Curated playlist
Video games set on fictional planets
- Final Fantasy XV: Pocket EditionFinal Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition reached three million downloads within its first month on the market. That number turned a stripped-down mobile spinoff into one of Square Enix's quieter success stories of 2018. The game took a full…
- 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 of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, it positioned the effort as "polymorphic…
- Final Fantasy XIIIFinal Fantasy XIII opens in a place that should not exist: Cocoon, a massive artificial sphere floating above the surface of Gran Pulse, kept aloft by mechanical gods called fal'Cie. Development of the game began in February 2004, and when…
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VIICrisis Core: Final Fantasy VII arrived in 2007 with an unusual burden: explaining one of gaming's most beloved tragedies before it happened. Zack Fair, a young member of the elite military force SOLDIER, would carry the entire weight of…
- Final Fantasy VFinal Fantasy V launched in Japan in December 1992, and within a single day it sold roughly 900,000 cartridges. That opening figure was about 4.5 times the first-day numbers posted by Final Fantasy IV the year before. Japanese authorities…
- Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VIIDirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII arrived in 2006 as something nobody expected from Square Enix: a third-person shooter set inside one of gaming's most beloved fantasy universes. Vincent Valentine, a brooding gunslinger who had spent…
- 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…
- Final Fantasy VII RemakeFinal Fantasy VII Remake arrived on the 10th of April 2020, nearly a quarter century after the game it set out to reimagine. Square Enix had spent years insisting no remake was in development. The question that hung over the gaming world…
- Final Fantasy VII RebirthFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth landed on the PlayStation 5 on the 29th of February 2024 - one of the first major video game releases to arrive on Leap Day. Square Enix chose that date deliberately for a game that had been in active development…
- Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD RemasterFinal Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster arrived in 2013 as something more than a polish job on two beloved games. It raised a question that fans had been quietly asking since the PlayStation 2 era: what happens to a world after it is saved? The…
- Final Fantasy XIII-2Final Fantasy XIII-2 arrived in Japanese stores on the 15th of December 2011, carrying an unusual burden: it was designed from the start as an answer to complaints about its predecessor. Square Enix had sold Final Fantasy XIII to roughly…
- Final Fantasy XVIFinal Fantasy XVI arrived on the 22nd of June 2023, carrying the weight of a franchise that had defined Japanese role-playing games for nearly four decades. The sixteenth mainline entry in one of gaming's most storied series, it made an…
- Final Fantasy XVFinal Fantasy XV shipped five million units in its first twenty-four hours, a figure Square Enix said allowed the game to break even on development costs immediately. That launch number was remarkable for a franchise that had been…
- Final Fantasy X-2Final Fantasy X-2 arrived in Japan in 2003 as something the series had never attempted: a direct sequel. Every numbered Final Fantasy before it told a self-contained story, with new worlds, new heroes, and no obligation to the game before…
- Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIILightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII opens on a brutal countdown: thirteen days until the world ends, and only one person to save every soul in it. The game, released in Japan in November 2013, is the third and final chapter in the Final…
- 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 Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. Hudson wanted BioWare to build a science fiction…
- Final Fantasy XFinal Fantasy X shipped in Japan in 2001 and sold more than 2.14 million units on its first day alone, including 1.4 to 1.5 million pre-orders. A million copies moved within hours of release. Square had expected modest returns from a…
- The Elder ScrollsThe Elder Scrolls began its life as a medieval gladiator game that nobody expected to succeed. In 1994, when Bethesda's small team told the developers of Wizardry VII they were building an action role-playing game, they were met with…
- Warcraft"Warcraft" was the name Blizzard developer Sam Didier proposed for the company's first fantasy game. Co-founder Allen Adham later said the word was chosen because "it sounded super cool," with no particular meaning attached. That 1994…
- Final Fantasy XIFinal Fantasy XI launched in Japan on the 16th of May 2002, asking players to share a single online world with strangers who spoke different languages and lived on different continents. That was a radical proposition for a console game. At…
- Final Fantasy XIVFinal Fantasy XIV had already failed once. In September 2010, Square Enix released an online game that was so broken, so poorly received, that then-President Yoichi Wada stood up and admitted it had "greatly damaged" the Final Fantasy…
- Astro BotBy the 9th of April, 2025, Astro Bot had surpassed It Takes Two to become the most awarded platformer game of all time. Its total reached 195 Game of the Year nominations and wins. That count began on the 6th of September, 2024, when the…