Overly Positive

My latest issue of Game Informer has within it a top 200 of video games in celebration of the 200th issue of the mag. First off, I do have to say kudos to Game Informer, a magazine that has remained viable due to an ingenious attachment to a game store chain. Reaching 200 issues is an amazing achievement in and of itself, especially when it comes to print for very specific media, so let’s hope Game Informer is here for a long time to come.

Anyway, their top ten games, from 1-10, are:

• Legend of Zelda (NES)
• Super Mario Bros. (NES)
• Tetris (PC)
• Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
• Half-Life 2 (PC)
• Doom (PC)
• Metroid (NES)
• Final Fantasy III/VI (SNES)
• Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
• Ms. Pac Man (Arcade)

At a glance, it’s hard to argue against such a list of classics, but there are definitely people that can and would do so. Normally, the inability to agree on any kind of top ten, let alone top two hundred, games of all time would be seen as a negative, but I think that it’s actually a good thing, for the industry and for us as gamers. Why is that? Well, it proves that gamers like all kinds of games, and not just one or two specific brands. The list above, while certainly worthy, is not everyone’s top ten, nor should it be. The variety and depth of video games as they exist today is validated by the fact that there are people out there who love games that wouldn’t normally be popularized, like Shadow of the Colossus (84), Earthbound (100), Ikaruga (172), or Age of Empires (71).

For the industry, while there are arguably games in certain genres that might generate more revenue than others (Modern Warfare 2 and Madden come to mind), there is still some value in creating a different experience with games. If the bottom line was so definitively drawn so as to show that only one or two kinds of games sold, that’s pretty much all you’d get from the industry. But the fact that there are games out there that aren’t really traditional, per se (such as Torchlight or Castle Crashers) and which can do respectably well, means it’s correct and worthwhile to make something that breaks the usual, millions-of-boxes-sold mold.

Besides, such variance breeds innovation, too. Every game that has been popularized started out as a title that offered something “different”, “fresh”, or otherwise new. The next blockbuster title that is waiting to generate tons of sequels might be just around the corner, and I, for one can’t wait to see what that is.