Today Enterbrain released issue 1,500 of the popular Japanese magazine Weekly Famitsu, and it included the culmination of a few weeks of surveys conducted by the publication.
This time around, Famitsu simply asked its readers to vote their favorite game of all time, without any restriction of release date, genre, or platform. In addition to the readers, the magazine’s own editorial staff, and a sizable panel of celebrities and game developers were asked to vote. Of course, everyone’s votes counted the same.
According to the survey’s rules, each person could vote up to three games in order of preference, with the first getting five points, the second getting three, and the third getting only one.
Votes were accepted between July 7th and July 18th, and the publication received 5,287 submissions, 55% were from males, 44% from females, and 1% did not disclose their gender. 18% of voters were in their teens, 40% in their twenties, 29% in their thirties, 10% in their forties, 2% in their fifties, and 1% was under ten or over sixty years old.
Below you can read the top-forty ranking. The ranking actually went all the way to 100, but that would have been a bit redundant. The number of points for the top-ten was also disclosed.
- Persona 5 – 835
- Dragon Quest III – 612
- Splatoon – 411
- NieR: Automata – 369
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 350
- Final Fantasy VII – 287
- Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony – 257
- Chrono Trigger – 231
- Sakura Wars – 223
- Shenmue – 217
- Danganronpa 1.2 Reload
- Shenmue 2
- Hatsune Miku Project DIVA Future Tone
- Yakuza 0
- Otoca D’Or
- Persona 4: Golden
- Okami
- Xenoblade Chronicles
- Suikoden II
- Final Fantasy XI
- Danganronpa 2
- Danganronpa
- Earthbound
- Dragon Quest V
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- Final Fantasy X
- Xenogears
- Monster Retsuden Oreca Battle
- Sonic Adventure 2
- Tactics Ogre
- Fate/Grand Order
- Persona 3
- Super Mario Bros.
- Kingdom Hearts II
- moon
- Hatsune Miku Project Mirai Deluxe
- Dragon Quest X
- Hatsune Miku Project DIVA Arcade Future Tone
- Final Fantasy XV
- Hatsune Miku Project DIVA X
Platforms ranked as follows:
- PS2 – 16%
- PlayStation – 15%
- Super Famicom – 11%
- PS4 – 8%
- PS3 – 6%
- Arcade – 5%
- Dreamcast – 5%
- PC – 5%
- Famicom – 5%
- Gamecube – 3%
- N64 – 3%
- PSP – 3%
- Sega Saturn – 3%
- PS Vita – 3%
- 3DS – 2%
- Wii – 2%
- Others – 6%
The breakdown by publishers sees Sega at the top, followed by Square Enix.
- Sega – 20%
- Square Enix- 17%
- Konami – 12%
- Nintendo – 11%
- Atlus – 7%
- Spike Chunsoft – 5%
- Bandai Namco – 4%
- Capcom – 4%
- Sony Interactive Entertainment – 3%
- Koei Tecmo – 2%
Last, but not least, we also get a breakdown by year of publication.
- 2010 – 2017 – 48%
- 2000 – 2009 – 23%
- 1990 – 1999 – 24%
- 1989 or earlier – 5%
Unsurprisingly, Persona 5 also won its own category (RPG) when Famitsu did a survey about that, Dragon Quest III also ranked second then, but Chrono Trigger, that ranked third, fared worse in this survey. NieR: Automata, on the other hand, held fast in 4th place in both surveys.
As you probably noticed, the recently-released and extremely successful Dragon Quest XI does not appear in the ranking, and that’s easily explained. It released in Japan on July 29th, over a week after the end of the survey. Due to that unfortunate timing, we won’t be able to know how it would fare against Persona 5 for a while.
That being said, Persona 5‘s triumph is hardly undeserved, as you can read in our own review, and in the results of the survey among our readers.