you people are missing the best snes rpg out which still stands as one of the best today. Secret of Mana hands down.

Super Mario 1
Super Mario 64
Half-Life
Lemmings
Total Annihilation
Pacman
The Incredible Machine
Quake
Everquest
A Final Fantasy

Tetris
Baldur's Gate
Starcraft
Final Fantasy Tactics
Guilty Gear X
Realms of Despair (old MUD)
The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Super Mario Bros 3
EarthBound

EarthBound is probably the most important game to me on the list. It's combination of humour, character design and well written dialogue has motivated me to play through it at least half a dozen times. The gameplay may be simplistic, but it is pure bliss on the creative side.

I find Warcraft I/II a bit redundant in that list. I strongly believe that Total Annihilation and the Total War series would make a much better choice for a designer educating him/herself in RTS games.

While we're all at it, don't forget to pay homage to the great old games that started them all.

Monkey Island series(the first 2 of the Monkey Island series at least) - really opened up the market for things to come, like Day of the Tentacles, Full Throttle, etc. The first PC game I played that made me laugh and fall out of my chair. Of course, then we have to mention Maniac Mansion as well, but Monkey Island really made things fun. Not to mention the developers had alot of fun with acronyms.

Descent (the original) - while everyone was drooling over Doom 1 and 2, Descent silently sneaked in and knocked the socks off of anyone who gave it a chance. I read that an editor at PC Gamer Magazine actually hurled due to motion sickness while trying to review it, how cool is that. Still, good things never last and the truly 3D freedom FPS games just kind of fell off the radar and Quake paved the way for the current large FPS market.

I'm amazed someone mentioned Star Control 2. You have my vote.

X-Com is a must on the list with its relentless'y tough game play. The only reason I ever came close to actually beating it was because I modified my save games to give myself more resources. :|

But overall, everyone made great points.

Um definitely more than 10, but I don't have a good memory anyway.
1. Zombies Ate My Neighbors. My fav game, I should make clone of it someday. It gathered crowds behind whoever played it. Catchy music, pressure of the game + pressure of the crowd, that definitely added to the feel of the game (videogame clubs)
2. Goldeneye / Perfect Dark: Pdark's design was way better.
3. Pokemon / Pkmn Snap
4. Twisted Metal series: TMIII is the one I like most, I just found out that and TMIV are the ones most people hate =o
5. Castlevania SOTN
6. Starcraft
7. Diablo 2: And this is why I don't wanna try WOW, I'm not getting sucked into an Online RPG again. It's good to play an Online RPG to learn how game economics work and develop.
8. Age Of Empires II
9. C&C - Red Alert Retaliaton (PS1)
10. SMW2 - Yoshi's Island

Others include Smash Brothers (N64), Zelda OOT, Duke Nukem 3D, Gran Turismo, Mario Party, Final Fight 2 (I think), Super Bomberman 3, Megaman X, Resident Evil (also gathered crowds, for hours) etc, etc, etc.

Ive got a random list of games you should play for different reasons.

In no particular order:

DDR - Theres obviously something about this game thats highly addictive. Theres been tons of games like this that never really made it so mainstream, but theres something different about DDR. I think itmay be the dancing, but just as many people play the console versions.

Castlevania: SOTN - This game proves that its possible to mix RPG with action. Study that aspect.

Zelda 1 / GTA3 - Both games are open ended and allow the player to roam freely. However, there becomes less restrictions on what you can do as you get further in the game. In Zelda, as you earn items you can do different things like reach some hearts, burn down trees, find caves. In GTA3, the bigger your arsenol is (mixed with a knowledge of hidden powerups like health and badges), the player is able to create more destruction and last longer against police.

The Horde - Not many people played this, but it mixed the genres of a sim game with an action game. Basically, durring the season, you did city planning on your villiage by adding fences, digging irrigation trenches, farming trees, and land reclimation. At the end of every season, monsters would attakc your town. Theyd eat up your crops and villiagers. You get to tax villiagers who survived and sell the crops for money. If the Horde eats all your villiagers, you lose the game.

Dark Cloud 1 and 2 - Again, a mixing of sim and rpg. In these games, something has happened to the world, and you must rebuild villiages across the land by dungeon crawling. As you go through the dungeons, you find pieces of the town you have to rebuild. Depending on how you format the town, you can make some people happy, and you earn bonuses. You can also do alot of fun stuff like customizing and upgrading weapons, fishing (if youre into that...), collecting rare items, building stats, and so on.

Final Fantasy 6j/3e / Chrono Trigger - FF6 is set up like an Opera in fantasy sence, and Chrono Trigger is an epic novel in a video game. Both RPGs prove that emotion and storyline can be delivered to the player without the use of graphic intensive cut scenes and mini movies. They also both show how an RPG can be full of other mini games and side quests that arent neccissary, yet involve the player more into the game. (Square should replay these games...)

Halo - I know you've all heard enough about this one, but regardless of how unliked it is by some trendy folk, Halo helped redefine the FPS genre. No longer are all FPS full of the standard pray-n-spray, head for the biggest gun, slaughter droves of brainless monsters type games. Halo is not a fragfest, and often requires a battleplan and some strategy. Legendary Co-op is some of the most fun Ive ever had in an FPS. Note that I did not include Halo 2 in this paragraph.

Metal Gear Solid - This game is full of examples of how the developer can trick the player into following a set level path without realising it. Not nearly enough games have this. Half Life 2, while innoventive for its world manipulation, had obviously linear map paths. Also, the game is another example of how items can be used to unlock areas (also see Super Metroid/Castlevania:SOTN for this).


ill think of two more later.

I could swear i was logged in...

The Classic Top 10:

1. TIE Fighter
Space-type flight sim, classic and still one I play. Nothing yet has ever matched it in my opinion, despite the need for so many controls. Between the story, SW music & feel, and the gameplay... I played this one through many times, something that is rare for me.

2. Dark Forces/Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
Dark Forces is another classic for me, the first FPS I ever really played all the way through. The weapons were fun to use, and each had their own uses. No "God Gun" like, say, CounterStrike's AWP, or the BFG. While the shoulder cannon was very powerful, it was also very limited in ammunition. The game's story drew me in, again with an excellent mix of music, and the gritty Star Wars atmosphere. Jedi Knight, the sequal, added Multiplayer mode which I played countless times, the multiple endings; whether dark or light. Force Powers, which seemed to be the first of the type of 'extra abilities' in an FPS added a totally new dimension. And, it was my introduction into modding a game / level editing, with the ease of scripting for it.

3. Super Mario Kart
This was the game that dominated much of my late childhood. 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc -- all gold, every race. It took awhile to achieve that, and even longer to break the last-known record I had seen for 150cc on Rainbow Road; 1'32" or so. I managed 1'27"ish, then Nintendo Power cut that contest (cry). It was a blast with friends, and the combat aspect added a fun, new way to overtake your opponents.

4. NBA Jam
Simplicity. This was the first and only real sports game I've ever had fun playing. I don't remember too much about it, but I do remember the thrill of launching an across-the-court shot for the win. The breaking glass of the backboard. Little things that spiced it up, and made it fun.

5. SubSpace (now Continuum)
Mutiplayer Asteroids is the only way I can describe it. Top-down, 2D shooter that has still stood the test of time. It came out way back in '98, but was in beta for a very long time. Accoridng to the designers, it was an accidental game -- it was a test for their later (and now failing) Infantry. So many people who were testing it wrote/phoned them that they released it. Even still the community, though not as large as it once was, plays it extensively. The fact you can just hop in and play right off is wonderful. The design was pretty straight-forward -- weapons cost energy to fire (bullets, bombs). Energy was your 'health bar.' If it went below 0, you exploded in fiery debris. You could pilot any of eight different ships, and the settings varied depending on which arena/zone (ie, server) you played in. It's still a blast to play. Give it a try, eh?

6. Ultima Online
Sadly, however, you would need a time machine to go back and play the beginning of this...the first Massively Multiplayer experiment. The game was totally redesigned from the ground up in a year and a half, a testiment to the brilliance of the designers at Origin Interactive. Despite the lag and bug-filled beginnings, it was the start of a new era. The free-form nature of character development differed totally from the slightly-later EverQuest, and every game I've seen since. I miss it. Simple things, like being able to dye your character's clothing, still lacked in later games. Ultima Online made it possibile for communities to really, truly exist, with housing. This feat still hasn't been duplicated, in my opinion. For instance, Dark Age of Camelot has housing -- sure, but it's in a seperate zone off away from everything else, rather than starting an outpost in the frontier. Of course, the side-effect of this was every open spot of land had a house on it.

7. Command & Conquer: Red Alert
The first RTS I really enjoyed. WarCraft was the first I had played, and it was OK, but the units I prefer from C&C:RA. There were a variety of ways to play, and only one resource; tiberium. Everything stemmed from this. This was also the first game to really introduce base-destroying death, in the form of nukes. Unfortunately, there was not a counter to this. Both sides had different units, in both cost and power, but neither asserted dominance over the other.

8. Diablo II
While I did not play the original Diablo, I did play its successor, and for god knows how long. The only RPG I've ever really enjoyed, because I felt like a hero. I beat up hordes of enemies, not like a MMOG where I die to two, or one. One of the biggest attractions to the game was finding those Uniques; the powerful and wonderful items. Also, there was the Horadric Cube (sp?) which could transmute items into other things. Then, there was Battle.net.

9. Total Annihilation
Another game I still play to this day -- there's nothing like it. There is no base structure, per se. Your most essential unit is your Commander, and that represents you. No other RTS has attempted this to my knowledge, except TA:Kingdoms, and it's quite a brilliant concept to put *you* as the 'general,' the keystone to your army's success being your very survival. The balance in Total Annihilation seems off, but only slightly.

10. Super Mario Land 3
Classic platformer, always playable. Everything about this game was good, and it is why I still love Nintendo. I would hope everyone has played this game, because if you haven't, you're missing out at life itself.

-Greven

Just noticed that a summary of this thread has been stickied here.
So just a few comments.
What on earth is going on in the RTS section? Why list both Warcraft 1, 2 and 3 as well as Starcraft, but miss out many of the much more innovative RTS'es?
If a designer has played WC3, does he really need to also play 1 and 2? (Or vice versa, there's not *that* much new in 3). Even the C&C series is fundamentally very similar, so while yes, they have interesting differences that make both worth playing, they might not warrant that much space on a list like this.

On the other hand, where is Total Annihilation? That was a RTS that brought something new to the table back when it came out.
Or more recently, and at least as refreshing, WH40k: Dawn of War.
(Which added some brilliant features, turning the usual rush-style gameplay into a fast-paced tactical game where you actually had to think (quickly) and react to your opponents strategy, and which used resource points scattered across the map to force players out of their bases, resulting in constant skirmishes all over the map, where Warcraft would have had people hiding in their bases until they launched one all-out rush on the enemy base.)

You might even say that DoW could replace C&C as well as Warcraft/Starcraft, simply because it shows all the same features that made those two series noteworthy, while adding a host of other brilliant ones. So from a designers point of view, DoW would actually be the only game you needed to play. (Of course, as a gamer, you have to play C&C and Warcraft as well, simply because they're classics, and great games. And no, I'm not seriously suggesting you remove Warcraft or C&C from the list, just pointing out that they are given too much attention while other, even more important games (from a game design point of view) are being missed completely)

Next up, the TBS genre:
What happened to Master of Orion? Alpha Centauri and Civ are obvious musts, but they basically represent the same subgenre, which leaves out a lot of other important TBS games.

RPG's:
Where's Fallout? Or Morrowind? I can't believe they're being left out. ;)
Morrowind is a must just because it's so damn huge, even it has quite a few flaws (I didn't particularly like the game, but I believe a game designer should know it, if nothing else, to learn what worked and what didn't, and because it was extremely ambitious).
Fallout is should be added just for being so damn interesting and original, for featuring a non-D&D-based skill system, and showing how well this can be done.
You might bunch it together with Baldurs Gate, as there are a lot of similarities (superficially, at least. In truth, the story is presented very differently, the character progression is very different, combat is practically opposite of BG, so when you go into a bit of depth, they don't really have any more in common that the isometric 2D view)

Finally, how about creating an extra category for "special" games, that don't really belong to any specific genre, but are nevertheless worth playing and learning from?
A few examples could be Dance Dance Revolution, Nights: Into Dreams, and I'm sure people can suggest many others.

(And one last question. Sorry. ;)
What happened to games like X-Com or Deus Ex? Or Elite, Frontier and other sequels/spinoffs? They have been suggesting in practically every post in this thread, so shouldn't they be on the "official" list too?)