Curated category
Video game franchises
- Metal GearMetal Gear began not as a stealth game, but as a straightforward military action game. Hideo Kojima designed it for the MSX2 computer platform in 1987…
- Call of DutyCall of Duty launched on the 29th of October 2003, built on the id Tech 3 engine by a studio called Infinity Ward and published by Activision.
- Fabula Nova Crystallis Final FantasyFabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy began with a mythology written by scenario writer Kazushige Nojima between 2003 and February 2004.
- Compilation of Final Fantasy VIIThe Compilation of Final Fantasy VII arrived not as a sequel but as a declaration. When Square Enix officially announced the project in 2003 with the reveal…
- Dragon Slayer (series)Dragon Slayer, the video game franchise by Nihon Falcom, helped build an entire genre from scratch. In 1984, a single game released for the NEC PC-88 changed…
- Star Wars: X-Wing (video game series)Star Wars: X-Wing is a series of space flight simulator video games that put players in the cockpit of starfighters from one of cinema's most beloved…
- Grand Theft AutoGrand Theft Auto, the action-adventure series created by David Jones and Mike Dailly, takes its name from a term for motor vehicle theft in the United States.
- Kingdom HeartsKingdom Hearts began with a conversation between two Square employees sharing an elevator. Shinji Hashimoto and Tetsuya Nomura found themselves talking about…
- Final Fantasy Crystal ChroniclesFinal Fantasy Crystal Chronicles began with a peculiar act of corporate bridge-building. Square, the company behind Final Fantasy, had split from Nintendo…
- Fable (video game series)Fable is a fantasy action role-playing series with a peculiar identity: a British fairy tale wrapped in a morality simulator, where a player's choices…
- Street FighterStreet Fighter arrived in arcades in August 1987, the creation of Capcom designers Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto.
- The Legend of ZeldaThe Legend of Zelda first reached players in Japan in February 1986, arriving on the Famicom Disk System as something few had seen before: a game with no…
- Silent HillSilent Hill began as a small internal project at Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo in September 1996, and what emerged from that studio would reshape what…
- Mass EffectMass Effect began not with a game but with a pitch. In 2003, BioWare project director Casey Hudson presented an idea codenamed SFX to company co-founders Ray…
- Tom Clancy's Splinter CellTom Clancy's Splinter Cell arrived in 2002 with a premise that felt genuinely different: you were not meant to be seen. Where most action games rewarded…
- Battlefield (video game series)Battlefield is a military first-person shooter franchise that has sold 88.7 million copies worldwide as of November 2022.
- Mana (series)The Mana series began not as its own creation, but as a side story attached to one of gaming's biggest franchises. In 1991, Square released Final Fantasy…
- Mortal KombatMortal Kombat arrived in arcades in August 1992, and within months it had become one of the most debated video games in American history.
- Middle-earth in video gamesMelbourne House released The Hobbit in 1982, marking the start of a licensed video game series based on J. R. R. Tolkien's works.
- Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (series)Star Wars: Rogue Squadron arrived on the Nintendo 64 on the 7th of December 1998, and it arrived with a secret. Hidden inside the game, locked behind a…
- Devil May CryDevil May Cry began life as a mistake. Hideki Kamiya was developing a new entry in the Resident Evil series when his prototype drifted so far from survival…
- TekkenTekken began not as a fighting game, but as an internal experiment at Namco to test how well a studio could animate 3D character models.
- DarkstalkersIn 1994, Capcom released Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors in Japanese arcades. This release marked a departure from the realistic martial arts style that…
- Gran Turismo (series)Gran Turismo began with a rejection. When Kazunori Yamauchi, then an employee at Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, first pitched the idea of a realistic…
- Final FantasyFinal Fantasy began as a desperate gamble. In 1987, a Square designer named Hironobu Sakaguchi was convinced he was about to wash out of the video game…
- Dead or Alive (franchise)Dead or Alive began as a wager. In the mid-1990s, Tecmo was in financial trouble, and a programmer named Tomonobu Itagaki made a bet with company management…
- 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…