You wanna study game design without blowing all your money at Full Sail? 
This is so subjective, but people always ask me what my favorite games are. They expect me to rattle off a few games they have heard of so they can feel well-informed. I usually say Pac-Man and Tetris and they are satisfied. Anyway, to the list:
1) Final Fantasy VI, VII, VIII, X, this counts as one game really.
2) Monkey Island, DOTT, Sam & Max, Leisure Suit Larry 1-7, this also counts as one, really.
3) Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II EX+ Alpha, these are just different flavors, so it counts as one.
4) Final Fantasy Adventure for Gameboy (also called 聖剣伝説 ～ファイナルファンタジー外伝～), Wario Ware… unrelated to each other, but this still counts as one.
5) Kid Icarus, Castlevania 1-4, Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden, Battle of Olympus, Punchout, Rush N Attack, Track and Field II Star Tropics, Strider, Wizards and Warriors 2, Metal Gear, Zelda 1+3+LA, 3D World Runner, Contra, Donkey Kong/Jr. Dragon Warrior, Gauntlet, Double Dragon, Excitebike, Goonies II, Prince of Persia, RC Pro AM, Magic of Scheherazade, Faxanadu, Section Z Gradius, TMNT 2, Blaster Master. These should be standard case-studies for game design, and count as one game, of course.
6) Tetris, Yoshi’s cookie, best thinking puzzle games of all time, damn near the same game, so it counts as one.
7) Q-Bert, Arkanoid, hate/love relationships with both of these, so it counts as one. While Arkanoid has a billion incarnations, you’ll see there are very few Q-Bert clones.
Mega Man X , Out of this World (Another World), Actraiser, Chrono Trigger. No relationship between any of these, but all came out within the same timeframe of awesome gaming years. So yes, they count as one.
9) Wolfenstein 3D, the original, not the new one.
10) Saga Frontier 1, Wild Arms, something campy about both of these RPGs, but something keeps them stuck in my mind as being awesome.
Err… that was 10 right?
Making this list reminded me of a few things:
a) I’ve played a plethora of games
b) Nothing on the list is from recent years; this doesn’t mean there aren’t recent excellent games (KOTOR and WoW deserve a very honorable mentions), they just haven’t reached the list of long-time awesomeness yet, and
c) I’ve played a plethora of games.
Many of these games are being released on the Playstation/Xbox/Wii’s online games service for a good reason, and for trivial amounts of money. Legal online emulation sites exist for many older systems too.
See all that money you saved on going to game design school? Now you can spend it on more important things, like donuts. Or new games 
MMORPGs Suck, And Are The Future of Gaming, Part 2
Interview with Legendary Leisure Suit Larry Designer, Al Lowe
Jaybot Interviewed by Just Another Mobile Monday
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
you gotta try beyond good and evil it’s my favorite game. it’s a of art, i swear to god. and you should appreciate the music in it, since you write music yourself
Hey Alice, thanks for the comments!
I played through roughly the first half of Beyond Good and Evil, The music was well-written and quite fitting if I remember. And while the story telling was nice, the characters were fun (if a little 2-dimensional) and the dialogue was entertaining… I personally felt that the gameplay itself fell short about half-way through the game. So even though I *really* wanted to continue the story, the gameplay became tedious and nonsensical enough for me to just give up and find a more entertaining game.
So even if a game has a great story, graphics, art, music, and story… I think it still needs to be backed by solid (or possibly easy) gameplay. Or maybe I just suck