From 1984’s Tetris to 2011’s Minecraft, several games listed below are fan favourites from members of both the Generation-Y camp and the millennials. We’ve compiled the list based on copies sold, paid downloads, profits and review rankings.
Tetris
The video game that needs no introduction. If you haven’t played Tetris, the rest of this list might as well be written in Latin. Released in 1984 by Russian developer Alexey Pajitnov, the game has gone on to sell approx. 495 million copies and digital downloads.
Minecraft
Minecraft is a game that parents can’t understand and children can’t get enough of. As of 6 months ago, the game sold over 100 million copies worldwide, 106,859,714 copies to be precise. This averages at 53,000 sales per day since the start of the year.
Grand Theft Auto V
The entire Grand Theft Auto series has been met with either excitement or disgust. Regardless on which side of the fence you’re on, this specific edition, GTA V, raked in $800 million in worldwide revenue in 24 hours which eventually hit over one billion dollars in just 3 days.
Super Mario Bros.
The franchise that taught many youngsters that you would have to overcome several threats to eventually find your princess. Released in 1985 the game has gone on to sell over 40.24m units as of November this year.
Mario Kart Wii
Doom
Before there was Call of Duty, there was DOOM. The series, available on over 30 platforms is one of the most loved first-person shooter games out there. The game even made it to the big screens in 2005, it didn’t do well though and found itself listed on TIME’s “top ten worst video games movies.”
The Legend of Zelda
Firstly, Link is the guy in green and Zelda is the princess. The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo’s best performing series with over 75 million copies sold as of this year. The series features close to three dozen other games and spin-offs starting from 1986/87 on the Famicom Disk systems and the early 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) all the way up to a game on the Wii U slotted for 2017.
Pokémon
The first game of the Pokémon series (Pokémon Red and Blue) was released in 1996 on the Game Boy and went on to set the tone for what can easily be considered as one of the best franchises in video game history selling over 279 million units as of February this year. If that’s not impressive, Pokémon Go, its augmented-reality mobile game claimed 5 Guinness World Records since its launch in July this year.
Call of Duty
2011’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and 2010’s Call of Duty: Black Ops sold a little over 26 million copies each, those figures coupled with the entire series’ dedicated fan base is merit enough for the franchise to feature on this list. Analysts predict that sales of the latest edition, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, are down, compared to last year’s edition. But if you know a dedicated COD fan, you would know that it still doesn’t matter to them at all.
Angry Birds
Yes, these guys have made it onto this list. I’m sure you don’t want to read this, and trust me, I don’t want to write this too, but what other app has its own movie and a theme park in Finland? Last year’s sequel to the popular yet pointless bird-flinging game (Angry Birds 2) hit 1 million downloads in just 12 hours and 20 million in its first week.
