When you’re developing a video game, you have to be ready for inspiration to strike at any time.
For this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, let’s look back at how some of the most iconic moments from Journey, Mortal Kombat, and Super Mario 64 went from the drawing board to the screen…
Just before the end of the year, the editors at GQ got together and published a look back at some of the “most important and best games” of the last decade. Here’s how they decided on which games to include:
Some of the best games we’ve ever seen came out in the past decade, but the 2010s were also the most turbulent, transformative, and revealing years for video games. Game development costs skyrocketed to new, unsustainable heights. Some games became never-ending, always online, services that you pay for in subscriptions. As advancements were made in public health care, indie game development flourished, and then regressed accordingly as it was dismantled. Games also reached beyond what was previously thought possible, delivering beautifully detailed worlds, touching and intimate narratives, and shared cultural experiences unlike any others. Here, according to the GQ staff, are the most important and best games of the decade.
“The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade” zigzagged it’s way through many of the titles that reshaped the game industry over the last ten years, as well as two that originally launched in Early Access in the previous decade (Derek Yu’s Spelunky and Mojang’s Minecraft). But which other games made the cut?
Yet another publication has thrown their hat in the ring with a look back at the best games of the decade. This time around, it’s Mashable, and the site’s Entertainment editors have sifted through the past decade of new games and selected “Our 15 Favorite Games of the Decade.”
While the listmakers accepted their charge, they also quickly realized that choosing “the best” in a decade that contains games as varied as Pokemon Go, Papers Please, and Fortnite (among others) was too daunting of a challenge:
It’s nearly impossible to choose the best games of this decade because so many provided us with amazing and unique experiences. There are too many factors to consider when thinking about what makes certain games “the best.” Is it story? Gameplay? Innovation? Cultural impact? So instead of debating endlessly about what makes some games better than all the rest, we chose our favorites.
In the end, Mashable’s list featured 15 unranked selections: Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Knight, Matt Makes Games’s Celeste, Bungie’s Destiny, Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Campo Santo’s Firewatch, Sony Santa Monica’s God of War (2018), Fulbright’s Gone Home, thatgamecompany’s Journey, Avalanche’s Just Cause 2, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mojang’s Minecraft, Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption, Capcom’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, and ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley.
