What have been the most important/influential games of all time?

[00Stinger]

Often we go through lists of the greatest games of all time, however what have been the most important/influential games of all time?


Pong - thought to be the first ever video game so obviously it was important

Wolfenstein 3d - The first person shooter which has spawned one of the biggest and highest grossing genres of all time. Call of Duty, Battlefield ext.

Dune 2 - Not the first RTS game but one of the earliest and most influential that really kicked of the genre for games like Command & Conquer to dominate the market. I have to admit I love RTS games but they have really dies out and I think a big reason is that they don't really play well on consoles

Monkey Island - Lucasarts adventure games at it's finest and is often credited with being the first ever funny game

Mario Brothers - Don't think there will ever be a more iconic and recognisable character than old Mario

Street Fighter 2 - This dominated the arcades in the 90's and brought the fight games to the front.

GTA III - Open world sandbox games never existed until this game and wow have they really come on since this game

 

[Chris_6678]

Mario 64

 

[Runnin Blue]

Pong - thought to be the first ever video game so obviously it was important

Wolfenstein 3d - The first person shooter which has spawned one of the biggest and highest grossing genres of all time. Call of Duty, Battlefield ext.

Dune 2 - Not the first RTS game but one of the earliest and most influential that really kicked of the genre for games like Command & Conquer to dominate the market. I have to admit I love RTS games but they have really dies out and I think a big reason is that they don't really play well on consoles

Monkey Island - Lucasarts adventure games at it's finest and is often credited with being the first ever funny game

Mario Brothers - Don't think there will ever be a more iconic and recognisable character than old Mario

Street Fighter 2 - This dominated the arcades in the 90's and brought the fight games to the front.

GTA III - Open world sandbox games never existed until this game and wow have they really come on since this game

Mario 64

Yep.

Also, Pacman, Galaga, Deus Ex, World of Warcraft (unfortunately) and Starcraft off the top of my head.

 

[Devastating Boris]

Goldeneye!

 

[00Stinger]

Goldeneye!

awesome game, but most important/influential?

If there was no Wolfenstein 3d there would have been no Goldeneye

 

[Devastating Boris]

awesome game, but most important/influential?

If there was no Wolfenstein 3d there would have been no Goldeneye

Ahhhhhh yeah. My little brother wouldn’t stop being oddjob, so I threw him into the fish tank which broke. Then my mum decreed that there was to be no more pets in the house. That was both important and influential.

Pierce Would have found a way to have goldeneye made.

Also how stupid were you if you picked Sean Bean. The man was made to die.

 

[dwwaino]

Great thread. Tough one to think about and I’m sure I’ll change my mind as I think of more stuff. I think my answer is going to be more collectives though than particular games which I know isn’t the question but it’s how my mind is working, I can’t single out many particular titles.

+1 for Monkey Island, but then I guess you could argue the early Sierra stuff like Space Quest paved the way.

Richard Garriott for the Ultima series which kicked off the isometric RPG genre. Also especially for Ultima Online which inspired just about every MMO since. WoW wouldn’t have been what it was/is without UO.

Interplay as both a developer and publisher in the 90s. They were influential in an RPG style that became popular with Fallout. BioWare further developed the style with Baldur’s Gate and their Infinity Engine was used by Black Isle to bring us stuff like Icewind Dale and Planescape.

I’d like to suggest John Carmack in general over simply Wolfenstein 3D. The guy deserves a statue. He was a trailblazer and his development of the first 3D engines is legendary. First it was Catacombs 3D, then he built on that for Wolfenstein and that became the basis for the legendary Doom Engine. Programming at the time was much different than it is now. It was a time where heaps of stuff was done in assembly languages and to look how Carmack developed a first person Engine was genius.

I completely forgot about Dune. I would have mentioned the first Command and Conquer in terms of RTS but without Dune then there would have been no C&C or Starcraft. Well there might have been but not as we know it.

Something modern but Witcher 3. Countless times in the last few years since we hear about games naming Witcher 3 as the inspiration for their side quests, world or story and I’m sure it will be the case for some time.

 

[Hawker_85]

Metal Gear Solid on the PSX is the first game that I can think of that really focused on the cinematic style of presentation that is so common now, so that has to be up there.

 

[Hawker_85]

Donkey Kong, first game with a jump button.

 

[simba_]

yeah Metal Gear in general is amazing, you go back to the NES game, so many NES games had no story element at all, they were treated purely as games in the toy sense of the word. Konami were doing things ahead of the time back on the NES with the first Metal Gear to the point where people were confused by the complicated controls, story, difficulty.

i remember well what it was like when MGS2 came out in 2001/2002, i was 11/12 year old, i could tell it was one of the best games ever but i recall at the time the doubt people had when cinematic stuff was crossing over into video games, people were skeptical and thought it would cheapen gaming, take it away from the purity of skill based gaming and turn it into some kind of interactive movie - hey, that actually happened. but Konami/Kojima was a visionary, he didn't have cinematic stuff tossed in there as a gimmick, it helped him tell his grand story that he didn't want to tell through Hollywood, told through a game in a groundbreaking way. i remember how people complained about the weapon selection system and the controls and such but it was all kind of revolutionary, looking back at the generation compared to now.

Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were totally influential because they set the stage for the genre, they laid the foundation for third person 3D games, and it's impressive because it came from the visions of a few men.

i guess Street Fighter has to be up there too for creating a genre as we know it, there's a cool documentary about the history of the games and the scene, obviously the competitive community is huge for SF

 

[darth_timon]

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was pretty revolutionary for its time, then Breath of the Wild came along and rewrote that landscape yet again.

I dare say games like Sim City and The Sims deserve a nod for changing the way we approached simulations.


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[00Stinger]

yeah Metal Gear in general is amazing, you go back to the NES game, so many NES games had no story element at all, they were treated purely as games in the toy sense of the word. Konami were doing things ahead of the time back on the NES with the first Metal Gear to the point where people were confused by the complicated controls, story, difficulty.

i remember well what it was like when MGS2 came out in 2001/2002, i was 11/12 year old, i could tell it was one of the best games ever but i recall at the time the doubt people had when cinematic stuff was crossing over into video games, people were skeptical and thought it would cheapen gaming, take it away from the purity of skill based gaming and turn it into some kind of interactive movie - hey, that actually happened. but Konami/Kojima was a visionary, he didn't have cinematic stuff tossed in there as a gimmick, it helped him tell his grand story that he didn't want to tell through Hollywood, told through a game in a groundbreaking way. i remember how people complained about the weapon selection system and the controls and such but it was all kind of revolutionary, looking back at the generation compared to now.

Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were totally influential because they set the stage for the genre, they laid the foundation for third person 3D games, and it's impressive because it came from the visions of a few men.

i guess Street Fighter has to be up there too for creating a genre as we know it, there's a cool documentary about the history of the games and the scene, obviously the competitive community is huge for SF

all this talk about the first MGS makes me wish I played it

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[woota]

obviously wolfenstein 3D and Doom for the FPS genre...but does anybody know what was the first FPS game with a vertical axis of movement? (meaning, the ability to aim up and down). I could be totally wrong but I'm thinking it may have actually been Duke Nukem 3D.

I think there's a handful of N64 games that were among the most influential of all time because the N64 was the first console to allow Nintendo's longest running characters to have their first outing in 3D - Mario 64, Zelda: OoT, Donkey Kong 64. I think Goldeneye 007 and perhaps even Turok were influential for the FPS genre.

 

[Dancing Potato]

System Shock deserves a place on this list for basically creating my favourite genre - the first person shooter/RPG hybrid with emergent gameplay.

Deus Ex, Thief, Bioshock, Dishonored and Prey all owe their existence to the original System Shock and it would fair to say it's influence has crept into Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout games too.

 

[00Stinger]

obviously wolfenstein 3D and Doom for the FPS genre...but does anybody know what was the first FPS game with a vertical axis of movement? (meaning, the ability to aim up and down). I could be totally wrong but I'm thinking it may have actually been Duke Nukem 3D.

I think there's a handful of N64 games that were among the most influential of all time because the N64 was the first console to allow Nintendo's longest running characters to have their first outing in 3D - Mario 64, Zelda: OoT, Donkey Kong 64. I think Goldeneye 007 and perhaps even Turok were influential for the FPS genre.

I think your right on that one.

Damn these aliens for smashing up my ship and taking my babes

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[Mootsy]

Breath of the Wild..

One of the few games that just never ends and you really enjoy existing in that world.

 

[Hawker_85]

all this talk about the first MGS makes me wish I played it

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There was a PC release of MGS after it went gangbusters on the PSX, you could probably get hold of it through a means that rhymes with *shmorrent,* not that I am advocating such things.

 

[Hawker_85]

I bet the author of this particular paragraph feels like a bit of an idiot now, this has been the standard FPS control scheme ever since.

 

[dwwaino]

I've been waiting for a good opportunity to post these so this is probably it. Ars Technica started a series (that I wish they'd continue) about some of the troubling issues behind the development of some important video games.

Firstly how Thief almost didn't happen. It's pretty amazing what they did to be honest, they kind of overlaid two systems. One for the player and another for the AI.


And probably my favourite because it's a game I hold really dear. A bit of the history and problems behind the godfather of MMOs.

 

[dwwaino]

View attachment 534900

I bet the author of this particular paragraph feels like a bit of an idiot now, this has been the standard FPS control scheme ever since.

When I first played Half Life I refused to conform (or just wasn't with the times) to mouse + keyboard, so I mapped the controls to arrow keys and space bar with look up and down to page up/down lol.

 

[dwwaino]

Another interesting video about the origins of Diablo which was originally planned to be a turn based RPG.

 

[Hawker_85]

When I first played Half Life I refused to conform (or just wasn't with the times) to mouse + keyboard, so I mapped the controls to arrow keys and space bar with look up and down to page up/down lol.

Jesus, that sounds awkward.

 

[dwwaino]

Jesus, that sounds awkward.

Yep! But I was used to stuff like Doom, Wolfenstein, Redneck Rampage, Kingpin etc. The idea of using the mouse to aim seemed awkward at the time

 

[Viney]

Unreal Tournament for competitive Online MP

Half Life for story telling FPS

Both had a big influence on their respective genres

 

[Viney]

awesome game, but most important/influential?

If there was no Wolfenstein 3d there would have been no Goldeneye

I reckon he's right to an extent. Goldeneye was massively influential on Console FPS with it's ability to split screen MP matches

Halo later influenced Console online MP