What constitutes the “Best Game” of all time? And can such a game or list be tackled properly? Not only that, but can a list like this be accurate when the topic is extremely subjective?

If you think about it, you can do a “best games” list in so many different ways. You can base it on critics’ reviews, or user reviews, most copies sold, by the game’s publisher, its developer, the genre it falls in, etcetera and so on.

However, we’d like to think it’s possible to pinpoint which games ultimately rise above the rest in the eye of critics everywhere. And we’re not just talking Metacritic averages, we’re talking about compiling all the reviews from critics across all major outlets, even for those games that came out before Metacritic was a thing. As the blurb above says, the industry is getting close to 50 years old now, and there have been tens of thousands of games released across the generations. So we want to make sure nothing will be left out of the picture, be it old games or new games, handheld or home (or hybrid), PC or console. So while this may be one of the sources, it is not the only one. We pulled scores from several review aggregate sites to give the most comprehensive score we can provide. You can see the full methodology behind our list at the end of this article.

Before we get started, here’s one last fun tidbit: the majority of these games can be played in one way or another on most current generation hardware. Yes, your PS4, Xbox One, or PC has ways to play a good portion of these games (sorry, Switch players). Links will be provided for each platform they can be played on.

So, Coin-Droppers, let’s break this down.