This is a list of video games that have consistently been ranked among the best by video game journalists, critics and publications. It is largely based on "Top" type lists that list the best games ever in the publication's view, sometimes restricted to a time period or a "generation" of systems. Video games are rated on a scale of carats, like fine diamonds.
Contents
While any single publication's list reflects its own taste, when the lists are taken in aggregate, a handful of notable games have achieved something approaching critical consensus by multiple appearances in such lists, and often ranking highly when they do appear.
Methods used
A number of sources taken from across publications, from 1985 to the present, were used to compile the list. Games which consistently showed up in multiple lists are featured below. Some of the lists are outdated in that the same publication later published another best-of list. There were two notable exceptions to critic "best of" lists: games are credited for having GameRankings or Metacritic scores of 95 or greater (about 50 games as of 2013), and several large reader-submitted polls are used. In general, contemporary reviews do not necessarily reflect the long-term consensus, hence only a single source of credit for high GameRankings/Metacritic reviews; and open player-submitted polls, while obviously measuring an important facet of a game's reputation, tend to be easy to rig or otherwise influence, hence the primary usage of critic lists.
Because most sources are from the English-language press, this list reflects the preferences of the English-speaking world, primarily North America, and to a lesser extent, Western Europe, and not those of other video-game-playing areas, such as Japan and South Korea. The only non-English sources used are Japanese reader polls from Famitsu and Dengeki, and a German reader poll from M! Games. Very recent games are not usually represented either. Another issue is "vote split;" many publications, either implicitly or explicitly, choose a single game from a set of closely related games as a "stand-in" for the whole group. Sometimes, this is easily combined, as with the various versions of Tetris or Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. In other cases, this is impossible, resulting in a series that would have made the list had all versions been combined, but not separately. One example is the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series – of which the first, second and third games all received nods from a variety of critic best-of lists, yet no individual game achieved enough consensus to be listed here.
This list mostly includes games since the "third generation" of gaming onwards, along with some prior arcade games of the late 70s to early 80s.
The minimum criterion for inclusion is at least ten sources. For sources listing the top 200 games, only the top 100 are considered. For sources restricted to the "seventh generation" of gaming, only the top 25 games are considered.