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The story
The overseas gaming outlet “acclaimedvideogames.com” has published a “Greatest Games of All Time” ranking compiled from multiple critics’ lists, with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild taking #1, Tetris at #2, and Half-Life 2 at #3. When the results were shared on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board, posters questioned why Elden Ring only landed at #20 and why Pokémon Gold/Silver didn’t make the list at all (with Red/Green/Blue coming in at #60), sparking debate over whether the ranking method favors older titles, versus the view that games should be judged by their influence on later works.
#1 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)
#2 Tetris (1985)
#3 Half-Life 2 (2004)
Source: acclaimedvideogames.com / Original article here
What people said
Elden Ring seems like it should've cracked the list somewhere, but I guess the wall at the top was just too thick.
Checked the site — Elden Ring actually comes in at #20.
Isn't it based on average placement or something?
But aren't Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 relatively recent games in the grand history of gaming?
It's obviously not based on sales — even A Link to the Past ("Kamitora") only sold 4.6 million copies worldwide.
Did Breath of the Wild actually influence anything? Genshin Impact, maybe?
By that logic the Dark Souls series should rank even higher — there are way too many Souls-likes among today's games.
Gears of War was born out of Resident Evil 4's influence too, you know.
Gold/Silver was a crap game.
Pokémon Red/Green/Blue/Yellow (Pikachu) is at #60.
It wouldn't be weird for it to be #1…
By that logic there's basically no title that couldn't have been bloc-voted.
Is there really some organization out there pushing Tetris up a greatest-games-of-all-time ranking?
If anything, Chrono Trigger has a reputation for being highly rated overseas.
Part 2 pointlessly bloated out the areas, which made exploring a total chore, and combined with how little the scenery actually changed, the story felt dull too — playing it was mind-numbingly boring. On the plus side, adding things like prone crawling in combat made the movement flow a lot smoother, and the weapon-upgrade animations felt really satisfying. But at the end of the day it's still a linear game with a boring scenario, unlikable characters, and plot convenience cranked up sloppily strong, so there was zero immersion — gameplay-wise it was genuinely a slog.
The problem is on Zelda's side — it lands near the top of literally every outlet's ranking.
Overseas love for Zelda is genuinely no joke — even plenty of indie games lift features straight from A Link to the Past.
Even after Breath of the Wild, I wouldn't call it a 'national' franchise exactly — Splatoon, Momotetsu, and Pokémon are all way more mainstream. Even Echoes of Wisdom barely made a dent either.
It was popular all the way up through Ocarina of Time — it's everything after that that went quiet.
Elden Ring is one culmination of the formula, but it was those earlier games that paved the way there.
Without Nintendo, Sony would never have built a game console, so Sega would've ended up ruling the world.
I loved this one. Never played 1 or 3 though.
Capcom's second entry is Street Fighter II at #23, which is respectable, but honestly it feels like it should rank even higher.
Foreign fans straight-up deify Silent Hill 2.
I'd have figured it had a decent-sized fanbase.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
“Greatest games of all time” rankings like this one are usually built not from a single vote but from an “average rank” method that aggregates multiple critics’ lists and reader polls — which tends to let titles that have been praised consistently for years hold onto the top spots. The thread’s complaint that “older games have the advantage” does point to a real feature of this aggregation method. But it’s easy to overlook that games like Minecraft or Pokémon — despite selling in numbers far beyond almost everything else on the list — can still end up ranking lower if critics’ votes for them are split rather than concentrated. It’s also worth noting that in rankings compiled overseas, titles whose domestic fame in Japan doesn’t match their critical reputation abroad (such as Chrono Trigger or Silent Hill 2) tend to rank higher than Japanese fans might expect — a gap that reflects differing evaluation cultures rather than simple “bloc voting.”
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Nandemo Jikkyo G”) thread “[Good News] The Greatest Games of All Time Ranking Has Been Decided LOL.”
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