Curated playlist
IOS games
- Final Fantasy Legend IIFinal Fantasy Legend II shipped in Japan on the 14th of December 1990, carrying a name that was, in its home country, entirely different: SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu. That gap between identities tells you something about the game's unusual…
- Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera OmniaDissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia launched on the 1st of February 2017, in Japan, assembling heroes and villains from across the Final Fantasy franchise into a single free-to-play mobile game. At its peak, it had been downloaded more than…
- Final Fantasy XV: Pocket EditionFinal Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition reached three million downloads within its first month on the market. That number turned a stripped-down mobile spinoff into one of Square Enix's quieter success stories of 2018. The game took a full…
- Final Fantasy IV (2007 video game)Final Fantasy IV (2007 video game) arrived on the Nintendo DS on the 20th of December 2007 in Japan, timed precisely to the Final Fantasy series' 20th anniversary. The game being celebrated was not a new entry but a rebuilt one: a full…
- Lineage WLineage W arrived on the 4th of November 2021, not with a quiet launch but with a declaration. NCSoft's chief creative officer, Taek Jin Kim, called it "the final Lineage" before a single player had logged in. That phrase carries weight…
- Final Fantasy XIIIFinal Fantasy XIII opens in a place that should not exist: Cocoon, a massive artificial sphere floating above the surface of Gran Pulse, kept aloft by mechanical gods called fal'Cie. Development of the game began in February 2004, and when…
- Final Fantasy IV: The After YearsFinal Fantasy IV: The After Years asks a question most sequels are afraid to pose: what happens seventeen years later, when the heroes have grown old and their children must face a threat their parents barely survived? The second moon has…
- Final Fantasy Legend IIIFinal Fantasy Legend III arrived in Japanese stores on the 13th of December, 1991, carrying a secret: in Japan it was called SaGa 3: Jikuu no Hasha, a title in a series its creator had already decided to end. Series creator Akitoshi Kawazu…
- Final Fantasy VFinal Fantasy V launched in Japan in December 1992, and within a single day it sold roughly 900,000 cartridges. That opening figure was about 4.5 times the first-day numbers posted by Final Fantasy IV the year before. Japanese authorities…
- Final Fantasy IIIFinal Fantasy III launched on the 27th of April, 1990, and within its first week sold 500,000 copies in Japan. By March 2003, that figure had reached 1.4 million, making it the highest-selling domestic release among the first three games…
- Final Fantasy VIIFinal Fantasy VII arrived in Japan on the 31st of January, 1997, and within three days had sold over two million copies. That pace was not an accident. It was the product of a project that had burned through multiple platforms, consumed…
- Final Fantasy IXFinal Fantasy IX arrived on the PlayStation in 2000 carrying a quiet act of rebellion. While its two immediate predecessors had chased a sleeker, more cinematic realism, this ninth entry turned deliberately backward, back to medieval…
- Final Fantasy XIII-2Final Fantasy XIII-2 arrived in Japanese stores on the 15th of December 2011, carrying an unusual burden: it was designed from the start as an answer to complaints about its predecessor. Square Enix had sold Final Fantasy XIII to roughly…
- Doom (1993 video game)Doom, released on the 10th of December 1993, crashed a university's network before most people had even heard of it. At midnight, after thirty straight hours of testing, the five-person team at id Software uploaded the first episode to an…
- Final Fantasy III (2006 video game)Final Fantasy III sold 500,000 copies in Japan in its first week on the Nintendo DS, surpassing Square Enix's own prediction of 350,000. That figure is striking on its own. What makes it more remarkable is that the game behind those…
- Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIILightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII opens on a brutal countdown: thirteen days until the world ends, and only one person to save every soul in it. The game, released in Japan in November 2013, is the third and final chapter in the Final…
- Final Fantasy IIFinal Fantasy II launched on the 17th of December 1988, almost exactly one year after the original game, and Square's small team of around ten people had already decided it would be nothing like its predecessor. The first game had saved…
- Street Fighter X TekkenStreet Fighter X Tekken arrived in 2012 as one of gaming's most unexpected partnerships. Two of the biggest fighting game franchises in history, built on completely different philosophies, were finally sharing a stage. But which studio's…
- Star Wars: The Force UnleashedStar Wars: The Force Unleashed opens with a small child wrenching Darth Vader's lightsaber from his grip. Vader kills the boy's father and takes him as a secret apprentice. Released in North America on the 16th of September 2008, the game…
- Shin Megami Tensei: Liberation Dx2Shin Megami Tensei: Liberation Dx2 puts a demon-summoning app in your pocket. Developed and published by Sega, this mobile role-playing game arrived in January 2018, first reaching Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau before eventually…
- Pac-ManPac-Man arrived in arcades on the 22nd of May 1980, and within two years it had earned more than a billion dollars in quarters from American players alone. A yellow circle eating dots in a maze does not sound like a cultural revolution.…
- Street Fighter IIStreet Fighter II arrived in arcades in 1991 and changed the way people played games in public spaces. By 1994, an estimated 25 million people in the United States alone had played it. That figure does not count Japan, Europe, or the rest…
- Final Fantasy (video game)Final Fantasy arrived in Japan in 1987 as a last-ditch effort by a company that nearly did not survive to publish it. Square was threatened with bankruptcy. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the game's creator, had privately decided he would quit the…
- Final Fantasy IVFinal Fantasy IV arrived in Japan in 1991, and with it came Cecil Harvey, a dark knight who steers warships through the sky for the Kingdom of Baron. The game opens not with a hero's triumph but with a crime: the Red Wings, Cecil's own…
- Final Fantasy VIFinal Fantasy VI arrived in Japanese homes on the 2nd of April, 1994, carrying a premise that broke from every rule the series had established. Where earlier installments placed players in medieval kingdoms, this game opened with…
- Final Fantasy VIIIFinal Fantasy VIII sold 2.21 million copies on its first day of release in Japan, grossing the equivalent of $151 million in a single day. That figure made it the fastest-selling entry in the Final Fantasy series at the time of its launch…
- Fighting EX LayerFighting EX Layer is a 2018 fighting video game built and published by the Japanese studio Arika. On April Fools' Day in 2017, Arika posted online footage of an unnamed fighting game prototype. Staff had built it while experimenting with…
- Final Fight (video game)Final Fight arrived in arcades in 1989 with a premise that could have come straight out of a Hollywood action film: a former pro wrestler turned city mayor tears through six rounds of urban chaos to rescue his kidnapped daughter. Capcom's…
- Space InvadersSpace Invaders arrived in Japanese arcades in July 1978, and within months the country was running out of places to put the machines. Pachinko parlors and bowling alleys were the first to adopt it when amusement arcade owners passed. Then…
- Granblue FantasyGranblue Fantasy launched in Japan in March 2014 on Android, iOS, and web browsers, built by a studio called Cygames. What made it remarkable from the start was not its platform or its genre, but two names on the credits: composer Nobuo…
- The Final Fantasy LegendThe Final Fantasy Legend arrived on Game Boy in December 1989, carrying a name it had not been born with. In Japan it launched as Makai Toushi Sa·Ga, the first title in what would become the SaGa series. Square's president Masafumi…
- Diablo ImmortalDiablo Immortal arrived on the 2nd of June 2022, and within a single week it had become the biggest launch in the Diablo franchise's history. By the end of July, thirty million people had downloaded it. Yet at the very same moment, the PC…