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[kingwingin]

Of have to go with capcom, they made some poor choices the last few years but they are crushing it now. So glad they didn't continue to ruin resident evil and dmc

 

[molasar]

It is a tie between Sega, Capcom and Rare mainly for a quantity of good games but the others had to be mentioned.

SEGA: 90s years
CAPCOM: 90s years
Konami: MG/MGS, Castlevania, SH
Kojima Productions
others:
Rare: during Rareware years
Visceral Games: for Dead Space and Dante's Inferno
Namco: for Ace Combat series
Starbreeze: for Syndicate (reboot)
Rebellion: for AvP
Midway: for MK 1- 3 Ultimate
Dennaton Games: for Hotline Miami
Probe: for Alien Trilogy, Extreme-G
Technos: for Double Dragon series
Eurocom: for Predator CJ
Curve: for Stealth Inc.

 

[Fbh]

Including nostalgia: Square soft
JRPG's were what got me into gaming and a big part of what I played growing up and Square was just amazing, they made most of my favourite games growing up. It's the first gaming company besides Nintendo I knew by name and the first that could get me hyped for a game just because they were involved with it.

Not including nostalgia: Platinum
They've had some missteps and have lost their "insta buy no questions asked" status. But still, Bayonetta 1&2, Wonderful 101, MGS Rising, Vanquish, Nier Automata.
They have been behind some of my favourite games of the past 2 gens and they just have a game design style that no one else is offering and which I love

 

[DiscoJer]

SSI

They published a ton of strategy and RPGs in the early 80s up to the late 90s: Questron, Phantasie, Roadwar, Various AD&D games including the Gold Box and Eye of the Beholder; later the Panzer General series and Tony LaRussa baseball

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

 

[dispensergoinup]

Can't pick a favorite so I'll list my tops:

SSI
Sierra
Origin
Microprose
Nintendo
Sony
Black Isle
Blizzard

 

[Macapala]

Nintendo can make some dumb-ass decisions at times, but when it comes to their games they are the best.

 

[dirthead]

Can't pick a favorite so I'll list my tops:

SSI
Sierra
Origin
Microprose
Nintendo
Sony
Black Isle
Blizzard

I really feel like Sierra is mostly a nostalgia trip and their reputation was more due to lack of competition than actual quality. I mean really, they had good music and art, but design wise they were almost all crap with their infamous nonsensical puzzles designed to get people to call 1-900 numbers. I can't think of a single "classic" Sierra adventure game that I could actually say has good gameplay with a straight face. As soon as the Texas shareware companies cropped up and started releasing real video games for the PC and Sierra had some competition, they basically died overnight. It's not a coincidence.

id software.

I feel it, but intellectually it's hard to swallow. The reality about most of id games is that they're deeply flawed masterpieces. It's like what they set out to do was so ambitious and insane that, even in failure, they're fucking awesome, but they're still failures. At least 2/3rds of the maps in the original Doom blow. Episodes 2 and 3 are a write off. Knee Deep in the Dead is really the only part of that game that actually gels and comes together. Quake was a complete train wreck other than the multiplayer, and even there, most of the DM maps were crap. Quake 2 was boring, almost every map in Quake 3 sucked, Doom 3 was technically amazing but a complete gameplay misfire. Rage was just a flat out abomination: not only did the game stink, but even the technology sucked. Megatexture was just a poor design at the time it was done. The sad thing is that it's only now that console hardware is good enough to do it justice. See what I mean? They're a messy, sloppy, previously brilliant company.

Treasure.
The untouchable GOAT.
Radiant Silvergun + Gunstar + Sin n Punishment 1 all day everyday.

Came here to say this. On top of the games you mentioned, they just happened to make the best beat 'em up of all time (Guardian Heroes).

There are very few companies that have multiple undisputed best in genre games like they do. Really, there's nothing even close to Gunstar and Guardian Heroes in their respective genres. Those games are so far above the competition it's a joke.

It is a tie between Sega, Capcom and Rare mainly for a quantity of good games but the others had to be mentioned.

If I really evaluate Sega objectively, it doesn't look that good. Their games have a tendency to not age worth a crap, and I feel like most of their impressive games were essentially arcade tech showcases. Sonic didn't age nearly as well as Mario because it really was a technical showcase game. "Look at me, the first platformer that has what can be considered rudimentary physics, and it moves fast." The ModelX games are legendary but because of the graphics not the gameplay. Are any of them really worth playing today over other games? Not really. Streets of Rage was always just a poor man's Final Fight and is ludicrously overrated. They also tend to get a lot of credit for games that they published but really had nothing to do with the development of, too, like Gunstar Heroes and Guardian Heroes, which were really 100% Treasure. If I just look purely at seminal awesome games that are still awesome today, Capcom, Konami, and Nintendo completely smoke Sega.

 

[Raph64]

Nintendo all the way. Brings me back SO MANY profound childhood memories back from playing Wii Sports with my dad, saving for the first time Peach in New Super Mario Bros Wii, spending hours and hours on Super Mario Galaxy and Sonic Unleashed ( Sega is my second fav company btw ) and from there I’ve been a Nintendo fan, buying the Wii U and recently the Switch. They never cease to amaze me, they are always striving for originality and most of its consoles’ gimmicks ( taking your Switch anywhere ) turned out to be a real game-changer for me.

The way I could sum up Nintendo nowadays is like Gandalf : “ a wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to “

 

[Rodolink]

Besides Nintendo it was Konami for a long time until they crashed into oblivion (for me). They had a better survival horror than Capcom (SIlent Hill) better action games Castlevania, Metal gear. It's sad really.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

SEGA all the way! Just so many interesting worlds ro explore and some of the lore is incredible!

Transformed is the best Fanservice game I have played but I sadly didn't like the Flying parts of the gameplay.

I really really hope they get back to this as I love Kart Racing games and the love letter to SEGAs franchises.

 

[hecatomb]

Why would you put KONAMI and not SquarEnix? I used to like Bungie a lot back in the day when they had games like Myth, Abuse, Marathon 1, 2 and infinity, though now the company is not as good as it used to be. Capcom and SquarEnix are about tied, seeing how dragon quest games are my fav rpgs, and capcom has some of my other fav games like mega man, dragons dogma, and resident evil.

 

[Raph64]

SEGA all the way! Just so many interesting worlds ro explore and some of the lore is incredible!

Transformed is the best Fanservice game I have played but I sadly didn't like the Flying parts of the gameplay.

I really really hope they get back to this as I love Kart Racing games and the love letter to SEGAs franchises.

I remember playing the first All-Stars Racing game all the time on Wii. Such a great alternative to Mario Kart. Too bad Team Sonic Racing doesn’t have ANY fan-service apart from the Sonic franchise.

 

[klosos]

They made the best and most influential RPG'S to me off all time , that still stand up today 15 yeas later. easily the G.O.A.T western RPG maker

 

[petran79]

Epic Megagames and Gremlin Interactive

90s were my favorite decade on PC, thanks mainly to those two

Jill of the Jungle
Jazz Jackrabbit 1,2
Tyrian
One Must Fall

Lotus Turbo Challenge
Normality
Realms of the Haunting
Actua Soccer 2,3
Zool
Premier Manager

 

[llien]

Other: MicroPose

Because: phenomenal XCOM series that were so ahead of time (and in my books are still not beaten).

 

[Inanilmaz]

CING and Game Freak, but unfortunately both are dead.

 

[BrokenBones902]

LJN!!!

Nah, just kidding!

Probably either Nintendo or Ubisoft.

 

[Raph64]

CING and Game Freak, but unfortunately both are dead.

Huh no, Game Freak isn’t dead, they are actually developing the ‘Town’ game and the highly-anticipated 8th gen core Pokémon game both intended for release on Switch and due to both release this year.

 

[Meccs]

The 90s LucasArts.

 

[molasar]

If I really evaluate Sega objectively, it doesn't look that good. Their games have a tendency to not age worth a crap, and I feel like most of their impressive games were essentially arcade tech showcases. Sonic didn't age nearly as well as Mario because it really was a technical showcase game. "Look at me, the first platformer that has what can be considered rudimentary physics, and it moves fast." The ModelX games are legendary but because of the graphics not the gameplay. Are any of them really worth playing today over other games? Not really. Streets of Rage was always just a poor man's Final Fight and is ludicrously overrated. They also tend to get a lot of credit for games that they published but really had nothing to do with the development of, too, like Gunstar Heroes and Guardian Heroes, which were really 100% Treasure. If I just look purely at seminal awesome games that are still awesome today, Capcom, Konami, and Nintendo completely smoke Sega.

I could agree if we were using the same rating criteria but the thread is about personal favorite, not the best. So, for myself I set them up this way:
1) amount of games I like made by a particular company for a variety of reasons (more = better)
2) amount of games I like going back to from time to time made by a particular company for a variety of reasons (more = better)
3) variety, innovations, experimentation by a particular company (more = better)
All of these gave SEGA number one spot on my list together with Rare and Capcom.
Here are my favorite Sega's games: Bare Knuckle III, Golden Axe III, Motor Raid, Daytona USA 2 and I am still impressed by their arcade tech for its time especially by the R-360.

As for favorite beat'em ups of all time this is my list: Capcom's Alien vs. Predator(as number 1) and in no particular order Bare Knuckle III, Golden Axe III and Return of Double Dragon. I have never played Guardian Heroes because it does not appeal to me in any way for some reason and I have seen its gameplay video clips. It does not mean the game is bad just does not suit my taste.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Capcom but their efforts in this current era are kinda garbage for the most part, they have been getting better as of late however.

 

[DiscoJer]

I really feel like Sierra is mostly a nostalgia trip and their reputation was more due to lack of competition than actual quality. I mean really, they had good music and art, but design wise they were almost all crap with their infamous nonsensical puzzles designed to get people to call 1-900 numbers. I can't think of a single "classic" Sierra adventure game that I could actually say has good gameplay with a straight face. As soon as the Texas shareware companies cropped up and started releasing real video games for the PC and Sierra had some competition, they basically died overnight. It's not a coincidence.

Sierra released a lot more than adventure games. They had Dyanmix, which released very nice flight sims (Red Baron, Aces of the Pacific/Europe), sports games (Front Page Sports Baseball and Football), and rpgs (Betrayal at Krondor); Impressions who kinda sucked early one, but released Caesar, Pharaoh, Zeus.

 

[AV]

Insomniac.

Disruptor, Spyro, Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, Sunset Overdrive, Song of the Deep and now Spider-Man. They've been pumping out consistently great games for 23 years and they show no signs of slowing down.

 

[TLZ]

I went with Sega, Nintendo, and can I say Sony?

Konami were the shit until ps360, they fd up. They saw that easy money to be made elsewhere with the rise of smartphones and microtransactions.

Edit: wait I also forgot Squaresoftenix.

 

[Blood Borne]

Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, Onimusha, Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter, Dragon Dogma, Okami, Viewtiful Joe, Megaman, Final Fight, Capcom Fighting games (Rival School, Capcom vs, Xmen, Powerstone, Darkstalkers), Shadow of Rome, Ace Attorney, Disney games (Aladdin, Duck Tales), Maximo, God Hand. etc

I can live only on just Capcom games. They’re the greatest.

 

[Maguro]

What about SNK, IREM, RARE, Treasure, Taito, Cave, Hudson, Compile etc. ?

There are so many good ones it's really hard to decide. I would probably go with a top 3 here: Sega, Nintendo, Konami (old)

 

[hecatomb]

What about SNK, IREM, RARE, Treasure, Taito, Cave, Hudson, Compile etc. ?

There are so many good ones it's really hard to decide. I would probably go with a top 3 here: Sega, Nintendo, Konami (old)

isn't Irem dead? Rare sold out to MS, and hasn't made any good games since besides KI. Also haven't seen Hudson do anything in years or taito

 

[tylrdiablos]

I've always been a fan of Rare and Valve. Sadly neither appear to be doing much of interest these days.

Artifact is too niche, there's no mention of anything Portal/Half-Life/Left 4 Dead from Valve... at least Rare are making attempts to improve Sea of Thieves but it still holds little appear for their old-school fans who loved GoldenEye, Blast Corps, Jet Force Gemini, Banjo Kazooie etc.
Still, it could be worse, Rare could still bemaking those awful Kinect titles.
I feel old.

 

[JohnSpartanLee]

Capcom because of Resident Evil and Street Fighter. Plus some Zelda titles.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

I remember playing the first All-Stars Racing game all the time on Wii. Such a great alternative to Mario Kart. Too bad Team Sonic Racing doesn’t have ANY fan-service apart from the Sonic franchise.

The Wii version has fan art in it by accident! The Director of Sumo Digital at the time told us on the SEGA Forums how they picked a random FanArt for one of the Card images on Roulette Road (Sonia the Hedgehog), and had to reimberse the fan some SEGA swag! XD

To be honest, I think the Sonix game will be good although disappointed with the Team Gameplay Aspect as it doesn't work well in Single Player mode.

The All Stars Series is SEGAs answer to Smash Brothers and I prefer them going the Racing Aspect over Fighting or Tennis.

What annoyed many fans back in the day of Transformed's release was the DLC that me and 5 other guys did for a Petition (TB was the one who did the 40+ character poll, the poor guy) ended up going on the PC port instead (Ryo Hazuki won followed by Miku and Ristar).

Note to NeoGAF: If you remember the Transformed Poll thread where some guy did the DLC Petition. I know the guy who did it as we all arranged it on Skype!

Little trivia I hope you enjoy.

 

[Mr Hyde]

In the 80s it was Nintendo.

In the 90s it was Konami and Square.

In the 2000 it was Capcom.

In the 2010 it is From Software (and still a little bit of Capcom).

 

[Maguro]

Oh and lets not forget about ATLUS

 

[hariseldon]

Bullfrog - for creating Powermonger, Populous, Theme Park and Theme Hospital.
Maxis - for creating the original Sim City and The Sims - whatever they've become both were revolutionary when they came out and were enormous fun, never bettered by competitors in the market.
Novagen - the Mercenary and Damocles games, the first open-world exploration games, with the latter games featuring a full explorable solar system.
Microprose - F-19 Stealth Fighter, Midwinter 1 and 2, Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Knights Of The Sky, Silent Service, Formula One Grand Prix (Geoff Crammond), Pirates, Carrier Command (note some of these were under their Firebird and Rainbird labels).

 

[Alexios]

Thanks everyone for your replies so far, love you, the poll is still wrong though so please go back and add SEGA to your votes, you can vote for multiple companies in the poll.

I couldn't figure out how to automaticaly add a SEGA vote for every other vote, the thread tools are pretty limited, I hope it's fixed in the future.

 

[Guileless]

New World Computing (and the rest of 3DO generally)

Rationale: Might & Motherfucking Magic

Also High Heat Baseball

 

[dispensergoinup]

I really feel like Sierra is mostly a nostalgia trip and their reputation was more due to lack of competition than actual quality. I mean really, they had good music and art, but design wise they were almost all crap with their infamous nonsensical puzzles designed to get people to call 1-900 numbers. I can't think of a single "classic" Sierra adventure game that I could actually say has good gameplay with a straight face. As soon as the Texas shareware companies cropped up and started releasing real video games for the PC and Sierra had some competition, they basically died overnight. It's not a coincidence.

That's a pretty fair assessment of Sierra but that doesn't stop them from being one of my favorites as even their weird puzzles didn't really frustrate me as a little kid. I kinda just went "oh okay that sucks". Never had to call any numbers or anything and just tried a bunch of different things and brute forced the solutions. I guess I had a lot higher tolerance for that kinda stuff back then, mainly because it was all new to me as a very very new PC kid. In any case their formula led me to some other games like Monkey Island, Loom, Indiana Jones games later so I can still appreciate how influential they were to me as a PC gamer kid.

 

[dispensergoinup]

Bullfrog - for creating Powermonger, Populous, Theme Park and Theme Hospital.
Maxis - for creating the original Sim City and The Sims - whatever they've become both were revolutionary when they came out and were enormous fun, never bettered by competitors in the market.
Novagen - the Mercenary and Damocles games, the first open-world exploration games, with the latter games featuring a full explorable solar system.
Microprose - F-19 Stealth Fighter, Midwinter 1 and 2, Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Knights Of The Sky, Silent Service, Formula One Grand Prix (Geoff Crammond), Pirates, Carrier Command (note some of these were under their Firebird and Rainbird labels).

My man right there, all those Microprose games were ace!

 

[hariseldon]

My man right there, all those Microprose games were ace!

One of the things I really liked, aside from the lovely deep systems prevalent in their games, was that despite being 3D for the most part, they managed to pack in some gorgeous pixel art (esp Midwinter 2 and F-19) - honestly that and Operation Stealth (Delphine) are probably my favourite pixel art ever.

 

[Airbus Jr]

Capcom because of Resident Evil and Street Fighter. Plus some Zelda titles.

And Monster Hunter World and DMCV

 

[Alexios]

And Monster Hunter World and DMCV

How would you rate the latter, I'd give it a 7/10 myself after researching the trailers very very closely so I'd still put Yakuza 0 over it and have SEGA objectively win anyway, but what's your subjective take?

 

[Airbus Jr]

How would you rate the latter, I'd give it a 7/10 myself after researching the trailers very very closely so I'd still put Yakuza 0 over it and have SEGA objectively win anyway, but what's your subjective take?

Can't say much for now but early gameplay from last year look promising

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

A favorite living company:

A favorite funct (nearly dead?) company:

A favorite defunct company:

 

[Alexios]

A favorite living company:

A favorite funct (nearly dead?) company:

A favorite defunct company:

That's cool, you can vote for OTHER and SEGA.

 

[Raph64]

Question : why can’t neo members vote in polls ?

 

[betrayal]

For me it's Blizzard by far.

Starcraft hooked me into online gaming back in 1998. I played a lot of Diablo 1 + 2, i played a shitload of WoW and now i regularly play Overwatch.

 

[Alexios]

Question : why can’t neo members vote in polls ?

No idea, it's lame, I couldn't vote until a while ago either.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

That's cool, you can vote for OTHER and SEGA.

I voted for every choice.

 

[Alexios]

For me it's Blizzard by far.

Starcraft hooked me into online gaming back in 1998. I played a lot of Diablo 1 + 2, i played a shitload of WoW and now i regularly play Overwatch.

Nice, SEGA's Herzog Zwei and the Dreamcast's Record of Lodoss War and Quake 3 Arena port are better than all those but that's some good subjective opinioning you got there.

 

[Azelover]

SEGA all the way!