The Best Video Games of 2025

In the early 1980s, while driving his sports car, the game designer Eugene Jarvis was struck by another vehicle that ran a red light. His car did not survive the collision, but Jarvis, mercifully, did—though with a hand injury that temporarily made it impossible for him to press an arcade cabinet’s buttons.

Rather than abandon his work, Jarvis adapted. He rigged up a second joystick to stand in for the buttons, which he could manipulate with his bandaged right hand. Six months later, Jarvis released Robotron: 2084, the game he designed to accommodate his physical constraint. The left joystick controlled his character’s movement, the right the direction of gunfire. From this small, bodily adjustment emerged the twin-stick shooter: a now-familiar mode of play that, four decades on, arguably reached its zenith in 2025 with Sektori, a kinetic test of skill and screen management set to a mesmeric, thumping soundtrack.