One of the best things about modern gaming is the abundance of games that are released every week. Granted, not all of these games are hits, but with how popular the gaming industry is today and how many studios are trying to release the next best thing, there's plenty of great content to keep players occupied.
Despite how much competition there is today, there are some iconic franchises that have remained popular over the course of multiple decades. The following franchises on this list have all been able to reinvent themselves multiple times to stay relevant and have released games in four different decades.
8 Donkey Kong
The original Donkey Kong was released in 1981 and is considered to be one of the most important gaming releases of all time. The arcade game introduced the gaming industry to two characters who would become mascots for the entire industry, Mario and Donkey Kong, and it also kickstarted the platform genre.
Notable Donkey Kong releases in the decades that followed include Donkey Kong Country from the '90s, Donkey Konga from the '00s, and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze from the 2010s.
7 FIFA
The FIFA series began in 1993 with FIFA International Soccer, and new titles have been released every year since. This amount of releases may sound like over-saturation, and some believe that it is, though the games are consistently among the best sellers of their respective years.
Interestingly, the latest release in the series, FIFA 23, will be the last under the EA and FIFA partnership. EA are set to launch EA Sports FC next year, while FIFA have said that they still plan to release a FIFA 24.
6 Final Fantasy
The Final Fantasy series has been at the forefront of the JRPG genre for many years now. The franchise started in 1987 and has received numerous main series releases, with the gap between 2016's Final Fantasy XV and the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI (due to release in 2023) being the longest gap between main series entries.
The release of Final Fantasy XVI will mean that there have been main series Final Fantasy games released for five decades in a row, and the franchise doesn't look to be ending any time soon.
5 Resident Evil
Whereas the Final Fantasy series stands atop the JRPG genre, Resident Evil is a dominant force in the survival horror genre. The series started in the '90s with a trilogy of games that popularized horror in gaming and stood out with their iconic fixed perspective. The main series then drastically changed in direction with the legendary shooter Resident Evil 4 before opting for a first-person and more pure-horror experience with Resident Evil 7 and Village.
Another similarity to Final Fantasy is that Resident Evil has also had a plethora of titles released outside of the main series, though the main series games are where the series' true quality lies.
4 Crash Bandicoot
The Crash Bandicoot franchise was created by Naughty Dog and began in 1996 on the PlayStation 1. The bandicoot was created with the intention of being PlayStation's answer to Nintendo's Mario and Sega's Sonic, a high standard that Naughty Dog did an excellent job of trying to reach with the franchise's iconic PS1 trilogy and classic kart racing game.
The Crash Bandicoot series suffered from a significant drop in quality when Naughty Dog left after Crash Team Racing, and the series looked like it would never recover after a stretch of underwhelming releases in the late 2000s. However, after a near-decade-long gap between main series releases, the bandicoot came back with a bang with the N. Sane Trilogy, a remake of the original trilogy. In 2020 a sequel was released to 1998's Crash Bandicoot: Warped, securing the franchise's spot on this list.
3 Pac-Man
Before Mario came along (more on him later) the yellow circle with a mouth known as Pac-Man was considered to be gaming's mascot by many people. The character debuted in the iconic arcade game Pac-Man, a maze game that is still great fun to play today.
There's no denying that the Pac-Man franchise has never come close to reaching the heights of the original release in terms of popularity, though the character has starred in numerous enjoyable games across a variety of genres over the years and decades, such as 3D platformer, kart racer, and party.
2 Super Mario
The first Super Mario game was released in 1985 and it's no exaggeration to say that the gaming industry wouldn't be where it is today without it. This is not only because Mario would go on to become the gaming industry's unofficial mascot but also because the game was fundamental in helping the industry recover from its 1983 crash.
The Super Mario franchise remains one of the gaming industry's most critically acclaimed and beloved franchises today, with numerous classic titles having been released across five decades. The latest game, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury was released in February 2021.
1 The Legend Of Zelda
Like the Super Mario series, the Legend of Zelda franchise was instrumental in helping audiences trust home console gaming again following the 1983 crash. The original Legend of Zelda may not look like much by today's standards, but its open world felt enormous at the time, and having the freedom to simply explore was a rarity when the game was released in 1986.
The series has gone from strength to strength since, with its jump to 3D in Ocarina of Time being a notable standout, along with the most recent main series game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.