The United States of America is 250 years old today! Cynics might tell you that any major government existing for so long will show signs of an empire in decay, but counterpoint: round numbers are cool. I wanted to do a list of all of America’s greatest hits over the years, but Larry insisted I had to keep it about video games somehow, so I’ll see what I can do.

c. 20,000 BC: Prehistoric migrants cross the Bering land bridge and populate the Americas, setting the groundwork for people to one day play video games there.

c. 11,000 BC: The Mastodon and Megalonyx are hunted to extinction, ensuring America has no giant monsters so Shadow of the Colossus will feel more impressive when it comes out.

c. 750 AD: The Hohokam culture in present-day Arizona invents video games, tells nobody.

1492: Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas ushers in a new era of global trade that will one day lead to video games. And genocide. But also video games!

1607: Millennia of idyllic existence without English people ruined.

1619: America becomes woke and political by adding Black characters.

1620: The Plymouth Colony becomes a role model for future gaming executives by being praised as pioneers for something they weren’t even the first people to steal.

1773: Outrage spreads across the American colonies when Britain decides to put all the tea in lootboxes.

1776: Another community splinters due to infighting.

1789: The United States Constitution takes effect, a work of load-bearing legacy code that will create bugs for centuries to come.

1790: George Washington signs America’s first copyright law. If it was still in effect, you would be legally able to play every video game made before 1998 right now for free. But I’m sure the current system is good too.

1804: Alexander Hamilton is killed in a duel after Aaron Burr picks Oddjob.

1807: Robert Fulton invents the steamboat, which proves much more popular than its competitor, the Epic Boat.

1848: The United States forcibly seizes over half of Mexico’s territory in the Mexican-American War, displacing countless Mexicans and Native Americans and setting up future territorial disputes that will eventually lead to civil war. But eventually Metroid Prime gets made, so kind of a mixed bag.

1855: Commodore Matthew Perry becomes the first American to demand to buy Japanese stuff.

1860: The Checkered Game of Life dares to ask if a game can simulate a person’s life. Most matches end with someone removing a ladder from a swimming pool so all the checkers drown.

1861: Before Counter-Strike made it a daily occurrence, a first-person shooter match is held where one team’s entire thing is being incredibly racist.

1865: The Civil War ends and the Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery. Nathan Bedford Forrest founds an organization of concerned gamers who think everything’s getting a little too politically correct.

1867: The United States purchases Alaska from Russia for two cents an acre, setting a precedent for gamers that it’s OK to spend a bunch of money on something you don’t want because it’s on sale.

1890: During the Wounded Knee Massacre, the United States Army kills over 200 Lakota civilians, including women and children. They named a level in Turtles in Time after this.

1893: At the Chicago World’s Fair, local businessman H. H. Holmes invents the escape room.

1898: President William McKinley manages to enable debug mode, uses the developer console to take over a bunch of territory it doesn’t really make sense for America to have.

1899: Red Dead Redemption 2 happens.

1901: William McKinley’s account banned for cheating.

1903: The first penny arcade opens, allowing customers to look at comics about how much the newest video games suck.

1911: IBM is founded. With how important it would later become to creating the personal computer, IBM is unmistakably a gamer company that does things gamers like.

1914: World War joins Grand Theft Auto and Persona as one of those series where nobody really likes the first entry.

1919: Prohibition begins, forcing obnoxious gamers to instead yell into the mic about how they’re sober right now.

1920: Women granted the right to vote, prompting waves of fake voter girls who only pretend to like voting so male voters will be attracted to them.

1931: The first pinball games awaken a primal human urge to put a coin in a machine and watch a ball move around.

1936: The first science fiction convention is held in Philadelphia after an argument over how bad a hotel room can possibly smell.

1937: IBM CEO Thomas Watson receives a medal from Adolf Hitler for his valuable service to the Nazis.

1938: In the single biggest legislative blow to the video game industry, the Fair Labor Standards Act says businesses cannot treat their employees like total garbage.

1940: American businessmen in Hawaii found what will eventually become Sega once they realize there’s no good place to find hedgehog porn.

1941: The United States enters that thing from all the World War II video games.

1942: Following in Perry’s footsteps, Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first American to build a giant collection of Japanese stuff.

1945: The Manhattan Project creates the atomic bomb. One of the physicists involved, William Higinbotham, dedicates the rest of his life to nuclear nonproliferation so that he may never again release a destructive invention to the world.

1947: A patent is filed for the “Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device.” Almost immediately, a group of annoying fans gather to complain about the meta and demand new patches. They call themselves “Curtads.”

1950: Champion Among Us player Joseph McCarthy realizes you can just accuse everybody.

1956: Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi visits Cincinnati. At the sight of 1950s Ohio, he realizes we need to make video games exist fast and bring this miserable era to an end.

1958: William Higinbotham invents Tennis for Two, one of the first video games.

1959: America finally unlocks all 50 states, though rumors persist about a super-secret hidden Puerto Rico.

1962: Members of MIT’s Model Railroad Club create the computer game Spacewar! after deciding that playing with toy trains in college did not get them bullied enough.

1968: A famously bad year for America. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy are assassinated, the military massacres civilians at Mỹ Lai, the Chicago police attacks protesters at the Democratic National Convention, Richard Nixon is elected President, and Tommy Tallarico is born.

1969: Man lands on the moon, ushering in a new scientific golden age where modern technology creates a utopian world with no problems whatsoever.

1972: Pong and the Magnavox Odyssey make video games officially a thing, forcing this list to shift to annual entries. Richard Nixon is so happy he begins planning a way to free up his schedule for more gaming time.

1973: Pong II proves less popular than its predecessor, mostly due to the darker plot where Left Paddle seeks revenge against Right Paddle for murdering his wife.

1974: A Satanic cabal invents Dungeons & Dragons to corrupt the nation’s youth into solving math problems.

1975: Bill Gates founds Microsoft and turns it into a tech juggernaut, proving anything is possible if you dream big, work hard, and are a pedophile.

1976: Colossal Cave Adventure proves the computer can construct imaginary adventures. Countless PC owners’ social lives teleport away faster than you can type “xyzzy.”

1977: John Madden coaches the Raiders to victory in Super Bowl XI, an achievement that will be completely forgotten for his ultimate legacy of having a mediocre video game series named after him.

1978: Jimmy Carter installs a Space Invaders cabinet in Camp David, then tells Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin they can only play if they put their name on a sign-up sheet first.

1979: The popularity of Asteroids inspires NASA’s official “Just Do This for Real” contingency plan, which remains in effect to this day.

1980: Rogue becomes the first video game to ever be like itself.

1981: Ultima and Wizardry release, having such an enormous impact on RPGs that even now, decades later, their influence can be felt. Ronald Reagan becomes President and has the same effect on everything else, but bad.

1982: George Lucas founds LucasArts as part of an extremely long convoluted puzzle to get inside a nightclub without an invitation.

1983: The video game industry fires basically everybody, but at least this will never happen again.

1984: A MUD1 user is kicked out of the game after sending death threats to another player. As a result, from then on anytime anyone on the Internet is told not to do something by anyone else for any reason, it’s seen as “just like 1984.”

1985: America’s children collectively demand you buy them a Nintendo. America’s parents respond with an agreement to refer to all video games as Nintendos in perpetuity.

1986: Eight-year-old Christian Bartley of Florida is told to turn off that Nintendo and watch the Challenger launch with his parents. He would later be allowed unlimited gaming time for the rest of his childhood.

1987: Reagan enters the Konami Code to avoid a punishing defeat in Contra.

1988: The first issue of Nintendo Power releases, its hard-hitting journalism raising America’s awareness of the growing political instability in Hyrule.

1989: As part of a cultural exchange, Tetris releases in the United States while Beat ‘Em and Eat ‘Em releases in the Soviet Union.

1990: Super Mario Bros. 3 denounced by die-hard fans of The Wizard as another crappy movie tie-in game.

1991: The Console Wars begin when Sega detonates a car bomb outside Nintendo of America’s headquarters, kickstarting a wave of sectarian violence that will plague the country for decades to come.

1992: Bill Clinton hires the same firm as Sega to make his campaign ads. The commercial where he says “Bush is dumb, and if you like him so are you!” before skateboarding away is seen as instrumental to his victory.

1993: Senator Joe Lieberman accuses video games of leading to real violence, as merely looking at Mortal Kombat footage made him want to invade Iran.

1994: Following the theatrical success of The Lion King, Disney releases a 16-minute cut that’s closer to the video game, where Simba falls off an ostrich and dies.

1995: The first E3 is held, finally bringing what every child loves most to gaming: Industry trade shows organized by political lobbying groups.

1996: Quake invents 3D movement. Before this, reality was two-dimensional.

1997: Fallout lets gamers bored of the relative peace of the 90s pretend they live in a world where everything sucks.

1998: Your mom involuntarily learns the names of most Pokémon.

1999: The Columbine High School massacre is accused of imitating Doom, even though they never backtracked to places they’d already been looking for a keycard.

2000: The Supreme Court rules in Marvel v. Capcom that forcing superheroes to fight each other is constitutional.

2001: In one of the most tragic days in American history, a shocked, grieving nation learns the Sega Dreamcast was discontinued.

2002: George W. Bush becomes so engrossed in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind he answers all work questions with “Go ask Cheney.” The Department of Homeland Security is created.

2003: America invades Iraq, a lengthy divisive conflict that will leave the government longing for a way to instill militaristic nationalism in the general public. On an unrelated note, the first Call of Duty releases.

2004: The future winner of the 2052 Presidential election types “pwned” in World of Warcraft’s chat.

2005: Microsoft releases the Xbox 360, allowing gamers around the world to communicate about how their moms are gay.

2006: Americans begin taking subprime loans en masse to purchase a PlayStation 3.

2007: A high school student says “The cake is a lie!”, prompting another to say he’s “just like Sheldon.”

2008: The country’s banks trade in their used mortgages to the United States government for far more money than they’re reasonably worth. Economists refer to this as a “reverse GameStop.”

2009: Borderlands breaks new technical ground as the first video game to be both EPIC and BADASS despite the hardware constraints of the time.

2010: The United States’s economy is saved when Valve realizes gamers all over the world will spend money on imaginary hats.

2011: Barack Obama gifted a copy of The Witcher 2, which he uninstalls after learning you can’t drone strike the Scoia’tael.

2012: The Walking Dead proves video games are capable of emotional cinematic narratives that can melt the heart of anyone who consumes no other media besides video games.

2013: Vice President Joe Biden meets with heads of America’s video game industry to discuss video game violence and come to the conclusion that it kicks ass.

2014: A bunch of people decide to irrevocably ruin society because they don’t like Kotaku headlines.

2015: Gay people are allowed to marry in the United States four years after they were allowed to in Skyrim.

2016: America’s faith in democratic institutions being able to make the best decisions for the populace is forever tainted when Overwatch wins Game of the Year. 

2017: Fortnite finally releases. All of human culture before this was just to promote the game by teasing future character skins.

2018: Owner of dusty collection of Magic School Bus CD-ROM games becomes most well-funded scientist in America.

2019: Undercover FBI agent spying on Communist organization hands his superiors a plot synopsis of Disco Elysium.

2020: The United States participates in a big global gaming session where everyone stays inside and plays video games non-stop. It was awesome.

2021: Gamer meetup held at the United States Capitol.

2022: Bodily autonomy patched out.

2023: In a moment of clarity, Joe Biden realizes the full gravity of how he has enabled a genocide, says “Well, at least I’m not meeting the President of EA again.”

2024: An exploit in America is uncovered that allows a user to play as horribly as possible and get rewarded in the end.

2025: Everything gets really bad really fast. But at least Blue Prince came out.

2026: This list becomes the only worthy celebration of America’s 250th anniversary to happen the entire year.