My Top 7 Games of “2025”
By Brian • 15 March 2026
Ah, crap, looks like it was another lean year for prospective Top 10 lists. I mustered just seven games in 2025. What is this, a slow descent into responsible adulthood? I remember last year, I only managed a top 8 list because spending a lot of time with old favorites cut into my opportunities to play new games. This year, the old favorites barely made an appearance. In fact, few games made an appearance at all. Instead, we sold our house and moved, I spent more time with my family, more time reading, and I left video games languishing outside in a sad, pixelated rain. Damp and dejected, they can only peek in through the blinds and watch while my family and I sip hot chocolate and put together jigsaw puzzles or whatever. I don’t even know what new games are coming out this year. Disgraceful. I hear the Bad Enough Dudes Corps is trying to force me into early retirement, but I’m just too bad! They’ll never get rid of me!
And, if you think a Top 7 is appalling, I made the mistake of starting 2026 with Hollow Knight, of all games, so I hope you’re looking forward to my banger of a “Top 1 Games of 2026” post next year.
Anyway, let’s take a look at this alleged Top 7! Criteria is as follows:
- I beat (or played a lot of, in the case of high score chasers) the game for the first time in 2025. “Beat” simply means I saw the end of the game—it does not necessarily mean I’ve seen or done everything the game has to offer.
- I didn’t repeat games that have made my Top XX lists before.
Honorable Mention: Baseball Stars (NES, 1989)
I explained in my Extra Life 2025 marathon recap that Baseball Stars rejuvenated me at a time when I was strongly considering not participating in Extra Life at all in 2025, on account of All the Things™, so I thought it only appropriate to give it an honorable mention here. I hadn’t really thought about Baseball Stars for a while, stumbled upon a baseball YouTube channel that dedicated an episode to the game, and realized it might be a good fit for a charity video game marathon on account of its team and player-creation features. What a perfect incentive to give donors a spot on our very own baseball team! Taking the time to create the team, play some exhibition games to build up our skills (both the players on the team and my skill at actually playing the game), and wipe out a bunch of computer opponents during the marathon reminded me that Baseball Stars is the best baseball game on the NES and is ranks among my favorite sports game of all time. Since the opposition all turned out to be too easy during the tournament, I want to create some more teams so I can have a very interesting tournament during the next marathon.
7. Black Widow: Recharged (Nintendo Switch, 2021)
It's a remake of a 1983 arcade twin-stick shooter about a spider protecting its web from a bunch of angry mosquitoes and other destructive insects. Shouldn’t all these bugs be getting stuck in the web? Whatever, they are the next generation of anti-web pests and therefore must be eliminated by firing gross spider mouth-bullets at them. Shoot bugs and collect the dollar-signs they drop (what's the current state of the entomological economy, anyway?) for bonus points, and if the spider collects enough, it can unleash a widely dispersed super web attack that disintegrates anything in its path. Get outta here, bugs!
I play this for about ten minutes every couple of weeks, and if I don't set a high score in that amount of time, I switch it off before rage sets in. You only get one life, so any mistake is too many. It’s a lot of fun, though. Twin-stick shooters are my thing, even though I'm no good at them. I just know my limits and when to step away.
6. G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra (PC, 2024)
Ah, here’s another franchise deserving of the nostalgic beat ’em up treatment. Streets of Rage 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge got this trend started. Marvel Cosmic Invasion released late last year, and I think we’re getting a Masters of the Universe game sometime this year.
Not to be forgotten in that mix is G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra. Craig and I played through this together, and while it’s not the most polished game in this new batch of beat ’em ups (limited combos and combat variety, not enough sound effects or music from the cartoon, and some extra-frustrating damage sponges crudding up the joint), I think we still had a pretty good time with it. You can play as a wide selection of characters (we played as Roadblock and Scarlett), it’s fun beating up Cobra goons, and the cutscenes harken back to the animated series.
I think the most fun was identifying the references to the license, most notably the types of Cobra soldiers as we laid waste to them. “Oh, these are Cobra Vipers” or “Look out! It’s the Crimson Guard!” I probably got a little too excited when the B.A.T.s debuted. There are also H.I.S.S. tanks, Trubble Bubbles, and other notable Cobra vehicles to punch and kick to death, as cartoon action stars do. The big-name Cobra personalities like Destro, Baroness, Major Bludd, and so on appear as bosses. Given that it’s G.I. Joe, even though it’s a beat ’em up, I feel like a little more gunplay would have been appropriate, and while there are plenty of gun pickups, the ammo is very limited and they generally don’t feel that much more useful than melee attacks.
I must unfortunately report that bugs dragged Wrath of Cobra down to some extent, as well. Fonts sometimes go missing in the end-of-level stats, and we sometimes took damage against certain enemies without explanation? The final battle ends if just one player loses all their lives, but the other is still alive. I wasn’t sure if that was a bug or a feature. If it’s intentional, that’s cruelty on the level of Battletoads. One time, a B.A.T. threw me across the screen and soft-locked the game, and Craig got stuck once, as well. Maybe some of these bugs are fixed by now, I don’t know. Not the best, not the worst, and the license definitely helps carry it. I’d play it again with Craig or friends, but probably not otherwise.
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (SNES, 1992)
Hey! This was on the list last year! Quite true, my scrutinous peers. Alas, that was the arcade Turtles in Time--now, we examine the Super Nintendo version, which is the same, only different. Some extra levels, different bosses (Bebop and Rocksteady are back, in place of Tokka and Rahzar), and the final boss is Super Shredder instead of regular Shredder. Despite the technical limitations, the extras give this version a slight edge over the arcade original. I played this during my Extra Life marathon and barely eked out a win, but it was a lot of fun, and deserves its spot among the great beat 'em ups of its era.
4. Star Wars: Rebellion (PC, 1998)
1990s PC games have a certain effect on me. When I get an itch to play one, I have to play it. I can’t let go—the thought will consume me until I pull the game from the mothballs and give it a go. Maybe that’s why Ultima Online re-hooks me so often. It’s a 90s PC game, and ultra addictive in its own right. The original Diablo is another major culprit.
In the spring of ’25, like the Millennium Falcon getting the jump on Darth Vader, Star Wars: Rebellion came out of nowhere, blasting its way into my every conscious musing and action. I knew I would be hurtling off into space for eternity if I didn’t play it. I also started a Star Wars streak—I beat Dark Forces in 2024 and Rebellion in 2025, so I guess I’ll have to beat another Star Wars game in 2026. I have some pretty good options in the tank. Who knows, maybe I’ll get inspired and give X-Wing Alliance another whirl.
Anyway, Rebellion! Since I was able to jettison my adolescent desire to build the biggest fleet of star destroyers possible and bomb every rebel planet into pre-civilization, the game proved to be a nuanced and deeply strategic experience. I played as the Alliance this time, and once I got my system established of blockading planets, taking them by force with ground troops (rather than those unpopular orbital bombardments), and then sending in my best diplomats to sway the citizens to the rebel cause, the Empire didn’t stand a chance. At least not until the endgame, when control of Coruscant and the surrounding systems proved quite difficult to maintain. I loved building fleets and maintaining planetary defenses. Hey, even resource management held my interest once I figured out how it worked! There’s not much visible action in the game, but plenty of tension and second-guessing of every decision. Plus, all the Star Wars personalities are here: Luke, Han, Leia, the old guys from the Yavin IV base, and they’re all under your command. Maybe when you play, Han and Luke and Chewie won’t accidentally kill General Veers when you send them on a mission to capture him, but then again, maybe they will!
3. Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Game Boy Advance, 2004)
Like many Zelda games that came after A Link to the Past, I played The Minish Cap about 20 years too late, missing the initial release on account of the existence of too many other video games. And, all of this in spite of the fact that Amanda has owned a copy for as long as I’ve known her. I just never played it. Luckily, The Minish Cap now conveniently resides on Nintendo Classics, and because inserting a cartridge into a Game Boy Advance was apparently too much work these last many years, I played it for the first time in 2025. Link must free Princess Zelda from petrification by the evil sorcerer Vaati, who seeks the legendary Light Force. Link gets help from a tiny race of humanoids called the Minish, and a talking enchanted hat named Ezlo that grants Link the ability to shrink down to Minish size to complete parts of his quest.
Throughout The Minish Cap, I felt strong influence from the original Legend of Zelda and the ensuing 2D games in the series, from the first appearance of the White Sword since the original game (as far as I know), to octoroks and tektites skittering around a compact world map that packed tons of things to do into a relatively small space, to an ocarina with the ability to teleport Link to a number of locations throughout Hyrule. My biggest concern was that the shrinking mechanic would feel forced and cumbersome, but it seamlessly blended with the overall experience and granted lots of fun and clever traversal puzzles, as well as opportunities to find all those precious secrets that I can’t get enough of. I’m consistently impressed by these Capcom-developed portable Zeldas—not just Minish Cap, but Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, as well. They’re fun side stories that explore non-Ganon villains and deliver fun and engaging mechanics magnificently interlaced with the core Zelda formula. And, while 3D Zeldas have grown on me over the years, I still prefer the 2D installments.
Overall, it was on the easy side, with just five mostly-linear dungeons, but the sheer amount of content and fun things to do made up for the lack of difficulty. I didn’t see and do absolutely everything—I’m still missing a lot of Kinstone matches, but the Kinstone-collecting felt like something that would probably addict me, so I didn’t allow myself to get too invested. I didn’t collect all of the little figurines in the seashell-trading game, either. There are a million of them and the trading interface is too plodding. In conclusion, I definitely should have played The Minish Cap 20 years ago, there are too many video games, stay tuned for my 20-part manifesto on how to play and enjoy like 0.0002 percent of all the video games that ever existed and not feel like you’re missing out on anything.
2. Mario Golf (Game Boy Color, 1999)
I recently blogged about my fantastic Mario Golf experience, so I won’t navel-gaze too long here. All the great things I heard about developer Camelot’s work on this game are true. Nintendo Golf games, as a rule, hold an unstoppable power over me, and I succumbed to Mario Golf as expected. The mechanics, the variety of courses, the secrets, the rivalries with club champions—so much done right here that I had no choice but to play. There’s just that Princess Peach course standing in my way. I’ll be back. Some day.
1. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch, 2023)
Oh boy. Here’s Mario again with another game near the top of these lists. If you’re keeping up, a mainline Mario game captured the number one spot in 2023 and the number two spot in 2024. I guess I just like Mario a lot. Hey, if Konami ever stepped up and released a new Castlevania (which they’re finally doing), maybe something else will usurp Mario (and, to a lesser extent, Blaster Master) at the top of these lists.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder takes the gang to the Flower Kingdom, where Bowser has touched a Wonder Flower inappropriately and somehow merged with Prince Florian’s castle, and now he’s flying around, predictably causing a bunch of trouble. I played as the blue Toad, because of course. I probably don’t even have to mention that. When Nintendo does us all a kindness by including Toad as a playable character, I am honorbound to accept. (Ugh, except when Josh picks Toad in Mario Kart.) Super Mario Bros. 2 started it, and it’s not going away. Toad rules.
I put this to you as bluntly as possible: Super Mario Bros. Wonder is weird. There are bizarre, but enthralling new enemies, like charging buffalo, these beavers that run away and throw nuts, koopa troopas on roller skates, mummies with really tall hats, singing piranha plants, and so forth. There are bizarre, but enthralling new powerups, like Elephant Mario, Bubble Mario, and Drill Mario. (Those aren’t too far off from the powerups in the Mario 3 sequel I drew on my Magna Doodle in 1992.) Every level has a Wonder Flower, which alters the level or gameplay mechanics in a bizarre and enthralling way, like making your character very tall or turning them into a goomba, or turning the level’s pipes into worms, or changing the perspective from sidescrolling to overhead.
At first, I wasn’t into this. I appreciated the new enemies, but I dodged the new powerups in favor of the more traditional fire flower, and I made lots of low-key-intentional attempts to miss the Wonder Flowers in each level because I just wanted to play the levels and ignore the gimmicks. Eventually, I allowed myself to embrace the weirdness and originality of this game, especially when I realized I would be missing a lot of collectibles if I didn’t. In time, the elephant power-up became my favorite of the game, and not just because slapping a goomba with the elephant’s trunk sends them flying off the screen, which made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion. Once I accepted the Wonder Flowers, I found that I actively sought them out so I could experience what crazy thing they would do next.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder drips with creativity and life, and takes the series in a refreshing new direction after four different New Super Mario Bros. games. The badge system is fun, too, and I foresee my kids taking full advantage of these to help them circumvent some of the more challenging portions of the game. Oh, and as always, there are a bunch of secrets I have to go back and discover. These Mario games burst with content.
That’s it! That’s the list! What were your favorite games of 2025? (If you can even remember, since it’s already March.) Something relevant and timely, no doubt?
Thanks for reading, and see you next mission!
