I decided I wanted to do a top 10 games list after all. That meant making up some rules: for instance, leaving out arcade machines (which were really cool in the late 80s but would probably seem slightly less so now), "meditative" gamelets like Minesweeper or Hearts (which I've spent more time with than most games but which probably don't belong on a list like this), and games I've had lots of fun watching competent people play but played little or not at all myself (notably Unreal Tournament). Still, I couldn't escape the division between single- and multiplayer experiences. You can have so much fun with any game with a well implemented multiplayer feature that it might not matter if it's totally unplayable on one's own, and in terms of sheer fun collected over a gamer's career, perfectly good single player games might be "unfairly" outshone by relatively simple multiplayer games. So I'm going to do two parallel lists. Also, to increase overall annoyance and interest, I'll be posting the games two at a time, counting down from ten to one, and so as not to spam the list thread, I'll do it in a thread all of my own, so that people can flame and comment. Isn't that considerate? (No, you can't do it as well. Imagine what the board would look like.) Remember, I fully expect everyone to shiver in awe of my impeccable taste. Here we go!
10, MP: Mario Bros (C64)
Before they were Super Mario Bros, Mario and Luigi were just these ordinary Mario Bros, running around a single static screen with platforms. Monsters would emerge from pipes at the top, and could be rendered helpless by bumping them from below. Defeating all monsters on a level would let you proceed to the next, and it made for an entertaining enough cooperative experience if you tried to get as far as possible. But you could also play it as a sort of deathmatch and try to kill the other player, which could often be done quite elegantly thanks to the "physics" regulating the behaviour of the two main characters as well as the various monsters. In short, it was a simple game you could have tons of fun with. Needless to say, the whole franchise went to hell directly afterwards. (OK, maybe not entirely.)
10, SP: Fallout (PC)
Some will be surprised to see the original Fallout so far down on my list. Myself, I'm still not sure it should even be here; most likely it wouldn't be if I hadn't been dragged into the fandom after playing Fallout 2 and spent a lot, lot more time with it than I otherwise would have. It's a solid design, a good story and game, it's just not... as memorable as it perhaps might have been. The world feels small, a lot of quests are sort of bland and predictable, and the dialogue in some areas is as badly written as Mark O'Green's contributions are succulent... All right, it is fun to blow a mole rat apart with the .223 Pistol going WHAM in the sewers of Necropolis and so on. Shoo, Knights of the Old Republic. You didn't make the list after all. Maybe if you'd had a "No, really, this IS hard" difficulty setting. It's too late now. Yeah, go cry.
10, MP: Mario Bros (C64)
Before they were Super Mario Bros, Mario and Luigi were just these ordinary Mario Bros, running around a single static screen with platforms. Monsters would emerge from pipes at the top, and could be rendered helpless by bumping them from below. Defeating all monsters on a level would let you proceed to the next, and it made for an entertaining enough cooperative experience if you tried to get as far as possible. But you could also play it as a sort of deathmatch and try to kill the other player, which could often be done quite elegantly thanks to the "physics" regulating the behaviour of the two main characters as well as the various monsters. In short, it was a simple game you could have tons of fun with. Needless to say, the whole franchise went to hell directly afterwards. (OK, maybe not entirely.)
10, SP: Fallout (PC)
Some will be surprised to see the original Fallout so far down on my list. Myself, I'm still not sure it should even be here; most likely it wouldn't be if I hadn't been dragged into the fandom after playing Fallout 2 and spent a lot, lot more time with it than I otherwise would have. It's a solid design, a good story and game, it's just not... as memorable as it perhaps might have been. The world feels small, a lot of quests are sort of bland and predictable, and the dialogue in some areas is as badly written as Mark O'Green's contributions are succulent... All right, it is fun to blow a mole rat apart with the .223 Pistol going WHAM in the sewers of Necropolis and so on. Shoo, Knights of the Old Republic. You didn't make the list after all. Maybe if you'd had a "No, really, this IS hard" difficulty setting. It's too late now. Yeah, go cry.
. I'll be looking forward to the rest of your listings, as you put more into them than a frivolous 10.. 9 .. 8... etc. 
