Best Launch Game of All Time?

One of the best feelings for a gamer is opening up a brand new console. You can also probably double or even triple the happiness factor if this is done on Christmas. The amount of possibilities that are encased in that premium cardboard box are infinite.

However, despite as cool as the box may look or how many games are announced for the system, the feeling fades somewhat quickly if there isn’t a great game to play. In the current era of gaming, it seems like a forgotten art, but there was a time when you needed a system seller launch or even dare I say pack in title.

In the formative days of gaming, technology was advancing at a much higher rate which made it easier to display the massive jump in quality. If you look at the most recent launch of the PS5 and the Xbox Series X and try to figure out the best launch title for each console, it’s not as simple as it used to be with things like backwards compatibility and smart delivery, but there was a time, and hopefully will still be more to come in the future.

To Be or Not To Be….Packed In

It got me thinking about the best launch game of all time and the only way to figure out without bias was to create a tournament bracket featuring the best launch games of all time. To expedite the process a little, the tournament bracket would only feature an 8 tier bracket (highlighted in BOLD) of the games that were the strongest launch titles.

Here are all the games that qualified for the tournament that felt like it was a least worthy of mentioning:

SNES - Super Mario World 49.10

NES -Super Mario Bros 61.91

Game Boy - Tetris 118.69

Sega Genesis - Altered Beast

Sega Saturn Virtua Fighter, panzer dragoon

Game Gear - Columns

n64 - Mario 64 32.93

Dreamcast - Sonic Adventure

GBA - Super Mario Advance

Xbox -Halo 24 million

GameCube - Luigis Mansion

Xbox 360 - Perfect Dark Zero

PS3 -Resistance

Wii - Wii Sports 101.63

Vita - Uncharted Golden Abyss,

Wii U - New Super Mario Bros U

PS4 - Killzone Shadow Fall

Xbox One - RYSE, Forza 5,

Switch - BOTW 114.33

PS5 - Astro’s Playroom

When it comes down to comparing the games against each other, what carried the most weight was its quality at the time combined with its importance for the platform. Would the Wii have been a runaway success with casual gamers if it wasn’t for Wii Sports? Would the Game Boy have had the same fortune as the Virtual Boy if it wasn’t for Tetris? Questions like these will help give us a better answer.

Launch Madness

When it comes down the tournament bracket, the two that remained in the finals were Halo CE and Super Mario Bros for the NES. Not only was the quality of these titles revolutionary at the time but they carried much more weight on their shoulders. Halo singlehandedly made the Xbox a success that established them in the console market. Without Halo and its amazing first person controls on the console combined with its multiplayer capability, not only would millions of LAN parties never happened but Microsoft wouldn’t be in the console business today making moves like acquiring gaming studios for billions.

On the other hand in the early 80’s, the video game industry was on its last legs due to the amount of shovel-ware and copy cats that were watering down the market. In 1985, The Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Mario Bros not only carried the system to over nearly 62 million units sold, which is not only great for todays numbers but incredible for nearly 40 years ago. The power of Super Mario Bros could be pointed to as the catalyst for reviving gaming from the brink of collapse. It also established Mario as a household name that still exists today as one of the most powerful brands alongside coca-cola and Mickey Mouse.

Winner:

Both of these titles were important in their own right but Super Mario Bros not only had the success of a system riding on it but also a whole gaming industry. With the importance of launch games becoming less and less relevant, it might never be matched again. It might have also come from a time when pack in’s and great launch games were not only essential but basically mandatory. This is evident by the last few generational launches. Although Nintendo still clearly believes in this strategy because they might not pack in games anymore but they still launch with them as Breath of The Wild is one of the best Zelda titles ever.