Let’s be honest: movies and TV have long had a monopoly on the grand, self-important list. From AFI’s “Top 100” to Rolling Stone’s exhaustive episode rankings, every frame worth ranking has been ranked and then re-ranked. Video games have their best-of genre lists, but it’s not quite the same as swinging for the fences and cementing history. Which is why Polygon decided it was time — overdue! — to build something of our own.
Not a list of best games, or even best moments, but the lines that stuck with us. We’re talking dialogue and screen text that wormed their way into our memories right alongside the platforming, the boss fights, the puzzle-solving. Games didn’t begin as a writer’s medium, but hey, at a certain point they undeniably became one. We wanted to honor that.
On Monday, Polygon published its first-ever, 100-entry list of the greatest video game quotes — a mix of canon-defining classics and memed oddities. Having watched the process up close, I can tell you the staff spent months arguing, revisiting, and occasionally spiraling over the final picks, all in service of a list that reflects the medium’s history and range. Plus the required Kojimaisms. (To those who think we left over their favorites from the early days of arcades and home consoles… no, we’re not that young, we’re just discerning.)
Our top pick may surprise you for its lack of Mario. No, instead we went with Nintendo’s other legendary franchise, 1986’s The Legend of Zelda.
As Polygon editor-at-large Giovanni Colantonio puts it, “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.” is both a an instant stakes-setting call to action and “the most effective and efficient tutorial of all time.” But why is it number one? I asked our deputy editor Ari Notis to explain how the group came to the decision:
It’s the type of line that can only exist in a video game. This line also fundamentally gets the community element that makes gaming such an interesting hobby: an acknowledgement that even when you’re engaging with this stuff alone, you’re not really alone, are you? We at Polygon always say the way people engage with games is just as interesting as the games themselves, and this line gets at that. You’re alone? Not anymore! Take this.
This quote is so iconic, it’s still getting quoted to this day — not just in memes or whatever but in new games too; this year’s People of Note fires off a direct reference to it to set its own RPG stage. This is the “say hello to my little friend” of video game dialogue — iconic, eminently quotable, parsable by players even if they don’t get the reference. Honesty picking the number one quote was pretty easy. The other 99, however…
On top of critical commentary, we also connected with writers behind the featured lines and expanded a few of those conversations into exclusive new features (find them across the site all week). And of course, we’re all ears on the quotes that deserve space on the list. This is only our first stab at the list. Wait until you play Pragmata…
For the full breakdown of 100 to 1, go read The 100 Greatest Video Game Quotes of All Time.
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And it’s not bingo related
