Video Game of the Year

Video Game of the Year breaks down the 40-year history of the world''s most popular art form—one 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 tech journalist Jordan Minor investigates, in chronological order, the most innovative, genre-bending, and earth-shattering games from 1977 through 2022. Exploring development stories, critical reception, and legacy, Minor 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. From portly plumbers to armor-clad space marines and the speedy rodents in between, Video Game of the Year paints individual portraits