world itself strange and wonderous with some of the best dungeons and best bosses not just in this series but in all of video games. I deliberate didn't save and restarted my game 3-4 times just to replay the Stallord boss battle. It was my favorite Zelda game over just over a decade. Then we come to my number one.

1. The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild.
As I've said a number of times at this point: I love to explore. As a child I walked and biked my entire neighborhood, tracing all the culverts, and accidently traveling several miles from home by trying to find the source of a local creek. Even as I grew I enjoyed hiking, camping, backpacking. Even just driving around so long as it let me find something new and interesting. Even when I was inside, I read books that took me to new and strange worlds, letting me experience things that were impossible here on Earth. And of course, I played video games. I explored the worlds inside my TV always looking for what was over the horizon.
In 2017 I was an adult in grad school. That feeling had never left me, but it had grown more muted with age and experience. By happenstance I found a Switch for sale while on a family vacation and I gladly scooped it up since they had been in short supply. After I got home, I bought Breath of the Wild and I felt the same joy of discovery that I had as a child. The journey was hard, I quickly learned to avoid guardians and Lonels in the early game and I can't tell you how many times I slipped off mountains due to rain. But that's part of exploration. The breaking weapons never bothered me because that was just a impetus to find more and better. The map size never intimidated me because that was just more to explore. The first thing I did once I was off the plateau was race like a madman to each of the towers to fill the map. And I looked out over everything once I had that accomplished and just followed my heart's desire, investigating whatever interested me in the moment. There's a good argument to be made that Totk is the superior game, that it improved on BotW in numerous ways. But while I love both, nothing can replace that magic that I felt first playing Breath of the Wild.

I absolutely did mention that indies are a huge factor for me. Smaller games, pixel games, etc...they're all creeping up on me as well. Smaller games like The Messenger and Terraria and Minecraft (It started small) and Cuphead and Sea of Stars and Yooka-Laylee and Bloodstained...all games that have a very important place in my heart and I don't predict that changing any time soon. 

I love me some big AAA games like Zelda and Mario and God of War and Elden Ring and the like, but I think it's pretty important to balance out the big, bombastic, huge games with the smaller, experimental, unique games. 

Heck, I don't even LIKE most games, but I'm so glad we have an industry like we do. I See my buddies and folks online playing all these quirky games and genres that I'd never play myself and I'm just so happy they exist because it shows there's so much creativity and artistic merit out there. I'd never play Five Nights at freddy's myself...but it's such a unique, interesting concept that I'm glad it exists. I'm not into the unique trappings of Phoenix Wright but I see the appeal and I'm so glad it exists. Stuff like Dredge and Inscryption and Pony Island and so many other games are ideas that I think are SO unique and interesting and I'm SO glad they exist, even though I'd never play them myself. 

Gaming truly is in its most golden age right now and I just don't see anyone making a compelling argument to the contrary. I have nostalgia for the SNES, as my list makes pretty clear, but I think the range and versatility we're experiencing now is the best it has ever been. Yeah, we get garbage live services and consumer-milking nonsense but you can avoid literally every game that has ever had a microtransaction in it and still be overwhelmed with choice. I hate those practices but they aren't that hard to avoid if people hate it so much. 

but yeah, between Fromsoft, indies, and the various exclusives out there, I love seeing the medium progress in a positive direction.

and for as much as I am not shy about not liking Microsoft's exclusive games (I find they buy into the live service nonsense or procedural generation shit or just don't seem to give their games the polish they need or the creativity they deserve), some of the most fun, interesting, and unique games to come out lately are Xbox games...they're just small releases and not really selling consoles. Hi Fi Rush, Pentiment, Cuphead, Ori, and Vampire Survivors are all artistically important games and I'm so glad they exist....I just don't have an Xbox so I wait till they come out on Switch/PS because I'm not buying a console for Hi Fi rush and Pentiment, no matter how good they are. 

Yeah, I agree we entered a new golden age. For a long time I would've said the 90s were the golden age for video games, but recently we had so much good stuff. Sure, some AAA companies deliver more of the same rubbish, but if we look away for a moment we see so much interesting direction, be it middle range companies liek From Soft or Larian, or the indie explosion. New tools and the digital distribution channels have made it quite possible for small teams or even a single person to develop and release a game, so we see much more ideas followed and some of these ideas are great and picked up and refined by others. I mean you can just look at Vampire Survivors and the many games that took that recipe and refined it - and all that happened in a pretty short timeframe.

Pardon my ignorance, but when will the results thread be posted?