Curated playlist

Video game franchises

Metal GearMetal Gear became a stealth game because its computer could not handle a gunfight.
Call of DutyCall of Duty left World War II in 2007 and sales took off. Modern Warfare sold over 13 million copies by May 2009.
Fabula Nova Crystallis Final FantasyFabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy began as a mythology, not a game. Kazushige Nojima wrote a bible of gods for it.
Compilation of Final Fantasy VIIBefore Crisis, a Final Fantasy VII mobile game, never left Japan. Phones in North America could not run it.
Dragon Slayer (series)Dragon Slayer, a 1984 game for the NEC PC-88, replaced menu-based RPG combat with real-time fighting.
James Bond in video gamesJames Bond in video games begins with one fictional MI6 agent, created by Ian Fleming. Many studios have tried to turn him into a playable hero. In 1997, a Nintendo 64 shooter called GoldenEye 007, made by Rare, sold over eight million…
Star Wars: X-Wing (video game series)TIE Fighter, a 1994 Star Wars game, let players fly for the Galactic Empire. It is part of the X-Wing series.
Fallout (franchise)In the Fallout franchise, the world ends in a two-hour nuclear exchange on the morning of the 23rd of October 2077, eastern daylight time. Everything in the series grows from the wreckage. Fallout is an American media franchise of…
Grand Theft AutoGrand Theft Auto was voted one of Britain's top 10 designs in 2006. It sat beside Concorde and the Spitfire.
Hitman (franchise)Hitman is a stealth game franchise from the Danish studio IO Interactive, and it began as a deliberately modest idea. Designer Jacob Andersen described the plan like this: "We decided to do a quick game inspired by Hong Kong action…
Kingdom HeartsKingdom Hearts began with a chance elevator meeting between a Square producer and a Disney executive.
Horizon (video game series)Horizon is a science fiction game series from the Amsterdam studio Guerrilla Games, and by November 2025 it had sold over 40 million units worldwide. That figure places it among Sony's best-selling first-party properties. Its setting is…
Pokémon (video game series)The Pokémon video game series has sold more than 515 million units worldwide. That makes it the fourth best-selling video game franchise, behind only the Mario franchise, Call of Duty, and Tetris. It started in 1996, when Pocket Monsters…
Final Fantasy Crystal ChroniclesThe original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles needed a Game Boy Advance for each multiplayer player.
Prince of PersiaJordan Mechner asked his own brother to play the Prince. For the 1989 game Prince of Persia, Mechner used his brother as the model for the title character. The animation was then built with a technique called rotoscoping, which draws…
Tomb RaiderTomb Raider is a video game franchise that began in 1994 at Core Design, a British studio, and had sold more than 100 million units worldwide by 2024. Its pull was felt almost at once. In late 1996 and early 1997 the band the Prodigy…
Five Nights at Freddy'sFive Nights at Freddy's, known to fans as FNaF, asks its players for one thing: stay alive from midnight until 6 a.m. in a pizza restaurant after closing time. Scott Cawthon created the series, and it has grown from video games into…
Fable (video game series)In the Fable games, your choices change the hero's face. Good and evil deeds show in the character's body.
Donkey KongDonkey Kong is a video game franchise, and even its name was a small piece of design. Shigeru Miyamoto chose donkey to suggest stubbornness and kong to hint at a gorilla. The ape he built around that name began as a villain, and for years…
Total War (video game series)Total War, a series of strategy games from the British studio Creative Assembly, had sold over 36 million copies by April 2021. Each of those copies asks the player to do two jobs at once. One job is the slow work of running an empire. The…
Crash BandicootCrash Bandicoot began life as a wombat. Naughty Dog's tentative name for its hero was Willy the Wombat, a goofy, Zorro-like Tasmanian marsupial. The bandicoot who replaced him anchored a franchise that sold over 40 million units by 2007…
Street FighterStreet Fighter player Daigo Umehara parried 15 hits in a row with one pixel of health left in 2004.
The Legend of ZeldaAs a boy, Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto walked into a cave carrying a lantern. That memory shaped every dungeon.
Silent HillSilent Hill got its name from translating a Japanese prefecture's name. The title was not crafted for marketing.
Batman: ArkhamBatman: Arkham is a video game series built on one long feud between Batman and the Joker. Its main games have sold more than 32 million copies worldwide. Eidos Interactive first published the series, and Warner Bros. Games publishes it…
Ace AttorneyAce Attorney is a Capcom adventure series in which the hero wins by catching a witness in a lie. In its fictional courts, a trial lasts three days at most. Verdicts usually come back guilty, and the cases the games follow are rare…
Mass EffectMass Effect began in 2003 as a pitch to build a universe on the scale of Star Wars. BioWare wanted to own it entirely.
Gears of WarGears of War begins its fiction with a death toll. The event is called Emergence Day. In only 26 hours, the Locust Horde, a race of subterranean creatures, kills 25% of the population of the planet Sera. From that catastrophe grows a…
Sonic the HedgehogSonic the Hedgehog, a franchise about a blue hedgehog with supersonic speed, had reached 1.77 billion in combined series sales and free-to-play mobile downloads by 2024. Sega counts it as its flagship. Three Japanese developers created it:…
Tom Clancy's Splinter CellIn Splinter Cell, stepping into the light meant you were already dead.
Battlefield (video game series)Battlefield 6 was Vince Zampella's only game as the series' creative director. He died in December 2025.
Mana (series)The Mana series began as a side story to Final Fantasy. Square's 1991 Game Boy game carried that name.
Mortal KombatMortal Kombat began as a planned Jean-Claude Van Damme movie game, but the deal fell through.
Middle-earth in video gamesTwo companies held Lord of the Rings game rights at once, one for the films and one for the books.
Fire EmblemFire Emblem is a Japanese fantasy strategy franchise published by Nintendo, and in 2010 it was handed a hard number. Nintendo told the developers at Intelligent Systems that their next game had to sell more than 250,000 units. If it fell…
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (series)Star Wars: Rogue Squadron hid a starship from a film not yet in theaters. Two codes were needed.
Mega ManMega Man's producer, Keiji Inafune, told readers of his blog on the 29th of October 2010 that he was leaving Capcom. He wanted to start his life over, and he had spent 23 years at the company. The blue robot hero known as Mega Man, or…
Devil May CryDevil May Cry began as a failed Resident Evil prototype. Capcom let it become its own game instead of scrapping it.
Ratchet & ClankRatchet & Clank began with a reptile. Early sketches for the hero of Insomniac Games' new PlayStation 2 adventure showed a reptilian alien. Artists eventually settled on a feline humanoid and gave it a species name, Lombax, which the…
Ace CombatAce Combat is an arcade-style combat flight simulation series in which a fighter jet can stall in midair, yet can also carry dozens of missiles. That mix of realistic flight dynamics and heavy firepower sets the tone. The games pair fast…
Persona (series)In Persona 3, released in 2006, the heroes of the Persona video game series raise a gun-like device to their own heads and pull the trigger. The device is called an Evoker. Firing it is meant to overcome the user's cowardice, and what…
CastlevaniaCastlevania is a gothic horror action-adventure series from Konami, and its first staff roll in 1986 was full of disguises. The director and programmer, Hitoshi Akamatsu, was credited as Trans Fishers, a nod to the horror film director…
Super MarioSuper Mario is a Nintendo platform game series, and in the United Kingdom the wider Mario franchise is recognized by 91% of adults. That makes it the most famous video game franchise there. Shigeru Miyamoto created the series, and its star…
Super Smash Bros.Super Smash Bros. is a series of platform fighting games published by Nintendo, and it began as a prototype called Dragon King: The Fighting Game. Only three people built that prototype. Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the series, handled…
TekkenIn Tekken, a son throws his father off a cliff, and the father survives to throw him into a volcano.
DarkstalkersIn Darkstalkers, Demitri's move Midnight Bliss turns an opponent into a girl before he drains their blood.
Gran Turismo (series)Sony turned down Gran Turismo when Kazunori Yamauchi first pitched it in 1992. His small team kept working on it anyway.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old RepublicStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republic begins with a character waking aboard a doomed Republic capital ship, with no memory of who they are. The setting lies four thousand years before the Star Wars films. This one amnesiac premise…
Megami TenseiMegami Tensei reached Japanese players on the 11th of September 1987, when Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei launched on the Famicom. The game grew out of a science-fiction novel series by Aya Nishitani, and the franchise took its name…
Tales (video game series)The Tales series has shipped more than 30 million copies as of 2024, and plenty of English-speaking players have still never heard of it. It is a family of fantasy role-playing games published by Bandai Namco, begun in 1995 with Tales of…