The 50 Best Puzzle Games of All Time

Long before the Wii brought casual games to consoles and mobile devices kick started a new era of pick-up-and-play and socially driven titles for gamers and non-gamers alike, there were puzzle games. Whether you prefer a hardcore match-three session, brain teasers or just a five minute distraction on your morning commute, this genre has something for everyone.

And given that developers can twist a player’s brain in any number of directions—reflexes, memory, logistics and cognitive awareness of all kinds, to name a few—puzzle games arguably have the widest appeal of any type of game. Put on your thinking cap for Complex’s countdown of the 50 Best Puzzle games of all time.

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50. Kirby’s Avalanche

Year: 1995
System: SNES

Surely we couldn’t do a list of best puzzle games without a Puyo Puyo title, and Kirby’s Avalanche is one of the better available in America. It plays identically to any Puyo Puyo title, but it’s better looking than Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and, for better or worse, it features Kirby trash talking his opponents. Say what?

49. Brain Age

Year: 2006
System: DS

Months before the Wii hit store shelves, Dr. Ryuta Kawashima’s brain age exercises took the gaming world by storm by introducing casual brain stimulating activities for casual and non-casual gamers alike to try daily in order to sharpen their minds. Brain Age includes math and speed quizzes, recognition and memory—sounds like school, right? Even after it was more or less proven that brain training programs don’t actually improve your brain (though like any exercise they may sharpen your cognitive abilities) it was still fun to get regular check ups from the doctor’s disembodied head.

48. The Lost Vikings

Year: 1992
System: SNES, Genesis, PC

The Lost Vikings was somewhat unusual for a puzzle platformer in that you weren’t controlling just one character, but three. Erik the Swift, Olaf the Stout and Baelog the Fierce all have different abilities that must be used in tandem to defeat enemies and survive safely until the end of the level, and the player could switch between them whenever necessary. To top it all off, the developers (who would eventually become Blizzard) made the game surprisingly lighthearted compared to their later works. Funny how that works out.

47. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Year: 2007
System: PSP, DS, PS3 (PSN), Xbox 360 (XBLA), PC, iOS, mobile

Ok, so take a basic RPG template where you travel along the world map point by point, interrupted by monsters in between bouts of narrative. This is what Puzzle Quest does. But instead of having normal battles, skirmishes take place on a Bejeweled-style grid that has you swapping adjacent gems to match three, activate special moves or attacks or create chains for XP and score bonuses. Who would’ve thought you could combine RPGs and puzzle games?

46. Rampart

Year: 1990
System: Arcade

A type of tower defense before the genre really existed, Rampart mixes Tetris-like puzzle building with strategy. The puzzle element comes in the form of various shaped blocks, which you have a limited amount of time to fit together to create a solid perimeter around your castle. Then it’s off to battle, where you blast your opponent’s newly bolstered defensives while staving off as much damage as possible. Then it’s back to defense—hopefully expanding the range of your perimeter rather than just rebuilding parts you just lost. Like all good puzzle games, Rampart is easy to learn, but success takes a lot more nuance.

45. Peggle

Year: 2007
System: PS3 (PSN), Xbox 360 (XBLA), PC, mobile

What’s great about Peggle? It’s easy to pick up for anyone and it’s available on every possible platform known it man. Basically taking a page from Pachinko’s playbook, you aim and fire a ball down a destructible course of pegs, increasing your score with every hit. It really is that simple. Tearing yourself away may prove much harder.

44. Swarm

Year: 2011
System: Xbox 360 (XBLA)

If Swarmites have a defining characteristic, it’s that they’re expendable. Running hordes of up to 50 through burning, nightmarish landscapes of barbed wire industrial hell, it’s your job to make sure enough live to see the next level by grouping them together, spacing them apart and stacking them on the fly. Here’s the kicker: the more swarmites you allow to die (environmental hazards abound) the higher your multiplier score goes, making for a delightfully twisted balancing act.

43. Wario’s Woods

Year: 1994
System: NES, SNES

Wario’s Woods does bear something of a resemblance to Tetris Attack, but for one key difference—rather than manipulating puzzle pieces directly, you control Toad, who is on the playing field manually flipping them. One of Nintendo’s more original permutations of puzzle game design.

42. Monsters Ate My Condo

Year: 2011
System: iOS

MAMC takes colored condos falling from the sky and stacks them, Jenga-style, in the center of the screen, while colored monsters flank them on either side. Feeding a monster condos of the same color will keep it from throwing an earthquake-like tantrum, toppling your tower. Meanwhile, the more condos you match in a row, the higher the power is for each concentrated super condo that’s formed, which can be traded either to temporarily stop the monsters or boost your score, or saved to cash in an even higher yield. Your condos can fall as fast as you want, so things can get pretty insane very quickly—how long can you last?

41. Edge Extended

Year: 2012
System: iOS

Edge Extended seems relatively simple. Navigating a prismatic cube through a beautifully minimalist environment, you simply need to make to the end of each stage without falling off the level geometry. Inevitably, it doesn’t stay that easy. Your cube can initially only roll one level higher than your current elevation, so high ledges need to be worked around by activating switches that change the levels, or just finding an alternate route. Black cubes may also work against (and sometimes with) you, compounding the challenge. Don’t be fooled—this is easily one of the best puzzle games on iOS.

40. Bust A Move

Year: 1994
System: Arcade

An entirely different kind of matching game, Bust A Move has you shooting colored bubbles towards a multicolored cluster moving steadily downward. Like any good matching game you can pull off combo chains with a well-placed hit, though it gets tricky in that sometimes the best way to do this is to bounce a bubble off the wall like you might the cue ball in billiards. What really makes this one stand out is the reversal of its core components though—how often do you angle your shot upward at an already established target?

39. Ilomilo

Year: 2011
System: Xbox 360 (XBLA), PC

Ilomilo may be one of the cutest puzzle games ever. Ilo and Milo have a tendency to get separated and it’s your job to bring these friends back together again. Doing so requires these little guys to work together in a topsy-turvy and colorful world of shifting gravitational planes and tandem solving. But when you see their little reunited dance, it’s all worth it.

38. VVVVVV

Year: 2011
System: 3DS, PC

Passing off the oddly named, retro-infused VVVVVV as a relatively straightforward puzzle platformer is a mistake. While progression is generally a matter of getting from point A to point B, it’s much more challenging: essentially given the ability to reverse gravity, you’ll need to toggle back and forth between normal and anti-grav to safely move past spikes and other hazards. The level design quickly becomes downright sadistic, however. Worth twisting your brain for the soundtrack alone.

37. Columns

Year: 1990
System: Mega-Drive/Genesis

Unlike many match-three style puzzlers, Columns differentiates itself by staying true to its name: colored gem types rotate vertically, allowing only for top to bottom, horizontal and diagonal combos of three or more. As if that (and the big, chunky pieces that fill up the screen quickly) isn’t enough enough trouble, the difficulty on this one is for serious players—medium is as fast as many match-threes advanced levels, while hard can leave your screen a crowded mess of mismatched gems in a matter of seconds.

36. The Adventures of Lolo

Year: 1989
System: NES

Before HAL Labs became known for Kirby, they created Lolo, a cuddly blue critter tasked with saving his princess girlfriend from the clutches of evil. With the princess unsurprisingly held at the top of the castle, Lolo must climb the fortress one level at a time; collecting heart pieces to open the door to the next level may sound easy, but once you factor in varying enemy types, moveable environmental objects and one hit kills, things get a lot more tricky. Just watch out for that music…

35. Kirby’s Star Stacker

Year: 1997
System: Game Boy

Kirby’s more interesting original outing, Star Stacker is based on Kirby’s Dreamland 2 and uses the match tile design to interesting effect. For one, your pieces are Kirby’s adorable animal pals, but more importantly, you have to clear stars from the rows by stacking them between sets of animals. Addictive and brimming with sugar Kirby goodness? Yes please.

34. Trials HD

Year: 2009
System: Xbox 360 (XBLA)

You may not think that a game that, for all intents and purposes, looks like a 2.5D Excitebike may have that much to do with using your head, but you’d be wrong. While the difficulty curve starts out slow, this all-physics puzzler quickly moves from simply trying to angle your bike to properly land a jump to making hundreds of attempts to bypass a single obstacle, like trying to mount a vertical 80 degree hill or landing both wheels on top of a large grounded pipe. Maddeningly challenging.

33. Devil Dice

Year: 1998
System: PS One

Devil Dice may seem a bit disorientingly chaotic at first: you’re small red devil rolling dice from on top of them while lightning distractingly crackles in the background with more dice sprouting where it hit. There is a method to the madness, though. Sort of a 3D isometric match-three, the more dice sides you match (like three pairs of two, for instance) the higher your score goes as the dice disintegrate out from under you. You can chain together combos by walking to another die and flipping it to the right number, but, as in the stage itself, time is limited. As thoroughly addicting as it is strange.

32. Picross DS

Year: 2007
System: DS

Like its 3D counterpart, Picross DS is all about creating art by solving Sudoku-like puzzles based on numbered grids. Whereas the 3D incarnation of the series feels more like chiseling out a piece of art, Picross DS is at its core, a logic puzzle. Instead of written clues, though, you’re given sets of numbers that correspond to the number of filled in or empty tiles in any given row or column. By cross-referencing rows and columns, you’re able to deduce what needs to be filled in and what doesn’t—eventually your markings will form a picture. A simple sounding puzzle game, yes, but even on a flat 2D plane logic puzzles can be quite hard (and fun).

31. Mr. Driller

Year: 1999
System: Arcade, PS One

Although you’d never know it from the gameplay, Mr. Driller is actually the son of Dig Dug’s protagonist. The two games are very different. Whereas Dig Dug was a slower game that involved excavating rocks to drop on enemies’ heads, Mr. Driller is a furious race propelled downward. Though Mr. Driller can drill through entire layers of marshmallowy terrain in one action, the strategy is that you’re always one step away from a collapse by cave in. Hard blocks are peppered throughout each stage, too, so you can’t just drill straight down. The quick pace makes this one a good—and relatively more modern—alternative to Namco’s classic.

30. Lumines

Year: 2005
System: PSP

Don’t call Lumines a standard matching tile puzzler. There are elements of it at its core, but there’s a lot more going on underneath the hood here than in most puzzle games. The object here is to form 2x2 square grids; drops blocked can “share” spaces between two forming squares, for instance, for a higher score, but game is governed by the ironclad “timeline” beat that sweeps across the screen in time to the music. (Unsurprising, coming from Rez and Child of Eden creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi.) You’ve got until the next timeline interval to finalize your block’s position, because as soon as it makes its sweep, squares you’ve formed are gone. As with any Mizuguchi game, music is a big part of the trance-like experience, and it really makes a difference in how engrossing this one can be. But don’t take my word for it—check it out yourself.

29. World of Goo

Year: 2008
System: Wii, PC, mobile

World of Goo tasks you with getting a collection of goo balls into a pipe at the end of each level by using them to form bonds with each other, creating structures used to traverse any given levels terrain while avoid obstacles. There are several different kinds of goos, like bone goo (invulnerable to some environmental dangers), pokey goo (creates spikes that ground it in a level or object) and balloon goo (used to fly upwards). There are a lot of different types of combinations you’ll need to survive all the challenges, but, surprising no one, you should play this one just for the visuals and animation.

28. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo

Year: 1996
System: Arcade, various platforms

It sounds like a game so absurd it can’t be real: a bunch of super deformed Street Fighter and Darkstalkers characters team up to beat the crap out of each other using match-style puzzle tactics. Yes, Puzzle Fighter may sound insane, and it’s gameplay lives up to the premise. Each fighter has a different counter attack that dumps gem patterns of various arrangements on your enemies for a well-played chain. It basically plays like a variation on Tetris Attack, but with fan service this good, it’s hard to argue.

27. Fluidity

Year: 2010
System: Wii

Possibly one of the more obscure titles to make this list, Fluidity has you controlling a body of water in a metroidvania-style world in various states. Interestingly, most of the control over the water is done by tilting the screen to the left or right, sending your puddle splashing over the scenery (with highly impressive physics to boot). As if using water to operate rotational power devices and the like wasn’t cool enough, later in the game you can transform into a cloud or even freeze in a block of ice. Finally, a good scientific reason to use Wiiware.

26. Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus

Year: 1998
System: PS One, PC

Abe’s Exoddus continues the story of the titular Abe, a member of the Mudokon race that’s being exploited as slave labor and used to make a brewed beverage by the totalitarian Glukkons. Exoddus plays similarly to its predecessor, with Abe using his wits to run, sneak and otherwise bypass heavily guarded areas under Glukkon control to free his friends; a puzzle-platformer in the vein of Flashback (but with a hefty does of humor) Exoddus also introduced behavorial AI to Abe’s NPC friends, meaning more multi-layered puzzles. Although Just Add Water is currently hard at work on an HD remake of the original Abe’s Oddysey, Exoddus’s cleaner, better quality visuals and more interesting gameplay make this one the preferred entry, for now.

25. Pokemon Puzzle League

Year: 2000
System: N64

Yes, Pokémon Puzzle League is basically Tetris Attack reskinned with Pokémon characters; you choose a Pokémon trainer to play as, and, just like the SNES classic, match like titles (this time Pokémon themed) together to create a stack of garbage blocks on your opponent’s screen. However, the PPL does have a few advantages: the N64’s comparatively better processing power made for more advanced AI and higher difficulty levels, not to mention the addition of a 3D mode that wrapped the playing field around in a cylinder. Plus it’s based on the original animé, which still holds up.

24. Stacking

Year: 2011
System: PS3 (PSN), Xbox 360 (XBLA), PC

Leave it to Tim Schafer to create a quirky puzzle title based in late 19th century Russia…using stacking matryoshka dolls to solve puzzles. As the smallest of a group of siblings who were kidnapped by an villainous baron, you must “stack into” bigger dolls in order to utilize their abilities and solve crises appropriate for the era (the first puzzle involves getting a group of station personnel to stop the union members from striking, for example). You’ll be charmed silent film presentation and stop motion-esque aesthetic, to say nothing of the game’s funny script and interesting puzzle mechanics.

23. No One Can Stop Mr. Domino

Year: 1998
System: PS One

Mr. Domino (or one of his many friends) have the unique abilities to leave a trail of dominoes wherever they go. In NOCSMD, you control your domino avatar as they run along circular tracks filled with reaction points, which let you manipulate your environment in goofy ways. You can probably guess where this is going: as you move along the track, you have to place dominos so that the lines will hit each reaction point (chaining them together for a higher score), but you only have a few laps before your domino loses steam and dies. Japanese puzzle games, ladies and gents.

22. A Boy and His Blob

Year: 2010
System: Wii

The NES’ original Boy and his Blob was a bizarre game, not just because it made you feel high but in that it was next to impossible to decipher it’s ambiguous game design to figure out how to proceed. 2010’s Wiimake couldn’t be further from that. As in the original, the boy feeds his blob jellybeans, after which the blob can be used as all manner of useful tools (like ladders and parachutes) to aid the boy in moving forward. It’s a great puzzle platformer on its own, and thanks to the simple animated aesthetic and the inclusion of a hug button (a hug’s only impact on gameplay is emotional) it’s also one of the most heartwarming.

21. The Incredible Machine

Year: 1993
System: PC

If you’ve seen Back to the Future’s opening, you’re familiar with Rube Goldberg devices—incredibly complicated makeshift contraptions designed to accomplish a random task. The Incredible Machine makes Rube Goldberg inventions interactive, using an open-ended palette of gadgets to string together (as well as realistic physics and gravity) to solve each level’s objective. After years of sequels, now there’s even an iPad version. Who says science isn’t fun?

20. Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Year: 2010
System: DS

The third game starring Level-5’s titular mystery non-detective (and his sidekick) delivers more of what you expect from Layton: an engrossing story (this time about time travel and thematically re-visting the past), impressively high production values in a charming, European-style world and brain-busting puzzles. In Layton’s world, everyone is obsessed with brain teasers—you can’t even have a conversation most times without getting into some sort of conundrum to solve, whether challenging your abilities for logic, spatial problems or math. Good luck with some of the bonus ones.

19. Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!

Year: 2010
System: DS

Essentially Nintendo’s take on Lemmings, Mario Vs. Donkey Kong has Mario guiding wind-up toys made in his image to safety doors at the end of each level. Like the PC classic, one these so-called Mario minis are activated they can only move in straight lines, so using the environment (Mario pipes, conveyor belts and the like) as well as special tools like bridge-building girders and Shyguy-smashing hammers is key. What makes Mini-Land Mayhem tops? Aside from superior level deign, it’s fully integrated construction mode lets you make your own levels.

18. Intelligent Qube

Year: 1997
System: PS One

Another very straightforward looking puzzle game, Intelligent Qube has you controlling an anonymous avatar trapped on an open plane with cubes pushing you towards an endless void at the stage’s edge at a regular intervals. Highlighting a tile on the gridded surface when a cube is over it will destroy it; since you can only destroy one cube per push forward, the key is to rely on special green cubes that take out whole rows at a time. The catch is that destroying any black cubes mixed in shortens the level. Classical music accompanies your doom in this odd, obscure title.

17. Echochrome

Year: 2008
System: PS3, PSP

Echochrome is the MC Escher of puzzle games, quite literally—controlling what looks like a wooden artist doll, you must manipulate the camera to physically change perspective by, say, making a hazardous hole actually disappear by rotating the viewpoint so that an edge blocks it from view. As you can imagine, using this unique mechanic can lead to some pretty complicated outcomes, taxing your brain in the process.

16. Hotel Dusk: Room 215

Year: 2007
System: DS

A 70’s noir detective story, Hotel Dusk puts players into the well-worn shoes of former cop-turned-insurance agent Kyle Hyde, who books a room in the strange hotel in order to solve the mystery of his ex-partner’s death. The puzzles are split between conversational investigation, interrogation and environmental interaction, making for an interesting gameplay style—that said it’s worth tracking this one down just for its pencil sketch look, though the hard boiled story doesn’t hurt.

15. The Splatters

Year: 2012
System: Xbox 360 (XBLA)

The eponymous Splatters may be suicidal—they explode into liquid goo on impact—but they’re ok with it. They have one reason to live: to go out with the flashiest bang possible. Using a few tricks like slamming into the ground and speeding around curves, these gelatinous little guys are determined to blow up as many bombs in stage arenas as they can, pulling off the most tricks to do it. It doesn’t hurt that the game has one of the most impressive physics engines around—The Splatters is great fun.

14. Dr. Mario

Year: 1990
System: NES

Leave it to Mario to save the Mushroom Kingdom from any ill that ails it, including germs. You probably know the drill here: taking their own stab at the matching tile formula, Mario has match the colors in dual or single-color pills in order to eliminate nasty bugs. To this day, it’s still a pretty challenging puzzle game. Who knew the Mario remedy worked so well?

13. Candy Crush Saga

Year: 2012
System: Android, iOS, Facebook

Everyone loves candy (well, most people, anyway), and everyone likes an enjoyable distraction that can be accessed at their fingertips. So it makes sense that Candy Crush Saga is as popular as it is. The goal is simple: combine as many similar pieces of candy possible, until you run out of moves or time. The game offers an assortment of different play modes, but it's all about the "Target Score" mode. For those who have sweet fingers, Candy Crush Saga is for you.

12. Super Scribblenauts

Year: 2010
System: DS

Imagine a puzzle game where you can solve for x by typing in a word, any word, and that object will appear. It may sound impossible, but that’s exactly what Scribblenauts did. Need a put out a fire? Summon a bucket of water. Or a giant squid. Or a tsunami. Aside from fixing the original’s wonky controls, Super Scribblenauts adds adjectives—now that bucket, squid and tsunami can be quilted, bow-tied and gelatinous. Or whatever you want. Will the Wii U’s upcoming Scribblenauts Unlimited live up to its name? Time will tell.

11. Trash Panic

Year: 2009
System: PS3 (PSN)

As fiendishly difficult and addicting as it is eco-conscious, Trash Panic challenges you to dispose of a continuous cycle of trash by stacking—and subsequently attempting by force to break down—all manner of landfill junk in increasingly large containers. Starting with common office supplies, trash heap objects get as large as small islands and oil rigs, so finding the right strategy to smashing and burning your garbage without disastrous penalties is essential. At least it measures your carbon footprint.

10. Limbo

Year: 2010
System: PS3, Xbox 360, PC

A bleak and beautiful puzzle platfomer, Limbo is an artistic masterpiece as well as a great genre entry. As a young boy looking for his sister lost somewhere in limbo, most puzzles propel you forward (or kill you in the process). Although Limbo’s stark, high-contrast landscape is arguably more about atmosphere and interpreting a narrative experience than it is puzzle-solving, obstacles do get a bit tricky. Don’t miss this.

9. Catherine

Year: 2011
System: PS3, Xbox 360

Vincent has a problem: he’s just drunkenly cheated on his longtime girlfriend. Now he’s having nightmares about climbing block towers that disintegrate underneath him (also, he’s a sheep in his boxers). Leave it to the team behind the Persona series to come up with a puzzle horror game that crosses social interactions and commentary on relationships with a blood-soaked QBert. There’s no other puzzle game quite like Catherine, and despite its steep difficulty it’s definitely worth your while.

8. Tetris Attack

Year: 1996
System: SNES

Although it bears the Tetris name, Attack has little to do with Alexei Pajitnov’s original game. Instead, Tetris Attack is a Yoshi’s Island-themed match-style battle, where the better your combo score is the more hurt is visited upon your opponent in the form of extra blocks. Aside from the cutesy presentation, Tetris Attack spawned hordes of competition—including the aforementioned Super Puzzle Fighter—but it remains probably the best of its kind.

7. Braid

Year: 2009
System: PS3, Xbox 360, PC

If you haven’t heard of Braid, Jonathan Blow’s debut time-bending puzzle platformer featured in Indie Game: the Movie (as well as countless critical award listings), you probably don’t play many games. Interwoven with a surprisingly textured, ambiguous narrative of love and loss, Braid’s devious exercises in lateral thinking play with time in more ways than just moving backwards or forwards through it. You should probably play this one.

6. Fez

Year: 2012
System: Xbox 360 (XBLA)

What can I say about Fez that hasn’t already been said? It’s a game whose core mechanic—rotating a seemingly 2D world around to view its constituent sides in order to solve puzzles—will make you stop and stare. It’s a game that uses coded messages and ingenious meta ideas (e.g., scanning in-game QR codes to help decipher riddles) to further its quest (or just its completion percentage) while using optical illusions to keep you from progressing. It’s an innocuous looking 2D puzzle platformer that belies a much deeper and more rewarding experience. It’s a game you should play if you haven’t done so already.

5. Ghost Trick

Year: 2011
System: DS, iOS

A wonderfully original puzzle mystery, Ghost Trick involves you trying to solve the case of your own murder. Ghosts are powerless in the real world, but can possess nearby objects and travel through telephone lines to different locations—tools you’ll need to complete the bevy of uniquely challenging scenarios that cross your path. Bizarre and utterly engaging, this one is as entertaining as it is tough on your brain.

4. Lemmings

Year: 1991
System: PC

One of the all-time classic puzzle games, Lemmings’ works on a very simple premise: guide a flock of unintelligent, wayward lemmings to the end of each stage with as few casualties as you can manage. Lemmings are inherently witless, and require explicit instructions if they’re to do anything besides move forward, and with a number of jobs at your disposal—any lemming will happily build a bridge, stop other lemmings from moving or punch through a wall if you give them proper instruction—you can do just that. Still great after all these years.

3. Portal 2

Year: 2011
System: PS3, Xbox 360, PC

The hype for Portal 2 reached a fever pitch before its release, and Valve delivered big with this sequel. Besides continuing the story of Aperture Science, Chell and GlaDOS (whose razor wit has not diminished) Portal 2 introduced new characters into the fold, as well as improved puzzle mechanics while adding features like gels that would affect surfaces when sprayed with them. Throw in one of the best co-op campaigns in recent memory and you’ve a puzzle game even Gabe and company might have trouble topping.

2. Picross 3D

Year: 2010
System: DS

Taking its cues from the original Picross, which had players shading in Sudoku-esque number grid puzzles to form pictures, Picross 3D has more in common with sculpting than pixel art. Each piece of 3D art begins life as a cube covered in numbers that represent the number of blocks in any given row or column the finished piece will contain. Using a little deductive reasoning and logic to make sure the numbers between grid and row match (and with the help of a marker that lets you tag blocks you want to keep) you’re free to chip away at an unfinished cube until a shape appears. Needless to say, this is great fun for fans of spatial puzzles.

1. Tetris

Year: 1989 (1986 NES)
System: Game Boy

With countless iterations across every platform known to man, Tetris is arguably the alpha and omega of all puzzle games. It’s the first puzzle game that comes to mind when the genre is suggested, and arguably we’ve all probably had more fun with it than any other game in the genre; this game was so hot back in the 80s it essentially incited a corporate war between Nintendo and various competitors for publishing rights. (The Game Boy version, while identical in gameplay to its console counterpart, holds particularly fond memories because the music was far superior to the NES version.) Just about every puzzle game out there has either been directly inspired by or owes something to Alexei Pajitnov’s original design, period. That alone is proof positive that it’s still the original and the best.