Top 5 Favorite Console Games

[TheSunshineFund]

Any console.  Not necessarily the critically acclaimed, but your personal favorites.

Disclaimer:  The only 'modern' type console I own now is the Wii and I mostly use it for other things than gaming.  The previous most recent console I owned was a PS2 so you won't see many modern console games in my list though I'm sure a lot of them are 

Also I stayed away from arcade translations, Street Fighter 2, etc.  Although you could argue both sports games I list are arcade translations I suppose.  But I digress...

1.  Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time (N64):  I think this is the most enjoyable console gaming experience I have had

2.  Baseball Stars - NES:  I remember creating a team (without the powered up cheat) and changing all their names to the current Cardinals roster and trying to win money to buy attribute increases.  So many days spent playing against the Lovely Ladies.

3.  Phantasy Star - SMS:  I could never find the last enemy so I wrote to Sega and they sent me a 20 page typed book of where all the items were.  LOL those were the days.  I remember getting this game on a whim since it was $70 and I figured for that price it had to be  .  It was.  That damn the last enemy was a "take 3 steps, face a wall, use a spell" type of thing.  Take 3 steps and face a wall?  GTFO.

4.  Resident Evil 4 - Wii:  I bought this because of the high ratings it got when I was looking for cheap Wii games (I had never played any in the series previously) and was blown away.  Really impactful gaming experience, well thought out and executed.

5.  Tecmo Bowl - NES:  Can't leave this out, still play tournaments with my friends to this day.  A game with only 4 total plays that stands the test of time is incredible.  Bo Jackson hype.

Honorable Mentions:

Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure - Wii:  I think this game should be used in classrooms, great way for kids to develop critical thinking skills, puzzle solving, out of the box ideas.  Wonderful game.

Super Mario Bros 3 - NES:  Lots O' playthroughs with friends growing up.  All time classic.

Y's Book I & II - TG-16 CD:  Outstanding soundtrack, graphics and play for its time.

Goldeneye - N64:  One of the only FPS I ever really got into, mostly because I'm a big Bond fan but one of the few movie spinoff games that worked.

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King - PS2:   The only DQ game I've played and I got hooked on it big time.  I'm a sucker for good turn based RPG's and believe it or not I've never played any of the FF series.  Sorry Phil and Jry.  Maybe this year!

[Drunkguy89]

Great list 

[TheSunshineFund]

I gotta remember to do a least favorite list as well.  That actually might be more fun.  Shit game!

[hchien]

1- Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)

2- Gran Turismo 1 or 3, can't decide (PS1/2)

3- Time Crisis (PS1)

4- Legend of Zelda (SNES)

5- Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64)

honorable mention:

Metroid Prime (Wii)

[DiggingInNY]

Y's Book I & II - TG-16 CD:  Outstanding soundtrack, graphics and play for its time.

One of my all time favorites. The TG-16/CD is one of the most underrated systems of all time. Here is my top 5, in no particualr order. I base this on games that I can play and beat over and over again.

1. Ys Book I & II - Turbo Grafx CD - One of my favorite soundtracks in a video game. This was the first CD based game I ever played and who can beat the combat system which involved bumping into enemies.

2. Lunar Silver Star Story Complete/Lunar Eternal Blue - PlayStation - I'm counting the Lunar series as one. I love the storyline and characters and the animated cut scenes were top notch.

3. Legend of Zelda - NES - It's one of those games that is permanently embedded in my brain. I can go 10 years without playing it and I can still remember where everything is.

4. Castlevania Symphony of the Night - Playstation - No explanation needed

5. Alundra - PlayStation - This is a cult classic game that plays similarly to Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past or Link's Awakening, but with a much darker tone. A lot of puzzle solving is involved in navigating through the dungeons, some of them are very challening.

Honorable mentions go to: Dracula X Rondo of Blood (PC Engine/TG Super CD), Suikoden (PlayStation), Final Fantasy IV (SNES), Dungeon Explorer II (Turbo Grafx Super CD), DuckTales (NES), and the Bonk series (Turbo Grafx 16).

[marinomitch13]

Didn't really grow up as a "gamer" or even with consoles, but here a my main two:

Doom games -Playstation/N64 (all are good)

Megaman games -NES/SNES

[Drunkguy89]

Following Steve's great Idea of a top 5 Console games ...im going to include Pc games under "console" fwiw


1. "Shenmue" : (Dreamcast)

Easily the greatest console game I have ever played made back in 99 and have yet to play anything that comes close, The story, music
and level of detail is incredible (for example on one of the streets there is an arcade which lets you play "Space Harrier" "Hang-On" "Darts" ect.)

Dreamcast Magazine Shenmue Trailer

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2. "Broken Sword" 1 and 2 : (PC/ PS2)

Two of my favorite "Point and Click" games, Beautiful hand drawn backrounds although the later games turned 3D faild badly.

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars trailer


......................................................................

3. "Beneth A Steel Sky" (DOS/Amiga/Microsoft Windows)

From the same makers of the Broken Sword
games this one is fairly oldschool, its a free download from the makers site "Revalution Software" highly recomended PnC

Beneath a Steel Sky Review for GOG.com and Noobtoob.com

......................................................................

4. "grim fandango" (Microsoft Windows)

Im sure most of you will be familiar with this LucasArts gem so I wont go into any detail,
You can currently get a "mouse mod" for this since it origionally used slugish tank controls wich never suited it, the mouse mod enables you to play it PnC style however
unfortunately the game can be rare to come across and sometimes expensive ($367.07 - New?) .........EbayPls.
It can also be a pain in the ass to get it running on modern computers.


Grim Fandango trailer

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5. "Blade Runner" (Microsoft Windows)
Another classic although admittedly I have not played this one yet ..the reason I added this particular game is because I have watched it beeing played numourus times on YT
and its a shining example of how games should be done when based on movies, its like watching another Bladerunner movie !

http://youtu.be/CPwJpaboePU?t=25s


Ship to 0:26^^

[Dk_madness]

Wow so many great titles to choose from....I've always been a RPG fan,

1. Panzer Dragoon Saga (Sega Saturn)

2. Thousand Arms (Playstation)

3. Phantasy Star 2 (Genesis)

4. Contra (NES)

5. Radiant Silvergun (Sega Saturn Japan)


Honorable mention goes out to many of the Neo-Geo games including the Metal Slug series, Magician Lord, and Crossed Swords, as well as the Working Designs RPGs for the Sega CD and Saturn. Oh almost forgot the games by Atlas!!

(Had to change the top 5, I forgot about Thousand Arms. Yeah you level up you girls by dating them.....Epic) 

[TheSunshineFund]

Nice!

I used to love the PnC Lucas games like Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, etc.  Good shit.

[D.B. Cooper]

I like my console games old school.

1.  Dragster - Atari 2600.  This is still the game that I've probably played for more hours than any other.  I had a box full of joysticks that I broke playing this game.

2.  Micro Machines - NES.  I still consider this the most fun head to head driving game ever developed. 

3.  Baseball Simulator 1.000 - NES.  Like Steve's Baseball Stars, me and my friend used to spend as much time setting up our teams as we did playing.  Gameplay is the same as for RBI baseball but the extra features made the game much better IMO.

4.  The Black Bass - NES.  The first fishing game where you started in a boat and had to find the right places to fish and figure out how to catch only bass.  The formula has been copied many times over and current fishing games have way cooler graphics but I've never played one where the gameplay was better than this one.

5.  Star Force - NES.  This is actually a port of an arcade game but since I've never seen nor ever hear of anyone ever owning the actual arcade game, I'm counting this one.  Still my favorite shoot em up and it gets bonus points because my wife likes it as well.

Honorable mention goes to the first ever text adventure pc game I played - Leisure Suit Larry.

[TheSunshineFund]

5.  Star Force - NES.  This is actually a port of an arcade game but since I've never seen nor ever hear of anyone ever owning the actual arcade game, I'm counting this one.  Still my favorite shoot em up and it gets bonus points because my wife likes it as well.

Dick, if you check out Martin Bedard's streams at all, he's been playing this in MAME every now and then.  I fired it up in MAME after thinking it looked pretty fun and just got my ass kicked everywhere.

[D.B. Cooper]

Thanks Steve, I'll check it out.  Playing on default (easy) settings, the game isn't bad and there are some huge scores up on MARP.  But, if you play on TG settings (hard, I think), the game is an ass kicker.

[tudose]

great lists so far, guys. LOVE IT!

lol ok so this post got a lot bigger than i expected it to be lol. i wouldnt blame anyone for just looking at the list and not reading the descriptions

im definitely looking forward to seeing more lists and playing some of the games that i havent tried before. great topic, steve. anyway...

1. The Legened of Zelda - A Link to The Past (SNES) - as much as i loved the original NES title, this one just blew me away when i was a kid. it was the first game i ever bought with my own money when i was around 8 years old so itll always be #1 for me. this is what i left DK to speedrun, so yeah...

2. Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) - ok so this one isnt quite your daddys final fantasy. in fact there are a lot of ppl in the final fantasy community that totally dislike it. its known for being quite linear in the first half, and didnt hold true to a lot of the original things that made final fantasy a great series. nonetheless i found this to be an awesome game. a great lineup of characters, great atmosphere, a ton of grinding(which i enjoy), and some fresh music make this a game i can return to over and over again. when im happy with my overall time on alttp im going to move on to speedrunning this title.

3. Drake/Uncharted (series) (PS3) - i picked a series of 3 games as my choice for #3. the reason i put all 3 in one slot is because theyre not particularly long games. for example i could probably beat all 3 of the games in this series before finishing a casual FFXIII run. that being said i still enjoy firing these games up at least once every 6 months. the writing is great, the scenery is amazing, the puzzles and gameplay are a lot of fun, and the voice actors are top-notch. i would recommend this series to anyone that thinks theyd enjoy a fresh take on an indiana jones-type character.

4. The Last of Us (PS3) - WOW. WOW. WOW. this game was created by the same folks that brought us the uncharted series(Naughty Dog). i just finished this title last week and was blown away. it found its way into my all-time favourites list immediately. i almost feel as if i could put this title into the #1 slot. its that good. i actually cant think of a story i enjoyed more on a modern console. i would love for some of the strictly classic gamers to try some of these newer titles. dont be a . just because a game has good graphics doesnt mean its shit lol. there is a 0% chance you will dislike this game. 10/10

5. Final Fantasy X (PS2/PS3) - the first final fantasy game in the series that i completed. an amazing story and characters, a bunch of side-quests, TOUGH challenges(fuck the sun sigil), extra bosses/monsters(many of them being exponentially harder than the final boss), and one of the greatest soundtracks ever(uematsu hype) make FFX an almost perfect game in my eyes. the hymn of the fayth

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Honourable Mentions

1. Oblivion and Skyrim(Elder Scrolls) (PC/PS3) - you can spend hundreds or even thousands of hours exploring these games. theyre both massive and allow you to do pretty much whatever youd like. these are the kinds of games worth paying full price for new.

2. God of War (series) (PS2/PS3) - i left these out of my top 5 simply based on the length of the games. i enjoyed each and every one of them but i feel like the entire series shouldve been one game. for example the most recent in the series took me 9 hours to complete on first playthrough which is a joke lol. by contrast my first playthroughs of FFXIII, Oblivion, and Skyrim each went between 150-200 hours. it honestly bothers me that games like these still charge full price upon release. you can get 20x the gameplay from a game like skyrim for the exact same price. in fact the cutscenes alone from FFXIII are about the same length as the entire new god of war release lol. great games, but seriously a 9hr title with a new game+ option? get stuffed

3. Mario Kart (SNES) - what really needs to be said about mario kart? its fkn awesome. all of them in fact. love it.

4. Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (Arcade/PS2) - it took everything i loved about SF2 and made it better in every single aspect. this is easily my favourite of the series. its not even close.

5. Skate (series) (PS3) - same deal as god of war. that being theyre all fairly short games. still a lot of fun and probably each under $15 used at this point. worth picking up if you are or were ever into the skate scene.

[Adam_Wilmot]

1: Mario Kart 64- Nintendo 64. My friends and I used to play this all the time a few years back in high school and had some epic battles, we were all about the same skill level and so it made for some interesting races. We all had our "main" character that we always went (mine was bowser) and it was always fun to get together and race. Still to this day we get together and bash out a few 2 player Grand Prix tournaments

2: Dynasty Warriors 5- PS2. I had a lot of fun with this game, although its very repetitive and just a button mashing game there is a lot of unlockables (characters, items, weapons, maps). One of my fondest gaming memories is my brother and I spending most of the summer holidays in 05' trying to unlock everything in the game and max out the statistics for each character. I remember my brother printed off a huge FAQ with all the locations for pretty much everything which was very helpful. Also for a PS2 game the graphics were pretty good and the load time for the game was pretty much non-existant which blew my mind considering it was an older gen game.

3: Super Mario All-stars- SNES. This was the game that started it all, my childhood was very much centered around this game and with the 4 in 1 capability it made it that much better (although I don't care for SMB 2). This was for me the earliest gaming memory I have. Not much more can be said. Great gameplay, decent graphics for SNES, and excellent fluid controls. Will always be one of my favourites and once I discovered TG, SMB and SMB 3 were the first scores I tried to set a WR on. Still one of the best SNES games around in my opinion.

4: NBA Live 2003- PS2. I got this game dirt cheap at one of those "selling out of season sports games sales" at the local video store. Being a huge basketball fan it was great, it had pretty easy controls, good balance (although if you had good timing you could almost always hit the jump shot) and most importantly for me a huge selection of legends that you could add to your roster. This was the last NBA game (until recent) That had a truly great selection of legends (also the last NBA game that featured Michael Jordan, before 2k13). My friend and I would play 2 player season mode and make teams that had the current players and would add any legends into the team (only if the played for the team though) to create a best of "all-time" team. We played the hell out of this game every weekend and we were both quite devastated when it finally scratched up and stopped working.

5: Super Castlevania 4- SNES. Found this game in a box that was ready for garbage pick-up on the side of the road when I was in year 8 (who would throw out a gem like this) and had no idea what I had picked up, I just saw the SNES games in there (was about 6 games), knew I had a working SNES and took them home. This game is awesome. Very smooth gameplay and graphics, great atmosphere and awesome music. Blew my mind first time I played it with that awesome theme from stage 1 and I have been hooked ever since. Again similar to Mario All-Stars the game is a SNES gem and has a well-known reputation, If you haven't played it before I highly recommend it.

Honorable mention:
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2- PS2. Similar to Dynasty Warriors 5. Button mashing game, with a lot of stat and item unlockables as well as extra characters. Except you can play as your favourite Marvel characters and have a team of 4 on the screen at each time instead of just a singular player. Was debating giving this the 5 slot but I couldn't pass over Super Castlevania 4.

Anyway I have gushed long enough on my favourite console games but as you can see it was a big part of my childhood and its always interesting to see other people's choices for lists like this. I always like to read peoples  reasoning for putting games in their list, wether it's because of childhood memories or just a cool story (like getting a great game cheap or for free)

Also the other games in that box of SNES wonders on the side of the road included: Donkey Kong Country 3, Super Mario World, Mr.Do!, Lion King and I can't remember the last one. Some people have know idea what they are throwing out.

[VON]

#1.) Quake III: Arena (PC): Quite simply, the best first-person shooter engine of all-time.  Q3A, and the numerous mods it spawned, kept me busy playing FPS for the better part of a decade.  All other FPS are second-best.

#2.) Metroid Prime (Gamecube & Wii): The original Metroid and Super Metroid were also excellent games, but the 3D of the Prime series took it to another level for me.  If you haven't played any of the Prime series, you're doing yourself a mighty disservice.

#3.) The Legend of Zelda (NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii): All Zeldas, all good.  If I had to choose one, I'd probably settle on Ocarina of Time, though I've not played the most recent installment, Skyward Sword.  (I actually own Skyward Sword, yet haven't even taken it out of its packaging.  CAG has consumed me .)

#4.) Super Mario 64 (N64, Gamecube, Wii): The 64 installment built the engine on which the Galaxy games were based.  Just reflect on that for a moment: SM64 was released in 1996, and yet over a decade and multiple console generations later, the engine was still good enough to build a wildly fun and very successful game.  SM64 was groundbreaking, and it's obvious why it's still widely played today.

#5.) Mario Kart 64 (N64, Gamecube): Again, I'm including multiple games here, as Double Dash also used the near perfect MK64 engine.  My only complaint against this game is that I pwnd too hard, and my friends stopped playing with me. 


Honorable Mentions 

MegaMan I & II (NES)

F-Zero GX (Gamecube)

NBA Hangtime (N64)

Punch-Out!! & Super Punch-Out!! (NES, SNES)

Rygar (NES)

Solomon's Key (NES)

Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube, Wii)


Obviously, I'm a fan of the Nintendo franchises, and I hope Nintendo doesn't fall off the map like many have projected them to do after their underwhelming release of the WiiU.