Games

[icycalm]

Looking over my comments in the recent thread on the Mystery site (which I will be revealing properly soon), and especially what I said about how I regard it as the third best videogame site of all time, I decided to make a list happen, and here's what I got so far:


1. Insomnia (see here)
2. Postback (see here)
3. Mystery site (see here)
4. Blame The Control Pad (which is basically HG101 done right, see here)

I also know that Insert Credit will be included in the list at some point (the early IC at any rate, not the rubbish recent revival), perhaps somewhere between no. 5 and 10, once all the sites with proper substance have been included.

On another note, Seth Killian's and Randorama's stuff is also top 10 material, but Seth's stuff was originally posted on a forum (SRK), whilst here we are ranking sites and not individual authors, and SRK is most definitely NOT one of the best game sites ever; while Rando's stuff was originally published in an utterly fucking shitty fanzine called The Gamer's Quarter, from which I rescued it (the early stuff, at any rate, because he has since written episodes exclusively for Insomnia), so TGQ isn't going on that list regardless of its 10% or so greatness represented by Rando's input. Moreover, since all that content has been hosted on Insomnia, while no one else seems to give a fuck about it, I feel a certain justification in including it along with everything else in the number one spot with Insomnia.

Another site that would definitely be on the list is Nick Nasty's Segabastard, but this has utterly disappeared off the face of the internet, leaving practically nothing behind, and in order to determine its exact position I'd have to go through it more carefully than the casual glance I gave it before Nick took it down. I do have a correspondence with him, however, and he is considering bringing it back, or giving me the archive to host it on my servers, so we'll see about that.

Two other shoo-ins are gamengai and CAVE-STG.com (the latter of which by the way is closing down soon, so hopefully someone will manage to rescue the archive), but they will go further down the list because they are dedicated to very small domains of gaming (especially the latter), hence more general sites of comparable quality will have to take precedence.

So we basically have 8 sites so far. 4 more and we have a top 10. Perhaps we'll make it a top 20 after that -- we'll see. If you do post a suggestion, at any rate, make sure to include at least a few lines of justification, and one or two indicative links to articles or reviews.

Right off the bat let me tell you that HG101 will not be on it. And though sites like IGN and GameSpot were pretty damn neat in their early days circa 1999-2001 (I swear to God it's true -- look their early stuff up if you want), they have since degenerated to such a point that even mentioning them in a forum post is sacrilege towards the artform. So gimme what you got, and I'll keep racking my brains to come up with more contenders.

[icycalm]

Maybe that Game Kommander site Josh talks about sometimes? If he could give me a one-minute evaluation and some representative links I'd consider it.

Any other Japanese sites worth considering?

Note that the no. 2 site is in Spanish, so non-English sites are welcome.

[icycalm]

Along with all the best, I will also include the very worst site on videogames the internet has ever seen -- the very last site on the list, even if it had 10,000 places: "Learn to Counter" lol. I genuinely believe it is the worst, and you can check my ongoing analysis here for details. He will no doubt welcome the free publicity and rub his greaseball hands together -- but that's merely yet more proof of what a worthless bungling plagiarizing retard he is. But he will help round out the article with comedy material, so who cares. I'll make him the internet's laughing stock before I am done with him.

It goes without saying that this list will become the no. 1 list on the subject on the internet, like all my lists (and like all my lists, it will be publicly viewable), so it's worth putting in the extra effort to create it.

[icycalm]

The problem is finding sites that cover the advanced genres: modern gaming. There's only Insomnia and the Mystery site so far (which deals almost exclusively with advanced genres). The paradox is that, overall, there exist way more sites for these genres than for the primitive ones, but practically none that aren't worthless. Recap would chime in here with some snarky comment to the effect that worthless sites for worthless games etc., but that would be his stupidity and ressentiment talking: the real reason for this state of affairs is that, all things told, modern games are harder to evaluate than primitive ones, and so many misconceptions surround their design and reception (way more misconceptions that exist for the primitive genres), that it's basically impossible to find anyone who is completely free of them outside this website. So even if you can find the odd worthwhile review scattered here or there, it's hard to recommend the entire site on which it's hosted, because it's filled with so much bullshit.

[icycalm]

After a little bit more thought, this is what I got:

1. Insomnia
2. Postback
3. Mystery site
4. Insert Credit
5. gamengai
6. Blame The Control Pad
7. Game Kommander
8. Segabastard
9. UK Resistance
10. CAVE-STG

Worst site ever: Learn to Counter

The exact ranking is provisional on me checking out Game Kommander and Segabastard, and thereby perhaps reevaluating their positions, but other than that, and barring someone making a compelling suggestion, it's done. I ended up moving up IC and gamengai higher than Blame The Control Pad for the following reasons:

1. They both deal with a wider range of games/genres.

2. IC was instrumental in my development as a critic and theorist (more details soon), and hence, whatever its shortcomings, weighs more heavily than Encyclopedia-style expositions, however well done they might be.

3. The essence of gamengai and Blame The Control Pad is essentially identical, but gamengai features like 1000 times more content (inc. the forum, which is in fact where almost all the content is), however disorganized it might be -- and the disorganization might even be said to be one of the site's charms, by making its exploration more rewarding, sort of like a videogame.

The only other change I am contemplating is switching around the positions of IC and the Mystery site -- but I don't know. It could just be nostalgia talking, so I'll think about it some more.

I tried thinking up a top 20, but I can't for the life of me think of another site I could unreservedly call "great". 10 more of them seems impossible -- but perhaps some of you might be able to help me. Failing that the list will remain a top 10 for the foreseeable future.