Edge Magazine ranks the 100 Greatest Videogames of the past 30 years

[maidenhaver]

Drakes Fortune gave us the yellow ledges fad.

[GhostCow]

Call of Duty popularized ADS

Which is why I ******* hate COD and almost every shooter released after it got popular.

[maidenhaver]

What was that series called? Fortune Man. Drake Cliffhanger. It had the quicktime climbing win button hero who did the thing. There was also the influencial series Hitman, starring Agent 47, who influenced the Hitman World trilogy.

[Rand]

Thief: The Dark Project influenced a whole genre of games, most directly Deus Ex and System Shock/Bioshock

[wndrbr]

If it's meant to be a list of most influential games, Skyrim takes #1 easily no question. You could argue the games that inspired Skyrim belong there, but they aren't the ones that directly influenced most of video games made post-2011.

Nearly every single game now has RPG mechanics. Did any other genre ever infect the video game industry quite like this?

Half-Life 1 made shooters cinematic, Halo invented the "you're wounded, take cover!" autoregenerating health mechanic (it's shields, but functionally the same thing). Zelda Ocarina of time was likely very influential - there were other games that invented the z-targeting and other things, but it was Ocarina that popularized it. RE4 invented the over-the-shoulder camera. Gears of War wasn't the first shooter with sticky cover system (i think the first one Kill.switch, or maybe even MGS1), but it was the one that popularized it. Dark Souls launched a wave of souls-like games. GTA3 launched a wave of GTA knockoffs (like saints row, scarface, etc etc). Amnesia invented the streamer-bait horror walking sims which is a massive industry now..

No one really copied skyrim beyond the surface level stuff like "open world" (there were lots of popular open world games before skyrim), "dungeons" (lots of popular games with worlds peppered with dungeons before skyrim), "perks" (again, not something skyrim invented).

[maidenhaver]

If it's meant to be a list of most influential games, Skyrim takes #1 easily no question. You could argue the games that inspired Skyrim belong there, but they aren't the ones that directly influenced most of video games made post-2011.

Nearly every single game now has RPG mechanics. Did any other genre ever infect the video game industry quite like this?

Half-Life 1 made shooters cinematic, Halo invented the "you're wounded, take cover!" autoregenerating health mechanic (it's shields, but functionally the same thing).

What's funny is all my friends played with shields so low that two hits could kill you, no grenades, on zanzibar or the hanging fort, and usually just human weapons. Basically Quake.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Isn't Minecraft the best selling game ever? The game with the most content made for it (maps uploaded, mods made, and youtube videos uploaded) of all time? How did it not make the top 10?

Leaving aside the usual Nintendo & soulslikes fetishism, what's the rationale behind ranking Halo above Doom? Not only was Doom more impactful and innovative but it's also more fun to play today. Why are journos so infatuated with a mediocre game with Halo? there has to be more than "it was the first playable console FPS" (which isn't true) and "it was the first time an FPS got multiplayer right" (which isn't true).

I remember playing Combat Evolved for a little bit way back when. I thought that the armor looked a little cool but that was it.

[Tweed]

Kill all jurnos

[agentorange]

Far Cry 3 would rank with Skyrim as most influencial. Didn't every game do FC3 discover the world by climbing towers?

Yeah, Far Cry 3 and Borderlands, as FPS games with loot and skill trees and crafting and other nonsense, were far more influential in bringing "RPG" mechanics into every genre than Skyrim.

[asf]

what is this weeb crap

[♦ Arcana ♦]

gaming identity is very tied to marketing. every edge top 100 games from true experts is just whichever ones were promoted very heavily (and to gamers, that makes it of the utmost importance). the other games, despite apparent quality, are not actually worthy of existing. see series like ultima or the arcade games that were buried despite 1000x more tangible influence than anything on home consoles. gaming historical discussion in the west is a distillation of crony marketing and not reality.

[Tweed]

Here's my top list:

1.Old game everyone likes to show that I know THE ROOTS
2.Slightly newer game that almost every likes
3.A game some people don't like to show I'm paying attention and not just rattling off a hit parade
4.A game from a publisher that took us all to lunch two years ago and gave us swag
5.Same as above
6.Trash everyone hates, but we need the clicks
7.If we don't give this a high mark we'll never get another exclusive as long as we live
8.Terrible game everyone hates, but I personally love and since I'm in charge I'll do what I want
9.A garbage game with horrible mutants, but it makes huwhite people mad and I'm taking my frustration at being a journalism school wash out on them
10.A game no one in their right mind would ever play, but we're on the take so it gets top billing

[junior]

I will never understand appeal of zelda games or final fantasy.

[Ranselknulf]

What the **** is this list.

I took a look at their methodology to try and see how they came up with this list. What they did was ask a pool of around 20 "industry professionals" rank the games.

Here is the complete list of people who voted.

► Show Spoiler

Together with votes from readers and the in-house Edge editorial team, we polled a variety of videogame industry representatives, alongside regular contributors to the magazine and former Edge staff. Thank you to the following for taking part: Nate Austin, Jon Bailes, Callum Bains, Dinga Bakaba, Sam Barlow, Alex Beachum, Joel Beardshaw, Sébastien Bénard, Mike Bithell, Lucy Blundell, Wren Brier, Ben Brode, Mike Brown, Nathan Brown, Jeppe Carlsen, Matthew Castle, Roger Clark, Oli Clarke Smith, Simon Cox, Phil Crabtree, Ste Curran, Dylan Cuthbert, Martin Davies, Tim Dawson, Teddy Dief, Joao Diniz Sanches, Christian Donlan, Nicolas Doucet, Caelyn Ellis, Joel Eschler, Caspar Field, Simon Flesser, Aaryn Flynn, Ojiro Fumoto, Michael Gapper, Ian Hardingham, Duncan Harris, Alan Hazelden, Chris Hecker, Adrian Hon, Sam Horti, Casey Hudson, Joseph Humfrey, Alex Hutchinson, Jon Ingold, Bryan Intihar, Phil Iwaniuk, Steve Jarratt, Meghna Jayanth, John Johanas, Madison Karrh, Greg Kasavin, Mikael Kasurinen, Jake Kazdal, Emma Kent, Paul Kilduff-Taylor, Jason Killingsworth, Andrejs Klavinš, Ilari Kuittinen, Trent Kusters, Rick Lane, Greg Lobanov, Mark MacDonald, Dan Marshall, Corey Martin, Gareth Damian Martin, Ben Maxwell, David McCarthy, Edmund McMillen, Anna Megill, Daniel Mullins, Xalavier Nelson Jr, Dana Nightingale, Niall O'Donoghue, Henrique Olifiers, Dave Oshry, Trent Oster, Craig Owens, Lewis Packwood, Simon Parkin, Jeremy Peel, Gary Penn, Dan Pinchbeck, Lucas Pope, Lena Raine, Jade Raymond, Siobhan Reddy, Paweł Sasko, Andrew Shouldice, Jen Simpkins, Harvey Smith, Randy Smith, Davide Soliani, Jake Solomon, Richard Stanton, Matt Stark, Abbie Stone, Keith Stuart, Goichi Suda, Jörg Tittel, Ragnar Tørnquist, Feargus Urquhart, David Valjalo, Jan-Bart Van Beek, Sean Vanaman, Swen Vincke, Robin Walker, Alex Ward, Alan Wen, Tim Willits, Alex Wiltshire, Erik Wolpaw, Shuhei Yoshida and Derek Yu. Some additional game development and publishing staff who preferred to remain anonymous also contributed.

It's also not the greatest of all time, but the greatest of the past 30 years. From the poll.

"As part of Edge's 30th anniversary celebrations in this month's issue (#390) of Edge magazine, they invited ~100 people from the industry to pick the 100 greatest games of the past 30 years. Or, as they call it, The 100 Greatest Games of Edge's Lifetime.

There are a lot of blurbs from some pretty notable people in the magazine, but I don't think I can share them here -- so I'd definitely recommend picking up a copy. Still, here's the full list. I'm sure people will be calm and rational about this, and no one will lose their minds over the position (or absence) of a specific game."


I think if I tried to make a list of top 100 games, I'd have a better methodology than a poll honestly. I'd try to make a list of games that made an impact on the gaming market and changed the way games were played as a starting point.

[Piggy]

The only devs I know from that list are Swen and Feargus. who the **** are this people?

[KnightoftheWind]

So Breath of the Wild is the greatest game of all time?. It doesn't even compare to Skyrim, and of course they had to put Dark Souls in there too as if we're not sick to death of hearing about that one. Miyazaki must be on cloud nine for perfecting the art of recycling your own assets ad nauseum, and still getting a seat at the executive table.

[rusty_shackleford]

So Breath of the Wild is the greatest game of all time?

Nintendo is certified journocore gaming. Nintendo games are made for children, so this makes sense.

[Rigwort]

These kinds of lists are for children anyways, especially anything from a magazine. The only lists worth analyzing are those by true autists.

[Gastrick]

Isn't Minecraft the best selling game ever? The game with the most content made for it (maps uploaded, mods made, and youtube videos uploaded) of all time? How did it not make the top 10?

Imagine that list, Minecraft and Roblox and Fortnite. Candy Crush also sold a lot of copies, can't forget that one.

[Tweed]

These kinds of lists are for children anyways, especially anything from a magazine. The only lists worth analyzing are those by true autists.

Autists lists are only good for starting fights with other autists.