We’re still waiting to see how a few of this Fall’s biggest new releases turn out, including Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Game Freak’s Pokemon Sword/Shield. But the editors of Paste Magazine’s Games section, Garrett Martin and Holly Green, have poured over the digital publication’s last ten years of coverage to compile “The 100 Best Videogames of the 2010s.”
Diving in to the sometimes subtle (and sometimes major) differences between a prototype and the final product is probably one of the most exciting parts of video game history. In many cases, you’ll be looking at the (literal) building blocks of what came before.
In this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, let’s look at one prototype that served as the foundation of something great and another that was ultimately sent to the scrapyard. And after all that, we’ll have a good laugh at a hoax that recently fooled the Jeopardy! writer’s room.
It’s October 5th, which means that most of this Fall’s major new releases are still ahead of us. But that hasn’t stopped CNET from selecting the games they believe best represent “The 30 Best Video Games of the Decade.”
Earlier today, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia in Canberra officially opened the doors to Game Masters: The Exhibition, a new exhibit that chronicles “an interactive journey through five decades of video game history.” Museumgoers who visit the Game Masters exhibit will be able to view “interviews, never-before-seen concept artwork, [and] an amazing display of vintage consoles and collectable items,” as well as an arcade installation with dozens of games.
Game Masters is an interactive journey through five decades of video game history, offering both a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process behind the world’s most popular characters and franchises, and a chance to play them. Featuring interviews, never-before-seen concept artwork, an amazing display of vintage consoles and collectable items, and 80 playable games, visitors won’t want to leave!
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Game Masters is divided into three sections: Arcade Heroes, Game Changers and Indies. It features unique experiences such as a spectacular multiplayer dance stage for Dance Central 3 (2012), hands-on experiential music booths and a selection of original classic arcade machines from the 1970s and ‘80s acquired especially for the exhibition, all playable in their original form.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia will also use this opportunity to begin archiving important games developed within Australia. The first eight games selected by the program include a nice variety of titles released over the last 37 years:
Initial List of Games Selected for Preservation by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
- The Hobbit (Beam Software, 1982)
- Halloween Harry (Interactive Binary Illusions / Sub Zero Software, 1985/1993)
- Shadowrun (Beam Software, 1993)
- L.A. Noire (Team Bondi, 2011)
- Submerged (Uppercut Games, 2015)
- Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017)
- Florence (Mountains, 2018)
- Espire 1: VR Operative (Digital Lode, 2019)
More games will be added to the archive on an ongoing basis, and Game Masters: The Exhibition will remain open to the public through March 9, 2020.
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.
Bite-Sized Game History has reached way back to talk about a lot of video game firsts, and I’ve got a few more today.
So let’s get right to it and dig into the history of speed boosts, the working title for Final Fight, and Nintendo’s initial collaboration with Hyundai.
Kyle Orland is a veteran game journalist who has also been writing about what it means to be a good game journalist for over 20 years. He recently collected many of those columns in The Game Beat: Observations and Lessons from Two Decades Writing About Games, and it’s now being published in hardcover and paperback from Carnegie Mellon’s ETC Press.
The collection offers an extremely interesting and insightful look back at how game journalism has changed in the last two decades:
Game journalism is young enough that we’re still trying to collectively agree on the answers to some pretty fundamental questions. What makes a good review? Should we be evaluating games as consumer products or works of art? What role should scores or grades play in the review process? How should we deal with Metacritic’s outsized influence?
How close should game journalists be with the publishers and developers they cover? How can journalists get around the information control of the PR machine? How should outlets handle gifts and publisher-sponsored junkets? How are we supposed to make any money off any of this in the age of the Internet?
The Game Beat catalogs years of my own scattered attempts to answer those questions, and many more that continue to vex the field, through dozens of blog posts, columns, newsletters, and interviews focused on the art and craft of writing about games. In the process, this book also serves as a sort of public diary of my own education in and advancement through the world of professional game journalism, from eager outsider blogger to hustling freelancer to entrenched staff writer.
A PDF version of The Game Beat is also available to download for free.
If you’ve been on Twitter in the last week, you might have seen a lot of tweets in your timeline where people listed their favorite games from the past decade and a half. The “15 Years of GOTY” trend has highlighted a lot of great games going all the way back to 2004, but what does the Video Game Canon have to say about some of the choices?
Using Version 3.0, I was able to sort out the best game from each of the last 15 years as ranked by their C-Score (how each game is ranked by the 53 Best Games lists that currently make up the Video Game Canon).
As you might have guessed, in some years the answer was obvious (Half-Life 2 in 2004, The Last of Us in 2013), but in other years it wasn’t (Braid barely squeaked above Fallout 3 in 2008 while Okami leapfrogged The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2006). In the end, Sony and Capcom shared the trophy for most-honored publisher, as both can lay claim to the “Game of the Year” in three separate years.
Take a look at the game with the highest ranking from each of the last 15 years (and the runner-up) after the break.
If you can believe it, Blizzard is just as well known for franchises like Diablo and Warcraft as it is for the monstrous statues that tower over the desks at its Irvine campus. It’s even become something of a tradition for newly-hired employees to pose in front of The Orc Statue on their first day.
But how do you immortalize an even more epic figure in video game history? How about with a nice park bench in the middle of New Hampshire…
I think it’s fair to say that most video game fans are at least a little familiar with the basic beats behind the creation of Tetris. Alexey Pajitnov, a technician with the USSR’s Computer Centre, programmed the puzzle game in his spare time using only the text display of an Electronika 60. After porting the game to IBM-Compatible PCs with the assistance of his co-workers, Pajitnov’s supervisors would go on to sell the international rights to the game to multiple companies, creating a legal mess that would drag on for years.
In time, Pajitnov would move to the United States and regain the rights to Tetris after partnering with Henk Rogers to form The Tetris Company in 1996. Since then, dozens of developers have put their own stamp on Tetris, including the eye-popping VR effects of Tetris Effect in 2018 and the hyper-competitive multiplayer of Tetris 99 in 2019.
Today is Tetris‘s 35th Anniversary, and if you’re unfamiliar with the story behind the game’s creation (or just want to hear it again), there’s no better time than now to dive back into this fascinating story.
