This Old Neon Forum

Welcome to the "BEST GAME EVER!!!" Project Semifinals!

You can vote for 1 game in this bracket. Vote carefully—you can't change your vote after submitting it. The top game at the end of the week will advance to the Grand Finals.

20 - Super Mario World - 1990 - SNES
84 - Tetris - 1989 - GB

You are encouraged to discuss your choice and your reasons for selecting the game you did.

It's time for Tetris to retire.

Easy vote for SMW. I've explained before why I don't like Tetris.

I'm still voting for Tetris, although Super Mario World is probably my favorite of the Mario games.

Spore wrote:

It's not super though. Therefore it sucks.

A relatively easy vote for Tetris. If it were against A Link to the Past this would be a tougher bracket.

Super Mario World is probably the strongest game in the Mario series, with great layered level design and good mechanics. But Tetris is a perfect game that remains eminently playable. It's also the kind of game that is so tightly designed that it becomes really hard to iterate on it, as later Tetris games that tried to innovate with the gameplay have been good enough but fallen somewhat flat. Very seldom do we see games that are so perfectly conceptualized and executed. This is the definition of what a "BEST GAME EVER!!!" should be.

There's much more to see and to do in Super Mario World than in Tetris, and so it gets my vote. It's not my favorite Mario game, but it's pretty great and better than most games.

Kong Wen wrote:A relatively easy vote for Tetris. If it were against A Link to the Past this would be a tougher bracket.

Super Mario World is probably the strongest game in the Mario series, with great layered level design and good mechanics. But Tetris is a perfect game that remains eminently playable. It's also the kind of game that is so tightly designed that it becomes really hard to iterate on it, as later Tetris games that tried to innovate with the gameplay have been good enough but fallen somewhat flat. Very seldom do we see games that are so perfectly conceptualized and executed. This is the definition of what a "BEST GAME EVER!!!" should be.

I have tons of difficulty mounting any sort of case against Tetris whatsoever. It is, indeed, a perfect game, but I think a perfect game is also not necessarily incapable of being bested in a contest like this. Particularly if, like Tetris, it is so lacking in any emotional tug whatsoever. Super Mario World, plain choice though it may be, is my favorite game of all time. Not only is it, like Tetris, essentially without flaw, but it also charms me to no end. Break that level-end banner one more time, Mario. You've nearly got your crown.

Claytone wrote:I have tons of difficulty mounting any sort of case against Tetris whatsoever. It is, indeed, a perfect game, but I think a perfect game is also not necessarily incapable of being bested in a contest like this. Particularly if, like Tetris, it is so lacking in any emotional tug whatsoever. Super Mario World, plain choice though it may be, is my favorite game of all time. Not only is it, like Tetris, essentially without flaw, but it also charms me to no end. Break that level-end banner one more time, Mario. You've nearly got your crown.

I definitely don't think a perfect game is incapable of being bested, since there are a few others who have already gone down to emotional fan favourites of dubious quality. And Super Mario World isn't one of those—it's a legitimately excellent game. For me, emotional tug isn't a necessary criterion. It can help a great deal (e.g. in the case of Brothers, which is an emotional game, or Lunar, to which I have an emotional attachment), but I'd consider chess—as mechanical and emotionless a game as I can think of—better than many pulpy video games of our time.

Anyway, this is the semifinals, so this is where we're supposed to find the incredibly hard match-ups like this one.