Cosmic Encounter is one of the few, the proud, the...
I am the type of gamer who desires depth, not breadth. I'd rather play one game fifty times, than play fifty games one time each. A standard such as that requires a game that can hold up to fifty plays. Quite frankly, that is a rare case. This hobby is littered with the flotsam and jetsam of games that held up for five plays and were then traded away to someone else so that THEY could play it five times and trade it away. We tend to call any game a "classic" if it is pretty good (and sometimes when it isn't). It can be easy to forget that there is no such thing as an "instant classic." The only thing that can create a classic is time, and games that stand the test of time are the ones that get played over and over again. These are the games that get whole websites devoted to strategy, that reside in hallowed places on our game shelf in battered boxes, with grubby cards and tape along the edges. They may fall out of print, but they are never forgotten.