Warp Zoned Presents
All Articles: Wii
The Video Game Canon’s 2020 Update is Here
The Video Game Canon is a statistical meta-ranking of dozens of “Best Video Games of All Time” lists that began in 2017 with Version 1.0, and the ranking has been updated several times since then. Which game is #1? There’s only one way to find out…
The latest update to the Video Game Canon, Version 4.0, has arrived!
The Video Game Canon now includes a total of 1,232 games, which were pulled from 59 “Best Video Games of All Time” lists published between 1995 and 2020. Each game was ranked against the rest of the field using the C-Score, a formula that takes into account a game’s “Average Ranking” and the complementary percentage of its “Appearance Frequency” across all lists.
Finally, games released after December 31, 2016 were excluded from the ranking because of their newness.
Three brand new lists were added to Version 4.0 of the Video Game Canon, including “The 100 Best Video Games in History” from GQ Spain, a “Top 100 Video Games of All Time” ranking from Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, and a massive look back at “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” from Popular Mechanics. Alongside these new additions, updates to IGN‘s “Top 100 Video Games of All Time,” Popular Mechanics‘s “The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time,” and Slant Magazine‘s “The 100 Best Video Games of All Time” were also added to the calculation. Thanks to reader CriticalCid for providing research assistance with some of these new lists.
But even with all this new data, there was surprisingly very little movement near the top of the Video Game Canon, and the Top 3 was once again represented by Alexey Pajitnov’s Tetris (#1), Valve’s Half-Life 2, and Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 (#3). There was some slight shuffling in the rest of the Top 10, but no new titles were able to crack the highest tier. Nintendo’s classic quartet of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (#4), Super Mario 64 (#5), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (#6), and Super Metroid (#10) all hung around, as did Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (#7), Irrational’s BioShock (#8), and Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption (#9).
Things get more interesting as you move further down the Top 100, especially for the 2015 and 2016 releases that now qualify for inclusion in the Video Game Canon.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to learn more about this year’s update to the big list and to explore the rest of the Top 1000.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is unsurprisingly the best-selling game of April 2020
The public has been anxiously awaiting the launch of Final Fantasy VII Remake ever since it was first announced all the way back in 2015. Well, it finally arrived on store shelves last month, and fans eagerly emptied their wallets to return to the world of Midgar.
According to The NPD Group’s Mat Piscatella (via Twitter), Final Fantasy VII Remake was far and away the best-selling game in April 2020. The game’s exceptional sales also pushed it to become the biggest launch in Final Fantasy franchise history.
Strong sales across the board for software ($662 million), hardware ($420 million), and accessories ($384 million) were recorded by The NPD Group. Added together, the video game industry racked up revenues of $1.467 billion last month, a whopping 73% increase over April 2019. The total also surpassed April 2008’s previous record of $1.2 billion.
An expanded list of April 2020’s best-selling games (featuring Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Resident Evil 3, and many others) can be found after the break. (more…)
It’s raining Bells as Animal Crossing: New Horizons becomes the best-selling game of March 2020
Multiple states attempted to “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus pandemic throughout the month of March by shutting down non-essential businesses, and The NPD Group’s recent report (via Twitter) about the month’s best-selling games absolutely reflects this strange new world.
Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons, without the benefit of digital sales (the consolemaker doesn’t supply them to NPD), was the best-selling game of March 2020. According to analyst Mat Piscatella (also via Twitter), it’s impressive debut has already set a new sales record for the franchise, and it trails only Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Super Smash Bros. Brawl for best first month sales by a Nintendo-published title.
The game also helped sell a lot of people on the Switch, as Nintendo sold more Switch consoles in March of 2020 than they did when the system launched in March of 2017.
With gamers doing their part and staying home, the entire industry surged ahead alongside Tom Nook, Isabelle, K.K. Slider, and the rest of the Animal Crossing crew. Total game sales were up 34% over March 2019 ($739 million vs $550 million), while total hardware sales rose 63% ($461 million vs $282 million).
And Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t the only new release that’s popular with players right now. MLB The Show 20 (#3), Resident Evil 3 (#4), Doom Eternal (#6), and Persona 5 Royal (#7) all debuted in the Top Ten. Looking further down the list, new games such as Nioh 2 (#11), Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX (#15), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered (#20) all snuck into the Top 20.
You can find a complete breakdown of The NPD Group’s list of best-selling games from March 2020 after the break. (more…)