I'm Jon-Paul Dyson, director of

the International Center for the History

of Electronic Games at The Strong Museum.

And I'm Shannon Simons, curator for Electronic Games

at the Strong Museum.

And this is every iconic video game for the last 40 years.

[rock music]

[Shannon] When deciding which game to pick each year,

we looked at a variety of factors.

The game had to be iconic.

People had to recognize it.

It had wide geographic reach

and was played all across the world.

It had cultural significance

with a lot of people even outside the gaming industry.

1979, Asteroids.

In the 1970s Atari ruled the arcade scene,

but in the late 1970s competition came from Japan

in the form of Space Invaders.

Atari needed a followup.

Asteroids was the answer.

This rock blasting game featuring

asteroids hurdling through space

inspired by the original Space War game

from the early 1960s,

but it proved to be a gold mine for Atari,

raking in the quarters, both in the arcade,

and eventually when ported to home console.

Asteroids combined this amazing fluidity of movement

with excitement.

The sound ramped up, the action ramped up,

the asteroids came faster and faster.

It generated coins by the bucketful

and really made a lot of money for Atari

and brought internal fame

to Ed Logg and Lyle Rains the developers.

1980, Pac-Man, when creator Toru Iwatani

was eating a pizza and removed a slice

he got this image of this yellow ball

going across the screen eating pellets,

and he thought that that would be something

that would appeal widely across genders, across ages.

Not only did Pac-Man do well in the arcade,

but it became the first game

to incite this licensing craze.

Pac-Man's fun for everyone.

All you have to do is go around a maze.

And it also had these wonderful ghosts.

In 1982 Ms. Pac-Man became one of the first

iconic female video game characters.

1981 Donkey Kong.

Donkey Kong introduced to video games

two of its most important characters.

The first was the games creator, Shigeru Miyamoto

who saved Nintendo when they were desperately

looking for a game to replace their failed Radar Scope.

It was a delightful game featuring

a character called Jump Man,

who saved this damsel in distress

from the clutches of an evil gorilla.

The second character was, of course, Jump Man,

who we know as Mario.

Without Donkey Kong there may be no Mario

and video games would be very different than they are today.

1982, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial.

E.T. is an example of a video game

that's remembered for all the wrong reasons.

It's considered one of the biggest commercial failures

of the entire video game industry.

It only took five and a half weeks to develop

due to licensing rights and trying to get

the game out for the holiday season.

[video game noises]

The game just didn't play well.

Legend had it that after the game's failure

Atari buried thousands upon thousands of these cartridges

in a landfill in the New Mexico desert

that turned out to be true during a 2014 excavation

when all of these cartridges were dug up.

E.T. is often credited as a great example

of why the video game industry crashed in 1983.

A lotta games were being produced

and the console market was glutted with games

that just weren't selling.

The PC industry was also taking off at the time.

But when people talk about the crash,

they always talk about E.T.

1983, M.U.L.E.

When people think of video games

they usually think of the games, not the creators.

But when Trip Hawkins founded Electronic Arts in 1982

he wanted to change that.

He wanted to bring the developers to the floor.

And so he got some of the best developers

in the business to create games.

One of those creators was Dan Bunten,

who later became Danielle Bunten Berry.

Bunten used to say that no one ever died

wishing they'd spent more time in front of a computer screen

and wanted to bring that spirit

of a board game to a computer game.

M.U.L.E. did this successfully.

It's a game designer's game,

and one that is still influential today,

shaping how we think of multiplayer games

for a mass audience.

1984, King's Quest.

The game development company, Sierra Online,

became synonymous with graphical adventures,

mainly because of the success of the game King's Quest,

developed and created by co-founder Roberta Williams,

who became one of the most

iconic female video game designers.

King's Quest combined the best of early text adventure games

with pioneering graphics

for IBM's latest computer, The PC Junior.

King's Quest allowed players a freedom of movement

that they hadn't experienced before,

including being able to move in front of

and behind objects on the screen.

It's a game that appealed to everyone,

both women and men alike, and people who perhaps

weren't even generally fans of computer games at the time.

Although the PC Junior itself

proved to be a commercial failure,

King's Quest found new life when it was ported

to other computer systems such as the Commodore 64

and the Apple II line.

1985, Super Mario Bros.

Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong as Jump Man.

It wasn't until 1895 when he first appeared

in his breakout series [foreign language].

Mario's gameplay became so popular

because it was so simple.

You scrolled in one direction,

jumping over enemies like Koopa Troopas,

and Goombas and try to avoid falling in pits,

which made it easy to play for everyone,

no matter what level you were.

He has appeared in over 200 games

on every single Nintendo console ever created.

And in the survey in the 1990s more children

recognized Mario even than Mickey Mouse.

1986, The Legend of Zelda.

If you first played Zelda

on the Nintendo Entertainment System,

you might be confused as to why we're introducing this

in 1986 instead of 1987.

But it actually premiered on the Japanese only

Nintendo Famicom Disk System as a flagship game.

It was initially thought of by Shigeru Miyamoto,

the creator of Mario and Donkey Kong,

as a counterpoint.

Something that was a little bit more complex.

It pioneered this open world feel.

This miniature garden where players would explore

the entire land of Hyrule openly,

without having a discrete path to follow.

It gave rise to some of the most

iconic lines in video game history.

It's dangerous to go along, take this.

The Legend of Zelda is still popular today,

even with some of the more recent iterations

such as Breath of the Wild and Ocarina of Time.

[video game music]

1987, Tecmo Bowl.

Every year sports games dominate the bestsellers lists.

Games like John Madden Football are purchased

by millions of players every year.

But early on, football games were

largely absent from the video game scene.

There have been games like Atari's arcade game Football.

But it was a pretty boring abstract game of x's and o's.

Tecmo Bowl brought to video games live action,

two screens, four players.

It was a real hit in the arcade,

and also when it was ported to the home console at home.

Tecmo Bowl had bright simple colors,

but most of all it was the action

that took foremost in the game,

and that's what made it really exciting.

While the teams in Tecmo Bowl

were not real, the players were.

A licensing deal with the NFL Players Association

brought real named players to the game

that brought an extra level of excitement.

[video game music]

1988, Wasteland.

Role playing games had been around since the 1970s.

First in pen and paper form

and then in computer games.

But mostly they're fantasy games,

things taking places in dungeons with spells and wizards.

Wasteland was different.

Not set in a fantasy world,

but a post-apocalyptic landscape,

but one that was filled not only with a little horror,

but also a lotta humor as well.

1989, Tetris.

Tetris was originally created by a Soviet designer,

Alexey Pajitnov, in 1984 on an Electronica 60 mini computer.

But it wasn't until its release in 1989

on Nintendo's Game Boy handheld

that it achieved real worldwide success.

The title's a combination of the Greek word

tetra for four and tennis.

It also has its origins in the game Pentominoes,

where players take puzzle pieces

and fit them together in a box-like puzzle.

Tetris became famous as a game that was easy to play

but difficult to master.

Tetris is still probably the most

popular puzzle game on the market.

It's something that people can enjoy

not only on their computers

but also on mobiles handheld devices.

It's a game you can play really quickly

while you're waiting for the bus.

1990, Microsoft Windows Solitaire.

When we think of computer games

we don't usually think of card games.

But perhaps the most popular computer game of all time

was a card game, Microsoft Solitaire,

introduced with Windows 3.0 operating system.

The game was crucial, not only in ensuring

that people wasted millions of hours of time

playing this addicting game,

but also teaches them how to use a mouse,

a device that was completely new to many people,

and so they could learn how to click, drag,

do other things with this device by playing a game.

I totally don't play that while I'm at work, do you?

No, not at all. No.

No, never have, never have.

[laughing]

1991, Sonic the Hedgehog.

In the early 1990s Sega and Nintendo

were locked in a battle for the hearts and minds

of their console fan base.

Sega wanted to paint Nintendo as a console for children.

They decided to have an in-house design contest

to create a brand new character.

They came up with the idea of this blue hedgehog

code named Mr. Needlemouse

who became Sonic the Hedgehog.

With Sonic the Hedgehog they intended to appeal

to an older audience with someone who was more hip,

cool, resonated with Gen X.

Then with the advent of the Sega Genesis

and especially with Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991,

Sega vaulted forward and just absolutely dominated

the 16-bit console market.

1992, Mortal Kombat.

Finish him.

[voice game sounds and screaming]

Never before has there been a game

that's created so much excitement,

or maybe I should say controversy.

Mortal Kombat was a fighting game

with over-the-top graphic violence

that today looks tame, but back then, outraged people.

Some of those people were U.S. senators.

The result was not only a wildly popular game,

but senate hearings that led to the development

of the ESRB, the rating code

that continues to govern video games today.

Mortal Kombat's violence was not so much disturbing

to some people because it was realistic.

Ripping the spine out of our opponent

is not necessarily realistic.

But it was because it was so gratuitous

and also because [voice muffled]

it was marketed to children.

Who a game is marketed to is sometimes important

in determining how people react to it

as to what it actually contains.

Mortal Kombat helped not only boost the fighting game scene,

but also created an interest in games

that really were spectacles at the arcade.

Games like Street Fighter Two would be ones

in which players competed to see who was the best.

Mortal Kombat has an important legacy

not only for its sociopolitical effects,

but also just for its effects in the game world itself.

1993, Doom.

Anyone who played Doom when it first came out

will never forget the experience.

This was just mesmerizing, adrenaline boosting,

sheer joy of blasting away these enemies coming at you.

Its first person perspective was revolutionary,

and as revolutionary was the way that it was distributed.

The digital shareware.

You could download the first chapter,

play it, and get hooked.

John Carmack and John Romero were the geniuses

who set this ammo-blasting, adrenaline-fueled,

action-packed adventure set to heavy metal music

that really just turned the video game industry upside down.

Doom popularized the first person shooter,

showing how compelling it could be

to look down the barrel of your gun

at enemies swarming at you.

It was a game that was impossible to turn away from

and you just had to keep playing as long as you survived.

1994, Super Metroid.

Super Metroid is widely considered the best game

in the entire Metroid franchise.

As bounty hunter Samus, you're on this isolated spaceship,

going through, trying to capture pirates.

Players of the original Metroid probably remember

that they reveal at the end Samus was a girl.

Samus wasn't the first female protagonist in a video game.

But she certainly did become the most popular,

especially of the era.

And was the first to really be seen

as a non-sexualized character.

When she's in her armor you really don't care

whether she's male or female, she's just awesome.

Super Metroid was one of the first games

to have multiple endings.

Three in this particular case.

And it became very popular in speed running communities,

as they raced to beat the clock

to get the best ending possible.

1995, Command and Conquer.

Command and Conquer wasn't the first

real time strategy game from Westwood,

but it was a game that brought together

in a perfect combination all the elements of skill,

strategy, and speed to make for a good

real time strategy game today.

Command and Conquer really showed other manufacturers

that RTSs, real time strategy games,

had an audience who just craved the excitement

of trying to defeat your opponent

while so many things are happening all around you.

1996, Tomb Raider.

1996 was actually a really big year for video games,

with releases of epics like Diablo and Resident Evil.

[Woman] Look out, it's a monster.

Let me take care of this.

[gunshots blasting]

But we picked Tomb Raider for one huge reason.

And her name was Lara Croft.

Lara was this no-nonsense Indiana Jones-esque character.

She was doing everything

that the traditional action hero did

except that she was doing it in hot pants.

As awesome as Lara was, she can sometimes

be seen as a sex symbol as well.

Tomb Raider really set the standard for 3D video games

with the ability for characters to move in every direction,

to jump, climb, swing, and in this particular case,

find some pretty cool treasure.

1997, Final Fantasy VII.

When Hironobu Sakaguchi released the original Final Fantasy,

it wasn't the first role playing game,

but it was really the first to take it to that next level,

but in 1997 when Square published the seventh iteration

of their Final Fantasy genre

it really, really broke the mold.

Prior to this role playing games

were mostly super popular in Japan.

Final Fantasy VII exploded the role playing genre

in America and Europe.

The game allowed you to explore lots of different areas,

and as one of these original four heroes of light,

as you tried to go out and save the world from destruction,

you were able to explore different areas,

find treasure, and level up all of your weapons and gear.

If you started out as a fighter

you definitely had a cooler sword by the end.

With characters like Cloud Strife,

the devilishly handsome Sephiroth, and Aerith,

whose death unfortunately remains

one of the most tear-inducing moments in video game history.

[sad music]

1998, Pokemon Red and Blue.

1998 was a big year for Nintendo.

They released what's considered sometimes

the most popular game of all time,

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.

[video game sounds]

But in this case we're gonna talk about a different game.

A smaller one that changed the way portable play worked.

You might be a little confused as to why we're introducing

Pokemon in 1998 when it actually came out in Japan in 1996.

That was released as Pokemon [foreign language],

Red and Green.

The original Red and Green was only released in Japan.

And when it came over here

they decided to shorten it to Pokemon

from the original title Pocket Monsters,

because it needed to fit on the small Game Boy screen

and it was just easier to read.

There was also a licensing issue,

because there was a Pocket Monsters game already over here.

Creator Satoshi Tajiri was

this huge bug collector when he was a child.

And he decided that he really wanted to give

children in Japanese cities the opportunity

to do their own bug collecting.

He had this vision of insects crawling along

the game link cable that connected two Game Boys together.

And thus, Pokemon was born.

Pokemon is still considered one of

the most popular RPGs of all time.

And its legacy can still be seen

in the 2016 augmented reality game, Pokemon Go

as people walk around with their smartphoness

and collect Pokemon right in their backyard.

Pokemon also created an entire transmedia franchise

that included one of the most popular

trading card games of all time as well as anime series,

movies, board games,

pretty much everything you can think of,

you can catch 'em all.

1999, Shenmue.

To the non-gamer, Shenmue sounds like maybe a killer whale.

But in reality it's one of the most exciting

open world games ever created, a real pioneer,

which players were lost in a world

where they could do all sorts of things,

from battling enemies to racing forklifts.

Shenmue liberated players to explore in ways

that they hadn't really explored before.

It's designer, Yu Suzuki, was a brilliant designer

who knew how to make worlds seem to come alive

in ways that really tasks the limits

of the Sega Dreamcast for players

was a revelation of how immersive

a video game world could be.

2000, The Sims.

One of the geniuses of Will Wright

is that he looked for inspirations in the everyday world.

His hit game Sim City drew on the way

that a model train set can bring alive a miniature world.

Similarly, with The Sims he found a dollhouse

an inspiration for a new way of playing,

one that really changed the way we look at

how Sim games work and the worlds that they can create.

People have been playing with dollhouses for centuries.

But The Sims brought alive worlds of players

who interacted with each other, had emotions,

and did mundane, every day things like going to work

or using the bathroom.

The game was strangely compelling.

Players spent hours building their Sims up,

seeing them interact with each other,

and really creating this digital world that felt alive

and the realism and the emotions that the Sims felt

and related to one another.

2001, Halo: Combat Evolved.

A game called GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64

showed that first person shooters

could be successful on consoles.

In 2001 Microsoft broke into

the home console market with their Xbox.

They perfected it.

Or at least came really, really close.

Halo was a game that broke the boundaries

of what a traditional first person shooter could be.

It had a sweeping plot line, a highly developed world,

and characters that players really, really bonded with.

It also pioneered some new game mechanics,

like the idea of only being able

to carry two weapons at a time.

That forced players to asses and reassess every situation

that they went into in order to make sure

that they had the correct weapon.

Halo became known as the Xbox's killer app,

which basically means that the console might not have sold

nearly so well without it.

In fact, a full 50% of Xbox consoles sold

in conjunction with a copy of the Halo game.

Halo also became extraordinarily famous for its multiplayer,

which might seem odd because it actually

came out before the advent of Xbox Live

and players had to play on a local area network connection.

But it allowed up to 16 people to play simultaneously,

which was huge for a console at the time.

It may be an exaggeration to say

that the fate of the Xbox franchise rested on Halo,

but not that much of an exaggeration.

The game was really instrumental in cementing

not only the platform success,

but an image of what sort of player

really gravitated towards the Xbox.

2002, Metal Gear Solid 2.

Video games are usually built around

speed, action, and less so stealth.

But the Metal Gear Solid franchise

was really key in bringing that game mechanic to popularity.

And yet this game had its own form of stealth.

Metal Gear Solid 2 reshaped the face of stealth games.

Hideo Kojima's brilliant game really brought

the artistry of a stealth game

with its different demands on a player

to a new height that hadn't been reached before.

Metal Gear Solid is the most enduring

stealth franchise in video games.

And Metal Gear Solid 2 was key to making that happen.

2003, Call of Duty.

World War II is often known as the good war,

with clear protagonists and antagonists.

The result is that it is easily ported over to video games.

But no game has ever done it as well,

perhaps, as Call of Duty.

It put players on a mission to fight the enemy

in a way that was thrilling,

and at the time, highly realistic.

Just as generations earlier,

little kids that played with little green army men

in their sandboxes, now kids all grown up,

have an amazing time playing in this world

of Word War II in which you were

trying to fight the enemy and stay alive.

As a franchise, Call of Duty has been a tremendous hit

for Activision and some of

the bestselling games of all time.

2004, World of Warcraft.

In 1997 Richard Garriott coined the term

massively multiplayer online role playing game,

or MMORPG for short, for his game Ultima Online.

But it wasn't until 2004 when Blizzard released

World of Warcraft when the genre really took hold.

With its peak of 12 million players,

WOW really took the internet by storm.

Not only was it an easier RPG,

which allowed players who maybe wouldn't be so interested

in in depth role playing game to play,

it also made it super easy for people to catch up

with lots of XP giving quests and not huge penalties

when you die.

It made novice players able to catch up to

the more experienced companions a lot faster than normal.

World of Warcraft is still

the most iconic MMORPG on the map.

When people think of MMOs they still

think of World of Warcraft first.

2005, Guitar Hero.

In video games it's all about the controller.

Think about the simple Atari joystick,

or the controller for the NES.

But most controllers are variations on a theme.

With Guitar Hero players got something completely different.

Here was a simulated guitar that anyone could pick up

and know sort of what to do with pretty much right away.

Guitar Hero was a party game

that expanded their reach of video games.

Anyone at a social gathering wanted to pick up the guitar

and play and try to see how they do,

even if, in the end,

they probably didn't hit all the right notes.

2006, Wii Sports.

You probably have an idea in your head

when someone says, I'm a video gamer.

And the first thing you think of is

probably not your 90-year-old grandmother.

But wen it comes to Wii Sports

you might as well think about her,

because she's probably playing it.

Along with all of her grandkids.

Wii Sports became one of the most popular sports games

and one of the most popular games of all time

and launched the Nintendo Wii console to massive success.

In fact, there were lots of people

who were buying Nintendo Wii who didn't even know

that it could play a different game.

Wii Sports helped the Nintendo Wii

sell over 100 million consoles,

and its' motion-controlled remote and nunchuck

even spurred Microsoft and Sony

to design their own motion controlled system

the Microsoft Kinect and the PlayStation move.

2007, Portal.

In 2007 Valve Corporation released a really interesting,

almost funny-looking game called The Orange Box.

It was a compilation of five games.

Four of them were first person shooters

from some of their more popular franchises,

like Half Life Two and Team Fortress Two,

and there was this short puzzle game called Portal.

Surprisingly enough, that small game,

which could be completed in four hours or less,

ended up receiving more critical acclaim

than the other four games put together.

Portal had a unique gameplay system using portal guns,

which allowed the shooter to shoot in one area

and move in a different direction.

So you could exit one room in one direction

and enter another in the opposite direction,

or in fact move through walls and ceilings.

But one of the most enduring parts of portal

was its single vocalist.

[GLaDOS] Very, very good.

A complementary victory lift

has been activated in the main chamber.

Her name was Ellen McClain

and she played a darkly sarcastic

artificial intelligence named GLaDOS,

who promised to navigate you

through the Aperture bet365体育赛事 Lab.

And as long as you perform to her satisfaction,

you would be rewarded with a delicious slice

of black forest cake.

Unfortunately the cake was a lie.

She actually tried to kill you.

[video game sounds]

2008, World of Goo.

Video games, especially starting in the 1990s,

were made by massive teams pouring massive amounts of money

into the development of the game.

But starting in the early 2000s

new tools began to emerge that allowed single individuals

or small teams to create a game.

One of those games was World of Goo.

A fun, splattering game that really

had a playful spirit about it,

and yet, low budget looking animations.

The result was something attainable,

yet fun, and really spurred the indie game movement

that really is a key player in today's video game world.

2009, Angry Birds.

It's the first game that really transcended mobiles gaming.

Not only inspired people sometimes to buy a phones itself,

but also to buy lots of other merchandise

inspired by the game.

Angry Birds was important,

not only for its popularity,

but the way it brought new gamers into the fold of gaming.

Someone who would never consider themselves a gamer

found themselves addicted to Angry Birds.

Eagerness to see if they could knock down

those devilish pigs and really try to get

to the next level in the game that was frustrating,

fascinating, and most of all, fun.

2010, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty.

Starcraft is one of the best examples

of the real time strategy genre.

Unlike a lot of the most popular

real time strategy games, it takes place in space,

with three very distinct races.

Humans, Protoss, and Zergs.

One of the things that sets Starcraft apart

from its contemporaries

was the fact that each faction was uniquely different

in how you could build your bases,

lead your armies, and what your powers were.

The original Starcraft also pioneered what we call today

the eGames Sports movement.

The eSports movement was especially popular in South Korea.

But with Starcraft 2 it branched out

and became one of the most popular eSport games worldwide.

2011, Minecraft.

A Lego brick affords a lot more varieties at play

than the talking Barbie.

Both can be fun, but one opens up many more possibilities.

Minecraft was the Lego brick of the video game universe.

Add simple eight-bit looking graphics

that opened up a creative world for players

to build things that they could imagine

in ways they couldn't build in real life

with those atom-based Lego bricks.

Result was a game that has yielded

millions of hours of gameplay as players

discover the possibilities of building something

on the computer screen that before they could only imagine.

2012, Journey.

Set in a vast desert where the player feels small against

this wide expansive sand and tall mountains.

Journey evokes this sense of solitude and wonder.

Players are allowed to communicate

with each other only through chimes.

Not through a voice or text.

They can help each other but never hinder.

The game was also designed to be so simplistic

that players wouldn't require any in-game instruction

so they wouldn't be taken out of their world.

Journey is also known for its

sweeping, evocative soundtrack,

which was the first video game

to be nominated for a Grammy Award.

[intense music]

2013, The Last of US.

Early video games were long on play and short on story.

There's not much story in Donkey Kong.

It was a damsel in distress,

Jump Man rescuing his love.

Yeah, as games have developed over time

the stories have gotten more compelling,

and studioses have learned how to tell

those stories more effectively.

The Last of Us, in some ways,

[voice muffled] very standard genre,

the zombie apocalypse.

With many video games there are very artificial mechanics

that move the story along.

Maybe you get to a new level, for instance,

or your character gains new abilities.

But The Last of Us, you're in the story always,

as your main character and the girl who is the sidekick,

went through the story, developing almost like a novel.

It was compelling because it felt real

in a way that more artificial systems would not have.

2014, Destiny.

Destiny was developed by Bungie,

best known for their Halo franchise.

And with Destiny they created yet another hit.

Perhaps best known for its persistent online world,

which means that things continuously happen

even when you're not logged on,

Destiny creates a world where players

can do their own thing,

but also just randomly meet up with other people

for worldwide events.

Maybe there's a boss fight that pops up.

Or a raid that needs to be completed.

Everyone can interact or you can ignore it

and just keep on doing what you're doing.

The choice is up to you.

Bungie also made a commitment with Destiny

that it was going to be continuously updated,

they said until the end of time.

But probably at least until

the company goes out of business.

Because of that Destiny receives continuous updates

and support so players never have to worry

that they're gonna run out of new content.

2015, Undertale.

Most video games are developed by a whole crowd of people,

or at the very least one or two.

Undertale was developed, published,

written, and composed by a single person, Toby Fox.

He created a game that he wanted to play.

And if there was an element in a game that he didn't like,

he just didn't include it.

So for example, he hated fetch quests

because it made you go back and retread old ground.

He also hated being forced to grind for experience points.

So none of those things appeared in Undertale.

One thing that did, however,

was a very interesting game mechanic

that allowed you three choices whenever you faced a monster.

You could fight them and kill them

like you normally would in a video game,

but you could also choose to flea

or you could choose to befriend them.

And depending on you choice,

and your various choices throughout the game,

you received a different ending.

That could sometimes even continue on to subsequent plays

if you decided to play the game over again.

2016, That Dragon, Cancer.

When Trip Hawkins first started Electronic Arts,

he ran a series of ads that asked the question,

can a game make you cry?

With That Dragon, Cancer, there was a game

that really had the potential to move players to tears,

in large part because it was based

on the real life experience of the developer,

who lost his son.

That Dragon, Cancer, brought to the video game

the tragedy and sometimes the tedium of what it was like

to wait with a sick child, to experience that.

It's a game that anyone who played it could not forget.

And it's a game that began to show the power of the medium

as it developed to bring new senses

of what was possible in video games.

New ways to move players and new ways to show the artistry

and the pathos that is possible in video games.

2017, Fortnite.

The most important games sometimes aren't the first games

to adapt a certain medium.

Take the battle royale mode of video games.

Fortnite was not the first game

to use a battle royale mode,

in which you're the last player standing.

Think of something like Hunger Games, for instance.

But something about Fortnite was compelling.

Well, maybe that something was the fact

that it was free to play

and also the fact that it had graphics

that were accessible to anyone.

Meanwhile, a circle is shrinking,

limiting the amount of space you can go.

Meaning that in the end only one person will survive.

It was not the first battle royale game,

but something about the game,

that combination of fast action,

of suspense, of accessible graphics,

and the free to play mode made it a video game phenomenon,

brought new players in,

brought players of all ages together to play.

2018, Celeste.

Some games you just enjoy playing.

There's not really as much rhyme or reason for it,

you just really like it.

Celeste tended to be one of those,

with the gamers for whom it was popular.

Celeste had some interesting game mechanics

that allowed you to do things like double dash in midair.

It wasn't the first game to do that,

but combined with the fact that each room

was its own individual puzzle,

it made everything feel faster, stronger,

and it also allowed for a great deal of replayability,

since each room had maybe a different way to play it.

Several rooms also had hidden cassette tapes.

If you found the cassette tape

it would unlock a b-side to the level,

which was a harder version.

If you beat every single b-side

it unlocked a c-side and allowed you

to play an even harder version.

Basically allowing for almost

endless replayability of the game.

But what really hooked a lot of players to Celeste

was the protagonist herself,

a young girl named Madeline,

who was trying desperately to scale a mountain.

She kept being hindered by a reflection of herself

that she called a piece of me.

It turned out that this piece of her

was a metaphor for her own internal anxiety and depression,

and it was only by combining the two aspects of herself,

that she was able to finally scale the mountain,

which is a really interesting metaphor,

I think, for most of us.

[Jon-Paul] That was every iconic game

for the past 40 years.

[Shannon] We hope you learned something

and had some fun doing it.

We'll look forward to seeing what the next 40 years bring.

[light music]