Island Getaway

Animal Crossing: New Horizons broke from series tradition by using a deserted island as its main setting. The island is undeveloped when you first arrive, so you’ll have to use a tent for shelter until a proper house can be built. Over time, the island develops into a thriving community. New buildings are erected, new infrastructure is constructed, and new residents move in. Eventually, the island will have a general store, a tailor shop, a museum, and enough housing plots for ten neighbors. You’ll even be able to set up a campsite to accommodate new visitors. The game lets players dictate their own pace, but there are a lot of activities to partake in. You can spend your time fishing, catching bugs, gathering fruit, collecting seashells, digging up fossils, befriending ghosts, and chatting with your neighbors. The best thing about the island is how much control you have over its development. You ultimately get to choose where everything is built, and you are free to alter the landscape to your liking. You can plant flowers, relocate trees, and even re-route rivers and waterfalls! You’re also encouraged to decorate the island in any way you see fit. Do you want to set up a 1950s diner? How about creating a wrestling ring surrounded by an audience of teddy bears? Maybe you just want to add some class to your island by lining your beaches with outside toilets. The choice is ultimately up to you! Some islands will be more impressive than others, and it’s entirely dependent on how creative you are. It’s a little unfair to mention New Horizons on this list seeing as how each player will have their own island, so we’ll just place it in the number ten position in the interest of fairness.

Panau is a fictional island nation in the Gulf of Thailand, implied to be located near the Malay Peninsula. It’s technically an archipelago, but we’ll recognize all of Panau for the purpose of this list. The region had apparently been controlled by the Spanish during the Age of Exploration, and it had likely been influenced by Arab merchants prior to that. Political unrest following World War II led to instability, however, and the world’s superpowers effectively created an opportunity for a dictatorship to arise. If you can look past the corrupt government and political instability, you’ll find one of the most awe-inspiring locations in gaming history. At nearly 400 square miles, Panau is easily the largest island on this list. It’s also one of the most diverse. The country has sprawling jungles, deciduous forests, snow-capped mountains, sun-dried beaches, and over 300 settlements! While exploring Panau, you can expect to find everything from ski resorts to submarine bases. The dynamic weather system and day/night cycles make everything seem even more varied. The ultimate goal in Just Cause 2 is to liberate Panau, and the game’s open-ended nature fits nicely with this theme. The story and game mechanics both revolve around the concept of freedom, and it’s always nice when an open-world game gives players a setting that’s actually worth exploring.

This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the namesake of the Monkey Island series. The games take place on a number of Caribbean islands during the Golden Age of piracy, and the main setting is a fictional archipelago known as the Tri-Island Area. The eponymous Monkey Island is an especially mysterious location since nobody knows exactly where it is. Incidentally, the uncharted island can only be reached by performing a voodoo spell. When you finally find the island, you can expect to see cannibals, a random castaway, an active volcano, and some ancient ruins thrown in for good measure. (There’s even an abundance of banana trees even though no such tree exists!) The island also features a giant statue of a monkey head and a large population of monkeys that includes at least one three-headed monkey. Monkey Island is featured in almost every Monkey Island game, and the island’s impenetrable secrets are the driving force behind most of the plot lines. Monkey Island is often used as the base of operations of the undead pirate LeChuck, but even he doesn’t know all of the island’s secrets.

Fans of the Grand Theft Auto series have probably noticed that the cities in the games are usually located on islands. Liberty City is a thinly-veiled homage to NYC, but it’s entirely surrounded by water. Likewise, Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas are situated on islands despite being modeled after Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas respectively. There are technical and artistic reasons why islands are so prevalent in the series, as they give developers a way to confine players to a specific area without completely breaking the immersion. Vice City is technically comprised of two islands, which are obviously meant to represent Miami Beach and the mainland. The city shares the same geography and art-deco building designs as Miami, and it features plenty of familiar landmarks. The Malibu Club is the place to be in Vice City, and it’s directly inspired by the Babylon Club from Scarface. Vice City also features a strip joint, a lighthouse, scenic roadways, and beautiful beaches. Vice City feels like a love letter to the 1980s, and everything from the fashion to the music makes you feel like you’ve opened a time capsule. Exploring the shores of Vice City Beach is like stepping onto the set of Miami Vice.

Wii Sports was one of the most accessible games of its era, but the bare-bones presentation almost made it feel like an elaborate tech demo. Wii Sports Resort was more refined than its predecessor. It featured more than twice as many activities, and the newly-minted Wii MotionPlus peripheral allowed for a greater level of precision. The presentation was also improved. This time around, the game took place in an elaborate beach resort on an archipelago named Wuhu Island. The island had previously appeared in Wii Fit, but Wii Sports Resort made it feel like a proper resort island. Wuhu Island featured hotels, bowling alleys, tennis courts, a castle, ancient ruins, and even a swordplay arena. You could cycle around the island, wakeboard in the waters surrounding it, or explore the skies in an airplane. The landscape was varied, and there were so many neat things to discover. Wuhu Island has now been featured in 10 different games, including Pilotwings Resort, Mario Kart 7, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, just to name a few. (Incidentally, Wuhu Island is the longest course in Mario Kart history!) Shigeru Miyamoto has made the observation that Wuhu Island is almost becoming its own character after appearing in so many games.

When you think about islands, you might naturally imagine sandy beaches, warm weather, and fun in the sun. Shadow Moses Island is located off the coast of Alaska in the Bering sea, so it doesn’t exactly imbue the aforementioned characteristics. The island is largely defined by snowfields, glaciers, and frequent blizzards, and the man-made infrastructure is just as cold as the geography. Shadow Moses Island is packed with warehouses, hangars, prisons, power plants, blast furnaces, and a vast underground base. Although the island was intended to be used as a nuclear weapons disposal facility, it was actually used as a weapons development complex. An island in the middle of nowhere is the perfect location to conduct top secret research, and it helps underscore some of the game’s primary themes. The premise of Metal Gear Solid involves a group of terrorists taking over the island and putting the entire world at risk. A special operations soldier named Solid Snake is sent in to neutralize the threat, and the isolated nature of the island helps emphasize how little support he has from the outside world. Solid Snake has always been a lone wolf, so a secluded setting like Shadow Moses Island is a perfect fit for him.

In the original Donkey Kong games, the eponymous ape spent most of his time hanging out in construction sites and greenhouses. Donkey Kong Country had a much larger scope, and Donkey Kong Island was remarkably eclectic. The island features colorful jungles, pristine lakes, temple ruins, dense forests, icy mountains, and a thriving industrial zone. Donkey Kong is content to lounge around his tree house all day, but he’s forced to venture across the island in order to retrieve his stolen bananas. The island is large enough to warrant an air travel service, and Donkey Kong has various ways to traverse the hostile environments. He can swing from vines, bounce off tires, blast himself out of barrels, ride in minecarts, or enlist help from one of his animal buddies. A gorilla riding on the back of an ostrich isn’t normal, but on meth on Donkey Kong Island it is. I’d be remiss not to mention the fact that Donkey Kong Island just so happens to look exactly like Donkey Kong’s head. Living on an island that’s named after you would be pretty cool, but living on an island that looks like you is next-level shit. The entire island basically serves as a reminder of how awesome Donkey Kong is.

In Yoshi’s Island, a group of Yoshis work together to protect Baby Mario from an assortment of minions and environmental hazards. It’s technically Mario’s first appearance from a chronological standpoint, and it was a great way for him to start a life of adventure. The aptly-named Yoshi’s Island is one of the most diverse locales in the Mario series. It features lush jungles, beautiful forests, underground caves, molten volcanoes, and snow-covered mountain peaks. A few of the levels even take place in the clouds above the island. The game’s 48 stages are remarkably varied and much longer than typical levels from 2D Mario games. There are surprises around every corner, and every level is interesting. The game’s marker-drawn aesthetics makes everything all-the-more memorable, and the unique art style is as visually interesting today as it was in 1995. Yoshi’s Island is a timeless adventure, and the visuals hold up better than any other game from the era. Simply put, Yoshi’s Island is one of the most vibrant, colorful, and dynamic settings to ever be featured in a video game.

Zack is a self-taught Muay Thai boxer who competes in fighting tournaments in order to game fame and fortune. After gambling his winnings in Vegas and hitting the jackpot, Zack decided to purchase a small private island in the southern hemisphere. He had a vast beach resort built on the island – complete with a hotel and stores – but there was one thing the island was missing: teenage girls with big tits. Upon completion of his resort, Zack invited female Dead or Alive contestants under the pretense of hosting a new fighting tournament. He was just trying to lure them to his island for a holiday, of course, but the girls decided to stay for a vacation even though they had been duped. Immediately after the vacation was over, Zack’s resort was destroyed by a volcano eruption and the island sank into the ocean. Thankfully, Zack was able to restore the island with technology after stealing treasure from an Egyptian tomb. New Zack Island offered even more amenities than the original, and he wasted no time in inviting the babes for another vacation. A meteor shower reignited the volcano and sent the island back into the ocean, but Zack somehow managed to restore the resort yet again. I understand Zack’s motivations, but there’s also a reason why the girls keep coming back. During their time on the island, the guests can partake in all sorts of exciting activities. They can play beach volleyball, go rock climbing, relax by the pool, or compete against each other in epic butt battles. There are even things to do after the sun goes down, and the girls are given an opportunity to try out their pole-dancing skills in the island’s casino. Zack Island is the stuff dreams are made of, and the only island that could beat it for the top spot on this list was a dream of another variety.

Islands are commonplace in the Zelda series, and they’ve even been the focal point of some of the games. (The events of The Wind Waker are spread across a number of small islands, for instance.) When it came time to select one island to represent the entire franchise on this list, the choice was surprisingly easy. Koholint Island is one of the most intriguing locations in any Zelda game. During the opening moments of Link’s Awakening, our hero washes up on the shores of the mysterious island after being shipwrecked. Koholint’s geography is pretty typical, but the giant egg that sits atop a mountain in the middle of the island is a clear indication that there’s something strange going on. As Link explores his surroundings, he encounters a cast of whimsical characters that defy explanation. He’ll meet a friendly man who turns into a raccoon while hunting for mushrooms, a reclusive elder who gives advice exclusively over the phone, and an alligator who collects canned food as a hobby. From talking owls to murderous shopkeepers, everyone you meet on Koholint Island is memorable. The developers reportedly took inspiration from Twin Peaks in order to capture the feel of an idyllic small town, and great effort was taken to make sure everyone you met had distinctive characteristics. Link’s Awakening isn’t the largest Zelda adventure, but it’s the most densely-packed game in the series. Seemingly every screen has something interesting to see. The entire island turns out to be a dream, and this gave Nintendo creative license to be as surreal as they wanted to be.