Nintendo makes the top 5 games of all time.

I think objectively, there's not much argument to be had about the Galaxy games, though I'd put 2 over 1. Super Mario 64 and OOT? These were the first 3D entries in their respective franchises, which I believe gives them a bit more of the benefit of the doubt than they warrant in terms of quality. Anything that breaks boundaries in such a fundamental way will be viewed in higher esteem and their faults will be more likely to be overlooked.

They're excellent games no doubt but I wouldn't classify OOT and 64 as Nintendo's best. Only the most important.

EDIT: Super Mario Odyssey? GTFO here with that shit. Game was a pathetic excuse for a Mario title.

As someone who came in extremely late to OOT, it was probably one of the most puzzling games I've ever played. Once you get past the initial 20 minute dungeon, it's almost 2 hours of running back from one end of the map to the other doing fetch quests with silly mini-games. Greatest game of all time? Really?

I enjoyed Phantom Hourglass far more, even though that itself had it's own problem with possibly the single dumbest dungeon design decision in existence.

@hrt_rulz01 said:

@MirkoS77 said:

I think objectively, there's not much argument to be had about the Galaxy games, though I'd put 2 over 1. Super Mario 64 and OOT? These were the first 3D entries in their respective franchises, which I believe gives them a bit more of the benefit of the doubt than they warrant in terms of quality. Anything that breaks boundaries in such a fundamental way will be viewed in higher esteem and their faults will be more likely to be overlooked.

They're excellent games no doubt but I wouldn't classify OOT and 64 as Nintendo's best. Only the most important.

EDIT: Super Mario Odyssey? GTFO here with that shit. Game was a pathetic excuse for a Mario title.

Game was garbage for a Mario title. Moons thrown at you for the dumbest of reasons relegating it to a useless collectathon that gave little to no feeling of accomplishment, platforming minimized, the music was sub-par or downright absent at times, the bosses were abysmal, and on and on. Only Super Mario 3D World and Sunshine give it a run for its money on the scale of shit-tier Mario efforts.

This game has no place whatsoever on this list.

Strongly disagree with that assertion.

Mario Sunshine was actually pretty good, not top 5 good, but still great.

@MirkoS77: Your opinion I guess.

You're definitely in the minority but :)

@MirkoS77:

I tend to agree. It lacked structure. It would have benefitted from cutting a LOT of content. Some of the Moon locations made me go "why?" The pic art was pointless.

I dont think it stunk, but for the time and effort that went into some of it, it makes me wonder wtf nintendo was thinkin.

The speedrun community has taken a liking to it. But who wants to speedrun the 900 moons, is the question, when so many are just filler.

Mario 64 was just plain cool, period. After 64, Nintendo began shifting his image a bit.

Bottomline is Odyssey was not a knock your socks off game. 64 was, the original was, 3 was, and id personally toss 2 in there as well. Sunshine is great as well.

3D World was better than Odyssey and so was NSMBU. Galaxy was good, but a bit slow.

NSMBU is better than Odyssey? Sorry, but just no.

Breath of the Wild sucks and the Galaxy games were ruined by poor motion controls. Never played them because of that.

@MirkoS77: Would you really say that Sm64 and Oot are more important than the first Super Mario Bros pr the first Zelda? Would you really say they were more important than arcade Donkey Kong?

No, I meant of their 3D entries.

@omegamaster said:

Did you forget Metacritic?

2nd place Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, now that game needs a remake. Tony Hawk has already stated that it's not because of him but activation owns the rights and doesn't want to.

Agreeing on all time best games is impossible. Most of those reviews were posted when a game came out. A game may have been absolutely incredible when it came out or on the first play through, but that doesn't mean it's as good now. And of course some people play these games 5-10+ years later and go "what the heck this game is not as good as everyone says".

Glad to see Uncharted 2 isn't on this list though :P couldn't stand all the people last gen saying that was the best game ever.

A good game is a good game, period.

So we can all refer to the N64 as the goat?

@omegamaster: If anything, that screen capture makes me feel vindicated ignoring sites like metacritic.

@xantufrog: There are some people in the world who believe 1%/2% difference on that site means objectively a game is better.

When you make Link to the Past, and Yoshi Island making the top 5 games of all time ain't too hard.

What a great company Nintendo is!

@ProtossRushX: Those are better than the games listed in the OP tbh.

ill agree with ocarina of time.. but the rest? hell no, no way sunshine was better than mario 64.. no mario karts are up there either.. i remember seeing a commercial in 1996 for the N64 console and seeing 3D graphics for the first time and it was the most awe inspiring thing i had ever seen, and the commercial was mario jumping through a painting and the painting reacting to that.. no game or console since has had that kind of an effect, it certainly deserves to be there more than the newer garbage

@Telekill:

OOT has not aged well at all, along with a lot of other 3D games from that Gen. However I think it's pretty obvious that reviewers give Zelda some special treatment when it comes to reviews.

Example Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess.

Skyward Sword is so uninspired! The art style is bland, character models look funky, the game is extremely hand holdy, and the level design is bland and extremely linear!

And Twilight princess has some of the same problems as Skyward Sword! Character models, level design, are horrible and the game has a horribly slow start. Then it introduces a wolf mechanic that PALES in comparison to Okami. If you want a good Zelda game from the Gamecube generation play Okami.

Yet THESE TWO GAMES received universal praise and got 9's and 10's. And lord when Gamespot gave Twilight Princess an 8.9 this entire site flipped shit. At BEST Twilight Princess is an 8. AT BEST!

@Star67: You're welcome to your opinion of course. I just started replaying the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess and am 9 or so hours in. I'm enjoying it immensely more than I did Breath of the Wild. I still really enjoyed BotW, but I'm still preferring TP.

That said, I agree with the wonky character design. Also the controls as the wolf do feel dated but considering the game is what... 13 years old... that makes sense.

Twilight Princess has poor level design? I thought it had some of the best dungeons out there.

I also think there are games from that era which still look amazing, regardless of the lower polygon models. Imo the character designs in Ocarina of Time are much better than in Twilight Princess (for the most part). Even some of the texture work in Ocarina is better than Twilight Princess.

Could've at least put Prime in there to switch it up. Mario and Zelda. Mario and Zelda.

Ocarina of Time sucks. It has always sucked. 3D Zelda pre BOTW is basura.

That list gets way more interesting as you get towards 95%

Meh. Ok.

Btw, A Link to the Past is still the best Zelda game of all time.

@heirren: Yeah The Witcher 3 sucks. Lol ok

"who wants to play old games?"

@heavymetalman77

Yes, it does. Very clunky movement. When i try this game it feels similar to that of tank simulations.

@sealionact: There weren't so many gaming sites around back then.

In addition to reviews, Ocarina has topped at least 26 different lists of GOAT games. No other game comes close. Ocarina is the GOAT by consensus.

@jg4xchamp said:

@cainetao11 said:

"who wants to play old games?"

LOL

@omegamaster said:

Did you forget Metacritic?

@n64dd

Care to address this? Because the Metacritic one includes WAY more reviewers. Your GameRankings link excludes many professional reviewers.

Compare 63 reviews for Breath of the Wild to 109 reviews on Metacritic. 58 reviews for Mario Odyssey (on GameRankings) compared to 113 reviews on Metacritic.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/super-mario-odyssey

No one is doubting those 5 Nintendo games are some of the highest-scoring out there. But to claim "Nintendo has the Top 5 highest rated games of all time" is actually not correct. The more professional reviews you include, the more games from other platforms show up in the Top 5/Top 10.

@whatafailure said:

@omegamaster said:

Did you forget Metacritic?

@n64dd

Care to address this? Because the Metacritic one includes WAY more reviewers. Your GameRankings link excludes many professional reviewers.

Compare 63 reviews for Breath of the Wild to 109 reviews on Metacritic. 58 reviews for Mario Odyssey (on GameRankings) compared to 113 reviews on Metacritic.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/super-mario-odyssey

No one is doubting those 5 Nintendo games are some of the highest-scoring out there. But to claim "Nintendo has the Top 5 highest rated games of all time" is actually not correct. The more professional reviews you include, the more games from other platforms show up in the Top 5/Top 10.

Metacritic includes fake reviews. Gamerankings is legit.

Also, Metacritic fails to include a lot of older gaming magazine publications, resulting in a "recentism" bias (PS1 era onwards) on Metacritic. While GameRankings isn't much better in that regard, it is at least somewhat more inclusive of older gaming publications (and older platforms) than Metacritic.

If Metacritic included many of the older game magazines were included, then we'd be seeing a lot more older games (pre-PS1) right up there near the top. Yet Metacritic stubbornly refuses to include older gaming magazines, almost like they hate old games, and want to keep them down, just so they can hype-up the latest games.

Also, Metacritic hates Japanese publications. They almost never include Japanese publications like Famitsu or Dengeki. The only Japanese site they do include often is IGN Japan. And while Famitsu's reputation has fallen over the past decade, it's still more reputable than most of the shitty no-name sites that Metacritic does include.

Elaborate what you mean by fake reviews. I'm not talking about user scores. I don't give a crap about those, since they can be spammed with groups of angry nerd virgins. We only care about professional reviewers who have been granted approval and meet the high criteria for game criticism.

What epidemic of fake reviews are you talking about?

And what do you mean Metacritic doesn't use old reviews? I see Electronic Gaming Monthly, Gameshark (review from 2002), and Gamepro Magazine right on there.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/nintendo-64/the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time/critic-reviews

I feel like both of you are just making assumptions without even checking Metacritic. Because currently, you're both wrong.

You just proved my point. I said magazines, not websites. The only two magazines you mentioned are EGM and GamePro.

The only magazines I see listed are EGM, GamePro and Famitsu (the latter being a rare occurrence on MC, which rarely includes Famitsu for most other games). And that's pretty much it. There were a ton of gaming magazines around back then, yet MC only includes three mags.

Game magazines like Edge, Next Generation, Total, Consoles+, GMR, N64 Magazine, etc. gave OOT perfect scores, yet they're not listed on MC. For whatever reasons, MC hates old game magazines.

And that's why old games are heavily under-represented on MC. Metacritic is only useful for telling us about acclaimed games from the late PS1/N64 era onwards.

Ocarina is grossly overrated, and anchored the series for years, since the 3D games that followed had to have similar play styles. Breath of the Wild broke the chains in a very refreshing way.

And yes, Mario Galaxy was the peak of the series. I'll give them that. After those, 3D Land/World and Odyssey didn't seem as impressive.

I’ve tried to get into the Galaxy games numerous times. They look fun and polished, but for me - the Wii controller ruins the games.

But does Gameranking show those ALL of those old magazine reviews you mentioned? I don't think so. They show less reviews on average, and yet you and @n64dd love that site more.

You're saying Metacritic isn't comprehensive enough, and yet, Gamerankings neglects a lot of those publications too. And Ocarina of Time is kind of special, in that it's one of the older games in this Top 5 list that was in the magazine and early internet era of 1998, when girls were swooning over Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. Kind of hard to have current links to such old websites (one of them had to be linked to a web archive!).

Everything you complained about Metacritic doing, Gamerankings does too. No Super Mario Bros. 3 (A CLASSIC). No Ninja Gaiden on NES. Mortal Kombat II on SNES is there, but only 4 reviews. We all know that game was reviewed on more than 4 magazines back in the day, when magazines were everywhere. What is Gamerankings hiding?

@n64dd Still waiting for the explanation about Metacritic being stuffed with fake reviews.

Thread title would be better as: "Nintendo makes Top 5 games of all time, according to Gamerankings, but excluding NES/Atari/Master System reviews and TONS of magazine reviews from the 80s/90s. Still Top 5 though."

@whatafailure: You care what professional reviewers think lol?

@whatafailure:

Metacritic has become a selling point. Games and films will refer to metacritic scores as a means to sell. Thats just common sense.

I already stated in a previous post: "GameRankings isn't that much better in that regard, but it is at least somewhat more inclusive of older gaming publications (and older platforms) than Metacritic."

GameRankings at least includes older games going back to the 16-bit era, whereas Metacritic doesn't include anything from before the late PS1/N64 era. GameRankings' representation of old games is flawed, but it's still better than Metacritic, which outright excludes old games.

Films have been citing Rotten Tomatoes as well.