It’s a weird experience, starting a new top 100 series. In my head they sound like a good idea, after all, it’s 10 more posts for my blog! But I often forget how much effort actually goes into just creating the list, let alone writing out my thoughts for each game.

Regardless, what will be interesting is that unlike my board game top 100, I’ve been playing video games since I was 5 years old. A lot (and I mean A LOT) of these games are steeped in nostalgia and are created cherished memories that I hold dearly to this day. Speaking of nostalgia…

100 – Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose!

Year Released: 1992 | Platform: Super Nintendo

I didn’t watch any of the Tiny Toons cartoon series, but somehow the game Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose made its way into my household, and I loved seeing young bubs dash, slide, and jump his way through the levels. A pure platformer, the whole goal of the Buster Busts Loose is to make it to the end of the level, alive. Familiar faces show up frequently, from the Tasmanian Devil destroying the cafeteria, to a wild west train ride, to leaping to and fro on hot air balloons, I loved playing this game over and over. It was bright, colourful, and fast, often requiring daring leaps of faith at the climax of an exciting level.

99 – Fire Emblem Engage

Year Released: 2023 | Platform: Nintendo Switch

Hey, I actually wrote a whole review on Fire Emblem: Engage when I played it back in May. The summary of that review is that I had FUN playing Fire Emblem: Engage. I was engaged with the army building aspects, tweaking my characters classes, and getting through each battle without a casualty, which is what I really want out of a Fire Emblem game. I’ll save you the though, Fire Emblem: Three Houses didn’t make it onto my top 100, because SO MUCH of the time was spent in between battles. Running through the school, doing all the side tasks and talking to the ludicrous number of characters took up entirely too much time. I felt that Engage had a much better balance between the tactical combat (which I love) and the army management/dating sim aspects (which I’m less fond of). It also tapped into my nostalgia vein really well, as a longtime fan of the series, seeing all the old lords come back was a real treat for me.

98 – Sid Meier’s Civilization V

Year Released: 2010 | Platform: PC

It’s kind of hard to believe that I never played a Civilization game before Sid Meier’s Civilization V. That gap in my gaming history was mostly thanks to the fact that I was a console gamer for most of my life, until about 2014 when I build my first PC and picked up Civ V for cheap.

Civ V is a civilization building 4x game (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate). Players take control of a historical faction, complete with their own special bonuses, and lead their civilization through the ages into prosperity. You’ll create cities, expand your armies, and crawl across the world until you bump up against your neighbours, and eventually conquer them. Civ V is played on a hex map, so it’s basically a board game, but with enough math going on under the hood that you wouldn’t ever actually want to play it on a table.

Civ V is the kind of game that keeps you up until 4 in the morning, saying “Just one more turn…”. The game drip feeds accomplishments and achievements to you, always dangling the next carrot for you to chase. I’ve only finished a game of Civ V once, as I often just end up starting a new game, as that exploration and expansion aspect of the game is what I really enjoy, not so much the combat and conquering. At least not with these mechanics.

97 – Celeste

Year Released: 2018 | Platform: Xbox

Celeste is another platforming game, but this one doesn’t rely on blind leaps of faith. Instead, you play a red-headed heroine named Madeline as she scales a mountain and faces her inner demons and anxieties. The platforming in Celeste is tight and utterly satisfying, and the dialogue and characters are heartfelt. Most of the game has a sombre, melancholy vibe to it, especially when Badeline shows up and heckles Madeline.

Rife with themes of depression and anxiety, Celeste is so much more than a simple platformer, a-la Super Meat Boy. It’s beautiful pixel art drew me in, and the themes hooked me. Some of the platforming challenges are utterly frustrating, requiring near pixel perfect precision. But when you can overcome a challenge that felt unsurmountable, oh the feeling of euphoria makes those hundreds of attempts worth it.

96 – Braid

Year Released: 2008 | Platform: PC

Braid happened to be one of the first indie games I bought after building my first PC in 2013. I like platformers, and it was highly rated, so I figured I had nothing to lose. What I ended up getting was an amazing little experience. The platforming puzzles tickled my brain just right, the time travel mechanic made it easy to try tricky jumps again quickly, and the twist at the end caught me completely flat-footed.

Braid instilled a love of indie games in my heart. Games made by small teams that felt like they were made by people who love games, and less like pieces of product to be marketed and sold. It’s only a couple hours long, but it was absolutely worth the short trip!

95 – Mini Metro

Year Released: 2015 | Platform: Android

As much as I don’t like to admit it, I spend a lot of time on my phone. Mostly thanks to sitting on the bus. But in general, I don’t like scrolling through social media much, I’d rather be playing a game. Unfortunately the mobile gaming landscape can be kind of a mess. Thank goodness for games like Mini Metro. A simple puzzle game about creating routes to get passengers from location to location. Each game starts so simply, with only 3 stops. But as time goes on, the screen slowly pans out and more locations pop up. Each week you get access to some more things, like more trains, extra passenger cars, more bridges/tunnels, and extra lines. The goal is to just last as long as possible and deliver as many passengers as possible.

Mini Metro is a game my wife and I both got fairly competitive at. We would lay in bed playing the same maps to compare our scores. Never before did I think I would curse a circle out so hard, but when a cluster of stops makes a line have 7 circles in a row, it’s horribly inefficient! Really, any game that gets me invested to the point where I’m cursing basic shapes is a pretty excellent game.

94 – Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition

Year Released: 2018 | Platform: Nintendo Switch

When I first heard that there was going to be a Dynasty Warriors spin-off set in the Legend of Zelda world, I let out a groan. While I love The Legend of Zelda, I’ve never been a big fan of Dynasty Warriors. I’ve always found the gameplay repettive, and I’ve also never been fond of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which Dynasty Warriors draws its story and lore from.

I finally played Hyrule Warriors in late 2020 when my daughter was born. She had awful sleep patterns and would sometimes only sleep if she was being held. Now, if you don’t know, it’s unsafe to sleep while a baby is sleeping on you, so I spent many nights of my paternity leave laying on the couch at 3 in the morning with my daughter sleeping on my chest, and I needed a game that was active enough to keep me awake, but brain dead enough that my sleep-addled brain could comprehend it. I don’t find Hyrule Warriors a particularily phenomonial game, but I do cherish the memories that I associate with the game.

93 – Quest 64

Year Released: 1998 | Platform: Nintendo 64

Now here’s a game that I KNOW doesn’t hold up. Quest 64 has the prestige of being my very first 3D RPG adventure. Its simplicity made it an ideal starting point for my little 9-year-old brain, featuring all the basic elements of an RPG: character interactions, a story-driven plot, food upkeep, combat, levelling, and a search for those little magic gem things. It felt like a pure, early adventurer’s journey, the simple world offered a childlike charm that resonated with me.

However, Quest 64’s simplicity is a double-edged sword. I did replay this a few years ago, and found it utterly lacking in depth. All the mechanics felt watered down, and everything about this game is utterly forgettable. Town 1 and Town 2 are indistinguishable, and I can’t recall the name of anything without looking it up first.

That being said, it still holds a special place in my heart. I recognize that Quest 64 shouldn’t be on any “top 100 games” list, and yet it’s still a part of my history as a gamer, so here it sits.

92 – Pokémon Stadium

Year Released: 1999 | Platform: Nintendo 64

I tell this story often, but when I was 8 or 9 years old, my grandparents took my sister and I on a road trip to a family reunion. I was given $100 in spending money. At the first stop, I bought Pokémon Red from the local Wal-Mart for $50, and I spent the other $50 on batteries for my Game Boy. I was the perfect age for the Pokémon craze, the target demographic, and I was utterly hooked. So when Pokémon Staduim came out and had these amazing 3D visuals, I knew I had to get my paws on it.

And eventually I did. But I never did get the transfer pack, so my entire experience playing Pokémon Stadium was using the rental Pokémon to tackle the gym leaders and elite four. And beyond that my sister and I spent an amazing amount of time playing those little mini-games. I never did manage to beat her in Dig, Sandshrew, Dig…

91 – Tetrisphere

Year Released: 1997 | Platform: Nintendo 64

Hey look, 3 Nintendo 64 games in a row. Funny coincidence. Definitely not indicitive of how many Nintendo games are going to be on this list…

I love Tetris, as you’ll find out higher on the lists, but Tetrisphere is a wonky 3D take on the puzzle game. You twist the ball around, slide pieces around, then slam your pieces down on matching shapes that clear that piece, and any attached piece of the same shape/type. The goal of the game is to try and get to the core like it’s some kind of jawbreaker and release the prisioner. It’s pretty simple, I really enjoyed it as a kid, and I’m a little sad that it never made an apperance outside of the Nintendo 64!