My list of greatest video games

Here is the list of my greatest video games. Some are weighted by personal nostalgia. Some take into account how much quality they have in their design.

20. Qwirks

A clone of the game Puyo Puyo and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, it has the same creator as Tetris. This version had a better charm to it. The characters all had a little dance animation to signify their near victory, or when they were about to lose. The characters all were interesting creatures, until the final boss with corn cob abs. Getting huge cascade of matches would get a sour skittle. I had spent well too much time playing this.

19. Empire Attack

A now defunct MMO game that is offline. It was quite an original game of its kind at the time, and yet an amazingly simple premise. You simply conquer territory and build population; all in plain old text based HTML browsers . If the game number ended with a 0, there would be a massively dense bonus density of coins, and ten times more rare and rich if the game ended in a double zero. I had even once missed out on going to my cousin's birthday dinner so I could play an extremely rare quadrable zero game.

Oh, I had spent days at a time playing this. This is the kind of game addiction that would destroy marriages. The time would go so fast every round with hours. One could easily carry out a life-sentence by playing this game in confinement. The old game is defunct now. We should remaster the game and get it working again.

18. Weekend Warrior

A game show simulation which Pangea Software considers this their worst game, but I am not one of them who thinks that. This game is so hilarious that is redeems itself of all the terrible stuff. As opposed to pseudo-3D of the time, this game is claimed to be the first video game to be 100% live 3D. It showed off with the 90's spinning 3D text. The piñata in the Mayan temple, the sumo wrestlers in the pagoda, and the buzzsaws in the haunted house. This is one of the few Pangea Software games to have spoken dialogue. It's page still looks like a 90's website from the Netscape era.

There were many prizes for losing, such as macaroni and bleu cheese, clam fizz, and lemur chow. One of the prizes was much more valuable than the grand prize: three years worth of free diesel fuel. A very underrated game that should get more exposure. This game was published by Bungie, the same company that spawned the billion-dollar Halo franchise, has their brand on this game.

17. Railroad Tycoon 3

A game about trains, and I much do like trains. Unlike SimCity 4, this game is actually in live 3D. It has one one of the most limitless map editors of any game. This game could let you make almost anything.

16. Deimos Rising

Another game that was packaged on the Mac. A vertical-scrolling shooter game with lots of waves enemies. The game is itself a hugely improved sequel to the old predecessor Mars Rising. Despite taking place on Mars; a featureless, inhospitable, desert planet, the settings have lush jungles, forests, and lakes.

Although a somewhat generic arcade game of spaceships, it does have good value for being iconic to the Mac. The game has very great replayability despite it's age. The game was all in pseudo-3D prerendered sprites, but it should be remastered in live 3D. It has since become an orphaned game as the publishing company Ambrosia Software has vanished without explanation. The game may be unfortunately forever lost as abandonware.

15. Multiwinia

A real-time strategy game, and a game of true skill. It is a spin-off of Darwinia, which is a "digital playground" that personifies cyberspace. A game from the 2000s, it has quite impressive graphics for any time. It has a low-poly vector aesthetic that is always sharp. The flat little stick figures are voiced by a cat. They all attack each other with lasers and grenades. My brother always defeats me in this game. This game has since become abandoned, as there never seem to be any players online, leaving you to have to play with computer opponents.

14. SimCity 4

A city-planning game. I had long had the original SimCity game from the classic Macintosh, as well as SimCity 2000. This may have been the first "major" game title I owned. The game was still from the early 2000's, when game graphics were still transitioning, so everything is a weird uncanny valley pseudo-3D isometric perspective. This game was right when Maxis was acquired by Electronic Arts, so may be the latest still good game from the Sim City series. The "dolly llama" cheat code scared the freaking living crap out of me.

13. Spooky's House of Jumpscares

Later renamed Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion. Just lots of comical 2spooky4me spoopy jumpcares. All in a pseudo-3D perspective. It is impressive that this game was mostly created by one person.

The character is a disembodied spirit that apparently died quite prematurely. Maybe she had anti-vaccine parents. She must be quite rich for the size of the house she has. Despite this character's endearing appearance, she has terribly violent and bloodthirsty tendencies.

12. Slender: The Eight Pages

A viral game based on the urban phenomenon of Slenderman, a tall humanoid figure in a suit that lacks a face. You simply search for papers hidden around a forest while the enemy follows you. Indeed, the graphics are cheap. But this is not a game about novelty, but is a genuine horror game that unnerves you very well. This game had amazingly great reviews about how well it unearths those fears. Few games can compete with this manifestation of psychological horror.

The viral game was so popular that the huge influx of downloads had crashed the website. (I guess torrents are a lost art.)

11. Super Smash Brothers Brawl

Nintendo's premiere game for the Wii console. A huge crossover game of all Nintendo characters, and game of comical violence where you just beat the crap out of each other. I had played the game so much, and knew everything about all the character stats. My main man was Mr. Game & Watch. He had the just about the strongest move in the game, after Gannondorf's reverse punch. A rare chance, but the 9 was an instant hit if granted. Some characters were way too unfairly stacked, like Meta Knight. The following games of the Smash Brothers series greatly reduced the characters that they are no longer as great. Let alone the personal nostalgia, I do regard this game to be the greatest in the Smash Brothers series.

10. Bugdom

A 1999 Pangea Software game that was packaged on the G3 iMac. A rollie-pollie bug with converse shoes named Rollie McFly overthrows the clan of fire ants and restores order to the land. It is the most successful Pangea Software game by reception and popularity, and is an icon of Mac OS 9 and Mac gaming in general. No dialogue, just colorful graphics of bugs and flowers. A terrible sequel Bugdom 2 was just a cash-in trying to ride on this games success.

It has now been remastered for modern computers; it can now natively run directly on Mac OS 11 and Windows 10, no virtual machine or emulator needed!

9. Guitar Hero III

Oh, to be stuck in the 2000s. A rhythm game of hit songs. This is indeed one of the most successful games in its own right, but also has a great weight of charm to it. It was in the sevenths generation of consoles; the Wii, the Playstation 3, and the Xbox 360. The following games in the series declined in quality, and this single game still remains one of the most prominent titles in the series.

8. Daddy Long Legs

A bipedal spider that is five meters tall. You tap to take one step at a time to see how far you can walk without falling; similar to the viral game QWOP. What is so redeemable about this game that makes it rank so high is the great artwork and graphics, and the very smooth physics and animation. This game is a design of how all mobile game graphics should be.

7. Stinkoman 20X6

A Flash game from Homestar Runner that parodies Megaman and the poor Japanese to English translations common in games from that era. After 15 years of hiatus, the last level was finally released on December 30, 2020; the day before Flash was killed.

6. Plants vs. Zombies

A game where you throw corn at animated corpses. Yet another game that was taken over by EA. This game has great artwork like other 2000s PopCap games. This game should be on Wikipedia's list of greatest games, but it isn't.

5. Cookie Clicker.

A completely original game in it's own kind. It is a browser game where you click on a cookie to make more. This is the original game; similar games like Adventure Capitalist are rip-offs of this.

The game has many hilarious and creative items in the setting. Leeches that eat away your cookies, and an ancient temple with a cookie religion. And grandmas that become so overworked that they mutate and start an uprising. Ascending to cookie heaven to redeem your upgrades, there is just nothing like it. The game has seemingly no end to gameplay. No matter how much you acquire, there will always be more increments of gameplay to finish. It has every kind of cookie you can think of.

How does this game outrank Super Smash Brothers Brawl? This is a game that is not weighted by nostalgia, but is great by it's own merit. Let alone it's great design and premise, it in an independent game made by one person. The graphics and artwork are a very great, unique design. The pixel art is executed very well. This ought to be listed on Wikipedia's list of greatest games. I had left it running idle on my computer for weeks, which may have taken away a lot of the computer's lifespan.

4. Team Fortress 2

A game all the way back from 2000s. When I was in middle school just after this game was still new, there were many memes about it on YouTube. I had so much exposure to the game and knew so much about it without even having to play it. 14 years later, the game has managed to stay just as relevant and active as ever. Not much any other game has had such successful longevity.

3. Myst

Myst has a very rich and interesting story. This is the original game with the 90s CGI. The game is only a slideshow of images rather than live motion. It is very ominous and scary being alone on the island, but the mystery and adventure of searching for clues is very fun. The game has spawned many squeals and parodies, and has been remastered with modern graphics.

2. Toy Story 2

A video game based on the eponymous 1999 Pixar film of the same name, which itself is considered one of the greatest films of all time. This game has a full 3D environment to be explored rather than just a top-down map. The game has very great replayability by design. Some of the tokens in the levels require tools that are unlocked later in the game, making you have to return to the game to finish previous tasks. This game was long before the advent of online video game walkthroughs, so I had a friend play it for me me when I was stuck. This game had consumed full days of time. You can play it today.

1. Otto Matic

Pangea Software is the most represented company on this list. Their 2001 game Otto Matic was packaged on the Macintosh with the new advent of Mac OS X. It is a marketing miracle to get your game pre-installed on a computer. This is a somewhat more obscure game that has quite a niche fandom. The game is inspired by the theme of 1950's Sci-Fi B-movies, and is very well executed. Aliens wearing sneakers, UFOs on a string, and crop circles. All the levels have lots of unique diversity and design. It does have some of the same elements from their earlier game Weekend Warrior, such as the poppable balloons containing items and the Venus fly traps.

All of the levels in the game were named after the developers of the game.

Pangea Software considers Otto Matic their best game, a claim with which I fully agree.