10 Longest-Running Video Game Franchises With The MOST Quality
Pound for pound across decades. What's the most consistent franchise?
There are plenty of game franchises that have been in the zeitgeist for decades, some extending all the way back to the medium's infancy.
Naturally, they're not all end-to-end bangers but there are some that have managed to hit the nail on the head almost every time and those are the ones we're featuring here.
Running the gamut of genres including RPGs, strategy games, platformers, shooters, and action adventures, these are the franchises spanning decades that managed to define video games over multiple console generations and technological advancements.
Well, that was a very epic intro, wasn’t it? Let’s get into the meat of it.
10. Final Fantasy
As will be the case with many of these games, I can pretty much just say the name of the franchise, you guys will go ‘yep’, and we could move on, but Final Fantasy deserves better so let’s dig into it.
In what is probably the JRPG to rule all JRPGs, a category brimming with fantastic series, Final Fantasy offers up enormously lore-rich worlds starring a cast of interesting characters who most often find themselves wrapped up in consistently high-stakes conflicts.
Created by Hironobu Sakagushi back in 1987, the franchise has turned into a video game monolith that now encompasses a wide variety of different genres, as well as films, comics and books. With a healthy handful of games that easily slide into most gamers’ greatest games of all time list and some of the most iconic protagonists in video games, Square Enix proves the deep quality of the franchise with every new iteration and entry.
Given the stunning scores, especially from Nobuo Uematsu, rich worlds, fascinating stories, and gorgeous cinematic moments that can be found in Final Fantasy games, not to mention the unique consistently compelling combat, the franchise is, in a word, undeniable. The franchise is often hailed by other developers as a significant inspiration for their work.
It’s also frequently celebrated for pioneering stories that delivered emotional weight and proving that this was a thing gamers wanted out of the medium. That is my fancy way of saying they made you cry a lot.