Hello! You may have noticed that Eurogamer is marking its 25th anniversary this week. Alongside a few permanent little creases showing up here and there, and a clear drop in the number of people asking for our ID, we’re celebrating in a particularly remarkable way.
There are, as editor-in-chief Tom Phillips noted earlier in the week, multiple outstanding surprises in store—but this one needs a quick bit of context. Today brings the launch of the Eurogamer 100, a collection of the very best video games to play right now.
As you’ve probably already guessed, the emphasis is on that last phrase. Oddly enough, despite 25 years of publishing, we’ve never actually put together a straight-up list of the best video games, full stop. We’ve produced rankings by platform, genre, series, and even by month; and, most prominently, we’ve published yearly lineups of the top games released each year, with energetic input from you, our readers, reflected in the top 50 as well. Still, to our knowledge, we’ve never delivered one comprehensive all-time compilation.
Of course, we still haven’t—at least not in the usual sense. Unlike most collections you’ll find, the Eurogamer 100 isn’t meant to be a greatest-hits canon of all time. It’s a curated selection of the best games to dive into at this exact moment. To earn a spot, a title has to be (legally) available and playable on current-generation systems. At this stage, that includes consoles like the Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch, a range of streaming and subscription options, mobile platforms, smart TVs, offbeat choices such as the Playdate, and—naturally—the dependable PC.
That means no emulation, no digging up older consoles, and no games that have been pulled from stores. It also means each game needs to be in good working order: either because it still plays brilliantly now, just as it did at launch, or because it’s improved steadily over time—through updates, reworks, remasters, or restorations that bring it up to an excellent standard.
There’s a reason for all this. I think best-of lists work better when they’re immediately usable. Video games—despite the disappointment some people might feel—aren’t really comparable to steadier forms of entertainment like film, television, or music. They behave more like restaurants: they either thrive or shut down by responding to changing tastes; they push culture forward or simply chase whatever’s popular; and you can see quality rise and fall when star chefs move on, or when the team shifts from highly reliable cooks to quieter, dependable staff in roles that keep everything running. It’s a long comparison, but it’s still accurate—video games are living things, constantly shifting and growing on their own terms. So a list of what to play should reflect that reality.
It’s also part of our responsibility at Eurogamer, beyond being useful to our audience. We aim to keep a close eye on the medium as a whole: to shine a light on less well-known games that deserve attention and may need a little help finding it, or to acknowledge the enormous skill and commitment required to keep a live-service platform running smoothly at full strength. We care deeply about video game history, and it’s every bit as concerning as you’d expect to see fewer classic games staying available. Still, there are plenty of lists that look backward—and far fewer that respond to where video games stand today. Maybe we’ll try an all-time list someday.
To shape this one, we took a little of everything. We reviewed our existing staff and regular critics, consulted specialists about their respective genres, matched those views against Eurogamer’s historical coverage of the games in question, and then compared that with how those games are holding up today. We’ll revisit the list each year and refresh it annually—adding standout new releases, bringing in older games that have regained momentum, and swapping out entries that may have slipped in quality or availability.
Naturally, you’re probably going to disagree with the end result completely—because that’s part of the fun!—but hopefully it’s also a list that feels genuinely practical, engaging, informative, and, just like the medium itself, a bit lively.
This week we’ll roll the list out over four days, with 25 games revealed at a time—25th anniversary, after all!—leading up to the full list and the very top spot on Friday. For now, start with the first 25 and explore the Eurogamer 100 here.