I worked for T-Mobile when pokemon go came out. I literally sold phones to people who just wanted to play that game and their old ones couldn't handle it.
I first learned about the game when I walked through a park and saw about a dozen people either stopping randomly or just standing around like freaking zombies, though it was The Happening for a second.
Not quite sure about the criteria here, but Stardew Valley's arrival was definitely unexpected considering it was a game trying to revive a fairly niche genre and developed by a single person. Now it's sold over 15 million copies and inspired a whole slew of farming sims. Heck, it's even eclipsing the more recent Story of Seasons games, even though that was the franchise that inspired it!
@@rimurutempest4945 So long story there lol. Back in the day, the game series went under the English name Harvest Moon by the company that translated it. Eventually the two companies split ways, with the English company releasing their own games under the Harvest Moon name since they had the copyright to that name. So the orginal company that made/makes the games, are releasing them under the name Story of Seasons.
Probably because a whole generation has since grown up in a world where Minecraft has always been everywhere. it's easy to forget that, before it was a worldwide phenomenon with a billion mods allowing you to turn it into pretty much anything you can imagine, it started as a pet project from one guy selling access to a rough, alpha build of a game he was building in his off hours.
I'd say that MC didn't invent new things, but perfected things which were around before. For example, even _Diablo II_ (from 1999) had "crafting" (socketing gems into some equipment), but it wasn't as central. Likewise, _The Sims_ (same year IIRC) had a "survival" aspect, although it was pretty chill. _Red Faction_ had destructible level geometry. But MineCraft was the first to combine the three in an at least somewhat polished product.
@@一本のうんち did you see that new "update" the released today. we waited 7 months for a few new blocks and for them to break the stamina system. its clear it was a scam game from the start. they took the money and bought nice cars and new houses and forgot to make a game
Yep, as someone who hated, and I mean really hated, survival/building games like Minecraft, The Forest, Raft, and many more, I did not expect how much I would love the game.
@@exilestudios9546 You know, if they "took the money and ran" like so many people claim they did their wouldn't have been 11 updates 9 of which came out AFTER they hit 5 million copies sold. Taking the money and running, they would have dumped the project and done nothing.
I remember picking up a copy of The Sims the first day it was out in the UK, and I played it non-stop all weekend. I think a lot of people didn't expect that game to become so popular, it was just another weird game by Maxis, but it's one of the biggest game franchises ever and it's hardly ever had any competition.
I was about to suggest SimCity, since no one expected a game about something so tedious and mundane as municipal planning to sell well... but then I remembered The Sims, and that that was definitely a much better candidate for the "videogame phenomena" label. At one point, it was the best-selling franchise of all-time... but before the first game, no one expected a game about playing with virtual dolls to be the smash hit it turned into.
It's almost like.. mainstream niche, if that makes sense. Everybody knows about it, most everybody has played it and lots of people buy it to play a few hours, but the actual dedicated fan base that sticks with it and plays it religiously is tiny compared to other mainstream games. I think that's why they release 100 little content packs per game instead of big DLC. Most people stopped playing the newest game weeks or months after release, so it's kind of like mobile games where the goal is to milk the whales rather than herd the sheep. I think that's also why there's no competition really. It's a mainstream name, but a niche category of longterm gaming. If you release a competitor under an unknown name, you can only ever hope to snag some of that smaller dedicated fan base at best. The Sims pretty much dominates the relatively low demand for games like that.
@@ossiehalvorson7702 Paralives has been in development for a couple years, and Paradox has just announced Life By You to open a beta by the end of the year. EA's monopoly is coming to an end. May The Sims go the way of SimCity. True that a game of this scope is hard to be competed with, not to mention make, and its "mainstream niche" quality, as you cleverly named it, doesn't make it very appealing for the average developer when they could make Call of Shooty Shoot 5000 and make a quick million. EA was a genius snapping up Maxis when it did, as this all contributed to an effective monopoly on the genre that's hard to topple. But with two competitors announced, on of which from the same publisher that already ended their monopoly on the city builder genre, us life sim players are hopeful that, even if EA doesn't kill The Sims, they'll at least be forced to pick up the pace and actually test packs and patches before they send them out and slow down with the nickle-and-diming.
Could be argued that Phasmophobia could be included. Rough ghost game made by one guy, but now it's really built up and has inspired close to a half dozen similar games that are now coming out.
I remember when I started playing Among Us, I somehow joined a fraternity-style group of bear-eared players. It got incredibly emotional, with every betrayal feeling much more personal.
I was in Japan when it came out, so we had to wait like 3 months to get operational servers. However, that first weekend I went out and got level 20 so I wouldn't be behind anyone in my circle. I was at 20ish for like a year before anyone of them matched me :D
I love that they have marked the Pokemon you got in 2016, almost like a nod to show that you were there from the start. I too got it on launch day :) I remember when everyone was trying to come up with team slogans. I picked Mystic (I like blue and the group description resonated with me). I think it was decided in most forums that we'd use the Game of Thrones line of "Winter is Coming" since Articuno was the Mystic's legendary bird. I've not watched GoT but I loved it so much, I made someone's edit of the Mystic logo with that slogan my phone background for a year.
Pokemon Go was like what would happen if there had been world peace declared. Even my depressed and medicated butt was out there, talking to people, wandering in the sunshine. More than once, I had a person roll down her window and let me know there was a 'rarer' pokemon nearby, like Pollywhirl in a nearby park that had a lake. Great times. And it didn't activate my anxiety because everyone was out there doing the same thing, like we were all just one big group.
Your telling me u didn't add Apex Legends on here? The developers released it with no prior warning and took a massive risk with it being a Titanfall Battle Royal. It all of a sudden became grossly popular out of no where.
@@SurprisinglyDeep Actually, both Goldeneye and Starcraft are from 1997. Also, I was mostly joking, they have been running this channel for almost a decade and I know they did not start it as teenagers.
@@ShieTar_ You were right in that they both came out around the same time. I was totally wrong about them coming out 10 years apart from each other. I just checked and Goldeneye 007 came out August 25th 1997 and Starcraft came out in March 31st, 1998.
What about FNAF? (Five Nights at Freddy's) It started out as a simple power management game with jumpscares, and blew up into like 10 separate games including AR and VR, fan games out the wazoo, and all the merch you could ever need. Oh yeah also a movie that is still in the works.
Among Us is a doubly huge phenomena considering the fact it was like years old and basically a dead game til some gaming necromancy brought it back to life.
@@LnPPersonified Obviously, but I'd be willing to bet that its everyday use among the gaming community is at least 100 times higher since Among Us hit the scene.
Fun Fact: Irish creator of Player Unknown Battlegrounds, Brendan Greene, knew what he was doing when naming the game. In Ireland, "Pub-g" means "gangster level alcoholic"
Pokémon Go success doesn't really seem that surprising to me. It already had the biggest franchise to latch itself unto and the original games was one of the biggest and most well-loved games of all time (for me at least). It's not that hard to see the success coming, although predicting the magnitude of its success maybe is.
Yeah, i think no one who knew anything about video games in general was suprised that it was a sucess. Maybe suprised by how extremely sucessfull it was, but that's not like other games on this lsit like fall guys, among us et. al. who basically no one even knew existed untill the blew up overnight.
I think it's the scale that was surprising more than anything. Non-gamers and people who don't particularly care about Pokemon got swept up in it. When you consider that Pokemon Sun/Moon (also released 2016) sold a combined 16 million, the scale of PoGo having 500 million downloads in 2016 is pretty overwhelming.
Agreed. Pretty much every single one of us who played any Pokemon game growing up were less than surprised when it got big. Mostly we were just disappointed that the way they announced it had several features that were NOWHERE to be seen for a long time....buncha misleading bastards. I mean really who releases an AR-based real-world Pokemon game and doesn't think maybe putting trainer-vs-trainer battles (like the announce trailer had) would be the right way to go...
@@Laf631 Yes exactly, lots of people who hadn't played a game since the original pokemonia in the 90s bought back in, people who had NEVER played pokemon got involved. It is the only thing on this list which surpassed being a gaming icon and became a mainstream icon.
Roblox was on my radar, in the sense that I knew it existed, but I never knew it blew up beyond just a knockoff Lego sim until now. It explains all the Roblox toys I keep finding at the store, anyway.
16:09 or, like my brother, you had paramedics who, while coming back from putting gas into the ambulance, screaming at their partners to stop because there was a Pikachu in the middle of the road. The pharmacist I was working with at the time also just ran off because there was, I think, a Squirtle out in front of the dumpsters. 😅
2:07 Wait 2013-2017? This means that the Minecraft server minigame Hunger Games emerged at the same time as PUG, not after. That's some crazy convergent evolution, especially considering both Minecraft Hunger Games and Battle Royale take their names from two convergently evolved dsytoptian novels.
Just because a videogame developer and/or publisher company is scummy does not mean that their games fail to sell. Like RDR2 still sold tens of millions of copies and made more than $725 million USD despite their excessive use of crunch. Also most EA games still sell tens of millions of copies a year despite them being a company that pushes crunch and who has exploited and continues to exploit other developers. Like I think even if many people dislike the business practices of a company, they can morally justify overlooking those practices by thinking "I'm still supporting the innocent employees by buying this game". However don't get me wrong, I agree that it'd be good for gamers to collectively boycott some games if the developer/publisher is abusing other developers and/or their employees.
@@anthonyt4154 if by jokes you mean three of them are making hundreds of millions to billions of dollars a year and will continue to do so, then there’s no disputing that
@@ChaosDeary that doesn't excuse their drop in quality in their games the Michael Bay Transformers movies made a lot of money too, doesn't mean they are good movies
At 10:18 Mike reveals his secret hidden talent of being an amazing full body actor. Fully capable of acting with only emotions and not needing any words!!!!!! ........... Kind of makes you think, has this crazy explosive obsessed car enthusiast scatterbrain lovable frizzy haired guy.......... All been an act 🤔
No minecraft? I remember having a distinct memory of going to a friends house, and him showing me a like beta or alpha version of minecraft he had access to (I think he was in the nether) and I was just kinda like "ok well this is kinda a weird block indie game. Not too interesting." Then within the next year, it exploded.
Living in a college town, Pokémon Go was damn near like a speed dating event when it came out. I couldn't go to a park without getting phone numbers, adding girls on social media, etc all because of Pokémon Go. It was way better than tinder lol
I’ve been tempted to play Fall Guys, but I don’t know, it just seems like it would be something to rage about. I don’t really want to play a game that’s gonna make me upset.😂
H1Z1 had potential to be the best zombie game going, the dead players respawning as zombies and walking around with loot was epic! made scouting hordes worth it.
@@theboneman1938 It's not as much anymore, but it was for a good while (still has a pretty substantial fanbase to this day, even it isn't as large as the Pokemon fanbase.) It also helps that there aren't many things that were ever really considered a "rival" to the Pokemon series (though Digimon really isn't as similar to Pokemon as people think, especially not to the point of being a "copycat" like some people say...)
When it come out some people I studied with at uni played it, those people were considered huge nerds, even in the context of all of us studying physics. Never thought it would take off to anywhere near mainstream.
If you want to talk about more hits that came out of nowhere, Genshin Impact, released just under a year ago at the time of writing and already having grossed over a billion dollars. Especially interesting considering the company, miHoYo, had only published mobile games up to that point
I have not played a single game on this list for more than 15 minutes each, buuuuuut... this video gives me such strong nostalgia about the last 5/6 years and all the gaming fun we’ve had. just goes to show how powerful these games are.
I can honestly say I have not played a single one of these titles. Never could understand the hype of any of them. Then again I'm more of a tactics, RPG, open world survivor, narrative based action game kinda person. Oh and massive hermit that runs away the moment I hear online multiplayer lol. Now back to my cave before someone sees me.
Well, more like the 7 recent phenomenons we didn't see coming. What about some of the older ones? Tell me who saw how big Street Fighter 2 would be. Or Donkey Kong? Heck, since it came up, what about the original Pac-Man?
Hit with a wave of nostalgia (can nostalgia exist for something less than a year old?) seeing the Stack Kill, aka the greatest Among Us moment in history (because I said so).
How is Animal Crossing: New Horizons not on this list?! Seriously! Though AC always had an audience, it didn't blow up or become a 'must have' game until this version. And it's still updating! It's one of my most played games and it's not unusual for normally casual players to have clocked over five hundred hours on it.
I remember playing Roblox a bit years back - probably over a decade at this point. It was fun! Creative, exciting, innovative - I remember platformers, roleplay jails, apocalypses, murder mysteries, just a bunch of kids making stuff up. I was a consummate dabbler as a teen, though, so I dropped it after a while, but still. Given how big a user base it had back then, I'm not that surprised it's so ludicrously massive now.
yeah i played like 8 years ago and my favourite was the pokemon one with all the janky models, and the survive a disaster one with earthquakes, floods, meteors etc. i didn't have friends who played or anything i probably saw an ad and downloaded it cause it was free lol
It amazes me that almost all the things on this list had minecraft mini games on servers long before the games came out. From hunger games to spleef, tnt run, etc.
One of the only things I remember from the Pokémon Go craze was the amount of store and restaurants complaining about the crowds of people on their phones blocking the entrances to their buildings and having to call security on them.
I would have to say that PlayerUnknow's Battlegrounds was actually seen coming thanks to the DayZ Standalone game cutting out the PvP crowd fully and someone just making a game to fill in a gap in the market. SovietWomble actually did a 3 part essay on this that is well worth a watch.
How bout Genshin Impact?? I downloaded it on my phone as whim cuz it seemed much better than most anime aesthetic games and was not prepared for the AMAZING open-world game I got. It seems to have done pretty damn well too, a hybrid between gacha and open-world games.
I still remember Flappy Bird becoming suddenly popular about a year after it released and the players started sending the creator death threats because of the "difficulty." IIRC the man was making $50,000 a day but ended up becoming very depressed over all the hate and removed the game only after a month of it becoming super popular.
I worked for T-Mobile when pokemon go came out. I literally sold phones to people who just wanted to play that game and their old ones couldn't handle it.
I first learned about the game when I walked through a park and saw about a dozen people either stopping randomly or just standing around like freaking zombies, though it was The Happening for a second.
My phone couldn't handle it at the time, and I couldn't afford an upgrade. That entire fad passed me by :(
@@captainwolfos
I'm sorry to hear that. At least you, me and the children in developing countries had Snake and Brickout on our Nokia brick phones.
@@SurprisinglyDeep Snake was really the peak of gaming.
@@14faraday It truly was
I totally expected Mike to eat the bean, make all the strange faces and then complain it was peach.
Same :P
He got the bogey flavored one
I was quite disappointed when he didn't
Somehow I was expecting a very sad "...I can't tell."
Same
Not quite sure about the criteria here, but Stardew Valley's arrival was definitely unexpected considering it was a game trying to revive a fairly niche genre and developed by a single person. Now it's sold over 15 million copies and inspired a whole slew of farming sims. Heck, it's even eclipsing the more recent Story of Seasons games, even though that was the franchise that inspired it!
They could probably do a whole separate list of indie games that got way out of hand, tbh.
@@marinemanaphy101 Definitely Undertale
@@drewpamon wasn’t it Harvest Moon?
Stardew Valley is a special game.
@@rimurutempest4945 So long story there lol.
Back in the day, the game series went under the English name Harvest Moon by the company that translated it. Eventually the two companies split ways, with the English company releasing their own games under the Harvest Moon name since they had the copyright to that name.
So the orginal company that made/makes the games, are releasing them under the name Story of Seasons.
"after all, what's an encore, if not a second health bar?"
how is your writing this good???
They learnt from the mistakes made during the first health bar
They ask Ellen to write the first draft then take the best puns and dump the rest :P
(Just kidding, Ellen's puns are funny >.>)
Years and years of doing it.
"Rasputin, I choose you!"
Well, he is known to be Russia's hottest love machine.
But it was a shame how he carried on
Has Jane chosen. . . well?
He *was* the lover of the Russian Queen
also he's immune to poison, blades, basically everything except water attacks
ah! those russians
Here is a fun idea, seven most over the top cutscenes.
1. That full-ass movie from MGS4.
Anything from MGS series, anything from Yakuza, and any GTA5 online cutscene
Aww dang I was just about to say the MGS series 🤣
End of Borderlands 3, like wtf
Literally the entirety of Resident Evil 5's cutscenes
Shere-Khanage was straight brilliant
Thank you for explaining the joke for us rhotic-accented English speakers!
Mike's comment about 16 new versions of Skyrim was too real
and there will still be more.
They won't stop until our electric toothbrushes are running it 🙄
The only thing more overdone than porting Skyrim, is making jokes about it.
@@DevilboyScooby Or they stop making money from it
And ignoring Morrowind and Oblivion in the dust... bastards.
"...it's sure to be sheer carnage." I'm surprised you didn't call out that deep cut pun for Jungle Book.
I was admiring the fact that the pun only works in his particular British accent. Perfect really.
That pun was fantastic.
Thank you for pointing it out, i totally missed it in the video
I was really surprised not to see MineCraft on this list, seeing as how it went from a small indie game to the best selling video game of all time.
Probably because a whole generation has since grown up in a world where Minecraft has always been everywhere. it's easy to forget that, before it was a worldwide phenomenon with a billion mods allowing you to turn it into pretty much anything you can imagine, it started as a pet project from one guy selling access to a rough, alpha build of a game he was building in his off hours.
@@alexpage4355 it also built up over a few years, it didn't explode in popularity like most of the ones on this list
@@femthingevelyn But it did, at least as weird buggy betas go
it’s crazy I read about minecraft in a magazine before I got into alpha… i’m old
I'd say that MC didn't invent new things, but perfected things which were around before.
For example, even _Diablo II_ (from 1999) had "crafting" (socketing gems into some equipment), but it wasn't as central. Likewise, _The Sims_ (same year IIRC) had a "survival" aspect, although it was pretty chill. _Red Faction_ had destructible level geometry. But MineCraft was the first to combine the three in an at least somewhat polished product.
"Thank Twitch, which is something people rarely say these days ..."
Talk about serious shade!
more like savagexbox :D
Valheim was another game I didn’t expect to become popular!
Valheim was a surprise couples game. My buddy and his gf build and tame pets.
Didn't last long though as it's quite shallow lol
@@一本のうんち did you see that new "update" the released today. we waited 7 months for a few new blocks and for them to break the stamina system. its clear it was a scam game from the start. they took the money and bought nice cars and new houses and forgot to make a game
Yep, as someone who hated, and I mean really hated, survival/building games like Minecraft, The Forest, Raft, and many more, I did not expect how much I would love the game.
@@exilestudios9546 You know, if they "took the money and ran" like so many people claim they did their wouldn't have been 11 updates 9 of which came out AFTER they hit 5 million copies sold. Taking the money and running, they would have dumped the project and done nothing.
Was not expecting Mikes Jungle book pun, Ellen must be proud
Ellen probably held him at gun point in order to get him to say it
@@and-a-bell *at pun point, my dude
@@gruggerduggerhoose dammit, I'm mad that I didn't think of that.
I think I finally figured out what it means to simp someone, cause I'm totally simping Mike now.
I remember picking up a copy of The Sims the first day it was out in the UK, and I played it non-stop all weekend. I think a lot of people didn't expect that game to become so popular, it was just another weird game by Maxis, but it's one of the biggest game franchises ever and it's hardly ever had any competition.
I was about to suggest SimCity, since no one expected a game about something so tedious and mundane as municipal planning to sell well... but then I remembered The Sims, and that that was definitely a much better candidate for the "videogame phenomena" label. At one point, it was the best-selling franchise of all-time... but before the first game, no one expected a game about playing with virtual dolls to be the smash hit it turned into.
It's almost like.. mainstream niche, if that makes sense. Everybody knows about it, most everybody has played it and lots of people buy it to play a few hours, but the actual dedicated fan base that sticks with it and plays it religiously is tiny compared to other mainstream games.
I think that's why they release 100 little content packs per game instead of big DLC. Most people stopped playing the newest game weeks or months after release, so it's kind of like mobile games where the goal is to milk the whales rather than herd the sheep.
I think that's also why there's no competition really. It's a mainstream name, but a niche category of longterm gaming. If you release a competitor under an unknown name, you can only ever hope to snag some of that smaller dedicated fan base at best. The Sims pretty much dominates the relatively low demand for games like that.
@@ossiehalvorson7702 Paralives has been in development for a couple years, and Paradox has just announced Life By You to open a beta by the end of the year. EA's monopoly is coming to an end. May The Sims go the way of SimCity.
True that a game of this scope is hard to be competed with, not to mention make, and its "mainstream niche" quality, as you cleverly named it, doesn't make it very appealing for the average developer when they could make Call of Shooty Shoot 5000 and make a quick million. EA was a genius snapping up Maxis when it did, as this all contributed to an effective monopoly on the genre that's hard to topple. But with two competitors announced, on of which from the same publisher that already ended their monopoly on the city builder genre, us life sim players are hopeful that, even if EA doesn't kill The Sims, they'll at least be forced to pick up the pace and actually test packs and patches before they send them out and slow down with the nickle-and-diming.
Could be argued that Phasmophobia could be included. Rough ghost game made by one guy, but now it's really built up and has inspired close to a half dozen similar games that are now coming out.
Yeah, fair shout.
Absotively. Never played the game but I love watching others play it, esp Ian, Zoey and Aoife on EG.
I remember when I started playing Among Us, I somehow joined a fraternity-style group of bear-eared players. It got incredibly emotional, with every betrayal feeling much more personal.
that sounds wild... bunch of animals...
"It was doing these numbers without a sentient bag of garbage" uh I got Pokemon Go on launch day, actually.
I was in Japan when it came out, so we had to wait like 3 months to get operational servers. However, that first weekend I went out and got level 20 so I wouldn't be behind anyone in my circle. I was at 20ish for like a year before anyone of them matched me :D
I love that they have marked the Pokemon you got in 2016, almost like a nod to show that you were there from the start. I too got it on launch day :) I remember when everyone was trying to come up with team slogans. I picked Mystic (I like blue and the group description resonated with me). I think it was decided in most forums that we'd use the Game of Thrones line of "Winter is Coming" since Articuno was the Mystic's legendary bird. I've not watched GoT but I loved it so much, I made someone's edit of the Mystic logo with that slogan my phone background for a year.
My happiest Go moment was finding out that my first maxed Pokémon (a Vaporeon) had been, since the early days, a hundo.
Andy’s two player game of Among Us was way more funny that it had any right to be.
Hang on, Among Us has increased to 15 players? Well, we need a game with the full Gamer Network gang this Halloween, then...
I was watching an interview with Sid Meier recently and Civilization really wasn't expected to be a hit, even by some of the devs
I still vividly remember how Flappy Birds haunts my senior high school years. It still brings PTSD for me and many other people.
oh gosh... You know, I deliberately avoided Flappy Bird, but even then... there's an element of terror in remembering those days...
Pokemon Go was like what would happen if there had been world peace declared. Even my depressed and medicated butt was out there, talking to people, wandering in the sunshine. More than once, I had a person roll down her window and let me know there was a 'rarer' pokemon nearby, like Pollywhirl in a nearby park that had a lake. Great times. And it didn't activate my anxiety because everyone was out there doing the same thing, like we were all just one big group.
Cookie clicker better be on this list.
Remember, the Baker in the sky is always watching.
"It'd just be 16 new versions of Skyrim, wouldn't it?"
No, Mike, it'd be one version, sold on 16 different platforms.
Loved the stack kill scene of among us, still remember watching it live ❤️❤️❤️
and the ensuing panic and chaos
I wish there was a GD Mr Mime in my living room. That bastard is the last 1 I need to finish my Kanto collection
Your telling me u didn't add Apex Legends on here? The developers released it with no prior warning and took a massive risk with it being a Titanfall Battle Royal. It all of a sudden became grossly popular out of no where.
8:12 “i liked it when the car scored a goal 😃” made me wheeze laugh
I feel like the evolution of Starcraft into Korea’s national pastime deserves a mention on this list.
That was 20 years ago. I'm not sure anybody working for this channel is that old?
@@ShieTar_ If they're making jokes about the N64 game Goldeneye then they were around like 10 years later when Starcraft came out
@@SurprisinglyDeep Actually, both Goldeneye and Starcraft are from 1997.
Also, I was mostly joking, they have been running this channel for almost a decade and I know they did not start it as teenagers.
@@ShieTar_ You were right in that they both came out around the same time. I was totally wrong about them coming out 10 years apart from each other.
I just checked and Goldeneye 007 came out August 25th 1997 and Starcraft came out in March 31st, 1998.
-StarCraft-
**STARCRACK*
yw👍
What I didn't see coming is the revelation that Andy doesn't have an airlock in his living room. Home renovation 101
What about FNAF? (Five Nights at Freddy's) It started out as a simple power management game with jumpscares, and blew up into like 10 separate games including AR and VR, fan games out the wazoo, and all the merch you could ever need. Oh yeah also a movie that is still in the works.
As opposed to the totally unrelated Nic Cage movie about... (checks notes)... murderous six-foot animitronics in a children's theme restaurant.
Among Us is a doubly huge phenomena considering the fact it was like years old and basically a dead game til some gaming necromancy brought it back to life.
Kinda surprised that Andy didn't point out that Among Us even managed to add a new meme word to our pop culture lingo.
"Sus"... it's "sus".
Lookin pretty sus.
Sus has been around since long before Among Us.
@@LnPPersonified Obviously, but I'd be willing to bet that its everyday use among the gaming community is at least 100 times higher since Among Us hit the scene.
@@LnPPersonified Can you honestly say you've heard people unironically say the word "sus" in any context before Among Us blew up?
@@Fr0zenEagle "Sus" has been common slang in South Africa for at least 20 years.
MIKE THAT “Sheer carnage” PUN WAS ABSOLUTE GOLD. It took me so off guard my unexpected laughter caused immediate choking.
Fun Fact: Irish creator of Player Unknown Battlegrounds, Brendan Greene, knew what he was doing when naming the game.
In Ireland, "Pub-g" means "gangster level alcoholic"
Or "average Irishman"......
That’s funny 😂
Pokémon Go success doesn't really seem that surprising to me. It already had the biggest franchise to latch itself unto and the original games was one of the biggest and most well-loved games of all time (for me at least). It's not that hard to see the success coming, although predicting the magnitude of its success maybe is.
Yeah, i think no one who knew anything about video games in general was suprised that it was a sucess. Maybe suprised by how extremely sucessfull it was, but that's not like other games on this lsit like fall guys, among us et. al. who basically no one even knew existed untill the blew up overnight.
I think it's the scale that was surprising more than anything. Non-gamers and people who don't particularly care about Pokemon got swept up in it. When you consider that Pokemon Sun/Moon (also released 2016) sold a combined 16 million, the scale of PoGo having 500 million downloads in 2016 is pretty overwhelming.
Agreed. Pretty much every single one of us who played any Pokemon game growing up were less than surprised when it got big. Mostly we were just disappointed that the way they announced it had several features that were NOWHERE to be seen for a long time....buncha misleading bastards. I mean really who releases an AR-based real-world Pokemon game and doesn't think maybe putting trainer-vs-trainer battles (like the announce trailer had) would be the right way to go...
@@Laf631 Yes exactly, lots of people who hadn't played a game since the original pokemonia in the 90s bought back in, people who had NEVER played pokemon got involved. It is the only thing on this list which surpassed being a gaming icon and became a mainstream icon.
Roblox was on my radar, in the sense that I knew it existed, but I never knew it blew up beyond just a knockoff Lego sim until now. It explains all the Roblox toys I keep finding at the store, anyway.
I played it since I was nine but wasn't aware it was this popular. Even less did I expect World//Zero specifically to be shown *twice* in this video.
@@disarisumbrus4492 How old are you? I think I must be getting old because I think I only understood half of that sentence... :D
@@Zoso14892 20.
@@disarisumbrus4492 Roblox has been out that long? Welp!
Roblox was on my radar when I read the dangerous people on it.
Mike's face when he said "barf..." We feel for you, Mr. Channell
That dress is definitely one of the best looks Jane has used on the channel. And it's just plain fun, too.
16:09 or, like my brother, you had paramedics who, while coming back from putting gas into the ambulance, screaming at their partners to stop because there was a Pikachu in the middle of the road. The pharmacist I was working with at the time also just ran off because there was, I think, a Squirtle out in front of the dumpsters. 😅
Anyone that played SSARPBC knew Rocket League would be hype.
2:07 Wait 2013-2017? This means that the Minecraft server minigame Hunger Games emerged at the same time as PUG, not after. That's some crazy convergent evolution, especially considering both Minecraft Hunger Games and Battle Royale take their names from two convergently evolved dsytoptian novels.
World of Warcraft. Even Blizzard was shocked how well received it was.
"What is an encore but a second health bar" had me clapping
Sher Kahnage is the most criminally underrated pun ever.
Genshin Impact is apparently huge as well, being something as rare as a high quality Chinese (mostly) single player f2p
Fun fact: Genshin Impact is the highest budget mobile game of all time and one of the highest budget games of all time.
@@darthwiizius And it's still shit
Mike eating that jelly bean had me rolling! Put it on OXshorts!
I did not see successful TH-cam channels centered around talking through lists of videogame related things coming.
It is a balm to my soul to see & hear "phenomena" (the plural) and "phenomenon" (the singular) used properly. Aaaaaaah 😌
Thank you, Oxbox. 🙏
"You know the next rockstar game is gonna sell" yeah once upon a time I'd say the same about Blizzard but clearly things change.
Riot ... Blizzard ... Rockstar ... even EA ...
there was a time they used to be the standard, now they're all jokes
Just because a videogame developer and/or publisher company is scummy does not mean that their games fail to sell. Like RDR2 still sold tens of millions of copies and made more than $725 million USD despite their excessive use of crunch. Also most EA games still sell tens of millions of copies a year despite them being a company that pushes crunch and who has exploited and continues to exploit other developers.
Like I think even if many people dislike the business practices of a company, they can morally justify overlooking those practices by thinking "I'm still supporting the innocent employees by buying this game".
However don't get me wrong, I agree that it'd be good for gamers to collectively boycott some games if the developer/publisher is abusing other developers and/or their employees.
@@anthonyt4154 if by jokes you mean three of them are making hundreds of millions to billions of dollars a year and will continue to do so, then there’s no disputing that
@@ChaosDeary that doesn't excuse their drop in quality in their games
the Michael Bay Transformers movies made a lot of money too, doesn't mean they are good movies
That Jungle Book pun made me do an audible groan. Bravo.
God, I havent heard of that Battle Royal movie in so long. That was a great movie.
the fact that Fall Guys and the game that slowed it’s popularity (Among Us)
are in the same list is just wild.
"Killed" is a bit much. "Slowed down" is a better way to phrase it.
At 10:18 Mike reveals his secret hidden talent of being an amazing full body actor. Fully capable of acting with only emotions and not needing any words!!!!!!
........... Kind of makes you think, has this crazy explosive obsessed car enthusiast scatterbrain lovable frizzy haired guy.......... All been an act 🤔
I wanna hang out with Jane. She seems really cool. Then again. They all seem really cool
That Shear Khan-age joke.. that was tight.
No minecraft? I remember having a distinct memory of going to a friends house, and him showing me a like beta or alpha version of minecraft he had access to (I think he was in the nether) and I was just kinda like "ok well this is kinda a weird block indie game. Not too interesting." Then within the next year, it exploded.
Living in a college town, Pokémon Go was damn near like a speed dating event when it came out. I couldn't go to a park without getting phone numbers, adding girls on social media, etc all because of Pokémon Go. It was way better than tinder lol
I’ve been tempted to play Fall Guys, but I don’t know, it just seems like it would be something to rage about. I don’t really want to play a game that’s gonna make me upset.😂
That well timed 👀 from Mike got me 🤣
15:16 Andy is sus!
H1Z1 had potential to be the best zombie game going, the dead players respawning as zombies and walking around with loot was epic! made scouting hordes worth it.
What about Digimon? I don't think anyone expected a redesign of the Tomagotchi to develop into a major rival of the Pokemon series
"Major Rival"
@@theboneman1938 It's not as much anymore, but it was for a good while (still has a pretty substantial fanbase to this day, even it isn't as large as the Pokemon fanbase.) It also helps that there aren't many things that were ever really considered a "rival" to the Pokemon series (though Digimon really isn't as similar to Pokemon as people think, especially not to the point of being a "copycat" like some people say...)
i was half expecting to see Minecraft on this list, who would of thought a blocky game would of done anywhere near as well as it did
When it come out some people I studied with at uni played it, those people were considered huge nerds, even in the context of all of us studying physics. Never thought it would take off to anywhere near mainstream.
Anyone with legos (said in jest)
omg Jane's outfit my queen
Seven times Jane was the "benevolent" overlord we all know and love
You do realise there’s way too many to narrow it down to 7 and a commentators bonus like how many times Ellen has adorably lost it ? 🤔
How about the Oxventures? It started as "what are we doing here" and now... Corazon and Prudence are canon due to Idle Heroes.
at the risk of giving you ideas - if "What is an encore if not a second health bar?" were to be printed on a t-shirt, I'd buy and wear it...
If you want to talk about more hits that came out of nowhere, Genshin Impact, released just under a year ago at the time of writing and already having grossed over a billion dollars. Especially interesting considering the company, miHoYo, had only published mobile games up to that point
'Shere khanage' loll great one 👌
"Shere Khan-age" I saw... heard... whatever, what you did there Mike.
Saw the comments. Waited for it. Worth it.
I have not played a single game on this list for more than 15 minutes each, buuuuuut...
this video gives me such strong nostalgia about the last 5/6 years and all the gaming fun we’ve had. just goes to show how powerful these games are.
It's wonderful to see you all under the studio lights again. You're as lovely as ever ^_^
The writing's on fire in this vid. 🔥🔥🔥
I can honestly say I have not played a single one of these titles. Never could understand the hype of any of them. Then again I'm more of a tactics, RPG, open world survivor, narrative based action game kinda person. Oh and massive hermit that runs away the moment I hear online multiplayer lol. Now back to my cave before someone sees me.
Never thought Wolfenstein would become a thing. It was banned in Germany when I was a kid
Ah yes, the stack kill
Surprised FNAF wasn't on here even the "now-retired" creator was on the verge of abandoning games when FNAF went big.
Outside Xbox brings me so much joy. You guys are just such a pleasure to watch
Champion Island and... that... multiplayer Halloween-y one by Google also count!
Because Doc Brown modified it, of course! That's like a major plot point! :D
I personally can say that I wasn’t playing Pokémon go because I hated it at launch and still hate it to this day.
We really need another among us stream!
Agreed!! Can we make them a weekly thing?
True. These streams were brilliant. We need more!
Seeing that Sweet Tooth truck in Rocket League makes me wish Sony would make another Twisted Metal game
they're making a tv show out of it now, and if that's successful there'll probably be another game.
Fall Guys and Among Us were both bolstered massively by the pandemic.
I actually played Among us before it was popular, and thought "Hmm.... this could popular. It's pretty good.
This makes me miss the Among Us hype
yea.
Never thought the day would come that ingress would be featured over here
Well, more like the 7 recent phenomenons we didn't see coming. What about some of the older ones? Tell me who saw how big Street Fighter 2 would be. Or Donkey Kong? Heck, since it came up, what about the original Pac-Man?
Hit with a wave of nostalgia (can nostalgia exist for something less than a year old?) seeing the Stack Kill, aka the greatest Among Us moment in history (because I said so).
How is Animal Crossing: New Horizons not on this list?! Seriously! Though AC always had an audience, it didn't blow up or become a 'must have' game until this version. And it's still updating! It's one of my most played games and it's not unusual for normally casual players to have clocked over five hundred hours on it.
I remember playing Roblox a bit years back - probably over a decade at this point. It was fun! Creative, exciting, innovative - I remember platformers, roleplay jails, apocalypses, murder mysteries, just a bunch of kids making stuff up. I was a consummate dabbler as a teen, though, so I dropped it after a while, but still. Given how big a user base it had back then, I'm not that surprised it's so ludicrously massive now.
yeah i played like 8 years ago and my favourite was the pokemon one with all the janky models, and the survive a disaster one with earthquakes, floods, meteors etc. i didn't have friends who played or anything i probably saw an ad and downloaded it cause it was free lol
I like how the first and second entries are essentially the same game.
It amazes me that almost all the things on this list had minecraft mini games on servers long before the games came out. From hunger games to spleef, tnt run, etc.
Play Among Us on the channel again please!!
One of the only things I remember from the Pokémon Go craze was the amount of store and restaurants complaining about the crowds of people on their phones blocking the entrances to their buildings and having to call security on them.
I would have to say that PlayerUnknow's Battlegrounds was actually seen coming thanks to the DayZ Standalone game cutting out the PvP crowd fully and someone just making a game to fill in a gap in the market. SovietWomble actually did a 3 part essay on this that is well worth a watch.
. Something about zoomie cars and a giant football makes me happy.
...oh and don't mess with Jane when she's spitting Dolorian based science facts
How bout Genshin Impact?? I downloaded it on my phone as whim cuz it seemed much better than most anime aesthetic games and was not prepared for the AMAZING open-world game I got.
It seems to have done pretty damn well too, a hybrid between gacha and open-world games.
I still remember Flappy Bird becoming suddenly popular about a year after it released and the players started sending the creator death threats because of the "difficulty." IIRC the man was making $50,000 a day but ended up becoming very depressed over all the hate and removed the game only after a month of it becoming super popular.