Top 10 Video Games of All Time

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Whether you grew up playing video games or not, it is hard to argue that video games have not had a big influence on our culture. In fact, from the N64, Playstation, Xbox, and many other gaming systems, they have become woven into the fabric of everyday life. Whether it be the computer, a game console, or even our smart phones, they can be found everywhere and they are being played by everyone from small children to house moms. Many of these video games have taken a life of their own becoming some of the best video games of all time. They have transcended just games into everyday speech such as “It’s-a-me, Mario!” in Super Mario 64 and “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!” from the Pokemon series as well as movies and popular tv shows. Check out below to see a list of the top 10 video games of all time.

#10: Tetris

Tetris was first designed and developed by Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. It is a puzzle game where players much match various falling tiles. The simplicity of the game rules makes it easily accessible to anyone, but the skills necessary to become really good at the game makes people want to continue playing.

In a 1996 article by Next Generation Magazine, they best summed this up by saying, “There is something so perfect, so Zen about the falling blocks of Tetris that the game has captured the interest of everyone who has ever played it.”^[1]Reuters – At 25, Tetris still eyeing growth This is evident in the fact that you can find the game in nearly every gaming console every made, graphing calculators, smart phones, and a variety of other electronic devices. In fact, even today, with blockbuster 3D games, Tetris still sees continuous growth. In fact, it is the best selling video games of all time with over 170 million copies sold. It really is a game that has aged well with time and technology, thus firmly cementing itself as one of the best video games of all time.

#9: Super Mario 64

The Japanese know how to make video games. Mario has always been a big hit for Nintendo. For example their famous side scrolling adventure, Super Mario Bros., is a legendary game. However, Super Mario 64, which came out in 1996 for the Nintendo 64, hit it out of the park. It went down as one of the best-selling games for the Nintendo 64, further cementing Nintendo’s dominance as a game developer. In fact, it became such a hit, that it became one of the main reasons to buy the Nintendo 64 in the first place.

However, it goes much farther than that. One of the reasons that Super Mario 64 is one of the top games of all time is not because it sold so many copies, but because of the new rules and best practices it laid out for open world gaming. As Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games and creator of the Grand Theft Auto V game best puts it, “Anyone who makes 3-D games who says they’ve not borrowed something from Mario…is lying.”^[2]The New York Times – Americana at Its Most Felonious Pretty much every game since ’96 owes some bit of homage to Super Mario 64.

#8: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo had another hit game on their hands. This game came out in 1998. Taking the lessons that the learned from Super Mario 64, they made this game even better. The makers of Zelda did not follow the rules of game play and game world creation that game developers before them made. Instead, they rewrote the whole playbook.

Their open world building included intricate puzzles, to beautiful level design, and new player interfaces such as automatic targeting have become industry standards ever since. In fact, IGN (an American video game media company) went so far as to say that it was “the new benchmark for interactive entertainment” and GameTrailers (an American video gaming website) took this one step further by saying that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a “’walking patent office’ due to the number of features that became ‘industry standard’.”^[3]The Legend of Zelda Titles

#7: Doom

Pretty much any modern first-person shooter, from Call of Duty to Halo, owes a lot to the video game Doom. This video game, which came out in 1993 laid the ground work for principles found in all modern first-person shooters. With the release of Doom, it brought such new features as texture-mapped environments, non-orthogonal walls, light diminishing/light sourcing, variable height floors and ceilings, environment animation and morphing, palette translation, multiple players, smooth and seamless gameplay, and an open game that allowed people to modify it how they wished.^[4]Doom Press Release While many of these features may seem like nothing to a gamer today, Doom was the one that pioneered them. This easily puts it as one of the best video games every made.

#6: Grand Theft Auto III

Grand Theft Auto III was the first ever video game to take open world gaming to the next level. At the time, open world gaming was more like a series of rooms that you had to travel through. While there was some freedom and you could do what you wanted to within a limited scope, in most cases, you were still stuck in a fairly linear story progression that the game’s maker wanted you to follow.

However, with GTA III is one of the best video games every because it changed this with its’ open world sand box game design.^[5]Destructoid – Review: Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary While the game does have a story that the player can choose to follow, now players could go anywhere in the game world and do anything that they wanted to do from running a criminal empire to being a simple taxi driver. This meant that they could make up their own story within the game. This might seem normal today as most modern games implement this. However, this game design did not exist before.

#5: Diablo II

Diablo II is one of the the best role-playing games of all time, one of the best online games of all time, and one of the best PC games of all time.^[6]Blizzard – Diablo II Simply put, it is one of the best video games of all time. This is simply based on the game’s story by itself. When you take into account the game mechanics that it innovated, it shoots it into one of the top games of all time.

While its levels may seem repetitive, it perfected the reward system in the game. This made people want to keep coming back for some more hack and slash game play. On top of that, it introduced updates online. This gave continuous support in both updates and new gameplay. As such people have kept coming back for more years and decades after Blizzard Entertainment initially released the game. Lastly, if bored, sign in online and play through the levels with a couple of friends.

#4: GoldenEye 007

GoldenEye 007 has gone down as one of the best video games every made and has a great influence on the video game industry. Prior to this game, video gamers played first-person shooters primarily on PCs. However, thanks to its innovative control system, it proved that great first-person shooter could also be played on console systems.^[7]Gamasutra – The Gamasutra Quantum Leap Awards: First-Person Shooters In fact, it is credited as opening “the genre to a completely new market” of console systems. Furthermore, it is credited as making popular a new level of realism to the genre that had not been seen before. This along with multiplayer deathmatch modes where you could play alongside 3 of your friends for bragging rights helped pave the way for later popular titles such as the Halo and Call of Duty franchises.

#3: StarCraft

StarCraft is one of the best video games, top PC games, and online games ever made. It helped redefine the Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre.^[8]Blizzard – StarCraft’s 10-Year Anniversary: A Retrospective No more was it necessary to have opposing factions that were basically the same with just a slightly different look. The game takes a rock-paper-scissors approach. With this, the development team at Blizzard crafted three distinct but evenly matched sides. This created endless replayability. However, StarCraft’s biggest legacy is that it helped bring along the creation of e-sports. In fact, the game is so popular in South Korea, that the best players are minor celebrities in the country. They can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in winnings with matches televised on national television channels. Furthermore, Korean corporations and even the Korean military sponsor Korean teams.

#2: Mortal Kombat

Fighting style games have been popular since the beginning of video games. Originally, people could only play them on arcade machines around the country. When personal video game consoles started to become more common, many tried to port themselves over to them as well. However, Mortal Kombat managed to be the most successful and best video games every made. It did this by unapologetically showing gore and violence.

It created three main legacies. First, the public’s perception changed about video games. No longer were they just something for children. Now they were something that teens and adults would like as well.^[9]IGN – THE HISTORY OF MORTAL KOMBAT This opened up the video game market to a much wider and diverse audience. Second, it brought along with it a set of smooth buttons. These made it easy and intuitive to control your character with awesome combat combinations. Lastly, it created a long list of distinctive and imaginative characters.

#1: Pokemon Red & Blue

Pokemon Red & Blue is one of the top 10 video games every made. It is one of the best video games for the Game Boy. In addition, it is also one of the best Role Playing Games ever made. In addition, it was just one of the coolest games ever to play. Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of this game, managed to combine two things. One was an innovative gaming experience without having to use advanced affects. The second was advanced collecting and trading functions all without having any character die in the game.^[10]Time – The Ultimate Game Freak

The game does not use high tech tricks. This further promotes the players imagination and creativity when playing. This leads to a more rewarding and deep experience. Many a Pokemon player has sat on their couch playing on their Game Boy until the batteries died out. However, the did not let that stop them and put in a set of fully recharged batteries to continue playing.