About the Ratings

This blog is for sharing great games in MAME.  To start with, I'm going to post some of my rankings by genre.  There are a few things you should know first...

The ratings has a separate section for "Old School (OS)" as it is hard to compare the quality of something like Galaxian with DoDonPachi.  Graphics and Gameplay ratings are TOTALLY subjective based on how much I enjoy them.  Some graphics are simple but cool (Galaga) - some are modern but cruddy.  Gameplay can be great for many reasons and different games can play simply/complex/deriviative, etc. but all I care about is how fun it is and how good the controls and gameplay are.  For instance, Gun.Smoke is simple, but different button combinations have you shoot in different directions, and that makes it more enjoyable and playable.

There are several columns in my ratings they are from left to right...

Game Name

Genre

Sub-genre

Spinner (does the game use a spinner)

Trackball (does it use a trackball)

Dual Joystick (does the game play with two joysticks like Robotron 2084)

Old School (an arbitrary categorization based on the look and feel)

* = one of my favorites

Graphics (1-5 - keep in mind you are only seeing my highest rated games, there are many hundred more with lower scores that didn't make the cut)

Gameplay (see graphics)

Chaos (1-5 based on how crazy things get on the screen)

Special (arbitrary extra points awarded by me for special circumstances)

Overall - weighted total score

# of players - Used to indicate games that can play 3 or 4 plyrs simultaneously

Notes - Stuff I wanted to remind myself of (good luck interpreting some of them)