As we said when we pushed out 2018’s list, coming up with the top 100 Video Games of All Time is a daunting task. But this year we revised some of our criteria, making it a (somewhat) less daunting task — even if it meant making some painful cuts in the process.

As we leave the decade behind and look forward to a new generation of consoles, we believe it’s time to take stock of the games that we would still recommend even once we’ve got our PS5s and our Xbox Scarletts; games that are so good, they transcend decades. The primary criteria we considered when creating this updated list is as follows:

How much did this game impact us, and can it still be considered an excellent game in 2019?

This meant we de-emphasized the importance of longer influence on the industry, even if many of the games on 2019’s list were hugely influential (if it were all based on influence, 90% of the games would be from before 2003). Although some of the games on this list may be a little long in the tooth, we still believe every one of them stands up as an incredible gaming experience to this day.

Other considerations:

We didn’t want this list to be inundated with Zeldas and Marios, so we cut what we felt wasn’t the peak of those series in order to make room for different games.

We placed no specific emphasis on different editions or versions of a game, even if it has appeared on multiple platforms.

All entries must be a single video game — bundles or compilations are not eligible (Sorry, Super Mario All-Stars and Orange Box).

This list was formed from the collective opinions of everyone on IGN’s core content team.

If you'd like to know more, check out this list of changes to the Best 100 Games of All Time list -- and why we made those changes.