I love video games…always have, always will. From the first quarter spent in an old Pong machine as a thrill seeking kid at my local bowling alley to the big bucks I’ve dumped on consoles so I can play at home as an adult, video games have been a staple in my life for more than three decades. I absolutely adore them.
With the barrage of games that are released year after year, I’ve come to find that I favor the most in-depth puzzle-based games. Sure, I can go for the occasional first person shooter or the fighting games but give me a game with a storyline that has a beginning and a definite end that I have to solve and I’m all over it.
So, with that, I’ve decided to pen a list of my top ten favorite video games of all time. The criteria merely involves three things: 1) it has to have been a game that ran on a computer, console or free standing arcade machine; 2) the game has to have excited my brain to the point where I couldn’t walk away from it easily; 3) it has to make me want to go back and replay it again and again and again.
With that…let’s get to the list.
10. Kaboom
Publisher: Activision
Year: 1981
Where I Played It: Atari 2600
I never had an Atari 2600 at home and consider this one of the greatest tragedies of my youth. My brother Doug, however, was kind enough to loan me his one Christmas (a 14 year age difference between us had him living on his own when I was a squirt) and I was introduced to Kaboom. Talk about some fun! Basically, you were using the rarely used paddle controller on the Atari to catch the bombs dropped by the Mad Bomber. The further you got into the game, the faster the bombs would drop…and the more intensely you had to concentrate. My Mom even got hooked on this game and we’d play for hours together over that winter break. As simple as this game was, I still found myself instantly addicted to it.
9. Alley Cat
Publisher: Synapse Software
Year: 1983
Where I Played It: Atari home computer
Alley Cat sat on my floppy disks, unused, for ages until I got bored and decided to give it a whirl one afternoon on my beloved Atari home computer. After that, you couldn’t drag me away. The intro music and various sound effects have stuck with me to this day (whenever I imitate the sound of a cat fight, I mimic the sound used by this game). This was the first title that I ever played that encompassed a number of mini-games within the overall experience and I felt compelled to master each and every one of them while I tried to top my all-time best score. The action in this game could range from the fast and furious (catching the mice in the cheese) to very, very cautious (drinking the milk out of the large, sleeping cats’ saucers). All in all, I played the absolute hell out of Alley Cat back in the day and would love to play it again.
8. Final Fantasy VII
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Year: 1997
Where I Played It: PlayStation 2
Of all the incredible Final Fantasy games, none of them quite captured my attention like FF7. Tackling it with my son Alex, we both fell in love with everything from the game play to storyline and, most of all, the soundtrack. The music that played in any boss battle (and is playing in the YouTube clip to the right) will enter my inner-DJ and play repeatedly for hours upon end. As many of the players of this title can attest to, the death of the character Aeris actually got to me emotionally. This helped draw me into wanting to complete the game, knowing that I would get to avenge her death at some point and kick Sephiroth’s ass. After all was said and done I think I had logged a solid 50+ hours of time spent inside this dystopian world battling creatures of all kinds en route to the grand finale. Ahh, FF7…you rule above all the other Final Fantasies in my book.
7. M.U.L.E.
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Year: 1983
Where I Played It: Atari home computer
What the hell is a M.U.L.E.? Why, it’s a Multiple Use Labor Element of course! Revolutionary for its time, M.U.L.E. went on to influence a lot of the games that appear later on this list (most notably The Sims and Civilization series). Basically, your character is working to colonize the planet Irata (Atari spelled backwards) in a constant exercise of supply and demand economics. You used your M.U.L.E.s to mine resources from the planet to ensure the survival of the colony and worked with the other players — incorporating the first use of actual multiplayer game play within a single console — in an attempt to amass the most wealth. The aspect of the game that I enjoyed the most was the real-time auction in which you would haggle with the other players over the prices of the game’s resources. I learned the word “collusion” from M.U.L.E. when I tried to cheat by selling myself materials from a secondary character I was playing. Part strategy, part economics…M.U.L.E. was all fun. The intro music rules.
6. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Publisher: Rockstar North
Year: 2002
Where I Played It: PlayStation 2
Talk about this gamer’s perfect world — an open-ended, mission-based virtual world with an all-’80s soundtrack where I can run over people in my car AND pick up hookers. What’s not to love? I picked up GTA Vice City two months after it came out and ended up playing it almost non-stop during my entire Christmas break that year, solving it about a month later. Adding even more fun to this game was a series of cheat codes that gave me everything from tanks to jet packs and even unlimited ammo to wage a 1-man war against an entire virtual world. The physics of this game — even with the insane things you could pull off with the cheats — remains second to none as far as I’m concerned. Bashed by parent groups everywhere, the GTA series allows one to fully embrace a life of crime…and boy, did I ever live it up. I spent hours on the roof of my mansion picking off passer-bys with my sniper gun before conjuring up a tank and creating millions of dollars worth of pixelated chaos and destruction in my wake. The attention to detail by Rockstar is, in a word, incredible.
5. Sinistar
Publisher: Williams
Year: 1982
Where I Played It: Arcade
Talk about love at first sight. Sinistar, the lone arcade game on my top ten list, grabbed me from the very first time I plunked a quarter into it at the local grocery story back in 1982 while my Mom shopped. In the same vein as Asteroids, you manned a space ship that shot floating asteroids…however, in Sinistar, you needed to pick up the crystals that came out of the asteroids to turn them into Sinibombs. What on earth do you use a Sinibomb on? The Sinistar…duh! The first time I encountered the gravely-voiced Sinistar — the game’s ultimate nemesis that resembled a floating tiger’s head — I remember thinking to myself that I’d never seen anything in a video game as fast paced as this. The controller had an impressive 49-way movement that allowed you to make precision based turns while you did battle with the game’s namesake. Mom had to threaten me with my life to remove me from the grocery store as I did not want to stop playing my new found favorite game at the time. “Beware, coward!”
4. The Sims
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Year: 2000
Where I Played It: Mac home computer
Now the introduction of this game was just evil…as the entire point is to create your own world, play God, and play it as long as you’d like because there is NO ending. This spells instant addiction as far as I’m concerned. The Sims was revolutionary in the fact that you controlled a character that, over time, grasped some free will and could not do what you had ordered him, her or it to do simply because of a honed personality. I spent countless hours creating my own dream homes, pimping them out with the best that (fake) money could buy and then trying to interact with the seemingly never-ending cast of secondary characters. Ohh, Bella Goth…you sexy woman, you.
When The Sims 2 debuted, I quickly snatched it up and explored the additional new game play going as far as to create a guy who fell in love with an alien neighbor. They moved in together and created a family but Dummy here didn’t watch it when the mother came down with a fever. Due to my negligence, she died before the birth of the child. My main character was distraught and, for days within the game, would not do a single thing I tried to get him to do. I found myself consumed with an odd sense of guilt…over a video game character. I managed to force quit the game, brought it back up from a previous save file, and reunited my couple before the death. When the little alien baby was born, I named it “Miracle” and all was right with the world. To this day, I still feel the sting of guilt from letting that virtual alien mother-to-be die. Whew.
3. Civilization II
Publisher: MicroProse
Year: 1996
Where I Played It: Mac home computer
Best. Strategy. Game. Ever.
The first time I fired up a game of Civilization, I didn’t know what to expect other than it was going to be complicated judging by the thickness of the instruction manual. Before too long I realized that this game was M.U.L.E. on steroids mixed with elements of Risk and a slew of colonization games I’d played in the past. The next thing I know, I discover that I have been sitting completely enthralled at my computer for 12+ hour playing this game on a throwaway Saturday. Lastly I realized that I had stumbled across what was to become one of my favorite video games of all time.
Civ II, even with all of the subsequent releases in the series, continues to be my favorite. The simplicity of the graphics don’t bother me in the least in comparison to actual game play. As I developed my strategies and became better and better at the game, I could always increase the level of difficulty to create all new challenges. Adding to the fun was the multiplayer aspect of it, in which I would battle Scoot for hours upon end as I launched my attack from my capitol city of Xela (my son’s name spelled backwards). In all our years of playing Civ II against one another, I think I only lost four times. (Spies, Scoot…you always forget about the power of spies!)
Civ II, to me, was like a good book. I could lay down in bed before turning off the lights and play a quick game to take my mind off anything and everything the day had thrown my way. Long live Civ II!
2. Puzzle Pirates
Publisher: Three Rings
Year: 2003
Where I Played It: Mac home computer
Okay…you know all of those little addictive games that you encounter on Yahoo! Games and cell phones that you’d play for 10-15 minutes just for fun? Imagine finding 20+ of them in a game that puts them all together…each one affecting something else in this brilliantly concocted pirate world. Score well at one puzzle (blacksmithing) and you’ve helped fulfill an order for cannonballs for another actual player in the game. Perform another specific puzzle (bilging) and you’ve helped the pirate ship you’re on get rid of the water it’s taken on in the heat of battle, allowing it to sail faster…and so on and so forth. Everything — and I mean EVERYTHING — is related within this virtual world that takes place upon the high seas. Want to play poker with your buddies? Puzzle Pirates has it. Spades, Hearts? Puzzle Pirates has it. Want to embark on a team adventure in the pursuit of making money? Puzzle Pirates has it. Want to play solo and just enjoy playing time wasters? Puzzle Pirates has it. Want to rise through the ranks and achieve greater skills? Puzzle Pirates has it.
The first time I came across this game (Memorial Day weekend in ‘06), I was under the weather and holed up at home. I ended up playing this game almost non-stop for 72 hours, barring Nyquil-induced naps here and there. I quickly became addicted to Puzzle Pirates and was fascinated how I had to wait real time to have items created in the game as they required someone to actually play a puzzle in order to produce the labor to craft the item(s) I had ordered. Everything from the clothing your pirates wear to the ships they sail is created through the labor of another actual player or players in the game.
Here we are almost four years later and I still play this game almost daily. If not for the last item on this list, it’d be my favorite of all time…alas, that honor goes to…
1. Sid Meier’s Pirates!
Publisher: MicroProse
Year: 1987
Where I Played It: Commodore 64 home computer
Of any video game I have ever sat down to play, NONE of them have grabbed a hold of me quite like Sid Meier’s Pirates! did back when I discovered it as a college freshman y-e-a-r-s after it had been out. A buddy of mine was getting ready to head out of town for the weekend on a Friday afternoon and had *just* introduced me to the game. I asked him if I could hang out in his apartment and keep playing Pirates. He agreed. When he came home late Sunday evening he found yours truly still at his computer desk, still playing Sid Meier’s Pirates! having survived on a 5 lbs. sack of salted peanuts and a case of Pepsi. Like the weekend when I discovered Puzzle Pirates, I broke from the game only to nap before getting right back into the thick of things.
What was it about Pirates! that enraptured me so much? It was the fact that, unlike any other game I had played before, I was COMPLETELY in control of what I did in the game over the span of the pirates lifetime. If I wanted to be a merchant, I could be a merchant and make my fortune running commodities from island to island. If I wanted to be a hunter of pirates on the game’s equivalent of a “most wanted” list, I could spend hours tracking them down to turn in for the bounty. If I wanted to amass a gigantic fleet and attack heavily defended cities to plunder, I’d sail around the ever-changing ocean and pick off ships from the warring factions within the game’s politic scene and then make my move. Each and every time I fired up the game, it would be different — cities that were wealthy the previous play-through may be dirt poor due to being attacked by other pirates, enemies that were at war may now allies and the country that adored me before and handed me lavish gifts may have privateers out on the high seas hunting me down for capture.
Sid Meier’s Pirates! has the distinction of being the first video game to actually make me call in sick to work so that I could keep playing it. Each time that I think that I have played enough Pirates! to get it out of my system, I’ll stumble across it again and find myself hooked for several more weeks at a time.
I was very excited when I heard that an updated version was being released a couple years back but, after having played it, it lacked the charm of the original version that I’ve come to worship.
As far as I know, NOTHING will ever top Sid Meier’s original masterpiece. I’ve played video game after video game now for almost two decades and nothing has dethroned it yet. Who knows, maybe the next #1 is being developed right now as we speak.
Games that failed to make the top ten — but were close — include: Zork, Monsters (VAX/VMS game), multi-player Marathon, the Guitar Hero series, NBA Jam, Drop Zone, Punch-Out!!!, Resident Evil, Yi-Ar Kung Fu, Final Fantasy XII, Karate Champ, SimCity, Moon Base, Shuffle Puck, Tiger Woods Golf, Carnival, Karateka, Defender, Tetris, Lemmings, Super PacMan, You Don’t Know Jack and the one that ended up at #11…Galaga. Sorry, Fish!
So there they are – my top ten favorite video games of all time. What are yours?
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