Tag: Public Vote

Zelda: Breath of the Wild is #1 in Giant Bomb’s “The 100 Best Games of the 21st Century” Community Vote

Giant Bomb decided to piggyback off of the New York Times’s massive “The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century” feature with their own take on “The 100 Best Games of the 21st Century“.

The site’s editors opened up the voting to their community, and began collecting ballots a week and a half ago. Each voter was given the chance to choose any ten games released after 2000, and ranking a game higher up on the list ensured it received more points in the final tally.

After receiving a total of 3171 ballots, Giant Bomb unveiled the final list this morning, and it features many of the heavy hitters we’ve come to know and love over the last quarter century. So what made the cut? Please read on to find out…

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The BAFTA Games Awards Polled the Public and Shenmue is “The Most Influential Video Game of All Time”

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts did more than select the winners of the 2024-2025 BAFTA Games Awards last month (once again, congratulations to Astro Bot).

In the leadup to this year’s ceremony, the group gave the public a chance to vote for “The Most Influential Video Game of All Time“. With all the votes now tallied, Sega’s Shenmue appeared at the top of the list, and it was followed by 20 additional titles.

Chris Schilling, formerly of Edge Magazine, helped introduce the breadth of games on display:

As more than one responder said, it’s unfair to have to choose just one. Do you pick the pioneers that shaped the early days of the medium, the innovators that were ahead of their time, the ones that proved formative to your own creative journey, or simply the ones that made you most emotional? As might be expected, among the extraordinary number of responses we received was a staggering variety of games — ranging from titles that launched the industry to contemporary giants released mere months ago. The top ten alone spans multiple genres, from platformers to shooters, sandbox adventures to simulations.

Shenmue launched to near universal acclaim in 2000 and is ostensibly about Ryo Hazuki’s search for his father’s killer. But the game also works as a massive life simulation, giving players the opportunity to also play arcade games, chat with NPCs, and even drive a forklift. It’s a bit of a surprising choice for the top spot, but also not, as you can see the ripple effect that Shenmue‘s open world design and focus on minigames caused in the 2000s (and beyond). Shenmue‘s influence can be seen clearly in subsequent games in the Grand Theft Auto and Yakuza franchises, but also in Animal Crossing, Final Fantasy, and the games of Quantic Dream.

“The Most Influential Video Game of All Time” is actually a pretty solid list top to bottom, with foundational games like Pong (#13), Tetris (#11), and Super Mario Bros. (#3) sitting alongside newer classics like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (#20) and Baldur’s Gate 3 (#16). Doom (1993) (#2) and Half-Life 2 (#9), two games that often make the cut on lists like this, were also well-represented in the top ten.

Though I have to admit, I was a bit baffled that you’ll also find Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (#7) sandwiched between Super Mario 64 (#8) and Minecraft (#6) in the top ten. Warhorse’s sequel has received some fantastic reviews so far this year, but it’s also only two months old and hasn’t influenced much of anything yet.

The complete list of games from BAFTA’s “The Most Influential Video Game of All Time” can be found after the break.

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Japan’s TV Asahi Unveils the Top 100 from “50,000 People Vote! The Video Game General Election”

It’s something of a rare occurrence for journalists in Japan to produce a list of the best games of all time. Typically, this process is turned over to the public, with the results hinging on huge write-in campaigns from passionate fans across the country. Such was the case earlier this week, when TV Asahi aired “50,000 People Vote! The Video Game General Election” just after Christmas.

As you might have guessed from the name of the special, TV Asahi polled more than 50,000 viewers to create their list. You’ll probably also be unsurprised to find out that games from Japanese developers dominated the Top 100. Nintendo-published titles accounted for nearly half the list (42 in all) and Square Enix (with 25 entries) wasn’t too far behind.

Stepping beyond those two powerhouses, you’ll find a smattering of games from Atlus (including Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal), as well as a handful from Capcom (most notably, a quartet of games from the Monster Hunter series). In the end, just six titles from the list were developed outside of Japan (Respawn’s Apex Legends, Behavior’s Dead By Daylight, Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima, Mojang’s Minecraft, Alexey Pajitnov’s Tetris, and Toby Fox’s Undertale).

The full list was helpfully transcribed by Famitsu, and you can find it below (North American translations are used when available).

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Shortlist (and Winner) Announced for “Ultimate Game of All Time” Vote at 2021 Golden Joystick Awards

By the estimation of the Golden Joystick Awards, more than 1.1 million video games have been released since Atari’s Computer Space ushered in the medium’s commercial era in 1971. But is it possible to sweep away all the chaff and crown one single title as the “Ultimate Game of All Time”?

I still don’t know the answer to that question. But that’s not going to stop the people behind the Golden Joystick Awards from trying. And they want your help.

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See the Bracket (and Winner) for IGN’s “Best Video Game of All Time” Tournament

IGN’s editors and contributors have produced multiple Best Games lists over the last 20 years (the most recent, the “Top 100 Video Games of All Time,” was published in 2019), but they’re doing something a little different with their “Best Video Game of All Time Bracket.”

Beginning today, IGN’s readers will guide the process by voting in a March Madness-style tournament that features 64 of “the very best” games, as selected by IGN staff.

To build the bracket, games were sorted randomly into four different regions, and then seeded by IGN’s editors. Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption, Valve’s Portal 2, Nintendo’s Super Mario World, and Nintendo’s Super Metroid were the #1 seeds in each region, but voters will have to make some hard choices in this first round.

I mean, how do you choose between The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim? Or Halo 2 and Mass Effect 2? Or Street Fighter II and Pokemon Yellow? Or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Final Fantasy VII?

Let’s take a look at the full seeding…

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