I think the highlight of this week's Retro Roundup is that they finally caught up with all those titles they missed out on! They now cover every VC game yet released.
I'm quite surprised they don't recommend Sonic 3 and not because they figure that a version with Knuckles will be released down the line but rather that they don't like it. I've never heard anyone sh!t on Sonic 3. The general concensus is typically that the four Genesis games and Sonic CD are THE Sonic games to play.
Oddly enough they have no Sonic games represented on their essentials list. Bonk but no Sonic? I imagine the absence of other Mario and Zelda titles is that they only want one game from each series so they picked their favourite. This is a good list to get someone started and then based on what games they liked they would probably instinctively check out of the others in the series. No point telling a newbie to play SMB3 and SMW when if he likes SMB3 he'll naturally become interested in SMW, and if he doesn't like SMB3 he's not going to like Mario period.