Digital Trends has been covering the tech industry since 2006, but in all that time they’ve never tried to put their own spin on a Best Games list. But the site’s editors finally took their shot earlier this week when they posted The 50 Best Video Games of All Time.
Like a lot of recent attempts at curating a collection of the best games, the listmakers at Digital Trends are well aware of the folly that trying to position their choices as a definitive ranking would be, as you can see from the opening line of the article:
Trying to pick the best video games of all time is a task defined by one word: hubris.
How could anyone possibly create a definitive list of gaming’s greatest accomplishments when there’s such a wildly large variety of games to choose from?
Focusing instead on the breadth of experiences that games can deliver, the editors honed in on the “something special” that each one offers to players:
The 50 games we ended up agreeing upon span decades, from some of gaming’s earliest hits to a 2020 indie that stands toe-to-toe with foundational classics. Not every game included may play perfectly by today’s standards, but we firmly believe that every single one of them still has something special to offer today. Whether that’s giving you a deeper understanding of how a genre formed or presenting the kind of jaw-dropping spectacle that captures the medium’s endless potential, these are the games that still resonate with us in an ever-expanding universe of interactive experiences.
That ever-expanding universe was well-represented in the bottom quarter of Digital Trends’s list, with several games that entranced players in new and novel ways during the last decade. This list within a list includes titles like Nintendo’s Fire Emblem: Awakening (#50), Frictional’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent (#48), Sega’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon (#46), Platinum’s Nier: Automata (#44), and Lucas Pope’s Papers Please (#43). Further up the list, you’ll find another pair of recent-ish titles, ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley (#26) and Supergiant’s Hades (#8), that continue to push their way into the upper tier of the canon.
Hades is in good company in the Top Ten, sitting alongside nine other titles that regularly appear on best games lists. Alexey Pajitnov’s Tetris is sitting in the #1 spot, with Portal 2 (#2), Super Mario Bros. 3 (#3), Pac-Man (#5), Minecraft (#6), Half-Life 2 (#9), and Super Mario 64 (#10) all ranking in the top quadrant. A pair of Legend of Zelda games, Breath of the Wild (#4) and Ocarina of Time (#7), round out the Top Ten.
But the most surprising thing about Digital Trends’s list is that Street Fighter II is nowhere to be found. Instead, the publisher is represented by Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 at #49.
“The 50 Best Video Games of All Time” will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of the upcoming Version 7.0 Update, which will be completed sometime this Fall.