Curated playlist

Video games adapted into television shows

Assassin's CreedAssassin's Creed began as a Prince of Persia sequel with the prince cut out.
The Last of UsThe Last of Us is a video game series from the studio Naughty Dog, published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and by early 2023 the franchise had sold more than 37 million games. It takes place in a United States ruined by a mutated…
God of War (franchise)When the credits of the first God of War finished rolling, a closing line promised, "Kratos Will Return." He did, again and again. The God of War franchise now spans ten installments, beginning on the PlayStation 2 in 2005 and reaching…
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…
League of LegendsLeague of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena game from Riot Games. Its 2019 World Championship drew more than 100 million unique viewers. That same year, the game regularly reached eight million players online at the same moment.…
Dota 2A month before its official launch in 2013, Dota 2 already had nearly 330,000 people playing at the same moment on Steam. That crowd outnumbered the players in the rest of the platform's top ten games combined. Dota 2 is a Valve game in…
Halo (franchise)Halo is a military science fiction franchise, and in 1997 its earliest form went by a codename its own programmer was too embarrassed to say aloud. Bungie's team first called the project "Monkey Nuts." Jason Jones could not bring himself…
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…
Far CryFar Cry, the first-person shooter franchise published by Ubisoft, began life as an island full of dinosaurs. At the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 1999, the German studio Crytek showed a technology demo called X-Isle: Dinosaur Island.…
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…
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…
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…
Yakuza (franchise)By 2024, Sega reported that the Yakuza series, known in Japan as Like a Dragon, had sold a combined 27.7 million units since its debut in 2005. Those buyers were playing games about organized crime. In the same games they could also sing…
Resident EvilResident Evil was almost named Biohazard, but the name was already taken. A DOS game and a punk band held it.
Street FighterStreet Fighter player Daigo Umehara parried 15 hits in a row with one pixel of health left in 2004.
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…
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.
Dragon QuestOver 300 Japanese schoolchildren were arrested for truancy when Dragon Quest III went on sale.
Mortal KombatMortal Kombat began as a planned Jean-Claude Van Damme movie game, but the deal fell through.
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.
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…
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…
Alan WakeAlan Wake is a 2010 action-adventure game from the Finnish studio Remedy Entertainment, published by Microsoft Game Studios. Its hero is a bestselling crime novelist whose wife vanishes during a vacation in Bright Falls, a small fictional…
Fate/stay nightFate/stay night began as an unfinished college story. Kinoko Nasu finished only one of its three routes in 1999.
Angry BirdsOn Christmas Day 2011, players around the world downloaded 6.5 million copies of Angry Birds games on that single day. Angry Birds is a franchise created by the Finnish game designer Jaakko Iisalo and owned by Rovio Entertainment. Its…
Pac-ManPac-Man was first called Puck Man, until executives feared vandals would change the P to an F.
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.
Dragon's DogmaCapcom executives doubted Dragon's Dogma, the first open-world game ever proposed for a Capcom title.
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…
Cyberpunk 2077Cyberpunk 2077 broke a record within hours of its midnight GMT launch on the 10th of December 2020. More than one million people played it at once on Steam, and one million viewers watched live on Twitch. Together, the figures doubled the…
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.…
Final FantasyHironobu Sakaguchi planned to quit games if Final Fantasy failed. The 1987 role-playing game saved Square instead.
Granblue FantasyA live-streamed 700,000 yen spending spree forced Granblue Fantasy to apologize.
Monster HunterIn Monster Hunter, the hero never levels up. The Hunter has no intrinsic statistics or attributes whatsoever, and nothing about the character grows stronger with experience. Monster Hunter is a Japanese media franchise of fantasy action…
DanganronpaDanganronpa is a Japanese video game franchise in which a robotic teddy bear named Monokuma forces apparent high-school students to kill one another. Kazutaka Kodaka created the series. Spike Chunsoft, formerly known as Spike, develops and…