Penicillin. Nuclear power. Those little packets that keep beef jerky dry. These are just a few of the greatest scientific achievements in mankind's history. And while they all seem wildly different, they all started as the same thing: A crazy little idea.

Three years ago, two brave souls that shared a passion for fighting games decided that they were going to do the impossible: create a definitive, ranked list of the every fighting game ever made. It would be easy to just produce a list from memory, and let a combination of passion and nostalgia create a biased ranking. However such a list would be foolish, so these two men decided that the only way to take on such a task was with cold, hard science. Thus, Ranking of Fighters was born.

The original Ranking of Fighters list.

Along with newcomer and associate scientist Ben Pack, senior fighting game scientists Jason Oestreicher and Jeff Gerstmann developed a rigorous and argument-proof process that will take any fighting game ever created, and rank it against all others. The process is too lengthy, complicated, and top-secret to post here, but rest assured it is peer-reviewed and completely unbiased by things such as "feelings." The process includes the standard tests of any video game, such as how the game plays and how it is presented, but the team also gets under the hood and asks the important questions like "is there a sound test?" or "is Ten Count in the game?"

The project started small in scope. All the team had was two scientists, a couch, a whiteboard, and a dream. Now the team is bigger, the funding is flowing, and the graphics are fancier -- but the team is still just as passionate about that crazy little idea.

Here is the list, as it currently stands. Check back every other Monday for a new episode of Ranking of Fighters, when two more games will be ranked.

Ranking of Fighters: The Greatest Fighting Games of All Time