Games of the Decade - 1990's

Games of the Decade - 1990's

Took a while to actually get around to this after doing the 2000's and 2010's over a year ago, but I finally figured out a good workflow to make this list. Still really just a rough draft but hey figured I might as well get something up.

For a number of years I thought the 90's was the golden age of gaming, at least for me personally. And looking at this list the first 14 games are among my top 26 all timers. But then it drops off fairly quickly, especially in the back 50. But it still might be and sentimentally probably always will be. You'll see a ton of entries from the same franchises over and over in this list, that's reflective of what I had access to but also I think of an era completely dominated by some IP.

Which makes me wonder, as a I often do, what exactly makes a gaming year (or decade in this case) good? Is it the best of the best? breadth of quality? depth of quality games? or perhaps most likely some combination of all of the above?

Some notable themes in the 1990's's was the major transition from 2d->3d gaming mid way through There's really been nothing nearly as jarring as that before or since. It basically rebooted games quality wise there for a minute and I think much of the seeming weakness of this era came from the experimental by necessity nature of Gen 5. Gen 4 and 5 is also when JRPGs were at their zenith with me and seemingly in general. It also ushered in the popularization of the Fighting game genre. So those show up a bit disproportionately as there were a lot of them, but also many were really good . But as a result the middle of the decade were really thin, there were some of the best highpoints of all time but there wasn't much beyond them. Also the 90's marked the the arrival of the now dominant Sony Playstation that pretty much has ruled Gaming ever since, but for a number of years they came across to me as an unproven upstart

DISCLAIMERZ: Like with any of these lists, there's always gonna be stuff you missed, forgot or just didn't get to play. While I haven't finished everything in this list (nearly all of them tho and nothing less than 75%), these are all games I feel I've spent enough time with to at least feel they deserve placement on the list. One of my major shortcomings is lack of experience with the SEGA libraries as I never was a Sega Kid.

Oh and I am using United States release dates for most of these. While I think you make an argument for either Japanese or US dates, I am an American and it's easier to be consistent if I consider how they felt when they were playable here

Inspired by @liquiddragon's best of the 2010's list

https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/liquiddragon/lists/a-top-100-games-of-the-decade-list/366880/

Other lists from me in this series

1980's-Games of the Decade - 1980's (and earlier) (giantbomb.com)2000's-Games of the Decade - 2000's (giantbomb.com)

2010's-Games of the Decade - 2010's (giantbomb.com)