The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been voted the most important game of the past 30 years by staff and readers of Edge Magazine, as the publication celebrates its 30th anniversary.
Edge issue 390, which is on sale now, features the largest poll in the magazine's history. Readers, as well as current and former Edge staff "and a broad selection of leading lights in game development and publishing" came together to "produce a list of the 100 greatest games of the past 30 years."
At the top of that list is Breath of the Wild, which Edge describes as "the ultimate synthesis of creativity and technology, indistinguishable from magic." Grag Lobanov, developer of beloved indies Chicory and Wandersong, says that "Every year it gets harder to do anything that actually feels ahead of the crowd or that legitimately pushes the medium forward. It's hard to imagine right now that we'll see anything land a leap as ambitious as Breath of the Wild again."
The entire 100-game list is filled with excellent titles, of course, but Breath of the Wild beat out some serious competitors within the top five alone. At five, Resident Evil 4 came in just behind another Zelda game, Ocarina of Time, at four.
Super Mario 64 kicks off the top three, with Edge labeling it "as transformative as videogames get, and perhaps the most harmonious marriage of game and hardware." The runner-up spot falls to Dark Souls, which "stands as one of the most influential games of Edge's lifetime, its DNA traces found in games of all stripes [...] an instant classic whose true value has only grown in the years since."
