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- 1Tetris
Tetris was created in 1984 by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov at the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre in Moscow, and its journey to the West involved a genuinely convoluted set of licensing disputes across multiple companies before Nintendo secured rights to bundle it with the original Game Boy in 1989. That Game Boy bundling decision is widely credited as one of the most consequential packaging choices in gaming history, since Tetris's simple, endlessly replayable puzzle mechanics made it an ideal fit for handheld, pick-up-and-play sessions and helped drive the Game Boy's massive commercial success. The game's core mechanic — rotating and arranging falling geometric blocks to clear complete lines — has proven so fundamentally sound that Tetris has been re-released on virtually every gaming platform and computing device released since, spanning over four decades without needing any significant redesign of its central gameplay loop. Tetris's combination of its convoluted Cold War-era licensing journey to the West and its role driving the original Game Boy's success has made it one of the most commercially successful and enduringly played video games ever created.
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0 - 2Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros., released by Nintendo in 1985, is widely credited with helping single-handedly revive the American video game industry following the devastating 1983 market crash, bundled with the Nintendo Entertainment System at a moment when many retailers had sworn off video games entirely. The game established foundational conventions for the entire platformer genre, including power-ups that temporarily transform the player character, secret areas rewarding exploration, and tightly tuned physics-based jumping mechanics that numerous subsequent platformers directly built upon. Mario himself, along with the game's Mushroom Kingdom setting, became the most recognizable video game character and franchise in the medium's history, eventually expanding into dozens of sequels, spin-offs, and media adaptations across four decades. Super Mario Bros.'s combination of its historically significant role reviving the American video game industry and its genre-defining platformer mechanics has made it one of the most influential video games ever created.
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0 - 3The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, released for the Nintendo 64 in 1998, is widely regarded as one of the greatest video games ever made and was among the first successful adaptations of the established 2D Zelda formula into a fully three-dimensional game world. The game's innovative "Z-targeting" lock-on combat system, letting players lock onto enemies during three-dimensional combat, solved a fundamental technical problem that had challenged nearly every early 3D action game and became a widely adopted standard across the broader action-adventure genre afterward. Ocarina of Time's structure, blending puzzle-solving dungeons, an expansive overworld, time-travel-based storytelling, and its titular musical instrument mechanic for both puzzle-solving and travel, demonstrated a level of systemic design ambition that critics still frequently cite as a high-water mark for the medium. Ocarina of Time's combination of its successful 3D adaptation of the Zelda formula and its genre-defining targeting combat system has made it one of the most critically acclaimed video games ever released.
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0 - 4Minecraft
Minecraft was created by Swedish developer Markus "Notch" Persson, first released in a rough alpha form in 2009 before its full 2011 launch, built around a simple but deeply open-ended premise: breaking and placing cube-shaped blocks in a procedurally generated world to build, survive, and create almost anything imaginable. The game's minimal initial development budget and its early, unusually direct relationship between Persson and his player community, built through active forums and constant updates during its alpha period, became a widely cited model for how a small independent game could grow through sustained community engagement rather than traditional marketing. Microsoft's 2014 acquisition of Minecraft's developer Mojang for $2.5 billion reflected the game's massive and enduring commercial success, and Minecraft went on to become the best-selling video game of all time, with sales exceeding 300 million copies across every major gaming platform. Minecraft's combination of its open-ended block-building creative premise and its record-setting status as the best-selling video game ever made has made it one of the most commercially and culturally significant video games in the medium's history.
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0 - 5Grand Theft Auto V
Grand Theft Auto V, released by Rockstar Games in 2013, set numerous entertainment industry records upon release, generating over $800 million in its first day and over $1 billion within three days, figures that outpaced the opening receipts of nearly every major film release in history at the time. The game's massive open-world recreation of a fictionalized Los Angeles, featuring three separate playable protagonists whose storylines interweave throughout the campaign, represented an unusually ambitious structural approach to open-world game design compared to the single-protagonist structure of most prior entries in the genre. Grand Theft Auto Online, the game's persistent multiplayer mode, sustained an enormous and continuously updated player base for well over a decade after the base game's release, turning what began as a single retail purchase into one of the most commercially enduring live-service platforms in gaming history. Grand Theft Auto V's combination of its record-shattering commercial launch and its unusually long-lived multiplayer platform has made it one of the most commercially significant video games ever released.
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0 - 6Pac-Man
Pac-Man was created by Japanese designer Toru Iwatani and released by Namco in 1980, deliberately designed to appeal to a broader audience, including women, at a time when arcade games were overwhelmingly dominated by space-shooter themes aimed at a narrower demographic. The character's iconic yellow circular design, reportedly inspired partly by a pizza missing a slice, became one of the most instantly recognizable images in video game history, and the game's simple maze-navigation-and-ghost-avoidance premise proved accessible to players who found contemporary shooting games intimidating. Pac-Man became a genuine mainstream cultural phenomenon beyond arcades, spawning a hit song ("Pac-Man Fever"), a Saturday morning cartoon, and extensive merchandising, at a scale that few if any video games had achieved before it, helping legitimize video games as a broader entertainment medium. Pac-Man's combination of its deliberately broad-audience design philosophy and its unprecedented mainstream cultural crossover success has made it one of the most historically significant video games ever created.
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