Rudie’s Top 100 Video Games

Star Wars Dark Forces 2:Jedi Knight

PC, Lucasarts, 1997

This is peak Star Wars. When the prequels and modern eternal media empire were a distant dream, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II arrived in full 3D to tax the family computer. From navigating catwalks around a city planet to carefully crossing an enormous canyon by wreckage, no other game matches the mega-structures present in this game. 

It is the level design that takes this over the top. Each stage is a new brilliant adventure in traveling from point A to point B. Frequently I  see my destination and need only to figure out how to get there. 

With weird aliens, a John Williams score, and Dad Issues it feels like Star Wars. The live-action cutscenes only bring a smile nowadays. Let’s not forget about the lightsaber duels as the name and cover implies.

F Zero GX

Gamecube, Amusement Vision, 2003

F Zero GX is fast. The signs along the course say “Go Fast”. It is the fastest game in existence. Drop this Gamecube game into an emulator and it looks stunningly beautiful. 

It plays smooth. It demands I be smooth against 29 opposing racers. Each of them has a theme song. The game is generous. There are dozens of little cutscenes and character building dialog prompts to find if I am fast enough to see a cup to the end. 

I have to work to unlock all the racers. Some of them are buried behind a legendarily difficult Story Mode. I found out two friends had in fact beaten the Story Mode of F Zero GX. I’ve long held that bragging about beating a video game is like bragging about jerking off; all it takes is time, usually. This legit impressed me. It impressed each of the friends in turn, “I don’t know how I did it” each independently exclaimed.

I tried for an hour in 2024 to beat the first story mission. For how fast I was going, it wasn’t fast enough. F Zero GX commands respect.

Devotion

PC, Red Candle Games, 2019

Devotion is the most successful of the PT-likes. I navigate a home in Taiwan during a turbulent political time. It wraps up the horror in the socio-political machinations and the family’s own insecurities. It begins to drift into religion and mysticism that even the common Taiwanese person doesn’t understand. 

Just like PT, the world is tiny. I am constantly wrapping and revisiting this apartment. I barely ever leave it. I was shocked by how stunning the clouded glass catching exterior light looked. The creeping dread of a horror game is slowly replaced with the horror that is reality. That we can actually support the makers of this is a gift.

Last Blade 2

Neo Geo, SNK, 1998

Set during the Bakumatsu era, Last Blade 2 takes place during a fascinating period where the West finally encroached on isolationist Japan. There are also yokai and two meter long swords.

What sets Last Blade 2 apart is the aesthetic stillness. There are battles with no music, purely atmosphere sounds. It plays closer to Street Fighter II than Samurai Shodown, though the hits are harder than the former. Finding an opening can mean the end of the round.

But the reality is I chose Last Blade 2 on vibes. I don’t know anything about fighting games. My Street Fighter IV online record was 13/132. I hate losing to get better. It is a genre I have played my whole life but have come to accept I don’t actually like and do not have the focus to become better at. So I salute you, fighting games, my lost genre, with Last Blade 2.

Nier

PS3/360, cavia, 2010

I’m one of the few that bought Nier full price at release. I heard “Song of the Ancients” on the game’s website and it captured my brain. I listened to it on repeat for months. The full soundtrack has captivated me for years.

Nier takes the Legend of Zelda and makes it about something. I have gone from rolling my eyes to “You Are The Baddy” to recognizing people will commit righteous atrocities. With a steady hand, Nier says “the monsters have families too.” 

Nier is also famously playful to the player. The fishing quest is legendary. That the protagonist complains about the fetch quests is good. For the true sickos, there is a farming game that takes an actual real world month to grow the best crop. cavia (lowercase c) was giddy with the possibility of video games and put this stuff on top of an actual story, not making What If The Video Game Looked At You The Player the whole of the story.

On top of that are the recontextualized homages to other video games. Each dungeon is almost a different game and yet also still the video game Nier. Then finally the game (in this form) is about a father’s love for their child. I only want to give them a better life. A parent has one responsibility. Nier carries that one out.

Donkey Kong

Arcade, Nintendo, 1981

Donkey Kong is a game about a man rescuing his girl from a monkey at a construction site. All the information is on the screen. It has strange mechanics like half ladders and a hammer that makes it impossible for the man to jump but he can now destroy barrels and ghosts. It is a fantastic game to grow to know. 

I was fascinated to play what I assume is an original Japanese tabletop cabinet recently and discover the controls were locked to left and right. There was no vertical movement on the tiny nub of a stick. It took my brain a while to understand the first form of Monkey Donkey. There is a bootleg version called Monkey Donkey. I have gotten years of mileage out of that.

Super Mario 64

Nintendo 64, Nintendo, 1996

I can have fun with Super Mario 64 right from the start, just moving Mario. Almost every 3D platformer since 64 has missed this. I don’t even need to do anything to start exploring and exploiting his entire moveset. 

The levels are also fantastic. And if one annoys or troubles me, I feel free to leave and get my stars elsewhere. The castle is filled with secrets that still feel magical to discover. Everything is just 3D, just abstract enough that it still looks incredible. The low fidelity and the CRT intentionality blurs the rest into believability.

And if that isn’t enough, with the leak of Mario.exe, you can play Super Mario 64 on almost any device with any modern niceties you want, from free camera to ray-tracying. Super Mario 64 has been democratized and now is for the people. Eternally great and available, even on your Playstation 2, if you really want it that way.

Crazy Taxi

Dreamcast, Sega-AM3, 2000

I am of a specific age and The Offspring’s “All I Want” is buried deep in my brain and it will never leave. The beautiful hills of San Francisco provide an exciting vertical-style driving experience. Crazy Taxi is a driving game where I use the entire brake-pad.

It is also a game I’ve played for twenty years and have never beaten. I don’t think I’ve ever done better than a C-License. Maybe a B, once. Each new passenger affords you a tiny bit more time. Maybe perfect play is out of the range of mortals.

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

PS3/360, Ignition Tokyo, 2011

The game begins with the literal devil, Lucifel, the fallen angel who turned his back on God, telling me the game will take about 7 hours and I should relax and enjoy myself. This game takes place in the distant past, before Noah even flooded the Earth. Lucifel is my support as I, Enoch, the only man to go to heaven while he was still alive, return to Earth to capture renegade angels. Both of these characters are dressed in specially designed Edwin Jeans. 

The game itself is a stunningly beautiful action platformer with a single button combat system that gets all the mileage it can out of tapping the button, holding the button, delaying the button, and combining the button with jump and block.

I like this game so much I own Enoch’s Jeans. I just have them! I even wear them, when the situation calls for it. All games should have the literal devil tell me how long they are. 

Deathsmiles

Arcade, Cave, 2007

I gotta accept it: Deathsmiles is the best game Cave has ever made. With a hearty sigh and batting the lacey maid outfits away, this game is great from novices to sickos. The Halloween theme is fantastic. Each girl provides a distinctly different way to play the game, as do the home port’s inclusion of different modes.

At every step, Deathsmiles asks if I want the game to be more difficult. I can choose to embrace greatness or cowardness. 

I ignored the game for years because well, look at it. Then I finally played it and couldn’t stop playing it. I watched the US leaderboards and realized I could get on them with some effort. I put in some effort.

One night while I was playing, my now-deceased father came into the room. I braced myself to be asked questions I couldn’t answer. He stared at me dodging glowing cubes generated by a gigantic normal cow. He broke the silence with, “What did that cow do to you?”

Next Up: Have you seen my daughter?

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