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.

British GQ Polled Hundreds of Experts to Compile “The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time”

As the official magazine of the British Film Institute, the editors at Sight & Sound regularly poll hundreds of critics and directors to aggregate a list of the Greatest Films of All Time. This once-a-decade undertaking was last compiled in 2022 and uses a simple premise: each voter is able to select ten films and the final list is ranked based on which films were mentioned most often.

The methodology for British GQ’s “The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time, Ranked by Experts” is slightly different, but the recent list is probably the closest analogue the video game industry has to Sight & Sound’s poll.

Like Sight & Sound, British GQ asked critics and developers to submit a personally ranked top ten list of games… without including any guidance as to what “The Greatest” meant. But that “personally ranked” bit means that the methodology of this list differs slightly from the Sight & Sound poll. Each voter’s top title received ten points, second place was given nine, third place picked up eight points, and so on down to a single point for the game in the tenth position. From there, the final list was ranked according to the total number of points each game received.

Sam White, British GQ’s resident Games Columnist, sent out 300 invitations to partake in the poll and received 239 responses. A total of 652 games received at least one vote and the game in the top spot not only accrued the most points, but also the most #1 placements among all voters as well.

So which game came out on top amongst this expansive panel of experts? Drumroll please…

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The World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023 Inducts The Last of Us, Wii Sports, Barbie Fashion Designer, and Computer Space

I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us has had a pretty good year. An enhanced remake known as The Last of Us Part I helped set new standards for accessibility in games when it debuted on the PS5 in September. HBO’s hugely popular live action adaptation followed in January to rave reviews and some of the highest ratings in the network’s history. And now, it has been inducted into the Strong Museum’s World Video Game Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2023.

Three other games were inducted this year, and each one sparked a revolution in video games in their own way.

Nintendo’s Wii Sports launched alongside the Wii in 2006 and popularized motion controls in a big way. Not only did Nintendo’s traditional audience love it, but the game also became a favorite of seniors and inspired Sony and Microsoft to introduce motion peripherals later that generation.

Like Wii Sports, Mattel Media’s Barbie Fashion Designer also opened up video games to a new audience in 1996. The dress-up game sold more than half a million copies in its first year (more than megasellers like Doom or Quake over a similar span of time), kickstarted a conversation about gender and gaming, and served as an introduction to technology for many women.

Finally, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabny’s Computer Space, the first commercially-available video game, has made its way into the World Video Game Hall of Fame

The historians and curators from the World Video Game Hall of Fame spared a few thoughts about the Class of 2023, which you can find after the break.

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“The Greatest Games: The 93 Best Computer Games of All Time” is a Best Games List from 1985

More than 70 Best Games lists have been used to create the Video Game Canon’s Top 1000 (with the oldest going all the way back to 1995). But did you know that an even earlier generation of writers were compiling notable lists in the 1980s?

It’s true. People were already having fierce debates about which games should be considered the Best Games of All Time, even though we were just a decade removed from the launch of Computer Space.

Dan Gutman and Shay Addams, the editors of Computer Games magazine, were two writers who wanted to try their hand at creating just such a list. Branching out from their day jobs, the pair took their gaming expertise to Compute! Books, who agreed to publish The Greatest Games: The 93 Best Computer Games of All Time in January 1985.

The Greatest Games first appeared in bookstores during a very strange time for the industry. This was just after “The Great Video Game Crash” of 1983 marked the end of the line for the Atari 2600. But it was also a time when players were migrating over to a growing number of different computer platforms (especially outside the United States). You also have to remember what was still to come, as the book was published before Street Fighter II revitalized the arcade scene, before Tetris escaped the USSR, and before the NES changed everything.

So what were a couple of video game experts talking about as the best games ever in the 1980s?

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Koji Kondo’s “Super Mario Bros. Theme” Added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is still dragging their feet on formally adopting Henry Lowood’s Game Canon proposal, but that didn’t stop the institution from including a piece of music from a video game for the first time as part of the National Recording Registry’s Class of 2023.

While a case could certainly be made for “Korobeiniki” from Tetris, this honor actually belongs to Koji Kondo’s “Super Mario Bros. Theme,” which was selected for the list by the National Recording Preservation Board. Alongside the rest of this year’s inductees, the board believes that the recording (officially known as the “Ground Theme”) is a perfect example of an “audio treasure worthy of preservation for all time based on its cultural, historical or aesthetic importance.”

The tune was originally released in 1985 alongside Super Mario Bros., and the Library of Congress believes that it is “perhaps the most recognizable video game theme in history.” It’s hard to argue with that assessment, or with its description as a “jaunty” piece of music with a “Latin-influenced melody.”

It’s hard to believe that Koji Kondo was just 23 years old when he created this iconic theme, and he seems genuinely touched by its inclusion in the National Recording Registry:

“The amount of data that we could use for music and sound effects was extremely small, so I really had to be very innovative and make full use of the musical and programming ingenuity that we had at the time,” he said through an interpreter in a recent interview. “I used all sorts of genres that matched what was happening on screen. We had jingles to encourage players to try again after getting a ‘game over,’ fanfares to congratulate them for reaching goals, and pieces that sped up when the time remaining grew short.”

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“Having this music preserved alongside so many other classic songs is such a great honor,” he said. “It’s actually a little bit difficult to believe.”

The “Super Mario Bros. Theme” will be inducted into the National Recording Registry this year alongside a lot of other great music, including “Imagine” by John Lennon, “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver, “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by Eurythmics, Like a Virgin by Madonna, and “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey.

Bite-Sized Game History: Hand-Drawn Secrets of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage, and Cuphead

A pencil used to be one of the most relied-upon parts of a game developer’s toolkit. But thanks to the rise of computer-generated imagery, the humble pencil has certainly become less important over time.

So for this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, we’ll travel back to the days of graph paper and lightboxes, and look at a more modern example of a time when hand-drawn artwork was used in game development.

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2022 GOTY Scoreboard: Elden Ring, Vampire Survivors, God of War: Ragnarok, and More

After wandering in the wilderness during the early part of the PS4 era, the God of War franchise came back in a big way with God of War (2018). With a new pantheon to slay, Kratos slashed his way into our hearts, and he helped Sony Santa Monica collect a decent chunk of accolades from reviewers and players alike during the 2018-2019 “Game of the Year” season (including a sweep at all five of the major year-end awards shows).

But it’s been five long years since Kratos first brought his unique brand of godly violence to the Norse realm, what could the Ghost of Sparta do for an encore?

God of War: Ragnarok, which was released this past November, answered that question with spectacular battles against the one-eyed Allfather, Odin, and the Mighty Thor himself. But not even the end of the world could topple From Software’s Elden Ring, which has steamrolled the competition.

Elden Ring was named “Game of the Year” by dozens of publications and took home the statuette at three major awards show. Only one game managed to break through From Software’s stranglehold on voting bodies across the industry, with Poncle’s Vampire Survivors taking the last major year-end award.

You can see more of last year’s most-acclaimed titles in the 2022 GOTY Scoreboard after the break.

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Vampire Survivors Snaps Elden Ring’s Streak and Wins “Best Game” at the 2022-2023 BAFTA Games Awards

Sony Santa Monica’s God of War (2018) is the only game in history to win “Game of the Year” honors at all five major year-end shows.

With the SXSW Gaming Awards off the calendar, and after Elden Ring‘s victories at The Game Awards, the DICE Awards, and the GDC Awards, it was looking extremely likely that Kratos would soon have some company. But it was not to be… and God of War: Ragnarok wasn’t even the one to snap the streak.

Instead, “Best Game” at the 2022-2023 BAFTA Games Awards went to Poncle’s Vampire Survivors.

The retro-styled “bullet heaven” shooter has been steadily picking up steam since it was released in early access in December 2021, and won over even more converts after its official launch in October. I’m sure a lot of people will look at this as an unlikely victory, but the membership of the British Academy has always tended to go their own way (most famously in 2017-2018 when it chose What Remains of Edith Finch over The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). To further push that point home, Vampire Survivors also won the “Game Design” statuette.

So what of Elden Ring? From Software’s dark fantasy also won two awards, “Original Property” and “Multiplayer.”

Believe it or not, the biggest winner of the night was actually Sony Santa Monica and God of War: Ragnarok. The conclusion to Kratos’s Norse adventures took home six total awards, including three for the developer (“Animation,” “Audio Achievement,” and “Music”), both performance awards (Christopher Judge for “Performer in a Leading Role” and Laya DeLeon Hayes for “Performer in a Supporting Role”), and the fan-voted “EE Game of the Year.”

The complete list of winners and nominees from the 2022-2023 BAFTA Games Awards, as well as a replay of the ceremony, can be found after the break.

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Bite-Sized Game History: Disc Room’s Future History, 007 Blood Stone’s Economic Box Art, and Super Mario 64’s Wild Manga

Surprise… Surprise…

Today’s Bite-Sized Game History is all about the strange little surprises you stumble across when you’re exploring where a game came from. Those surprises can be a clever bit of programming, an economical bit of marketing, or an absolutely wild adaptation of a game that you thought you knew everything about.

Find out which is which after the break.

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Elden Ring Wins “Game of the Year” at 2022-2023 GDC Awards

Hold on to your hats, but From Software’s Elden Ring is now three-for-three at the major year-end awards after it collected a total of three awards, including “Game of the Year,” at the 2022-2023 Game Developers Choice Awards. In addition to the top prize, the development team will need to find room in their trophy case for the “Best Design” and “Best Visual Arts” statuettes.

“Three” was the theme of the night as things definitely happened in threes during the ceremony, starting right at the top with the hosting duties of Leslee Sullivant, a triple threat Game Producer, Writer, and TikTok creator (you’ve absolutely seen at least one of her “stories from the games industry” videos).

The other big winner last night was Sony Santa Monica’s God of War: Ragnarok, which also won three awards. The godlike technical feats performed by Kratos netted “Best Audio” and “Best Technology” for the developer, while a public vote secured the “Audience Award.”

Finally, four other awards went to four very deserving games (the theme suffers when your program has ten awards). Obsidian’s tale of medieval murder, Pentiment, won “Best Narrative.” Immortality‘s innovative use of video was the snared an “Innovation Award” for Half Mermaid. BlueTwelve continued their streak with another “Best Debut” award for Stray. And Citizen Sleeper was given the “Social Impact Award.”

Congratulations also to John Romero, who was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for Doom, Quake, and a laundry list of other games; and to the family of Mabel Addis, who was posthumously awarded the Pioneer Award for her work on The Sumerian Game.

The full list of winners, nominees, and honorable mentions from the 2022-2023 GDC Awards can be found after the break.

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