I say you spend an hour and write up a couple pages. Start by defining “popular” in a couple of ways, and provide the lists that match those definitions. Then explain the problem with unrecorded games of Solitaire and Minesweeper, talk about the greater social phenomenon of casual games, the cost of commercial development as balanced against sales, bundle/pack-ins, and then wrap it all up with a general rant about the lack of definitive records.
As others have mentioned, I think this is kind of a lame and vague assignment, but if I were forced to make a list, I’d have to list Tetris as #1. Keep in mind that the sales figure listed above, while skewed for being a packin, is only for the GB version. Tetris has been available in one form or another on virtually every platform created since the NES days. It is widely cloned. It is still played on the DS and other platforms. They are working on a big online Tetris game for the 360 currently. People play Tetris on their cellphones. It is still a big money maker after all these years.
This isn’t a bad idea. I teach in a completely different field, but it could be that your prof wants you to take a stand and be able to back it up with evidence. There might be four or five ways to define popular – and I’d use that as a class discussion – but picking one or two definitions, outlining your reasoning for choosing those two, and then finding the games that fit those definitions is a reasonable exercise in gathering evidence and using critical thinking skills.
Or you could just e-mail him or her and ask for more clarification.
Shareware doom has been downloaded over 20 million times.
Doom is available on over 25 different platforms, including handhelds, consoles from 16-32 bit to modern, and 10 different PC Operating systems.
Fallout is probably in my top 10 games of all time, but it’s probably not even in the top 1000 games by commercial sales. It wasn’t a big commercial hit - sold about 150,000 units in North America in initial release, compared to the other titles you list, which sold 5 million+.
What the fuck are these “sales numbers” you’re talking about?
In all seriousness, though, I would say that Super Mario Brothers has to be #1 by a mile? It was packaged with the NES…
Theme Hospital? You have got to be kidding me.
It beats RCT, Red Alert, Warcaft II, Diablo, BF1932, AoE, etc…
Did I miss something here? Was everyone and their brother playing Theme hospital at some point? I think that throws the validity of that entire list in question.
I seem to remember that Theme Hospital was fairly popular in Europe during that time period, but yeah, I’m a little surprised that it outsold classics like Warcaft II (the cheap Korean knock-off) and BF1932 (the boring prequel with pre-war technology).
Sorry, don’t mean to go all grammar-snob on you, but I got a chuckle out of coming up with justifications for your typos…
Second Life is the new internet. Back in the day, you would see tons of articles (especially in Wired) about how someone was doing something totally ordinary, but they were doing it On The Internet, and that made it news. Well, now we see articles about how some company opened a store In Second Life, and someone else held a press conference In Second Life, and that’s supposed to make it news. It appeals to the sorts of people who drive to the go-kart track and then say “Look at me Marge, I’m driving!”
[ol]
[li]Solitare[/li][li]Minesweeper[/li][li]Tetris[/li][li]Pac Man[/li][*]Pong[/ol]Agreed, the criteria or definitoin of “most popular” needs to be clarified.
Second Life likes to talk big about how many registered users they have. Of course, it costs nothing to register, and a person who creates an account, logs in for five minutes, and never returns (me!) will now add one user to their total forever…
The reason you hear a lot about Second Life is because they’ve got a very good PR firm, and they’re very aggressive about getting themselves in the news. They aren’t even vaguely on the same level as WoW.
Also, note how many of those were pack-ins of some sort.
SMB was a NES pack-in. Duck Hunt was a pack-in with the set that included the gun. Tetris was a GB pack-in. A great deal of Game Boys were sold in Pokemon edition bundles with Pokemon packed-in. Super Mario World was a SNES pack-in.
Not that those games shouldn’t count, of course. Just that there’s a very good reason they sold millions upon millions upon millions of units.
I know that the 2600 pack-in switched to Pac-Man at some point, but I’m still surprised not to see Combat on that list. I guess it didn’t sell other than as a pack-in, though it was an awesome game.
Of course there’s also the issue if the console sold the pack-in or vice versa when considering titles like Tetris or SMB.
I’m really disappointed at the lack of ridicule towards people putting Fallout and Second Life in the top 5. The Qt3 crowd is growing soft :)
Nokia Snake!
In fact JE Sawyer has in the past commented (on the old BIS forums when they existed) that both Fallout games combined only sold a bit more than half the number that PS:T did. I forget exactly what number but I recall him saying that PS:T did ~450,000. Though I believe this was before the budget version releases.
1: Grim Fandango [best story of any game ever created]
2: Tribes 1 [i was an addict…]
3: Doom 1 [pure action! too bad doom 3 had none]
4: Morrowind - TES [going back to play it again, then Oblivion after that!]
5: a tie between Clive Barkers Undying [scared the hell out of me ok…] and HalfLife 2 [main story was really good but multiplayer is boring, not played other episodes yet, waiting for an “ultimate pack” of some sort]
best != popular
Yeah, those are actually a good indication of wrong numbers.
Theme Hospital - 4 million ??
Neverwinter Nights - 1 million ??
There’s no way a list like this can be factual on Wiki. It’s wide open to other’s personal agenda.
I’ll second a vote for Solitaire and Minesweeper. The assignment’s asking what’s popular, not what sold the most copies.