The Best Video Game Franchises of All Time

Ranker Games
Updated August 6, 2020 330.8K votes 20.5K voters 181.2K views
Over 20.5K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The Best Video Game Franchises of All Time
Voting Rules
Vote up the best franchises in all of gaming.

If someone asked you what the greatest video game franchise of all time was, how would you answer? If you grew up in the 80's and 90's, classic franchises like Mario, Sonic, Final Fantasy, and The Legend of Zelda might appeal to you more. However today's gamers have insanely good franchises to sink their teeth into as well, including Grand Theft Auto, God of War, Halo, Deus Ex, and so much more. This list takes your opinion into account, rather than sales, popularity, and reviews, so vote for your favorite game franchises no matter how mainstream or highly-rated they are. All genres are included here, whether it's a RPG, platformer, first person shooter or an adventure game.

You can add any franchise that's missing to this list of the greatest game series of all time, as long as there have been 3 or more games in the franchise so far. That means we're not including games like Minecraft, League of Legends, and DotA. 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY
Ranked by
  • The Legend of Zelda
    1
    The Legend of Zelda, subtitled The Hyrule Fantasy in its original Japanese release, is a 1986 action-adventure video game developed and published by Nintendo, released in North America in 1987 and ...more
  • Super Mario Bros.
    2
    Super Mario Bros. is a 1985 platform video game internally developed by Nintendo R&D4 and published by Nintendo as a pseudo-sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. It was originally released in Japan for ...more
  • Pokémon
    3

    Pokémon

    5,159 votes
    Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Blue Version, originally released in Japan as Pocket Monsters: Red & Green, are role-playing video games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo for the Game ...more
  • Final Fantasy
    4

    Final Fantasy

    3,792 votes
    Final Fantasy is a fantasy role-playing video game created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, developed and first published in Japan by Square in 1987. It is the first game in Square's Final Fantasy series. ...more
  • Mario Kart
    5

    Mario Kart

    7,911 votes
    Super Mario Kart is a 1992 go-kart racing video game developed by Nintendo EAD for the Super Famicom and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The first game of the Mario Kart series, it was ...more
  • Red Dead Redemption
    6
    This game is an open world, western action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games. It was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles on May 18, ...more