The Nintendo Entertainment System is legendary in the video game world. Nintendo virtually came out of nowhere to invade the world with a reborn love for home-based video games. To fuel the revolution, Nintendo and a skilled group of third parties loaded the NES library with a wealth of high quality 8-bit games that would not only ingrain themselves in the minds of youngsters, but set standards for video game generations to come.
When video game consoles leaped into the 16 bit age my friend and I each got a different console. My friend decided to go with boring old Mario and the Super Nintendo. I decided to go with the much cooler Sega Genesis. For the next several years we debated which one was better, but there was no debate. The video game sales said it all. Much to my chagrin Super Nintendo was king. These are the 10 highest selling video games on the Super Nintendo.
In the early 1990's, video games experienced what is regarded by many to be the swan song of 2D gaming. The NES built up a lot of steam in the late 1980's with its 8 bits of processing power, but their competitor Sega wasn't going to just sit back and watch Nintendo cash in on all the console sales. Instead, they began a new generation of video gaming known as the 16-bit era by releasing a console known as the Genesis. It was inevitable then that in order to maintain their foothold in the home video game industry, Nintendo would have to release new hardware as well. In 1991, Nintendo launches the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES.
Apparently, according to the Everything Preschool.com Calendar the month of August presents an unusual but fun week-long holiday during week one to celebrate video games. Research efforts turned up very brief allusions to Video Game Week in August but none of the sources offered much explanation regarding the holiday's origin or details of how people celebrate this unusual holiday. So I've decided to pay tribute to the occasion my own way: Through old school video game nostalgia.
Let's face it, nothing goes together better than food and video games. Heck, for many of us retro gamers of the '80s, the local video arcade and pizza place were one in the same. Perhaps that's how Nolan Bushnell, co-founder of Atari, came up with the idea of starting Chucky Cheese.
How many times have you clicked on a "World's Greatest Video Games" link only to discover that most of the games listed were released within the past few months? Or even worse, the list omits such important video gaming milestones like Pong, Asteroids, or Tempest 2000?
There have been many amazing game titles of many different varieties, so it'd be near impossible to really get a perfect list of top video games of all time. This, however, is my attempt. These are what I consider my top ten video games of all time, keeping in mind two things. First, I tried to include only one game for each series. I could easily make a top ten list that was half Legend of Zelda games, but what's the point of that? Second, there are popular games and series of games that I've just never gotten into, like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, or Halo, so they won't be included.
In the early days of video games beat 'em ups were very popular. From the beat 'em up genre came another sub-genre called hack and slash games. Hack and slash games are similar to beat 'em ups in that the game is mainly just a bunch of button mashing as you fight a myriad of enemies at once. The difference between a hack and slash game and a beat 'em up is that typically beat 'em up games require using your fists and feet and hack and slash requires using a sword or knife for most of the game. These are the ten best hack and slash video games of all-time.
Though there are certainly many, many great strategy video games, below is a lot of outstanding ones. Here you will find classic and newer games, many of them in the exciting Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre. To me, these are the top ten greatest strategy video games of all time...
From the mono color, clunky graphics of Pong to the full motion rendered videos of Final Fantasy XIII, video games have changed drastically in the almost 40 years they have been around. What once could only be found in a six foot tall box in an arcade now can be played on phones the size of a credit card. As games have changed, so has the industry, and many of the major changes have been spurred by specific, influential games. Presented below are the ten games that had the greatest impact on the gaming industry and continue to influence gaming to this day.
Other lists I've created involving movies, music and sports have certainly sparked some healthy debate and I've had to laugh at the abuse heaped upon my choices in the comments section of those posts. However, I suspect this list of the best video games of all time will trump them all when it comes to reader backlash. Everyone has their own strongly held opinions when it comes to these types of lists, and if a favorite song, movie or athlete is overlooked then outrage naturally seems to follow. However, with video games there is an extra ingredient thrown into the recipe that really adds some spice to the argument. That ingredient is "The Fanboy".
The first real arcade quality handheld video game was the Nintendo Game Boy which was not released in North America until the 1990s. The Game Boy was the first to have an actual working ( although primitive ) monitor for game graphics to be reproduced on. The fact that no actual miniature monitor existed in the 1980s did not stop toy companies from claiming they were releasing hand held video games.
Sega is a multinational video game software and hardware development company founded in 1940 as Standard games. Sega's biggest marketing push for video games between 1989 and 2001 was to launch an anti-Nintendo campaign to carry the new generation of games with a slogan of "We do what Nintendon't". In 1991 Sega changed their slogan to "Welcome to the next level" and the console war continued. As a result of these campaigns some very popular games became available for players to entertain themselves with. These are ten of the most popular ones that Sega Genesis was involved with.
Although the majority of today's gamers would laugh up their sleeves in derision if shown a classic video game from the 80s, the fact remains that this was really the decade that started the video game phenomenon, and the games that were the pioneers of this phenomenon, though graphically far inferior to today's offerings, were some of the most brilliantly craft, addictive games ever to grace a monitor or TV screen. Arcades ruled the day, with youth willing to do any odd job to earn a few quarters so they could run down to the local arcade and plug those quarters into games like Pac-Man, Defender, and Galaga. Most adults turned up their noses at these dark, musty caves with their overwhelming cacophony of beeps and blasts, but to kids these arcades were heaven on earth.
While horror might be a mainstay for console games today, there was a time when a home video game system didn't have enough power to run the terrifying graphics needed to create a rich and frightening universe. So the place where the spooky classics went to get their fright on was on computers. From PC, Mac and even a few 8-bit models, the place to experience real terror was on the hard drive. The games that follow are the best and most groundbreaking fright-fest video games ever released. Just keep repeating to yourself, "it's only DOS", "it's only DOS".
In an industry where an obese plumber can become a cultural icon, it's no wonder that in video games, weird is normal. However nutty they get, these oddities were never as strange as the ones for the Atari 2600. Ironically the most bizarre of these came out around the crash of the video game industry, causing most of them to go unnoticed in the rubble of a once great gaming console. Take a look weirdest Games you'll ever see, all for the Atari 2600.
If you lived during the 80's you probably know that the Commodore 64 was a popular computer/video game console that dominated the market, outselling IBM clones, Apple, and Atari--yes, Atari at one time made computers. The vast majority of Commodore 64s have since gone the way of all old technology and are collecting dust in basements, adorning landfills, or sitting next to that Betamax video recorder in the homes of those who say, "I'm not buying something new until they improve on what I already have."
Arcades is where many of the great video games first emerged. This was particularly the case in the '80s, when consoles were more limited. As such, there are a few arcade games that became classic games, moved to game consoles and are regarded as some of the best video games. Here are a few such classic games.
In the 1980s, video arcades were a major part of the existence of teens and preteens. Many a weekly allowance would be converted to quarters and fed into machines in order to play the latest game. Although business has slowed for arcades in recent years, the effect of arcades on the video game industry still can't be ignored. The following is a list of the top five arcade games of all time in chronological order.