I was going to limit it to current systems to put the fading generation into perspective, but why not all of them? It'll give us some insight into our fellow members' taste, and perhaps their progression as a gamer (in my case, that should probably be LACK of progression).

I'll take my turn later. I have another roundtable to draft...

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@Anand
It's brutal to whittle down the DS to just 5, I had to leave off so many games that I truly loved, like Yoshi's, Ghost Trick, Layton, Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword, GTA Chinatown Wars, Star Wars ROTS, Ouendan, Mario Kart DS, Advance Wars Dual Strike, I could on and on!

@deathly_hallows
For me, whittling down the NES and GBA stuff was murder. Sooo many classics...

C64 was also tough, because it's difficult to remember clearly that far back. It's mostly just a haze of nostalgia and EA games.

Oh, plus I forgot the Atari 800 (Miner 2049er and some Ninja game!) and ST (Dungeon Master)...

@Anand
I found the NES relatively easy because I realized I must have only had like 10 games total when I was a kid, those games were expensive! I'd get one game and it would have to last like 3-6 months! Also for some reason I wasn't counting games I played on VC, only games I played on the actual hardware, that helped narrow it down...

Hmm yeah oddly enough, despite loving the NES, I couldn't really think of that many amazing games outside of Mario, Zelda, a few other Nintendo properties and well... Mega Man. Maybe Contra. I guess if I were into RPGs back then I'd have a bigger list.

SNES is where gaming really took off.

@deathly_hallows

Yeah, I did the same. I only listed games that I've played on the actual hardware the games originally came out on. Made things much easier.

@Zero

Yeah, agreed. The NES era was amazing, because everything was new and I never really knew what to expect. But the SNES took things to the next level, and that's when games really started getting more refined and polished.

That was around the same time the Gameboy really started to hit its stride as well, that helped too.

I guess I'll go with my gut and answer the first games that come to mind. I'll also only list games I've owned in physical form for consoles I've owned in physical form.

Game Boy:

Wario Land
Final Fantasy Legend II
Final Fantasy Adventure
Link's Awakening
Pokémon Pinball

SNES:

Demon's Crest
Chrono Trigger
Super Metroid
Killer Instinct

PC:

Grim Fandango
Alpha Centauri
Fallout 2
Freespace 2
Starcraft

GameCube:

Viewtiful Joe
Metroid Prime
F-Zero GX
Wind Waker
SSX3

GBA:

Astro Boy: The Omega Factor
Advance Wars 2
Mario & Luigi
Metroid Fusion

DS:
Dragon Quest V
Dragon Quest IX
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Wii:
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Mario Galaxy 2
DKCR
Wii Sports Resort
Xenoblade

3DS:

Super Mario 3D Land
Kid Icarus: Uprising



edits - Added Super Mario 3D Land, Killer Instinct, the PC list, Mario & Luigi, Metroid Fusion, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

For every system I've owned? All right...these exclude VC games. These are only cartridges/discs that I paid for, and aren't in any particular order.

NES:
Duck Tales
The Legend of Zelda
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 3
Super Mario Bros. 3

Game Boy (I only owned eight games on the original Game Boy):
Kirby's Dream Land
Pokemon (Blue)
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
Tetris
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

Super Nintendo:
Chrono Trigger
EarthBound
Final Fantasy III
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Nintendo 64:
Harvest Moon 64
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Paper Mario
Star Fox 64
Super Mario 64

Game Boy Advance:
Golden Sun
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
MOTHER 1 + 2
MOTHER 3

GameCube:
F-Zero GX
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Metroid Prime
Resident Evil 4
Super Smash Bros. Melee

DS:
Final Fantasy IV
Kirby Canvas Curse
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
The World Ends With You

Wii:
Donkey Kong Country Returns
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Rune Factory Frontier
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Mario Galaxy 2

3DS:
Dead or Alive: Dimensions
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
Super Mario 3D Land
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy

And for my non-Nintendo systems, I didn't own a whole lot of titles before I got my PS3, so take these with a grain of salt...

PlayStation:
Bust-a-Groove 2
Chrono Cross
Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy IX
Star Ocean: The Second Story

PlayStation 2:
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy XII
Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts 2
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

PlayStation 3:
The Beatles: Rock Band
Final Fantasy XIII
LittleBigPlanet 2
Rock Band 3
Sound Shapes

@Guillaume

Ah yes, the Gameboy Final Fantasy games were so good! My personal favorite was Final Fantasy Legend III (all that time travel stuff is neat!) but both Legend II and Adventure were classics. The first one was a bit hokey, though. At least IMO. I can't remember exactly why, but I remember when I was younger I was put off by it for some reason.

Your GBA, DS and 3DS lists are pretty bare...do you not own many (physical) games for those systems?

@GameDadGrant

I don't own many retail 3DS games, no. And Super Mario 3D Land is the only one I feel strongly enough about to put on a top 5 list.

I owned more games for GBA but... Heh. I guess I could add M&L or Fusion.

Wait... you didn't get into Kid Icarus with the rest of the site?! And what about Mario Kart 7, I know you played a bit of that!

I did! I was trying to go from guts/memory without looking at other people's lists. Kid Icarus Uprising is a good choice, I don't know why it slipped my mind other than I lost the cartridge a while ago.

@Guillaume
Oh we're supposed to feel strongly? Haha, a lot of my games made the top 5 because I only had like a handful of games for a system, period. Project Gotham Racing? Really it was okay (Geometry Wars baby!) but I don't feel strongly about it, actually I can barely remember it (outside of Geometry Wars).

@Guillaume

Oh, I see. You're only putting ones you feel strongly about.

I did my list like @deathly_hallows did - just put my top 5 from each system, even if I only owned a handful of games from the one in question. Though I enjoyed all the games I listed well enough to feel comfortable listing them.

@deathly_hallows I feel that way about the Wii, not only have I enjoyed a lot of its games, but so many of them are different experiences from each other that it's difficult to quantify what is better than what.

@Mop it up

The thread is more about what you enjoyed more though, right? So you just gotta go with what you really liked, even if that game is technically "inferior" to another.

Or wait, am I doing it wrong?

You can do it however you wanna do it. I was thinking "only games that you're passionate about, though". But, yeah, personal preference would definitely trump 'objective' quality.

@deathly_hallows
You didn't rent back in the day? I used to rent NES games by the fistful! Granted, that was only half a game at a time, but still!

Everyone seems to universally agree that SNES was the REAL hotness but I. The SNES felt kind of old hat to me. Sure, it had some bonafide super-duper classics, but it really lacked the fertile experimentation and sheer quantity of the NES library for me. The NES library was like, "Holy shit, have you played this game?" and the SNES library was all, "Hey, this is a prettier version of that NES game that blew me away!" My lack of RPGosity probably figures into that opinion, though.

GBA -> DS was a similar progression for me. It was a system with TONS of very good to great games, but not nearly as many DS games blew my socks off as...did... GBA games. That sentence was tortuous.

@Anand

A valid argument, although I'd argue that the SNES's sequels were...well, REALLY good. I mean, honestly, they were so good that the argument can be made that most of them have yet to be topped 15-20 years later. In other words, a lot will tell you that Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Super Contra, Super Castlevania, Turtles in Time, Final Fantasy III, Donkey Kong Country (2), Kirby Super Star, and even Super Mario Kart are the best in their series. That's pretty amazing if you think about it--that companies were able to get these games so right on their first (16-bit) go-around.

And that's not even including the more unique franchises/experiences such as Mario Paint, EarthBound, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana/Evermore, Lufia II (what happened to this series?), Soul Blazer/Illusion of Gaia, Earthworm Jim and Yoshi's Island. The NES and N64 to a degree probably did pioneer more series and gameplay elements, but the SNES's best are so refined that it's very difficult to find better games within those genres.

Also, you guys need to stop listing your top games with the best one first! I say this all the time!

Of what significance is the "first (16 bit) go around," though? Certainly series like Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Contra, Final Fantasy and Castlevania had all been building toward those classic 16-bit games since the 8-bit days. If these stand as the ultimate games in their series (and I'd argue against a number of your examples) I'd say it's because everything moved away from sprite-based gaming during the next generation. So the 16-bit era really stands as the cut-off point for this style of gaming, at least for many years. That sort of crystalized them as the height of their genres. It's not necessarily that they were unbeatably good, imho. The ones that did continue, like Castlevania or eventually DKC, offered games that might have even better reputations than their 16 bit counterparts.

Personally, I prefer the revolutionary 8-bit versions of most of those franchise games to their evolutionary 16-bit brethren. I think it's just a simple matter of preference, though. No wrong answers, here. This is the sort of argument you want to have. Both the NES and SNES are darn near perfect consoles.

But I'm with Anand. The NES just felt more exciting to me because all these playstyles were so new. (Strange how I don't feel the same affection for the 64 era, which was equally revolutionary. Probably just my age and low level of engagement during that era.)

I can understand the point about NES games being new and exciting. I certainly liked several NES games back in the day, but the problem I have with that system is that it has aged terribly. After gaming has evolved so much since then, it just shines light on all the design issues, bad control, and other problems that those games have. There are a few games I can still play today, but most are too simple or bad to hold my interest. And if I didn't play a game back in the day, then I can't get into it at all now. SNES doesn't have this problem, most of its games still hold up.

@GameDadGrant But how can I decide which games I enjoyed more when I enjoyed them for different reasons?

Anand said:

GBA -> DS was a similar progression for me. It was a system with TONS of very good to great games, but not nearly as many DS games blew my socks off as...did... GBA games. That sentence was tortuous.

Interesting. As the people that "know" me already know, I feel the DS was the system that interjected a sort of 'new life' into video games. At least for me. Dual-screen and touch-screen gaming was so new at the time, that everything felt fresh again. It wasn't just the same ol' same ol' but prettier. It was unique. This didn't apply to EVERY game of course (Mario Kart DS, Pokémon and of course NEW Super Mario Bros. all felt and sometimes even looked like past games in their respective franchises) but the many others that did? Man. DS definitely blew the GBA out of the water, at least IMO. And that's saying a lot, because I freakin' LOVED the GBA. (still do, truth be told)

GBA was a refinement of Gameboy games, but the DS was something else entirely.

@kriswright

Good point. Maybe if 2D gaming continued to evolve, we would have gotten better and better games in various franchises. Maybe we should have let 2D stick around longer, eh? At least to see what would happen?

Of course, being young and having nostalgia will also play a factor. As you said, the N64 era doesn't have that same feeling you had during the NES era. Could've just been your age. And I think that's part of why I'm not as engaged in the console side of things now, in this current generation. Not because the games coming out or the systems they are on are bad. It's because I'm older, I'm jaded and I'm far busier than I ever was before. Certainly not gaming's fault.

But yeah, good point. Cheers.

@Mop it up

Just gotta go with what you enjoyed MOST, overall. I...guess? I mean, I enjoyed both Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and Elite Beat Agents on DS for different reasons, but I can tell you my overall enjoyment and lasting uh, joy, and memory of Castlevania can put it above Elite Beat Agents. I liked both games for different reasons, but I can still tell which I liked more.

It's personal, so you just gotta go with your gut.