Actually, I'm surprised I haven't answered to this question.
For tradition purposes, it's in descending order:
10: Chrono trigger: The amount of imersion this game will produce on you is really something. Music are so much accurate of their feels and the Active mode in the battles is like you experience turn by turn, but with the stress of real time. It's a perfect balance because you have access to wide variety of strategy options and feel into it. What is really something tough is the imersion of the plot, I need to replay it some days because I'm not sure I got the full thing, but I can tell you that emotionally, it;s really reaching. As for time travel, well, most of the plot is just centered on it and most of it is scripted. It's just changing the atmosphere which is good in imersion, but in itself, it;s not why the game is good but the way it flows.
9: Super Paper Mario: Yep, it;s mainly because of the story. I will tell first, this game is underrated because platformer. Problem, it is merged with RPG elements. Anyway it's a love story very deep and very imersive in its presentation. I realy can't tell much because spoilers, but I can tell that the quality of the series was mostly preserved with some flaws, but overall, good game.
8: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: It;s so sad that this game has some flaws because its concept was genius and the freaking depression feel constantly expressed so deeply. I first want to tell you it's a very unique game in the zelda series because of how deep the NPC story is and it got interpreted in multiples ways that a lot seems valid (the grief theory comes in mind). What I really also want to point out is the "time" (it's even more than that) travel. Now, from someone who played chrono trigger, it's not like that at all. It's what I call from a speedrunner a sequence travel, but under normal gameplay! Let me fill you: a sequence is the series of triggers the game has that constitute the game flow from its beginning to its end. It is not the action, but the triggers and the game is made so that the actions are implied as requirements. It's possible via glitches in some game to break the sequence by skipping trigger and normally, the game assumes you did the requirements. Tough, I saw some games that you can revert the asumption state while you still progressed so you sort of skip, go back before the skip, go even fiurther than before. It's confusing, but you basically travel in the sequence hence the name. Here, let me tell you, It's very interesting. You have a permanent and always available point when you can revert the sequence. Reverting to this points implies that every action you did was never done and you have to use this point to save your game. This is the first game where normal game flows is not the normal way to play and it's not even playable. The only way to make progress is to get permanent triggers like getting items. For side quest, they are at the end of it meaning that you have to finish them to progress and if you don't you have to redo everything. This is really something I enjoyed because you really travel under normal circumstances in the game flow and making it the main gameplay made the sad feel even more obvious and the music final hours is a proof of it. Don't listen to this when you're hype because it will crush it instantly. Not reccomended if you're depressed.
7: Kirby Air Ride: Yeah let's be direct, it should be renamed to city trial only. That is really 95% of the reason it's there. I remember I could spend hours of just trying to get upgrades with cpu on max level. They are tough btw and the game was so random (something I like in games) that it felt never the same for those 7 (by defualt it's 5, but the longer the better) minutes. Even the events were memorable like who doesn;t remember hearing dense fog today? Or the bounce events music? I didn't played a kirby game before, but just because of this mode, it was awesome. As for the achievements, yeah they are fun too, but mostly city trial itself stole the show. it's so addicting, please, have a watch near you...
6: Metroid Prime: You could honestly put the other 2 in the same position, but I only pick this one because slight nostalgia. The 3 are all good, but I don't want to waste 3 spaces, so I just took the one that marked me the most. Anyway, I'm a guy who is ok with backtracking so, it didn't really hurted my experience. The desire of exploring is what made this game so good. Because the game highly enhance the alone feel (something IRL I really enjoy btw), it pushes you to go deeper in the open world. Getting power ups is now even more satisfying because each time, you have new areas to go and it really seems to be so long to never ends. The audio is doing a good job to imerse you mostly by ambiance instead of music which are reserved for intense battles. Speaking of them, it's really intense because you really have to act fast and it sort of tries to play with your stress. It's really easy sometimes to loose all your life and the saves points enhance this feel of not wanting to die to get into reaction. The game is detailed, fun fact: during an AGDQ stream, a dev of retro studio that worked on the game said to remember having a meeting where the goal was to decide what shade of red to use when you damage an enemy. If it's crazy like that, that's usually a good sign in the detail of the final version.
5: Earthbound -> Ok, this game is just art. I don't think I really need to explain why. There's so much hidden references and so much stuff hidden in this game that really, it feels almost familiar IRL because of the cultural references (some I probably miss a lot). It's almost like philosophy with the purpose some elements were implemented like it's really beautiful. Also, the text is absolutely hilarious. If you're the type of person that likes silly and absurd jokes (some even destroy the 4th wall), then you'll just facepalm so much time while thinking "did they really wrote that?". I can tell you the number of time I had to press home to laugh about some jokes that was so fun. The music is btw surprinsingly immersive with how simple it is. It's amore a game that instead of realistically imerses you, it tries to psychologically feel real and I tend to like this way the most. I'm really glad Nintendo finally rereleased it because it's a masterpiece to remember.
4: Super Mario Sunshine -> Tbh honest, this game did blew my mind, but It's so sad that learning how underrated it is was even more surprising. First, yes, I know this was and is even apparent to be rushed and yes FLUDD isn't sm64 (I actually sucks at sm64), but it's not the main reason why this game was so good (I'm even impressed it's good considering the rush it had). I decided to call an effect I saw on this game because it was really the one that did it the best: the sunshine effect. It's a feel you live in a game where doing really pointless actions is becoming an enjoyment and makes you happy because of its satisfaction when it's done. Here, just by looking at delfino plaza or most of the levels of the game just first makes the urge to smile. Second, you have a big temptation to play and do stuff in the level, but it can become very pointless and still enjoying. For example, i really was happy to just jump for no reason on the rooftop of the houses in delfino plaza and the FLUDD air control made it even better. It's like you feel you're in a sandbox even tough it's just totally useless to do that, naviguating in the game is even enhancing the feel of the temptation to play the game in the first place! Then it becomes infinite until you beat the game. I know there was some obvious flaws, but the sunshine effect just overshadowed most of them. It's really unimaginable to play this game while you're angry (and might calm you down if you play it actually).
3: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Bright colors are my favourite, but bright green is my favourite color. It turns out that this game is exploding of bright green. Like, I just loved the design of this game because it's so rare to see games like this to have so much bright colors. It's almost without any gradient! The best colors I can enjoy for my tastes. Not to mention that the abundance of water and the fact that you're so small in a so fast world just made me want to explore more which is actually the main goal of the game! Games that are designed to make even more enjoyable its main purposes is the one I praise the most because it's not just enjoying a game, but also making it even better and maybe sometimes its best possible. Those are the main reasons why it's my best zelda game.
2: Paper Mario The Thousand-year Door -> Honestly, you don't know me enough if you're surprised it's not my number 1. Anyway, I talked about it the most on this forum and I made literally pages on this game and why I got crazy on it, but I can summarize them shortly. Basically, it was the game that was matching so much my tastes that I grew and still am very addicted to its design and humor. I just was mind blown to see a game that amazing, it's those type of game that first, the ending is always sad because it ended and second, it's almost perfect. There's couple a flaws I could point out since perfect is just impossible, but there's so few that almost isn't even an exageration imo. EVERYTHING is made to look appealing, be memorable and of course, make you happy. I honestly tell you if you somehow like RPG, you have to play this game to get why I got crazy on it that much. I tend to compare the Paper Mario series to the Mother series because I found weird, but abundant reference from Mother and I know how Mother influenced some people (it's the most solid fanbase I've ever heard of). So, if you like the mother series or played the VC release of earthbound, just play this game. It's almost guaranted you'll love it, but really, it's a wonderful experience.
1: Super Smash Bros Melee -> It will never change. Unless somethings happens that makes the current video game industry completely pointless to exist in the first place, this game will always in one way or another be implied to be impossible to top for me. The reason is very simple: the list of 10 to 2 will never appear if I haven't played ssbm. It's really THE game that made me realise even years after I played it that a video game is an art in its design and conception. The moment I realised this, I tried to play all the games I missed and even bough the one I played, but after I changed my mind on games which was constant because I was learning so much. This point marks the point where since then, every time I finish a game, my way of seeing them changed. It would either teach me what could be possible or how to better appreciate games as art. Nonetheless, because of how much I was discovering, it was BY FAR (even if I consider TTYD), my best experience I lived in any gaming moment EVER. It lasted even months and it was mostly solo modes as some were hard for my inexperience and my lack of English knowledge. This is why the music "menu 1" is my most memorable music that makes me remember all this fantastic experience. I only knew more about the trophies way later, but I was mind blown when I realised they all came from so much series. I owe Sakurai a lot because without him, you wouldn't even read this.
That's it. I didn't put pm64 for the simple reason that I'm planning a replay of it in the following days or week since I forgot too much of that game. Normally, you could maybe put it at number 10, but I feel bad of not mentioning chrono trigger
There's a lot of GC games because well, that's the proof how awesome I found this system.
I should have done that way before tough...
. It'll probably change in the future.
