Out of all the games I played for the first time this year, there were 17 that I really liked. Instead of bringing the list up to 20 by adding a few games I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about, or cutting off a few of the games I liked to bring the list down to 15 or 10, let's go through all of them. This list is ordered but I really do like all 17 of them, so feel free to take all of these as recommendations from me.

I'll go through some honourable mentions afterwards, so please don't worry too much if your favourite game isn't in my top 17. Anyway, on with the list:

17. Öoo (NamaTakahashi, PC, 2025)

A short puzzle platformer by the creator of Elec Head. It's a little on the easy side even if you do all of the optional/hidden content, but it's very charming! (steam link)

16. Ninja Princess (SEGA, Arcade, 1985)

A cute top-down run 'n gun with aggressive enemies who orbit the player. You have a very strong dodge roll, but they balance it by having some aggressive enemies who just run straight at you and hit you right out of your roll's recovery frames. It's a funny way of balancing dodge rolls and more games should do this.

15. Bomber Man World (Irem, Arcade, 1992)

(Game journal post) I prefer Irem's other Bomberman arcade game but this one is still a lot of fun! Filling the screen with tons of enemies, powering up the player really quickly and removing all your powerups after each room is a really fun formula for a single player (and co-op) Bomberman game.

14. Tank Force (Namco, Arcade, 1991)

An arcade sequel to Battle City (NES) and Tank Battalion (Arcade), featuring co-op for up to 4 players. It's a top-down 2D tank game that floods the screen with enemies and challenges you to take them all out before they reach your base. I love the mechanic of being able to shoot enemy bullets out of the air if you line yourself up with them perfectly! The only reason I didn't go for a one credit clear of this game is that it's very long and unforgiving; if you make one mistake and they blow up your base, it's an instant game over. It recently got a PS4/Switch release as part of Arcade Archives if that's your kind of thing!

13. Singou Breaka (NEOタケトンボ, PC, 2025)

Possibly the most stressful and claustrophobic arcade-style puzzle game I have ever played. Slide traffic lights back and forth, match their colors and make them explode! It's so easy to accidentally let everything to spiral out of control, lock up your board and slowly suffocate your way to a game over. I love it. (steam link)

12. Bomber Man (Irem, Arcade, 1991)

(Game journal post) The first of Irem's two Bomberman games. This one has the more aggressive enemies of the two so I prefer it, but they're both well worth playing. I want more games like this!

11. Ninja Warriors Once Again / Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors (NatsumeAtari, PC/Consoles, 2019 remake of a 1994 SNES game)

A remake of the The Ninja Warriors (SNES) by the original developers, with beautiful pixel art and some extremely interesting new characters. I prefer the original game's 4:3 playfield and higher level of difficulty, but this one is still a lot of fun. (steam link)

10. Splatterhouse (Namco, Arcade, 1988)

(Game journal post) An interesting Castlevania-style action platformer for the arcades. The game lets you use infinite continues but it sends you back to the start of the stage every time, so you can still have a good time when using infinite credits and treating it like a console game. The difficulty level is fairly low by arcade game standards and there's not much to do after you've cleared it unless you get into speedrunning, but I loved my time with the game nonetheless. Especially the bubble corridor stage, where you have to proactively punch and kick randomly swaying bubbles out of the air before they overwhelm you and take you out. I would play an entire game of that bubble corridor.

9. Kozure Ōkami / Lone Wolf and Cub (Nichibutsu, Arcade, 1987)

(Game journal post) A simplified footsies 'em up with a sword. Enemies outrange you if they approach you from above or below but your sword has a long horizontal reach, so you run through the stage while lining yourself up horizontally with enemies and poking them as they run at you. That's pretty much the entire game, other than a few enemies with guns that mix things up and some awkward bosses who you have to repeatedly poke while standing diagonally below them. Very simple to get into but very fun to learn!

8. Mamorukun ReCurse! (G.Rev / City Connection, PC/Consoles, 2025 update to a 2008 Arcade/Dreamcast game)

An updated release of the cute top-down bullet hell run 'n gun Mamorukun Curse with new characters, a widescreen aspect ratio and various new gameplay modes. I always struggled to get into the original game because it had a vertical aspect ratio and lots of horizontal screen scrolling, so I felt like a horse wearing blinders. This widescreen release helped me fall in love with the game! I wonder if I'll be able to go back to the original, now that this release has eased me into things and helped me learn the stage layouts. (steam link)

7. Deltarune Chapters 3 & 4 (Toby Fox and lots of other people, PC/Consoles, 2025)

It's an RPG. The gameplay isn't my kind of thing but I love the writing and the presentation! It feels like this development team just keeps getting better and better at doing what they do. (steam link)

6. Midnight Wanderers (Capcom, Arcade, 1991)

(Game journal post) An unbelievably beautiful looking run 'n gun that is one of the three games in Capcom's "Three Wonders" arcade release. This is one of those games where you spray a billion shots in multiple angles at once and I tend to prefer games where you have to work hard to aim your attacks, but this game won me over with its lightning-fast pacing and fun boss fights. It's a bit on the easy side but I loved every moment of it. (steam link)

5. Bonanza Bros. (SEGA, Arcade, 1990)

(Game journal post) A fascinatingly original sidescrolling 2.5D stealth-action hybrid game from all the way back in 1990, with a great blend of sneaking around, hiding behind enemies, and fighting them head-on in the right situations. It also makes the genius decision of your weapon only stunning enemies for a handful of seconds, forcing you to keep moving instead of being able to methodically clear out every single enemy. I wish some of the enemy types were a bit harder to fight head-on and that the game had a bit more random variance instead of being fully predictable, but I still had a great time clearing it and figuring out how to route my world record speedrun (note: the game barely has any competition, I am not a genius speedrunner or anything). There's nothing else quite like this game, and I personally think the particular way that it mixed stealth and action would still feel fresh and ahead of its time if it released as an indie game today.

4. Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry, PC/Consoles, 2025)

Unfortunately I had to drop this game after a few hours because of motion sickness. It was an interesting mix of some of the best arena fights and bosses of any sidescrolling game I have ever played, and lots of dialogue and exploration that personally didn't appeal to me. If they ever give the game an arcade mode with nothing but locked room fights and bosses, along with an optional camera change that makes it so I don't get motion sickness when I play, it would become one of my favourite games of all time. (steam link)

3. Rolling Bird (Hijong Park, PC, 2018)

(Game journal post) A brutally tense run 'n gun inspired by Namco's Rolling Thunder (1986), with random level layouts and fast and hectic gameplay. It is shocking just how perfectly this combination works; even with only a few enemy types (melee, grenade, gun, gun again but with the ability to proactively crouch) it doesn't just feel like samey sludge in the way that most randomly generated action game stages do, thanks to the game forcing you to heavily rely on terrain to survive. This might just be the perfect run 'n gun for me, and it is easily the most fun I have had playing a procedurally-generated action game since I first downloaded a Spelunky alpha build from TIGSource back in 2008. I cannot overstate how much I love this game.

My only incredibly minor nitpick is that I wish it mixed in some hardcoded setpieces, to make its overall pacing feel a bit less like Tetris / Mr. Driller and a bit more like a regular arcade run 'n gun that happens to have some unpredictable procedurally generated sections mixed in. But when the absolute worst thing I can say about a game is that it makes me imagine an even better game that doesn't exist yet, that's an incredible place to be. This is an all-time classic in my eyes. (steam link)

2. Violent Storm (Konami, Arcade, 1993)

(Game journal post) I learned how to play arcade beat 'em ups by playing The Punisher last year, but playing Violent Storm is what made me truly fall in love with the genre. I love its cramped tight arenas, its fast pacing and low health enemies, its incredibly strong throws and pummels, and its brutally strong enemies who can sometimes be completely impossible to fight head-on if you don't have a way to get the jump on them. Its second loop throws in all sorts of extremely silly Mario Maker-esque level design, with huge enemies chasing you through an entire section of a stage, a big group of fish dancing on a pier, barrels and enemies raining down from the sky, and giant groups of elite enemies arranged like bowling pins.

The only things I don't love about are its boss fights, its easier parts (stages 1, 2, 5 and the first half of stage 3) and how incredibly strong the player's dash attack is against most enemies. But the dull parts are pretty quick to breeze through, and the game still finds plenty of ways to challenge you even when you're using your dash attack as much as possible. I feel like if the original team got to make a sequel to this game, it would have cleaned up those issues and been one of the best games ever made.

1. Final Fight (Capcom, Arcade, 1989)

This might be my new favourite game of all time, especially when playing as Haggar. It doesn't quite have the lightning-fast pacing of Violent Storm but it is perfectly designed in every other way (except for a couple of the bosses). Coming up with a plan in this game and executing it feels immensely satisfying in the same way as driving a manual car, or pulling off a difficult technique mid-match in an old fighting game. There are so many satisfying little tricks like backward jump splashing enemies to pull them towards you, using regular backward jumps when you need the extra speed (such as dropkicking an Andore onto the ground then instantly backturn jumping towards him so you can get into meaty grab range by the time he stands up), knowing when to buffer a superjoy input by holding a button and when to go for the raw two-buttons-on-the-exact-same-frame input, being ready to superjoy after (or ideally before) getting hit in general, and keeping track of whether or not your autocombo suplex hit any other enemies so you know whether or not you'll be able to chain another quick suplex.

Thankfully none of these tricks trivialize the game in any way. Even if you can perfectly execute all of them every time under pressure, you still have to participate in the main game of footsies and crowd control, and I have never played another beat em up that does this as well as Final Fight does.

Violent Storm's enemies are split into three camps: ones who you can easily approach with a dash attack, ones who will run into your jab if you stand still and mash it, and ones who you basically can't safely approach at all unless you throw another enemy at them or hit them as soon as they spawn. Final Fight, on the other hand, has enemies who demand a wider variety of approaches (when playing as Haggar). Basic enemies can often be jabbed or thrown, Bill Bulls outrange you on the ground while charging at you but can still be hit with any jumping attack, Andores can charge at you with no startup and can only be consistently outranged by dropkicks (unless you have inhumanly good jab timing), and Hollywoods are plain evil. There's something really fun about your only way to start your offense on certain enemies being a committal uncomboable low-reward attack like your dropkick, which only lets you convert it into a more damaging followup loop if you can clear enough space to meaty grab the enemy the moment they finish getting up. In short, the risks and rewards of the different attacks and strategies feel perfectly balanced.

Most importantly, this game simply feels great to play on a visceral level. There's nothing else quite like suplexing a guy into ten other guys, or punching an entire crowd at once with your three hit combo. The game really does have it all, and I can't wait to learn how to clear the final stage and eventually go for a 1 credit clear.

I have no idea how the prevailing modern opinion of this game ended up being a combination of "it's an unfair quarter muncher" and "it was good for its time but you only have a few attacks so it's outdated". This is so far away from my opinion of it that I feel like I'm living in a different universe. If you are at all interested in beat 'em ups and you don't mind a very high level of challenge, I highly recommend giving Final Fight a try as Haggar. Just make sure you play the arcade original (or the modern ports on Capcom Arcade Stadium), not the 90s retro console ports that removed half of the enemies and completely changed how the game played as a result. (steam link)

This was a great year for videogames for me! I have three new all-time favourites, a potential future all-time favourite in Silksong, and plenty of other inspirational arcade games and fantastic modern games.

Before you go asking why your favourite game isn't on the list, let's go through some honourable mentions:

Other games I played and loved this year but it didn't seem fair to put them on my list:

Panic Park (Namco, Arcade, 1998). I played this violently physical arcade minigame collection for the first time on my birthday this year and I loved it, but I can't imagine wanting to play it for more than an hour or two. It's a novelty, albeit an amazing one.

Boghog's beat 'em up prototype (Boghog, PC, 2025). It's just a prototype but it's really good! I can't be unbiased about it though.

Boghog's top-down single screen run 'n gun (Boghog, PC, 2025). This one is really good too, but I can't be unbiased about it either.

Other prototypes and unfinished games from my friends (my friends, PC, 2025-2026). I can't talk about any of these, and even if I could I'd be biased as hell.

Fox Flare Night demo (Outside, PC, 2026). The game's not out yet, and my opinion on the demo would rely on guessing how the final game will turn out (e.g. will it have a standard arcade mode with no upgrade shop?). There's potential for the final game to be fantastic in my opinion!

Hyper Bun Buster: Rocket Hammer Action (me, PC, 2026). I love my game but I'm the one making it. Even if I did put it on the list, how would I even decide where it goes? Do I think my own game is better than Silksong? I have no idea how I would even approach that kind of question...

Other cool-looking games from 2025 that I haven't played yet

ASURA THE STRIKER. Apparently this game is great but surely it will give me motion sickness...

Daemon Bride: ADDITIONAL GAIN. Oh my god they finally released a home port of this game, with rollback and everything. I am going to play this so much.

Gradius Origins. I think I would really like the Gradius series and this seems like a great way to get into them.

Hundred Line. I love big bombastic silly visual novel plots, and this sure seems to have one. I probably won't care about the combat parts but that's fine.

Lilac 0. This looks like a fun vertical shmup with a cool sword dash attack. I've heard it's good!

MASH VP! Re VISION. There's just something satisfying about seeing the two sets of lanes snap back and forth mid-song. I want to play it.

Stray Children. Everyone else seems interested in this game because it's a new RPG by the moon: Remix RPG Adventure team, but I'm interested because it's an RPG by the BLACK BIRD team with shmup-inspired fights. Are its fights good? I have no idea, I haven't looked into it yet. I hope they are!

TETRIS® THE GRAND MASTER 4 -ABSOLUTE EYE-. I can't believe TGM4 finally got its official release. I've never gotten into Tetris at anything beyond a beginner level but maybe now is the time.

Other games I played for the first time in 2025 but didn't put in my top 17

Angeline Era (demo), Astro Climber, Baldr Sky, Bloom Paradise, Butasan: Pig's & Bomber's, Looney Landers, Touhou Fantastic Danmaku Festival Part III (demo). None of these are bad games by any stretch of the imagination; they were mostly just either too adventure/RPG-focused for my tastes, too static for my tastes (e.g. every single run felt exactly the same and every single enemy behaved in robotically predictable ways) or way too easy for my tastes. Apparently Touhou FDF3 added some harder modes in the final release so there's a chance I would enjoy that one if I tried the full game!