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.