In a video I made about this game, I've publicly admitted to sitting on the floor in a nonzero amount of high school lunch periods and I think that's the best testament to how much of a stare into your own soul it is.

Very much not a coincidence that two of my top three games are ones that acknowledge their own inherent shortcomings as a work of consumption/escapism and end in a call for you to make more material change.

The reasons I like plenty of other games on here would just be mere bullet points on the long list of everything Mother 3 has managed accomplish.
Honorable mentions from the same series: The whole fucking series

Nothing can compare to the unhinged Looney Tunes ass shenanigans that this game and the person playing it are engaged in. So good it made me truly accept that this series needs to die.
Honorable mentions from the same series: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Sacred Stones, Shadow Dragon, The Last Promise

Nails the feeling of finding hope in a world that feels hopeless. World of Ruin is a better open world game than any actual open world game.
Honorable mentions from the same series: all three games in the PS1 "trilogy", Jack x Astos yaoi, probably more that I still need to play cause Final Fantasy is just on another level

Getting a legitimately skilled play and/or piece of RNG bullshit so good your opponent ragequits is probably what cocaine feels like.
Honorable mentions from the same series: Platinum

The tighest paced and best playing Metroidvania I've ever played and also the best execution of Castlevania's weird blend of gothic aesthetics and cheesy shonen power fantasy.
Honorable mentions from the same series: Bloodlines, Portrait of Ruin

If you say anything along the lines of "the No Mercy route sucks because it wants you to feel bad for playing it," just know that I see you as a lesser human being

One of those rare games that actually lives up to the circlejerk but I'm 99% sure that most of the people circlejerking it haven't had the spiritual experience of playing it while incomprehensibly shouting the lyrics to Story of Undertale on a Discord VC.

I'm well past my "Hollow Knight is the best game of all time" phase and the lore/story is an in one ear, out the other type deal for me but everything about it is still so meticulously crafted.

https://twitter.com/YtGnome/status/1744065951073538434

You probably watched a video essay regurgitating the obvious reasons this is goated but it will always be a weird spectre to me as this game hyped up as "dark" and "fucked up" that I never got that far in as a kid.
Honorable mentions from the same series: Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time

Simultaneously a collection of legitimately interesting philosophical questions and also a massive shitpost and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Purposeful in a way that you just wouldn't expect from a Nintendo developed game (ignore the one above it lol). I love watching my little goobers drown themselves like the stupid idiots they are.

WE'LL SACRIFICE THE SON OF HEAVEN
MAN'S GREATEST GLIMPSE OF FIRE RED
Honorable mentions from the same series: IV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-9xbgTHpLA

Attracts the most unhinged shills for a reason. While it doesn't succeed at everything it sets out to do (cough cough Prehistory cough cough), very few games set out to do that much to begin with and even fewer reach the heights this game reaches in Medieval.

Sometimes being a horrifically unbalanced mess is a good thing

Check out my Judas Priest nightcore AMV

Doesn't need any fancy gimmicks to be a really well designed RPG with a charming story about a teenager slowly gaining agency in a world that looks down on him.

Most Megaman games are junk food for me but they really fucking cooked with this one in particular.
Honorable mentions from the same series: X4

Best feeling Metroid in terms of controls/level design and it's really cool how they contextualized the series' signature lock and key structure as trying to gain agency over the shadowy government from whichever sci-fi flick the staff watched that week.
Honorable mentions from the same series: II, Super, Prime 1

Successfully beating "Doing Things The Hard Way" would be one of my greatest feats if I were to ever get into a gaming dick measuring contest.

Quite possibly the best game ever made from a formalist standpoint and I wish I had more interesting thoughts on it than that.

I know the Portal games are currently facing death row charges for what they did for internet humor but I'd be damned if this didn't have some of the most well thought out level design in any game