That same night she bought a game called Lunar: The Silver Star Story for $80.00 on Amazon. For the average gamer, $80.00 is a bit high for a used Playstation 1 title, but for a collector, it’s a steal. I played this game when it originally debuted on Sega CD back in 1993. It was by far one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve ever had. The ambiance and design of the game was so incredible and alluring that one of my best friends watched me beat the entire game from beginning to end. We were geeks back then too.

This got me thinking about all the other great games that I’ve played over the years, and which games I considered to be the best of the best. The problem with creating a list like this is making sure people understand the criteria for such a list. In an effort to jog my memory for games long forgotten, I’ve been reading other “best games ever” lists around the web. Some of the lists I found were absolute crap, while others I found to be very interesting. Again, the problem is criteria. How do you make a list like this? What is the criteria?

1. Are they games with the best graphics at the time of its release?
2. Are they games with the best story lines?
3. Are they games that have sold the most copies?
4. Are they games with the best replay value?
5. Are they games that have had the most significant impact on the gaming industry?
6. Are they games that are just considered to be the most fun?
7. Or does a list like this need to take all of these aspects into consideration?

I’ll tell you right now, based on what I wrote above, I could make 7 very different lists. That’s why I want to make sure everyone knows what I’m basing my list on. A game must meet all of the following criteria to make the cut.

1. I must have played it.
2. I must have really, really, really liked it.

Simple enough, right? Well then, here we go.

A quick side note, this lists consists of games starting with NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). Although I loved my older systems like Atari, Colecovision, and Intellivision, I feel that the real gaming revolution began at the original NES, and thus, this is where our journey shall begin. By the way, I’ve ordered the list by platform and then by year released, not by preference.

• Super Mario Bros.
  Nintendo – 1985
• Metroid
  Nintendo – 1986
• Legend of Zelda
  Nintendo – 1987
• Rygar
  Nintendo – 1987
• Lost Vikings
  Super Nintendo – 1992
• Star Fox
  Super Nintendo – 1993
• Mortal Kombat II
  Super Nintendo – 1994
• Street Fighter 2
  Super Nintendo – 1996
• Lunar: Silver Star
  Sega CD – 1993
• Alien vs Predator
  Atari Jaguar – 1994
• Wave Race 64
  Nintendo 64 – 1996
• Golden Eye 007
  Nintendo 64 – 1997
• Mario Kart 64
  Nintendo 64 – 1997
• Twisted Metal 2
  Playstation – 1996
• Resident Evil
  Playstation – 1996
• Tomb Raider
  Playstation -1996
• Resident Evil 2
  Playstation – 1997
• Final Fantasy VII
  Playstation – 1997
• Metal Gear Solid
  Playstation – 1998
• Gran Turismo
  Playstation – 1998
• SSX
  Playstation 2 – 2000
• Doom
  PC – 1993
• Quake II
  PC – 1997
• Half-Life
  PC – 1998
• Starcraft
  PC – 1998
• Team Fortress Classic
  PC – 1999
• Counter-Strike
  PC – 1999
• Unreal Tournament
  PC – 1999
• Diablo II
  PC – 2000
• Deus Ex
  PC – 2000
• Undying
  PC – 2001
• Command & Conquer: Renegade
  PC – 2002
• Soldier of Fortune II
  PC – 2002
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
  PC – 2002
• Battlefield 1942
  PC – 2002
• Ghost Recon
  PC – 2003
• Call of Duty
  PC – 2003
• Planetside
  PC – 2003
• World of Warcraft
  PC – 2004
• Unreal Tournament 2004
  PC – 2004
• Half-Life 2
  PC – 2004
• Battlefield 2
  PC – 2005

DONE!! That was a blast. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few games. I’ll add them as they come to me.

You know, while making this list I discovered some interesting facts about my tastes in games. The most obvious is that I’m a huge first person shooter fan. I didn’t need this list to tell you that. However, one interesting fact is that I have no favorite games on Sega Genesis, Nintendo Game Cube, or XBOX. It’s not because I didn’t own those systems, because I did. This kind of surprised me, so I thought about it a bit and here is what I came up with.

1. Sega Genesis -
   Sega competed head to head with Super Nintendo. I think back then you were either a Nintendo guy or a Sega guy. I was a Nintendo guy. There’s not much more to say. I guess Sonic the Hedgehog just didn’t cut it for me.
2. Nintendo Game Cube -
   The truth is, I don’t think I ever gave this system a fair shake. It was always kind of in the shadow of the PS2 and the XBOX. From what I hear, the Zelda series on NGC is incredible, as is their Resident Evil series. But don’t lose hope yet, you Nintendo fans may be happy to know that since my daughter’s interest in video games has surfaced, her platform of choice is the Game Cube. Naturally, being her gaming mentor, I have to pick up the controller every now and then and show her how it’s done.
3. XBOX -
   The first reason I never played the XBOX is simple, the controller. XBOX’s controller has, does, and will forever suck. Don’t try to defend it. It sucks. The other reason I never played the XBOX is because I’m a PC gamer. All the great titles that have ever been released on XBOX have been released on the PC a year earlier and ten times better. I’m sure Halo was a great game, but that’s only because it’s the first real game of it’s kind to hit consoles. Games like Halo are a dime a dozen on the PC.

Am I droning on? This is such a fun topic for me though. While doing my research I read dozens of “top games” lists from different magazines and game sites. None of the lists were even close to identical, but I was able to find some common recurrences. A lot of these games made it on my list. Some, however, did not and that piqued my interest. What have I missed! I’ll list some of these games below and my pathetic excuses for never playing them. And I call myself hardcore, please!

• Chrono Trigger for SNES
  Out of all the games I have never played, this one appears on the most lists. I’m embarrassed to say I really know nothing about this game. I have, however, already downloaded the rom to my hard drive. I shall be a Chrono Trigger master by the end of the week.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for N64
  This game claimed the most #1 spots of any game I saw. It also got a perfect 10 on Gamespot. I have no excuse for not playing this game. It just slipped through the cracks. It isn’t too late I’m happy to say. This just happens to be one of the games Meg bought on her game buying spree.
• Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos for PC
  This game made its fair share of lists. The truth is, it’s just not my genre. True, Starcraft is on my list, but I think that was caused by some kind of wierd cosmic anomaly. I may dig it out and play it someday.
• Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow – for PC
  Again, no excuse. I own it (actually I stole it from Meg), I’ve installed it, I even went as far as setting up the controls. I’ll get around to playing it once I kick my addiction to World of Warcrack.
• Super Mario 64 for N64
  To tell you the truth, I was suprised to see this game show up on list after list after list. It just doesn’t seem appealing to me. But alas, the people have spoken. It just so happens that Meg owns this game too, what luck.
• System Shock II for PC
  Being an avid fps fan I’m ashamed to say I’ve never owned or played this game. There’s no excuse for my obvious disrespect to the genre. This game is also on almost every Top 100 gaming list I read. It looks very Deus Exish, I’ll be buying it.
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for PC
  Own it, haven’t played it, I suck.
• Beyond Good and Evil for PC
  I remember when this game came out. There was little to no hype about it, but every now and then you would here someone say what a terrific game it was. Then some more people would say it. Then some more. Now it’s considered one of the best sleeper hits of 2003.

Alright, I’ll shut up now. I’m sure I missed a ton of games that deserve to be on this list, but my brain hurts right now. Like I said, I’ll add them as I remember them.

If you recall, back in October, I experienced the great cellar flood of 2005 which single handedly wiped out three of my four computers. As luck would have it, my XPS laptop was spared from the devastation of said flood. This was mostly due to the fact that it was 10 miles away, sitting on my desk at work.

After almost five months of desktoplessness, I finally finished all the repairs to the cellar and restored the command center (also referred to as the dungeon) to its former glory. Everything got a complete upgrade; the walls , the ceiling, the floors, the windows, and most importantly my computers. Ahh yes, my new babies. Take particular notice of the brand spanking new Dell XPS 600 sitting ever so menacingly to the left of my desk. This thing is so screaming fast it actually hovers off the ground. Complete with full blown, dual nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX w/ SLI, Creative X-Fi sound, 2 Gig of DDR2 ram, and a dual TV tuner. Click on the larger of the two images above to check out all of my new goodies.

fast forward to the present day

I’ve killed my computer. That’s right, dead. How’d I do this you ask? Let me tell you the series of events that led to the final demise of my beloved PC.

Let me first tell you about when it reboots. This is important to know when troubleshooting. Out of the dozens of times it randomly rebooted, only 1 time was while not playing a game. Every other time was in-game. I ran a bunch of benchmark programs and torture tests to try to get it to reboot (processor, video, audio, memory). Nothing. I really tortured this machine too. Nothing I did made the computer reboot. The only constant I had was that it reboots while playing a game. Specifically Battlefield 2 and Half-Life 2. And never at the same point in either game. I think you’re all caught up at this point. This is the information I had to work with. And the following outlines my train of thought and the actions I took.

• Video Card - My first thought was that it must be video related. It just made sense. At the time I was using a nVidia Chaintech 6800 GT 256. I rolled back the drivers. I must have tried 6 different versions of the drivers. Rebooted. Then I switched the video card out completely with a nVidia BFG 6800 GT 128 OC (my original card). Rebooted. I was dumbfounded. Back to the drawing board.
• Software Related- I should first tell you that I am obsessed with having a clean system. I methodically run multiple anti-virus programs a week. Not to mention multiple spyware and adware programs, CWShredder, highjackthis, IBprocMan, Tweaknow Regcleaner, diskclean, defrag, etc… I know every process that is running on my computer at any given time. But still, I had to know. So I reformatted and reinstalled my OS. Rebooted.
• Power Supply- It must be the power supply. Granted 420 watts should be more than enough to run what I have. Perhaps it was bad. Power supplies are one of the leading causes of this type of problem. So I went out and bought a new power supply. Rebooted. Son of a…
• Memory- Another leading cause of system failures. I ran memtest86 for 24 hours straight. No errors. But I still had to be sure. So i popped out one stick and fired up BF2. Rebooted. I popped out the other stick and replaced it with the one I originally took out. Fired up BF2 once again and boom, rebooted. Hmm, well at least I was expecting this.

Audio Card- This was my next thought. The games I play are not only graphics intensive but audio intensive as well. And it is the oldest piece of hardware in my computer. I’m using one of the first edition Soundblaster Audigy cards. So I popped it out and used the on-board audio (which I hear is actually very nice). Rebooted.

• Monitor- I know, I know, I’m stretching here. About right now I’m just praying it’s not the motherboard or processor. And I actually read in some random tech forum that this guy switched monitors and it solved his rebooting problem. I can’t imagine a monitor ever rebooting a computer, but at this point I’m desperate. I have a rather old 21″ NEC that is obviously on it’s way out. So I swapped my computers. I put Big Blue on a 19″ Micron. I switched power outlets too just to be safe. It actually didn’t reboot for several days. I was crushed when it actually did. Son of a…
• Network Card- I figured why not, I’ve swapped out everything else. Rebooted.
• IDE Cables- Rebooted

Where on the home stretch here folks. I should have mentioned before that overheating is not a problem. I have 5 case fans, 1 ps fan and a vortex cpu fan which I can control the rpm’s manually. The processor’s temperature is well below the specified limits.

I figured I’m running out of options here. I pulled everything out of the pc and checked for metal on metal or anything that might short out the motherboard and force a reboot. Nothing. I decided to out pull the cpu and cpu fan and investigate. This my friends is where the problem lies. As I was pulling the cpu out, the cpu and heatsink separated. I had to reapply the arctic silver thermal paste. I hate doing this. And I think this led to Big Blue’s ultimate destruction. Ever since I put the cpu/heatsink back into the computer it has decided it doesn’t feel like booting up. AT ALL. Instead in decides to spew out these obnoxious beeping sounds at me. I’m not talking about any post beep or standard error beeps you would get from a fully functional motherboard. No, this was more like the binary equivalent of getting flipped off by a computer. That’s it, this officially marks the day my computer shit the bed. What pisses me off the most is not figuring out what the original problem actually was. At this point I hope it was the motherboard or processor. That way I wouldn’t feel so bad about frying it myself.

Oh well, what to do now. I’ll be without an uber computer for a while. I have other computers to get me through this very traumatic time. It’s just not quite the same though. I don’t think I mentioned that the motherboard was an Asus KV8 Pro with an AMD 64 3200. I’m thinking Abit will be my next motherboard of choice. Maybe I’ll upgrade a little to an AMD 64 3700 while I’m at it. Yeah, that sounds good. See, I’m feeling better already. I’ll keep you posted. Big Blue shall rise again.