Author: VGC | John

John Scalzo has been writing about video games since 2001, and he co-founded Warp Zoned in 2011. Growing out of his interest in game history, the launch of Video Game Canon followed in 2017.

Listology 3.0: Critics from the UK Choose the Best Video Games of All Time

Roughly a month ago, a discussion about the distinctly American flavor that dominates most of the discourse around classic games broke out on Twitter. Some of the UK’s best-known game writers weighed in throughout the thread, and they all agreed that games that were popular in the US, but virtually unknown in UK, somehow managed to push out many would-be blockbusters that never made it across the Atlantic.

Games such as Contra and Chrono Trigger were specifically called out by name as titles that weren’t all that big in the UK, but are still widely remembered all the same. And at some point, the conversation shifted and began to ask where the retrospectives and re-releases were for Sensible Soccer, Zool, Turrican, Elite, and many others.

As an American, it’s fair to say that I know little to nothing about all four of those games. But what would happen if the UK had more say in which classic games get remembered? It’s an interesting question to ponder, so I pulled out all the UK-based “Best Games of All Time” lists from Version 3.0 of the Video Game Canon to peak into this alternate reality.

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NME Salutes the Wonderfully Weird in “The 50 Best Games of the Decade: The 2010s”

Depicting the 2010s as the decade when gaming got weird is a theme that’s been hit again and again as publications ponder the Best Games of the 2010s, and it was definitely on the minds of NME’s editors when they created their list of “The 50 Best Games of the Decade: The 2010s” (which actually goes to 51):

Since we’re approaching the end of the decade, we decided to make a big old list of the 50 greatest games of the last 10 years – yes, we know it says 51, but read on for the reason why… Some of you may read this list and become irrationally angry. Some may read it and nod sagely in agreement. But what we guarantee all of you will do is read it and think, ‘God bless videogames, aren’t they the absolute nuts…’.

You’ll find hidden gems such as Bulletstorm (#50), Superhot (#38), Night in the Woods (#25), Untitled Goose Game (#20), Oxenfree, and Doki Doki Literature Club (#15) throughout the list, though plenty of big blockbusters were also represented.

And in a not-that-shocking twist, NME chose two of those blockbusters for the top spot, crediting both Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with a tie.

You can find NME’s full ranking of the last decade after the break.

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“The 10 Best Video Games of the 2010s” Have Been Selected by Time Magazine

The editors at Time Magazine have produced several “Best Games of All Time” lists, and with New Year’s Eve fast approaching, they’ve once again turned their gaze backwards. This time, they’ve selected “The 10 Best Video Games of the 2010s,” though like most outlets, they make an exception for two very huge games from 2009:

The video game industry was already a billion dollar behemoth when it rolled into the 2010s. Over the past decade, the cultural cache of video games has grown and its profits are now greater than movies, television or music. The 2010s are when the hobby stopped being something semi-niche, and solidly took its place in the mainstream.

Those games, of course, are Mojang’s Minecraft and Riot’s League of Legends. Describing them as a “global phenomenon” and a “cultural institution,” respectively, Time’s editors argue that the rules should be bent for them as the two games were so important to what gaming became in the 2010s.

Time Magazine – The 10 Best Video Games of the 2010s

  • Dark Souls
  • Disco Elysium
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  • Fortnite
  • Grand Theft Auto V / Grand Theft Auto Online
  • League of Legends
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • Minecraft
  • Pokemon Go
  • Portal 2

The remaining eight selections went to Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Portal 2 from 2011, Grand Theft Auto V from 2013, Pokemon Go from 2016, Fortnite and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild from 2017, and Disco Elysium from last year.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Wins “Game of the Year” at the 2019 Game Awards

Geoff Keighley and his co-presenters shotgunned their way through dozens of awards during tonight’s Game Awards, but in between all the World Premiere Trailers, they managed to shine a brief spotlight on a wide variety of titles. Unlike most years when a handful of titles dominate the conversation, this year’s Game Awards spread the wealth among a lot of worthy winners, including Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, this year’s recipient of the “Game of the Year” award.

From Software’s ninja adventure also claimed the “Best Action/Adventure Game” trophy, but it wasn’t able to sway the jury for the other three nominations it was up for. Instead, ZA/UM’s Disco Elysium became the most-honored game of the night, winning “Best Narrative,” “Best Role Playing Game,” “Best Independent Game,” and “Fresh Indie Game.”

Some of the ceremony’s other winners included Kojima Production’s Death Stranding (“Best Game Direction,” “Best Score/Music,” and “Best Performance” for Mads Mikkelsen), Remedy’s Control (“Best Art Direction”), Beat Games’s Beat Saber (“Best VR/AR Game”), Respawn’s Apex Legends (“Best Multiplayer”), and Activision’s Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled (“Best Sports/Racing Game”).

In addition to a rousing speech by their former President, Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo had a great night too, taking home trophies for “Best Fighting Game” (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate), “Best Family Game” (Luigi’s Mansion 3), and “Best Strategy Game” (Fire Emblem: Three Houses).

The complete list of winners and nominees from the 2019 Game Awards, as well as a video replay of the ceremony, can be found below.

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Destructoid is Talking About “The Games that Defined the Decade” This Week

Destructoid’s staff combined forces this week to deliver “The Games that Defined the Decade,” a series of essays that looked back at some of the highlights of the last ten years.

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“The 20 Best Games of the Decade” as Chosen by The Hollywood Reporter

When it came time to choose the best games of the previous decade, League of Legends of Minecraft definitely threw a wrench into the works. Most publications ultimately gave the two titles their due, but others were hung up on the fact that both originally launched in “Early Access” in 2009.

While compiling their list of “The 20 Best Games of the Decade,” the editors and contributors at The Hollywood Reporter went with the latter option and barred both League of Legends and Minecraft from contention.

But don’t worry, the games they did pick as the “most influential, impactful, and memorable” of the decade certainly deserve it.

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Untitled Goose Game is Popular Mechanics’s “Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” for 2019

Popular Mechanics has has added a handful of titles from 2019 to their ongoing collection, “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born.”

House House’s Untitled Goose Game was picked by Popular Mechanics’s editors as the best game of 2019, both for its “havoc-causing” stealth elements and its “wholesomeness”:

There were lots and lots of great games for 2019, but none had quite the reaction (and the wholesomeness) of Untitled Goose Game. The objective to be the most havoc-causing goose in existence, and it generates so much joy its almost hard to fathom. It just goes to show that sometimes a year’s best game doesn’t need giant budgets and super crisp graphics. It just needs a goose with a bad temper.

From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Kojima Productions’s Death Stranding, and Electronic Arts’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order were all given “Honorable Mention” status, along with a pair of Nintendo-produced titles for the Switch (Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Pokemon Sword and Shield).

Popular Mechanics’s “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” will be added to the Video Game Canon in the Version 4.0 update, which should be ready to go in 2020.

The “Extraordinary Diversification” of Video Games is on Display in Eurogamer’s “Games of the Decade”

Deciding what criteria to use when selecting the best games of the 2010s is often just as difficult as picking the games themselves. So far this Fall, many outlets have focused on the ways gaming changed and grew during the decade when making their lists, and Eurogamer appears to be no exception.

The long-running site (they celebrated their 20th anniversary this year), specifically sought out games that highlight the “extraordinary diversification” of the industry when filling out their “Games of the Decade” list.

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Staff of DualShockers Selected Their “50 Best Video Games of the Decade”

The parade of publications picking the best games of the decade continues to roll on this week as DualShockers got their turn in front of the microphone with “The 50 Best Video Games of the Decade (2010-2019).”

DualShockers focused their list on “games that had significant impact on a cultural, artistic, or development level across both the landscape of video games and larger mainstream culture,” while also trying to encompass the rise of live service games, the return of single-player adventures, and nearly a dozen different platforms.

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Boss Fight Books Will Republish “Pilgrim in the Microworld” in 2020

David Sudnow’s Pilgrim in the Microworld sought to examine the inner workings of Atari’s Breakout (and the people who obsessively played it) when it was first published in 1983. Out of print for decades, Sudnow’s quest to unlock “the essence of video skill” will finally be republished in 2020 by Boss Fight Books.

The indie publisher has turned to Kickstarter to help fund this new printing of Pilgrim in the Microworld (now titled Breakout: Pilgrim in the Microworld), and they’ve already smashed their campaign goal, receiving pledges from more than 150 backers as of this writing:

Originally released under the title Pilgrim in the Microworld, Sudnow’s groundbreaking longform criticism of a single game predates the rise of game studies by decades. While its earliest critics often scorned the idea of a serious book about an object of play, the book’s modern readers remain fascinated by an obsessive, brilliant, and often hilarious quest to learn to play Breakout just as one would learn the piano.

Featuring a new foreword and freshly edited text, Breakout makes a perfect addition to Boss Fight’s lineup of critical, historical, and personal looks at single video games. We’re proud to restore this classic to print and share with new audiences Sudnow’s wild pilgrimage into the limitless microworld of play.

Pilgrim in the Microworld was one of the first books to focus on a single game, and it’ll be released in a “sleek new paperback” edition and as a DRM-free ebook in January 2020.