[Fien]

Originally Posted by Jackal

This is another pointlessly tiresome exchange, Fien. You made a definitive comparative statement about both lists without having seen the top half of ours. I ventured a guess about the commonalities in the remaining half. Yes, a guess. That's what the "almost" was for. And I'll eat my hat if my statement isn't true. Though really, I don't care much at this point.

What I’m getting from this, is that if I’d added an “it-looks-like” or a “so-far” to my original statement, we wouldn’t have had this exchange. No problem, I’ll try to remember in future.

But just for the record, no, I didn't say the top halves of our lists would be more similar. I said that our top half would have more in common with your top 100 than the bottom half.

Aha. So for you, my “in common” referred only to the number of games. But I consider placement just as important, if not more important. With one or two exceptions, AG ranks the games that also appear on my list much, much lower. For instance, Dreamfall (52), Callahan’s (66), Spycraft (90), Feeble Files (91), Space Bar (98) are in my top twenty, Obsidian (62) and Discworld are in my top ten.

So yes, it is possible that AG’s top fifty will have more games that also appear in my top hundred. But based on what I’ve seen so far, and on the IMO quite reasonable predictions of AG’s top 50 made by others, I expect that number will be about the same as in AG’s bottom fifty.

You yourself already said the bottom 50 is the half with the greater variation rather than the predictable top half.

I said that about the AG list, which is IMO by definition way more predictable than any individual top hundred.

[zane]

my 2 biggest complaints so far:
1. i just cant fathom that discworld 2 is on the list but discworld 1 was ruled out. The first was a better adventure game in every sense of the word.. it has better puzzles, a cohesive plot, and much more exploration. The sequel has... songs, and more puns.
2. counting "infocom games" as an entry really bugs me You might as well put a spot in for "really old sierra games" for someone that cant be bothered to play all of the old ones.

[Arial Type]

I also think another decision should've been made regarding IF genre. I'm no expert, but there are many different games with different authors. Choosing only one company to represent the whole epoch and putting all its games on one position seems unfair.
Rather the Top should've been called "Top 100 graphical adventure games" or someone familiar with the genre should have chosen at least 10 IF games, one for each of the Days.

[zane]

^ fully agreed. If you absolutely cant rank them the same as individual games like the rest of the list, then dont include them on the list, put them on a different list or somthing
I disagree that none of them stand out above the rest, but if none of them stood out, then they shouldnt be on the list.

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by zane

my 2 biggest complaints so far:
1. i just cant fathom that discworld 2 is on the list but discworld 1 was ruled out. The first was a better adventure game in every sense of the word.. it has better puzzles, a cohesive plot, and much more exploration. The sequel has... songs, and more puns.
2. counting "infocom games" as an entry really bugs me You might as well put a spot in for "really old sierra games" for someone that cant be bothered to play all of the old ones.

Agree with both of these, but at least these games are on the list. A lesser Top 100 would have omitted them altogether. Then again, maybe that's no excuse and we should expect a top quality list from an adventure gaming site.

I would also not put Full Throttle higher than The Dig, and I don't think that's just personal preference. Though I will admit Full Throttle was probably more influential.

[Kurufinwe]

I had far too much time on my hands this afternoon, so I decided to do some stats. I'll present the full results when we have the complete list, but I thought we could play bookmakers a bit while we wait.

First, what is the greatest adventure game company of all time? Based on the first 70 games (and not counting the Infocom pack, for obvious reasons), 9 companies have 2 games or more on the list:

At that point, it's impossible to catch up with Sierra.

However, a game at the bottom of the list shouldn't count as much as one in the top-10. So let's say we give points based on rankings: 100 points for #1, 70 points for #31, etc. down to 1 point for #100. We get a somewhat different picture:

So now, can LucasArts catch up with Sierra? They can expect to have 5 games in the top-30: MI1, MI2, DotT, Sam & Max and Grim Fandango. Sierra should have 4: GK1, GK2, KQ6 and hopefully QfG4. If LucasArts gets the entire top-5, and the Sierra games end up at #30-27, LucasArts would win by 687 to 626. However, that seems very unlikely, and, unless some braindead person decided to put MI4 in the top-30, I'd say the crown is in the bag for Sierra.


What about the greatest designer of all time? Based on the games we expect to see in the top-30, it looks like it's going to be a very close race between Jane Jensen, Tim Schaffer and Dave Grossman. They all already have 1 game in (ranked very close to each other). Jane Jensen and Dave Grossman should get 3 more (KQ6, GK1, GK2; MI1, MI2, DotT) and Schaffer four (same as Grossman + GF). Depending on how they're ranked, there's a (small but non-zero) chance that Jane Jensen will win. Dave Grossmann, however, cannot expect to be above Tim Schaffer, since they share credits on many games, and Sam & Max Season 2 is quite a bit below Full Throttle.

(Of course, this assumes that co-designers get full points for games they've worked on. Otherwise, Jane Jensen wins effortlessly. But where would the fun be in that?)

So, who are you rooting for? Are you #TeamJane or #TeamTim?


Finally (for today), what is the golden year of adventure gaming? Once again weighting the games by rank, we get a very interesting graph:

Of course, since the games in the top-30 will get from 71 to 100 points, the shape of the graph will change quite a bit in the coming days. Still, the report of the genre's death in the early 2000s was clearly not exaggerated. It seems to have resurrected just fine in recent years, though.

[Arial Type]

Tim and Dave were co-designers on Monkey Island 1-2, with Ron leading the project, while Jane designed three games all by herself and shared the credits with Roberta Williams on King's Quest 6 (which should make it). And she was one of the co-designers on Pepper's Adventures in Time. So she's in the winning position)

[Nothingman]

Ouch for GK3. I had to register just to complain about its too low ranking
But what you can do, tastes are different. For me, GK3 is top 10 material without any doubt. One of the best stories ever, some pretty tough puzzles, nice replay value because you could miss some events.

This is my list of top 6 games (without any order because I could not decide):

The Longest Journey
Gabriel Knight 3
Grim Fandango
The Secret of Monkey Island
Day of the Tentacle
Discworld Noir

Honorable mentions (games I would not put at the top of the list because I guess many people would not agree, but I liked them very much):
Black Dahlia
Ripper

Ripper is here because of its game setting. I loved every second of this game and its atmosphere.
Black Dahlia is here for its fantastic hard (but logical) puzzles.

[AnneS]

Delighted to see Full Throttle so high on the list, as I wasn't sure it would make it at all. Sure, it's short and the bike track sequence is pretty awful, but it's wonderfully written and acted, and the music is wonderful.

[DustyShinigami]

I'm enjoying the countdown... Like everyone else, I don't completely agree with it, but still...

I'm very curious what will make it in the Top 10; not to mention #1...

I wonder if Broken Sword 3 and Tales of Monkey Island will make it to the list? They're not innovative by any means, but they're still great games none the less. Of course, if they do, they'll probably stir up some controversy by being above some of the greats already (Gabriel Knight 3 springs to mind).

Thanks to the list, it's convinced me to get a Nintendo DS in the future; I wanna play the likes of Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton etc.

[zane]

^half the reason i got a ds was for the adventure games, and i was not disappointed. The original phoenix wright and last window rank among my all-time favorites. Theres at least 10 very solid adventure games on the system, many of which provide around 20 hours of entertainment.

[TimovieMan]

Originally Posted by Gazzoid

Thanks to the list, it's convinced me to get a Nintendo DS in the future; I wanna play the likes of Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton etc.

Some of the best (and definitely my favourite) games of the last couple of years were DS-games.

And I'm very glad that they're all making the top-100...

[Bad Asp]

Yay, Sam and Max Hit the Road is on there!

[Shany]

Glad to see Discworld Noir is here, but what's with the spoiler?

[Tiocfaidh]

Originally Posted by Gazzoid

I wonder if Broken Sword 3 and Tales of Monkey Island will make it to the list? They're not innovative by any means, but they're still great games none the less. Of course, if they do, they'll probably stir up some controversy by being above some of the greats already (Gabriel Knight 3 springs to mind).

I´d be very surprised if they´d make it.

Originally Posted by Gazzoid

Thanks to the list, it's convinced me to get a Nintendo DS in the future; I wanna play the likes of Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton etc.

Me too.
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 & Last Window seem to be right up my alley.

[Jackal]

Originally Posted by Shany

Glad to see Discworld Noir is here, but what's with the spoiler?

I played the game so long ago that I don't remember much (except that it's great), and nothing at all of consequence leaps out at me. Can you PM me and let me know what you think is a spoiler?

[Gabe]

I think this not a legit list anymore,Heavy Rain can be anything
but not an ag for sure.

[gray pierce]

Originally Posted by Gabe

I think this not a legit list anymore,Heavy Rain can be anything
but not an ag for sure.

I have to disagree with that though I can definitely see your point. On a superficial level it's quite easy: Heavy Rain has waaaay to many action sequences to be called an AG. And yes it does (in fact it has waaay to many action sequences period) but on the other hand what really defines an AG? Puzzles? Definitely not: there are plenty AGs that don't really have any real puzzles but are still widely recognised as AGs(Overclocked, The Last Express) Is it not then telling a good original story that doesn't involve killing monsters or bad guys? With real characters that you can really connect with? (I'm talking ideally of course) And isn't that exactly what Heavy Rain is all about? So therefor isn't it safe to say that if there's one genre Heavy Rain leans most towards to it'd be the adventure genre?

[colpet]

Thank you for all the time and effort it must have taken to put this list together. I think that so far it's been pretty fair, even if I'm sure that one of may fave series (Rhem) probably won't make the list.

[Jannik]

Quite nice list so far, no big complaints

It would be nice to know, though, how you created the list. Did most/all staff members make their own top X, and then you transformed the results to a top 100? Or is the list a result of only a few peoples discussions? Or something else?