Curated playlist

Japan Game Award winners

Dissidia Final FantasyDissidia Final Fantasy began as a game about Disney characters fighting.
Resident Evil 3 (2020 video game)Resident Evil 3 is a horror game from Capcom, released in 2020, in which a former police officer named Jill Valentine tries to get out of a city full of zombies. She is not simply fleeing. Something was built to find her, and it keeps…
Final Fantasy XIIIFinal Fantasy XIII's heroes learn their mission is to destroy their own world.
Resident Evil 2 (2019 video game)Resident Evil 2, the 2019 survival horror game from Capcom, begins on the night of the 29th of September 1998. A rookie police officer named Leon S. Kennedy is heading for Raccoon City to start his first shift. A college student named…
Red Dead Redemption 2Red Dead Redemption 2 is a 2018 action-adventure game from Rockstar Games that puts the player in the boots of Arthur Morgan, an outlaw living in the year 1899. The frontier he knows is closing. Government forces, rival gangs and the march…
Kingdom Hearts IIIKingdom Hearts III, a 2019 action role-playing game from Square Enix, sold more than five million copies in under two weeks. That made it the fastest-selling title in its series. The road to that launch was far slower. Rumors, delays and…
The Last of Us Part IIThe Last of Us Part II is a 2020 action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It unfolds in a post-apocalyptic United States, four years after the studio's The Last of Us of 2013. Two…
Life Is Strange (video game)Life Is Strange opens in October 2013, as an 18-year-old photography student named Max Caulfield returns to Arcadia Bay, Oregon, to attend Blackwell Academy. During class she has a vivid vision of a tornado destroying a lighthouse and…
Grand Theft Auto IIIGrand Theft Auto III began with an art director's complaint about the games of his day. Aaron Garbut felt that most of them were "a thing you played". He wanted this one to be "a place you lived in". The core team behind that ambition was…
Marvel's Spider-Man (video game)Marvel's Spider-Man, released for the PlayStation 4 on the 7th of September 2018, sold 3.3 million units in its first three days. That figure includes copies bundled with consoles. It made the game the fastest-selling first-party release…
Resident Evil 5In May 2026, Capcom's financial release reported that Resident Evil 5 had sold 19.01 million copies. That figure made this 2009 third-person shooter the best-selling game in the Resident Evil series. Capcom developed and published it, and…
Final Fantasy VII RemakeFinal Fantasy VII Remake's reveal sent Square Enix's stock to its highest point since November 2008.
Final Fantasy VII RebirthFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth was released on Leap Day, the 29th of February 2024. Square Enix chose that date deliberately.
Final Fantasy XVIIn Final Fantasy XVI, the hero hunts a fire monster that turns out to be him.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight PrincessThe Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a 2006 action-adventure game from Nintendo, owes part of its identity to a strange dream. Its director, Eiji Aonuma, dreamed during an overseas business trip that he was a wolf locked inside a cage.…
Final Fantasy IXFinal Fantasy IX deliberately turned backward to medieval castles and minstrels.
Final Fantasy XIII-2In Final Fantasy XIII-2, Serah and Noel jump between eras to repair paradoxes in time.
Resident Evil 4 (2023 video game)Resident Evil 4, Capcom's 2023 survival horror remake, earned an unusual compliment from the man who made the original. Shinji Mikami, who directed the 2005 game, said on Twitter that he enjoyed the remake very much. He also admitted that…
UndertaleUndertale began as a request for US$5,000. When the crowdfunding campaign for the role-playing game closed on the 25th of July 2013, 2,398 backers had pledged US$51,124, more than ten times the goal. Behind the page stood Toby Fox, an…
Final Fantasy XVFinal Fantasy XV shipped five million units in one day. Square Enix said that covered its development costs.
Final Fantasy X-2Final Fantasy X-2 built its costume-changing battles from magical girl anime and Charlie's Angels.
God of War RagnarökGod of War Ragnarök sold 5.1 million copies in its first week, the fastest launch week any first-party PlayStation game has recorded. Santa Monica Studio released the game on the 9th of November 2022 as the sequel to 2018's God of War. Its…
Death StrandingDeath Stranding is a 2019 video game in which a courier named Sam Porter Bridges crosses a wrecked United States on foot, carrying a premature baby in a pod. The baby is not cargo. It is a tool, a companion and, as the story unfolds,…
Horizon Zero DawnIn Horizon Zero Dawn, a 2017 game from Guerrilla Games and Sony, an infant is found before a sealed door inside a sacred mountain. She grows up as Aloy, an outcast of the Nora tribe, raised by a fellow outcast named Rost. Her world is a…
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake EaterMetal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater sends the player up an extremely tall ladder for roughly three minutes, with a vocal theme song as the only company. Fans and critics singled out the climb as one of the series' most memorable moments. Some…
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom PainMetal Gear Solid V was first announced as an indie game from a fake Swedish studio. Kojima's team made it.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of LibertyEvery trailer for Metal Gear Solid 2 showed Solid Snake in fights that Raiden had. Players had never heard of him.
Sekiro: Shadows Die TwiceIn Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, you win by breaking an enemy's balance, not draining health. Then one killing blow lands.
Persona 5Persona 5 opens in an interrogation room in Tokyo, and it keeps pulling the player back there. The 2016 role-playing game, built by the Atlus development studio P-Studio, is the sixth installment in the Persona series, which grew out of…
Metal Gear Solid: Peace WalkerMetal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is a 2010 stealth game from Kojima Productions, published by Konami, and it was made for one of the smallest screens of its day, the PlayStation Portable. IGN's Greg Miller scored it 9.5 out of 10 and said it…
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward SwordThe Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword got its story in a single day. Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi feigned illness, shut himself in a hotel room and wrote the synopsis. Nintendo built the game for the Wii over roughly five years, and much of…
Apex LegendsApex Legends passed one million unique players eight hours after it went live in February 2019, and almost nobody had known it existed. Respawn Entertainment built the game, Electronic Arts published it, and it cost nothing to download.…
Demon's SoulsDemon's Souls, a role-playing game for the PlayStation 3 made by FromSoftware, was announced in early October 2008 and put in front of the public at the Tokyo Game Show the following week. Sony producer Takeshi Kajii later described the…
Devil May Cry 5A hooded stranger walks into a demon-hunting office in Devil May Cry 5, and the young hunter on duty, Nero, politely offers him something to eat. The stranger answers by ripping off a demonic Devil Bringer arm, which transforms in his hand…
Final Fantasy XIVSquare Enix rebuilt Final Fantasy XIV from scratch while the failed original kept running.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind WakerThe Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker sold 4.6 million copies on the GameCube. That sounds like a triumph until it is set beside the 7.6 million copies that Ocarina of Time had sold. Nintendo released this 2002 adventure to enormous critical…
Persona 4Persona 4 is a 2008 role-playing game from the Japanese developer Atlus, and it opens on a puzzle that sounds like a ghost story. In a small rural town, bodies are found dangling from television antennas, and no one can say what killed…
Pokémon Scarlet and VioletPokémon Scarlet and Violet are role-playing games from the studio Game Freak, built for the Nintendo Switch and released on the 18th of November 2022. The story starts at a school. Players enroll at Naranja Academy in Scarlet or Uva…
Super Mario OdysseySuper Mario Odyssey opens with an act of violence against a hat. Bowser's airship drags Mario's cap into its rear propellers and shreds it to pieces. Mario has just been knocked off the ship, and he lands in a kingdom of living hats. From…
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a being called the Paintress paints a number on an enormous rock formation known as the Monolith. Every person at that age or older then vanishes. The event is called the Gommage. It happens once a year, and…
Umamusume: Pretty DerbyOn the 26th of March 2016, a panel at the AnimeJapan event revealed concept art for a cast of racing girls with horse ears and tails. An animated trailer from the studio P.A. Works came with it. This was the first public look at Umamusume:…
Genshin ImpactGenshin Impact, a 2020 action role-playing game from the Chinese studio miHoYo, caused an uproar before anyone could play it. At the ChinaJoy convention in 2019, fans of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild gave the Sony booth the…
Resident Evil VillageResident Evil Village is a 2021 survival horror game from Capcom, and its launch came with a drawing visible from far away. On the 7th of May 2021, Capcom marked the release with a chalk Lycan on a hillside in Somerset. The figure stood 58…
Nier: AutomataNier: Automata, a 2017 action role-playing game made by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix, ends with an unusual request. When the story is over, the closing credits turn into a shooting game that the player must fight through.…
Resident Evil 6Resident Evil 6 was made by a development staff of more than 600 people, the largest team Capcom had ever put on a single production. The 2012 third-person shooter was a major installment in the Resident Evil series, and Capcom both…
Pokémon Diamond and PearlPokémon Diamond and Pearl, a pair of role-playing games for the Nintendo DS, helped players complete more than 10 million Pokémon trades over Wi-Fi. Game Freak developed them for the Nintendo DS and released them in 2006, the 10th…
Shadow of the ColossusIn Shadow of the Colossus, a young man named Wander lifts his sword into the sunlight, and the blade throws beams of light across the land. The beams converge when the sword points toward the next giant. Sony Computer Entertainment…
Bravely DefaultThe team behind Bravely Default never expected the 3DS game to leave Japan. It sold a million copies by July 2014.
Heavy RainHeavy Rain, the 2010 video game from the studio Quantic Dream, grew out of a scare in a shopping mall. Its writer and director, David Cage, briefly lost track of his son there. The episode made him ask himself "what it means to love your…
BloodborneIn the game Bloodborne, the miracle cure that heals almost any ailment slowly turns people into beasts.