Category: Listology

Zoom in on specific portions of the Video Game Canon and explore alternate sorting options with Listology.

Listology 5.0: See the Video Game Canon Using Only Modern Best Games Lists Published Between 2016 and 2020

You may want to sit down, because what I’m about to say might shock you… video games have changed and evolved tremendously since the 1990s.

Version 5.0 of the Video Game Canon was built using Best Games lists published between 1995 through 2020, and that 25-year span gives us a nice overview of the titles that game writers have loved over the years. But what if you wanted to zero in on the more recent games that benefited from all that change and evolution?

Thankfully, we can do just that. Say hello to a “Modern” filter for Version 5.0 of the Video Game Canon (V5-M from here on out).

Created using the 17 Best Games lists published between 2016 and 2020 (Version 5.0 didn’t include any lists from 2021), this remixed ranking includes many of the classics you’re used to, as well as a big focus on the groundbreaking titles of the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch.

Ultimately, V5-M produced an aggregated list that looks very different from the full-length Version 5.0 (or any other Version of the Video Game Canon that came before it).

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Listology 5.0: Untangling Atari’s Past and Digging Up the Company’s Best Games

It’s been 50 years since Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabny formed Atari and ushered in the beginning of the game industry’s commercial era. But thanks to an almost neverending series of buyouts and acquisitions, the Atari that still exists today is not the same company that ruled the arcade in the 1970s and the living room in the 1980s.

And in the beginning, even Atari wasn’t known as Atari.

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Listology 4.0: The Best Nintendo 64 Games

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…

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Listology 3.0: The Superest Mario Games of All Time for Mario Day

Today might not be Mario’s birthday, but Nintendo has been celebrating March 10th (“MAR10”) as Mario Day since 2016.

Fans have been receiving little surprises from the consolemaker ever since, and as a big fan of Nintendo’s mustachioed mascot myself, I wanted to see what Version 3.0 of the Video Game Canon had to say about Mario’s greatest adventures. Does one of the classic side-scrollers like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World reign supreme? Or perhaps critics prefer a 3D adventure like Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Galaxy 2?

There’s only one way to find out…

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Listology 3.0: North American Critics Choose the Best Video Games of All Time

A few weeks ago, I reordered the Video Game Canon to focus solely on the picks made by UK publications. That Listology article, Critics from the UK Choose the Best Video Games of All Time, was an interesting look at how our friends across the pond feel about some of the “universally-acclaimed” classics. They weren’t too fond of games like Contra and Tecmo Bowl and Ninja Gaiden, but they had a lot of praise for homegrown heroes like Sensible Soccer and Elite and Lemmings.

But what would Version 3.0 of the Video Game Canon look like if I flipped the switch the other way? What if North American publications had all the power? Let’s find out…

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Listology 3.0: Critics from the UK Choose the Best Video Games of All Time

Roughly a month ago, a discussion about the distinctly American flavor that dominates most of the discourse around classic games broke out on Twitter. Some of the UK’s best-known game writers weighed in throughout the thread, and they all agreed that games that were popular in the US, but virtually unknown in UK, somehow managed to push out many would-be blockbusters that never made it across the Atlantic.

Games such as Contra and Chrono Trigger were specifically called out by name as titles that weren’t all that big in the UK, but are still widely remembered all the same. And at some point, the conversation shifted and began to ask where the retrospectives and re-releases were for Sensible Soccer, Zool, Turrican, Elite, and many others.

As an American, it’s fair to say that I know little to nothing about all four of those games. But what would happen if the UK had more say in which classic games get remembered? It’s an interesting question to ponder, so I pulled out all the UK-based “Best Games of All Time” lists from Version 3.0 of the Video Game Canon to peak into this alternate reality.

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Listology 3.0: 15 Years of GOTY

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.

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Listology 2.0: What Does the Video Game Canon Look Like Using Only Modern Best Games Lists Published After 2010?

Tetris earned the top spot in the first version of the Video Game Canon, and easily repeated in the Version 2.0 update I put together earlier this year. But what happens if you limited the formula to just Best Games lists that have been published this decade?

Not much, it turns out.

No other game was able to knock Alexy Pajitnov’s puzzle masterpiece off the top of the heap, though Valve’s Half-Life 2 (#2) came very close. The remainder of the Top 10 also looks fairly familiar, with Resident Evil 4 at #3, Super Mario 64 at #4, BioShock at #5, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past at #6, Super Metroid at #7, The Last of Us at #8, World of Warcraft at #9, and Grand Theft Auto V at #10.

However, using only the 27 Best Games lists that were published between 2010 and 2017 does produce a few interesting swings. Some games moved up (like Portal from #19 to #11), while others slid down (Street Fighter II went from #16 to #28).

Other games made bigger leaps, which might lead to some massive changes to the Video Game Canon’s Top 100 in future updates. For example, Nintendo’s EarthBound may have launched to a rocky reception in the mid 90s, but critics in the 2010s are coming around on it as it moved to #62 (it was #119 on the regular Video Game Canon) Likewise, Myst had a strong showing, and landed at #87 versus #137 on the regular ranking.

See where the rest of the 1,041 games from Version 2.0 of the Video Game Canon landed after the break.

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Listology 2.0: Exploring the Best Games From the 2010s

We’ve still got 18 months to go, but the 2010s have been a pretty great decade for games. To make sure they stand the test of time, all games released after January 1, 2014 are ineligible for Version 2.0 of the Video Game Canon, but you’ll find several very important games in the decade’s earlier years.

Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo extended the lifespans of the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii beyond the standard five years in 2010, and developers used this extra time to produce software that took full advantage of each platform’s quirks. That was especially true of the 2013 launch of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, which took the top spot on this list. But it was Rockstar Games that might have had the biggest impact on the decade so far. The publisher controlled the rest of the Top 3 thanks to strong showings from Grand Theft Auto V (#2) and Red Dead Redemption (#3).

And while 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is still too new to qualify for the Video Game Canon, I have a feeling this category will get very interesting once its eligible.

Find out where all of your favorite games released between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2013 placed after the break.

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Listology 2.0: Exploring the Best Games From the 2000s

You could probably say this about any ten-year period, but the 2000s (AKA “The Aughts”) were a strange decade for video games. The era was bookended on one side by the angular blockiness of the waning days of the PlayStation and on the other by the return of pixel-perfect platforming with Jonathan Blow’s Braid. In between Sony launched the PS2, Sega exited the consolemaker’s club, PC gaming died (only to be reborn), and gaming entered a new era of online connectivity and high definition graphics.

Whew.

But the one constant throughout the entire decade was Valve. Half-Life was originally released in 1998, but Valve pushed the story further with multiple expansion packs in the early 2000s, as well as a PS2 version of the game in 2001. It’s most popular mod, Counter-Strike, also originally launched during the previous decade, but Valve brought the multiplayer shooter in-house in 2000 and released the game’s definitive version (Counter-Strike 1.6) in 2003. From there, Valve stepped up their game considerably with the launch of Steam, and then a murderer’s row of unique offerings: 2004’s Half-Life 2 (#1), 2007’s Portal (#8), 2007’s Team Fortress 2 (#31), 2008’s Left 4 Dead (#42), and 2009’s Left 4 Dead 2 (#53).

But Valve wasn’t the only company to make their mark on the decade. Capcom brought back the Resident Evil franchise in a big way with Resident Evil 4 (#2), Irrational changed the way we look at a game’s story with BioShock (#3), Blizzard birthed the most popular MMORPG ever with World of Warcraft (#4), and Infinity Ward took the Call of Duty franchise to the next level with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (#5).

Going further down the list, you’ll find two from Team Ico (Shadow of the Colossus at #6 and Ico at #14), Bungie’s Halo: Combat Evolved (#7), Harmonix’s Rock Band (#10), and the mighty Minecraft (#13). And outside the Top 15, you’ll find Rockstar’s revolutionary Grand Theft Auto III (#16).

“The Aughts” were a great decade for games, and you can see where the rest of the decade’s best games landed on Version 2.0 of the Video Game Canon after the break.

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