I guess Mario isn’t the only classic video game character who can bring in the big bucks from collectors.
On Friday, Heritage Auctions held their first standalone “Video Game Signature Auction” and auctioneers brought the hammer down on a sealed and graded copy of The Legend of Zelda for $870,000. This eye-popping price isn’t just impressively high, it also set a new record for a single game transaction.
The Nintendo 64 isn’t celebrating a milestone anniversary this year, but that hasn’t stopped Nintendo Life from asking their readers to pick the misunderstood console’s best games. While we wait for the results, I dug through Version 4.0 of the Video Game Canon to find out which Nintendo 64 games have been singled out over the years.
It’s not a particularly long list, but there’s no shortage of interesting titles…
Google Bombing was a popular activity in the early 2000s, as coordinated groups of people attempted to link humorous results to seemingly innocuous searches.
The search engine had mostly put an end to the practice by 2010, which means that the top result for “miserable failure” no longer points to a WhiteHouse.gov page about George W. Bush. But quirks in the algorithm can still cause trouble for people who don’t bother to read beyond the first few links. Author John Boyne, probably best known for writing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, learned that lesson for himself recently.
This edition of Bite-Sized Game History will look at Boyne’s blunder, as well as Dragon Quest Builders, and remembering Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game on its tenth anniversary.
Slant Magazine recently published a new update to their list of “The 100 Best Video Games of All Time,” and it looks like not much has changed since 2018.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, the quirky and somewhat-polarizing sidequel to Ocarina of Time, took the top spot once again. While Link’s adventure in Termina doesn’t usually rank that high on other “Best Games” lists, Slant’s reshuffled Top Ten includes a lot of the usual big hitters… Final Fantasy VI (at #2), Super Mario Bros. 3 (at #3), Tetris (at #5), Metroid Prime (at #7), and Resident Evil 4 (at #8).
Old standbys may populate the top of the list, but Slant also elevated several more recent titles above the fray. A handful of titles were even added to a “Best Games” list for the first time… IO Interactive’s Hitman 2 (#97), Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn (#53), Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds (#37), and ZA/UM’s Disco Elysium (#32).
Slant Magazine’s latest rendition of “The 100 Best Video Games of All Time” will be included in the Video Game Canon’s upcoming Version 4.0 update.
The editors at Time Magazine have produced several “Best Games of All Time” lists, and with New Year’s Eve fast approaching, they’ve once again turned their gaze backwards. This time, they’ve selected “The 10 Best Video Games of the 2010s,” though like most outlets, they make an exception for two very huge games from 2009:
The video game industry was already a billion dollar behemoth when it rolled into the 2010s. Over the past decade, the cultural cache of video games has grown and its profits are now greater than movies, television or music. The 2010s are when the hobby stopped being something semi-niche, and solidly took its place in the mainstream.
Those games, of course, are Mojang’s Minecraft and Riot’s League of Legends. Describing them as a “global phenomenon” and a “cultural institution,” respectively, Time’s editors argue that the rules should be bent for them as the two games were so important to what gaming became in the 2010s.
The remaining eight selections went to Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Portal 2 from 2011, Grand Theft Auto V from 2013, Pokemon Go from 2016, Fortnite and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild from 2017, and Disco Elysium from last year.
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.
As a former video producer for IGN and Kinda Funny, Jared Petty has been around video games for a long time. In addition to his editorial work, he’s also dabbled on the development side as a social content editor at Electronic Arts.
But Petty is also an avid podcaster, and now he’s breaking into “Best Games” analysis with a new series. The Top 100 Games Podcast launched earlier this week with episodes devoted to Resident Evil 2 Remake (#100), Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (#99), and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (#98). But please take those numbers with a grain of salt. Petty stressed that The Top 100 Games Podcast would probably end up being a “horrible list” as the topic of each episode will be chosen by a wide-raning series of guests. Sound like fun though:
Counting down the top 100 video games of all time! Host Jared Petty and a series of guests travel through the history of classic gaming and take a close look at the most important contributions to electronic entertainment over the last 50+ years.
More episodes of The Top 100 Games Podcast will be produced in the coming days and weeks, and you can subscribe to it on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and other podcast services.
Just a few months after Popular Mechanics revealed “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” (which they plan to update on a yearly basis), the publication’s editors are back with an update to their “100 Greatest Video Games of All Time” list, which was first published in 2014.
This time around, Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past earned the #1 spot, dethroning BioShock, which had to settle for #7. Link’s third adventure is actually in some familiar company, as aside from Irrational’s shooter, the majority of the Top 15 is heavily populated by a slew of games from the 1990s. Ready?
There’s Super Mario Bros. 3 (#15) from 1990, Super Mario World (#2) and Street Fighter II (#6) from 1991, Super Mario Kart (#11) from 1992, Doom (#13) from 1993, Final Fantasy VII (#4) and GoldenEye 007 (#10) from 1997, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (#12) and Metal Gear Solid (#14) from 1998.
Outside of the Top 15, Popular Mechanics is the first publication to give Epic’s Fortnite (#34) a spot on their “Best Games” list, and believe it or not, they’re also the first to include car combat classic Twisted Metal (#87).
The Video Game Canon’s Version 3.0 Update was published just a few weeks ago, but you can be sure that Popular Mechanics’s “The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time” will be included in the next revision.
Slant Magazine recently updated their list of “The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time” and named Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask as their #1 game. The oft-ignored sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has been undergoing a bit of a reevaluation in recent years, and it’s selection by Slant is the first time it’s earned the top spot on a “Best Games” list.
In addition to old favorites, the editors at Slant gave four games their first exposure on a “Best Games” list… Platinum’s Nier: Automata (#7), Bracket’s Three Fourths Home (#73), Croteam’s The Talos Principle (#82), and Ninja Theory’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (#94).
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey have been on a perfect streak since their release in 2017, and Slate kept it alive by slotting Link’s latest adventure at #39 and Mario’s Cappy-tivating quest at #31.
Slant Magazine’s “The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time” will be added to the Video Game Canon in a future update.
The good folks at Game Informer published their 300th issue last month, and a big part of the celebration included the unveiling of a brand new “Best Games” list, “The Top 300 Games of All Time.”
The good folks at Game Informer published their 300th issue last month, and a big part of the celebration included the unveiling of a brand new Best Games list, “The Top 300 Games of All Time.”
The editors of Game Informer chose Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as the #1 game, writing this about Link’s third adventure: “Although many of the series’ conventions debuted on the NES in The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past defined the blueprint Nintendo has used for most sequels, and is still one of the most ambitious entries to date.”
