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.
- 1. Tetris
- 2. Half-Life 2
- 3. Resident Evil 4
- 4. Super Mario 64
- 5. The Last of Us
- 6. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
- 7. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- 8. Super Metroid
- 9. BioShock
- 10. Red Dead Redemption
- 11. Portal
- 12. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
- 13. Street Fighter II
- 14. Shadow of the Colossus
- 15. World of Warcraft
- 16. Halo: Combat Evolved
- 17. Grand Theft Auto V
- 18. GoldenEye 007
- 19. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- 20. Mass Effect 2
- 21. Final Fantasy VII
- 22. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- 23. Doom (1993)
- 24. Super Mario World
- 25. Journey
- 26. Rock Band (Series)
- 27. Chrono Trigger
- 28. Metal Gear Solid
- 29. Super Mario Kart
- 30. StarCraft
- 31. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
- 32. Deus Ex
- 33. Metroid Prime
- 34. Minecraft
- 35. Super Mario Bros. 3
- 36. Dark Souls
- 37. Portal 2
- 38. Ico
- 39. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- 40. Half-Life
- 41. Grand Theft Auto III
- 42. Super Mario Bros.
- 43. Pokemon Blue / Red / Yellow (AKA Pokemon FireRed / LeafGreen)
- 44. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (Series)
- 45. Counter-Strike
- 46. Final Fantasy VI (AKA Final Fantasy III [US])
- 47. Sonic the Hedgehog
- 48. Tomb Raider (1996)
- 49. The Walking Dead
- 50. Silent Hill 2
- 51. Diablo II
- 52. Braid
- 53. Fallout 3
- 54. Grand Theft Auto IV
- 55. Donkey Kong
- 56. Super Mario Galaxy 2
- 57. Ms. Pac-Man
- 58. SimCity 2000
- 59. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
- 60. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
- 61. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
- 62. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
- 63. The Sims
- 64. The Legend of Zelda
- 65. Mega Man 2
- 66. Super Smash Bros. Melee
- 67. Resident Evil
- 68. System Shock 2
- 69. Okami
- 70. Batman: Arkham Asylum
- 71. Secret of Mana
- 72. Team Fortress 2
- 73. SimCity
- 74. Batman: Arkham City
- 75. Grim Fandango
- 76. Advance Wars
- 77. Final Fantasy Tactics
- 78. League of Legends
- 79. Lemmings
- 80. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (AKA Punch-Out!!)
- 81. Assassin’s Creed II
- 82. NBA Jam (Series)
- 83. Dota 2
- 84. X-COM: UFO Defense (AKA UFO: Enemy Unknown)
- 85. God of War (2005)
- 86. The Secret of Monkey Island
- 87. Galaga
- 88. Pac-Man
- 89. Star Wars: TIE Fighter
- 90. Guitar Hero (Series)
- 91. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
- 92. Space Invaders
- 93. Contra (AKA Probotector)
- 94. Pong
- 95. Madden NFL Football (Series)
- 96. Planescape: Torment
- 97. Civilization II
- 98. Rez (AKA Rez Infinite)
- 99. Super Mario Galaxy
- 100. Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
Valve’s Half-Life 2 climbed a single spot to go from #3 to #2. It was joined by Capcom’s Resident Evil 4, which raised itself up from #4 to #3. To make room for both games, Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 had to drop from #2 to #4. Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us rounded out the top five, making a big gain from its previous position at #10.
The only game to fall out of the top ten was Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, which was replaced by Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption.
The game with the greatest upward trajectory was Super Smash Bros. Melee, which vaulted all the way from #91 to #66. Several other titles entered the top echelon of titles in Version 3.0, including League of Legends (#105 to #78), Assassin’s Creed II (#102 to #81), Galaga (#118 to #87), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (#107 to #91), Contra (#110 to #93), Planescape: Torment (#135 to #96), and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (#111 to #100).
But for every game that rises in the rankings, another must dip below that threshold on the Video Game Canon. With the publication of Version 3.0, that means that XCOM: Enemy Unknown (#84 to #107), Quake (#93 to #119), Shenmue (#95 to #122), Elite (#96 to #105), Street Fighter IV (#98 to 140), Soul Calibur (#99 to #101), and Civilization (#100 to #112) all dropped out of sight.
As of Version 3.0, the cut-off for the Video Game Canon now extends to games released in 2014, but surprisingly, none managed to find themselves ranked among the first 100. Mario Kart 8 came the closest at #113. Blizzard’s Hearthstone (#118), Platinum’s Bayonetta 2 (#176), and Bungie’s Destiny (#178) also performed well in their first year of eligibility. More than two dozen games from 2014 were selected by at least one publication, but seeing PT all the way down at #1046 proves that gamers will never forget our first (and only) glimpse at a demo of Hideo Kojima’s unreleased Silent Hills.
Interested in learning more about the rest of the Top 1,167? Head over to the Version 3.0 page for a complete rundown of all the games that qualified for the big list.