Every Year In Video Gaming Ranked From WORST To BEST

On this channel, we’ve ranked games. We’ve ranked  franchises. We’ve ranked quests. We’ve ranked   characters. However, that’s no longer enough  for us. We’ve gone mad with ranking power,   to the point that we are now ranking entire  years. If you aren’t careful, we’ll rank you next.  Yes, today, we are ranking every single year in  the entire history of video games. We’re starting   with 1972 and we just closed out 2022, making for  exactly 50 years, so clearly it’s our destiny to   make this list at this very moment. Also, it’s  your destiny to watch it. We’re in this together.  We will more fully discuss 1972 when  we get to that entry, but nailing down   a definitive starting point for gaming  is almost impossible. There isn’t even   agreement on what counts as the first video game. For instance,the phrase “the first video game”   used to be applied toSpacewar!, developed in 1962  by Steve Russell and several others. ThenTennis   for Two, designed by William Higinbotham in  1958, started getting the attention.Even earlier,   though,OXOwas created by A.S. Douglas in 1952,  andAlan Turing and David Champernownewrote the   code for a chess game called Turbochamp in  1948...before any computer could actually   run it. We could say that gaming started in any  of those years, but then we’d end up covering   a lot of completely empty years, during which  nothing happened in the industry, leaving us   with a lot of very boring entries. Starting with  1972, however, ensures that every year on this   list contains at least one notable development. Speaking of years – we’ll be “speaking of years”   for the entirety of this list, but you get the  idea – we’ll do our best when it comes to release   dates. We’ve done our research and deferred to  whichever source we felt was most likely to be   correct, but we still had to make a few judgment  calls. Also, we’ve gone with the earliest release   dates, which means that if something came out  in 1996 in Japan but not until 1997 in the West,   we’re covering it in our 1996 entry. After all,  we aren’t ranking these years in terms of how   good they were for one specific country; we’re  ranking them in terms of what happened overall,   and it’d be rather strange to talk  about the history of video games and   disregard what was happening in Japan. How exactly are we ranking these years,   you ask?Well, we created a formula to help us  track the high points and low points of the   industry from 1972 throughto today. Well,through  to “when we finished writing this script.”  On the negative side of the ledger, we  consideredmajorconsole and software flops,   scandals, tragedies, and games that had an  average critical reception of 30% or lower. On the   positive side of things, we looked at important  hardware, landmark games, non-game developments   that changed the industry, and games with an  average critical reception of 90% or higher.  We also took into account the total video-game  revenue for each year. We are not financial   experts – don’t loan us money, because we  will waste it – so we deferred to Pelham   Smithers Associates, who had the most complete and  comprehensive data. That’s about it for the rules,   but we do have some notes for you to keep  in mind as you watch. We know you won’t   keep them in mind, and you’ll yell at us in  the comments because you skipped this part,   but you can’t fault us for trying. First, as usual, we are focusing on   the original release of games, rather than  ports or remasters. There’s really no other   option unless you want to hear about Doom,  Resident Evil 4, and Skyrim in every entry.  Second, we are going to try to keep things as  light as possible. We are well aware of the   mass shootings, murders, and other atrocities that  either get blamed on or are related in some way to   video games. We took these – and many other awful  things – into account. In our actual entries,   though, we are going to try to keep discussion  of real-world horrors to an absolute minimum.  Finally, we simply cannot discuss everything  that happened in any given year. We tried to   cover as much as we could, but many things  will end up being left out simply because   we have other things to talk about. We took  all major events and releases into account,   don’t worry, but if we discussed all of  them, this list would take 50 years to watch.  Actually, wait, 50 years? Now that I think about  it, if we’re counting both 1972 and 2022, then   that’s not 50 years; that’s 51 years. False alarm,  everyone, sorry; I suppose it’s not destiny that   we make this list after all. Still, we’ve done  the intro now, so we might as well keep going. Let’s rank ‘em. I’m Ben and I’m Peter   from TripleJump, and this is Every Year  in Video Gaming Ranked from Worst to Best. #51: 1994 Right, we’re starting with a placement that   surprised us as well. And, certainly, when you’re  detaching your personal feelings from things and   just seeing where the metrics take you, you can  end up in some very unexpected places. Sometimes   a lot of really great games happen to release in  a year that is otherwise not notable. Sometimes   a lot of really bad ones release in a year that  you remember fondly. And sometimes, Sega shoots   itself in both feet and both hands, and then  blindfolds itself and walks directly into traffic.  We’re not sure Sega had a strategy in 1994 beyond  “do whatever Nintendo isn’t doing.” Sadly for   Sega, what Nintendo “wasn’t doing” was launching  a bunch of high-profile flops in the same year.   The Sega Channel, the 32X, and the Saturn were  all, to be as polite as possible, “ahead of   their time.” The more honest explanation is that  they were “ahead of anyone’s interest,” and this   marked the start of the company’s decline. They  weren’t out of the hardware conversation just yet,   but they were certainly on the way down. At the  time, that was a major blow to gaming in general.  This was also the year of a number of  games that are commonly spoken of as being   among the absolute worst: Shaq Fu, Hotel  Mario, and Zelda’s Adventure. Admittedly,   we found it difficult to find definitive proof  of the release date for Zelda’s Adventure,   as though all documentation of its creation  has self-destructed in order to protect us,   but it certainly feels like it belongs in the  worst-ranked year, doesn’t it? 1994 alsohas   one of our earliest games with an average  review score of 30% or less: DreamWeb. We   here at TripleJump Towers have thoroughly failed  to make any sense out of this one, which evidently   sought to combine the story of Highlander  with a parable about the seven deadly sins,   in the form of a graphical adventure game with  digitized nudity. It’s possible that DreamWeb is   a misunderstood masterpiece. It’s also possible  that we live in the dream of a sleeping baby,   though, so it’s probably not worth worrying about. No year is all bad, of course. Humble beginnings   were laid for future successes in the form of The  Elder Scrolls: Arena, King’s Field, and X-COM:   UFO Defense. Existing genres were brought to  new heights with Tekken, Donkey Kong Country,   Super Metroid, and Mother 2, or EarthBound if you  want to get “1995 in the West” about this. Oh,   and something called the PlayStation launched at  the very end of the year in Japan. That might be   worth keeping an eye on. Fortunately for it  and everyone else, better years are ahead. #50: 1979 Where does an industry   go after a worldwide hit like Space Invaders?  In 1979, one year after that game’s release,   there was no clear answer to that question. Its  popularity alone seemed to change the landscape,   and more companies than ever wanted a chance to  demonstrate their own creativity and innovation   to appreciative audiences who...alright,  let’s not put on airs; more companies than   ever wanted money and saw video games as a  method for making it, but few of them really   knew how to do that. Near the very bottom of  the pile, perhaps surprisingly, was Nintendo,   whose Radar Scope flopped hard, shifting only  around one-third of its measly stock. The   company had only recently entered the video-game  scene and already it seemed as though they didn’t   have a clue what made games popular in the first  place. In fact, Radar Scope is the earliest “Big   Flop” we have on our entire list, but don’t  worry; the game will be back, better, and   completely unrecognizable in a couple of years. On the subject of games that would return in   better form, Sega gave the world Head On in  1979. Namco realized that that game would have   been much better with fruit and gave us Pac-Man  a year later, and we’ll certainly get to that   one. Speaking of Namco, we also gotGalaxian, which  was essentially a flashier take on Space Invaders   and which would eventually return to arcades in  sort-of-remake sort-of-sequelGalaga. All of which   means that a lot of placesetting was happening in  1979, but there was very little forward momentum.  The Microvision released, at least. That’s  usually thought of as the first handheld   console with interchangeable cartridges, but  the cartridges themselves housed the games;   the Microvision itself was basically a  shell that did little on its own. Still,   it was the earliest proper attempt at making  “handheld gaming” a thing, so kudos for that.  The most important game of the year was  probably Asteroids, which was...sort   of alright. Players use a tiny spaceship to blast  away at hulking space rocks. The asteroids each   break several times into smaller pieces, making  the screen more crowded and allowing players to   manage their own difficulty, to an extent. It  was a success, certainly, and it’s every bit   deserving of love, but after Space Invaders, just  about anything would have felt like a step down. #49: 1991 With the impressive debut   of new hardware the previous year, 1991 more or  less coasted on the quality of its games. And with   the year’s low placement on this list, those games  must represent one big pile of sh...ovelware. And,   indeed, just look at all of these stinkers:The  Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super   Castlevania IV, Final Fantasy IV, Road Rash... ...wait, those are all really good. Okay, well,   it must have been PC games that were dragging  things down then. Let’s take a look at some of the   absolute plops that people were stuck with there.  Hmm...Lemmings, Another World, Neverwinter Nights,   Civilization...right...well, I’m sure the arcades  were struggling then. Wait, Street Fighter II??   Why on Earth is this year ranking so low? Well, 1991 had a lot of truly excellent,   revolutionarygames. But it was dragged down by  a number of high-profile misfires. In terms of   software, the crowning turd in the waterpipe  was Action 52, a legendarily awful NES game   that retailed for $200. That’s around $424.51  today. Think of all the unfortunate children who   saved their allowance for literal months just  to buy one of mankind’s greatest atrocities.  Then there was a pair of CD-based consoles that  were crapped out to mass derision at the very end   of the year: Sega’s Mega-CD and Philips’ CD-i.  Seriously, if you both had waited just a few   weeks, 1991 could have soared so high! Granted,  it’s a bit tough to nail down a singular release   date for the CD-i; commercial versions existed  prior to this but, as far as we can tell,   the first consumer versions were released in  1991. Now imagine the poor kid who got burned   by Action 52 and then decided that CD technology  must have been where the real fun was, so he saved   up for a CD-i next. Whoever they were, I hope  INTERPOL is keeping a very close watch on them.  One of the major positives for the year  was the debut of Sonic the Hedgehog,   appearing in a game that was...like...60% good.  For him, that represents a massive success. Sonic   promised gamers around the world that Sega was  here to stay! He then very quickly tripped on   his shoelaces and knocked all of his own teeth  out, but still...good start. We’re putting the   blue blur in this year’s positives column, but  if you’d prefer to think of it as a negative   that one of gaming’s most enduring punchlines  made his debut here...well...I can’t blame you. #48: 1973 If you were a video game fan in 1973,   you were probably quite bored. Fortunately, you  weren’t a video game fan in 1973 because the   industry as we know it had only been around since  the previous year, and also you probably weren’t   born yet. In fact, 1973 is the only year on our  entire list for which we couldn’t name a single   landmark game. Games came out, yes, but nothing  of any real importance, and certainly nothing   that rivaled the significance of the previous  year’s Pong. In fact, Midway released Winner,   which was basically Pong. Williams released Paddle  Ball, which was basically Pong. And Atari released   Pong Doubles, which was basically Pong with  a little extra Pong in the middle as a treat.  If you played an arcade game in 1973, you were  very likely playing some variation of Pong, which   is understandable. Nobody can look at two paddles  hitting a ball back and forth and immediately   think, “I know; I’ll make Uncharted.” It takes  time for ideas to evolve and, impressively, they’d   evolve rather quickly. For now, though? This was  a year during which Pong was no longer a novelty,   but nobody had yet decided what would come next. Atari’s Space Race also released this year. To   clear up one misconception, this is often referred  to as the first racing video game, which would   indeed be innovative, but we don’t think that’s  an entirely accurate claim. It’s quite clearly   not in line with what we’d expect a racing game  to be – meaning that its influence isn’t as large   as it might seem at first – and the Magnavox  Odyssey already had Wipeout the year before.  Oh, Atari also released Gotcha, in which one  player pursued another through a constantly   shifting room. It was, so far as we can tell,  the very first overhead maze game, which would   eventually give rise to the immortal Pac-Man.  Being 1973, it wasn’t entirely clear what the   game was meant to be about, but the advertising  flyers implied that it was about a man chasing   a woman and attempting to corner her. I’m probably  reading too much into that, of course. Then again,   players controlled the game by manipulating two  pink rubber breasts on the front of the console   so, no, I’m not reading too much into that,  and the game is just disgusting. Well done,   Gotcha. You’re the earliest game on our  list to fill us with utter revulsion. #47: 1983 Yes, it’s   the year of the video game crash. Like Icarus,  Atari flew too close to the sun. And by that,   I mean that Atari manufactured more copies of  their games than there were consoles to play   them and then wondered why they had so many left  over. Come to think of it, that’s nothing like   Icarus. The kid was stupid, but not that stupid. The games themselves – namely E.T.: The Extra   Terrestrial and the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man –  were released in 1982, but Atari didn’t truly feel   the pinch of the unsold stock until the following  year, and the industry felt it right alongside   them. Video games at this point were still viewed  as a passing fad by the public at large. Then   Atari – the biggest company in the business –  had two high-profile flops, and everyone took a   big step back. Developers became wary of taking  risks. Players bought fewer games. Arcades and   other establishments reduced their purchasing.  Growth didn’t just slow down; it tanked.  The industry had hit $42 billion in revenue the  previous year, but thanks to the video game crash   of 1983, revenue wouldn’t hit the same amount  again until 1993. It wouldn’t exceed that amount   until 2000. People today sometimes debate the  severity of the crash, claiming that it wasn’t   as significant as others claim, but when you  put it into sheer financial perspective, with   things taking anywhere from one to two decades to  recover, that is a serious blow. The crash mainly   affected North America, yes, but North America  represented a massive portion of the market.  Nintendo debuted its Famicom this year, but  it was reluctant to send the console West for   exactly this reason. If you ever wondered why the  NES had such a slow and tentative rollout outside   of Japan, that’s why. It wouldn’t hit America  until the end of 1985. It wouldn’t hit Europe   until a year after that. It wouldn’t hit Australia  until 1987. And this was because Nintendo – like   every other company –worried that the Western  market had already burned itself out. Exporting   consoles is expensive. In another timeline,  Nintendo kept the Famicom firmly within Japan,   leaving the industry-wide recovery on  hold even longer...if it recovered at all.  1983 is now a distant, cautionary tale. Still,  we can focus on some of the smaller positives   that the year brought us. The original  Mario Bros., Manic Miner, Bomberman,   Nobunaga’s Ambition, Dragon’s Lair...all of  those games offered exciting glimpses of the   future. It just wasn’t all that certain,  at the time, that there would be a future. #46: 1976 1976 represents the very   first time that industry revenue peaked, hitting  $25 billion before decreasing again for the next   few years. It wouldn’t hit these levels again  until 1980. On the more positive side of things,   1976 is also the earliest year for which we  have identified more than one landmark title,   andthey couldn’t be more different. If anything,  that proved that games were starting to chart   new territory rather than simply trying to  chase each other’s successes. One of them   marked a turning point for arcade games,  and the other marked one for home games.  The breakout hit in arcades was...erm...Breakout,  in which players attempted to clear entire screens   of bricks with just a ball and a paddle. It  was an addictive high-score game that relied   on mechanical mastery. It also inspired one of  the first book-length works of games criticism,   Pilgrim in the Microworld. It  wouldn’t come out until 1979,   but the fact that Breakout inspired critical  analysis at all speaks volumes. Well, one volume.  On the home-gaming side of things, we gotColossal  Cave Adventure, which inspired video games beyond   number and set a new standard for depth. Unlike  most games up to this point, which focused on   a single screen or a repeating gameplay loop,  Colossal Cave Adventure offered variety at every   turn, puzzles to solve, and a text parser which  was marginally more cooperative than an angry cat.   Still, it sparked the imaginations of many fans  who would go on to develop titles of their own,   and references to it are still working  their way into games released today.  Another interesting development was Sega releasing  Road Race, which in turn was rereleased in the   same year in motorcycle-themed variants. One  of these was Fonz, a tie-in to American sitcom   Happy Days. This was one of the very first  licensed video games, and it offered the firm   assurance that they would alwaysbe terrible. On the subject of driving games, Death Race,   a game in which players plowed over little  human characters, sparked what is probably   gaming’s first controversy over violence. We also  gotNürburgring 1,which was, so far as we can tell,   the earliest driving game played from a  first-person perspective. Atari ripped it   off the same year and called it Night Driver,  which is much less obscure.I suppose after four   years of Pong being cloned, Atari decided to start  practicing theft as opposed to experiencing it.   We understand where you’re coming from,  Atari, but that doesn’t make it right. #45: 1978 When it comes to   video games, it can be argued that a number of  notable things happened in 1978. It can just   as easily be argued that only one notable  thing happened...but it was one of the most   notable things that would ever happen. On the less-invasive side of things,   Video magazine debuted “Arcade Alley,” the  first recurring video-game column in a non-trade   publication. This was the start of modern  games journalism, and it’s been all downhill   from there.We alsosaw the arcade debut of two  companies that would eventually become titans.   Konami released Block Game, about which little  information survives. Depending on the source,   it was either a Breakout clone or a dominoes  game. Nintendo released Computer Othello.   Little information about that survives as well  but at least we know it was...y’know...Othello.   But you don’t care about that. Nobody cared about  that. All anybody cared about was Space Invaders.  Taito’s Space Invaders was the most important  thing to happen to video games yet and,   at the time, it seemed like the game towards  which the entire industry had been building.   Space Invaders was insanely popular, becoming  the highest-grossing game in Japan, the U.S.,   and the U.K. by the following  year. It marked the very start   of what we now call the golden age of arcades. In one way, it was a simple score attack game,   but everything about it gripped players  in ways they’d not previously experienced.   The primitive soundtrack increased in tempo as  the game progressed, providing a real sense of   rising tension. The game sped up as more aliens  were shot, a limitation of the programming that   accidentally created the difficulty curve. And  the spritework on the aliens was immediately   iconic in a way that almost no other game had  even attempted to be. These weren’t just things   to shoot; these were identifiable and memorable  enemies, and everybody wanted to be the one who   managed to blast them all out of the sky. Space Invaders was a cultural phenomenon,   and it pushed the medium forward in a way that  few games have ever managed to do. It wasn’t   just “better” than the other games available; it  was evidence that this young artform had so much   capacity to surprise and inspire. And that’s  not exaggeration, it’s been cited by Shigeru   Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima as being one of their  earliest inspirations. Space Invaders wasn’t   just a fun way to spend a few coins; it was the  promise of excellent games for decades to come. #44: 1993 1993 suffers largely from the fallout of   a pair of video games released in 1992. How’s that  for unfair? We won’t hear about 1992 for a while,   because that was a great year that didn’t have to  face the consequences of its own actions. Sort of   like Saturday-night me, with a belly full of  Domino’s. That’s a problem for Sunday-morning   me to deal with. Sucks to be that guy! Thanks to those two games, this year saw the start   of the United States Senate hearings on video game  violence. Those would eventually give rise to the   ESRB, a ratings board for American releases, and  other regions around the world would establish   similar practices of their own. That in itself  is not a bad thing at all. Grandma probably feels   a bit better knowing that she won’t buy little  Timmy a game full of exploding heads for his 10th   birthday, for instance, and content warnings help  us understand what we’re getting ourselves into   when we pick up a new game ourselves. The problem  was that this marked an official start to an era   in which video games continue to be blamed for  horrific acts that certainly have different root   causes, with those causes remaining completely  unaddressed. From mental health issues to easily   procured deadly weapons, focusing society’s ire  on video game violence prevents us from having   discussions about actual problems and finding  solutions that might...y’know...work. I myself   have played Mortal Kombat, for instance, and I’ve  ripped out no more than three or four spines in   my entire life. It’s clearly not the games! Interestingly, while 1993 will be remembered   for vilifying video games and gamers, it was  also full of releases that expanded minds,   demonstrated great creativity, and moved  the medium significantly forwards as an art   form. Myst, The 7th Guest, and Secret of Mana all  built fascinating universes and explored them in   surprising new ways. NBA Jam, Virtua Fighter, and  Star Fox took well-established genres and launched   them to new levels of excitement and engagement.  Day of the Tentacle set a new standard for writing   and voice acting in graphical adventure games.  Mega Man X took standard platformer conventions   and placed them into a larger, more explorable  framework, full of hidden goodies and upgrades.   All of these represented huge steps forwards  not just in terms of spectacle, but in terms   of intelligence, imagination, and innovation. ...right, also, there was Doom, but I’m trying   not to bolster their argument here. Let’s focus  on the brainier stuff and not...the bits of   actual brain that Doom Guy was splattering all  over the walls. It was still very good though. #43: 2021 COVID-19 shook the world in 2020,   but its effects in gaming were even more fully  felt in 2021. Nobody knew quite how long the   pandemic would affect working conditions,  let alone daily life, which left release   dates unmet and developers struggling to adjust  to what was becoming a more difficult world.  It wasn’t without highlights, but after  several years packed so full of highlights   that we couldn’t possibly list them all, there’s  not nearly as much here. Resident Evil Village   was probably the closest thing to a universal  favorite, taking the action of the Resident Evil   2 remake, the atmosphere of Resident Evil 4, and  the first-person perspective of Resident Evil 7,   and then had a nine-foot-tall woman  step on them until they became one.  Pac-Man 99 was a fun diversion. It Takes Two  was a surprisingly good co-op game. Returnal   was an addictive roguelike adventure. Kaze and the  Wild Masks was a great Donkey Kong Country game,   especially since nobody bothers to make Donkey  Kong Country anymore. Similarly,Record of Lodoss   War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth was a great  Castlevania game, especially since nobody bothers   to make Castlevania anymore. Also, if you can  explain the title to me, I’ll know you’re lying.   And there wasMetroid Dread, which...well, people  werehappy to have a new Metroid game, so they all   agreed to pretend that just about every previous  Metroid game wasn’t much, much better than this.  It wasn’t the best year for new releases, but  it was a rather good year for ports and remakes.   Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, Sea of Solitude:  Director’s Cut, Capcom Arcade Stadium,Oddworld:   Soulstorm, and many others brought older  games back into our homes, which was welcome,   since we weren’t allowed to leave. This  goes double for Super Mario 3D World,   with the Bowser’s Fury bonus game that feels  like a glimpse of an open-world Mario game to   come. Of course, we aren’t counting ports and  remakes, so these games aren’t doing 2021 any   favors overall, but they’re worth noting. Bringing down the average were two rightful   punching bags. eFootball 2022 was Konami’s  latest attempt to see if they could make   money from a game that wasn’t worth playing. And  Balan Wonderworld was Yuji Naka’s interactive   resignation from the games industry. I’m joking,  of course; Square Enix wrestled creative control   away from the man and then refused to take  his name off the game. On the bright side,   Yuji, whatever you do next is going to be  seen as one hell of a step up. Oh, oh no. #42: 1972 This is it, the year that started   it all. Sort of. If you really squint. But not  really. So, right, we promised you an explanation,   and you’re going to get one. 1972 was not the  first year in which video games existed. That’s   a fact. It does, however, mark the first year in  which video games as we know them existed. This   is when video games went from being impressive  experiments to being...well...an industry. 1972   laid firm groundwork for every year to follow.This  due to two innovations that happened to land in   the same year: onein arcades, and one in homes. The early emissary of the arcade landscape was   none other than Pong. This was not the first  arcade game; Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney   released Computer Space the previous  year. Computer Space, in our opinion,   is the better game. It’s a more involved  experience that relies on players mastering   tricky movement to either blast enemy spacecraft  or each other, depending upon the version of the   game. It was impressive. Maybe not when compared  to Rocket League or something, but when compared   to...y’know...nothing, it was quite revolutionary.  Computer Space, however, was nowhere near the hit   that 1972’s Pong was. Pong was entirely reaction  based, with controls that were simple to master,   which was a better fit for a public that didn’t  have years of video game experience yet. (And   which was also probably rather drunk, as the  Pong prototype was originally installed in a   tavern.) Computer Space struggled to sell around  1,500 cabinets, but Pong quickly sold 8,000.  Home gamers – not that there had been any prior to  1972 – got to experience the very first console:   the Magnavox Odyssey. The Odyssey used cartridges  that tweaked the system’s internal programming,   and most of what the Odyssey could  do was built right into it. “What the   Odyssey could do” amounted to moving  different kinds of digital paddles around,   but it was an impressive achievement, and it came  with screen overlays and physical materials to   make each game feel different. The Odyssey isn’t  likely to be anybody’s favorite console today,   but your favorite console – whatever  it is – owes it a debt of gratitude.  Granted, both of these developments happened in  the United States, leaving the rest of the world   to play catchup later, but there was no doubt  that revolution was afoot and, five decades   down the line, it’s impressive just how much of  an impact these two innovations had. They were   the Adam and Eve of video gaming. eFootball  2022 is Cain and Balan Wonderworld is Abel. #41: 1999 Let’s put the good news up front, shall   we? Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was the first sign  of the series beginning to flag a bit, but it was   still good. Also, it arrived in tandem with Silent  Hill, which followed in Resident Evil’s footsteps   with a brainier, more philosophical approach  to the horror. What an exciting new series! I’m   sure this one will be around forever and ever. Tony Hawk’s Skateboarding – or Tony Hawk’s Pro   Skater, if you wanna get transcontinental about  this – set a new precedent for sports games. I   know you get mad when we call skateboarding a  sport, but other people would get made if we   didn’t call it a sport, so go easy on us. Jeez,  let me move on to something easier to describe,   like Shenmue, which...right, I’ve played  Shenmue and I still don’t know what it is. Maybe   I’ll call it a sport, too, just to annoy you. We also got great games such asSuper Smash Bros.,   Crazy Taxi, Ape Escape, System Shock 2, and Mario  Golf. Look, our writer really loves Mario Golf,   and he threatened to quit if  I didn’t let him include it,   so let’s politely nod and never speak of it again. Otherwise, though, 1999 was very rough. Strictly   speaking, the “biggest” hardware release was  the 64DD, an add on for the Nintendo 64 that   Japan never bothered exporting. It was such a  flop that they may have considered deporting it   instead. There was a small highlight in the form  of the Wonderswan, which was Nintendo’s first true   competitor in the handheld space, as it managed  to grab 8% of the market. That’s...not much,   but it’s an impressive amount to steal back  from Nintendo. When the Wonderswan qualifies   as a hardware highlight, though,  you’re in rather rocky territory.  1999 was also the year that brought us  Superman: The New Superman Adventures,   better known as Superman 64, which was every  terrible tendency of licensed video games rolled   into one, and then jammed directly into your eye. Most heartbreaking for a certain subset of gamers   was “Chainsaw Monday,” a massive downsizing of  Sierra Online that resulted in the abrupt halt –   in mostcases permanently – of the developer’s many  popular series, including Quest for Glory, King’s   Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest Quest,  Chex Quest, Quest of the Delta Knights...sorry,   lost the thread a bit there, but you get the  idea. The heyday of graphical adventure games   had come to an end and, a few modern revivals  aside, things have never been quite the same   since. When Prince suggested partying like it  was 1999, he must not have worked at Sierra. #40: 1984 The year between the video   game crash and the Western debut of Nintendo’s  Famicom was a largely quiet one for gamers outside   of Japan. A number of developers, particularly in  the West, closed their doors and left the industry   behind entirely. Many others were extremely  reluctant to take risks, seeing for the first   time how truly fragile success could be. Atari  even delayed the release of its 7800 console,   which it had already announced, on the grounds  that they weren’t sure the industry would   survive long enough to warrant mass production. See, companies have this weird thing in common:   They like making money and they dislike  losing it. Super strange! It’s certainly   nothing I understand or could explain, but it at  least provides a reason that developers became,   almost overnight, far more selective about where  they were willing to invest their resources and   release their products. The overriding sentiment  was that the industry was waiting to see what   happened before they shoveled more money  into what might turn out to be a furnace,   and the result was a rather quiet year overall. As such, Orwell was right; 1984 isn’t a year   most of us would choose to live in. Those whowere  around, however, got at least a few interesting   releases to keep them busy. Boulder Dash, Karate  Champ,King’s Quest, and Punch-Out!! are mainly   notable in retrospect for the number of much  better games that they inspired, but they each   still deserve a bit of credit in their own right.  Ditto 1942. The game, not the year. Frankly, if we   were including that “year in gaming” on our list,  we’d put it dead last as nothing came out at all.  1984 also saw the release of one of the most  popular video games in history...though you’d   be forgiven if you didn’t notice it. This was  Tetris, designed by Alexey Pajitnov and released   solely in the USSR for the Electronika 60, a  Soviet-manufactured computer. Interestingly,   the Electronika 60 wasn’t capable of displaying  graphics as we know them, and the blocks were   made from text characters. Probably should  have called it Textris, then, Alexey!  Of course, Tetris wouldn’t truly make an impact  on the industry until 1989, when Nintendo bundled   it with its revolutionary handheld. In 1984, it  was just an oddity, and nobody was even sure that   there’d be an industry at all. It was a quiet  year. Fortunately, 1985 would be much noisier. #39: 1975 As with many of   the earliest years of the industry, 1975 isn’t  where you’ll find many innovations. Instead,   you’ll find just a few that ended up having  a massive impact. Also, as with many of the   earliest years of the industry, it was Pong that  led the way. Though the game was several years   old at this point, and other arcade games were  unquestionably more impressive, Pong was still   a massive success and arcades were flooded with  imitators. What Atari did in 1975 was, finally,   release a version of the game for the home  market. Of course, the “home market” barely   existed just yet, and Atari struggled to catch the  interest of manufacturers or distributors. Yes,   at this early stage, “selling hardware to video  game fans” was a radical concept, and Atari had   to rely on Sears to release the first official  home Pong console, under the “Tele-Games” name.  Magnavox beat the company into homes with the  Odyssey, but Atari making Pong available may   have officially cemented the home market  as a concept, turning those who enjoyed   pumping a few coins into arcade cabinets now  and then into lifelong consumers. Elsewhere,   other advances were happening around the  periphery, with hobbyists learning to program   and developing exciting new games of their own. pedit5 was what we’d call a dungeon crawler today.   It was developed by Rusty Rutherford, making use  of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s   computer system...which was an inappropriate  use of school resources. The game was deleted   repeatedly by administrators, leaving Rutherford  to restore it over and over again. dnd– sometimes   said to have originated in 1974, but it’s  unclear – was another dungeon crawler, but it   is credited with introducing one of gaming’s most  enduring innovations: boss fights. Oh, and ripping   off Dungeons and Dragons. So it introduced  two of gaming’s most enduring innovations.  Another important game was Taito’s Western Gun  – released as Gun Fight in North America – which   featured the first person-to-person combat  between recognizably human characters. It’s   fair to say that that idea caught on. Also, in  1975, the industry hit $15 billion in revenue,   more than doubling the previous year, which is  a rate of growth that would never happen again.  I know that it’s easy to dismiss this  by saying “smaller numbers are easier   to double,” and that’s correct, but the rate  of growth was undoubtedly impressive. Also,   I dunno, I’d be pretty happy with $15 billion,  personally. Maybe I’m too easy to please. #38: 1985 To put the video game   crash into sharp perspective, in 1985, industry  revenue was the lowest it had been since 1974. You   know...when there was almostno industry at all.  Things would, however, start to turn around now,   and it’s all thanks to a little grey box  called the Nintendo Entertainment System.  Nintendo did not export its Famicom, as the  company was no longer comfortable pitching   whatever it had into the global market and  hoping for the best. Instead, they spent two   years refining and reworking the technology into  something that they felt would be more actively   palatable to Western audiences, and they ensured  that the refined system, the NES, would launch   with a strong lineup of games, leaving most of  the less impressive ones right where they were   in Japan. Nintendo essentially pioneered the act  of game localization as we know it. Things weren’t   simply translated; they were tweaked, altered, and  sometimes removed entirely. The company understood   that it couldn’t leave luck to heaven; it had to  make an active effort to ensure that its products   were in line with what Western gamers would want. The result? Super Mario Bros., basically. That   game had a then-unprecedented three-year  development cycle, with Shigeru Miyamoto and   Takashi Tezuka leading production on what would  not only be Nintendo’s killer app, but would be   the industry’s killer app. The game was designed  to be more fun, more impressive, longer, deeper   – quiet back there – and more memorable than  anything that had come before. That was incredibly   cocksure – I said quiet – but, miraculously, they  succeeded. Super Mario Bros. was exactly the shot   in the arm that gaming needed, and it immediately  sparked a level of competition from other   developers and console manufacturers that simply  hadn’t existed before. Also, Nintendo made literal   tons of cash, which they probably liked, too. The year – and every childhood, and most of the   money – belonged to Nintendo, without question,  but there were still worthwhile games coming out   of other companies. Konami gave us Gradius, Sega  gave us Space Harrier, Atari gave us Paperboy,   Capcom gave us Ghosts ‘n Goblins, and all  of those are great...but they also seemed   pedestrian compared to Super Mario Bros., which  felt like exactly what it was: a bridge to a much   brighter future for gaming as a whole. Oh, also the Master System came out.   Somebody might have bought one, but I  haven’t been able to verify that fact. #37: 1986 1986 was a fairly quiet year as far as innovations   went, but it wouldn’t have felt that way. The  NES was still fresh and was singlehandedly – and   rapidly – revitalizing the Western market. Looking  back, it’s easy to just glance over the new games   and say, “Yes, they were good.” But for gamers at  the time, especially young ones, they weren’t just   good. They were thrilling, they were more varied  and exciting than ever before, and everyone of   them was a little magical portal into entirely  new worlds...where everything was made of little   squares, yes, but still! 1986 basically coasted  on its software, but that software went a long   way towards cementing video game systems as  household staples. If you didn’t own an NES by   the end of 1986, it didn’t just mean that you had  different hobbies; it meant that you were missing   out on an entire wave of popular culture. What’s more, for the first time since 1982,   the year saw an increase in industry revenue  rather than a decrease. The industry had not   yetrecovered,but it was, at least, recovering. As  this was due in large part to the NES – seriously,   most of the “industry revenue” at this point  was “company revenue” for Nintendo– it’s no   surprise that most of the important  games were released for thatconsole.  Castlevania, Dragon Quest, Adventure Island,  Metroid, and Kid Icarus offered enough on their   own to keep gamers busy, but Nintendo had to go  and release The Legend of Zelda as well. Boy,   that company really doesn’t get enough credit  for inventing the backlog. Cruel, cruel people.   Arcade fans got some nice new toys, too, such as  Bubble Bobble and Out Run, and PC owners got an   early attempt at a comedy-heavy video game thanks  to Space Quest. It was far from the best adventure   game anybody had played, but it was genuinely  funny, which was impressive in itself. Also,   the sequels were much better, thank goodness. Elsewhere, though, fans of Sega’s Master System   – okay, sorry, I tried to say that with a straight  face, I really did. [Ahem.]Victims of Sega’s   Master System were introduced to a character  designed to go toe-to-toe with Mario and break   Nintendo’s newfound stranglehold on the industry.  I’ll give you a hint: He’s blue, he has spines,   he’s a hedgehog, his name is Sonic, and I’m lying  because it was actually just Alex Kidd and nobody   cared. We already covered Sonic’s debut in entry  #49, anyway. You’re so easy to fool, I swear! #36: 1974 Everyone   knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It’s a  scientific fact. But what of video games? Well,   the industry crossed $5 billion in revenue  for the first time, which is significant,   but developers were nowhere near perfecting  video games. Still, the quality was increasing.  For instance, Pong might have been a fair enough  approximation of tennis, but Taito’s Basketball   had actual human players in it. Whether or  not these are the first humans in video games   is debatable; without question, humans had at  least been represented in games by this point,   so Taito’s real achievement was making them  recognizably human. Even then, their arms   are three times the length of their legs and they  have heads like toasters, but, still. Elsewhere,   Speed Race(released under two different names,  Racer and Wheels, the following year in North   America) looks and plays much like what top-down  racing games would become for years to follow.  Then there was Spasim, one of the very first 3D  games ever created. Its programmer, Jim Bowery,   is well aware of how many other games followed  in its footsteps, and in 2001 he even offered   a bounty to anyone who could prove the existence  of “a multi-player 3D virtual reality game prior   to Spasim.” I’d love to collect that bounty  by pointing out the existence of 1973’s Maze,   and it’s almost certainly true that Maze preceded  Spasim, but the development timeline of that game   is far hazier. Some sources claim that  Maze wasn’t a “proper game” until 1974,   when it was renamed Maze War, so I’ll follow  the historians’ lead on this and credit both   Spasim and Maze as the parents of modern-day  first-person shooters. Congratulations;   your children will grow up to be awful. Both of those games were passion projects,   however, and not commercial products, meaning  that the one true landmark title of 1974 was   Atari’s Tank, best known today for opening each  episode of Cowboy Bebop. It’s a very simple game   that sees two players engaging in head-to-head  vehicular combat and it’sstill quite fun, which   explains why we keep seeing variations on the same  idea today. It was a hit for Atari and it would   later inspire some of their most successful home  releases as well. In fact, we owe the game our   gratitude for firming up Atari’s standing in the  burgeoning industry ahead of its first console,   and helping the company to establish what home  gaming would look like moving forwards. In other   words: Tanks...for everything. #35: 2022  As years go, 2022 has been somewhat  bland. Usually, this would be a bad thing,   but considering the couple of years  that came before, I think we’re all   just relieved to have had a bit of stability. The game on everyone’s lips was, of course,   Elden Ring, the gorgeous open-world RPG by  FromSoftware that had everyone and their dog   vying to become the Elden Lord. If you were one  of the five people who weren’t playing Elden Ring,   it’s likely you’ll have been diving head-first  into one of several hotly anticipated sequels,   such as Horizon Forbidden Westor God of War:  Ragnarök, or one of the many, many remasters,   ports, or remakes that 2022 sent our way. Not everyone was pleased about all of these   rehashings though, and developer, Naughty  Dog, caught a huge amount of flack from the   public for remaking The Last of Us, a game  which, at the time, was only nine years old.   Opinions remain divided on whether the improved  visuals were worth the $70 price tag. In our   writer’s opinion, absolutely bloody not. The number of good games released in 2022   were far outweighed by the disappointing  ones, and despite being hyped into oblivion,   players came away feeling short changed by  everything from the Saints Row reboot to   Gotham Knights, and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. As the world began to go somewhat back to normal,   gamers found it much easier to come by hardware  that had previously alluded them. The Xbox   Series X and PlayStation 5 were still selling out  almost as quickly as they were being stocked, but   certainly towards the end of the year, it became  less of an ordeal to get hold of the consoles.   There was also good news for PC gamers, who saw  the prices of major components like GPUs falling   due to the resolution of supply chain issues  and declines in the stock and crypto markets.  If 2022 was the year of anything though,  it was the year of the acquisition. Zynga,   the American studio behind Farmville, was bought  by Take-Two Interactive for $12.7 billion,   and Sony acquired Halo and Destiny developer,  Bungie, for $3.6 billion, but perhaps the   biggest upset was Microsoft’s announcement that  they intend to buy recently-disgraced company,   Activision Blizzard. Should the acquisition  be approved by international regulators,   it will be the largest in video game  history, and will grant Microsoft the   rights to a plethora of franchises. By this point, we should probably   just accept Microsoft as our new  overlords and be done with it. #34: 1989 You know, if 1989 gave rise to nothing   other than the Game Boy, it would have been a very  important year. It was the first handheld to truly   become a worldwide sensation, owing in huge part  to all of the lessons Nintendo had learned from   localizing its Famicom for the Western market. The  company understood that high-quality software was   crucial to long-term sales as opposed to a quick  financial rush. Nintendo wanted the Game Boy to   actually stick around and to become a staple  of pockets, just as the NES was now a staple   of living rooms. Of course, nobody actually  had pockets large enough to hold a Game Boy,   but theintention was good. So were the games, with  Tetris singlehandedly justifying the purchase.  Additionally, Capcom was hitting its stride  as well, with the release of...well...Strider,   as well as Final Fight, both of which helped  cement the developer as a rising star and which   are among the best games of the era. Capcom  also released DuckTales for the NES, perhaps   the first truly great licensed game. As far as I’m  concerned, it was also the last! Oh, I’m on fire   today. This was the same year that Konami released  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Teenage Mutant   Hero Turtles if you want to get“unreasonably  threatened by the word ‘ninja’” about this.  Sega was experimenting with games that  might not have paid immediate dividends,   but which did prove that the company was more  confident in experimenting as time went on. There   was Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, which was  a non-linear side-scrolling adventure featuring   transformations, RPG elements, and collectibles.  There was Herzog Zwei, a real-time strategy game   during a time when those were not commonplace,  especially on consoles. And there was Phantasy   Star II, which is now considered to be one of  the best RPGs of its day. Considering the RPG   landscape in 1989, that only says so much,  but it’s an impressive accolade nonetheless.  Computer gamers experienced some seminal titles  of their own, including SimCity,Prince of Persia,   and Pipe Mania. Yes, you once had to pay to own a  copy of the hacking minigame that you hate. These   were lawless times. The PC Engine took a stab at  a mascot of its own with Bonk’s Adventure – known   as PC Kid in Europe, where we insisted on  having the worst name for everything all   of the time – though Bonk obviously didn’t do  for that console what Mario did for the NES,   and the age of malformed caveman heroes was  short-lived. Maybe that’s a good thing, actually. #33: 1995 The PlayStation made its   Japanese debut at the end of the previous year,  but 1995 was the year in which Sony made it very,   very clear that they weren’t just entering  the console market out of curiosity;   they were coming out swinging. Sadly for Sega,  this coincided with the very first E3, during   which attendees witnessed a public execution. Sony  deliberately and expertly cut the legs out from   under the Saturn’s Western debut, and the company  set its sights on Nintendo next. Of course,   theatrics and pricing wars only mean so much;  good hardware needs good software, and though 1995   was far from the PlayStation’s best year in that  regard, it was still a pretty good one. Suikoden,   Wipeout, Rayman, and Twisted Metalwere among  some of the console’s early highlights.  The quick success of the PlayStation can’t  be overstated, as this got the understandable   attention of longtime Nintendo developers, who  would quickly begin making moves to put their   long-running series on Sony hardware instead.  In the years to come, Square would move Final   Fantasy and Dragon Quest there, Capcom would  move Mega Man X, Konami would move Castlevania,   and the fewer games that Nintendo fans could  count on getting, the more curious eyes would   turn Sony’s way. Those, of course, were still  developments yet to come, so we aren’t counting   them here, but the point is that Sony gained a  lot of ground with the PlayStation’s debut, and   the momentum would not slow for a very long time. None of which is to say that Nintendo was showing   signs of slowing down just yet. Some of the  best games of the year were found on their   juggernaut SNES, including Yoshi’s Island,  Panel de Pon, Terranigma, Tales of Phantasia,   and Chrono Trigger. Additionally, they launched  the Satellaview in Japan, which introduced online   gaming and downloadable titles into millions  of homes. They also launched the Virtual Boy,   however, which introduced glass and red plastic  into millions of landfills. Speaking of which,   Tiger’s R-Zone debuted that year as well.  Boy, people really thought that the future   would be bright crimson and black, didn’t they? So, yeah, there was great hardware making waves   and some pretty lousy hardware pulling down the  overall average, including Atari’s Jaguar CD,   which was essentially the last gasp of what  had once been a classic company. Atari didn’t   die with the Jaguar, though its quality of  life was certainly never very high after   this point. That’s a little sad. Let’s dip back  into Atari’s glory days for a bit then, shall we? #32: 1977 1977 was a year with a lot of small successes and   two major ones. In terms of hardware, this was the  year of the Atari 2600. The system allowed games   to be fully loaded onto cartridges, as opposed to  using cartridges to simply manipulate the software   of the console itself, as the Odyssey did. This  freed up developers to do...well...anything at   all, as long as the 2600 could actually run it.  The sky was the limit, and the console gave rise   to waves of third-party developers who could now  make games for the growing industry without having   to also create hardware. Not all 2600 games  were great, of course, but the system ushered   in a new and significant era of creativity. The  games also looked far better than anything the   Odyssey could have produced, showing how far  the technology had advanced in just five years.  The other big success was Zork. Zork was  heavily inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure,   and it similarly inspired hobbyists and massive  nerds to dabble in programming for themselves,   but it also went on to become one of home  gaming’s earliest smash success stories. It   was an “indie darling” before there was even  an indie scene. It wouldn’t see a commercial   release until a later version, called  Zork I, was released by Infocom in 1980,   but the game was already making waves through  informal distribution networks before then. It   even became a series of its own. We certainly  got sequels to games released before 1977,   but very few of them could have been  said to have launched entire franchises.  Still notable but less immediately influential  were the Color TV-Game 6 – marking Nintendo’s   earliest dalliance with consoles, though still  a tentative one – and the Apple II, which was   not designed for games but which would eventually  give rise to some truly enduring ones, and which   provided budding young developers with their  first taste of home computing and programming.  This is also the year that Atari cofounder Nolan  Bushnell opened the first Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza   Time Theatre in San Jose, California. It  was a notable event in arcade history,   as it provided dedicated space for fans to  visit and experience a vast array of cabinets,   as opposed to just finding one or two at various  pubs or restaurants. Video games, in other words,   were finally becoming enough of a draw  themselves; they no longer had to rely on other   things being the main attraction. Of course,  “pizza” and “singing mice” probably helped. #31: 1997 It was the best of times,   it was the worst of times. Actually; this is  neither the first nor last entry on this list,   so that’s not true. Sorry, Dickens. Sorry!  Shouldn’t have brought you into this at all,   really. Point is, this was a year in which  some good stuff happened, but some really   crap stuff also happened, and overall it’s  kind of a wash. (There you go, Charles;   that should have been your opening sentence!) The odds are good that if you’re into classic   video games at all, at least one of your  favorites either released in 1997 or was   a sequel to something released  in 1997.GoldenEye 007, Oddworld:   Abe’s Oddysee, Diablo, Gran Turismo, Klonoa: Door  to Phantomile, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night,   and Dungeon Keeper were all instant classics,  and their reputations have only grown since.  Final Fantasy had an especially strong  showing, with Final Fantasy VII and Final   Fantasy Tacticsboth hitting shelves. Also,  two legendary franchises got their start here:   Grand Theft Auto and Fallout. They’d both  get much bigger,and they’d also get better,   but each of those games made a huge impact, and it  was clear that they would lead to great things. In   both cases, that was correct...for the most part. And yet it was also a year of misfortune. Let’s   point and laugh at the game com, Tiger’s  attempt at a handheld to rival the Game Boy,   which ended up instead rivaling flesh-eating  bacteria for how much anyone wanted it. The   reason we’re going to point and laugh and get  it out of our systems now is that1997’s other   tragedies are not deserving of mockery. The first is that Gunpei Yokoi was struck   and killed by a motorist, resulting in an  untimely death for one of gaming’s earliest   visionaries. Yokoi was instrumental to the  development of the Game & Watch and Game Boy,   and was still actively developing new  hardware when he died. (The Wonderswan, his   final project, would be released posthumously.) The second is that an episode of the Pokémon anime   contained flickering visuals that resulted in the  hospitalization of almost 700 children in Japan,   with some remaining hospitalized for weeks.  Nintendowas not responsible for this – they   didn’t make the anime – but the companywas  tied closely enough to the property that their   shares dipped significantly and Nintendo  president Hiroshi Yamauchi had to issue a   statement that the games did not use the same  flashing effects seen in the television show.   There was a lot of unfortunate darkness in  this year that was otherwise pretty great. #30: 1981 Prior to 1981,   major advances in gaming had some breathing room.  The Odyssey had a five-year head start before the   Atari 2600 started kicking it out of homes. Pong  had four years of intermittent dominance before   Breakout further evolved the arcade experience,  and Breakout itself had two years before Space   Invaders blew it away. Next, Space Invaders had  two years before Pac-Man gobbled it up. But in   1981, the very next year, Donkey Kong barreled its  way onto the scene. Gone were the days of slow,   small innovations; things were changing every year  from this point forwards, and they were changing   in great number. All because, in 1981,everyone  fell in love with a gorilla. Not...in that   way. Come on, you know what I meant. Pac-Man stayed on top financially,   but attention was turning to Donkey Kong, which  introduced...well, Donkey Kong, and also Mario,   who would go on to essentially define video  games well into the 1990s. The fascinating   thing is that the entire game was born from  misfortune...and therefore both the Donkey   Kong and Mario franchises were as well. After  Nintendo failed to shift nearly as many Radar   Scope units as it had manufactured – remember  that one? – the company tasked Shigeru Miyamoto   and Gunpei Yokoi with creating a better game that  could run on the same hardware. The idea was that   unsold Radar Scope units would be reconfigured  to run whatever the two young men created,   and maybe the company could make its money  back. Had they failed, Nintendo might have   pulled out of video games altogether. They  did not fail, of course, and both men became   industry superstars in their own right in the  years to come. All anybody knew at the time,   however, was that Donkey Kong was the new  king, and he was more than happy to collect   the world’s tribute in form of pocket change. This was not the only important debut,   though it was certainly the most momentous  one. Other important new series includedUltima,   Wizardry, and Castle Wolfenstein. And  there were more high-profile hits as well,   including Frogger, Galaga, Tempest, and  Defender...which was so popular that it   got a sequel, Stargate, in the very same year. Things were picking up speed in 1981, and notably   so. The technology was still primitive, but with  the introduction of so many enduring classics   and new series, things were finally starting to  look a lot more like what we’d recognize today. #29: 1988 Because the PC gaming market   is more dispersed, it’s sometimes tough to look  at one year and see innovation after innovation   landing in quick succession, the way we’d often  see in arcades or on consoles. But 1988 saw a pair   of major titles from Interplay that are worth  taking note of. There was Battle Chess, which   was an early word-of-mouth hit that introduced  a new generation of fans to chess in general,   removing the abstraction from the game and  replacing it with well-animated cartoon violence,   just as God intended. Then there was Wasteland,  a post-apocalyptic RPG with pitch-black humor,   punishing difficulty, and a harrowing look at  familiar locations razed by nuclear war. We’d   end up revisiting similar ideas to even better  effect in the company’s later Fallout series.  And, of course, Nintendo was riding high.  To give you some idea of just how high,   the company debuted Nintendo Power, a long-running  magazine that contained hints, tips, previews,   cheat codes, and reviews...which wouldn’t be  notable aside from the fact that subscribers   were basically paying to receive video game  advertisements. That was one hell of a trick   on Nintendo’s part, and it’s not one that any  other company really managed to pull off again.  Really, it was Nintendo’s fans who were best  served in 1988. Ninja Gaiden made its debut in   arcades and on the NES in the same year, showing  that developers realized the importance – and   profitability – of covering both bases. Mega  Man 2 set a new standard for action games,   and it did so by basically being Mega Man 1  again, only good. Also,we got a great sequel   to Super Mario Bros., but it wouldn’t have been  the same sequel for everybody. In the West,   it was the reworked version of Super Mario  Bros. 2, and in Japan it was the smash hit   Super Mario Bros. 3. By this point, the  portly plumber was officially gaming’s   brightest star...but was that about to change? Maybe, because with the release of the Mega Drive,   Sega was finally ready to bring its real mascot  into homes. Yes, you waited patiently for him,   and now he’s arrived at last, the one  true rival that would shake Nintendo:   Altered Beast, the beast which is altered. Yeah, Sega’s strategy of “calling everything   a mascot and hoping for the best” wasn’t really  working. The Mega Drive was here, and it was   impressive, but it wasn’t a smash hit out of the  gates and, as we’ve seen, Sonic certainlytook   his sweet time showing up. I thought he was  supposed to be quick, that guy. What a fraud. #28: 1982 1982 was a year of   major debuts and a pair of high-profile sequels,  continuing the industry’s upward trajectory,   though the seeds of the following year’s  video game crash were sowed here. Obviously,   we’ve already discussed that in the entry for  1983 – a year which itself probably deserves to   be buried in the desert – but it’s worth noting  that the cracks were starting to show here,   however strong 1982 might have been otherwise. And it was indeed strong otherwise. Atari launched   the 5200, which fell massively short of the  2600’s sales, but which brought newer technology   to consoles and cemented the company, for the  time being, as the standard for home gaming. The   ColecoVisionmade its debut, and though it  didn’t loosen Atari’s grasp, it did become   a classic console in its own right. It even  launched with a pack-in version of Donkey Kong,   which looked great for the time  and was a major selling point.  Arcades saw the debut of huge games such as  Jungle King, though it was quickly renamed   Jungle Hunt to avoid legal entanglements with  Tarzan. For a man raised by apes, he certainly   is litigious. There was alsoDig Dug, Burger Time,  Pole Position, and Q*Bert, which is one hell of a   strong lineup of unique ideas. Gamers had more  variety than ever, and, as we now know, things   were really just getting started. We got sequels  to popular games as well, such as Donkey Kong Jr.,   Ms. Pac-Man, and probably some other games that  didn’t rely on exploring the family trees of   established characters. Seriously, we were this  close to getting a game about Frogger’s Auntie.  Home gamers were blessed with Pitfall! It  wasn’t David Crane’s first game, but it was   definitely the one that positioned him as one  of the industry’s earliest superstars. Pitfall!   was easily the most impressive platformer yet  released, and it provided a sense of exploration   that was unrivaled on consoles up to that point.  It looks a bit primitive today, yes, but its   influence was massive. Speaking of massive, Koei  released what might be the first eroge game,   Night Life, inventing an exciting new genre!  The game featured explicit images of...right,   I’ve just read the rest of this sentence and I’m  not comfortable saying any of it out loud, so   let’s wrap this up. Point is, things were riding  high in 1982! Shame that it was followed by 1983. #27: 1987 It will come as no surprise to hear that Nintendo   was still dominating the home market in 1987, but  we should at least spend some time acknowledging   just how great a year it was for arcade games.  That, after all, was an area in which Nintendo   had far less of a presence, and other companies  could develop their own identities with   interesting and influential releases that didn’t  have to fit onto a dinky little NES cartridge.  Sega, for instance, was still unsuccessful at  getting anyone on Earth to buy a Master System,   but the company continued to crank out arcade  hits, such as Shinobi and After Burner. Konami   set the bar for co-op games with Contra and  Double Dragon. And Capcom released Street   Fighter...but it was the crap Street Fighter,  so let’s check back in later for the sequel.  PC games as well were striking out in impressive  new directions, particularly in the field of   graphical adventure games. Maniac Mansion was a  brilliant horror-comedy that literally no human   being ever finished without a hint book.  Police Questoffered a striking innovation   of its own by not being any fun. And Leisure  Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards   innovated in ways that we can’t discuss  if we’d like to keep this video monetized.  1987 also saw the debut of the PC Engine – or  TurboGrafx-16, if you want to get “Simon Miller   photoshopped into a 1980s wardrobe” about this –  though it wouldn’t hit the West until 1989. And,   when it did, it wasn’t all that much of a hit.  Still, it was very impressive hardware for the   time and it had a pretty decent library  of games as well, earning it a dedicated   following that exists to this day. It couldn’t  hold a candle to the NES in terms of sales but,   at this point in time, literally nothing could. Because, yes, the NES continued to offer the best   games of the era. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! was  perhaps the first celebrity-licensed game worth   playing, andFinal Fantasy was...I mean, it was  Final Fantasy. Anyone who hears those two words   will know immediately how important they are. Add  to those a litany of strong sequels – Zelda II,   Castlevania II, Dragon Quest II, too – and that  was still just the tip of the iceberg. It was   Nintendo’s last truly unchallenged year at the  top, but they absolutely made the most of it.   #26: 2013 God,   2013 had some great stuff. Can’t we just focus  on that? There were so many excellentreleases   in 2013 that I feel my icy heart melting. Is  this what the scientists call...happiness?  2013 gave us great games all around. Shin Megami  Tensei IV is the best game in that renowned   series. The Wonderful 101 briefly discovered  a reason for the Wii U to have a touch screen.   Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag remembered that  the series was supposed to be vaguely historical,   yes, but it was also meant to be fun.Additionally,  we had a slew of games that explored some of the   industry’s most important questions. BioShock  Infinite asked, “What if the main character could   breathe outside?” The Tomb Raider reboot asked,  “What if this series were good again?” Papers,   Please asked, “What if great games could  make us miserable?” Flappy Bird asked the   same question that everyone asked about Flappy  Bird, and our answer was 17. This was also the   year of Guacamelee!, The Stanley Parable,  Lego City Undercover, and The Last of Us.  However, 2013 was the year that had the largest  number of contenders for worst game ever made,   with a whopping – and reeking – five games:  Aliens: Colonial Marines, Ride to Hell:   Retribution, Double Dragon II: Wander of  the Dragons, and two games that don’t have   colons in their titles but definitely came  out of one: the Kinect kerfuffle Fighter   Within and the always-online disasterpieceSimCity. Then there was the massive disappointment of the   Ouya, a crowd-funding success that, in all  honesty, seemed poised to do well. The rise   of small developers and the rapid embrace of indie  games suggested that a console built aroundthose   thingsshould have been a hit. And yet, it was  the precise opposite of a hit: It was the Ouya.  The problem was twofold. First, the fact that  indie games were on the rise proved that they   already haddistribution on Nintendo, Sony,  and Microsoft hardware, to say nothing of PCs,   and a dedicated console wasn’t necessary.  Second, the Ouya wasn’t all that great in itself,   suffering from poor UI, poor performance, and  a poor controller. On the bright side, though,   it doubled as an incredibly handy doorstop. Right, okay, I feel better now. My heart has   frozen over again, just the  way I like it. Thanks, Ouya. #25: 2020 Ah, 2020,   a year that basically just happened but still  feels like a lifetime ago. Here’s hoping this   entry moves a little more quickly than the year  actually did. The odds are good that 2020 sticks   in your mind as a difficult year for at least one  very good reason, and you may actually have dozens   of very good reasons. In some ways, however, it  was a great year for video games. (I suppose it   had to be a great year for something...) The big news was, of course, the COVID-19   pandemic, which ruined...well, everything, really.  More than six million people have lost their lives   to it and, as of this writing, that number is  still climbing, which is absolutely horrifying.   We’re only looking at video games for this  list, however, and it is a fact that lockdowns,   quarantines, and isolations led to an uptick  in industry revenue. One of the world’s biggest   accounting firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers,  estimated industry growth for 2020 at 10%.   That’s bigger than it sounds, as other industries  saw sharp decreases in revenues, such as movie   theaters, which plummeted 71%. Simply put, people  were buying and playing more games. And those   people were, basically, buying and playing Animal  Crossing: New Horizons, which sold more than 31   million units by February 2021. The safe island  paradise of that game arrived at exactly the time   that fans needed it most. Also, you haven’t  been back to check on your villagers since,   so I’m sorry to report that they now hate you. It was also a year of great games such as   Half-Life: Alyx, The Last of Us Part II, the first  0.0004% of Final Fantasy VII’s remake, and...well,   I’ve also got Cyberpunk 2077 written here, but  that obviously belongs in the “negatives” column;   it and Warcraft III: Reforged duked it out to see  who could disappoint the largest number of fans.  COVID-19 also made it difficult for gamers to  enjoy the newest releases, as severe console   shortages affected the PlayStation 5 and Xbox  Series X Slash Series S, a problem that is still   not fully resolved. Once again, Nintendo’s timing  couldn’t have been better; having the Switch   already on shelves made it a much easier purchase. This year, multiple stories of sexual misconduct   and harassment were also brought to light at  major companies and events, including Ubisoft,   Evo, and Insomniac. Let me be very clear  that “things being brought to light” is an   inherently good thing. It does make us feel  quite terrible, however, to know how much   of our money was given to companies that were  treating entire classes of people appallingly. #24: 1992 Nine years after the video game crash,   1992 represents a year in which gaming had finally  found its footing a second time. Industry revenue   wouldn’t match its pre-crash peak until the  following year, but things were feeling more   like...well...an industry again. Games were  also being taken more seriously than they ever   had before, for better and for worse. Nintendo had  ushered the medium into a new era of credibility,   Sega was nipping at its heels (which continued  driving innovation on the part of both companies),   and the entire year was full of true  classics from just about every corner.  With attention comes controversy, however, and  controversy indeed sprung from a pair of games   released late in 1992. Mortal Kombat took the  sturdy template established by Street Fighter   II and added the ability to rip your opponent  apart with lovingly rendered gore. Night Trap   intended to put the “killer” in “killer app” for  the Mega CD, inviting both vampires and murderers   into your home in glorious full-motion video.  Both games horrified parents and politicians,   who were worried that they would expose  children to...all of the same things   children already been seeing in films for decades. It wasn’t all scantily clad slaughterhouse fun,   of course. Virtua Racing was only horrific if  you were afraid of oversized polygons. Kirby’s   Dream Land was only horrific if you thought  about it for a while. Sonic the Hedgehog 2   was only horrific if you knew that the tendency  to introduce new friends for Sonic with each   game would eventually give rise to Charmy Bee. We also saw the release of games that may not   have been the first in their genres, but which  directly inspired legions of imitators and gave   rise to far greater things. Wolfenstein 3D did  it for first-person shooters, Dune IIdid it for   real-time strategy games, Alone in the Dark did  it for survival horror, and Super Mario Kart did   it for the end of lifelong friendships. It  was a good year, and the controversy that   sprung from Mortal Kombat and Night Trap  wouldn’t quite rear its head until 1993,   leaving this year to place impressively well. Ultimately, 1992 was when a lot of people   took notice of video games, whether  that was out of intrigue or fear.   The industry earned a lot of new fans, but  it would soon also make a lot of enemies. #23: 2014 2014 was a year of   significant ups and downs. Whether or not the good  outweighs the bad may come down to whether or not   you belong to a marginalized group in gaming. As  we’re trying to keep things positive, just know   that we’ve indeed taken the horrendous toxicity  that reared its head in 2014 into account,   and if you’d rank this year lower than we did as a  result, we wouldn’t blame you at all. Even outside   of that, there was plenty to get angry about. Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric in any given year   would probably deserve the most venom. Sega  entrusted its most valuable IP to a new company,   forced that company late in development to aim for  a Wii U release, and then rushed that company to   finish making it as quickly as possible. The  only wise thing Sega did with Sonic Boom was   release it in the same year as Dungeon Keeper,  which EA released as an exciting new way to get   hold of people’s credit card numbers. Sonic  Boom certainly hasn’t been forgotten as the   misguided mess that it was, but Dungeon Keeper  ensured that Sega wasn’t the only company in the   crosshairs that year. Which was worse? Well, do  you prefer your game to be crawling with bugs or   with microtransactions? There’s no right answer. Elsewhere, P.T. was a remarkably confident vision   of a horror game that...never actually came  out. Five Nights at Freddy’s was a new kind of   spooky experience that...wore out its welcome  incredibly fast. The Elder Scrolls Online was   a huge success that...convinced Bethesda to  make an online version of Fallout. Good lord,   this whole year just gives with one hand and rips  your eyeballs out with the other, doesn’t it?  There were a few other bits of goodness that  didn’t come with corresponding horribleness,   at least. Alien: Isolation was precisely the game  that Alien fans always wanted. Shovel Knight would   be supported for years with incredible content  updates. South Park: The Stick of Truth was   one of the most genuinely funny games ever made. Also, Nintendo found success with its new line of   Amiibos, little figurines that, allegedly, could  unlock content in various games. We say allegedly   because nobody took them out of their boxes, so we  have to take Nintendo’s word for that. Also, Geoff   Keighley launched The Game Awards, which quickly  became an annual hub of gaming announcements and   celebration. Almost as quickly, E3 started dying  off, and Keighley soon picked up the slack with   Summer Game Fest. I’ll give him credit for that;  the man’s timing really couldn’t have been better. #22: 1980 With the dawn of a new decade,   gaming took a massive step forwards. So massive  that it might indeed represent the precise year   during which gaming could no longer possibly  be seen as a fad or a quirky hobby; it was an   industry, an artform, and a defining facet of  modern life. And we owe all of that to Pac-Man.  Pac-Man, like Space Invaders a few years  prior, was clearly the best game that had   yet been released. It was colorful, addictive,  and bursting with personality. It’s simple by   today’s standards, of course, but it remains an  enduring favorite thanks in large part to that   simplicity. It’s deep enough to encourage mastery,  yet direct enough that everybody can understand   it. The story of a man with jaundice attempting  to eat food off the ground before he gets ripped   apart by ghosts proved to be urgently relatable  to people all around the world, and it gave the   industry its first true mascot, who still remains  inextricably linked with gaming as a whole.  Pac-Man was certainly the biggest success  story in 1980, but it wasn’t the only one.   Atari released vector-based tank game  Battlezone, which was one of the most   visually pioneering games yet. Space Panic  is often cited as the very first platformer,   though it doesn’t feature jumping. (That  wouldn’t become part of the formula until   next year’s Donkey Kong, which also introduced  a replacement for Pac-Man as gaming’s mascot.)   Adventure on the Atari 2600 gave console owners  a glimpse at open-world fantasy games to come,   Rogue invented a completely new genre that  wouldn’t truly be appreciated for another   few decades, and Mystery House was the  first game from Roberta and Ken Williams,   who would eventually give the industry some of  its most defining graphical adventure games.  Oh, and there was new hardware, too! Good lord,  1980 was busy. Home gamers met the Intellivision,   which got its proper launch this year, after  a small test release in 1979. It was a rousing   success and left gamers salivating for whatever  console Mattel would produce next. That turned   out to be the HyperScan in 2006, for the record;  sorry to get your hopes up. And Nintendo launched   its first hardware success with five varieties of  the Game & Watch, shifting around three million   units and quickly establishing the company  as a major force in handheld gaming. And they   did it with a game that was just called Ball.  Let’s see somebody repeat that success today. #21: 1990 1990 was probably the first   truly exciting year for video game hardware.  Previous years saw some great and important   consoles, to be sure, but they tended to just sort  of...happen. Rarely did something feel both like   an evolution of what we’d seen and an exciting  promise of what was still to come. And yet,   1990 had two bits of hardware that fit that  bill: Nintendo’s Super Famicom – known in   the West as the SNES – and Sega’s Game Gear. In retrospect, the Game Gear fulfilled very   little of its immense promise. At the time,  though, the idea of a full-color handheld was   an appealing one. Yeah, Atari had its Lynx  the previous year, but you’d have gotten   beaten up for playing that in public. The  Game Gear was much cooler. It wasn’t great;   it ate batteries like they were sweets, and  it would have siphoned its power directly from   your body if it could have, but it was still an  important step forwards for handheld technology,   with games that could have been even better  than those on the Game Boy. They weren’t better,   but they could have been...so...that’s something. The SNES, of course, competed directly with Sega’s   Mega Drive, and helped define the 16-bit era with  great games such as Super Mario World and F-Zero.   Super Mario World is even the earliest game on  this list to have an average review score higher   than 90%. Not half bad, Nintendo! Keep it up and  this Mario guy might actually go places. The NES   slash Famicom wasn’t quite forgotten about yet,  either, with Dr. Mario and Fire Emblem becoming   landmark titles in their genres. That’s “puzzle  games” and “hot anime skirmishes,” respectively.  Arcade games were continuing to experiment and  push technological boundaries with games such   as Pit-Fighter, which used digitized actors, and  Smash TV, which didn’t use digitized actors but   was instead good. Then there was G-LOC: Air  Battle, which had an innovative 360-degree,   full 3D world. LOC stood for “loss of  consciousness,” so the game was also innovative   for suggesting that playing it could injure you. PC gamers received some true classics as well,   including Wing Commander, Commander Keen, and  Railroad Commander. Sorry; Railroad Tycoon. It   was also the year of The Secret of Monkey Island,  which is often considered the high-water mark   for graphical adventure games. It’s not, of  course; that honor goes to its 1991 sequel,   in which Guybrush grows a little beard.  Still, this one’s alright, I suppose. #20: 2006 When you think 2006, you think “Wii.” Yes,   the stinking puddle of rancid wee that was Sonic  the Hedgehog. I’m joking. Seriously, though,   the game is terrible. It was Nintendo’s Wii,  however, that made the biggest impact this year,   being the only home console by Nintendo to break  the sales records set by the NES. The Wii itself   would eventually be unseated as the company’s  most successful home console by the Switch but,   until then, the Wii reigned supreme. It didn’t have the greatest specs or most   of the best games, but the Wii was less about  impressing people than it was about encouraging   them to have fun, which it absolutely did. It  launched with Wii Sports, which did a perfect   job of helping players to understand the  appeal of the hardware and, as time went on,   the system accumulated a number of party games  and fitness apps that made it a must-buy for   families and a staple of friendly gatherings. Yes, hardcore gamers had plenty of other places   to get their fix, but this was the first time  that Grandpa and Little Susie could feel equally   comfortable playing the same system, and  that went a long way towards generating   public interest. It was a daring experiment  for Nintendo, and it paid off, as it’s the   fifth best-selling home console to this day. Not  bad for a system designed around shaking long,   vibrating plastic toys at each other.  Actually, maybe I just worked out the appeal...  That system released at the very end of the year,  so it wouldn’t truly start building up its library   until 2007. That’s okay, however, because plenty  of other consoles and developers were keeping us   busy with great games. 2006 marked the debut of  Bully, Saints Row, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,   Gears of War, Just Cause, Okami,Persona 3,  and La-Mulana. Nintendo’s DS got New Super   Mario Bros., which, like the Wii, appealed in  particular to gamers who yearned for the days   of fun-loving simplicity. It also got Cooking  Mama, which single-handedly taught Peter the   meaning of the word “waifu.” The Game Cube even  got to take a final bow with The Legend of Zelda:   Twilight Princess, which also launched on the  Wii. It was a great game on both consoles,   especially for Zelda fans who always wished that  the series would be dark, empty, and miserable. #19: 2019  Only four games averaged higher than 90% in 2019,  which...isn’t many, but none of them scored less   than 30%, which helps a lot...though we do  think that WWE 2K20 probably deserved to. That   game’s negative reception was so loud that you can  still hear the echoes, if you close your eyes and   concentrate. The game was plagued by glitches,  including an amusing one that prevented WWE   2K20 from working once we entered the year 2K20. But let’s focus on the positive. Beat Sabergave us   one of the best rhythm games ever, Disco Elysium  gave us a scummy, gritty mystery to untangle,   the reimagined Resident Evil 2 gave us one  of gaming’s greatest horror experiences,   and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice gave me a  sadness that has yet to dissipate. Other   highlights that we wish performed just a bit  better were Control, Outer Wilds, Baba is You,   and Tetris 99. All of that was great, and the year  was indeed great! Until Google dropped the Stadia,   the most recent Big Flop on our entire list, onto  our collective heads like a gigantic bird poo.  If any company had the means to disrupt gaming  in a new and exciting way, it was Google. Google   instead decided to sink millions of dollars into  a system that did not work, then quickly ignore   it and shut down its development studio around 14  months later. Cloud gaming almost certainly will   be the way of the future, but the Stadia tried to  do too much out of the gate and then gave up the   moment that it ran into any difficulty whatsoever. Also, as if to remind us all of the downsides of a   digital future, Nintendo ceased supporting the  Wii Shop Channel, and any WiiWare and Virtual   Console games became unavailable from that point  forwards. That’s unfortunate, of course, but the   real problem was that additional shutterings were  yet to come, meaning that owners of the DSi, 3DS,   WiiU,PSP, Vita, and even PS3 would eventually  lose access to their digital libraries as well.   Some of those decisions were reversed, for now  at least, but digital storefronts are only good   for the industry as long as the relevant companies  choose to keep them around. The moment they don’t,   we all lose our games, and that is terrifying.  Meanwhile, Microsoft fans who can still download   their Xbox 360 games on their brand-new Series  X are mocking us ruthlessly. And rightly so. #18: 2003 After two years of legendary software, 2003 had an   interesting idea: “What if we kept the great games  coming, but also released heaps of terrible ones?”   The result was...well, a year that wasn’t as good  overall. And so, admittedly, gamers got plenty of   critical darlings and popular favorites to enjoy  for years to come. Silent Hill 3, Star Wars:   Knights of the Old Republic, Viewtiful Joe, Mario  & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Beyond Good & Evil,   Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne...and even  both Wario WorldandWarioWare, ensuring that   we were boxed in by Wario on both sides, just as  we’d always wanted. But the real step forwards in   2003 was the proper standalone release of Steam. Launched by Valve, Steam revolutionized PC gaming   and, in many ways, gaming overall. There are  valid reasons to criticize the service, yes,   but it’s much easier to see the benefits  that it’s brought to gamers and developers   around the world. It made it easier for small  teams to release their games widely and it gave   indie developers their largest audiences ever.  Steam also has a catalogue so expansive that,   no matter your preferred genre or what you look  for in a game, you’ll find it here, along with   several variants that star enchanted anime  bunny girls. Who could ask for anything more?  Alas, we got more, which drags the average  down severely. The biggest hardware flop   was the N-Gage, which made the mistake of  thinking that anyone would want to play   video games on their phones. The idiots! In  fairness, it had some big-name game support   from the likes of Splinter Cell, Tony Hawk,  The Sims, Worms, The Elder Scrolls, Rayman,   and Crash Bandicoot. What a lineup! On a  related note, what a waste of a lineup!  On the software side of the rubbish heap, we  had four frequent contenders for the title of   Worst Game Ever. There was Big Rigs: Over the  Road Racing, which broke new ground as a game   that had to have the “game” part patched into  it later. Batman: Dark Tomorrow and Tomb Raider:   The Angel of Darkness had the innovative idea to  turn things that people loved into things that   people hated. Then there was Drake of the  99 Dragons, in which you’ve got 99 dragons   but a drake ain’t one. It took a brand-new  character that nobody liked and inserted him   into a game that didn’t function. And it bombed!  I swear, gamers are just impossible to please. #17: 2009 If you want a year full of great   games...well, you could do better than 2009. But,  still, the games that we got were good! Batman:   Arkham Asylum shocked the world by being a  Batman game that didn’t make you wish you’d   have been gunned down in an alley. It set a new  precedent for superhero games, which is good,   because the previous precedent was  just a paper bag full of dog sick.  Elsewhere, Bit.Trip: Beat combined rhythm action  with Breakout. Just Dance got us all up and moving   in ways we...probably shouldn’t have been moving.  Demon’s Souls brought the world one step closer to   comparing everything to Dark Souls. The Beatles:  Rock Band thrilled those who always hoped to see   the band appear in video games, but disappointed  everyone who had hoped that John Lennon would   have made his debut in a metroidvania about  finding enlightenment. Infamous and Prototype   did that “Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man” thing  before it was cool. And Nine Hours, Nine Persons,   Nine Doors essentially invented  escape rooms, weaving a story that   you’ve spent 14 years pretending to understand. The biggest success story wouldn’t truly become   a success for a while: 2009 marked the first  public release of Minecraft. This was also the   year that...well, a lot of you will hate us for  pointing it out as anything other than a negative,   but 2009 made the world take notice of  phone gaming. There were games available   for many years before this, but it’s fair to  say that, prior to Angry Birds, mobile gaming   never had a smash success on this level. It was  preceded on phones – just barely – by Canabalt,   an endless runner that found itself with an  enthusiastic audience of high-score chasers,   and it would also become a hit. Developers  were starting to crack the “correct” way   to make a phone game, and the industry has  been more than happy to cash in ever since.  The year also gave us a plop trifecta: We got  Worst Games Ever classic Rogue Warrior, and future   Worst Games Ever classics Leisure Suit Larry: Box  Office Bust and Stalin vs. Martians. In fact, we   will commit to playing both of those games if this  video gets to ten million views. If it doesn’t,   we’ll...continue the show and just play some  other things instead. The stakes are quite low,   I admit. But come on. We worked hard on this  video. Give us the ten million views, please. #16: 2012 2012 has a strong   argument for being the overall best year for indie  releases. Even if you disagree with that, there’s   no denying that the year was pivotal in terms  oftheir mainstream acceptance. This year gave   us the brilliantly violent – and self-critical  – Hotline Miami. It gave us what might be the   cleverest puzzle platformer ever made in Fez.  FTL: Faster Than Light was an anxiety simulator,   and a great one, which puts you in a spaceship and  ensures that everything that can go wrong will go   wrong at the worst possible time. Spelunky got its  first proper public release and made everyone who   played it feel like they were very bad at video  games. And Retro City Rampageoffered pixelized   hijinks in a nostalgic NES-era style. That’s a darned good selection,   and larger publishers and developers kept us busy  as well. Borderlands 2, Dishonored, and Spec Ops:   The Line are all highlights of their genres. Fire  Emblem Awakening and Kid Icarus: Uprising promised   exciting new eras in their respective series...and  one of those new eras actually happened!   Telltale’s The Walking Deadhit new heights  in emotional storytelling, and Journeyhit new   heights in minimalistic storytelling. Also,Gravity  Rush is the best game that you will eventually   get around to playing one day, you promise. In short, it was a rather good year, but it was   marred by one high-profile failure and one easily  forgettable one. The most obvious was the Wii U,   the 17th-best selling home console in  history...which, okay, sounds good,   but when it’s from a company known for rocketing  towards the top of that list, that understandably   qualifies as a failure. The Wii U had potential  that no developers – Nintendo included – seemed   interested in exploring. It set the stage for  the far-more-successful Switch but, at the time,   it seemed like Nintendo had lost its magic touch. Then there was Infestation: Survivor Stories.   There had been terrible games before. There had  been controversial games before. But rarely were   games this terrible and this controversial  at the same time. The game came under fire   for its bugginess, its predatory monetization,  features that were held hostage until enough   people bought the game, customer info being  stolen, a development team that used slurs on   official forums, and more. Infestation: Survivor  Stories probably doesn’t deserve a slot on Worst   Games Ever, but we’ll gladly discuss it if we  ever launch a show called Worst Developers Ever. #15: 2018 Your personal feelings on   2018 will likely come down to just how much  you care about big-budget triple-A games,   as the real highlights were elsewhere. Of  course, we did get a few of those, and what   we got was great! Super Smash Bros. Ultimate,  Spider-Man, and God of War took established   series and gave us their biggest, most-polished  games yet. There was also Red Dead Redemption 2,   which brought along some controversy about  excessive crunch and overworked employees.   “Overworked employees” is not worth a good game,  but at least it was a good game. Fallout 76,   which launched the same year, had similarly  horrific working conditions behind it, and was   not a good game. Fallout 76 did substantial damage  to both the Fallout brand and Bethesda as a whole.  If you were open to smaller titles  with exciting new ideas, though,   then you were better served. Tetris Effect gave  us what might be the best version of the game   ever. 2018 also blessed us with Moss, Subnautica,  Dead Cells, Minit, and Return of the Obra Dinn,   all of which provided interesting spins  on established formulas, and absolutely   all of which are going to be on somebody’s  list of favorite games ever. Two releases   in particular – Celeste and Iconoclasts – also  managed to weave deceptively dense, moving stories   that you owe it to yourself to experience. Both  games are brilliant, both games are important,   and both games prove that even seemingly familiar  trappings can pop with new life when there’s real   passion behind the games being made. “Passion” is probably the right word   to describe 2018, actually. Not all of the  games were perfect, and of course not all   of them will appeal to everybody. But what  was here tended to come from places of love,   with real feeling and personality behind them. Which is why you’d think that this would be a   great year for something like the PlayStation  Classic, but Sony made very sure to strip every   ounce of love and care out of what should  have been an easy homerun. It’s as though   the company tried to provide the worst possible  way to experience one of history’s most famous   game libraries, and the mini-console justifiably  flopped. On the bright side, retailers are still   practically giving them away just to get rid of  them, and, statistically speaking, at least two   of your friends know how to hack it. Let them.  They’ll give you a better product than Sony did. #14: 2015 In many ways,   2015 saw us firmly in a new generation of  gaming. (But you still had to use your hands,   like a baby’s toy.) Games were becoming  bigger and more spectacular, certainly,   but just as important was the fact that they  were becoming more moving and more impactful.   This willingness to experiment emotionally was on  display throughout 2015, in manydifferent ways.   It was bleak and contemplative in Everybody’s  Gone to the Rapture. It was playful and morally   challenging in Undertale. It was philosophical  and unnerving in Soma. It was full of character   and personality in Life is Strange. Even  Axiom Verge conceals a story of loss and   longing. Games were growing up, in other words. Were there exceptions? Of course! We’ll list   a few for you right now, as we certainly can’t  pretend that everythingwas emotionally charged.   Traditional gaming experiences were still  everywhere, and they were no less celebrated.   This was the year of Fallout 4, The Witcher  3: Wild Hunt, Rocket League, and Bloodborne.  Two games released this year do tend to come up  in conversations about the worst games ever made,   but it’s only really fair to count one of them.  Alone in the Dark: Illumination was, basically,   a classical bad game. The right kind of bad game.  It had big ideas and real ambition, but it bungled   them thoroughly, becoming laughable where it  should have been terrifying and frustrating where   it should have been challenging. We salute you,  Alone in the Dark: Illumination, as a game that   manages to be bad in exactly the correct ways. We do not salute the other one, Tony Hawk’s Pro   Skater 5, in any way, for any reason. It was not  a labor of love; it was a desperate grab at some   money, as Activision’s licensing agreement with  the Bird Man himself expired at the end of 2015,   so they released a product as quickly as possible.  I can’t even call it “a game,” because most of the   game wasn’t ready in time for release; players  got it later as a massive patch. The disc itself   wasn’t worth the ink that was printed on it, and  Activision tarnished both their own name and the   name of a classic franchise for the sake of  a few quick bucks. I hope it was worth it,   Activision, because you made the worst  kind of bad game: the kind without a soul. #13: 2007 2007 is another   year that gets by on the overall strength of  the games released, and we’ll get to those   in a moment. Another thing that 2007 has  going for itis the fact that...well...it   didn’t really feature any big screwups. No  major scandals, no massive hardware flops,   no industry-shattering legal battles...any real  “damage” done was temporary and relatively minor,   making it far easier than usual to focus  exclusively on how healthy things were.   Revenue hit $68 billion, a new high, and it  would only grow from here. We tried to find   something to complain about – you know us;  of course we did! – but we had to concede   that things were really quite good. 2007 isn’t  likely to be anyone’s favorite year overall,   but a quick look back brings a lot of  smiles and impressively few grimaces!  Console and PC gamers alike received a steady  stream of excellent titles, such asThe World Ends   with You, Crackdown, Crysis, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:  Shadow of Chernobyl, Etrian Odyssey,   Pac-Man Championship Edition, and Super Mario  Galaxy. On top of those, we saw excellent debuts   for franchises that would quickly become  all-time favorites, including Assassin’s Creed,   Uncharted, BioShock, The Witcher, and Mass Effect. That’s more than enough for anyone, right? Right.   And we’d have happily moved along if it weren’t  for Valve just plopping a whole mess of other   great ones into our laps with The Orange Box.  In a gesture of shocking productivity – not to   mention generosity – fans received a collection  featuring Half-Life 2 and both of its “episodes.”   Nice enough, but it also came with Team  Fortress 2 – one of the best multiplayer games   in history – and Portal – perhaps the very best  puzzle game in history. Oh, and PC gamers got an   extra playable level for Half-Life 2 called Lost  Coast, as well as a Valve-themed reskin of Peggle.   On top of all that, Gabe Newell himself would  come over and walk your dog three times a day   whenever you were on holiday. Okay, that  is an exaggeration, but not much of one.  We will say that the PlayStation 3 wasn’t shifting  quite as many units as Sony would have liked. It   was the sixth best-selling console of the year,  yes, but with only six consoles on the market,   that wasn’t quite as nice as it sounds. Still,  when the worst news of the year is that a very   wealthy company made less money than expected,  it’s hard to feel too down in the dumps. #12: 2010  The year we make contact. In other words,  the year we...Kinect? Yes, unfortunately,   the world’s least beloved peripheral landed  with a thud in an otherwise wonderful year.   The Kinect isn’t just “a bad idea,” though; it  was Microsoft’s most public failure. (Aside from   maybe...Bob? Actually, you don’t remember  Bob, which probably proves the point.)  So, what happened? Well, Nintendo had given  the world the Wii Remote, which swept popular   culture by making gaming more accessible to the  layperson. Sony took one look at that and said,   “I can do the same thing and make it work better.”  Microsoft took one look at it and said, “I can   do the same thing and make it not work at all.” The Kinect was notoriously finicky, alternating   between misidentifying movements and failing  to notice them altogether. Admittedly, most of   the problems with the Kinect came down to its  software, as there’s only so much that hardware   can do when the games are poorly coded and awfully  designed. Regardless, that’s the Kinect’s legacy;   it was a big, expensive add-on that could  only play simple games, and it played them   all terribly. Anyone who was playing their games  on something other than Microsoft’s newest spycam,   however, was enjoying a seriously excellent year. Fallout: New Vegas, Donkey Kong Country Returns,   Super Mario Galaxy 2, Blur, Metro 2033, Mass  Effect 2, and Red Dead Redemption were all   massive, immediate classics. The indie scene gave  us Super Meat Boy, Limbo, and Bit. Trip Runner.   Then there were slow burns like Nier, Xenoblade  Chronicles, and Radiant Historia, all of which   took some time to find their audiences but, once  they did, those audiences were forever grateful.   2010 even saw the debut of two of the most  polarizing games ever made: Heavy Rain and Deadly   Premonition. Visit the internet for longer than,  say, 11 seconds, and you’ll see people loudly   singing the praises of both at the same time that  others are mocking them; the fact that both sides   are able to make valid arguments speaks volumes  about just how interesting these games are.  Only one game released all year failed to break  the 30% mark on Metacritic, and that was Deca   Sports Freedom. It was a Kinect exclusive, which  you...probably could have assumed, to be honest. #11: 2016 2016 was a...tough year,   I think we can all agree on that much. And those  of us who attempted to take solace in video   games were probably a little disappointed.  Yes, of course, there were great games,   and we’ll get to some of those, but it was overall  a rather empty year, full of disappointment and   unmet promises. In fact, “unmet promises” was  basically a game design philosophy for both   Mighty No. 9 and No Man’s Sky. In the case  of the latter, they simply promised too much   and then spent the next half decade trying to  make good on things. In the case of the former,   they barely promised anything, still came up  short, and then declared thatit was better than   nothing. Oh well. At least a new Resident Evil  game will make us happy! Oh. Oh, no. No, it won’t.  At the very least, you were well served if you  enjoy games that are a little more contemplative.   Firewatch, Stardew Valley, The Witness, Oxenfree,  and one of the best Kirby games, Planet Robobot,   all brought a touch of welcome peace and  quietude to difficult times. Then again,   even Kirby wasn’t immune to the frustration,  being as his game involved climbing into a   gigantic robot and smashing the living  hell out of everything around him.  Elsewhere, gamers were rightly pleased with the  rebooted Hitman, even though Square Enix did   everything its power to make everyone hate it  by releasing it episodically and requiring an   internet connection for literally no reason. Stop  telling us that we need to be online to track our   progress, you big liars. Another reboot came with  Doom which, miraculously, tracks your progress   just fine without an internet connection.  That’s a miracle, right Square Enix? It must   be a miracle, isn’t that right, Square Enix?! Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was obviously great,   and Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE was both a  great swansong for the Wii U and a great   way of tiding everyone over for Persona  5. Unless you lived in Japan, where you   got both this year...you lucky, lucky people. Though Nintendo’s Switch still wasn’t out and   the echo of the Wii U’s death rattle haunted us  all, the company itself had a really good year,   not least because of two unexpected hits that  banked on nostalgia:Pokémon Go and the NES   Classic Edition. Both made it clear that everyone  still wanted to give Nintendo money; Nintendo   just had to...y’know...make stuff. Fortunately,  they’d realize that for themselves soon enough. #10: 2011 This is where the   real Dark Souls begins. See? There it is, right  there! That alone should make 2011 the #1 year   on Ben Potter’s list of all-time greats,  but Mr. Potter is nothing if not humble,   so he allowed us to take other aspects of the year  into account as well. That’s unfortunate for 2011,   because not all of those other aspects were  great. In fact, Sony had spent 2010 laughing   at Microsoft for fumbling the ball with its  Kinect, and then Sony spent 2011 fumbling   its own pair of balls. ...There might have been  better ways to phrase that, but you get the idea.  The most notable was the Vita, a genuinely great  little handheld that Sony supported and promoted   for less time than it’s taking me to read this  sentence. The 11 years since have been a long,   drawn-out death for a handheld that deserved so  much better. The Vita even launched the same year   as Nintendo’s 3DS, which was massively struggling  to find its audience. This was precisely the   opening that Nintendo’s handheld competitors  had been waiting for, but Sony was content   to let the Vita starve quietly in the corner. Then there was the PlayStation Network outage,   which lasted for more than three weeks between  April and May, meaning that nobody could play   their games online. That’s all that it meant. That  was the entire problem. Nothing to worry about   at all. ...Oh, also, 77 million people had their  personal information leaked to identity thieves.   Whoopsie! Yeah, it was a major problem and a huge  black eye for Sony. It resulted in legal action   against the company and a major investigation. Otherwise, there was still plenty to enjoy. 2011   gave the world Terraria, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the  White Witch, Rayman Origins, The Binding of Isaac,   Bastion, Catherine, Batman: Arkham City, Portal 2,  Orcs Must Die!, and Sonic Generations, the first   of several times that everyone would cry “Sonic is  good again!” before admitting that Sonic was not   good again. 2011 was also the year of The Elder  Scrolls V: Skyrim. Hopefully you were around to   enjoy it then, because I don’t think they’ve ever  bothered to rerelease it. Sorry if you missed out!  And, finally, this is the year that gave  us Twitch, bringing gaming into a brave new   era in which nobody actually had to play anything  themselves. Think of all the time that’s saved us! #9: 2000 In the futuristic year 2000, people expected   we’d have flying cars, phasers, microchips  in our brains that showed us pretty pictures,   and governments that cared about us. Instead, we  got the PlayStation 2. You know what? Fair trade.  Sony’s second console was by far the biggest news  of the year, though it would of course take a bit   of time to establish its incredible library and  legacy. For now, tentative eyes were on Sony to   see if it could maintain its excellent momentum  in the console market or if it would peter out.   The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling  console of any kind ever so, right, safe   to say they’ll be sticking around for a while. The other consoles certainly had their share of   great games as well, but Sony was the standout.  The original PlayStation had an excellent year,   especially for RPG fans. Final Fantasy IX, Dragon  Quest VII, and Vagrant Story are highlights of the   generation. The Nintendo 64 got all-time greats  Perfect Dark, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask,   and Tsumi to Batsu: Hoshi no Keishōsha. You  probably know that one as Sin & Punishment,   but that wasn’t until it came to the West in  2007. For now it’sTsumi to Batsu: Hoshi no   Keishōsha, and we all have to deal with it. PC gamers received The Sims and Deus Ex,   and even the Dreamcast, which was not long  for this world, gotJet Set Radio and Skies   of Arcadia, two games so beloved that Sega  refuses to remake them in what we can only   assume is some kind of twisted revenge. Things weren’t all great, but we can excuse   most of the failures easily enough. SegaNet,  for instance, was a North American dial-up   service established in support of the ailing  Dreamcast. It existed for less than a year,   lost Sega lots of money, and died an unmourned  death. Then there’s Mortal Kombat: Special Forces,   one of the worst games ever made, but everyone  is happy enough to pretend it never existed,   so it’s not like it’s bothering anyone. Overall, though, the most important development   is that, for the first time, industry revenue  exceeded what it had been before the video game   crash of 1983. Yes, it took seventeen years for  revenues to continue upward from where things   had left off. To put things into perspective, the  crash occurred during the reign of the Atari 2600,   and we didn’t fully recover until the  Dreamcast was on its death bed. It took   a lot of work to turn things around,  but we’re glad it finally happened. #8: 2008 2008 was a boring   year. No major hardware launches. No major flops.  No industry-shaking scandals. No Uri Geller suing   children’s games...nothing. Revenue was growing  steadily, which was good but hardly noteworthy.   14 games scored 90% or higher, which was about  average for this point in time, and 5 games   scored below 30%, which was...also average for  this point in time. 2008 was just a boring year.  And yet, maybe that’s a problem with us.  People look for the peaks and valleys,   and don’t take the time to admire the  rolling plains. Those are beautiful,   too, even if they don’t stand out as easily. 2008  was indeed a beautiful rolling plain, populated   by some of the most wonderful games ever made. Braid was intelligent bliss. Valkyria Chronicles   combined anime tropes with the horrors of  war, as well as turn-based combat with a   tense third-person shooter. It was a combination  that should not have worked, and yet it stands   as one of Sega’s crowning achievements.  LittleBigPlanet turned much of the design   responsibility over to the players themselves,  giving them a creative playground in which to   let their imaginations run wild. Bethesda  brought Fallout back to life with Fallout 3,   a game that blends tragedy and atrocity  with a dry wit and brilliant brutality.  Then there was a whole load of games that  offered...well, nothing is truly “perfect,”   of course, but “perfection” seems to be the only  word that feels appropriate. Mega Man 9 brought us   retro platforming perfection. Dead Spacebrought  us sci-fi horror perfection.Burnout Paradise   brought us open-world racing perfection.Mirror’s  Edge brought us first-person parkour perfection.   Or parkourfection, if you’d like to  help me in getting that to catch on.  It was also a very good year for fans of the  number 4. Left 4 Dead was Valve’s incredible   co-op zombie shooter. Grand Theft Auto IV was  Rockstar giving us what we already thought   Grand Theft Auto had been like from the start.  And Persona 4 is a firm contender for the best   JRPG ever made.2008 didn’t even have any of the  contenders for Worst Game Ever! In fact, this is   chronologically the last year for which we can say  that; every year that followed had at least one.  So, was 2008 a boring year? Maybe.  But if it was, long live boredom. #7: 2002 As we’ll see, 2001 was   a phenomenal year for games, and 2002 retained  just about all of that momentum. Great hardware   was available across the big three manufacturers,  and the quality of the games made it clear that   these were exciting times indeed. Bruce Lee: Quest  of the Dragon, GoDai: Elemental Force, Legends of   Wrestling II, Sneakers, Gravity Games Bike: Street  Vert Dirt...classics, all of them, and I think   it’s safe to say that, if you’re a gamer today,  you have one or all of these games to thank.  ...anyway, back here in reality, there really were  some excellent games released across the board,   regardless of what that mountain of plops would  have you believe. Xbox fans got Tom Clancy’s   Splinter Cell and Todd Howard’s Morrowind – sorry,  The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind – which set a new   precedent for the series: Every Elder Scrolls game  from this point forwards would be called both the   best and worst in the series in online  arguments for years to come, with absolutely   no opinions in between. I do so love the internet! Sony fans – especially cartoon-loving Sony fans –   were in Heaven with 2002’sreleases. Sly Cooper  and the Thievius Raccoonus – or Sly Raccoon,   if you want to get European and far less creative  about this – boasted some gorgeous animations and   an unmatched visual style. Ratchet & Clank arrived  on the scene as a great third-person shooter with   platformer elements, and the series would go on  to teach children around the world about the joy   of double entendres. And Kingdom Hearts combined  Square characters with Disney ones to forge new   ground in impenetrable storytelling. No, I  don’t understand this series. No, you don’t   understand it, either, so stop lying to yourself. Surprisingly, it might have been Nintendo’s   struggling GameCube that had the best year  for games. All-time greats such as The Legend   of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the Resident Evil  remake, and Metroid Prime made their debuts,   as did flawed but still wonderful releases such as  Super Mario Sunshine and Resident Evil 0. Sadly,   nothing was really able to turn that console’s  fortunes around, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.   In fact, Metroid fans had their single best year  ever, with Metroid Fusion releasing just one day   before Metroid Prime in North America.  When do you think we’ll see two Metroid   games in the same year again? I’m thinking  3091...at the soonest. Place your bets now. #6: 1996 1996 is   mainly notable for the introduction of  one very important piece of hardware:   the Nintendo 64. It may not have been able  to compete with Sony’s upstart PlayStation,   but it had a lot to offer. It was four-player  compatible out of the box, it had a thumb stick   before the PlayStation did, and its reliance on  cartridges may have bitten it in the end, but it   also meant that the games loaded with lightning  speed and were less susceptible to damage.  Nintendo 64 fans also got all-time greats Super  Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64...in Japan, at least.   The thing is, though, that fantastic games were  coming out across the board. Whatever your console   of choice, you had something great to play.  1996 gave playersTomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot,   Nights into Dreams, Revelations: Persona, the  first two Pokémon games, Star Ocean, and Super   Mario RPG. Were you into PC gaming instead? If so,  games likeDuke Nukem 3D and Quake kept you far too   busy to worry about the console wars at all. 1996 also introduced the world to two enduring   horror franchises, though they couldn’t be  more different. There was Resident Evil,   which began life as a Doom-like reimagining  of Sweet Home. At least until director Shinji   Mikami played 1992’s Alone in the Dark  and said, “Let’s steal that instead.”  Then there was Corpse Party, which was an  atmospheric horror experience that few games   have ever come close to matching. Most of the  world wouldn’t get to play the game until 2008;   for now it was a project built in RPG Maker for  Japanese computers. Word traveled fast, though,   and these very humble beginnings spawned a  long-running and bone-chilling franchise.  If you like the icing on your cake schadenfreude  flavored, then you’re covered there as well:   1996 marked the official discontinuation of some  of the worst consoles in history: the Virtual Boy,   the Mega CD, the 32X, and the Jaguar. Some sources  claim that the CD-i was officially discontinued   this year as well, but it seems as though that  it might have limped on a little longer. Still,   I’m happy enough to bury it in the same mass  grave. The 3DO was also discontinued. It wasn’t   nearly as loathed, but it had struggled for  three years before being put out of its misery.  Overall, 1996 was a wonderful  year, with the industry ushering   in greatness and ridding itself of lots of  awfulness. It’s hard to complain, really.  What’s that? Bubsy 3D? Never heard  of it, mate. Never heard of it. #5: 2005 Anyone with enough   money can enter the console market. The true mark  of success, then, is being able to follow up your   first console with another that’s worth owning.  Nintendo and Sony had both proven themselves by   this point, but Microsoft’s Xbox could well have  been a lucky accident. Their second console,   however, proved that it was not. The Xbox 360  delivered on the promise of its predecessor,   and it did so in spades. It had a better  controller, superior online functionality,   and a much higher failure rate! Okay, that  last one might not be such a good thing,   but the console did remarkably well for itself,  and the Xbox Live Arcade ushered in a new era   of downloadable titles on consoles, which  itself represented a massive shakeup for   the industry. Downloadable games were  no longer a novelty; from this point   forwards, they would quickly become the rule. Another major development for gaming took the form   of neither hardware nor software. Nor was it a  game distribution service or retailer. It was just   a website. I’ll give you one hint: You’re on that  website right now! 2005 saw the debut of YouTube,   which would soon become – among other, less  positive things – a place for gaming reviews,   discussions, walkthroughs, and so on. It broadened  the conversation around gaming in general,   giving rise to a new era of amateur journalists  and providing a worldwide platform for people   to talk about what they loved. I’m joking, of  course. Everyone complained about everything.  Don’t worry, though; things weren’t all  great. It was also the year of the Gizmondo,   the world’s first console that was also a giant  scam. If you backed the Intellivision Amico,   than you’re probably convinced that it wasn’t  the last, either. On the software side of things,   we got Ninjabread Man and Lula 3D. Fortunately,  neither of them was released for the Gizmondo,   or the entire planet might have been destroyed  in the resulting vortex of awfulness.  With the bad games out of the way, though, we can  focus on the enormous quantities of good ones that   came out in 2005. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved,  Shadow of the Colossus, Psychonauts, Killer 7, and   Resident Evil 4 would have been standout games in  any year, and brand-new franchises got their start   here, quickly earning massive popularity: Yakuza,  God of War, Lego Star Wars, Nintendogs, and Guitar   Hero. We also got the world’s greatest soundtrack,  which just happened to come with a game: Sonic   Rush. What? It’s great! I’m dancing just thinking  about it. You would be, too, if you had any taste. #4: 2004 2004 represented a new era in   handheld gaming, due largely to the release of the  Nintendo DS, the single most successful handheld   console in history. The DS unseated the previous  most successful handheld console, the Nintendo   Game Boy. The third most successful handheld  console, though, is an interesting challenger that   might one day overtake it: the Nintendo Switch.  They are all currently holding their own against   the fourth most successful handheld console: the  Nintendo Game Boy Advance. Right. So, basically,   there’s no beating Nintendo here. Nevertheless,  2004 was when Sony decided to strike at them with   the PlayStation Portable. It was a good product  with a strong library, but it simply could not   compete. Nevertheless, the handheld wars were back  on, however briefly, and fans of both companies   received great games on truly excellent hardware. Another bit of hardware is much more interesting   in retrospect than it was at the time: The Atari  Flashback. This mini console featured 20 games,   was built to resemble a tiny Atari 7800, and  had controllers that were similar in style to   the originals. Does that sound familiar? This  was by no means the first plug-and-play system,   but it was definitely the forerunner of later  mini-consoles produced by Nintendo, Sony, Sega,   and others. This was impressively  prescient for a company that had   long been out of the cultural conversation. That’s a lot of good hardware, and we can’t   even scratch the surface of important games  that 2004 brought us, such as Katamari Damacy,   Monster Hunter, Doom 3, Grand Theft Auto: San  Andreas, Far Cry, Fable, and Half-Life 2. The   most notable title in some circles is one  that would only earn wide notice much later:   Cave Story, a one-man freeware passion project  by Daisuke Amaya that would go on to inspire   countless young developers and played no small  part in sparking the entire indie movement.  There weren’t enough true stinkers to make a  dent in the year, with only two games hitting   our below-30%threshold on Metacritic. Fear Factor:  Unleashed was actively terrible, but Ping Pals was   just...pointless. It was a messaging app for  the DS, which already had a superior built-in   messaging app. Ping Pals also had some minigames,  but it was more of an unwelcome obstruction   to your cartridge slot than anything outright  appalling. If you do want appalling, though, check   out NRA Varmint Hunter, which scored appropriately  low, but didn’t receive enough reviews to qualify   for this list. You’re awful, NRA Varmint Hunter,  but you’re not notable. I think that’s even worse. #3: 1998 One major reason we worked out a scoring algorithm   for this list is that...well, something like this  is inherently subjective. We did our best to take   our personal feelings and nostalgia out of the  overall ranking, because if we relied on those   things, we’d never be satisfied. There’s always  one year that seems like it should be lower,   or a year that we personally loved that we  think should be higher. We could spend months   shuffling everything around without making any  progress...and we still wouldn’t be satisfied.   Everybody will consider different bits of hardware  or certain games to be more or less important than   others. Some people will see some particular  controversy as a genuine tragedy, while others   will see it as more of a forgivable misstep. In  short, there’s no “correct” way to do something   like this; we just did our best to detach  ourselves emotionally from the overall ranking   and approach each year as fairly as possible. Having said all of that, even if we   were just going by feeling alone, 1998 would have  to rank extremely high. On the PC side of things,   Baldur’s Gate and Grim Fandango remain enduring  highlights of their genres, even if the commercial   failure of the latter more or less marked the  end of its genre. This was also the debut of   Half-Life, a series which, a quarter of a century  later, has yet to give us a part three. It’s okay.   It’s fine, really. It’s not that we’re impatient.  It’s just that, you know, we will actually die   one day, and we’d like to see what Half-Life 3  is like, but it’s fine. Take your time, Gabe.  Console gamers had things even better, and when  things are “even better” than Baldur’s Gate,   Grim Fandango, and Half-Life, you know it was a  great year. The best-reviewed game in history,   The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, set the  standard for 3D adventures. Sonic Adventure wasn’t   nearly as influential, but it was an impressive  step into proper 3D, and Sonic has spent every   waking moment since trying to recapture even a  fraction of that game’s charm and inventiveness.   Metal Gear Solid brought tactical espionage  action to the masses with a story that somebody,   somewhere, understands. Horror game fans got two  of the best ever with Resident Evil 2 and Parasite   Eve, and those who loved mascot platformers got  both Banjo-Kazooie and...Spyro the Dragon? I’m not   sure if I’m pronouncing that right. Not familiar  at all really, but I’ve heard decent things.   Also,Dance Dance Revolution hit arcades and made  it abundantly clear how out of shape we all were.  What’s more, 1998 saw 17 games break  an overall review average of 90%,   while only one averaged less than 30%. That’s the  best ratio in the history of video-game reviewing,   and it goes to show just how spoiled for choice  we were when it came to excellent releases. Or it   goes to show how few games were getting reviewed  by professional outlets. Either would explain it,   but we’re near the top of this list,  so let’s accentuate the positive. #2: 2017 Some years are   able to coast on an abundance of great games. Some  years are buoyed by a great piece of new hardware.   2017 soars this high on the strength of both. The hardwarewas the Switch, which was everything   fans wanted from Nintendo. It was simple,  it had a clear USP, it offered something   that no other console did, and it put the  company back in the conversation. In fact,   as of the writing of this script, the Switch is  the third-best-selling home console in history.   Of course, it’s also a portable console,  so if we look at it like that...well,   it’s also the third-best-selling portable  console in history. Impressive consistency!  Not to be cynical, of course, as the Switch  deserves its incredible success, but it remains   to be seen how well this approach will serve  Nintendo in the long run. In previous generations,   their successful handhelds kept the company  flush with money while their less-successful   consoles struggled. Will eliminating the  division between handheld and home gaming work   for them or against them? We’ll find out but, for  now, the Switch was very clearly the right move.  Then there are the games. Oh, lordy, the  games!Cuphead was the perfect realization   of an incredibleartistic vision. Little  Nightmares was a perfect atmospheric puzzle   platformer. What Remains of Edith Finch and  Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice duked it out to   see which could provide the perfect emotional  experience...and they each took such different   approaches that I’m comfortable declaring them  both winners. Super Mario Odyssey has a damned   strong argument for being one of the best  3D platformers ever. The Legend of Zelda:   Breath of the Wild set a new high-water mark for  open-world adventures. Nier: Automata combined   heavy philosophizing with hot anime robots, just  as I’d always wished somebody would. Sonic Mania   gave us the game we always wanted from that  series, and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard gave us   the game we never knew we wanted from that series. We’re still just scratching the surface. Horizon:   Zero Dawn launched an exciting new series,  Hollow Knight did metroidvania better than   Metroid or Castlevania ever will, and A  Hat in Time was the rare indie game with   retro sensibilities that fully lived up to its  promise. We got Doki Doki Literature Club, Prey,   and Night in the Woods as well, all of which  are rich and interesting enough that we could   talk about them for full entries on their own. There were so many incredible games this year,   in fact, that we counted 18 of them as being  landmark titles. That’s more than we counted   for any other year, and for such a recent year,  that’s a massively reassuring thing to see.   2017 also saw the debuts of PlayerUnknown’s  Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale. Do   we love those games? Eh, not really. Do lots  and lots of people have lots and lots of love   for those games? Absolutely. Also, they’ve  made more money than you can even dream of,   and I know you can dream of a lot of money! 2017 understandably came very close to   nabbing the top spot. But one other year just  managed to squeeze past it in our rankings. #1: 2001 Here it is,   the best year in gaming. 2001 saw the console  debut for Microsoft, and though the 360 might   have becomethe bigger hit, the Xbox was no slouch.  It managed to make an impressive...impression,   even when up against long-loved Nintendo and fiery  upstart Sony. Microsoft, of course, clearly had   the money to prop up the console and could have  bought as much advertising as they liked, but   as later experiments have proven – Google, cough  cough – that’s not enough to make people actually   want your hardware. Instead, the Xbox succeeded  thanks to an exciting new exclusive: Halo. The   Xbox also included online gaming capabilities,  correctly sensing that it would be the wave of   the future and impressing gamers who couldn’t help  but agree. Sega, meanwhile, gestured with futility   at its online-friendly Dreamcast, which had  just spent several years famously bombing.  Speaking of which, Sega bid farewell to the  Dreamcast and the console market at large,   putting a button on everything with  Sonic Adventure 2. The same year,   Sega ported it to Nintendo’s GameCube, ending  gaming’s longest rivalry.They also released   Sonic Advance for the Game Boy Advance, which  displayed impressive business sense from Sega,   because they’d finally published a new game  on a piece of hardwarethat people owned.  Elsewhere, the PlayStation 2 was on fire – not  literally– with a slew of brilliant games. Fans   got some of the best sequels in history  with Silent Hill 2, Grand Theft Auto III,   Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Final  Fantasy X, as well as exciting new seriessuch   asMax Payne, Devil May Cry, Fatal Frame,  and Jak and Daxter. If you enjoyed video   games at all, the odds were very good that  the PlayStation 2 had something you wanted.  That leaves us with Nintendo, which launched its  GameCube and...well, it wasn’t the hit console   that the company needed, to be honest. They  supported the system with some great games,   such as Animal Crossing, Pikmin, and Luigi’s  Mansion, but none of them established the   GameCube as a must-have. However, Nintendo  also launched the Game Boy Advance,   one of the greatest handhelds ever. This established a new place for Nintendo   in the industry; it may not have been able to  compete directly in terms of hardware anymore,   but it could find different ways of bringing  content to gamers. Nintendo was no longer   gaming’sguiding patriarch, but it was happy enough  to become its very creative, fun-loving uncle, and   the company has leaned into that image ever since. In short, 2001 set the precedent for what gaming   looks like today, more than 20 years later. Sony  and Microsoft are still going head-to-head in   battles over hardware specs, with the former  having morehomegrown exclusives but the latter   leading the way in online offerings. Nintendo  is still servingas the inventive outlier,   finding new niches in which to flourish while  its competitors fill the more traditional spaces.   This is still the configuration that dominates  the industry today, and these three companies   have held that arrangement for a longer period  than any other set of competitors ever have.  This incredible year also gave us a  frankly insane 32 games that averaged   90% or higher...more than any other year.And  whereas the year 2000 exceeded the previous   revenue peak of the industry, pre-crash, 2001  continued the upwards trajectory, signaling   that the industry had indeed been reborn. If you enjoy anything about gaming today, you owe   it to 2001, which put everything on stable footing  again, and did so with exciting new hardware,   a new set of companies at the top, and some of the  best games ever made. If you were around in 2001,   I hope you enjoyed yourself. It’s not likely  that we’ll see a year like it ever again.

Channel: TripleJump

Views: 399,571

Keywords: Every Year in Video Gaming Ranked from WORST to BEST, every game ranked, every year in gaming ranked, gaming ranked, ranked games, best game every year, every game of the year award winner, every game of the year, every game of the year winner, triplejump, triple jump ranked, ranked list, nintendo, sega, sony, playstation, xbox, microsoft, atari, colecovision, magnavox odyssey, video game crash of 1983, et game, esrb history, gaming history, video game documentary, worst games ever

Id: 6Nx8zJrMg5s

Length: 129min 17sec (7757 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 01 2023