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).
IGN’s editors and contributors have produced multiple Best Games lists over the last 20 years (the most recent, the “