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1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

It should come as no surprise that the best video game ever made should come from the best video game franchise of all time and be supported by the console with arguably the best video game library. Granting Ocarina of Time the highest position on the Top 100 List might seem obvious (it is generally considered at the very least the best console game ever made), but competition has become increasingly stiff in the last few years, from first, second and third party developers; no longer is Ocarina simply the default number 1.

Released in 1998 (one of the all-time great years in the video game industry), Ocarina of Time was the fifth Zelda game. The franchise was 11 years old in North America and had already gone through several important innovations. The premier game, The Legend of Zelda, had revolutionized video games by including a save battery in the game cartridge so that players could recover their progress once the NES was turned off. Its sequel, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, changed the perspective from top-down to a side-view and flirted with RPG elements. Then came A Link to the Past, the greatest Zelda game after Ocarina, which might be the most important game in the franchise. A Link to the Past refined all the gameplay elements which had been established in its predecessors and would dominate the franchise going forward: a fantasy landscape filled with castles, towns, dungeons, mountains and rivers; challenges unrelated to the main arc of the story in the form of side-quests, upgradable weapons; brain teasing puzzles; mini-games; and an abundance of non-player characters (NPCs).

With the foundation built, the designers behind Ocarina of Time simply needed to make a few minor changes and release a repackaged but essentially familiar Zelda adventure. As the gaming industry knows now, they did much more than that.

Ocarina revolutionized video games, from the most superficial level to the core of its gameplay, many elements of which now seem unremarkable when featured in modern games. In many ways, Ocarina is the experience promised by Super Mario 64: a fully-realized three-dimensional world with living, breathing heroes, villains and everything in between; a virtual garden with unprecedented freedom; a game that was simultaneously familiar and intimidating. Ocarina was all of this and more.

Set before the events of the previous four Zelda games, Ocarina gave the player never-before-seen glimpses into the geography of Hyrule, the formation of the Triforce and the origins of Ganon, the franchise’s ultimate villain. Gameplay innovations include the realistic passage of time, time travel and the ability to catch fish, play an ocarina and ride a horse. It is these last three which point to what might be the greatest achievement of Ocarina, namely its unparalleled immersive qualities. Never before and never since has a game transplanted its players so convincingly from their couch into the game world. Everything in Ocarina captures the imagination and absorbs the mind: the grassy plains of Hyrule Field, the dusty alleyways of the Gerudo Fortress; the noxious air of Death Mountain. This, above all else, differentiates Ocarina from the pantheon of great games to which it belongs.