Hello and welcome to another Side-Quest episode of Talk This! It’s Dangerous to Podcast Alone! We’re done rolling out a new format, and so we cycle back to Madelyn for the next topic!
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The Topic
What makes a game into a “greatest of all time?” Is there a difference between a classic game and a greatest of all time game? What about a historically significant game? Does that always have to be a great game or a classic game too? Is there even an objective way to measure that?
A Sample
E: #1 is Tetris, I know, because you’re gonna rant about it.
M: So, listeners, I read a lot of these top games of all time, most classic games, fifty best games, hundred best games, ten thousand best games of all time lists. And something that I found fascinating and bizarre is that, on a preponderance of those lists, Tetris comes in at number 1. Now, there’s some ways to justify this. By many, many metrics, Tetris is probably the best-selling game of all-time.
E: Right.
M: Depending on who you ask and how you’re counting, it’s somewhere between 170 million and, like, 500 million copies of Tetris have been sold. I tend to be convinced by the larger number, right? Tetris is on frikkin’ everything.
E: Yeah.
M: Not to mention the number of people who have played it for free online, right? Without even like downloading the game.
E: Right.
M: And Tetris is a fun game! And is a great game! And it is a classic Talk This! episode in which we were literally unable to mash it up, and we learned something about game design and game mechanics in the process.
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Enjoy the episode! Tell us what you think in the comments or on social media. We’ve been missing blogs for a bit because Emma writes them and she was in the middle of moving, but check out last week’s episode and look forward to next week’s where we’re talking about Panzer Dragoon and Anthem.
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