Forget graphics. Forget realism. The best video games have replay value. Sure, you could have a 42 million color background with Active Shadow Placement or Franchise Mode with Torn ACL Generator, but if the gameplay stinks, who cares? These 10 games out-fun the SimDMVs of the world and consistently dunk in reality's face.
 10. Super Mario Bros. (NES)
I haven't played it for a while, so technically this game shouldn't make the list. But believe me, I played enough as a kid. When I could beat it in 15 minutes with small Mario while taking the SATs, I decided that I had had enough. SMB gets bonus points for taking video games to the next level: It's like one of the monkeys over at Nintendo reached out and touched the black obelisk, and Mario was created out of thin air. With 32 levels (33 if you count that underwater Minus world), Mario put the competition in a Double Dragon-style headlock (more on that later...) and noogied it to death.
 9. Tetris (NES)
Tetris is the kind of game you might invent if you were locked in a dungeon for 30 years and only had Legos to play with. First, the negatives. The music--though based on classical compositions--was so bad that I often muted the TV and listened to the soundtrack of "Young Einstein" instead. And you could never tell if you had beaten the game--you got a rocket blasting off from Moscow at the end whether you played like Forrest Gump or like Bobby Fischer. Regardless, Tetris is the best strategy game ever, and more fun than a barrel of Donkey Kongs.
 8. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out (NES)
I've never been more excited for a game's release. And I wasn't disappointed when I opened it on Christmas morning--after pummeling Glass Joe, Von Kaiser and the first Piston Honda, I made it all the way to King Hippo that first day. True, the modern Tyson is a rapist and a madman who says "ludacrisp" constantly, but he'll always have this terrific NES game to his credit. The fighters' reactions to getting punched are what make Punch-Out great--from Bald Bull's fountain of spit to the lobotomized stare each character falls into after too many hits. The game is still shockingly hard after all these years. My video game skills peaked when I TKO'd Tyson for the first time in 1989.
 7. Baseball Simulator 1.000 (NES)
Some games are realistic. Some games try to be realistic and fail. Baseball Simulator tells reality to take a flying leap and instead gives us exploding baseballs and 160mph pitches. Yet, oddly, it will carefully track your inflated statistics over a 162-game season. Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds have nothing on my center fielder Dan, who was batting over .800 with 75 home runs before my brother reset the season in frustration.
 6. NBA Jam (Arcade)
Back when Shaq was still a free-throw clanking goober for the Magic, this transcendent NBA game came out in arcades across the land. A video pickup basketball subculture quickly formed, where the challenger would place his two nickels on the machine and say, "I got next," just like at the court. Only in the arcade, you were infinitely more likely to lose to a 4'3" kid hopped up on Ritalin. The coolest thing about NBA Jam is its ability to remember your win-loss record, but the secret code that makes regular players' heads the size of Charles Barkley's is a close second.
 5. Tecmo Super Bowl (Genesis)
One of the first truly modern football games--complete with real player names and all the teams--TSB is a stat-junkie's dream come true. You could take the pedestrian quarterback that plays for your favorite team--say, Bernie Kosar--and put up numbers that would make Dan Marino whimper. Or you could simply play as the Cowboys and lay waste to the record book--since Emmitt Smith ran about three times as fast as all the other players, and Aikman completed 95% of his passes. The best part was that somehow that tiny Sega cartridge would remember your numbers for an entire season. So at any given time, you could pull up the league leaderboard and impress your friends with the 130 sacks you recorded as Lawrence Taylor. Note to self: 12 year-old friends appear to be more impressed by this than 25 year-olds.
 4. Double Dragon (Arcade)
The original Double Dragon is the definitive sideways-scrolling arcade game. And it was like crack for 12 year-olds when it came out in the late '80s. Once you got a taste, there was no turning back. Of course, most kids didn't have enough quarters to finish the game, which only made it more addicting. The last level is filled with spears that can kill you with one touch, and tons of pits to jump over with the game's horrible jumping physics. Making it to the final "red room" was the stuff of legends, discussed in hushed tones at sleep-over parties. If you actually made it to the red room, you'd notice that there were no dragons, machine-guns or naked ladies, and you'd never trust your friends again.
 3. Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
This game is Evil with a capital E. But, like many things less good for you than broccoli, it's ridiculously appealing. Here's the concept: Run around a city and destroy as much stuff as possible. Hasn't everyone had this fantasy? Like, if everyone was wiped out in a holocaust but you, wouldn't you drive Ferraris down the street at 180mph, firing a machine gun at random? GT3 fulfills that fantasy so realistically it's scary. There is a loose "plot" tying everything together--where your character runs missions for the mob--but this only distracts from the wanton destruction you're perpetrating on Liberty City. Not recommended for children, or for people who don't want to discover that, given the chance, they will run their video game character down the street with a bat clubbing pedestrians.
 2. Street Fighter 2 (Arcade)
As a freshman in high school, I didn't play football or basketball, run track or try out for baseball. But I was on the varsity Street Fighter 2 team, fool. If the local 7-11 hadn't replaced the machine with Mortal Kombat (which was much less fun), I might have captained the SF2 geek squad. Yet although it nearly doomed me to a pale, pale existence, I have a soft spot for the game. You got to choose from eight fighters (though true losers knew that Ken was the best) and fight your way across the globe, ultimately facing off against German dictator M. Bison. Each fighter had signature moves, like Ken's "Ah-Buuullshit!" and "Ohhh-Yooooken!" and Chun-Li's "Yap-yap-yap-yap!" The best part was that you'd think you had worked out some unbeatable strategy, until you'd play an even bigger nerd who would use Zangief's spinning-piledriver to kill you in 3.5 seconds. Suddenly, you felt a whole lot cooler.
 1. RBI Baseball (NES)
Somehow, a drunken, overworked Japanese programmer created the best-playing baseball game ever when he programmed RBI Baseball from his sleeping tube just before dying of exhaustion and shame. The graphics could euphemistically be referred to as charmingly crappy, or crappily charming, and it only has 10 teams, but RBI is nonetheless the greatest video game of all time. You only have two buttons and a clumsy + to control your players, but the finesse built into the game engine is as sublime as a $5,000 bottle of wine or a Stradivarious violin. As a seasoned vet, I have the bat control to slap hits to all fields, double line-drives off the outfield wall or hit towering home runs with old-school sluggers like Canseco and Big Mac. Here's a million-dollar idea: Take the original RBI game and upgrade it for the modern consoles ... but DON'T change the graphics or gameplay. DO add all the players from all the teams that have ever played and the ability to save stats through a full season. If that happens, I may never leave the house again.
Honorable Mentions:
Mat Mania (Arcade) - Rivaled Double Dragon in arcade addictiveness.
Wolfenstein 3D (PC) - Invented the first-person shooter.
Doom II (PC) - Revolutionized the first-person shooter.
SimCity (PC) - Unleash tornadoes and Godzilla on your own town.
Metroid (NES) - Endlessly playable and weird.
Mega Man 1-6 (NES) - Except for when Wiley escapes every damn time.
Email me with further suggestions.
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