It’s arriving a little later than usual, but the 2023 Update to the Video Game Canon (Version 7.0) is now available.
Four brand new Best Games lists are now included in the calculation, as well as a handful of older lists (including one from 1985). The four newly-published lists come from British GQ (“The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time, Ranked by Experts“), Digital Trends (“The 50 Best Video Games of All Time“), Sports Illustrated/GLHF (“The Best 100 Games of All Time, Ranked“), and USA Today’s For the Win/GLHF (“The 100 Best Video Games of All Time“). Those last two lists appeared about six months apart, and though they share a similar pool of GLHF contributors, they’re fairly different.
Reaching back to 2016, I also added Gamereactor’s “Top 100 All Time Best Games” to the dataset, as well as “The Greatest Games: The 93 Best Computer Games of All Time,” a guidebook to the best games of all time by Dan Gutman and Shay Addams that was published by Compute! Books in 1985. It is, by far, the oldest list within the Video Game Canon, and a fascinating time capsule into what the conversation around games was like almost four decades ago (more than 60 games are unique to this list).
Finally, the Class of 2022 from the “Shacknews Hall of Fame” was added to the Video Game Canon as the site’s editors and contributors continued to expand their massive exploration of everything that’s great about video games.
So how did all of these additions affect the ranking of the Video Game Canon? As in most years, there were a lot of little changes and some very big swings in the standings.
The biggest change to the ranking is definitely the debut of Disco Elysium, which scored points from its inclusion on seven lists, and landed just inside the Top 50 at #42. Games released less than three years before a Video Game Canon update are ineligible for the list (to remove any recency bias), but it was obvious even from its launch date that’s ZA/UM’s wild RPG setting would find a place on the list.
A handful of other games from 2019 were also selected by a handful of listmakers, but none managed to crack the Top 100. The closest was Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds, which landed at #102.
If you’re new to the Video Game Canon, these placements are determined by the C-Score, a formula that ranks each game against the rest of the field by adding together its Average Ranking across all 76 lists with the complementary percentage of its Appearance Frequency. A lower C-Score indicates a higher placement, and you can see this system at work at the very top of the list, which remains unchanged from 2022. Alexey Pajitnov’s Tetris earned a C-Score of 23.34, thanks to an Average Ranking of 17.63 and an Appearance Frequency of 94.29%.
Looking at the Top 100 as a whole, it’s possible to break the Video Game Canon down into tiers that better reflect each game’s reception from listmakers.
Tier 1 will look familiar to anyone who has been following this project for the last few years. These six games have been part of the Video Game Canon for a while, and all have an Average Ranking below 30 and an Appearance Frequency above 80%.
- 1. Tetris
- 2. Resident Evil 4
- 3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- 4. The Last of Us
- 5. Half-Life 2
- 6. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The rest of the Top 40 is part of Tier 2, and it includes games with an Average Ranking under 60 and an Appearance Frequency above 55%. There weren’t many big changes in this stretch of the Top 100. Some games rose a few spots higher, while others dropped a bit lower to compensate. The biggest jump belonged to God of War (2018), which vaulted up 13 spots from its placement in 2022 to #17.
- 7. Super Mario 64
- 8. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- 9. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
- 10. BioShock
- 11. Super Metroid
- 12. Shadow of the Colossus
- 13. Mass Effect 2
- 14. Red Dead Redemption
- 15. Street Fighter II
- 16. Grand Theft Auto V
- 17. God of War (2018)
- 18. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
- 19. World of Warcraft
- 20. Doom (1993)
- 21. Final Fantasy VII
- 22. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- 23. GoldenEye 007
- 24. Bloodborne
- 25. Chrono Trigger
- 26. Halo: Combat Evolved
- 27. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- 28. Portal
- 29. Super Mario World
- 30. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
- 31. Metal Gear Solid
- 32. Portal 2
- 33. Journey
- 34. Super Mario Bros. 3
- 35. Minecraft
- 36. Red Dead Redemption 2
- 37. Dark Souls
- 38. Super Mario Kart
- 39. Metroid Prime
- 40. StarCraft
An Average Ranking below 90 and an Appearance Frequency above 40% are the defining characteristics of Tier 3, which encompasses the next 24 spots, including the aforementioned Disco Elysium at #42.
- 41. Deus Ex
- 42. Disco Elysium
- 43. Final Fantasy VI (AKA Final Fantasy III [US])
- 44. Rock Band (Series)
- 45. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- 46. Super Mario Bros.
- 47. Diablo II
- 48. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (Series)
- 49. Pokemon Blue/Red/Yellow (1998) / Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen (2004)
- 50. Silent Hill 2
- 51. Half-Life
- 52. Counter-Strike
- 53. Inside
- 54. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
- 55. Ico
- 56. Sonic the Hedgehog
- 57. Grand Theft Auto III
- 58. Super Mario Odyssey
- 59. Tomb Raider (1996) / Tomb Raider Anniversary (2007)
- 60. Donkey Kong
- 61. Fallout 3
- 62. Ms. Pac-Man
- 63. Undertale
- 64. Batman: Arkham City
Finally, we come to Tier 4, which is comprised of the rest of the Top 100. Once again, all of these games have an Average Ranking under 90, but each one’s Appearance Frequency will often hover around 30%. But this is also where you’ll find the most movement.
The two biggest movers both came from Nintendo. EarthBound rose to #65 (up from #75 in the 2022 Update) and Super Smash Bros. Melee punched its way to #70 (up from #85).
Two games also pushed their way into the Top 100 for the first time. Extremely OK’s Celeste climbed all the way to #66 (up from #139 in the 2022 Update), while ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley made the nearly-as-impressive leap to #67 (up from #114).
- 65. EarthBound
- 66. Celeste
- 67. Stardew Valley
- 68. Super Mario Galaxy 2
- 69. SimCity 2000
- 70. Super Smash Bros. Melee
- 71. System Shock 2
- 72. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
- 73. Mega Man 2
- 74. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- 75. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
- 76. Pac-Man
- 77. SimCity (1989)
- 78. Grim Fandango
- 79. The Legend of Zelda
- 80. Grand Theft Auto IV
- 81. Okami
- 82. The Walking Dead
- 83. Braid
- 84. The Sims
- 85. Overwatch
- 86. Resident Evil (1996) / Resident Evil (2002)
- 87. Space Invaders
- 88. The Secret of Monkey Island
- 89. Batman: Arkham Asylum
- 90. Lemmings
- 91. League of Legends
- 92. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
- 93. NBA Jam (Series)
- 94. Galaga
- 95. Super Mario Galaxy
- 96. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (1987) / Punch-Out!! (1990)
- 97. X-COM: UFO Defense (AKA UFO: Enemy Unknown)
- 98. Secret of Mana
- 99. Civilization IV
- 100. Final Fantasy Tactics
While the games from the Video Game Canon’s Top 100 are impressive, there are a lot of titles to explore beyond this arbitrary point. Some games may pop up again and again, but the full length of the list now stretches out to 1,532 games. Most have receive multiple mentions over the years, but a staggering 661 games have appeared on only one qualifying Best Games list.
It just goes to show, no matter which game you love the most, there’s absolutely another person out there that loves it just as much as you do.