The video game industry is bigger than ever and everyone has their favourite games that they look forward to buying. There will always be great individual games, but certain franchises keep us coming back for more. They repeatedly hit us with great game after great game after great game, gaining massive audiences around the world.
The following top 10 is a list of the greatest video game franchises of all time. But ultimately only you know who would be in your top 10 list, so do you agree that these are the top 10 video game franchises of all time?
The List
If you consider yourself a gamer then you definitely will have played at least one, though most likely several of the games from this list.
#10 – World of Warcraft
This MMORPG by Blizzard Entertainment was first released in 1994. The World of Warcraft takes place within the Warcraft world of Azeroth where players can take on the role of a fantasy character of their choice and develop them to a high level. A fully online game, players can interact, co-operate and go on quests with their friends to gain experience and gold. Millions of players worldwide are hooked on this game and can’t get enough of it. The franchise has grown a massive following and gained cultural recognition, often appearing in many parodies on television. More installments and expansions are expected to be released in the future, with increasing numbers of players ready to get questing online.
#9 – Resident Evil
Capcom’s hugely popular survival horror title game ‘Resident Evil‘ began in 1996 with the first installment. Following the evil Umbrella Corperation, players uncover the story that led up to the release of a deadly virus that turns the dead into flesh eating zombies. Dark eerie tentative tones combined with sequences that make you jump and action packed parts where you are fighting for your life against a seemingly endless amount of zombies, marry well together for a roller coaster ride experience. Loyal fans flock to buy the new releases in the series and a series of popular Hollywood films have been made. Resident Evil is the best horror game series that has ever been made and has been the inspiration for many other imitations.
#8 – Pokemon
You must have been living under a rock for the last 15 years if you haven’t heard of Pokemon. A truly massive franchise that has huge following and cultural impact on all corners of the globe. Pokemon was first introduced in 1996 as a pair of linkable Gameboy RPG games. Since then it has grown to become one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world, with huge amounts of merchandising including, anime, manga, trading cards, toys, books, films, TV shows and countless others. The video games allow players to search for and catch different varieties of Pokemon to use in battles. A big part of the game is to try to “catch them all” and collect every type of Pokemon in the game including the iconic ‘Pikachu’ character. Pokemon have shown itself to be a hugely popular series that continues to gain fans of all ages.
#7 – Legend of Zelda
One of Nintendo’s flagship title series, Zelda is a high fantasy, action adventure game following the infamous central character ‘Link’. Players are often given the task of using Link to rescue the Princess Zelda from the clutches of evil. The 15 official games and several spin-offs of the series have a huge fan following from around the world and continue to impress countless more. Link is often referred to as one of the most iconic video gaming characters of all time. The Legend of Zelda series has produced many great games, with notable mentions to ‘The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past’, ‘The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess’ and the hugely popular ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’. The Legend of Zelda has proven to be one of the greatest franchises of all time.
#6 – Gran Turismo
The hugely popular and highly acclaimed racing game ‘Gran Turismo‘ has entertained millions ofbgamers over the years. Since Polyphony Digital first introduced the series in 1997, over 63 million units have been sold worldwide on the variety of Sony Playstation consoles. Stunning graphics and the ability to race some of the most iconic vehicles of all time make the game so appealing to gamers. Branded as “the real driving simulator” meticulous detail has been given to the way the cars react, which have been modelled on the real life cars. Real race tracks that are world famous have also been fully modelled allowing players to race their favourite cars around the circuits at Monaco, Nurburgring, Laguna Seca and many more. If you are a fan of racing games or even just cars in general, you will appreciate that Gran Turismo is a great series.
#5 – Metal Gear Solid
‘Konami’ first introduced us to ‘Metal Gear Solid‘ in 1998 and since then gamers have been hooked. Following the story of the iconic character ‘Solid Snake’, players take on the role of sneakily infiltrating and neutralising terrorist threats and ultimately facing off against the latest incarnation of the super-weapon “Metal Gear”. The game series is proclaimed as the one that made the stealth genre popular, which has since resulted in many imitations. More instalments are set to be released on several different platforms, ensuring that Solid Snake will continue to entertain fans across the globe for a long time to come.
#4 – Call of Duty
A first-person and third-person shooter game, Call of Duty has emerged in recent years to be one of the most popular game series ever. Games have been primarily based in a World War II era, but recently have branched off with modern games in the form of ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’ and the cold war era in the form of ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’. This series also holds the world record for the fastest selling game of all time, with ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′ making £242.4 million ($401.6 million) on it’s release date. The series continues to entertain audiences with action packed gaming and detailed graphics that make it stand apart from many others. No doubt we will see more successful releases from this series as the franchise continues to grow.
#3 – GTA
‘Rockstar Games’ multi-award-winning series Grand Theft Auto has been setting the gaming world alight since it was first introduced in 1997. An often contrivetial game, players take the form of an up and coming criminal that takes to the streets of a fictional city, which is heavily based on American cities. A huge open world game that fuses elements of action, driving, role-playing, stealth, shooting and racing into a massive landscape that players can get lost in. GTA is a massive series that will no doubt get bigger and gain even more followers by building on its successful games of GTA IV, San Andreas and Vice City. It continues to make being bad extremely fun to play.
#2 – Final Fantasy
Famously starting in 1987 as the company’s last project before they shut down, Final Fantasy was a huge success and has since grown to be the greatest RPG series of all time. It is continuously pushing boundaries and reinventing itself, often becoming one of the first to introduce new techniques to gaming, including switching from 2d to 3d rendering and using voice acting and lip syncing. Final Fantasy sets the bar so high that it is always at the forefront in the gaming world. It is credited as having made rpg games popular outside of Japan and has spawned countless imitations since. A unique element to the series is that the majority of the games have completely unrelated stories and features to other games in the series. Each installment has different levels of success, but some of it’s most popular titles include FFX, FFVIII and one of the greatest games ever made FFVII.
#1 – Mario
The Godfather of gaming! Easily THE most iconic and recognisable video game character of all time, Mario has been bouncing around our screens since 1981 and charming millions of people along the way. Despite his charm, it is because he has featured in so many great games over the years, continually reinventing himself as video game technology has improved, that he is loved by so many. Who has not played a Mario game at some point in their life, be it Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy or one or the many other great games that he has featured in. Mario will definitely be on our screens for a long time to come, and the video game industry would not be the same without him.
Other Notible Mentions
There are many other game franchises that could have featured on this list that are truly great games. Some of these include; Halo, Sonic, Street Fighter, Tekken, The Sims, Sim City, Command & Conquer, Civilisation, Gears of War, Little Big Planet, Silent Hill, Devil May Cry and many, many more.
I’m not going to lie, this list was very hard to make! This list could have easily been the top 25-50, so narrowing them down to just 10 was incredibly hard. Getting them into some kind of order was even harder! I believe this list reflects the views of the majority of gamers, which would agree that these ten (maybe not quite in this order) deserve to be recognised as the 10 greatest video game franchises of all time.
Do you agree with this list? Why not list your top 10 below and don’t forget to vote for your favourite!
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Gotta love Mario, but I always loved Pokemon myself
Mario is a legend!!!
Final Fantasy all the way
Who would have guessed that from your pic!
It’s a good list, I agree with about half of it, mainly because those are the ones if played. but it seems to be lacking a “proper” FPS title, I mean got an honourable mention though it pretty much the console FPS on the map and lets not forget Counter-Strike and Battlefield 2.
I was quite surprised that Street Fighter got an honourable mention, I would have thought it would have made the list.
So basically I would just replace Call of Duty with Halo or maybe Unreal Tournament
A lot of FPS could have made the list, but I wanted to give a good balence of game genres.
Halo VERY nearly made the list though!
sorry but terrible list.
Half-Life? how can you rate call of duty higher than metal gear solid and resident evil? makes no sense.
Hi Gay list! I based most of this list on the sheer amount of sales that these games have sold. Half life is a great game that I debated long & hard about putting in the list, but as I said, this list could have been 25-50 games long.
The great thing about lists is that no two are the same!
Metal Gear Solid, maybe not, but between COD and RE its debatable. COD is far more popular now a day and outsells RE by miles as a whole. Being iconic isn’t the only thing that makes a game franchise popular, you know, or else we’d see Batman games in there too.
Yeah, COD is by far more popular these days (quite rightly), but I wanted to try and create a list that ranks the games on number of sales over the entire franchises history. RE has been around for ages now, so it still deserves it’s place on the list.
It will be interesting to see what this list looks like in 5-10 years time.
Call of Duty over MGS and Uncharted not even an notable mention? Yeah, this lists sucks.
completely agree. thats just plain wrong.
Uncharted? How old are you, 12?
Call of Duty had to rank higher than Metal Gear (I personally prefer Metal Gear!) simply due to the imense sales that it had!
Call of duty over metal gear? dont be fucking ridiculous. it has sold more copies but is not a better franchise. can i get a hell yea?.
other than that the list is fairly solid, sorry for the flame!
Hi John! It was hard to put this list together. I personally would say that Metal gear is a better game, but I decided to rate most of them based on overall sales, which did rank Call of Duty higher than Metal Gear.
Remove GTA (GTA San Andreas was the only epic one), Call of Duty (Modern Warfare was the only epic one) and insert 3 of the following:
Halo;
Gears of War;
Crysis;
Sid Meyer’s Civilization;
Battlefield;
Half Life;
Quake;
Doom;
Deus Ex;
Splinter Cell;
Forza;
God of War;
Unreal Tournament;
The list goes on…
Some of these VERY nearly made the list!! Gears of War, Halo, Civilization, God of War.
This list could have easily been 25-50 long, but I wanted to keep it to 10 and generate some debate
This list is so horrid. World of Warcraft isn’t a franchise, it’s a game, off the Warcraft franchise. “This MMORPG by Blizzard Entertainment was first released in 1994″. Wrong again, try 2004. Jesus, I never realized how full the internet was of idiot misinformed “Journalists”. You know, being a journalist isn’t hard. It contains 3 steps. Acquire information, compile information, release information. Stupid simple in comparison to any job, it’s easier than working at Wal-Marts. I now know where we’re sending all of our stupid people, to websites, magazines, and newspapers, to be mis-informers of modern idiocy. Congrats at having a useless existence. Bet your mums proud.
LMFAO!!! Wow! You don’t have to take things so personally Cameron!
World of Warcraft IS a franchise that was first released in 94 as ‘Warcraft: Orcs & Humans’. The game has evolved over time, with many games and expansion packs – which is a pretty good definition of a franchise.
I have never worked at Wal-Mart, as I run my own business, so I can’t comment on how hard it is there. Perhaps you have some experience?
Yes, my Mum is very proud!
I think World of Warcraft is not Warcraft.
They has the same histroy, but they are not the same.
My list (even though it isn’t 10, but oh well:
Saints Row
GTA
Mafia
Driver
Thats all for now (It’s pretty bad I can’t even remember all of the games I had lol, but thats all I can remember right now)
Driver was a good game! Never played Mafia or Saints Row though
Zelda over CoD? You’re an idiot.
???? Call Of Duty IS ranked higher than Zelda???
Won’t waste time with this site again. Worst list ever.
Why comment then????
Fucking Moron!!!!
Shin Megami Tensei and Disgea.
WoW players don’t have time to vote on this post!
Morta Kombat anyone????
WTH. How is WoW in this list? It isn’t even a franchise, it just one pretty lousy game with lots of expansions.