With millions of titles to choose between, we came to our final shortlist after considering influence, innovation, legacy, social impact, critical reception, and enduring playability. The result is a list of the 50 best video games that spans eras and genres; a selection that respects the games that defined the past and those that we believe will be consequential to the industry's future.
There's always a degree of subjective interpretation with these sorts of endeavors, so that's why we opened up the process. The entries that make up the top 20 were shortlisted by a panel of industry experts and luminaries, and voted on by the viewers of the Golden Joystick Awards, while the remaining 30 were voted on by the senior editorial team here at GamesRadar+. We took care to include just one game from each series, with exceptions made for those that have significantly pushed beyond the boundaries of 2D or 3D – thanks for making things more complicated than they needed to be, Nintendo.
