VGC Updates – Page 2 – Video Game Canon

The 2022 Update to the Video Game Canon’s Top 1000 is Here

This article refers to an older Version of the Video Game Canon. View the Top 1000 to see the most recent changes to the list.

The 2022 Update (Version 6.0) to the Video Game Canon is here… and it’s more or less a maintenance update.

I was able to add a handful of newly-published lists from 2021 (including Games Radar, IGN, and Shacknews), as well as a GamesTM list from 2018, but little changed about my ranking of gaming’s top tier. With these additions, the Video Game Canon is now comprised of 70 Best Video Games of All Time lists that were published between 1995 and 2021.

The Video Game Canon’s scoring system, known as the C-Score, has remained the same for the 2022 Update. This formula ranks each game against the rest of the field by adding together a title’s Average Ranking across all lists with the complementary percentage of its Appearance Frequency.

For a good example, look at Tetris, which yet again landed in the #1 spot on the Video Game Canon. The puzzle game has an Average Ranking of 17.63 across all lists and, because only four publications chose to exclude it over the years, a staggering Appearance Frequency of 94.29%. Plugging those numbers into the formula gives us a C-Score of 23.34, considerably lower than any other game.

But nearly every other title in the Top 10 was shuffled around, though nothing else managed to break into the absolute top tier of the Video Game Canon. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, A Link to the Past, and Super Mario 64 all moved up slightly, while Red Dead Redemption and Ocarina of Time dipped. And after flipping places in 2021, Half-Life 2 and Resident Evil 4 flipped back in 2022. Capcom’s survival horror masterpiece slid back into the #3 slot, while Valve’s shooter sequel reclaimed the #2 ranking…

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USA Today’s For The Win Ranks “The 100 Best Video Games of All Time”

USA Today launched their irreverent sports blog, For The Win, in 2013. But in the last few years, the imprint has branched out to also offer coverage of video games with the editorial assistance of Good Luck Have Fun (GLHF), a media group headquartered in Sweden.

It’s an interesting arrangement, and earlier this month, several of GLHF’s editors got together to produce “The 100 Best Video Games of All Time, Ranked” for For The Win. That means that what we have here is essentially a European-centric list published under the masthead of a US-centric publication.

Yup, very interesting.

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World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022 Includes Civilization, Dance Dance Revolution, Ms. Pac-Man, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Put on your dancing shoes, the Strong Museum has announced the four inductees for the World Video Game Hall of Fame‘s Class of 2022.

After coming up empty in two previous years (2018 and 2019), Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution finally boogied its way into the Hall of Fame. It was joined on the virtual stage by Sid Meier’s Civilization (2016) and Bandai Namco’s Ms. Pac-Man (2018), two other titles that fell short in previous years.

For the fourth inductee, the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee chose Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in its first year as a finalist.

Historians and curators from the World Video Game Hall of Fame put together a short presentation video highlighting this year’s inductees, as well as shared some of their thoughts.

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Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022 Include Zelda: Ocarina of Time, PaRappa the Rapper, Minesweeper, and More

It’s that time of year again… the curators of the World Video Game Hall of Fame at the Strong Museum of Play have announced the finalists for this year’s class of inductees.

The games fighting for a spot in the Class of 2022 are all classics, but many of the titles have been here before. For Civilization and Dance Dance Revolution, this will be their third attempt to gain entry into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Sid Meier’s Civilization was previously a finalist in 2016 and 2019, while Dance Dance Revolution tried to groove its way to immortality in 2018 and 2019.

Four other titles are also getting a second chance on the World Video Game Hall of Fame shortlist, including Resident Evil (which was a finalist in 2017), Ms. Pac-Man (2018), Candy Crush Saga (2019), and NBA Jam (2020).

With six slots spoken for by repeat finalists, there were a few surprises among the games that are brand new to the process. That includes Microsoft’s beloved timewaster, Minesweeper, which could be considered something of a frontrunner after Windows Solitaire‘s inclusion in the Class of 2019. The 1990s as a whole were well-represented on the shortlist, which also included appearances from PaRappa the Rapper, Sony’s funky PSone era rhythm game, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the first 3D adventure from the Zelda franchise.

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman’s Rogue, and Zynga’s Words With Friends rounded out this year’s list of finalists.

As in years part, the general public will be able to vote for their favorite finalist by visiting WorldVideoGameHallOfFame.org between now and March 24. The three games that receive the most votes will be submitted as a Player’s Choice ballot alongside the other ballots from the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee.

This year’s inductees will be announced during an online presentation on Thursday, May 5, at 10:30 AM (Eastern Time), and you can learn more about all 12 games after the break.

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is #1 in IGN’s 2021 Update to Their “Top 100 Games of All Time”

Just a few months after hosting a “Best Video Game of All Time Bracket” for their readers, IGN is back with the latest update to their staff-curated “Top 100 Games of All Time” list.

Games in our top 100 have to measure up to a few key metrics: how great a game it was when it launched, how fun it is to still play today, and how much the game reflects the best in its class. While past versions of this list have put a big emphasis on a game’s impact and influence, we’ve essentially taken that out of the equation. Many games that left a mark and inspired future developers may not stand the test of time and be all that fun to play right now. Or, quite simply, they may have been surpassed by other games.

With all of that said, IGN’s list reflects the current staff’s 100 best games of all time – a collection of games that continue to captivate us with their stories, wow us with their revelatory approach to game design, and set the standards for the rest of the industry.

This year’s update is the seventh iteration of the list, which was first published all the way back in 2003. That group of editors and staff writers chose Super Mario Bros. for as the greatest game of all time. Mario’s first super-sized adventure is still hanging around the upper reaches of IGN’s list (it’s at #21), but a different Nintendo-published title claimed the top spot in 2021.

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Shacknews Launches the Shacknews Hall of Fame With a Massive Inaugural Class

GameSpot and IGN changed the video game media landscape after they debuted in 1996, but did you know there’s another site celebrating a quarter-century on the journalistic front lines this year?

Shacknews began life as a Quake fansite before growing into a full-service news portal and file directory in the early 2000s. The site was briefly owned by GameFly a decade ago and is best-known today as the destination for David L. Craddock’s fantastic Long Reads series. I’m guessing this newfound focus on game history served the editorial team well when they launched the Shacknews Hall of Fame last week.

Honoring not just games, the Shacknews Hall of Fame also exists to shine a spotlight on the creators, platforms, technology, and publications that built the game industry into what it is today:

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Games Radar Extends Their “Ultimate Game of All Time” Shortlist to “The 50 Best Games of All Time”

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launch of Computer Space (and the dawn of the commercial game industry), this year’s edition of the Golden Joystick Awards included a special category for the “Ultimate Game of All Time.” Forced to choose from a shortlist of 20 groundbreaking games, the public overwhelmingly voted for From Software’s Dark Souls.

But the editors at Games Radar, the popular online publication that administers the Golden Joystick Awards, weren’t content to stop there. They extended the shortlist to a full 50 games and published “The 50 Best Games of All Time” last week.

You’ll find most of the classic classics (including Tetris, Pac-Man, and Street Fighter II) in the shortlist for the “Ultimate Game of All Time” competition, so there was a lot of room for new classics such as God of War (#26), Hades (#43), and Animal Crossing: New Horizons (#50) in the supplemental list. The listmakers also picked up the slack where the shortlist fell a little… well… short, and made sure to include perennially-popular games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (#21), BioShock (#22), Resident Evil 4 (#24) in the early part of the 21-50 range.

Games Radar’s “The 50 Best Games of All Time” will be included in the next update to the Video Game Canon sometime in 2022.

2021 Update to the Video Game Canon Shakes Up the Top 1000 in a Big Way (But Tetris is Still #1)

This article refers to an older Version of the Video Game Canon. View the Top 1000 to see the most recent changes to the list.

Version 5.0 of the Video Game Canon is now available. Aggregating the critical consensus from 66 Best Video Games of All Time lists published between 1995 and 2020, this updated and expanded edition of the Video Game Canon has grown to include a total of 1,396 games.

Seven lists were added to the dataset in 2021, including recent lists published by GamingBible and Hardcore Gaming 101. Several legacy lists that weren’t part of previous calculations were also collected for the first time, including lists from Flux Magazine (1995), Hyper (1999), GamePro (2007), The Irish Times (2013), and Power Unlimited (2015).

As in years past, each game was ranked against the rest of the field using the C-Score, a formula that adds together each game’s Average Ranking and the complementary percentage of its Appearance Frequency across all lists. To give recent titles a chance to build their reputation, a game must also be at least three years old (and released on or before December 31, 2017) to be eligible for inclusion. So a game with a lower C-Score will rank higher on the Video Game Canon.

With these rules established, there was one game that was far ahead of the pack… Tetris (just as it’s been for the last four iterations of the Video Game Canon). Alexey Pajitnov’s puzzler reached the zenith of Version 5.0 of the Video Game Canon thanks to its extremely low Average Ranking (18.09) and extremely high Appearance Frequency (93.94%). Those components give it a C-Score of 24.15, which is well below the average C-Score of 195 and almost 12 points better than the runner-up.

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Long-Defunct Flux Magazine Picked “The Top 100 Video Games” All the Way Back in 1995

With the 2021 Update to the Video Game Canon just around the corner, I thought it would fun to look at one of the historical lists I plan to add to the calculation in Version 5.0… Flux Magazine’s “The Top 100 Video Games” from 1995.

Proudly featuring the tagline “The most dangerous video game & comic ‘zine” along the top of each issue, Flux Magazine launched in 1994 as a more adult alternative to GamePro and Wizard. The magazine folded a year later after publishing just seven issues, though not before creating one of the first Best Games lists to cover the full spectrum of games available at the time (arcade cabinets, consoles, PC platforms, and handhelds).

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The Four Inductees from the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2021 Have Been Announced

There usually isn’t a theme associated with the World Video Game Hall of Fame‘s annual induction ceremony, but a desire to explore new destinations seems to be at the core of each of this year’s selections. We’ll probably never know if this is just a coincidence or a reaction to last year’s pandemic-related lockdowns, but it’s certainly something to think about it.

On that note, fresh off the success of last year’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the first member of the Class of 2021 is Nintendo’s Animal Crossing, a game where players move to a new town and meet a wide variety of colorful characters as they build their home. Likewise, the 2020 launch of the newest edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator probably helped the original 1982 release succeed in its bid for Hall of Fame immortality.

The Class of 2021 also includes Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, an “edutainment” classic where players follow the clues and chase a master thief across the globe. And finally, Blizzard’s StarCraft was inducted this year after it sent players hurtling across the galaxy for an RTS space opera that also rewrote the rules for esports.

Historians and curators from the World Video Game Hall of Fame shared their own thoughts about what made each of these games special in a short video, which can be found after the break.

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