VGC Updates – Page 4 – Video Game Canon

World Video Game Hall of Fame Welcomes its Class of 2020: Minecraft, Bejeweled, Centipede, and King’s Quest

After selling more than 200 million copies over the last decade, it’s hard to remember a time when Minecraft wasn’t nearly synonymous with the entire medium of video games. And though it was only available in an unfinished state from 2009 to 2011, it seemed to emerge from Mojang’s offices as a fully-formed phenomenon even in its earliest days.

So as players continued to flock to its Lego-like world in droves, it was a bit of a shock when the game was denied entry into the World Video Game Hall of Fame three separate times. Shortlisted as a finalist in 2015, 2016, and 2018, the title was passed over again and again and again. But Minecraft’s creative sandbox become too big to ignore this year, and it has finally been enshrined among gaming’s greats.

In a stunning upset, three unlikely candidates also garnered enough support from the Hall of Fame’s Selection Advisory Committee to join the Class of 2020. A genre-defining match-3 puzzler from PopCap (Bejeweled), a classic coin-op from Atari (Centipede), and one of earliest adventure titles from Sierra (King’s Quest) won out over more popular titles such as NBA Jam, GoldenEye 007, and Guitar Hero.

While this year’s class might look a little surprising, historians working at the Hall of Fame’s parent organizations, the Strong Museum and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, helped put their importance into perspective.

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Zelda: Majora’s Mask is at the Top of Slant Magazine’s 2020 Update to Their “100 Best Video Games of All Time”

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.

Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020 Have Been Announced

The finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020 have been announced… and they’re on fire.

This year’s honorees include titles from every era of gaming, though the Star Power of Guitar Hero looms large over the competition. But that’s OK, because there’s a few other firestarters vying for a spot in this year’s class, including Midway’s NBA Jam, Mojang’s Minecraft, and Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Melee.

There’s also the groundbreaking GoldenEye 007, the unforgettable Nokia Snake, the edutaining Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, and the addicting Bejeweled. Rounding out this year’s crop of finalists is Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and a trio of classics from the early 80s (Centipede, Frogger, and King’s Quest).

This isn’t the first opportunity to join the World Video Game Hall of Fame for some of these games, and fans will have the chance to make their voice heard by submitting a Player’s Choice Ballot. The public can vote once per day now through April 2nd, and the three games that receive the most votes will join the 29 other ballots submitted by members of the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee.

The Strong Museum’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games, the entity that oversees the World Video Game Hall of Fame, will announce the inductees from the Class of 2020 at a date to be determined in a special ceremony. For now, you can learn more about this year’s finalists after the break.

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Untitled Goose Game is Popular Mechanics’s “Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” for 2019

Popular Mechanics has has added a handful of titles from 2019 to their ongoing collection, “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born.”

House House’s Untitled Goose Game was picked by Popular Mechanics’s editors as the best game of 2019, both for its “havoc-causing” stealth elements and its “wholesomeness”:

There were lots and lots of great games for 2019, but none had quite the reaction (and the wholesomeness) of Untitled Goose Game. The objective to be the most havoc-causing goose in existence, and it generates so much joy its almost hard to fathom. It just goes to show that sometimes a year’s best game doesn’t need giant budgets and super crisp graphics. It just needs a goose with a bad temper.

From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Kojima Productions’s Death Stranding, and Electronic Arts’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order were all given “Honorable Mention” status, along with a pair of Nintendo-produced titles for the Switch (Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Pokemon Sword and Shield).

Popular Mechanics’s “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” will be added to the Video Game Canon in the Version 4.0 update, which should be ready to go in 2020.

IGN Updates Their “Top 100 Video Games of All Time” List for 2019

It’s been roughly 18 months since IGN last revised its “Top 100 Video Games of All Time” list, but the popular publication has just issued a new update that welcomes a huge number of new games into the club.

That said, it might feel a little familiar at the top, as Super Mario World is once again ranked at #1, which is a holdover from their 2018 list. Thankfully, a closer examination of the rest of the list was produced by IGN themselves in the companion article, “Why We Made the Changes We Made.”

There we discover that Capcom’s remake of Resident Evil 2 (#81) from earlier this year is the most recent game to be added to the list. It was joined by 14 other new additions, including Sony Santa Monica’s 2018 reboot of God of War (#29), Left 4 Dead 2 (#45), Rise of the Tomb Raider (#55), Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (#61), Red Dead Redemption 2 (#62), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (#68), Fable II (#76), Fortnite (#77), Monster Hunter: World (#82), Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (#83), Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (#95), Dishonored (#97), Divinity: Original Sin II (#98), and Borderlands 2 (#99).

This newfound variety was possible thanks to the removal of multiple games from the Mario and Zelda franchises, though several other games were also removed from last year’s Top 100 to make room. Among the games getting the boot were Team Fortress 2, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Fallout 3, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Galaga, Grim Fandango, Banjo Kazooie, and The Oregon Trail.

IGN’s 2019 update to their “Top 100 Video Games of All Time” list will be added to the Video Game Canon in Version 4.0.

World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019 Includes Super Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat, Windows Solitaire, and Colossal Cave Adventure

The World Video Game Hall of Fame has welcomed four new games into the fold, as the inductees from the Class of 2019 were announced this morning in a special ceremony. This year, three games that practically defined gaming in the 1990s lead the way, while a groundbreaking text adventure from the 1970s also made the cut.

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Zelda: A Link to the Past is #1 in Popular Mechanics’s 2019 Update to Their “100 Greatest Video Games of All Time”

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.

Introducing the Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019

The World Video Game Hall of Fame, which is overseen by The Strong Museum of Play, has announced the finalists for this year’s crop of inductees. We’ll have to wait until May to find out which games make the final cut, but we now know that a dozen classic titles will be in the running for the Class of 2019.

This year’s finalists include several games that are taking one more shot at immortality, including Midway’s Mortal Kombat, Cyan Worlds’s Myst, Microsoft’s Windows Solitaire, and Valve’s Half-Life. All four have a strong claim to “Hall of Fame” status, as Myst helped popularize CD-ROMs, Half-Life pushed narrative games to new heights, Mortal Kombat’s controversial violence is still discussed today, and Windows Solitaire may just be the most-played game ever.

But they’ll have to compete against a slate of other titles that includes King’s Candy Crush, Atari’s Centipede, William Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure, Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution, Sega’s NBA 2K, Sid Meier’s Civilization, and Nintendo’s Super Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Gaming fans from around the globe will be able to influence which games will be eligible for induction this year through the Player’s Choice Ballot, which will be open from March 21st through the 28th. The remaining ballots will come from the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee, which is comprised of journalists and scholars who are “familiar with the history of video games.”

The World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019 will announced on May 2, but you can learn more about this year’s finalists after the break.

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Tetris Remains the Best Game of All Time in Video Game Canon’s Version 3.0 Update

This article refers to an older Version of the Video Game Canon. View the Top 1000 to see the most recent changes to the list.

Once again, Alexey Pajitnov’s puzzle masterpiece, Tetris, stands atop the Video Game Canon.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Video Game Canon, it’s a statistical meta-analysis of 53 Best Video Games of All Time lists that were published between 1995 and 2018. To qualify for inclusion, each list had to include at least 50 games, as well as some form of editorial oversight in the process (lists made up solely of reader polls or fan voting were excluded), and no restrictions on release dates or platforms.

After feeding each Best Games list into the Video Game Canon machine, the games were ranked against each other using the C-Score, a formula that adds together a game’s Average Ranking across all lists with the complementary percentage of its Appearance Frequency. Combining these two factors allows us to create a list of games that have universal appeal across a long period of time without punishing any game for being too old or too new.

Five new lists were added to the Video Game Canon in the Version 3.0 update, bringing the total number of games to be selected by at least one list up to 1,167. The most expansive new list came from Game Informer, which published “The Top 300 Games of All Time” in April of last year. Hyper (“The 200 Games You Must Play“), IGN (“Top 100 Video Games of All Time“), and Slant Magazine (“The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time“) also published new lists in 2018.

I was also able to reach back into the history books a little bit after stumbling upon a list from 2009 by Benchmark.pl, one of Poland’s largest technology blogs. Aside from a handful of titles (most notably, 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), most of the games created in Eastern Europe or played by Eastern European players aren’t on the radar of your average gamer, so digging through “The Top 100 Best Games of the Twentieth Century” gave me an interesting window into a population of gamers that I probably don’t think about as often as I should.

Even with these new additions to the dataset, Version 3.0 didn’t signal any huge changes to the Video Game Canon over last year’s Version 2.0 update, but the movement amongst the games in the top ten does bring to mind a round of musical chairs. And after the music stopped, nearly all the titles scrambled to find a new place to sit.

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Popular Mechanics Selects “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” from 1971 to 2018

Going all the way back to 1971 and the the very dawn of commercial video games, the editors of Popular Mechanics have chosen “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born.”

Popular Mechanics’s choices range from the obvious (Pong over everything in 1972) to the debatable (Sonic the Hedgehog over Street Fighter II and Zelda: A Link to the Past in 1991) to the controversial (Donkey Kong Country over both Earthbound and Final Fantasy VI in 1994). The editors went with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for 2017, pushing Link’s latest adventure to eight total selections since its release two years ago.

“The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” is also the first “Best Games” list I’ve found to include the entirety of 2018 in its purview and the editors chose to honor Into the Breach as the best game from last year, while also selecting Deltarune, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, God of War, Celeste, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Monster Hunter: World as “Honorable Mentions.” Popular Mechanics plans to update “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” with new titles every year.

The Video Game Canon’s Version 3.0 Update has already been locked down and will be published soon, but Popular Mechanics’s “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” will be added in a further update.