Live ranking

The full ranking.

5,046 video games face off in duels and 368,122 duels have already been settled. The ranking is recomputed with every vote: filter by genre, decade, platform or period.

69 games Reset

  1. 1 Super Metroid 1994 · Metroidvania 1,880
  2. 2 Doom II: Hell on Earth 1994 · FPS 1,839
  3. 3 Final Fantasy III 1994 · JRPG 1,825
  4. 4 EarthBound 1994 · JRPG 1,736
  5. 5 Donkey Kong Country 1994 · Platformer 1,732
  6. 6 Mortal Kombat II 1994 · Fighting 1,713
  7. 7 Sonic the Hedgehog 3 1994 · Platformer 1,713
  8. 8 System Shock 1994 · Action RPG 1,636
  9. 9 Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 1994 · Platformer 1,632
  10. 10 X-COM: UFO Defense 1994 · Strategy 1,619
  11. 11 Warcraft: Orcs & Humans 1994 · Strategy 1,612
  12. 12 Sonic & Knuckles 1994 · Platformer 1,573
  13. 13 The Lion King 1994 · Platformer 1,571
  14. 14 Mega Man X2 1994 · Platformer 1,560
  15. 15 Tekken 1994 · Fighting 1,554
  16. 16 Super Punch-Out!! 1994 · Fighting 1,532
  17. 17 International Superstar Soccer 1994 · Sports 1,522
  18. 18 Dynamite Headdy 1994 · Platformer 1,520
  19. 19 Castlevania: Bloodlines 1994 · Platformer 1,518
  20. 20 Heretic 1994 · FPS 1,518
  21. 21 Breath of Fire II 1994 · JRPG 1,513
  22. 22 Star Wars: TIE Fighter 1994 · Simulation 1,512
  23. 23 Killer Instinct 1994 · Fighting 1,511
  24. 24 Contra: Hard Corps 1994 · Platformer 1,511
  25. 25 Theme Park 1994 · Strategy 1,508

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FAQ

Questions about the ranking

How is this ranking established?

The ranking comes solely from player votes, in duels between two games. Each vote updates an ELO score, the rating system used in chess: every game starts at 1,500 points and its score moves duel after duel.

How often is the ranking updated?

Continuously: every duel voted immediately adjusts the score of the two games involved. The badge on the right shows how each game's rank moved over the past seven days.

How many games take part in the ranking?

5,046 games, selected for their fame, face off in duels. The full GameForever catalogue covers tens of thousands of titles, across every era and platform.

How can I see the best games by genre, decade or platform?

Use the filters at the top of the page: genre (RPG, FPS, platformer, strategy...), decade and platform (PC, PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox, SEGA). Filters combine, and the selection is numbered from 1, from the highest ranked down; each game's world rank stays shown on its own entry. The period filter instead ranks on the points gained recently, from 7 days to 12 months (all time by default).

Why can an indie game finish ahead of a blockbuster?

The ELO score measures neither sales nor budget, but the preferences expressed in duels. An indie game that regularly wins its match-ups against higher-ranked titles climbs mechanically, owing nothing to its production budget.

What is the difference between the position in the list and the world rank?

The position is that of the selection on screen, numbered from 1 and carried on from page to page: filter on RPGs and the top RPG becomes number 1. The world rank depends on no filter and is shown on each game's own entry, along with its duel count and win rate.

Why rank by duels rather than by a score out of 10?

Absolute scores saturate: nearly every game that matters ends up between 7 and 9, and what is left of the gap often says more about a site's audience than about the games. A duel asks a question you cannot answer with "both", and it lets a 1994 game and a 2024 game be compared without correcting anything: they are not scored on two scales, they are set against each other.

Vote on a duel