Rules: just pick 1 and explain why.
I’ve been playing since the NES and despite being from a low income family I had the luck of being able to play and own many consoles over the 3 decades of my life, plus some pc.
If you ask me right now? Resident Evil 4 (2005).
A before and after in gaming, to this day still extremely fun to play even for casuals but 20 years ago it was THE masterpiece. And everyone took notice of it, everyone played it, even players that didn’t cared about resident evil. The gameplay was so good that it got photocopied by everyone right after in the action genre.
Arguably the last big innovator in videogames minus Minecraft and… PUBG (Fortnite did it better I know).
Try to NOT pick your favourite game, that’s a different thing.
Earthbound. The soundtrack is supreme
Diablo
The first multi-player lobby over battlenet. Epic lore, great gameplay, created an entire genre.
I would counter & say Diablo 2 is the better game for expanding on everything that the original did & making it better by adding more.
Diablo is also the first game I can think of with a paid expansion. Hellfire was a 3rd party created add-on to put more content into the game. If you want to talk about creating a “genre”, that’s the conversation to have.
Tetris
Just about everyone has either played or heard of it. It is easy enough for young and old people alike to pick up. But it can get so challenging that even nowadays new records are broken regularly.
It’s simple. It’s fun. And will remain so for all eternity.
“Life is just loke tetris, it just gets harder until you die” Or something, can’t remember where i heard that.
Apparently some kid managed to “beat” it though so maybe it’s wrong now.
Twisted Metal or Resident Evil
Zelda, the entire series/franchise. The OG RPG. Many argue it isn’t an RPG because the original you couldnt level up but when I think of RPG, I think you are a character and you go on an adventure. It also serves as a good gateway to fixed RPGs where everyone basically has the same story. And to strategy video game as a whole. Also, it was Nintendo’s first RPG, when PlayStation and Xbox still did not exist. And the Best console is Nintendo since it lasted so long. Many of the other consoles feel like less of a game and more like your are in an interactive movie.