Curated playlist

Video games set on fictional islands

Metal Gear Solid (video game)1998 video game
Final Fantasy XII: Revenant WingsFinal Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings began with no Final Fantasy XII link. Vaan and Penelo were added later.
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin SnakesThe Twin Snakes began with a chance meeting in a Nintendo cafeteria.
Suikoden IVIn Suikoden IV, a cursed rune jumps to the nearest person when its bearer dies. It slowly drains its bearer's life.
Grand Theft Auto: San AndreasGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a 2004 action-adventure game from Rockstar North, gave players one of the most repeated lines in gaming. Early in the story, a mission called "Wrong Side of the Tracks" goes badly, and Big Smoke shouts, "All…
Tomb Raider (2013 video game)In November 2010, Square Enix filed a trademark for a slogan, "A Survivor is Born," to promote a new Tomb Raider game. That game arrived in 2013 from the developer Crystal Dynamics, and it did not simply continue Lara Croft's story. It…
Grand Theft Auto VThree days after Grand Theft Auto V reached stores in September 2013, it had passed one billion dollars in sales. No entertainment product in history had reached that mark faster. The game came from Rockstar North and was published by…
Red Dead Redemption 2Red Dead Redemption 2 is a 2018 action-adventure game from Rockstar Games that puts the player in the boots of Arthur Morgan, an outlaw living in the year 1899. The frontier he knows is closing. Government forces, rival gangs and the march…
Grand Theft Auto: Vice CityGrand Theft Auto: Vice City, a 2002 action-adventure game from Rockstar North, sold more than 500,000 copies within 24 hours of its release. Within two days it had reached 1.4 million, which made it the fastest-selling game in history at…
Resident Evil – Code: VeronicaIn December 1998, three months after she escaped Raccoon City, Claire Redfield raids an Umbrella Corporation facility in Paris. She is searching for her brother Chris, and she is caught. That capture opens Resident Evil Code: Veronica, a…
Grand Theft Auto IVGrand Theft Auto IV sold more than 3.6 million copies in the first twenty-four hours after its release in 2008. That worked out to roughly 310 million dollars in revenue. The game came from Rockstar North and Rockstar Games, and it centres…
Batman: Arkham AsylumBatman: Arkham Asylum, the 2009 game from Rocksteady Studios, once kept a single developer busy for two years on one garment, Batman's cape. Eidos president Ian Livingstone said the job involved more than 700 animations and sound effects,…
Grand Theft Auto IIIGrand Theft Auto III began with an art director's complaint about the games of his day. Aaron Garbut felt that most of them were "a thing you played". He wanted this one to be "a place you lived in". The core team behind that ambition was…
PUBG: BattlegroundsPUBG: Battlegrounds, a battle royale video game from 2017, once had 2,279,084 people playing it on Steam at the same moment. It reached that peak while still officially unfinished, listed as an early access title. The game began as a…
The Last StoryThe Last Story began as science fiction until Nintendo rejected the story outright.
Resident Evil 4 (2023 video game)Resident Evil 4, Capcom's 2023 survival horror remake, earned an unusual compliment from the man who made the original. Shinji Mikami, who directed the 2005 game, said on Twitter that he enjoyed the remake very much. He also admitted that…
Grand Theft Auto OnlineGrand Theft Auto Online went live on the 1st of October 2013 and asked its players to start as nobodies in the state of San Andreas. The state is fictional and based on Southern California. Up to 30 players can share its open world at the…
MystMyst, a 1993 adventure game from the studio Cyan, opens with a book. The player, an unnamed person, finds a volume titled Myst and reads its detailed description of an island. Resting a hand on the last page carries the player into that…
Pokémon Red, Blue, and YellowPokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow began as a pitch that Nintendo's own staff could not make sense of. In 1990, the game developer Satoshi Tajiri described his concept to them, and the response was skepticism. They judged his ideas too…
Final Fantasy VIFinal Fantasy VI lets its hero fail to save the world. The story's second half is called the World of Ruin.
Final Fantasy VIIIFinal Fantasy VIII sold 2.21 million copies in one day in Japan.
Hitman 3Hitman 3 was announced on the 11th of June 2020 at the PlayStation 5 reveal event, under the tagline 'Death Awaits'. It is a stealth game from IO Interactive, the eighth main installment in the Hitman series and the third game in the World…
Granblue FantasyA live-streamed 700,000 yen spending spree forced Granblue Fantasy to apologize.
Resident Evil 4Resident Evil 4 is a 2005 survival horror game from Capcom, released first for the GameCube, and by March 2025 it had sold 15.2 million copies. Its hero is Leon S. Kennedy, a special agent dropped into rural Spain on a rescue mission.…