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Call of Duty: WWII leads a huge month for game sales as best-selling game of Nov. 2017
Fans have been asking to send the Call of Duty franchise back to the European Theater for years, and now that Activision has finally delivered, those same fans have gleefully opened their wallets. According to The NPD Group, Call of Duty: WWII was the best-selling game in November, as well as the best-selling game in all of 2017 (so far).
Call of Duty: WWII’s launch helped push November 2017’s total game, hardware, and accessory sales to $2.7 billion, an increase of 30% over last year. Other big performers that fuled the last four weeks of sales included Star Wars: Battlefront II (#2), Assassin’s Creed Origins (#3), Super Mario Odyssey (#6), and a big debut for Need For Speed: Payback (#8).
The complete Top 20 from last month can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Assassin's Creed Origins, Call of Duty: WWII, Destiny 2, FIFA 18, Grand Theft Auto V, Just Dance 2018, Madden NFL 18, Mario Kart 8, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, NBA 2K18, Need For Speed Payback, NPD, Pokemon Sun/Moon, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Star Wars: Battlefront II, Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Sims 4, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, WWE 2K18
Staff of Polygon name their “500 Best Games of All Time”
Polygon recently celebrated its fifth birthday with a weeklong countdown of their choices for the “500 Best Games of All Time.”
Along with a high-profile roster of special guests (including Jeremy Parish, Susan Arendt, Jon-Paul Dyson, and Benj Edwards), the site’s staff put together this massive ranking of games that includes titles from nearly every platform and stretching back to the very beginning of the medium. They even set some ground rules:
We asked everyone to vote based on innovation, polish and durability, rather than simply personal taste. We cut games released in 2017 to eliminate recency bias. And we left out sequels that we deemed too similar to the games that came before them.
Collecting all those votes together, we then combed through the data for anomalies and came up with the final order you see here.
Polygon’s final tally looks very similar to our own “Scientifically Proven Best Video Games of All Time,” and this includes their selection of Tetris as the #1 game of all time.
Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon help Pokemon franchise surpass 300 million copies sold
The Pokemon franchise began in 1996 with the (Japanese) launch of Pokemon Red and Green. Since then, The Pokemon Company has added 74 more games to the franchise, including Pokemon UltraSun and UltraMoon, which launched for the 3DS on November 17. And according to the developer, the initial sales of those two games have pushed the Pokemon franchise’s lifetime sales tally above 300 million copies sold.
To celebrate, they’ve released a brand new “Accolades Trailer” for Pokemon UltraSun and UltraMoon, which is embedded above.
This milestone places the Pokemon franchise among some very exclusive company, as Nintendo’s Super Mario franchise is the only other game franchise to surpass 300 million in total sales. However, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto and Activision’s Call of Duty will likely join the “300 Million Club” soon, as both franchises are currently sitting at around 250 million copies sold.
New Retail Releases: Super Mario Odyssey, Wolfenstein II, Assassin’s Creed Origins, More
Mario is back this week in his first fully 3D adventure in more than a decade. Super Mario Odyssey will make its Switch debut this Friday, but fans can dance along with its super-catchy theme song, “Jump Up Super Star,” right now.
Also returning to the dance floor this week is BJ Blazkowicz (in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus), Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise (in Assassin’s Creed Origins), and the latest entry in the Just Dance series (Just Dance 2018).
Finally this week, Destiny 2 will make its PC debut.
You can read all about the rest of this week’s new retail releases after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Vita, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Assassin's Creed Origins, Destiny 2, Just Dance 2018, Super Mario Odyssey, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
The Video Game Canon: Mega Man 2
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at the the blockbuster success born out of the simple ambitions of Mega Man 2. Here’s a teaser…
The first Mega Man game is a bit of an odd duck, which has become even more pronounced as the years go by. The graphics are simplistic, the sound is tinny, there’s only six Robot Masters instead of the traditional eight, and there’s even a score counter (a feature that was jettisoned from the dozens of sequels that followed). There’s just a smoothness to subsequent games in the franchise that Capcom had yet to master with the first entry.
But like most Mega Man fans, I only learned all this after the fact. At the time, whatever memories I have of the first game were formed by guide writers who described it as an unfairly difficult game, old episodes of Captain N, and the fact that none of the local rental outlets owned a copy (unsurprisingly, Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf was always available).
I finally got the chance to see what all the fuss was about with Mega Man 2, which was also the first game in the Mega Man franchise to be spearheaded by Capcom’s Keiji Inafune. With an expanded role in the sequel’s development, Inafune became known as the “Father” of Mega Man to plenty of fans, and codified many of the traditions and patterns the series is known for.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
The Video Game Canon: Super Mario Kart
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at how Super Mario Kart strengthened and shattered friendships after it debuted in 1992. Here’s a teaser…
Even from its earliest days, the personalities behind the video game industry looked to pro wrestling’s combination of spectacle and soap opera for tips on how to behave. This dedication to competition came to a head in the early 90s when Nintendo and Sega engaged in the first “Console War.”
Beginning with the “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t” campaign in 1990, Sega began mercilessly picking at their rival over a variety of claims, some provable and some not. But that was just a warm-up for the infamous “Blast Processing” campaign and Nintendo’s eventual reply of asking their fans to “Play It Loud.” The Genesis and Super NES used these advertisements to compete in a head-to-head contest for the love and support of gamers everywhere, but the heaviest fighting actually took place on playgrounds and lunch tables between kids that weren’t even old enough to shave.
No game better symbolized this battleground of friend-versus-friend than Super Mario Kart.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Posted in Features, Retro, Top Story, Video Game Canon, Wii, Wii U
Tagged Super Mario Kart
The Video Game Canon: Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at how the real person at the center of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! changed sports games and how Little Mac’s cartoonish opponents did as well. Here’s a teaser…
“They say I can’t lose. I say you can’t win!”
– Mike Tyson, to Little Mac, in 1987’s Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
“There’s no one that can match me. My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I’m just ferocious. I want your heart! I want to eat his children!”
– Mike Tyson, about Lennox Lewis, in 2000
In the 13 years between those two quotes, Mike Tyson went from being the face of boxing (and Nintendo’s best-selling Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!) to becoming a punchline for late night comedians. In between, he was convicted of sexual assault in 1992 and bit off a part of Evander Holyfield’s ear in 1997.
From that moment on, Tyson would fit right in with the cartoon characters that made up the undercard to his eponymous game. After his retirement from the ring, Tyson would remake himself as something of a gentle giant, constantly tending to the pigeons he kept on the roof of his apartment building. His later decision to act in absurdist comedies like The Hangover and Mike Tyson Mysteries (an animated Scooby-Doo parody where Tyson is assisted by the ghost of the Marquess of Queensberry) just cemented it.
But the Mike Tyson of 1987 was cartoonish in a different way. The boxing prodigy known to the world as “Iron Mike” and “Kid Dynamite” demolished his opponents in ways that the sport hasn’t seen since. His first professional fight was over in less than two minutes. His next fight lasted a mere 52 seconds, while his fourth required only 39. And in 1986, Tyson knocked out Marvis Frazier in a little over 20 seconds, though an appeal changed the official time of the bout to 30 seconds.
“The Dream Fight” in Punch-Out!! was just as brutal. Tyson deals instant-knockdown uppercuts towards the game’s diminutive hero, Little Mac, for the first minute and a half of this epic boss battle. “Iron Mike” follows that up with a series of hooks that are so fast, it’s hard to keep up. In the second round, a series of ferocious jabs eventually give way to a wild combination of punches that are telegraphed by rapid-fire blinking. With bleary eyes and weary thumbs, hopefully you’ve figured out that the best strategy for fighting the champ is to just survive to the end of the third round and hope for a favorable decision.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Posted in 3DS, Features, Retro, Top Story, Video Game Canon, Wii, Wii U
Tagged Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
Content Crash #3: Will New Games Always Cost $60?
Welcome everyone to the Content Crash podcast. I’m your host, Dan Hartnack, and with as always, Keno Eastmond.
Today’s topic… we’d like to talk about the pricing of games. The standard has forever been that a brand new AAA release comes out and it is $60. That happened way back in the 90s with Nintendo and the Super NES. And all the way to today, that number has not changed, for the most part.
But why is that? And will it ever change?
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