Best-Selling Video Games of All Time
by Dan Steckenberg
The home version of Atari's Pong hit the market in
1975. In the 34 years since, gaming has gone from a niche market to a
multibillion dollar industry that employs thousands of people around the
globe. In fact, 2008 total video game sales in America topped $21 billion.
Listed below are the top selling video games of all time, as of January
2009.
1. Wii
Sports
Developer: Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and
Development
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Year of Release:
2006
Copies Sold: 41.65 million
In every country except
Japan, when you buy a Nintendo Wii you get Wii Sports. This accounts
for most of the game's now-historic success. Still, if the game (and its
platform) weren't good, perhaps some of its 40-million-plus sales might have
gone to a rival. Wii Sports includes five separate sports games:
tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing. As is characteristic to the
Wii, the games are simple to learn and make use of the Wii "remote." Players
use the remote to mimic the real life actions required to play the sports.
2. Super Mario
Bros.
Developer: Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and
Development
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Year of
Release: 1985
Copies Sold: 40.24 million
Super Mario
Bros. is a classic in every sense of the word. Its story has been turned
into TV shows, a film, comic books, and more. Even its theme music—composed
by Koji Kondo—is familiar to non-gamers and has lately been performed by
symphonies around the world. While Super Mario Bros.'s original
platform, the Nintendo Entertainment System, has long been obsolete,
Nintendo has kept the game fresh by releasing sequels, special editions, and
spin-offs that span all of Nintendo's subsequent platforms, from the Super
Nintendo Entertainment System, to the Game Boy, to the Wii.
3. Pokémon Red, Green, and
Blue
Developer: Game Freak
Platform: Game
Boy
Year of Release: 1996
Copies Sold: 31.38 million
Before it made the leap to the big and small screen and an
endless array of consumer products, Pokémon was a role-playing video
game for Nintendo Game Boy. The three versions listed here are the first
three—and best-selling—entries in the Pokémon franchise. At the time
of its release, Nintendo didn't have many expectations for Pokémon,
as it was coming out on the Game Boy, a platform that was quickly losing
popularity. But Pokémon caught on, and managed to extend the life of
Game Boy and give Nintendo another money-making franchise.
4.
Tetris
Developers: Alexey Pajitnov, Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim
Gerasimov
Platform: Game Boy
Year of Release:
1989
Copies Sold: 30.26 million
So simple it's hard to
believe it hasn't been around since the dawn of time (or at least the
invention of the wheel), Tetris was actually developed in Russia and
then purchased by Nintendo. It debuted on Game Boy and has since appeared on
pretty much every platform imaginable, including cell phones and graphing
calculators. For those living in a cave for the last 20 years, Tetris
is a geometric puzzle game in which the player has to arrange falling shapes
in the right manner, or else the shapes will begin to pile up. If the pile
reaches the top of the screen, the game is over.
5. Duck
Hunt
Developer: Nintendo Research and Development
1
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Year of Release:
1984
Copies Sold: 28.31 million
Any kid who grew up
around the Nintendo Entertainment System probably remembers the bright
orange "gun" used to play Duck Hunt. That gun set Duck Hunt
apart, because you used it—instead of a more traditional controller—to play
the game. If you aimed the gun correctly, you could hit one of the digital
ducks flying across the TV screen. In the 1980s, this was miraculous.
Although Duck Hunt wasn't immediately praised, it was bundled with
Nintendo so every gamer got a chance to play it. Now, there are literally
hundreds of games that offer a much more advanced (and more violent)
"shooting" experience, but Duck Hunt helped bring the hairtrigger to
the masses.
6. Pokémon Gold and Silver
Developer: Game Freak
Platform: Game Boy
Year of
Release: 1999
Copies Sold: 23.11 million
We've already
covered the first Pokémon—the Red, Green, and
Blue editions sitting at No. 3 on the list of all-time top-selling
video games. The Gold and Silver versions are extensions of
their forebears with some new wrinkles, including an internal clock that
tweaked the game play enough to keep it fresh.
7.
Nintendogs
Developer: Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and
Development
Platform: Nintendo DS
Year of Release:
2005
Copies Sold: 21.60 million
Developed for the
Nintendo DS handheld platform, Nintendogs takes advantage of the DS's
touch screen capability. Gamers can pet, feed, and play with their virtual
dogs. The game was originally released in three versions: Dachshund &
Friends, Lab & Friends, and Chihuahua & Friends.
Due to its popularity, Nintendogs has been re-released twice since
'05, and has been spun-off into two sequels.
8. Super Mario
World
Developer: Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and
Development
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment
System
Year of Release: 1990
Copies Sold: 20.61
million
When Nintendo released the Super Nintendo
Entertainment System as an upgrade for the original Nintendo Entertainment
System, the company needed a game to bundle with the new system to drive
sales. What better way to do that than to update the original Super Mario
Bros.? Super Mario World is, as you might expect, a lot like
Super Mario Bros., but with all-new levels, improved graphics and
game play, and some new moves for Mario. The game also introduced new
characters to the Mario universe, including Yoshi, a dinosaur that Mario can
hop on and ride.
9. Wii
Play
Developer: Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and
Development
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Year of Release:
2006
Copies Sold: 20.30 million
The counterpart to
Wii Sports, Wii Play includes nine more stand-alone games such
as "Table Tennis," "Shooting Range" (a Duck Hunt update), and
"Fishing." The games are simple—some say too simple. But Nintendo has always
claimed that part of the purpose of Wii Play was to help gamers train
themselves on the Wii remote, and sales of the game have justafied that
strategy.
10. New Super Mario
Bros.
Developer: Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and
Development
Platform: Nintendo DS
Year of Release:
2006
Copies Sold: 18.43 million
Remember No. 8, in
which Nintendo took advantage of the popularity of the Mario franchise to
launch a new platform? Similar story here. New Super Mario Bros. was
built for the handheld DS system, and promised to showcase the new
platform's capabilities as well as provide a lure for fans of Mario who
might not otherwise have bought a DS. The biggest innovations for this
version of Mario were improved 3D renderings of Mario and his cohorts, as
well as a better physics engine. In New Super Mario Bros., when Mario
swings on a rope it bends.
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
