SEGA Dreamcast (1999) by NAMCO

Seeing Soulcalibur running on our cinema screen for the first time was an exhilarating experience. It's rather incredible how a game from 2000 can look this good in 2016. The fluidity of character movement and the way different moves string together is particularly impressive. Simply, being able to play Soulcalibur on my Dreamcast this year was awesome.

Getting to this point, however, took a good while and some considerable effort. From faulty and wrongly shipped VGA cables, to a noisy amplifier that required constant replugging of inputs - getting the setup right was a journey. The last piece of the puzzle arrived only recently with a Kuro from Beharbros that replaced my previous Retrobit VGA box, which had defects both in image and sound quality.

Once things were finally in place, Soulcalibur was the first game I wanted to play. It's also the one Dreamcast game I have since enjoyed playing the most. Mission Battles are such a cool concept, L and I love reading the story bits before each mission. The objectives are varied, often challenging and, somehow, always fun. The one thing I wished was that there were more texts coming with the unlockable art gallery – we were hoping to learn more about the backstories of each of the characters!

"The Legend will never die."

I wouldn't be surprised to see Soulcalibur, and other Dreamcast games, to consistently show up in these best of the year lists. I have an undying love for my Dreamcast and there are so many games that I have never even played. Still, it's important to me to make this unmistakably clear: The reason why I played and enjoyed this NAMCO fighter so much this year is not due to a blind passion for the Dreamcast or some misguided sense of nostalgia; Soulcalibur holds up as an excellent game – today. And the soul still burns.

Nintendo DS (2011) by Atlus

Radiant Historia is a unique game on this list for multiple reasons: It's the only game I have both started and finished this year. It's also the only game I consistently played by myself this year. Both these points are a testament to this game's quality – it's really good.

I've been wanting to play this Atlus JRPG for quite some time. During my summer break this year, the time was finally right. It took me 38 hours to finish the game and I enjoyed my time with the game a lot. The soundtrack, composed by Yoko Shimomura, stands out. I specifically enjoyed the deeply atmospheric theme in the main city hub, "Mechanical Kingdom". To me it reflects the tone of this game. A lost soul in a world of deep mysteries, bringing hope into a kingdom run by mechanical rules.

The ending of the game is particularly strong, bringing together motivations and desperations of the main protagonists in the final moments. It feels to me that this game has purpose, I felt richer having have experienced its story.

In true Atlus fashion, the game has a true ending that can only be obtained if a number of sidequests have been completed before the final battle. I was lucky in a way, as in my playthrough I completely missed those quests – all of them. This allowed me to bring my save file over to my computer and finish these side stories playing the game in an emulator while recording the process.

It was a fun and challenging project to make these videos as good in quality as possible. I wanted to make the videos resemble the experience of playing the game closely, so that others could also see the true ending and the sidequests needed to get it without having to replay the game. I'm very happy with the results. Still today, I check the the views on my channel every morning and seeing that just a single person has watched my videos makes me happy.

Nintendo Wii U (2014) by Retro Studios

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is just another example of the ragtag collection of games I put on this year's list. I got this Wii U game late in 2014 and played significant chunks of the game in both 2014, 2015 and 2016. During this time I unlocked all the stages leading to the final boss, but before attempting the final battle, I went back to try and collect more KONG letter sets and puzzle pieces.

While we played the game in equal parts over the three years, we had the best time with it this year, for sure. Playing Tropical Freeze together – me controlling and L watching – we had some of our best scream-out-loud-I-can't-believe-this-just-happened-moments we've ever experienced playing video games. The pure insanity of the levels, floors routinely giving away under Donkey Kong's feet, huge pillars falling and crashing down, taking half the level with it… what the developer Retro Studies achieved in this game is brilliant.

"Non-peshon?" - "A-he-ho-hew!"

Tropical Freeze rewards those who invest time in the game with beautiful visuals, an excellent soundtrack and extremely challenging but never cheap gameplay. It's one of my favourite experiences in video games when controls become intuitive, when a pattern that was taught over and over suddenly needs to be applied in extreme situations, where there is no time to think and analyze - and you pull it off. Or, in my case, almost pull it off. Tropical Freeze has these moments and it's fantastic fun. There's still more to explore for us in this game and a final boss to beat, but already now I'm confident in saying that it's a very important game to me as the only platformer to have kept me interested in playing for dozens of hours!

Nintendo Wii U (2016) by Tantalus

My first Zelda game. This might be unbelievable to some, but after 30 years on this planet, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD on the Wii U is indeed the first Zelda game I have finished.

I liked the game much more than I thought I would. Coming off of Phantom Hourglass and The Wind Waker HD, that both left me unimpressed, my expectations for Twilight Princess weren't high. However, what we were able to find when in this game was not only an all-around great game, but a moving experience that still resonates with me today.

I feel that in many ways, Twilight Princess is the Zelda game made for us. We liked all that is Wolf Link so much. We overjoyed at the little things like how Wolf Link digs for rupees or follows traces. We had the best moment in the beginning hours of the game after meeting a puppy – that follows you around excitedly and that you can pick up and hug – when we learned that as Wolf Link you can talk to animals. We came to the realization at the same time and both shouted

"We can talk to the puppy!!"

and rushed as quickly as possible to the puppy's home. This is likely insignificant to many others, but it meant just meant so much to us. The love and the care that was put into this game reverberated to us in this moment and to our joy we kept finding moments likes this throughout the game.

What to some people defines the Zelda franchise, the dungeons and their puzzles, was in a sense the weakest part of the game to me. I was close to dropping after the game after the first dungeon – I did not enjoy Forest Temple at all. At their best, the dungeons represented an atmospheric environment with a rewarding puzzle mechanic, at their worst the dungeons felt slow and tedious. With a few notable exceptions, there's little to no story telling in the dungeons. Why is this here? Who built this? What happened here? Maybe we missed some of the more subtle clues, but I felt that these questions were mostly left unanswered.

What does make this game special to us are the characters. Midna is a unique character that adds a lot of texture to the game. Having her as a companion from early on was one of the things that kept us engaged. It didn't take us long to care about Midna, but Malo, Agitha, Coro the lamp guy – all the characters wet met along our journey were lovable in their own way and filled the world of Hyrule with life.

"Hey, guy!"

While we did, in the end, only finish the game in 2017, I feel the best parts playing Twilight Princess still belong to this year. Making soup for Yeta in Snowpeak Ruins on New Year's Eve, visiting the Zora's Domain in rainy November or finally seeing Malo putting a stop to the corrupt and price-gouging shops in Castle Town – I cherish the times we spent with this Zelda game in 2016 and I wonder if and when we will return to the lands of Hyrule.

Nintendo DS (2011) by Game Freak

Playing Pokémon White this year was the best experience I had with the series since playing Pokémon Red on the Game Boy in 1999. I liked everything better in this 5th generation and I got invested in Pokémon on a completely new level - Pokémon White on the Nintendo DS is my favourite game of 2016!

Pokémon is special to me, I consider myself a huge fan. I rarely missed an episode of the Indigo League anime series and to this day I'm proud of my unbeaten Alakazam deck in the trading card game. My history with the video games is less thorough, however. I first blazed through Pokémon Red on a borrowed Game Boy back in 1999 and when I had to return it soon after, I didn't get to play a Pokémon game for more than 10 years.

Only in 2015, L and I finally jumped back into Pokémon proper. The game we started with was Pokémon Diamond. This wasn't so much a deliberate choice at the time – a lot of things came together, both fortunate and unfortunate, and we somehow found ourselves lying on a foreign bed, playing Pokémon Diamond on a borrowed Nintendo DS Lite. Looking back, not everything about Diamond was perfect, but having the game meant much to us. When we beat the game after 70h44min, it was clear that our Pokémon journey was far from over.

"A new adventure comes our way ..."

We started Pokémon White quite late into 2016, but even playing only the opening hours of the game one thing stood out to me: Compared to its predecessor, everything seemed bigger, better, faster, stronger in Pokémon White. I appreciate so many of the small and big changes. TMs are finally reusable. HMs are now barely necessary for progression. Compared to the somber Sinnoh, the places we visited in Pokémon White were varied and exciting to explore – Nimbasa City, a favourite of mine, shines with its extravagant design and cheerful music theme. Little stories and quirky characters, like Heartbreaker Charles, fill Unova with life.

Moreover, Pokémon White's 5th generation is the only generation that features exclusively new Pokémon to catch and battle against. I think that's awesome and the Pokémon designs are among my favourite in the series as well. Lilligant, Litwick, Audino, Seismitoad, Swadloon, Leavanny – there are truly many fantastic and uniquely designed Pokémon in this generation. To me it feels like all of the changes made in Pokémon White are expertly aimed at making me enjoy the game more. My overall excitement for Pokémon White is perfectly summed up in the Team Plasma Battle Theme, which is easily my favourite track in the game.

In our playthrough we stuck to many of the "rules" we followed in Diamond already: Battle only with the same number of Pokémon as the opponent trainer, don't use potions, heal fainted Pokémon as soon as possible. Naming all the Pokémon we caught was as fun as ever. Our new friends included a Vanillish♂ named Benjer, a Mienfoo♀ named Jade, a Shelmet♂ named Knex and, of course, our little Trubbish♂ called Rubbert. Yeah, we're pretty clever!

One thing that was quite different from when we played Diamond was that, this time, we took a lot of care in planning our team of Pokémon in advance. At first, I just wanted to make sure we select the Pokémon we like most. After reading more and more, however, I developed the ambition to have the Pokémon we picked be the best they can be. I started to learn how different combinations of items, moves and abilities can enhance a Pokémon's capabilities greatly and to me all of this was purely exciting. Smogon is a fantastic resource for exactly this, but I was spending loads of time reading on PokémonDB and Bulbapedia as well.

And I really like our team. Liorey, our swords dancing Leavanny. Satin, our Liepard which puts fear into ghost and psychic types. Yozu, our Seismitoad that can, well, do pretty much anything. The most effort of the Pokémon in our team was dedicated to Aurel, our Audino that is able to set up screens and heal itself when switched out. Finding a female Audino with the ability Regenerator took us a long time!

After so many years with the series, playing Pokémon White this year opened up a whole new dimension of the games to me. I had an amazing time planning and training our Pokémon and I can't wait to lead our team into the Pokémon League. I'm grateful to have something so positive in our lives that we can share. There's still many things for L and I to discover in the world of Pokémon and we're beyond excited about starting the 3DS generations some time later, when our journey continues…!