They took Puyo Puyo 2, put Kirby in it, and gave it a weirder name for Europe (which is said by a digitised voice when you turn it on). He's also weirdly malicious in the cutscenes, and it's very funny.

Some kind of glorious mess. Massive ambition, varied locations and absurd interactables. Great weapon ideas too.

Brutal application of physics, played out to absurdity. Great memories of the Friends page on the leaderboards.

What a cool idea for a game. The human race is gone. The cities are where the animals fight now.

Super snappy Metroid. Quick, gratifying and brilliant.

It almost seems sacrilegious to attempt to expand the very first Mario game for a stupid Game Boy cart, but they did it, and through logical design, turned it into something completely different.

I really like caverns and instantly useful power ups and weird enemies.

Raw emotion. Driving fast cars around busy cities and smashing them all up.

I could argue for any of the Skate games being the best one. This was a good balance of 1's down to earth vibe and 3's freedom.

Almost pure charm. The Saturn sweating under the weight of doing a fully 3D action game with free movement. Anime firefighters blast fires with charge attacks and jetpacks. A dolphin warns you about an arsonist.

They made a version of playing cards that would appeal to me. Best thing Game Freak's ever done.

2's easily more robust and well-rounded, but there was a kind of in-jokey vibe between you and the Mario devs in 1. You bought a Wii U. You're allowed in the cool club. Fantastic GamePad utilisation, too.

It's Skate 1's grittiness that sticks with me. Almost a simulator. There's big stretches of the map that are useless for a skateboard, and I like that. That's how cities are.

What a daring thing this was. All the weird ideas they got out of a Dualshock. One of the most 3D games on the PS1.

Street Fighter as a card game. It just makes sense. Punchy, stressful, brutal.

I don't know if you can understand if you weren't around in the early 90s, but it's such a joyous expression of finally being able to make an exciting 3D game.

I find it very hard to compare Animal Crossing's quality with other games, but I do love it very much. This was my first. Isabelle is a dear friend.

What a success. Distance-juggling, frantic shooter, with hellspawn climbing the walls to get at you.

How did they do it? All of Super Metroid's appeal, as an FPS that Americans made. Impossible.

Putting a NES cart in and not knowing where you'll go. Equal parts elegant and charmingly scruffy. Very much a game of its time, but I value the ability to go back to that.

The newest game here, and the most likely for me to change my mind about, but it just does Pikmin gameplay really well without ever kicking you too much for it.

I was a little alarmed to see this here, but Jumping Flash is not a game you love with your head, but with your heart. MuuMuus in the izakaya at the end of each world, complaining about Robbit's strength.

Holy fuck is Kororinpa underrated. They finally made Marble Madness work. One-to-one control over wild, Rube Goldberg levels. Ought to be a pillar of the industry.

4 is messy and there's Bad Stuff in it, but it also has Taiga Saejima walking into a bar full of bigwigs with a revolver in his mouth.

Modest. Guide your spinning stick through the mazes. Oh, by the way, the stick is a helicopter piloted by a funny wee bird, and he's off to rescue his family.

The brutality of the desert. That vulnerability. Feeling your place on the food chain drop with each mistake. Seeing the awful opportunities and taking them.

A family is falling apart. You intimately explore the crevices of their private home, and bring them back together. Also, there's aliens and an army of eggs and a Frakenstein that loves a Barbie.

It's some of those early 3D successes that delivered its potential the most effectively. Swooping through archways as puppet animals berate your skills.

It's the logic in SoulCalibur's controls that make it so effective. Block, kick, vertical, horizontal. Work with that, and fight Voldo.

The Sega fanboy I once was will never truly die. It's so great to see them get a game as good as Zelda.

It's the tone. Earnest, silly, funny, stupid, heartbreaking, relevant. What a good game. I love chocobos.

They looked at increasingly complicated rhythm game design and just made an enormous drum you smack fuck out of. Don-chan and Katsu-chan are the last great Namco icons.

They really did a great job of applying Kirby's sensibilities to 3D. A gorgeous game too. I feel a great affinity with the passions of the environment artists.

Goofier than PaRappa, but that's not a completely bad thing. The most important thing is to make music with your friends.

I don't think it's as consistently successful as I once did, but presenting level design as a series of self-contained planetoids was a great compromise to balance the freedom of full 3D movement with the excitement of linear progression.

A game that scratches an itch. Building, defending, invading and Conquering. Finding resources and taking chances at the right moment. Good, stupid tone too. Tanya's voice clips live with me.

I'm so thankful Masahiro Sakurai was the man chosen to summarise everything we love about videogames. He cares more than anyone.

The absolute peak of PS1 visuals. All the interlocking styles, clashing and bouncing off each other. In one bit, you ride a dolphin.

It's the grunt and heft of Double Dash that makes me value it over many of its more balanced sequels. Mean Mario Kart.

They saw everything that was great about all the arcade lightgun shooters and just did that. Brutal, dumb fun. The dead walk the earth. Meet them with bulletfire.

Street Fighter is one of those pillars of videogames. Here is the coolest it's ever been. Vital.

I don't like the tone as much. I don't like segmenting the city into different maps. I don't like the Jason Lee tutorial. But I love the hills, the giant structures and the hippy jumps. One of the most captivating level editors I've ever been handed, too.

I don't know if I can logically communicate my love for QuackShot. I just feel the entire history of the Walt Disney corporation was leading to a Mega Drive game where Donald Duck travels the world and jumps on plungers.

A messy game that never fully lives up to the potential it's establishing, but such an admirable attempt. It swings big, and becomes immortal.

I don't number console generations like Wikipedia does. I number developer generations. Sakurai is the start of generation 2, looking back at platformers and making sense of them for unfamiliar audiences. You fight a penguin in a boxing ring at the end.

QIX, man. Risk/reward at its most brutally frank. See what you can get away with. See those gaps in the enemies, and go for it. You're almost certain to be killed, but you need that bonus.

Cool, distinctive, dark and wildly experimental, but what really makes me love it is how it cuts all the bullshit from survival horror design. Straight to the point. Take your position and fire.

A real curveball, this, but I often forget how much I love it. A big Akira Toriyama adventure through little towns with funny little stories. There's a big Aerith's Death moment, and they cut to you putting on a parade to cheer up a cow who's too sad to produce milk. I laughed so much at this game.

Animal Crossing is back, and this time, there's almost a sense of purpose. The toy-like HD textures on the villagers are just great, too. I'm thankful that they don't bully me too much when I go away for months.

It's the natural continuation of Resi. The virus has spread to the city. Get big guns and solve the problem. All the William Birkin mutations and blowing up an 40 ft alligator. What a game.

I sweat whenever I think of how much work Harmonix must have put into this. Guitar Hero, but you can do any of the parts, and download songs from all your favourite bands (except The Beatles, where you have to buy a separate game).

Slow, boxy, awkward. Intimate. Real. The bad guys ran over the mother cat. You get to say hello to the kitten each day.

The full gamut of a deeply unserious man's emotions as he tries to make The New Namco Game. Every single item you pick up has its own glossary page, and their entries are typically pretty funny.

This is it. This is the videogame.

How lucky was I to be 12 when Unreal Tournament came out? The ideal next step from Mighty Max playsets. Jumping around big cranes and space towers, hungry for headshots.

Part of me thinks MGS3 isn't a very good progression of the established design. Most of me knows it's Metal Gear Solid in the 60s jungle, and you can throw live snakes at the guards.

I don't want to hear about A Link to the Past anymore. This so completely outshone it. Giving you all the shit and sending you to tear a Zelda apart. Really great moments with the wall shifting mechanic, too.

It's the contrast from Shenmue 1 that makes me value it so much. You have left your happy hometown in search of Lan Di, and now you're lost in this hostile, crowded city of bastards. You slowly find your place in there.

A messy game, forever tied to the horrible circumstances it was made under, but there's those moments where it all comes together. Where you feel like this was the game they were dreaming of, back in 1987.

How clever of Namco to put this together right when they were at their absolute coolest. What good timing.

It's very hard to look at Sonic 1, ignoring the very embarrassing franchise it lead to, but there's so much to admire it for on its own terms. Early 90s Japan. The Dreams Come True soundtrack. Starlight Zone. How good it feels to build speed over treacherous obstacles and roll through a line of badniks.

Forever in my heart is the title that made me love videogames. It's easy to overlook how much is in here, too. Learn how you're supposed to play this, and start respecting it now.

They gave games a face. And it was a funny wee man jumping over barrels.

It feels so chaotic to rank this directly above Donkey Kong. That's right for Sexy Parodius.

I spent so much time with GTA3, it's hard to see the game in it. It's the sun and moon. The unpopulated beach and shipping districts. Turning on moon gravity and firing the tank through the sky.

TAI-TO! Have you seen the low-resolution apeman backgrounds? Perfect game.

Mainly "& Knuckles", but it was such a great showcase of giant, mad level design, and how exciting it could be to run through it. You forget how rich the atmosphere is, but by Lava Reef Zone Act 2, you are IN it.

It's so valuable that Fumito Ueda is one of the people making games. It's so crucial that those sensibilities are allowed to create these things.

I don't think Metal Gear 2 is especially fun for modern audiences, but the design is Kojima at his wildest. Joy, tension and absolute pulp in this giant 1990 home computer action game.

This is the bar. This is games design in its purest form. Anything I rank above this is an expression of pure whimsy and personal bias.

It says so much that when Miyamoto finally cleared his desk and made a new game in earnest, he made Pikmin. It's personal.

Yes, it's the energy, the music and the 326 character designs, but it's so good to play too. Following the bends of each note and dodging the onslaught of enemy percussion. Play it again and open the lid on the incredible wealth of alternate musical phrases the game is hiding for players of different skill levels. The ultimate progression of what PaRappa introduced.

One of the most difficult games to summarise my love for. It's that mid-90s Japan, early CGI earnestness, exploring a game with giant, evil, undead animals. The STARS Team are my absolute favourites, and it's so great to find your way through the bad house.

Civilisation has ended. You cradle a baby as you traverse the desolate wilderness and help the survivors realise how much they benefit from each other. Likely the boldest game Kojima has ever produced, and I'm so thankful he finally got to do something this mental.

You can't make a cooler game than Super Metroid. Try it. Slip up and fail, you fool.

How the fuck did they make Resident Evil BETTER? How do you take that game and improve on it? It takes that sense of security you grew from exploring with all your cartoon pals, and brings focus on the rot. The girl in the basement, wearing her mother's skin. Shinji Mikami ordered them to take his baby and make it disgusting. He has my eternal respect for that.

Some people take issue with the three-man team and the GamePad map. Pikmin 3 made me feel like a spaceman on a survival mission, surrounded by overwhelming technology and taking in the strange beauty of this new world.

It works so well that I kind of feel all the Yakuza games should be set in the decadent, lawless eighties. Righteous Kazuma, taking on huge, bloodthirsty villains. I love it so much.

It feels outrageous to rank a game as loud and annoying as SSX Tricky this highly, but SSX Tricky is the pure joy of being loud and annoying. It's being a drunk 8 year-old, running through town with a megaphone. It's so good that we can experience these feelings within the safety of a simulation.

I'm blown away with how well Valve can design a game, introducing things we've never seen before, and explore that through such a cohesive, dense, exciting campaign. Half-Life 2 is what you get when you only hire geniuses.

Nintendo caught themselves in the mirror. "We're Mario". They made the game worthy of this discovery.

PaRappa the Rapper is such a specific encapsulation of overlapping circumstances. It never could have happened any other time. We get to live in that moment forever.

Nobody takes Neversoft very seriously. Especially themselves. They had to be such a great team to make such a rich, complex game with such a great hook, when they did.

They had to make the Sonic sequel when they were at peak Frieza Saga hype. So much energy, and such fantastic levels. Sonic is so committed to stopping Robotnik, he follows him through the atmosphere and into outer space. I love Tails, and his biplane.

Time Crisis is pure. It's crystal. It's the best that shooting baddies has ever felt. I love the scenario, I love characters, I love the sunset.

It's easy to take for granted now, but I'm always taken back to that feeling of first bursting out of the water in Dolphin Shoals and hearing the saxophone burst in. Mario Kart could mean something now. What an incredible game.

What more could I ask to get from an 80s arcade game than Dig Dug? It's the distillation of everything I'd want. Forming plans in seconds, and reworking them twice as quick as an overlooked threat hones in on you. Has anyone ever drawn anything better than a Pooka?

Mario 3 can be a little scattershot. A little shallow. But it's ideas and ideas and ideas. You never get a chance to get bored. You're just sitting there, wondering how the hell your NES is doing this.

I'm dismissive of "nostalgia" when judging games, but so much of my early imagination was informed by the places Flashback took me. I see things differently from people who don't love Flashback. It's forever part of me. The coolest stunt an action star can perform is drawing a pistol after a forward roll.

Super Mario USA was such a weird situation, and it's so gratifying to see Nintendo delight in that and turn the volume up on all its eccentricities. There is no greater sense of "I am playing a videogame" than playing as Princess Peach, dodging bombs thrown by a big mouse in Squirtle Squad sunglasses.

"Design through limitation" is something I respect so much. Thinking of all the artists I admire, it could be the thing I respond to most passionately. HAL Laboratory made a Kirby pinball game on the Game Boy, and it's the peppiest, most captivating score attack challenge I have ever played.

Nintendo, the number 1 institution in game design history, were backed into a corner. They took an enormous swing with their new console, and it was widely rejected. Their key talent was growing old, and irrelevant. In the face of impending disaster, they trusted their junior talent. They produced a game that looked at the fundamental flaws of online shooters, and reworked it into something vital, distinctive and exciting to approach. Outsiders may cite the Switch as the thing that saved their fortunes, but it was Splatoon that gave them the energy to make it.

Snatcher has few elements that I'd look for in a good videogame. It's incredibly linear, repetitive and barely interactive. It's downright odd that I'd get this much out of it. But whether it's in the music, the writing, the artwork, the sci-fi concepts, the tone, the setpieces, or the bold gameplay ideas, I do.

No game better expresses the potential of Zelda's setting than Breath of the Wild. Taming wild horses, riding through peaks and valleys, encountering weird creatures and using your ingenuity to defend yourself from them. This is the adventure I always wanted.

If Fumito Ueda has no gas in the tank left - if he declares he's reached his full potential and will now retire - I'll respect that. He made The Last Guardian. A game that fully explores how interactivity can affect how you feel.

There's so much to admire Ocarina of Time for, but I think it's fundamentally how much the implementation of 3D design made us all believe in Zelda. How significant each environment felt. How Jabu Jabu wasn't just a weird background layer element, but a big mad fish that you went inside. There's a real heart to the game, and I think it's the creators belief in the game's significance that brought that out.

Here he is. Mario. The Man of Videogames, in his best one. The prime example of "Fun Game". He's never felt better, and the levels have never been as creative, ambitious or loveable. Ghost Houses and Monty Moles. Choco Island and Yoshi. The NES Mario team split up and went onto separate projects that best utilised their unique talents after this, but World was the peak of what they could do working together.

God Hand is the most divisive game that I'll prop up like this. It's Shinji Mikami making a game completely to his own tastes, disregarding every extraneous convention in design and layering more and more on top of it until Capcom insisted no more time or money was put into the project. Gene's fast-forwarded running animation as he approaches crowds of insane Final Fight and Fist of the North Star pastiches is so funny. I share an unspoken bond with all God Hand fans.

I know no phrase more powerful than "Resi 4". Mikami built a game unlike any other, and designed it so richly and confidently that every idea would be mimicked for decades afterwards. I didn't have to love Resident Evil 4 for anything else than its strong exploration of its mechanics, but it shifts into such a funny, weird, absurd adventure, that I vibrate with excitement, thinking of what's up next. To have watched Resi 2's success and delivered this in response is the ultimate baller move.

It's likely my age, but I will never recognise a more significant turning point in games than the shift from 2D to 3D. Metal Gear Solid does such a fantastic job of conveying the appeal of earlier games and the potential of the future. Spending several years in pre-development, as KCEJ figured out how the hell to make a PlayStation game worthy of Kojima's ambitions, they created such a rich concept of what this thing would be. Each function of Metal Gear REX's construction would be considered, reworked and justified, as Yoji Shinkawa's pet project while the programmers studied Sony SDKs. Every character would be given intricate backstories, with the team even designing individual fingerprints for them. If there has ever been a game so thoroughly considered, discussed and fretted over as Metal Gear Solid 1, I haven't seen it. I love every aspect of what they came up with. I don't think I'll ever love a game more than this, and I'm completely satisfied with that.