Top Most Influential Video Game

[Inazuma]

I have to agree with Super Mario Brothers being the most influential.

[Gamerforlife]

Street Fighter II - The template for 2D fighters as we know them
Grand Theft Auto III - Kicked off the whole sandbox craze and also helped bring much more mainstream attention to video games
Halo(Sorry Goldeneye) - For better or for worse, the current popularity of shooters on consoles starts here and a ton of games adopted it control scheme while also following its multi-player template. Plus, it brought a ton of mainstream attention to the industry just like Grand Theft Auto III

And just to humbly plug my own work, I covered some of the most influential games in the beat'em up and platformer genres in these racketboy articles

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/beatemup ... wlers.html

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/platform ... -know.html

[J T]

FPS: Doom
Multiplayer FPS: Quake, Counter Strike
Adventure: King's Quest, Maniac Mansion (because of SCUMM), Zelda
Platformer: Super Mario Bros.
3D Platformer: Mario 64
RPG: Ultima, maybe Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest
Shmups: Space Invaders for verts, Gradius for horis
Beatemups: Double Dragon, maybe Final Fight
Racing: Pole Position
Sandbox/Open World: Grand Theft Auto III, Elder Scrolls
Puzzle: Tetris, Bejeweled
Survival Horror: Alone in the Dark (PC version, 3DO isn't popular enough to be influential), maybe Resident Evil
Fighter: Street Fighter II, maybe Karate Champ
3D Fighter: Virtua Fighter
RTS: Total Annihilation, maybe Starcraft
Rhythm Games: Dance Dance Revolution, maybe Guitar Hero or Parappa the Rapper
God Games: Populous
City Builders: Sim City
Tower Defense: Plants vs Zombies
Roguelikes: Rogue, obviously
Metroidvanias: Metroid (Metroid gets first billing for a reason. Suck it SotN).
Minecraft: Minecraft


I think what really determines a game's influence is its ability to establish a genre. All of my choices are based on a balance between what came earliest and what was popular enough to inspire later games in the genre. Most of these games were not the first in their genre, but they showed up early in the genre's lifespan and had enough success to really propel the genre's development.

[TornadoCreator]

What about PacMan?

Very nearly killed console gaming on the Atari 2600 along side the infamous ET and honestly, there are very few games outside of perhaps Bomberman which built on it's gameplay style. Definately not one of the most influential I'd say, in fact I'd say it was one of the more damaging games in gaming... which is a pity as the original arcade game is very good.

[isiolia]

I think what really determines a game's influence is its ability to establish a genre. All of my choices are based on a balance between what came earliest and what was popular enough to inspire later games in the genre.

IMO, some of the choices there aren't quite consistent. For example, listing Rogue for Roguelikes, and not Diablo? Yet for RTS, no Dune II, Command & Conquer, or Warcraft/II? Those titles were huge.

Anyway...

I would submit Half-Life as a highly influential game. It might not have been the first to do everything it did, but it did a great job at setting a new bar for the genre - or at least one that everyone noticed. The way it told the story was immersive - no cutscenes, no mission loading/post level tally screens. You see what Gordon sees. Period. Weapons/powerups were more logically placed. Enemy AI was actually (relatively) smart.

In turn, the mods for became huge in their own right, despite many of them being updated Quake/II mods. Team Fortress->Team Fortress Classic, Action Quake 2->Counter-Strike (sorta). While HL Deathmatch itself wasn't much to write home about, the mods (and Valve's accomodation/support of them) are very influential on modern FPS multiplayer.

[BoringSupreez]

I'm going to do the most influential games from 1990 onward, because I'd rather not list the same old NES and Atari games everyone else is doing.

Commander Keen: Episode 1
Commander Keen was the game that gave ID their start. Without it, they wouldn't have made the next game I listed. Plus, it showed that 2D platforming could be done well on PCs, just like on consoles. PC games don't have to just be RTS, TBS and simulators.

Wolfenstein 3D
This is the game that, more than any other game except perhaps Doom, created the FPS as we know it today. Without it, Doom and Half Life either wouldn't have been created, or we wouldn't have gotten them until years later. Doom is essentially the next-gen evolution of Wolfenstein 3D, they both have very similar gameplay mechanics.

Final Fantasy IV
The game that popularized RPGs in the West. The 16-bit and 32-bit gens might not have been so great for RPGs here in NA and Europe had Final Fantasy IV not put it's foot in the door. However, I don't personally like this game. Later RPGs were more fun, IMO.

Super Mario 64
The first great full-3D video game. Still the blueprint for how to make a good 3D platformer. First full-3D game which made good use of an analog stick, and made analog sticks the default control mechanisms for the industry as a whole.

Metal Gear Solid
Popularized stealth and cinematic gameplay. Proved how well good voice acting could improve a game. Showed that action games benefit from a great story, just like RPGs do.

Honorable mention: Doom, Dune 2, Goldeneye, Half Life. Doom is the game that introduced multiplayer to the world of FPS games. Dune 2 is what created the RTS genre as we know it. Goldeneye popularized FPSs on consoles, it proved that original FPS games made specifically for consoles could be just as good as what the PC had to offer. Half Life carried MGS's mantra over to the FPS genre.

[Erik_Twice]

Games like Pokemon, one of the best selling games ever, wouldn't exist if FFIV hadn't paved the way for it 5 years earlier.

Actually Pokemon evolves from Shin Megami Tensei, the SNES title, released in 1992. It has a focus on capturing and summong demons, each one with different resistances and weaknesses and many other well-known Pokemon basics, like storing monsters in a computer.

I don't mean to say games couldn't have a storyline at all before FFIV, but a character driven storyline following a group of people saving "the world" or something of equivalent importance for that setting, that was new, and whether it's Pokemon, Golden Sun or Mass Effect, I think that type of storytelling is very dominant in gaming.

Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, Final Fantasy IV, while not the first, could be considered the catalyst for that specific kind of "epic" storylines.

I think the key difference compared to Ultima and other early RPGs is that FFIV is not a roleplaying game. Sure, a dungeon crawler is not exactly the best situation to roleplay but in FFIV you are certainly not any character.

Yes, this opens the "JRPGs are not RPGs at all" can of worms but I think it's important.

I'd say Pong's legacy ended when the NES took over simply because the NES doesn't seem to be inspired by the Atari games. Many NES games lack a high score and many are based on anything but sports

I would say there's a quite important cultural change from the Atari age to the NES, so yes, I would agree.

I wasn't really suggesting we rank the games as such, after all it's really hard to truly quantify "influence", I just thought it's make for an interesting chat and I wanted to share my opinions on what I think would make the list of "most influensial" games, but like I say, I could only really pinpoint 3 games where I feel they are the defining influence of a genre or style, there's loads more to consider...

Oh, yes. That part of my post was horribly written, it used to be part of a longer rant that I deleted so it doesn't make much sense.

Just ignore it

Rhythm Games: Dance Dance Revolution, maybe Guitar Hero or Parappa the Rapper

I don't think any of those were influential. Dance Dance Revolution was succesful enough to spark a couple of clones and it's a great game but it's simply an evolution of the pure-execution model of Beatmania. It's an important game to understand modern arcades tough.

Parappa predates Beatmania for only a year and is, as far as I know, the first rhytmn vigeogame. However, it wasn't very influential for rhytmn games, I can't name a single one that was inspired by it's gameplay and I know most of them.


Guitar Hero is a a Guitar Freaks rip-off and should go die in a fire.

Kidding. However I see nothing influential in GH. The gameplay follows the Bemani template but without timming requirements. The notechart designs are quite generic, with an overreliance on chords and hard-to-hit movements that makes it feel dated and locked into bad design paradigms.

The "You are a rockstar" tone of the game may look new at first glance but it follows the same line as all those other "empowering" videogames we are being subjected now. The "feel like a pro" tone is everywhere and while it may be good in certain doses I can't help but feel it tends to make gameplay elements less meaningful in turn of a shallow feeling.

What about PacMan?

Very nearly killed console gaming on the Atari 2600 along side the infamous ET and honestly, there are very few games outside of perhaps Bomberman which built on it's gameplay style. Definately not one of the most influential I'd say, in fact I'd say it was one of the more damaging games in gaming... which is a pity as the original arcade game is very good.

Actually many games built onto their gameplay, they are just not as well-known. Mappy and Lady Bug come to mind as the most famous but a quick search will show a lot of them and not just clones.

If you count how many games of each genre existed during 1980 and 1984 you will find that maze games were the second most popular genre after shooters. It's partly the reason why arcades suffered a crisis in 1984, the game offers got kind of stale.

It also had a quite developed AI for the time, with all enemies acting differently and featured an early example of Power-Up. It was also among the first games to have cutscenes, which had a far more obvious trail of influences, most notably Donkey Kong.



Concerning RTS, I would claim that the most influential are Command and Conquer and Warcraft III design-wise and Starcraft from a cultural point of view.

The ideas found in Dune II and other early examples of the genre were really crystallized in C&C, very much like Wolfestein and Doom.

Warcraft and Warcraft II, while great games didn't feel too different from C&C to me, they follow the same formula but with a reduced focus on base building and a smaller scope.

Starcraft is not that different from C&C, it's a straight refinement. A very, very good refinement. And I don't think Starcraft would have been as good were not earlier games as flawed as they were. Factions that looked too much like each other (Warcraft) and unit unbalance (C&C: Red Alert) were the main fixes of SC. Which is a quite big fix, it's the entire game.

Of course, Starcraft was also key in making competitive videogaming a reality and was better designed for that goal.


Warcraft III may not seem too innovative at first glance but it's use of heroes and it's reduced focus on bases have been key. Dawn of War, Rise of Nations, Empire Earth III...all follow the same formula. Which is a shame, really, because they do it poorly and has produced very bad products and outright killed franchises by forcing them into what they were never supposed to be.

It's not that it's bad design, it's just that they take the streamlining at face value, without understanding why it was streamlined. It's a recipe for disaster.

MOAR WALL OF TEXTS

AND THEN I DON'T UPDATE MY BLOG LOLOLOL

[J T]

Rhythm Games: Dance Dance Revolution, maybe Guitar Hero or Parappa the Rapper

I don't think any of those were influential. Dance Dance Revolution was succesful enough to spark a couple of clones and it's a great game but it's simply an evolution of the pure-execution model of Beatmania. It's an important game to understand modern arcades tough.

Parappa predates Beatmania for only a year and is, as far as I know, the first rhytmn vigeogame. However, it wasn't very influential for rhytmn games, I can't name a single one that was inspired by it's gameplay and I know most of them.

Guitar Hero is a a Guitar Freaks rip-off and should go die in a fire.

Kidding. However I see nothing influential in GH. The gameplay follows the Bemani template but without timming requirements. The notechart designs are quite generic, with an overreliance on chords and hard-to-hit movements that makes it feel dated and locked into bad design paradigms.

It may be cultural bias on my part to list Guitar Hero since Beatmania, Guitar Freaks, and Pop n Music never really made a big explosion out here in the USA like they did in Japan. Guitar Hero most definitely did though and it spurred on sales, sequels, spinoffs, and far too many peripheral devices. I mentioned Parappa because it was fairly successful and though the rhythm genre has moved away from a story-lined approach, Parappa still laid a lot of the foundation for the genre in terms of hitting buttons in time to music. The only games before it were the Simon machine, which didn't require rhythm, and Dance Aerobics for the Power Pad, which didn't really influence anything. For games more obviously influenced by Parappa the Rapper see Umjammer Lammy, Space Channel 5, Gitaroo Man, and Unison.

Ultimately, my main choice was Dance Dance Revolution because it sparked a phenomenon across cultural/country lines and there are a million spinoffs and quite a few clones. It also predates Guitar Hero.

[Gnashvar]

I would have to say Dune 2 was the the true start of the RTS.

[J T]

If people want to say Dune 2, I'm fine with that. I know it predates Starcraft and Total Annihilation both and played a strong role in the genre's development.

I said Starcraft largely because it is practically Korea's national pasttime. Also, as was mentioned, it really helped drive the competitive gaming sports movement.