The Video Game Canon is a statistical meta-analysis of 76 Best Video Games of All Time lists that were published between 1995 and 2023.
John Scalzo, one of the co-founders of Warp Zoned and a game journalist for more than 20 years, has maintained the Video Game Canon since it was founded in 2017.
Sorting Rules and the C-Score
The rank order for the Video Game Canon was compiled using a formula that measured each game’s Average Ranking across every list, as well as the Appearance Frequency of how many lists it was included on. 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. Though games released after December 31, 2019 were excluded to remove any recency bias.
The lower the C-Score, the higher a game is ranked on the Video Game Canon.
If a game was released at the time of a list’s creation and didn’t make the cut, it was given a ranking of one beyond the bottom of the list from that publication for averaging purposes (i.e., any games not included in a Top 100 list would be entered into the Average Ranking formula as a 101). However, if a game was unreleased at the time of a list’s creation, it was not included in the game’s Average Ranking or its Appearance Frequency. And all games included on lists that chose not to rank their selections were given a ranking of 1 for averaging purposes.
Games with multiple remakes or revisions (i.e. Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Street Fighter II Turbo, and Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers) were consolidated into a single title for ranking purposes. Rankings for yearly sports franchises and peripheral-based music franchises were also consolidated into their core Series as most publications treated all entries in the franchise as a single game (i.e. Madden NFL Football (Series) includes rankings from any yearly update to the Series, starting with John Madden Football.
If a publication ranked a complete Series in lieu of an individual game, all games from the Series available at the time of the list’s creation would receive credit for the ranking.
Now that you know how it works, see what games made the cut on the Video Game Canon Top 1000.
All posts and pages on Video Game Canon serve advertisements and cookies. See the Privacy and Data Collection Policy here.