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Curated playlist

Video games about parallel universes

  • Gensō Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no TokiGensō Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki sends three heroes back a hundred years. A monster wakes every century.
  • Heroes of the StormIn Heroes of the Storm, every player on a team levels up together. Fallen minions feed one shared team pool.
  • BioShock InfiniteBioShock Infinite sends its hero to a city that floats among the clouds above America in 1912. Irrational Games developed it and 2K published it in 2013, and it is a first-person shooter that leans hard on story. The hero is Booker DeWitt,…
  • Marvel vs. Capcom: InfiniteMarvel vs. Capcom: Infinite cut its fights from three characters to 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…
  • Final Fantasy IXFinal Fantasy IX deliberately turned backward to medieval castles and minstrels.
  • Final Fantasy VII RebirthFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth was released on Leap Day, the 29th of February 2024. Square Enix chose that date deliberately.
  • 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.…
  • The Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionPete Hines, Bethesda's vice president of public relations and marketing, once described the mood before The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion arrived with a wry line. He said: "People were expecting the game to cure blindness and heal the sick."…
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the PastThe Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past reached Japanese players in 1991 as the third entry in Nintendo's Zelda series. It was built for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and it followed Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which…
  • Mortal KombatMortal Kombat began as a planned Jean-Claude Van Damme movie game, but the deal fell through.
  • Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two WorldsLegal disputes kept Marvel vs. Capcom silent for close to ten years. Capcom won back the Marvel license in 2008.
  • Namco × CapcomCapcom broke an industry norm by teaming up with its rival Namco. The 2005 game Namco x Capcom never left Japan.
  • Project X ZoneProject X Zone sold more than ten times what its publisher expected in the West.
  • Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3The 2011 Tohoku earthquake led Capcom to make Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Planned add-ons became a separate game.
  • Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals reached 10 million players within 72 hours of its release on the 6th of December 2024. NetEase Games built this free-to-play hero shooter in collaboration with Marvel Games, and it draws its fighters from Marvel Comics. A…
  • 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…
  • Control (video game)Control is a 2019 action-adventure game from Remedy Entertainment, and nearly all of it takes place inside a single building in New York City. From the street, the Oldest House looks like a featureless concrete skyscraper. Inside, it is…
  • 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…
  • Bravely DefaultThe team behind Bravely Default never expected the 3DS game to leave Japan. It sold a million copies by July 2014.
  • Granblue FantasyA live-streamed 700,000 yen spending spree forced Granblue Fantasy to apologize.
  • Suikoden TierkreisIn Suikoden Tierkreis, a young villager must gather 108 heroes against a king who says fate is fixed.
  • Starfield (video game)Starfield is a 2023 action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, and it lets the player land on more than 1,000 planets. That scale raises a few questions. Why did a studio tied to Skyrim and Fallout 4 turn its attention to space?…
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's MaskA grimacing moon looms over the land of Termina in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Nintendo released the game for the Nintendo 64 in 2000. The moon is predicted to strike at dawn on the day of the Carnival of Time, an annual harvest…

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