What Are the 5 Most Popular Games Ever

Don’t forget Deer Hunter

So according to Wikipedia, looks like console games take 5 out of 5, beating out every PC game by a wide, wide margin.

Wow.

    * Super Mario Bros. (NES - 40.24 million) [39]
* Pokémon Red, Blue and Green (GB - 31.37 million) [citation needed]
* Tetris (GB - 30.26 million) [1]
* Duck Hunt (NES - 28.31 million) [citation needed]
* [I]More Mario and Pokemon[/I]
# Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (PS2 - 14.36 million) [citation needed]

By a wide margin being the top spot, that is.

Looks like The Sims might beat out Gran Turismo 3, but it wasn’t on the list for some reason, weird.

According to the wikipedia link I posted (and only now just read):
The Sims (16.08 million)
Diablo II (14.5 million)
Myst (11 million)
Starcraft (9.5 million)
World of Warcraft (8+ million)

If you’re including console games, none of those even make the list.

Well, SMB, Tetris and Duck Hunt were all pack-ins at one time, so that skews their positioning. I suppose that doesn’t preclude them from being most popular, though.

Does pack-in refer to included with the console itself?

I’m so young I don’t even remember those days. wry grin

Yes. Back in the day, when you bought a new console, it used to include a game. Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt came with the NES (both games were a single cartige, btw). And Tetris came with every Gameboy sold.

Hmmm, I could see how you could argue that invalidates the data for those games packed-in. :)

I’ll just include those in an aside, as sort of a ‘And there were these games, but they were packed in’ kind of thing.

Oh btw, be careful about citing Wikipedia as a source for a school assignment. I did that once in my first year and… it wasn’t pretty. Luckily, the prof was nice and allowed me to rewrite the paper with proper sources.

Minesweeper? Hard to get real numbers for people playing Minesweeper and/or Windows Solitaire though.

Yeah, all of those “citation needed” notations should let you know that Wikipedia is not ready for primetime, when it comes to being quoted for scholarly work.

Ooh, Minesweeper, Windows Solitaire, Freecell… I guess those can go into my ‘With Packins’ section.

SqueakyFoo, Wikipedia has some of this stuff cited in other sources, I was planning on citing those directly. Would most Profs accept that, you think?

It’s my first assignment for the class, I really dunno what he expects. -.-

WoW probably has well above as many players as every other MMO combined.

Second Life has an awesome hype machine. Last I saw that had less than 500,000 users, yet they generate more news than any other MMO. I don’t think it’s just their graphical MOO design, I think they have a pretty clever PR campaign.

E.g. A friend of mine works at a major museum here in NYC, and her boss came back from a conference all excited telling her to research building a copy of the museum in Second Life. A profoundly dumb idea, but it shows that Second Life Inc. is using some interesting tactics to advertise. It helps that the chin-stroking “virtual world” intellectuals who were all excited about VRML 10 years ago see SL as the second coming.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent.

I think you’re on the right track with minesweeper and solitaire. You need to distinguish between “most played” and “most sold”. Maybe do two lists to hedge your bets? :P

Of the top selling they are all bundled with consoles.

Super Mario Bros sold over 40 MILLION copies. Holy cow.

Hmmm, extra effort… laughs

That two list idea sounds real good though, thanks. :)

That sounds mostly right, except that Rollercoaster Tycoon easily bumps WoW off the list. The Wikipedia article only list the North American sales for RCT (but worldwide sales for these games), so the results are skewed. I don’t have the actual numbers handy, but I’m pretty sure that RCT outsold Starcraft, and possibly even Myst.

Assuming it looks to be a reliable source, yes. And if that website sources it’s info from another website use that one instead (and so on and so on).

Sales aren’t necessarily the best way to judge “popular.” I’d say quantity of time spent playing is a better judge.

So, with that in mind, Solitaire, Minesweeper, Bejeweled, The Sims. And I’d say DOOM has to be on the list, considering how many people played and dug the shareware version.

This assignment is bullshit and your teacher is lazy.

I’ve heard many a magazine writer say that when they had no other news to do, they would sit around in the conference room and make up a top X list, which involved a few hours of arguing followed by another few hours of fluff.

I recommend drinking beer, followed by browsing other top-ten lists. Average out every top ten list you find on the internet.

Accept that you will never make an accurate list, do the assignment, and then never write a top-X list again, because they’re bullshit.

Just cite the Quarter to Three messageboard. You should be fine.