The Laser Orgy 500: Our list of the best games of all time

Normally we try to keep the geekery from leaking out of Laser Orgy, that other Phoenix blog where we chronicle all manner of things cultish, weird, and offbeat ... but this is a special occasion.

We've been battling our favorite video games head to head in a game we call the Laser Orgy 500. After tallying roughly a gazillion votes, we've made a Top 50 Video Games list of our own, based mostly on users' opinions and partly on ours.

Did that entire paragraph sound like nonsense? Let me break it down for you. It all began with an office argument about whether the old Carmen Sandiego video game was better than that other "edutainment" standby from days gone by, Oregon Trail. Before we knew it, we were entering hundreds of video games into a comprehensive battle database and encouraging friends, family, and strangers to vote in randomly generated battles. Sounds easy enough, until you're faced with hard decisions like Half-Life 2 vs. Mario 3. Or mind-breaking nonsense like Red Dead Redemption vs. Pac-Man.

Over the past few months of voting, we've waxed poetic about the LO500's tough choices in our Battle of the Week series over at Laser Orgy. We've wasted many an hour plugging our own votes into the system (shhh, don't tell our editors). Eventually, the list we were building started to look pretty damn accurate. The top fifty jived with our sensibilities, give or take. It was time to start showing our work to the world. The result? Our Top 50, with plenty of input from the tons of you who've been voting alongside us.

But here's the thing -- this list of video games is still a living, breathing being. (Okay, maybe it's not actually alive. But it's only a matter of time before it becomes self-aware.) Are you finding yourself looking at our Top 50 and fuming with anger at how inaccurate it is? Feel free to pop an angry comment on any one of those nominations, but we'd also like to encourage you to keep on voting! You'll notice that since we posted our Top 50, Street Fighter II has mysteriously risen from #10 to #1. Anything can happen, folks -- with your help. So, go on! Check it out.