Curated playlist
Video games developed in the United States
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1992 video game)Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for the Nintendo Entertainment System arrived in 1992, a full twelve years after the film it was based on first played in cinemas. By then, the NES was aging hardware, and yet a small team of developers…
- Street Fighter 30th Anniversary CollectionStreet Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection packed twelve separate arcade fighting games onto one disc, thirteen if you owned a Nintendo Switch. Capcom and the studio Digital Eclipse built it to mark thirty years since the original Street…
- Silent Hill HD CollectionThe Silent Hill HD Collection arrived in March 2012 with a promise built on nostalgia: two of survival horror's most celebrated games, reborn in high definition for a new generation of consoles. Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, originally…
- Sid Meier's Antietam!Sid Meier's Antietam! arrived in December 1999 as something unusual: a commercial wargame that bypassed retail stores entirely. Sid Meier, the co-founder of Firaxis Games, had designed it as a prequel to his 1997 title Sid Meier's…
- Street Fighter: The Movie (arcade game)Street Fighter: The Movie is a 1995 arcade fighting game that arrived at an unusual crossroads: a video game adapted from a film that was itself adapted from a video game. Capcom, the franchise's owner and the film's financier, handed…
- Sid Meier's Gettysburg!Sid Meier's Gettysburg! arrived in 1997 with a question baked into its design: what if the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War could be fought again, differently? Developed by Firaxis Games and published by Electronic Arts, it let…
- Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's EdgeStar Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge arrived on the 19th of November, 2020, built for Oculus Quest headsets. ILMxLab designed the game's graphics. Players stepped into the role of a droid mechanic on the planet Batuu, caught between…
- Star Wars: X-Wing (video game)Star Wars: X-Wing launched in February 1993 on floppy disks, and its first shipment of 100,000 units sold out before the weekend was over. That debut was not just a commercial surprise. It was the moment a licensed video game, built around…
- Capcom Classics CollectionCapcom Classics Collection landed on PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2005, offering players a vault of arcade history in a single package. Behind the disc was not one studio but three: Backbone Entertainment, Sensory Sweep, and Klein Computer…
- Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade ClassicsMarvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics was not revealed at a fighting game tournament. It surfaced during a June 2024 Nintendo Direct, a presentation aimed at casual audiences and families. The competitive gaming community…
- Star Wars: Jedi ArenaStar Wars: Jedi Arena arrived on store shelves in January 1983, and it came with a distinction no other game in the franchise could claim: it was the first Star Wars video game to feature lightsabers. For anyone who had sat in a darkened…
- Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (video game)Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire arrived on the Nintendo 64 on the 2nd of December 1996, three months after the console launched in North America. It put players in control of a character most Star Wars fans had never heard of: Dash…
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1985 video game)Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back arrived in arcades in 1985, carrying one of the most recognizable names in cinema into a cabinet that could fit in any movie theater lobby or bowling alley. It was a sequel to an arcade game that had…
- Heroes of the StormHeroes of the Storm arrived on the 2nd of June 2015, a game that dared to ask what would happen if every hero Blizzard Entertainment had ever created could fight in the same arena. Diablo, a demon lord of destruction, on the same team as…
- Quake (video game)Quake is a 1996 first-person shooter from id Software, and on the day it launched, only one member of the entire development team came into the office to upload the files. That person was John Romero, who had fought harder than anyone to…
- Silent Hill: Book of MemoriesSilent Hill: Book of Memories arrived in October 2012 with a premise that felt almost heretical to fans of one of gaming's most atmospheric horror franchises. A book shows up on your birthday. It contains your entire life story. You start…
- Silent Hill: HomecomingSilent Hill: Homecoming begins with a truck rattling through fog on the road into Shepherd's Glen. Inside the cab, asleep, is Alex Shepherd, a soldier just back from an overseas tour of duty. The driver is Travis Grady, the same man who…
- Final Fantasy IIIFinal Fantasy III launched on the 27th of April, 1990, and within its first week sold 500,000 copies in Japan. By March 2003, that figure had reached 1.4 million, making it the highest-selling domestic release among the first three games…
- The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim shipped seven million units in its first week of release, and within two years had crossed twenty million sold. That was 2011. By June 2023, the number had climbed past sixty million. No other single-player…
- Super Star WarsSuper Star Wars arrived on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992, and it asked a simple question: what if you could fight your way through a galaxy far, far away? Not watch it. Fight through it. The developers at LucasArts and…
- Final Fantasy IXFinal Fantasy IX arrived on the PlayStation in 2000 carrying a quiet act of rebellion. While its two immediate predecessors had chased a sleeker, more cinematic realism, this ninth entry turned deliberately backward, back to medieval…
- Star Wars (1983 video game)Atari released the Star Wars arcade cabinet in 1983 using a unique hardware design that rendered 3D color vector graphics. The machine featured a deluxe cockpit with powerful speakers mounted in the back to create an immersive audio-visual…
- Star Wars: Dark ForcesIn September 1993, Daron Stinnett began writing code for a game engine that would change how players saw the Star Wars universe. The team at LucasArts needed to build something new because existing technology could not handle verticality…
- Doom (1993 video game)Doom, released on the 10th of December 1993, crashed a university's network before most people had even heard of it. At midnight, after thirty straight hours of testing, the five-person team at id Software uploaded the first episode to an…
- Dementium: The WardDementium: The Ward dropped on Halloween 2007, the last day of October, and the timing was no accident. A survival horror game for the Nintendo DS, it placed players inside an abandoned hospital crawling with creatures they had no name…
- Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (video game)Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law arrived on store shelves on the 8th of January 2008, priced at around thirty dollars. That budget price point was deliberate. One reviewer pointed out that it meant there was no need to shout "I object!"…
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1982 video game)Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back arrived as a cartridge for the Atari 2600 in 1982, and with it came a distinction no other game could claim: the first licensed Star Wars video game ever released. Rex Bradford programmed it; Parker…
- Star Wars: The Force UnleashedStar Wars: The Force Unleashed opens with a small child wrenching Darth Vader's lightsaber from his grip. Vader kills the boy's father and takes him as a secret apprentice. Released in North America on the 16th of September 2008, the game…
- Darkest of DaysDarkest of Days drops the player into one of the most desperate last stands in American military history: the Battle of Little Big Horn, where General Custer's battalion is being wiped out. The soldier at the center of the story, Alexander…
- The Lost VikingsThe Lost Vikings arrived in 1993 as a puzzle-platform game from a studio that would later become one of the most recognizable names in gaming. Silicon & Synapse, as Blizzard Entertainment was then called, handed players not one hero but…
- EverQuestEverQuest launched on the 16th of March 1999 with modest expectations from Sony, and within twenty-four hours it had drawn ten thousand active subscribers. Nobody expected what came next. By the end of that year, it had overtaken Ultima…
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen OrderStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Order almost starred a smuggler. Lucasfilm considered the Jedi a "sacred" part of its franchise and pushed developer Respawn Entertainment toward a shooter about a smuggler or bounty hunter. Game director Stig…
- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed IIStar Wars: The Force Unleashed II dropped into players' hands on the 26th of October 2010, and immediately posed an uncomfortable question: what does it mean to be a person if your very memories belong to someone else? The game's…
- Age of MythologyAge of Mythology arrived in October 2002 carrying a question that no strategy game from Ensemble Studios had asked before: what happens when you take the bones of a proven series and fill them with gods, monsters, and the supernatural? The…
- DaikatanaDaikatana arrived in May 2000 with the weight of years of broken promises behind it. A first-person shooter from Ion Storm, it had been announced in 1997 as the triumphant solo debut of John Romero, the man who co-created Wolfenstein 3D,…
- Ultima (series)Ultima is a series of open world fantasy role-playing games from Origin Systems, created by Richard Garriott, and it sold over two million copies by 1997. Few game series can claim to have invented the vocabulary of an entire genre, yet…
- Star Wars GalaxiesStar Wars Galaxies launched in North America on the 26th of June 2003, as one of the most ambitious online games ever attempted. Ten planets, ten playable species, and thirty-four professions greeted players on day one. The world was not…
- Star Wars: The Old RepublicStar Wars: The Old Republic launched on the 20th of December 2011, and within three days it had attracted one million subscribers. That made it, at the time, the fastest-growing MMO ever released. The number is striking on its own. But it…
- Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR SeriesVader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series launched on Oculus Quest and Rift on the 21st of May 2019. It placed players inside the story as a Force-sensitive smuggler newly captured by Darth Vader. Vader needed the smuggler to find the Bright…
- The Beatles: Rock BandThe Beatles: Rock Band arrived in stores on the 9th of September 2009, a date chosen with deliberate intent: it was the same day that newly remastered compact disc versions of the Beatles' albums hit shelves worldwide. No song by the…
- Diablo IVDiablo IV crossed one billion dollars in total revenue by September 2024, making it one of the fastest commercial rises in the history of its genre. But the road to that milestone was anything but smooth. The game's original concept,…