Gaming

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Horse Armor

The two-and-a-half-dollar download that put decorative armour on a horse in Oblivion in April 2006, laughed at as the most pointless purchase in gaming and later recognised as the first microtransaction, the beginning of paid DLC and the ancestor of every cosmetic shop since. The record notes the horse was fine and the industry was not.

▸ 2006peak 2007still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Jungle (MOBA)

The forest between the lanes of a MOBA map, and the role of the player who farms its monsters and ambushes lanes from it; 'jungling' was a DotA term by 2006 and a League of Legends job description from 2009. The record notes the jungler is blamed for everything by all three lanes, which is the position's main duty.

▸ 2006peak 2015still up

● Aliveadj.✎ 2

Nintendo Hard

Difficult in the manner of an 8-bit game of the late 1980s — no saves, instant death, three lives, a hit box the size of a bus — a term codified on TV Tropes around 2006 by adults describing the games that had ruined their childhoods. The record's entry for the difficulty that was not a design choice but a cartridge-size constraint.

▸ 2006peak 2010still up

● Aliveinterj.✎ 3

Oof (Roblox)

The short 'oof' a Roblox avatar made on dying, borrowed from a 2000 PC game called Messiah and played several billion times before a licensing dispute removed it in July 2022. The record notes the sound left the platform and the word stayed everywhere else, which is the reverse of what usually happens.

▸ 2006peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Roblox

The platform where children make games for other children and get paid in Robux, public since September 2006 and, from 2020, the place a generation went instead of the playground. Not a game but the box every Roblox record on file lives in. The record files it as the platform that turned a lockdown into a business.

▸ 2006peak 2021still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Stardoll

A Swedish browser dress-up site in which players dressed dolls of celebrities and then themselves, with a suite to decorate and a currency called Stardollars. The record's entry for the fashion game as a social network: by 2010 it had tens of millions of members, its clubs and forums were many people's first social media, and its Superstar membership was the first subscription a lot of parents were asked for.

▸ 2006peak 2010still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 4

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

An open fantasy world with a face-generation system that produced potato people, guards who said 'stop right there, criminal scum', and, in April 2006, a set of horse armour for $2.50 that became the first paid downloadable cosmetic and a joke that lasted twenty years. The remaster, shadow-dropped in April 2025, sold millions in a week.

▸ 2006peak 2007†2011

☠ Deadn.

Wii Shop Channel

A store with the most relaxing music ever written for commerce. Closed in January 2019; the music is the only entry here that people hum at funerals.

▸ 2006peak 2009†2019

▲ Fossiln.✎ 4

Wii Sports

Tennis, bowling, golf, baseball and boxing played by waving a remote, packed in with the Wii and therefore in eighty million homes. Its trend moment was 2007: grandparents bowling, care homes buying consoles, and televisions broken by remotes thrown through them. Nintendo added wrist straps and a rubber jacket and sold more.

▸ 2006peak 2008†2013

● Alivephr.✎ 2

Achievement Unlocked

The pop-up and chime with which the Xbox 360 rewarded players for doing things from its launch in November 2005, and the phrase since attached to any minor real-life accomplishment ('Achievement Unlocked: Left the House'). The record notes the system was designed to keep players playing, and that it worked on a scale nobody at Microsoft had budgeted for.

▸ 2005peak 2010still up

▲ Fossiln.✎ 4

Animal Crossing: Wild World

A village of animals, a mortgage to a raccoon, and a clock that ran in real time so the shop closed when you got home from school. The DS version was the first Animal Crossing most of the world played, and the first with online visiting through friend codes, a system so awkward it became a joke. The 2020 island version is filed separately.

▸ 2005peak 2006†2014

↺ Undeadn.✎ 4

Brain Age

Sums, Stroop tests and reading aloud, with a floating polygon head of a Japanese neuroscientist telling you your brain age. It sold the DS to adults and pensioners in 2006 and 2007, put Nicole Kidman in adverts in Europe, and started the brain-training industry that regulators later questioned. A Switch version returned in 2020.

▸ 2005peak 2007†2013

▲ Fossiln.✎ 4

Brick Breaker (BlackBerry)

A Breakout clone pre-installed on every BlackBerry, played with the trackball or the scroll wheel by executives in departure lounges for most of the late 2000s. It was the one game on a device sold as being for work, and for a few years its high scores were an informal currency among lawyers, bankers and civil servants.

▸ 2005peak 2009†2013

● Alivev.✎ 2

Choke (Esports)

To lose a match, series or round from a position that could not be lost, under pressure and in front of a crowd; a sports word that esports adopted by the mid-2000s and which certain teams have made their brand. The record notes the choke is the only esports event that spectators can predict and players cannot.

▸ 2005peak 2019still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Guild Wars

An online RPG with no monthly fee, built by three former Blizzard staff, that sold millions to players who resented World of Warcraft's subscription. Its trend moment was the mid-2000s, with instanced maps, an eight-skill bar and a competitive arena with real prize money. Guild Wars 2 replaced it in 2012; the original servers are still up.

▸ 2005peak 2007still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Guitar Hero

A plastic guitar with five coloured buttons and a game that made a living room feel like a stage. The 2005 original was a sleeper; the third game in 2007 was a phenomenon, sold to people who had never bought a console game, and Activision then released so many that the market collapsed. The franchise was shut in February 2011.

▸ 2005peak 2007†2011

▲ Fossiln.✎ 4

Nintendogs

A puppy on the bottom screen that you stroked with a stylus and called by name into the microphone. It sold the DS to children and their mothers in 2005, was the first game many girls owned, and produced the sight of adults on trains saying a dog's name into a handheld. The record files it as the pet the family did not have to walk.

▸ 2005peak 2006†2011

● Alivephr.✎ 2

One More Game

The lie that precedes the next three hours — 'one more game' — as old as multiplayer and revived as a meme every time a new game makes it true. The record's entry for the phrase that has been spoken by every player in history and believed by none of them.

▸ 2005peak 2024still up

● Aliveadj.✎ 4

Pay to Win

A game where the shop beats the skill. The accusation has become so broad that it now applies to most of the economy.

▸ 2005peak 2013still up

● Alivev.

Rage Quit

Leaving a game in anger, mid-match. Extended to jobs, relationships and group chats without loss of meaning.

▸ 2005peak 2011still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Webkinz

A plush toy with a code on the tag that unlocked a virtual version of itself in a browser world of rooms, games and a doctor. The record's entry for the first toy-to-screen craze: by 2008 the animals were sold out in shops, the codes were traded and stolen, the site had millions of daily visitors, and the phrase 'the tag is the toy' was said by parents who had paid for a bear to get a login.

▸ 2005peak 2008still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Cave Story

A robot boy with no memory wakes in a cave full of rabbit-like creatures called Mimigas and shoots his way toward an ending that depends on which people he saved. Made alone over five years by a Japanese developer and released free in December 2004, it was the first indie game many players had heard of, and the record files it as the genre's origin story.

▸ 2004peak 2010still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Dofus

A turn-based tactical MMORPG drawn in Flash by a small studio in northern France, with a cartoon style that produced a television series, a film and Wakfu. It was the game of French-speaking teenagers in the late 2000s, in France, Belgium, Quebec and North Africa, and its Unity rebuild around 2024 brought many of them back.

▸ 2004peak 2008still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

EVO Moment 37

The fifteen seconds at EVO 2004 in which Daigo Umehara, at one pixel of health, parried every hit of Justin Wong's super and won the round, filmed on a camcorder and passed around for years as the fighting-game community's founding scripture. The record notes the crowd noise on the tape is still the loudest thing in the genre.

▸ 2004peak 2005still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Eco Round

A round in Counter-Strike (and later Valorant) in which a team buys nothing, or almost nothing, to save money for a full buy next round; and so the round in which pistols occasionally beat rifles and the chat goes quiet. The record's entry for austerity as tactics, established in competitive play by the mid-2000s.

▸ 2004peak 2016still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Garry's Mod

A sandbox built on Half-Life 2 in which players spawn props, weld them together, and pose ragdolls, and which players turned into Prop Hunt, Trouble in Terrorist Town and a decade of YouTube. Released as a free mod in December 2004 by a British developer and sold on Steam from 2006, it is still one of the most played games on the platform. The record files the physics gun.

▸ 2004peak 2014still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 4

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Three cities, a countryside, a gym, a jetpack and a protagonist called CJ. The 2004 game was the largest thing on the PlayStation 2, and its trend moment was Hot Coffee: a hidden sex minigame unlocked by a mod in June 2005 that got the game re-rated Adults Only, pulled from shelves, discussed in the US Senate and settled in court. CJ returned as a meme in 2019.

▸ 2004peak 2005†2013

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Halo 2

The sequel that made Xbox Live: matchmaking, party chat, a ranking system, and a midnight launch reported as the biggest entertainment opening of any kind at the time. Its trend moment ran until the original Xbox servers closed on 15 April 2010, when a few dozen players kept their consoles on for weeks to be the last ones in the game.

▸ 2004peak 2005†2010

● Aliven.✎ 2

K/D Ratio

Kills divided by deaths — the number by which shooter players have measured their worth since Halo 2 and Call of Duty began tracking it in the mid-2000s, and the reason so many of them will not play the objective. The record's entry for the statistic that made a team game into a personal one.

▸ 2004peak 2012still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 4

Katamari Damacy

Roll a sticky ball around a house until it picks up the house, then the town, then the sky. A cheap Japanese game with a Prince and a drunk King of All Cosmos became a cult in America in 2004, sold on word of mouth, and made a soundtrack of Japanese pop into a shared reference. The 2018 remaster, Reroll, brought it to the Switch.

▸ 2004peak 2005†2011

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Knight Online

A Korean MMORPG with two nations, Karus and El Morad, at permanent war, that found its real audience in Turkey's internet cafés around 2006 and became a national obsession there. Its trend moment was a whole country choosing sides between a lizard people and a human kingdom, and the clan wars, gold sellers and café tournaments that followed. Still online, mostly in Turkish.

▸ 2004peak 2007still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Metin2

A Korean martial-arts MMORPG that Europe adopted after a German publisher localised it in 2007. Its trend moment was 2008 to 2010 in Germany, Turkey, Poland, Romania and Italy, where it was the free game on every second PC and its metin stones, glowing rocks you hit for loot, were a schoolyard reference. Still online, still hitting rocks.

▸ 2004peak 2009still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Monster Hunter

Hunt a large creature, make armour from it, hunt a larger one. A PlayStation 2 game nobody noticed became, on the PSP in Japan around 2008, a social phenomenon played by four people on a train, and then in 2018 with Monster Hunter: World a global one. Wilds in 2025 was Capcom's fastest-selling game. The record notes the West took fourteen years to arrive.

▸ 2004peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 3

No Johns

A Smash Bros. community rule against excuses, named after a player called John whose reasons for losing became so proverbial that his name became the noun for one. The record notes the phrase dates from the Melee scene of the early 2000s and that 'that's a john' remains the fastest way to end a post-match explanation.

▸ 2004peak 2009still up

● Aliveabbr.✎ 3

PB

Personal best: a speedrunner's fastest time in a category, borrowed from athletics into the Speed Demos Archive community by the mid-2000s and now the thing every stream title is chasing ('PB attempts'). The record notes the PB is the only record most runners will ever set and that they treat it with the seriousness the world record deserves.

▸ 2004peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

World of Warcraft

The massively multiplayer game that made the genre mainstream: twelve million subscribers by 2010, a South Park episode, a plague that epidemiologists studied, a documentary about addiction and a Leeroy Jenkins, who is filed elsewhere. The record notes that WoW Classic in 2019 brought back the 2004 game and the queues.

▸ 2004peak 2010still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Yume Nikki

A girl called Madotsuki refuses to leave her flat, goes to bed, and explores dreams that contain a great many things and explain none of them. A free Japanese RPG Maker game from 2004 by a developer nobody has identified, it spread in the West around 2008 to 2010 and became the founding text of a genre of quiet, unsettling exploration games. The record keeps it on file for Uboa.

▸ 2004peak 2010still up

▲ Fossiln.✎ 4

Defense of the Ancients

A custom map for Warcraft III, passed between anonymous developers, that invented the five-a-side lane-pushing game later called the MOBA. Played in cafés from Manila to Stockholm, it produced a Swedish pop song about itself in 2006, a competitive scene with no publisher, and two of the largest games of the 2010s, one of which kept the name.

▸ 2003peak 2009†2013

● Aliven.✎ 4

Kingdom of Loathing

A browser role-playing game drawn in stick figures, where the currency is meat, the classes include Disco Bandit and Pastamancer, and every item is a pun. Launched in February 2003 by two people, it was the small strange web game that everyone with a LiveJournal played in 2005 and 2006, and the record notes it is still being updated with the same jokes and the same drawings.

▸ 2003peak 2006still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

MapleStory

A 2D side-scrolling MMORPG with cartoon characters, cash-shop clothes and grinding measured in months. Korea's answer to RuneScape, it was the game of the mid-2000s for Korean, Chinese, Singaporean and North American teenagers, sold cosmetics before anyone called them that, and survived a 2010 rebuild called Big Bang. It has never stopped.

▸ 2003peak 2007still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Ninja Defuse

Defusing the bomb in Counter-Strike while enemy players are still alive and nearby but not looking, usually through smoke, and winning the round in silence. The record notes the term was established by the early 2000s and that the ninja defuse is the single most-rewatched five seconds in the game's history.

▸ 2003peak 2016still up

● Aliveadj.✎ 2

Sus

Suspicious, or suspect, clipped; a slang word with roots in British police jargon and 2000s American English that Among Us handed to the entire planet in 2020 as the only word needed to accuse a crewmate. The record notes 'sus' is now used by children who have never played the game and by adults who have never stopped.

▸ 2003peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Trackmania

Time-trial racing on tracks you built from blocks, with no collisions and a leaderboard, made by a small French studio. Its trend moment was TrackMania Nations in 2006, a free version made for the Electronic Sports World Cup that put the game on every European school PC. It has an esports scene, a speedrunning culture, and a 2020 relaunch.

▸ 2003peak 2008still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

America's Army

A free tactical shooter published by the United States Army as a recruiting tool, in which both teams saw themselves as the Americans and the training included a virtual medic course. Its trend moment was the mid-2000s, when it was among the most-played online shooters and the subject of a debate about propaganda. The Army shut it down in May 2022.

▸ 2002peak 2005†2022

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Battlefield 1942

Sixty-four players, tanks, planes and boats on Second World War maps, in a game where the plane always crashed into the hangar. The Swedish studio's first Battlefield was the LAN and office game of 2003 and the base for Desert Combat, a mod so good EA hired its makers. Official multiplayer died in 2014 with the GameSpy servers; fans host their own.

▸ 2002peak 2004†2014

☠ Deadn.✎ 5

Friendster

The first social network to be popular, and the first to be too slow to stay that way. Turned down Google for $30 million and became a Malaysian gaming site instead.

▸ 2002peak 2003†2015

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

GunBound

Worms with cartoon tanks, wind and angle calculations, and avatars you dressed in bought hats. The Korean turn-based artillery game was the browser-era craze of Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Philippines in the mid-2000s, with cafés running tournaments and a currency called Gold that was farmed by children. The record notes it has been relaunched several times.

▸ 2002peak 2005still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Ragnarok Online

A 2D-sprites-in-3D-world MMORPG based on a Korean comic, with a Norse setting and a soundtrack people still hum. It was the game of Southeast Asia and Latin America in the mid-2000s, with Philippine and Brazilian servers that outlasted the Western ones, and a private-server culture so large that Gravity licensed some of it. Still running, in many forms.

▸ 2002peak 2005still up