With the 2021 Update to the Video Game Canon just around the corner, I thought it would fun to look at one of the historical lists I plan to add to the calculation in Version 5.0… Flux Magazine’s “The Top 100 Video Games” from 1995.
Proudly featuring the tagline “The most dangerous video game & comic ‘zine” along the top of each issue, Flux Magazine launched in 1994 as a more adult alternative to GamePro and Wizard. The magazine folded a year later after publishing just seven issues, though not before creating one of the first Best Games lists to cover the full spectrum of games available at the time (arcade cabinets, consoles, PC platforms, and handhelds).
Flux Magazine’s “Top 100 Video Games” was spearheaded by Dan Amrich, who would go on to have a long career in game journalism, eventually leading GamePro (under the alias Dan Elektro), Games Radar, and Official Xbox Magazine. After that, he jumped into game development, joining Activision in 2010 and Ubisoft in 2014. He also, believe it or not, performs parody music as part of the band Palette-Swap Ninja.
Amrich’s unique voice added a splash of zaniness to the magazine, and that style would come to typify game journalism in the mid-to-late 1990s. This off-kilter presentation also filtered down to the list’s selection set, though maybe that’s more due to the fact that so many of the titles that round out your average Best Games list were still years (or even decades) in the future. So he and his co-contributors (who included Ralph Barbagallo, Mark East, Chris Hudak, Jeff Kitts, Zach Mestron, and Jeff Yang) reached back to select a lot of foundational games for the list, while also highlighting what was hot between 1990 and 1994 (it’s hard to believe now, but helicopter sims were inescapable at the time).
But what might be most interesting about Flux Magazine’s “Top 100 Video Games” is that nearly a third of the list (32 games) has never been picked by another publication. It’s genuinely surprising that some of these one-offs seem to have been completely forgotten, and not just because one of them is a personal favorite (Terminator 2: The Arcade Game at #74). This collection also features the original Duke Nukem (#39), early skateboarding sim 720° (#79), and a handful of quintessentially 90s games like The 7th Guest (#23), Suzuka 8 Hours (#54), and Cruis’n USA (#63).
Naturally, most of the rest of the titles come from the 80s, including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (#31), Major League Baseball (#37), Berzerk (#55), Space Dungeon (#64), Mr. Do (#67), Haunted House (#68), Phoenix (#69), Swordquest: Earthworld (#71), Sinistar (#72), Escape from the MindMaster (#77), Jungle Hunt (#82), Star Castle (#83), Wizard of Wor (#84), Kaboom (#85), Yars’ Revenge (#90), Karate Champ (#91), Crystal Castles (#95), Turmoil (#97), and Crossbow (#98). The 1970s (Night Driver at #59 and Super Breakout at #93) and a few more from the 1990s (Alien Vs Predator at #60, NCAA Basketball at #75, Lunar: The Silver Star at #76, Tomcat Alley at #81, and Starblade at #96) are also represented.
But you’ll find mostly familiar names at the top of the list. Taito’s Space Invaders was #1, and it was followed by Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda (#2), id Software’s Doom (#3), Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog (#4), and Midway’s Mortal Kombat (#5).
Some things never change.
UPDATE (8/22/21): Dan Amrich was kind of enough to share this great story about the creation of Flux Magazine’s “The Top 100 Video Games” with me on Twitter:
LOL, thank you for the compliment, I don't think I have earned legendary yet. But I have a great story about this issue that you might like to hear. Thread follows!
— Dan Amrich (@DanAmrich) August 22, 2021