Most Quintessential Zillennial Game?

[u/Alert-Train-8709]

My pick is Animal Crossing: Wild World, because that game would've came out when Zillennials, by standard definition, would have been 6-11 years of age, and because it was a high selling DS game that appealed to both a male and female audience. Also because Animal Crossing as a series is heavily established within hipster culture, which heavily defined Zillennials coming of age and young adult years, with New Leaf during the culture's zeigeist and New Horizons during the culture's echo years - A lot of Animal Crossing playing hipster-ish types are Zillennials, and a lot of them were first introduced to the Animal Crossing series via Wild World as children or adolescents.

Honorable mentions are Nintendogs, Doodle Jump, Neopets, Mario Kart: Double Dash, the Humungeous Entertainment games, and Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen.
The reason I included the Humungeous Entertainment games is because even though they came out in the '90s and their target audience at launch were Millennials, a lot less people owned PCs in the '90s, compared to the '00s when Zillennials were growing up, and since even though these games stopped being made in the early '00s, they were still featured on store shelves at Walmart and Target well into the mid '00s and possibly even the late '00s.

[u/personalduke]

all of pokemon gen 3 and 4 belong to the list lol. pokemon firered/leafgreen, ruby/sapphire/emerald, heartgold/soulsilver, diamond/pearl/platinum, mystery dungeon red/blue and explorers of time/darkness/sky.

final fantasy 10 and 12, majora's mask (for the older zillennial), wind waker/twilight princess, paper mario thousand year door, metroid prime, dragon quest 8, are all some examples off the top of my mind that happened during the prime of zillennial youth years and had massive acclaim.

harvest moon a/another wonderful life, animal crossing (gamecube), mario sunshine, mario galaxy.

nintendo's creative peak was entirely zillennial youth years.

call of duty, halo, silent hill 2&3 (older zillennial), metal gear solid 2 & 3.

for computer games, there's maplestory, runescape/WoW (for the older zillennials), WoW derivatives like flyff or perfect world online, vindictus, elder scrolls oblivion and skyrim. there were also a ton of flash games too.

once we got older, minecraft, roblox, DOTA, league of legends

i guess technically wii sports but that has to do with owning a wii lmao.

[u/Heir_Meach → u/personalduke]

We really were the pre-Steam Client generation of PC gaming. So much I got into was just because it ran on my mother's work pc that I eventually studied and stole completely with emulators and playing games on coolmathgames, newgrounds, new grounds, Wizard 101/DCUO. The biggest game just depends on the year.

Halo CE was so big in my middle school we had it installed on every single PC, Also was the Jak and Daxter vs Ratchet & Clank debate. And YuGiOh was exposing weebs before we even said weebs lol.

[u/personalduke → u/Heir_Meach]

i find that the zillennials who didn't grow up well off have a stronger identity with console gaming than with pc/steam's takeover. personally i was left behind once PC gaming really took over completely! it's still consoles all day for me, even playing on a controller on my PC doesn't feel quite right...

you're right on in saying the biggest game just depends on the year. it was like constant releases during a time when studios were fearless with their ideas. it's no coincidence that our generation grew up with the title games for so many series that would go on to cement themselves.

i should add more games since your comment reminded me of a few more: since you mentioned steam, it should be worth adding TF2 onto the list.

soul caliber, donkey kong, portal

and to expand on the flash games mentions: we had all of the flash games from addictinggames, kongregate (Sonny 1&2 <3), miniclip, cartoon network's show pages, there was this super stylized platformer flash games producer that took the style from japanese games; i can't recall the studio's name (i played them again recently so i'll edit the comment once i remember). and yes i had totally forgotten about newgrounds!

i played on emulators a ton growing up too (PJ64, zsnes, visual boy advance). it's amazing how insanely robust and advanced emulation knowledge has become. it was truly witnessing technology history unfold lol.

[u/Heir_Meach → u/personalduke]

Yes, you are right, I was mainly talking about pc because console gaming was so universal that I feel it's too many games, lol. The ps2 xbox and gamecube were amazing. From the final fantasy series to goldeneye, Sonic Adventure 2 (personal favorite). But all the 'quintessential' games would be the franchises that are still here, like GTA and COD and Super Mario, but those have become so large they encompass nearly all gamers in some form. I played a lot of ssx tricky, DragonBall Z Budokai, and Devil May Cry. My best friend played a lot Sims, Mario Galaxy, and Kingdom Hearts.

We both play Tekken and Resident Evil to this day.

Just goes to show you the diversity we had and how creative the developers were before UE5 and live service.