#10. Mario Tennis
August 28, 2000
Camelot Software Planning
Nintendo
$59.99 on Amazon
Following the hit that was Mario Golf, Nintendo went ahead and converted the next whitest pastime they could into video game form. And again, they knocked it out of the park. Err… aced it. Moving around the court feels great. There are enough options with each hit to mix things up and pull a fast one on your opponent, but it’s not overwhelming with high-level strategy that makes it impenetrable for a newcomer—which kinda boils down to Nintendo’s philosophy. What we have ourselves here is a gimmick-light tennis simulator featuring Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, and the whole gang.
But that’s not everyone who’s here. Mario’s bastardized counterpart Wario needed a doubles partner, and with no one in the existing canon around that can fit the bill, a new anti-hero was molded from the clay of the courts. Waluigi exists because of Mario Tennis and that’s just grand. The game remains more fun to go back to than playing any of the subsequent Mario Tennis games to come after and it birthed us a new lord and savior. It easily makes the top 10 for that. — J. Tilleli
#9. Paper Mario
February 5, 2001
Intelligent Systems
Nintendo
$99.99 on Amazon
Paper Mario, as innocuous as it may seem, is bizarrely clever in two ways: you are so caught up in how it executes a unique sense of cuteness that you don’t see it robbing you blind. The initial charm is that Mario is a 2D paper cutout, which is insane because by this point, he’s been 2D for the majority of his career. Somehow Nintendo managed to sell the same game back to us on fake pieces of paper, and we ate it up like the greedy little piggies we are. We got a taste of 3D in Super Mario 64 and within weeks, we were already nostalgic for the 2D times.
Aside from Paper Mario being the perfect metaphor for how gamers perpetuate their own insufferable tendencies, the game is pretty damn cute! It kickstarted a lovely trend of Nintendo using crafty textures to enrich its games. In some ways, Yoshi’s Woolly World and Kirby’s Epic Yarn owe their existence to the success of Paper Mario. And that’s OK because those games fucking rule and we need more quality textures that we can feel with our eyeballs and ears. I have never been so excited to hear the sound of paper folding, crumpling, or whizzing through the air as much as when I play this game. A 10/10, delightful experience through and through. — A. Oh
#8. Diddy Kong Racing
November 24, 1997
Rare
Rare
$59.99 on Amazon
Diddy Kong Racing is a dream come true. When I would play Mario Kart 64, I always wondered about the areas just out of reach. I wanted to explore. Diddy Kong Racing gave me just what I wanted. With the innovative adventure mode, you are given a whole wide (well, wide for N64) world to race around in. Find challenges, unlock characters, ram into the Elephant guy. Friends were now optional when playing a racing game. Not only that, but you can even pilot a dope plane or ride across the ocean in a hovercraft, something that put this game miles ahead of any other racer at the time. This would all be for nothing, however, if the controls weren’t great. Luckily, they are tight and always responsive. You are always in control. I often lay awake at night wishing that I would be Mandela Effect-ed into a world where Diddy Kong Racing was Nintendo’s flagship kart racer. It sure is the best one. — G. Porter
#7. Banjo-Kazooie
June 29, 1998
Rare
Nintendo
$74.99 on Amazon
Banjo-Kazooie is what you get when a development team takes its ‘No Bad Ideas’ policy a little too far. Thinking about how the whiteboard in that writers’ room must have looked I am immediately reminded of that It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia meme where Charlie Day is frantically trying to explain how “The backpack bear, with the help of the foulmouthed woodpecker, has to find the kidnapping, machinist witch before she disintegrates his sister – and that’s why we have to solve all these fucking jigsaw puzzles!”
Alright, alright, so I know that’s kinda hyperbolic and that there are a bunch of other games (movies, books, prog rock albums, subway advertisements, etc.) that you could make that same argument for. So what I will say for BK is that for all the contrasting elements in story, gameplay and design, it all still works well together – like really well. Like, we don’t deserve how good this weird, weird game is. But then again, none of us ever deserved the N64 in the first place. — J. Knapp
#6: Perfect Dark
May 22, 2000
Rare
Rare
$39.95 on Amazon
Perfect Dark? More like Perfect Game! Besides, uh, the five other games above it, but you get the idea. Perfect Dark is what happens when Rare, at the top of their game, spends three years honing the already-great Goldeneye 007 in every aspect, while replacing the movie tie-in with a sci-fi setting and badass female agent. Just like 007, you spend levels completing spy objectives with a ton of guns and high-tech gadgets. Except this time, there’s funny gray aliens waddling around.
Rare didn’t go the extra mile with Perfect Dark, they went the extra lightyear. Game artist Brett Jones said “People would just do the things they thought were cool and would work,” and you can feel it in the astronomical amount of in-game content. A revamped game engine, stellar graphics, industry-leading enemy AI, Co-op mode, extremely diverse multiplayer options. Hell, Perfect Dark implemented the ‘counter-operative’ system where another player can be the baddies fighting you during a story level two decades before Deathloop made that its whole gimmick. That’s a great way to look at Perfect Dark: the game casually includes features that other titles devoted their budget to. The developers literally had to use the Expansion Pak system to cram this prodigious game onto our systems.
The one drawback of the game was its framerate, but guess what? It’s 2023, baby. Rev up those GeForce 4090s, because it’s time to game in buttery 60 FPS. — R. Fleishman
#5. WWF No Mercy
November 17, 2000
Asmik Ace Entertainment/AKI Corporation
THQ
$89.32 on Amazon
If nostalgia comes bearing rose-tinted glasses, this game makes me wish I had more eyes so I could wear more glasses. No, pro wrestling may never be nearly as popular as it was when this game originally came out, but you know what else hasn’t been matched since it came out? Any wrestling game since. There’s a reason No Mercy has been hailed as the greatest of all time and it might have at least a little something to do with being able to beat the shit out of people with giant wedges of cheese. As well as an absolutely stacked roster, replayable campaigns with branching storylines, a character creation suite a decade ahead of its time, and the ability to powerbomb people onto car engine-sized copies of The Rock’s autobiography. I’d be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t sing praises to the thing that got me into professional wrestling in the first place. Not just in the wrestling genre, either – I’d put No Mercy up there with the best on the system. And unlike Vince McMahon himself, it still holds up to this day. — W. Quant
#4. Donkey Kong 64
November 22, 1999
Rare
Nintendo
$72.99 on Amazon
Fuck you: this game is perfect. Donkey Kong 64 is maximalist game design at its finest. Oh, you like collecting stars or jiggies or some shit? Great—here’s 201 of them, but this time they’re GOLDEN BANANAS that will have mfs out here saying “OHHHH, BANANA.” Your friends speculated about how cool it would be if Luigi was playable in Super Mario 64? Well, not only can you play as Donkey or Diddy Kong — you can also play as one of three made-up Kong’s whose superpowers are being big, being small, and being a fucked-up weirdo, respectively. Every other review I’ve ever read of Donkey Kong 64 has some boring caveat like, “To be sure, the game’s collecting mechanic is bloated and the backtracking can be tedious.” Oh, boo hoo; so it’s annoying to get 101% completion on this game. Guess what? It should be. Who told you that you had to do that? You call it backtracking; I call it replay value. It’s the only thing the haters can say: that this game has too much stuff. Meanwhile, I can’t tell you how many N64 games I’ve had to play with the depth of one of those shitty mobile game ads that’s just a front for Russian malware. Sorry you can’t beat Donkey Kong 64 in 30 minutes. Sorry it holds the Guinness World Record for most collectable items in a platform game. Sorry you don’t like opening a door as Lanky so you can activate a floor switch as Chunky so you can play a mini-game as Tiny. Gamers will dismiss Donkey Kong 64 and then cream their pants when they find out Tears of the Kingdom has like 1,872 Korok seeds or whatever. Just admit it: this game was ahead of its time, the DK rap slaps, and the only reason that public interest in platformers collapsed after this game was because it perfected the form. Also, my enthusiasm has nothing to do with the fact that this was the first console game I ever played when I was 6. — C. Dean
#3. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
November 21, 1998
Nintendo EAD
Nintendo
$75.99 on Amazon
A masterpiece. It’s almost hard to decide what to say here. The way this game slowly opens up its world to you, lets you poke around and find your own way, but always makes it clear what your next objective is? It’s a masterclass in game design. The Z-targeting system is an elegant solution to combat in a 3D space that’s become so commonplace we take it for granted. Sure, anything involving moving through water is awful. And there’s some stealth sections that are annoying. And we all know about…The Owl. But those are drops in the bucket in the ocean that is this game. The confidence in its storytelling is stronger than in most modern AAA titles. This is a game that makes a promise to you that one day you’ll grow up to be a cool, horse-riding, badass, and then never lets you forget that the reason you grew up so fast is because you screwed up monumentally and let the villain win. This is a must play. — S. Finkelstein
#2. Super Mario 64
September 29, 1996
Nintendo EAD
Nintendo
$82.99 on Amazon
The Nintendo 64 marked the transition for many-a-platformer to make the jump from 2D to 3D and everyone’s favorite plumber decided to vault his way onto the console with a double front flip and stick the landing. Seriously. It’s amazing how Nintendo nailed it in one try. Not only did Super Mario 64 define how all cameras would be handled in a 3D space for generations to come, it also equipped Mario with a moveset that would remain pretty much untouched for nearly 30 years. It’s amazing just how fluid and deep this little jumping boy’s kit of controls go. He has his jumped, double jump, triple jump, side jump, long jump, back flip, ground pound, you get the idea. These remained staples of how Mario moves in future titles across console generations all the way up to Super Mario Odyssey. It’s got a soundtrack that slaps and memorable levels, unfortunately not always for good reasons.
It’s taken on a second life in speedrunning which has provided the community with endless hours of challenge and entertainment. However, as a casual player, the bullshit that is Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride keep us from granting this the number one slot. — J. Tilleli
#1. GoldenEye 007
August 25, 1997
Rare
Nintendo
$49.99 on Amazon
“One Pak, please. Rumbled, not stirred”
GoldenEye 007 is an inarguably era-defining game that not only established the gold standard of the day for the burgeoning FPS genre, but also opened the floodgates for nearly a decade of z-grade shooters adapted from blockbuster IPs, all made in a limp, flagrant attempt to replicate its success. It effectively became a licence to kill the already emaciated medium of movie video games, if you will. Listen, if you were in my shoes, you’d try to work that in here too. Bite me.
Mission Impossible, The Fifth Element, and most egregiously Aliens Online were the first offerings to crop up in the 1998 wake of GoldenEye-mania. While all of these titles (and countless others to come) failed to emulate their forefather in many aspects, the biggest and most insurmountable one of all was simple – they failed to eclipse their source material.
In 2023, it’s impossible to talk about the actual contents of GoldenEye 007 in any revelatory or insightful way. That well’s likely been dry for longer than I’ve been able to grasp a controller. But the most enduring testament to its legacy is how it’s grown to overshadow the movie it’s based on. If you leave this article, go to Google, and search “goldeneye”, right now? Nearly 30 years on, articles about the game will come up before the film. Y’know what happens if you google “fifth element”, in the hopes you’ll see anything about the PlayStation title? Fuckin’ nothing. Nothing but movie. — W. MacDonald
