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Super Mario Bros., or Super Mario World? Mass Effect 2 or Street Fighter 2? Space Invaders or Galaga? From the early days of Atari to the latest edition of Elden Ring, video games have provided nerds around the world with hours, and hours, and hours of fun.
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Step into strange worlds, explore sinister plots and fight the fiendish of foe. It’s time to find your new favorite game. We’ve ranked them all to figure out what are absolutely, positively the greatest games of all time.
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100. Gone Home (2013)
Steam Nintendo Switch PS4 Xbox One
You arrive at your family’s new house following a trip overseas. No one is home. A note from your little sister on the door begs you not to look for her. Where is everyone? What happened here? That’s the premise of Gone Home, the spectacular debut game from the Fullbright Company. No guns or swords, no puzzles or quests, no henchmen or monsters—just you and a house and the story told by what you find inside.
Original platforms: Windows, OS X, Linux
99. Shenmue II (2001)
The Shenmue series transformed adventure games into an open-world 3D experience with a cinematic, story-driven game. Shenmue II picks up after the events of the first game, as Ryo Hazuki continues the search for his father’s murderer. Gameplay involves a combination of city-exploration, detective-style investigation, interrogation, and combat—a mixture of real-time action and quick-time-events.
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The second installment of the series offered a larger world to explore: the vibrant city of Hong Kong as opposed to the small Japanese town of the first game.
Original platform: Sega Dreamcast
98. Fire Emblem: Awakening (2012)
The factor that set Fire Emblem: Awakening apart from its predecessors is the inclusion of a robust relationship system. The more your characters fight alongside each other in battle, the closer they become. If they spend enough time together, some will even get married and have kids, passing along stat bonuses and movesets.
The super-charging of your troops with an army of beefed-up youngsters is nice, but the real show-stealer is the extensive dialog interactions that come from your characters’ burgeoning relationships. It’s all the charm of a dating sim, but less “buying flowers and trips to the mall,” and more “the family that slays together, stays together.”
Oh, and the game is also an entertaining turn-based tactical RPG.
Original platform: Nintendo 3DS
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97. Silent Hill 2 (2001)
Silent Hill 2 succeeds in creating an atmosphere of pure terror by focusing more on the psychological and thematic elements of horror rather than simply battling against big scary monsters.
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You play as James Sutherland, a man searching for his deceased wife in the fog- and monster-riddled town of Silent Hill. His quest is a journey through both the town and his own psyche, where he faces taboo topics such as domestic abuse, rape, and incest.
Original platform: PlayStation 2
96. Day of the Tentacle (1993)
Games like this just don’t come around very often anymore. Back in the CD-ROM days when LucasArts ruled, DOTT was the time-traveling puzzle game that far surpassed its predecessor Maniac Mansion.
Guide Hoagie, Laverne, and Bernard on their journey to stop the purple tentacle from taking over the world. The puzzles range from getting Betsy Ross to design a new flag to dressing up a mummy to win a beauty contest. It’s still just as fun to play more than 25 years later.
Original platform: MS-DOS
95. Zork (1980)
In the late ’70s and early '80s, while the golden age of arcades made its way into shopping malls and bowling alleys, a different kind of game began to thrive at home. Text adventures offered worlds of imaginative depth, whether through an interactive fantasy novel or an electronic game of Dungeons and Dragons.
Zork was one of the first of these games, but it differentiated itself by its depth of both story and design. The game’s text parser was more sophisticated than its predecessors, able to understand short but more complex strings of commands as opposed to basic noun-verb statements. This made the game more engaging from both a narrative and gameplay perspective, giving us the first glimpse at what would be possible in the fantasy RPGs of the future.
Original platform: PDP-10
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94. Star Fox 64 (1997)
There’s a moment in the first level of Star Fox 64 where, if you fly through a series of seemingly innocuous arches, your wingman Falco tells you to follow him. He leads you through a waterfall and into an alternate end of the level, unlocking a whole new path of locations to visit. You could have beaten the game via the basic path countless times without ever knowing these places existed.
I love that moment.
Original platform: Nintendo 64
93. Mega Man 2 (1988)
Nintendo Switch Nintendo 3DS NES NES Classic
Critics loved the original Mega Man, but nobody bought it. Lucky for us, Capcom decided to move forward with a sequel, and Mega Man 2 was a smash. The game sold more than 1.5 million copies and launched the franchise into the gaming stratosphere. The second game is played like the first, as you control the eponymous Blue Bomber through a series of robot-ridden levels, defeating them to earn their abilities. But Mega Man 2 brought a series of upgrades, not the least of which was making the game less crushingly difficult.
Original platform: Famicom, NES
92: Dungeon Master (1987)
Dungeon Master pioneered and popularized many elements that would become staples of the role-playing game genre. Those include real-time gameplay, an immersive 3D world, character inventory, skills that improved through use rather than by spending skill points, and more. Individually, these features had appeared in earlier games. But Dungeon Master’s packing of them into a cohesive, enjoyable package in the model that games since then have emulated.
Original platform: Atari ST
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91. Dota 2 (2013)
A sequel to the community-created mod Defense of the Ancients for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Dota 2 became a phenomenon itself, spawning one of the biggest e-sports communities in the world.
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With incredible artistic design, Valve perfected the massive online battle arena (MOBA) genre, and unsurprisingly, it’s not the last Valve game you’ll see on this list.
Original platform: PC
90. Soulcalibur 2 (2002)
The Soul series of fighting games separated itself from the likes of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter through its focus on weapon-based combat. Large, flashy, deadly weapons. Soulcalibur 2, the third entry in the series, leaped forward with its improved step-and-avoid system, a series staple.
Original platform: Namco System 246 Arcade Board
89. Timesplitters 2 (2002)
It’s Goldeneye without the whole Bond tie-in. There’s a story mode here, but it’s really all about the multi-player option. Choose from a variety of characters and then battle your way through levels depicting several different time periods. There were so many gameplay modes aside from just your run-of-the-mill death match. Even Capture the Bag was a blast to play.
Original platform: PlayStation 2
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88. Dead Space (2008)
Dead Space was a prime example of the cinematic storytelling experience that drove many of the best games in the 2000s. The game’s detailed setting was both atmospheric and terrifying, a perfect background to the survival-horror storyline of undead space monsters.
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You play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer who must survive when his mining ship is attacked by space-zombies known as Necromorphs. The game’s combat uses a system called “strategic dismemberment,” where Isaac must use his improvised arsenal to slice off the arms, legs, and other extremities of his alien assailants.
Original platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
87. Twisted Metal (1995)
It’s not about racing. It’s about annihilating your opponents with every weapon in your arsenal. This 1995 Playstation release was a car game for people who didn’t care about getting to any finish line. It’s a battle royale where shooting missiles from a creepy ice cream truck is par for the course.
Original platform: PlayStation
86. Cuphead (2017)
Microsoft Windows Xbox One Nintendo Switch
This little indie took the gaming world by storm upon its release in 2017. The animation style echoes the work of studios like Disney and Fleischer from the 1930s. Players control the titular character making your way through boss fights with increasing difficulty. And it does get quite difficult as Cuphead and his brother Mugman fight their way to a confrontation with the devil himself.
Original platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox One
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85. Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec (2001)
With Gran Turismo 3, the now-venerated racing series made the jump from PlayStation to PS2, and with it made a giant leap in graphics and realism. While the game was perhaps a bit too realistic (and thus complicated) for the casual player, GT3’s track-day physics and driving mechanics made it a favorite of car fanatics and racing game fans alike.
Original platform: PlayStation 2
84. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2003)
Where the third entry in the original Prince of Persia trilogy failed to successfully transfer the series from its 2D roots to a 3D setting, Sands of Time succeeded. A reboot of the classic franchise for the sixth generation of consoles, the game featured beautiful graphics and acrobatic 3D platforming and combat, all of which it combined with an innovative time-bending mechanic. The game was a hit, earning critical acclaim and spawning multiple sequels and a feature film adaptation.
We try to forget about that last bit, though...
Original platforms: Windows, Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube
83. Donkey Kong (1981)
Just as many superheroes made their first appearance in non-eponymous comic books (Superman in Action Comics #1, Batman in Detective Comics #27), everyone’s favorite mustachioed plumber debuted in a game with neither “Super” nor “Mario” in the name.
This game was more than the Italian high-jumper’s first outing, though. Donkey Kong was an early example of the iconic platforming genre and one of the most popular arcade games of all time, helping Nintendo break into the American video game market it would dominate in the 80s.
Original platform: Arcade
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82. Mike Tyson's Punch Out (1987)
An early standout of home console entertainment and one of the first sports video games, Punch Out was successful for targeting arcade-style fun rather than attempting to emulate the sport it’s based upon.
In fact, part of Punch Out’s brilliance is that it’s not really a sports game at all. It’s a puzzle game that has much more to do with pattern recognition than physical prowess. In a way, so is boxing.
Original platforms: Arcade
81. Super Mario Odyssey (2017)
Pop culture’s most famous plumber makes his Nintendo Switch debut with Odyssey and he has a new friend named Cappy. Together they travel the kingdoms, including stops in New Donk City and Crumbleden, on an adventure collecting power moons.
Cappy can be used by Mario as a weapon to capture special objects and to overcome environmental obstacles. He’s no Luigi or Toad, but a welcome addition to the family.
Original platform: Nintendo Switch
Adam Schubak
Content Strategy Manager
Adam is an NYC-based writer who has covered everything from men's fashion to video games and travel. He loves any opportunity to write about pop culture or essays inspired by his personal life.
