What is the best video game of all time? The sheer number of factors that can (and must) be considered is so vast that answering that question has become an impossible task, but that hasn't stopped certain publications from compiling their own lists. This time, Time's Top 50 decided to place the classic and inexhaustible Tetris by Alexey Pajitnov as number one of all time.
I've played many video games in my life. Some only took a few minutes, while others demanded entire months. They even got me in trouble at school (who's going to do homework with a computer full of games waiting?), and over time, they became part of my work, through the occasional review or a more specific article. Still, when someone asks me what the best game of all time is, the first thing that comes to mind is "I don't know". The facts indicate that we owe a lot to a huge number of games, and we're obligated to consider all that debt before giving an opinion based on mere popularity. That said, Time magazine published its Top 50...
Time's Top 50
... and placed Tetris at number one. Let's say deep down we agree. Tetris was created by Alexey Pajitnov in June 1984, was ported to dozens of platforms, turned the Game Boy into one of the most important handheld consoles in the world (not to say 'the' most important), but what we really should highlight about Tetris is that it served as a 'gateway' to the world of video games for millions of people, whether playing official versions or those Chinese clones still bought for coins. The rest of the 'top 5' is completed by Super Mario 64 in second place, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in third, the original Doom in fourth, and Ms. Pac-Man in fifth, apparently with enough 'merit' (?) to displace Pac-Man.
The rest of the list becomes quite hard to follow. Apparently Final Fantasy VI is better than Final Fantasy VII (I'll let the saga's fans settle that), Street Fighter II and Chrono Trigger are conspicuously absent, neither Silent Hill nor the first Resident Evil appear (though we do find RE4), Angry Birds and Guitar Hero have a place (albeit very low)... and so we fall into the trap: If we get the feeling we could replace half of this Top 50 with better games, that feeling is probably true, but someone else will look at the new list and feel they could replace the other half. Fortunately, the choice of Tetris as number one is very hard to argue with.
