Many of the early titles that helped craft what videogames would become, from Space Invaders to PAC-MAN, are now left to gather dust in the annals of gaming history. Others though, have gone from strength to strength, reinventing themselves with each successive generation and technological leap forward. Below we’re taking a look at some of the greatest game franchises of the modern era. From iconic characters to historic gameplay innovations, these series have left their mark on gaming history and continue to produce top tier titles that surpass the competition even today.
Dead franchises
Franchise sales include expansion packs even though they are not considered full video games. Free-to-play game downloads (including free mobile games) and microtransactions should not figure into sales or shipment figures. For video game franchises that have generated the highest overall media revenue (from games and other media and merchandise), see the list of highest-grossing media franchises. All entries include multiple video games, not counting ports or altered re-releases. Shin Megami Tensei only has five mainline entries, but it’s spun off into so many subseries that it’s become one of the largest video game series of all time.
Treyarch made one last World War II-based game, World at War (2008), before releasing Black Ops (2010) and subsequently creating the Black Ops sub-series. Five more entries, Black Ops II (2012), Black Ops III (2015), Black Ops 4 (2018), Black Ops Cold War (2020), and Black Ops 6 (2024) were made, the latter two in conjunction with Raven Software. Sledgehammer Games, which were co-developers for Modern Warfare 3, have also developed three titles, Advanced Warfare (2014), WWII (2017), and Vanguard (2021).
Donkey Kong might not star in that many games recently, but there was a time when the villain-turned-hero was everywhere. After 1981’s Donkey Kong arcade cabinet introduced DK and Mario, the gorilla and his extended family continued to appear in arcades, home consoles, and handheld games. A Dead franchise is a franchise that has no activity, and usually isn’t profitable enough to add new entries into. The big ones are Capcom vs SNK and Capcom x Namco.There are also individual games that could be considered cross-franchise, but usually its not too common.
The first game launched in 1986, and since then, there have been multiple games that fall under the Shin Megami Tensei banner such as Persona, Devil Summoner, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. One of the most revered fighting games ever made, Street Fighter sets the bar for one-on-one competition in the video game world. While innovations like combos and supers have enhanced the series over the years, the core gameplay remains largely unchanged and the cast of characters are still familiar. We’re living in a golden age of video games, where established franchises have roots that go back decades and gamers have more choice than ever to dive into epic, multi-game classics. According to the thousands of people who registered their votes on Ranker, here are the 30 best video game franchises of all time.
Series v Franchise
From fighting games to pinball, there aren’t many genres Kirby hasn’t explored yet. The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo’s longest-running and most successful series, and almost every entry has lived up to the legacy established with the first game. The original Legend of Zelda launched in 1986 and has been followed by 20 mainline games, multiple spin-offs including Hyrule Warriors and Cadence of Hyrule, and a slew of remakes. While Mega Man might not be as popular today as he used to be, there was a time when you couldn’t go a year without seeing his face on the cover of a new game. Created by Capcom, the first game in the series launched on the NES in 1987 and introduced a non-linear way of playing games through its “level select” feature. For best-selling individual video games, see the list of best-selling video games.
These are games where the entire goal/intent of the game is to overcome a wide variety of puzzles and challenges. The vernacular in regards to the overarching game is to use a possessive when referring to the minigame. Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. Modern Warfare 2 received significant controversy due to its inclusion of the level “No Russian”, in which the player participates in a massacre of civilians at a Russian airport.
A series like a franchise is a set of related video games, usually a series tells a story in some form, where a franchise doesn’t have to. Also a franchise can have a series in ( the Final Fantasy franchise has the Final Fantasy Tactics series in it, for example. The Zork franchise includes the Enchanter trilogy and Zork trilogy as well. Call of Duty Online was announced by Activision when the company first stated their interest in a Massively multiplayer online game (MMO) in early 2011. Long before Project Cars, GRID, Toca or Forza Motorsport, there was Gran Turismo. Gran Turismo certainly wasn’t the first true racing simulator, but it was instantly the best when it was released in 1997 on the PlayStation after 5 years in development. It gave players unprecedented access game guide behind the wheel, and under the hood, of 180 different cars ranging from the Fiat 500 L to the Mitsubishi GTO Twin Turbo, and everything in between.
Nintendo’s foothold in the space fighting flight simulator is entirely thanks to Star Fox and his crew of animal kingdom pilots. Early games in the series feature a signature style of polygon graphics that made Fox’s space dogfights feel positively futuristic. Recent missteps with the series haven’t kept fans from ravenously demanding more. With Nintendo’s latest console, the Switch, finding serious success, we expect to see more Star Fox in the near future.
Call of Duty: Warzone (
The sales figures given below also do not include arcade video game sales, which can be found at the list of highest-grossing arcade games. The post-apocalyptic stylings of the Fallout series are enormous triumphs of video game design and gameplay. The vast world populated with countless NPCs and a dark humor have kept fans’ attention for years, and each new game is met with ravenous fervor from the gamers who love this franchise. Samus Aran is one of the first female video game heroes and her adventures battling Mother Brain, among others, have stolen plenty of hours from us over the years. If Nintendo keeps giving us excellent Metroid games, we’ll sure as shit keep playing them. Since its debut as a WW2 shooter, Call of Duty has taken us to almost every warzone of the past century… and even beyond.
What more can we say about this little yellow chomper and his wife, both of whom have remained staples of the arcade since the arcade was invented? When a video game character becomes a significant figure in pop culture, you know there’s something special about his franchise. One of the bestselling PC series of all-time, Diablo’s action RPG, hack-and-slash gameplay have made it a fan-favorite for years and have helped keep Blizzard as a studio that is revered by gamers. Shortly after his debut, Mega Man would start appearing in a herd of sequels, spin-offs, and subseries including Mega Man X, Mega Man Legends, Mega Man Battle Network, and so much more. Most of these subseries had at least one – if not multiple – sequels to them, which makes the number of games Mega Man has starred in astronomical compared to other platforming legends like Donkey Kong or Sonic. The differences between a series and a franchise are muddy at best, and present a sort of grey area when it comes to grouping video game intellectual properties (IP).
Call of Duty 2 is a first-person shooter video game and the sequel to Call of Duty. The game is set during World War II and is experienced through the perspectives of soldiers in the Red Army, British Army, and United States Army. It was released on October 25, 2005, for Windows, November 15, 2005, for the Xbox 360, and June 13, 2006, for Mac OS X. Other versions were made for mobile phones, Pocket PCs, and smartphones.
Beyond the mainline titles, spin-offs, and remakes of older games, there have been nearly 20 mobile games and over a half dozen Pachinko machines under the Resident Evil umbrella. The series helped create the foundation for the survival-horror genre and is still finding new ways to reinvent and redefine it nearly three decades later. Few characters are as malleable as Kirby, which is likely why he has starred in so many different video games. The pink ball made his debut in 1992 with Kirby’s Dream Land for the Game Boy and has starred in multiple games for handheld and home consoles.