Top Games of 2023

Video Games
9

In my prior posts, I kept talking about my “favorite era” of NES-through-PS2. I am finally there at its starts, re-playing the MSX Goonies and Castlevanias that got me started on this chronology project a couple years ago. Because I stuck with streaming, a lot of my time was spent playing OldSchool RuneScape. I finally maxed, which has been a lifelong goal. Hundreds of days spent playing that game. According to my OSRS Year in Review, I spent 794 hours playing OSRS in 2023, but that doesn’t even include my Free-to-play Ultimate Ironman account I made for a stream idea. Just played it till I beat Dragon Slayer. Anyway, my biggest change in terms of OSRS wasn’t just maxing my stats, it was also that I finally got into bossing. I can actually do end-game tough content like Tombs of Amascut and Nex. I never got into the pvm or any active part of OSRS, always just played it for afk. We will see if it sticks because a goal for 2024 is to focus on relaxing and putting my wellbeing before desires, urges, and worries.

Because of me truly focusing on my goal of maxing and then on learning pvm and endgame content on OSRS, my rate of backlog clearing suffered. I mean, last year was insane. Seems it was 367 games reviewed not just played.. A lot of my ultimate favorites I played this year were re-plays–namely Castlevania and Dragon Quest. For this playthrough I did the original Japanese versions. I was surprised that the first Zelda and Metroid didn’t make the cut of absolute favorite, let alone 5 stars, but they’re of course great games. Anyway, my top 10 played in 2023: (after writing out the list, I realized how many were games I played for stream, not backlog games >.< )

  1. Castlevania (FDS, 1986) - On replay, this grew to be one of my all-time favorite games. I loved it the first time I played it through in 2021, but I trullllly loved it this time. I couldn’t stop replaying it, trying to limit my use of savestates, even completing the tougher 2nd version you start after beating the game once. Just a great game, full of quirky gameplay mechanics you can get to know and eventually love.

  2. Kingdom Hearts (PS2, 2002) - I didn’t realize how many of these streamed games I played in 2023! Time has been weird. Anyway, what a consuming game. I always get sucked into it every playthrough. And this time, it managed to be declared a Perfect Rating, matched only with FFX and Super Mario World. Only reason Castlevania was higher was because it became a favorite favorite this year, a new all-time favorite that may grow to be a Perfect Rating and forever game too. The fact I’ve already played it, what, 5 times through in only a year or 2 of having played it says a lot.

  3. Super Mario World (SNES, 1990) - So beloved. I feel like I know the controls of this game and Crash 3 better than any other game. It’s so intuitive to me at this point. Only reason KH got one higher is because Super Mario World can get really tough at times. Which is warranted, but as we all know, I like to game for ease and fun ha. This is a forever game, I will replay it and replay it for the rest of my life. May even try speedruns

  4. Tomba (PS1, 1998) - A childhood favorite I replayed for stream. Tho some of the gameplay got frustrating, it has such a unique mix of quest-based action-adventure, RPG, and platformer. Once you get Baron, traveling around is much easier and becomes a fun pseudo-open-world adventure game of crossing off quests. Lord knows how much I love crossing off lists! Plus the Sound and Look are forever-endearing.

  5. Pokemon Yellow (GBC, 1998) - A childhood favorite I replayed for stream. It has a lot of bugs and goofy aspects, but it is just so endearing and addictive. I love the grind-heaviness, and the dialogue is surprisingly great for 90s RPG.

  6. Larn (Browser, 1986) - My issue with roguelikes is the intense difficulty. It is assumed you will die, and die a lot, and just keep retrying. Luckily, Larn was the first one to really get me to push through that, because I dunno, you kept learning from it and the browser larn version had some niceties that made it feel like a proper menu and enjoyable to play. I got so addicted to this lol.

  7. Abe’s Oddysee (PS1, 1997) - The difficulty was a bit marring, but hey, infinite lives. Just made it a bit tough to stream ha. Another childhood favorite and it proved to be as good as I remembered. Maybe some day I’ll finally 100% the game. One of the few favorites I have never 100%'d

  8. Section-Z (MAME, 1985) - Harkened the Look of Metroid, great Sound, addictive shmup gameplay (main thing of 2023, I suppose, was that I can now officially add shoot em ups on my list of games I tend to always finish, along with platformers and action-adventures ha… even when they aren’t very good). Luckily this game is good! I love the Moon Patrol style checkpoint system, keeps me going. Now, to see if JRPGs join those 3 genres as favorite genres, since I usually have viewed RPGs and platformers as my ultimate genres (but during the backlog, I was not enjoying early-to-mid-80s CRPGs).

  9. Shao-Lin’s Road (Arcade & MAME, 1985) - I first played this on the actual arcade machine and knew I needed to give it a full playthrough via MAME. This was just plain-ol, fast-paced, fun action. Great controls, great pacing, and great gameplay. Can’t ask for much more in an arcade action game.

  10. The Fairyland Story (MAME, 1985) - I’m noticing a pattern with the backlog games that made the cut to the top 10: almost all were arcade releases. I thought NES games would be the ones, but no surprise that arcade games made it (plus, Dragon Quest is close behind, and there were a lot of great NES and MSX games in 1986). Anyway, the last few levels of this are soooo hard to the point where I almost gave up. But the fact I did push through said a lot. Plus, the Look is amazing.

Ironically, I only have a few more games before I start on 1987. Almost this whole year (2023) was spent in 1986 games. 1987 was the last year I added darn near every game from the database to my backlog, buttttt games also start getting longer and higher-quality so that doesn’t mean I will be moving much faster. Plus, the rise of JRPGs. Here we go into 2024! My next 2 stream games are FFX (Which will surely make the cut for 2024) and Earthbound (never played it before).

Oh and honorable mentions: Dragon Quest (1986, NES) and KiKi KaiKai (1986, MAME). Both were super special. Other 5 stars included: Gateway (1985, Mac), Master of Magic (1985, C64), Terrormolinos (1985, Speccy), Big Mac: The Mad Maintenance Man (1985, C64), Super Mario Bros (1985, NES), and The Goonies (1986, NES)

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