Video Game of the Year

A Year-by-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977.

Breaking down the 40-year history of the world's most popular art form, one video game at a time.

Pong. The Legend of Zelda. Final Fantasy VII. Rock Band. Fortnite. Animal Crossing. New Horizons. For each of the 40 years of video game history, there is a defining game, a game that captured the zeitgeist and left a legacy for all games that followed. Through a series of entertaining, informative, and opinionated critical essays, author and video game critic Jordan Minor investigates, in chronological order, the innovative, genre-bending, and earth-shattering games from 1977 through 2020. Minor explores development stories, critical reception, and legacy, and also looks at how gaming intersects with and eventually influences society at large while reveling in how uniquely and delightfully bizarre even the most famous games tend to be.