The Legendary List
I've mentioned many a time that I've been compiling a massive List of all the many many many Towering Classics of the video game genre that I never played and very much need and want to. There has been much clamor of late to see the List, such that people may peruse it, be aghast that their favorite game isn't on it, and press me to include it, posthaste. So I figured I'd oblige, because I like to oblige people.
It's a little hard for me to describe exactly what qualifies a game for inclusion. In general, the List is a list of games of cultural significance and narrative excellence. The latter is relatively straightforward (and also explains why a few things are notably missing), the former is hard to pin down. I guess one could describe it as something like 'those games which are consistently referred to with great fondness within video game culture, such that to truly understand that culture one needs to have experienced them oneself'. I dunno, it's a kind of subjective measure, and there's a whole bunch of things on the List that don't really qualify, being kind of niche, but which came highly recommended to me by all of you, by Erik, or by the various critics that I follow online.
This particular version of the List is slightly edited; I've stricken a bunch of things that I'm embarrassed to admit that I still feel I ought to play through (such as the first games in various series that I picked up in the middle), and I have included several things from the ancillary list, which is the list of things that I'm trying to decide whether or not I should put on the List.
Other than being vaguely clumped by what system I believe they run on, these are in absolutely no order whatsoever.
The List:
Currently in Progress
Starcraft
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (I came so close to finishing this, but I think I'd have to start the whole thing over now)
Okami
The Bouncer
Neverwinter Nights (probably in a permanent state of hibernation)
The List Proper
Starcraft: Brood War
Starcraft II
BioShock
Half Life 2
Half Life
Grim Fandango
Monkey Island
Dragon Age Origins
Knights of the Old Republic
Amazing Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom
Baldur's Gate
Planescape: Torment
Deus Ex
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Thief: the Dark Project
Star Control 2
Wind Waker
Majora's Mask
Twilight Princess
Final Fantasy VI/VII/VIII/IX/X/X-2 (but probably not all of them)
Chrono Trigger
Ico
Beyond Good and Evil
Okage
Psychonauts
Mass Effect
Earthbound
Super Metroid
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
With some of these, of course, the issue is finding a shitty enough computer to run them...
It's a little hard for me to describe exactly what qualifies a game for inclusion. In general, the List is a list of games of cultural significance and narrative excellence. The latter is relatively straightforward (and also explains why a few things are notably missing), the former is hard to pin down. I guess one could describe it as something like 'those games which are consistently referred to with great fondness within video game culture, such that to truly understand that culture one needs to have experienced them oneself'. I dunno, it's a kind of subjective measure, and there's a whole bunch of things on the List that don't really qualify, being kind of niche, but which came highly recommended to me by all of you, by Erik, or by the various critics that I follow online.
This particular version of the List is slightly edited; I've stricken a bunch of things that I'm embarrassed to admit that I still feel I ought to play through (such as the first games in various series that I picked up in the middle), and I have included several things from the ancillary list, which is the list of things that I'm trying to decide whether or not I should put on the List.
Other than being vaguely clumped by what system I believe they run on, these are in absolutely no order whatsoever.
The List:
Currently in Progress
Starcraft
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (I came so close to finishing this, but I think I'd have to start the whole thing over now)
Okami
The Bouncer
Neverwinter Nights (probably in a permanent state of hibernation)
The List Proper
Starcraft: Brood War
Starcraft II
BioShock
Half Life 2
Half Life
Grim Fandango
Monkey Island
Dragon Age Origins
Knights of the Old Republic
Amazing Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom
Baldur's Gate
Planescape: Torment
Deus Ex
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Thief: the Dark Project
Star Control 2
Wind Waker
Majora's Mask
Twilight Princess
Final Fantasy VI/VII/VIII/IX/X/X-2 (but probably not all of them)
Chrono Trigger
Ico
Beyond Good and Evil
Okage
Psychonauts
Mass Effect
Earthbound
Super Metroid
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
With some of these, of course, the issue is finding a shitty enough computer to run them...