The 14 best 3rd generation (8-bit) console games

Highly rated, with fewer than 3 reviews

11 titles have a score of 90 or more, but from only one or two reviews, and no Metacritic score.

How the ranking works

• The scores are the ones magazines gave when the games came out, all converted to a 0–100 scale. Only one review per magazine counts for a game: the most recent.
• A game's score is half the average, half the median of its magazine reviews. A title opens the game's page on uvlist.net; a score opens the report with every review behind it.
• A game needs at least 3 magazine reviews to be ranked. With equal scores, the game with more reviews comes first.
• Metacritic already sums up many reviews, so it is never mixed with the magazines: it is used only for games with fewer than 3 magazine reviews, as their only score.
• Each list shows every game with a score of 90 or more. Games with fewer than 3 reviews and no Metacritic score are shown apart: their score is promising, but rests on one or two opinions.
• A title released on several systems of the group appears once, at the rank of its best version; every version good enough to make the list is shown under it.

The lists are rebuilt each time reviews are added. To filter by genre, year, magazine or publisher, explore all the scores in the report.

More lists

Best 2nd generation console games Best 4th generation (16-bit) console games Best 5th generation (32/64-bit) console games Best 6th generation console games Best 7th generation console games Best 8th generation console games Best 9th generation console games Best 4th generation handheld games Best 5th generation handheld games Best 6th generation handheld games Best 7th generation handheld games Best 8th generation handheld games Best 8-bit home computer games Best 16/32-bit home computer games Best PC (MS-DOS and Windows) games All the lists