An exceptionally interesting history lesson about the feudal era of Japan interspersed with stories of their famed religious and mythological figures! The only game I have played with a story so intricate it contained an in-game bibliography. This is like an edutainment game for the adults, I dig the lack of need to romanticize this era as it's portrayed as straightup horrific. There's a reason why even Roger Ebert loved it.

I always loved piecing together my own stories in this game. Even though the game is hilariously random, there's almost a pattern to be seen in its madness. My favourite memory is running into a warehouse in the murder district since I saw the outline of a dead person, only to hear a boom the instant I ran inside; the camera swung to reveal a killer staring me down, gun freshly fired at me. It was as if he returned to the scene of his murder and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Truly one of the most special games to me ever.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. For those not in the know, it is a shmup that erases files from one's PC and it deletes a random file permanently depending on what is shot. Based malware.

The closest thing I can think of to a game with no cliches. No main character, no enemies, no actual world to explore. I enjoy vibing out to the unique music style and navigating a sentient(?) ball through a world ruled by skill with a pinch of cruel luck and nothing more.

The controls aren't perfect but I used to jam the fuck out to this game and its relaxing live action forest environment as a kiddo. Truly a one of a kind puzzle game.

Being able to generate your own levels by inserting music CDs is honestly still cool as fuck. It's so funny to say a minimalist world composed purely of black and white shapes can look distinct and inspired, but it's true.

Saltybet is art, don't @ me.

A tale about how even animals can have dreams and how escapism is cool but what is the limit? One of the coolest details is that you are not playing as an RPG character, but rather as a boy who takes the role of an RPG character. As such the game literally begins with "you" skipping loads of dialogue the way I did when I couldn't read as a kid playing JRPGs for the first time.

No experience has ever been similar to the one I had leaping across the barren world and falling into a water cave until my caveman died of old age. There's nothing like this game period.

A game where genre has no meaning. None but Parasite Eve can claim to have mixed survival horror, action RPG, turn-based RPG, roguelike, cinematic game and even quiz game elements into such a one of a kind experience that ultimately stands as more than the sum of its parts. Tied with Silent Hill 1 for the best sound design I've heard in a game as well thanks to clever details like the sewer water sounding like slowed down human screaming or the FMVs seamlessly continuing to play music from directly prior gameplay segments.

I always point to this as a story that could only exist in video games. The game psychoanalyzing the player based on which items they examine, how often they heal, how they treat their AI partner, and so forth is all worked into the narrative and gameplay simultaneously in a way that can only be described as lightning in a bottle. Not to mention Pyramid Head is a truly iconic monster.

A real trailblazer of an indie game for sure, absolutely incredible how it inspired hundreds of fangames and imitators. Yume Nikki is more than a game, it's also the story of a community piecing together a vague author's story in a world of wacky characters while contributing loads of badass fanart.

The sheer lack of fucks given with copyright help to make this world so magical to photograph. Terminator, Michael Jackson, Spider-Man, and Godzilla all live in the same world as a pogging Mona Lisa face ages before Mugen. I can't think of many games at all in this genre if any.

This was the first time I felt like shit over what I had done in a video game, yet still felt like I was justifiable in some way. The ultimate ambiguous situation of an artsy game.

The granddaddy of cinematic platformers. I'll never forget its early example of a clone/rival character in a game, and how he still has the most creative "fight" in that the player defeats him not by slashing him to death, but combining with the Prince's mirror reflection. The rotoscoped animations also give it shockingly realistic motion for an 80s game.

Every Treasure game can qualify to at least a limited degree, but if I had to pick one it's absolutely Dynamite Headdy. Why must cinematic games be associated with hours of cutscenes? Dynamite Headdy with its limited story ironically feels more like a cinematic game to me than any cutscene heavy game. The chapter titles are like straight out of a DVD menu. It's willing to break the mold for the action-platformer genre by making the time freeze actually fucking worthwhile to use to the point it freezes every boss for an ez kill. All the placings of cameras in the world really help contribute to making me feel like an action movie star too.

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I would rather not speak of this game again....

Such an interesting game. I have a deep love for dream languages if my placement of Moon on this list didn't make it obvious already. The fact there are entire songs composed of them to make the world of sentient yellow circles feel alive, complete with a one of a kind control scheme, is simply peak.

This game is not fun at all but it unironically helped push me in learning French to get the full gist of its world. The deep allegorical story can be analyzed for ages, and I will fight anybody who says something as reductive as "dude Batter is just an asshole lol"

Cool animals :)

I truly miss when we gave 0 fucks about copyright. The sampled music, character creation system with anime character parts such as Astro Boy or Gundam, and bosses like Santa Claus all capture the spirit of my inner child's dreams. When we are kids, we come up with silly ways to explain how the world works. For me, it was the sun turning blue when it snowed outside cus the sun was cold. The seas being made of milk pouring from giant curtains in the sky and such truly speak to me on that level.

It's not a good game but I respect the fuck out of its existence. A great early example of split dialogue systems to the point of multiple endings, unreliable narration, and sandbox worlds while also having an ending I'm still thinking about a month later.

What if pinball... but in hell? This game is like something out of a nightmare one would have from playing pinball all day and trying to beat an impossible score. Truly feels like a descent into madness.

I expected the ending to be cringe and dark for the sake of dark. I was very happy about the conclusion however :)

A game made by somebody who hated video games. It's a sight to behold if nothing else!

My favourite indie game of all time. The sheer depth and breadth of this game leave adversaries in its dust as the constant movement of Kawase mixed with the momentum of her fishing rod allow for a one of a kind experience, featuring pre-rendered backgrounds that can put some ps1 games to shame. There's even a rewind feature where the player can record and playback 16(!) of their best runs, all on a SNES cart made by an indie studio. Bravo. The music and realistic backgrounds always make me feel nostalgic for a game I never even played as a child.

The use of military technology for this game's 3D graphics really leapt the evolution of gaming forward by years! A game made by somebody who doesn't really play video games, it shows how close this is to a simulation of martial arts rather than the flashy style of something like Tekken or Dead or Alive.

I respect the hell out of this game for not only following in Gradius' journey to translate tokusatsu action to the game console by making the player feel like a space cadet on one continuous journey through a big setpiece rather than themed levels. I respect it even more for realizing so early that turning off the UI can fuck with the player psychologically on so many levels, particularly if they forgot where their cursor last was. The use of a final boss as a victory lap celebration in the series is also always something I deeply appreciated.

This is the only game I've played where you obtain the good ending by LOSING to the final boss. A truly mindblowing simulation that made me feel like a bastard at the very end, I wish this game was released in a finished state.