Favorite Game from Each Year since Birth

Piggybacking off of @stovetop and @Zangril here because I figured why not. I will also put two honorable mentions for each year if applicable. The list will cover from 1991 to 2022 and I will update it once this year concludes. Not much else to say other than I will go based on their release dates in North America since that is likely the version I played of the game unless otherwise stated. Good example is that Xenoblade came out in 2012 in NA but its essentially the EU version so I'm counting it for 2011. I'll apply similar logic to things that have remasters and ignore the remaster of a game if I included another version in an earlier year to lower the chance of doubling down at any point.

1991
Honorable Mentions:
Ninja Gaiden III
Shatterhand
1992
Honorable Mentions:
TMNT IV Turtles in Time
Little Samson
1993
Honorable Mentions:
NBA Jam
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
1994
Honorable Mentions:
Donkey Kong Country
Mega Man X
1995
Honorable Mentions:
Donkey Kong Country 2
Chrono Trigger
1996
Honorable Mentions
Donkey Kong Country 3
Pajama Sam
1997
Honorable Mentions:
Final Fantasy VII
Wild Arms
1998
Honorable Mentions
Metal Gear Solid
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
1999
Honorable Mentions:
Pokemon Snap
NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC
2000
Honorable Mentions:
Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask
Pokemon Gold
2001
Honorable Mentions:
Final Fantasy X
Metal Gear Solid 2
2002
Honorable Mentions:
Backyard Baseball 2003
Dead to Rights
2003
Honorable Mentions:
Fire Emblem 7: Rekka no Ken
Pokemon Ruby
2004
Honorable Mentions:
Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater
Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door
2005
Honorable Mentions:
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Fire Emblem Sacred Stones
2006
Honorable Mentions:
Kingdom Hearts 2
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
2007
Honorable Mentions:
DBZ: Budokai Tenkaiichi 3
Super Paper Mario
2008
Honorable Mentions:
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
FF7 Crisis Core
2009
Honorable Mention:
Batman Arkham Asylum
Professor Layton & Diabolical Box
2010
Honorable Mention:
999
Donkey Kong Country Returns
2011
Honorable Mentions:
Batman Arkham City
Catherine
2012
Honorable Mention:
Dust: An Elysian Tail
Atelier Ayesha
2013
Honorable Mentions:
Ni No Kuni
Super Mario 3D World
2014
Honorable Mentions:
Shantae: Pirate's Curse
Atelier Rorona Plus
2015
Honorable Mention:
Yoshi's Wooly World
Her Story
2016
Honorable Mentions:
Owlboy
Stardew Valley
2017
Honorable Mentions:
Hollow Knight
Persona 5
2018
Honorable Mentions:
God of War
Return to the Obra Dinn
2019
Honorable Mention:
Fire Emblem Three Houses
A Plague Tale Innocence
2020
Honorable Mentions:
I really need to play more of the new decade before putting HMs for them that feel confident. This will apply for the rest of the 2020s' for now as well.

4 Comments


9 months ago

Seeing the similarities in our lists, it makes sense how we're friends. Also, this makes most of my dates look wrong cuz I was trusting backlogged's dates. I really don't want to redo my list, took long enough as is

9 months ago

@stovetop Hah well I took longer than I should have to see which dates were which for certain games. Most of them on this site on the first release of the game regardless of region or platform. I went by NA release for most and the system I played it if it made a difference in a specific case. It doesn't matter all that much all things considered, I just apparently wanted to make it more challenging for myself to make.

9 months ago

@Doaks I feel that. For whatever reason we like to set these arbitrary conditions anytime we do some sort of listing

9 months ago

There's so many great games in this one list! It's also nice to see some overlap in our lists.


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