The games featured a brand new region and 100 additional Pokemon, which would go on to become the standard for all subsequent sequels. They also allowed players to return to the Kanto region after completing the main story, where they could then challenge the original gym leaders and Elite Four as well as the main protagonist from the first games. In addition to this, Gold & Silver players could obtain 82% of the series’ available Pokemon without the need for trading, a percentage which remains higher than in any subsequent generation to this day. Our blue speedster Sonic made his debut on the Sega Genesis, before seguing into numerous sequels expanding on the firstgame’s speed-based platforming. Then there was the shift from 2D to 3D with 1998’s “Sonic Adventure”, when Sonic’s universe began to fill up with colourful realms and even more colourful characters.
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Sure, some of this is down to video games taking longer to develop these days, but a big part can be attributed to the continued success of Grand Theft Auto 5 and Grand Theft Auto Online. There’s a reason why Mario is one of the most recognizable video game characters of all time, and, spoiler alert, it has nothing to do with his glorious mustache. The Italian plumber’s debut title helped to reinvigorate the home console market following the 1983 video game crash.
In 2024, the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees to win their eighth World Series. In addition to nabbing backing from a16z’s game-specific fund, Series landed BITKRAFT. This is a firm founded by eSports pioneer Jens Hilgers who cofounded ESL and G2 Esports, and is one of the most active game investors. Ditto for F4 Fund, a firm run by David Kaye and Joakim Achrén, two game makers who have built and sold multiple studios apiece and now invest.
Over the past two decades, fans have only received three new mainline Final Fantasy games, none of which has really come close to matching the quality of its predecessors. This is made all the more frustrating by the fact that the seven years between 1994 and 2001 saw five fantastic Final Fantasy games released, the last, and arguably best of which was Final Fantasy 10. The leap from PS1 to PS2 allowed Kojima and his team to make some pretty big improvements, not just to the game‘s visuals, but also to the way that enemies behaved. The decision to switch Snake out for Raiden during the early stages of the game was a masterful one too, though it did prove to be somewhat controversial with both fans and critics around the time of the game’s release. In terms of the story, the themes and ideas explored are a lot more mature this time around, encouraging players to think about a variety of poignant issues as they make their way through the game.
What are some of the best regarded video game franchises of all time? Fallout, Final Fantasy, and Call of Duty all seem like surefire bets rights? Those are all big games, but funnily enough they don’t appear that many times in the top 200 on Metacritic. The recent Call of Duty titles often feel more like movies than games. The cinematic graphics and, some would say, the at times linear gameplay give the feeling of participating in a first person movie. Although the multiplayer mode has now become such a big part of the series that the single-player campaign usually plays second fiddle.
You’ll be babbling about the seven Halo installations the Forerunners made in no time. On the surface of it, Halo might just seem like another series of shooters only with a slightly better story than other games in the FPS genre. But if you dare to dig a little deeper, you’ll soon find that every single race and faction has a fleshed-out history told through a multitude of perspectives. Yet, as so many other horror franchises have come, gone, and generally struggled to find sustainable success, Resident Evil has remained a bonafide blockbuster. While the quality has, of course, varied over the years, I still maintain that after 13 entries, there’s never been a truly awful mainline Assassin’s Creed game. That sort of track record isn’t unheard of in gaming, but it’s especially impressive when you consider the size and scope of these games.
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Another element of this intricacy is Kingdom Hearts’ broad spectrum of filler games. Based on the titles, there are technically three main series games, compared to approximately ten other entries, including the mobile game. One of the facts that most gamers know about Kingdom Hearts, even if they’re not familiar with the series, is the complexity of its timeline. Not only does the franchise release games out of chronological order, but it also has multiple overlapping groups of protagonists that the storyline moves between. The “modern day” segments of the games can be more arduous to follow due to their multiple protagonists and the influence of both technological and supernatural artifacts from the series’ lore.
There is no denying that the series has seen some significant ups and downs.
With 15 mainline entries across every platform you could imagine, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy franchise provides thousands of hours of JRPG goodness. Given that each iteration is a self-contained experience, you can pretty much take your pick of where you want to start. This Switch entry has pretty open world-style sections, and it’s a serious visual upgrade over the 3DS games. While there are loads more Pokémon games to play on the 3DS, you’re better off just getting the newest version and enjoying that if you’re a first-timer. These 11 series will provide hundreds of hours of rich, immersive experiences that will help pass the time until the PS5 and the Xbox Series X launch, both of which will arrive with a payload of new games. While fans will undoubtedly disagree about which video game is the greatest, Metacritic offers a ranking based on reviews from many sources.
From side-scrollers to three-dimensional platformers, and even the odd Bioware made RPG, this hedgehog has quite the line-up, even if his recent titles haven’t really kept up the pace. The core series alone contains nine generations of video games, each spawning up to two or three games each. The mainline series only scratches the surface of what’s available, because there are a significant amount of spin-offs like Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Pinball, and Pokemon Go that provide new ways to enjoy the world of Pokemon. The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo’s longest-running and most successful series, and almost every entry has lived up to the legacy established with the first game. The original Legend of Zelda launched in 1986 and has been followed by 20 mainline games, multiple spin-offs including Hyrule Warriors and Cadence of Hyrule, and a slew of remakes.
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The top-down viewpoint and ancient graphics have been replaced with an isometric view and luscious 3D models. The AI has advanced so much since that first game, it’s now a bit like comparing Skynet to a pocket calculator. There’s a whole myriad of differences between this latest incarnation and the first Call of Duty, and not just in the looks department. It may still be a first-person shooter, but as the series moves further and further into the future.
Series bills Rho as the first AI-native, multimodal full-stack game creation platform – meaning it handles visuals and audio. To be fair, there are other AI gaming engine competitors out there including, for instance, Modl.ai Engine, and Unity’s Muse Chat. Modl.ai performs tasks like bug catching, or identifying reasons why the games are crashing.
The sprite work is impeccable throughout and the stage design and music are top notch too. Perhaps the most noticeable thing about Sonic game review Mania, however, is that it’s a lot of fun to play, which hasn’t always been the case with other modern Sonic games. Over the past two or three decades, these genre-defining franchises have paved the way for smaller games and series, while also becoming incredibly popular in the process.