Madden fell from grace with a great big thud last generation, as I found the X360 Madden games to be obtusely designed, unfocused, and bloated. But the GameCube Madden games, especially '03 and '05, rank as some of my all-time favourite sports games, and for that reason Madden makes this list.

It feels a little disingenuous to talk about the Zelda franchise as a whole, since my first Nintendo console was the N64, and so I cannot speak about the NES and SNES Zelda games at all. That said, as a kid, the two Zelda N64 games were among the most important games in my life, and I owned many other Zelda games, especially on Game Boy, that I may not have completed but still demonstrate my affinity for the franchise.

Oblivion is the game that changed my life more than any other I've experienced before or since. It launched me into my gaming "golden age", and I've easily spent 1,000+ hours playing it - without mods, I might add. In hindsight, I can see the argument for why Skyrim is a better TES game, and maybe if I'd been big into PC RPGs in the early 2000s then Morrowind would be #1 on this list instead, but as things stand Oblivion is the game that most defines me as a person and as a video game enthusiast, and that's why it's #1.