How Matrix Picks Ranks Games (and Why 'Best' Doesn't Mean What You Think)

By · October 17, 2026 · 6 min read

Matrix Picks recommends games from a database of more than twelve thousand retro titles. That's far more than any person could play and review, so it's fair to ask how we decide what to show you. This page explains exactly that, including the parts that are imperfect.

Where the data comes from

The game list, release details and box art references come from the open libretro database, a community project that catalogues games for every classic system. We match each game to Wikidata, the structured database behind Wikipedia, for genres, developers, series and links to Wikipedia articles. Full credits are on our credits page.

Databases make mistakes, so we correct them by hand where we can. Co-op is the clearest example. Several sources mark a game as co-op if any version of it ever had co-op, which is how single-player console ports ended up labelled as co-op. We fixed those and hand-checked the best-known co-op games.

What the fame score measures

Every game has a fame score based on how many of Wikipedia's language editions and sister projects cover it, adjusted down for ports of older games. A game written about in forty languages has clearly travelled further than one covered only in English.

Here's the important part: fame isn't quality. A famous game can be bad (E.T. on the Atari 2600 is famous largely for being bad), and a brilliant game can be almost unknown. When one of our lists says "best", it's ranked by fame, and we say so on the page. That's useful when you want the games that defined a console, and useless when you want something you've never heard of. For that, we have separate lists.

Classics, well-known games and deep cuts

We group games into three tiers by fame. Certified classics are the games almost everyone has heard of. Well-known games had a solid audience. Deep cuts are games with a documented history (they have a Wikipedia article) but much less attention. The deep cut tier is where our underrated lists come from, and our hand-picked hidden gems list goes one step further: every game on it was chosen by a person, with a reason.

How the quiz picks for you

The quiz asks five questions: your mood, how much time you have, who's playing, which era you like, and whether you want a classic or a deep cut. Each answer filters and scores the games:

  • Mood maps to genres. "Epic quest" means RPGs and adventures, "Think and plan" means puzzle, strategy and simulation games, and so on.
  • Time uses a typical play length for each game, from a quick arcade session to a 20-hour-plus journey.
  • Players filters by player count and co-op support.
  • If your answers are so specific that almost nothing fits, the quiz relaxes the least important filters one at a time and tells you it did.

There's no AI and no tracking involved. The scoring runs in your browser, and your saved list stays on your device unless you choose to sign in and sync it.

Hand-written notes

For the most popular games we write our own short take: what makes the game special, which version to play, and what to know before you start. Those notes are the opposite of automated, and we're adding more over time. If a game you love is missing one, or you spot a mistake anywhere on the site, tell us. Corrections genuinely help.

Not sure what to play? Let the Matrix pick

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