What Is the Best Video Game of All Time?

Follow-up question: What’s the best game to lose your virginity to? Stream an exclusive episode of our favorite gaming podcast, Idle Thumbs, to find out.

By Idle Thumbs
(Chris Remo, Jake Rodkin, and Sean Vanaman)
Illustration by Mia Noltingil

Video games are underratedly sophisticated at multimedia storytelling, intermingling text, audio, and video inside navigable spaces. These days, video game criticism is no different (well, minus the navigable spaces—so far). We don’t just read about games anymore. We watch and listen, too.

Matter asked the hosts of Idle Thumbs, our favorite game podcast, to answer one elementary question: What is the best—not the greatest, but the best— video game of all time? Stream or download it here:

CLIPS:

What does “best” even mean?

Does the best video game need to appeal to nongamers?

What is the Almost Famous of video games? The Clue: The Movie of video games? The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl?

What is the best video game to play while losing your virginity?

What about Grand Theft Auto?

The one and only answer (probably).

Or maybe it’s just Flappy Bird.

A possibly incomplete list of the video games mentioned on this podcast, in order: Tetris, Minecraft, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3D Land, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Spelunky, QWOP, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto V, Dwarf Fortress, The Sims, SimCity, Mario Kart 64, Grim Fandango, Double Dragon II, Bad Dudes 2, Renegade, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Rock Band 2 on no-fail mode, Half-Life, Doom, Far Cry 2, Flappy Bird, Flappy Bird Family, Blast Corps, Full Throttle, Christmas Lemmings.

Presented by Matter

Follow Matter on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Subscribe to our newsletter