Under The Influence

[AndrewB]

Gamespot has released a new feature, entitled the 15 Most Influential Games Of All Time. Strangely enough, all of the top fifteen are PC games, but I guess that's just the way it worked out. Dig through the articles of each game mentioned. See your grin get smaller and smaller as you trudge through the mess, thinking "When will they ever get to DOOM?"... Well, if you ever do find something DOOM-related in it, let us know, so we may all have intelligent and insightful discussion about it. Now go read!

[stphrz]

Quake beat Doom???? Noooooooooooooooooooooo :(

Sorry, I couldn't think of anything intelligent or insightful to say :P

[Guest q.pixel[rex]]

I guess their reasoning for Quake beating Doom was how large and popular mods where...most other game communities now look just like the original Quake's. When Doom was released, the internet just wasn't large enough to sport a game community. In my opinion, Quake is the true milestone of online gaming communities.

What shocks me most is that Starcraft/Warcraft didn't make it. Blizzard's strategy games are so unique that I don't believe their greater aspects were based on or influenced by previous games (dune II? wtf?)

[Linguica]

I don't think any game "beat" any other game here, they are just the top 15.

[Guest Firewater]

They just don't understand.

[Guest Pr0jectJ]

Before I start, I want everyone to keep in mind that the title of the article is... 15 Most Influential Games Of All Time.

I really don't understand the point of putting Half-Life on the list of most influential games. What did it influence?

Why not list Wolfenstein 3D as the key influential game that got this whole thing started? How many first person shooters existed before? How many now?

Another problem I had with the article was that they claimed that Doom had the capacity and actually used slanted walls and floors, which I know full well is complete BS! I believe that this is a receint application to ZDoom.

And why use 3 of the top 15 on 1st person shooters? Quake, Doom and Half-Life. I mean come on folks! These games aren't that fundamentally different other than a few new tricks with the engine.

I honestly think that it was a room full of people who hadn't touched a computer until at least the early 90's and they were trying to figure out a way to map the history of PC Gaming. Frankly, I'm shocked that so many uninformed opinions (not to mention they failed to adequately cover the topic of the article) would come out in pusblic and speak about a topic they obviously don't have that much information on!

Do some research people... video games have been around since pong and before then... the 80's brought us so many big games, such as Dragon's Lair, Summer Games (EPYX), Yie Ar Kung Fu (One of the original 2 person fighting games like Street Figher, MK, etc), The Bard's Tale, AD&D's Pool of Radiance, and several others. These were the influential games. They led the way. There have been very few games that have even bothered coming up with 'new' ideas. It's all rehashing of someone else's idea. While there is no real 'new ideas' in this world, some creativity would be in order to put an end to this,

Hey, I got an idea! Let's make a 1st person shooter like Doom, but we can change all the characters and add new features and market the hell out of it!!!

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

J

[myk]

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!
anyway... the screenies say it, doom is the best game mentioned there by a mile or two

* Myk hops about... and suddenly steps out of sight, off to play doom :D

[prower]

Doom's influence is easy to identify - it pretty muched spawned the popularity of FPS's as a whole. Millions of people played Doom, thought it kicked ass and wanted more. Thus, the FPS genre was made popular.

Quake's influence is also obvious - it set the standard for editing and modification support, online multiplayer, and in turn created the modern online gaming community. Quake's influence was simply huge, much greater than Doom's, in my opinion.

As for Half-Life, its influence is a bit more subtle. Half-Life raised the bar for a number of FPS elements - interactivity, scripting, and pacing. Notice how the current wave of FPS games have been much more creative - Deus Ex (which probably isn't even an FPS), Unreal Tournament (many different and fun gametypes/mutators), etc. I think that's due, in part, to Half-Life raising the bar for creativity, and shunning the id system of "old game in new engine".

[bitstate]

first impression: why not an toc? why have to read all articles to find out the list?? i guess its so that you'll have to watch all those banners, but since i've got proximitron nicely installed they waste their time...

then... why only pc games/versions? i mean it took very long time until the pc came up to par with the amiga standard.. and atleast simcity and popuolos exist for amiga... damnit..

well, atleast they got most of it right, but they really shoud rename it to "15 Most Influential Games Of All Time."

[NiGHTMARE]

This list seems to have been written by someone who has only played about 10 games pre. 1994.

Wing Commander - WTF? What about Elite? That was doing it all, years before, and a LOT better too.

Ultima 3 - This was one of the lowest selling Ultima's. Ultima 4, 6 or 7 I would have agreed with, as with Monkey Island, they created a wave of other RPGs at their respective times, but 3 had little effect.

Alone in the Dark - I agree with this one.

Ultima On-line - Ditto.

Tomb Raider - Uh, no. Been there, done that, a thousand times already, even when the first one came out. Try Flashback or Another World instead, or about a billion old console games.

Falcon 3.0 - I don't know much about flight sims, but I know there were plenty of much more influential flight sims than this; Red Baron, the Aces Over series, even Fly.

Simcity - I have to agree with this one.

Half-life - It may be slightly too early to list this. Probably in a few more years time HL's influence will be much more widespread, but currently it's limited to only a handful of games.

Civilization - I agree with this too.

Diablo - I'm sorry, what exactly has this influenced? There may be a "handful of copycat games" (that, apart from Nox, no-one plays), but Diablo is arguably a copycat itself, of games such as Shadowland.

Dune 2 - I have to agree with this, although the original Command and Conquer was pretty influential as well.

King's Quest IV - Sorry, but no. Monkey Island 1, yes. It may not have started off the adventure genre, but it created huge public interes in it.

Myst - This should really go under the category of "all time biggest influence of s**t games".

Doom - Oh yes, absolutely. But Wolfenstein should really be in this list too.

Quake - It didn't have the same affect as Doom, but it did pretty much start off the whole "mod" thing in games. Sure, you could do stuff in Doom and even Wolf, but this brought it to a masse audience.

There you go, I agree with 7 and disagree with 8.

[Guest space-dog]

kings quest iv? eh, what, pardon me. My arse!
What about games like elite, bards tale and laser quest. I mean, i've played more than a few games in my time and i've never even heard of kings quest or falcon or most of the runners up. Donkey kong is more influential than most of the top 15 combined

[SailorScout]

Haven't posted in a while, or updated my page.. but oh well. This list is fubared for a number of reasons. Excuse me, but the video game market last year made almost as much as the movie industry, so WTF aren't there any console games on there? Only two Mac games were in that list too... think there's a bit of PC bias at GameSpot? Naaaah!

Ultima IV was more important then III. III had a SQUARE continent. Your party wasn't really all that important; the "characters" like Dupre and Shamino didn't come into their own until Quest of the Avatar. And the reagents/spellbook system later Ultimas used was NOT present in III, not to mention the Virtues. Now, for that..

King's Quest shouldn't even be mentioned. If you wanted an influential adventure game? Mystery House. First PC game of it's type that actually had graphics. Also happened to have been made by Sierra, so it's not company bias speaking. :P

(P.S. I have version 1.0 of KQ4, and it didn't have mouse support; dunno what those guys at GameSpot are smoking, or what version they warezed..)

Likewise, Half-Life should not be mentioned. HL's place would be better in a list of "Best" games, as opposed to influential.

Civilization is redundant to list when SimCity is already there, and far more popular. Ditto for Populous.

Ultima Online is a good mention, but uhmmm, try using some screenshots that AREN'T stolen from CoolInfo.com's UO review, and that aren't from the beta, k?

Doom is more important then Quake, because without Doom, there would not have been any Quake. Quake didn't revolutionize the shareware market OR the entire PC gaming industry; Doom did. Practically everyone who got into the industry (for their Quake work) started with Doom, so the community issue is moot. If you wanted to talk technology, QuakeWORLD was influential..

Wolfenstein should have been mentioned for the same reason; it brought FPS gaming to the PC. Ultima Underworld would have been tied with Wolf3D (IMO) because it actually came out first, but didn't have the mass appeal.

MechWarrior II should NOT have been honorable mention, when you consider that one title was the only thing that prevented Activision from going out of business. It should have been in the regular list. Besides all the network stuff they mentioned.. oh yeah, and the original runs fullscreen on a 486 (in low res of course) at an acceptable framerate. I'd like to see you try running Quake on a 486 at ANY speed!

Missing titles from that list:

Computer Space --- The first video game. Period. Pong was actually the second game, programmed by Nolan K. Bushnell AFTER seeing Computer Space in action.

Pong --- Don't make me spell it out..

Tetris --- This defines the puzzle genre, bar none. It was also notable for breaking the "gender" barrier, as Tetris is played by both men and women.

Donkey Kong --- First platform game.

Defender --- First scrolling game; featured lots of things many video games later ripped off, such as the infamous "smart bombs" (explosives that kill everything onscreen.... virtually every video game has such a weapon since then!)

Dragon Warrior --- Defined console role-playing for years to come. Final Fantasy I was better, but it wasn't as influential.

Street Fighter II --- Yes, I know Kie Ar Kung Fu for the Commodore and older systems was first, but SF2 set the standards. Down, Diagonal Forward and Forward + Punch. Everyone knows some of these basic combos.

NARC --- First game with digitized graphics. Also notable for copious amounts of blood and the whole Reagan-era "Say No to Drugs!" message.

The Legend of Zelda --- First game with a battery, a feature almost every console RPG/adventure game would use for many more years. One of the few titles that is STILL good even now.

Ninja Gaiden --- First game with cinema scenes. Still one of the damn hardest games out there too.

Super Tecmo Bowl --- Greatest football game ever made. Hell with Madden (whose titles are popular but not neccessarily influential), the Tecmo games will never be beat.

Virtua Fighter --- Ok, so the original one wasn't even half as good as the sequel, but this release sure did popularize polygons!

Mortal Kombat --- Not influential in any way besides the fact it was ridiculously hyped. Ditto for NBA Jam and the other array of Acclaim titles that were ported to every single platform known to man.

There are soooo many other important games out there, but these are just a few that I was thinking of...

[sirgalahadwizar]

FREE HISSY!!!

...what's the cyberdemon at the bottom for anyway?

[Risen]

Where is Super Mario Bros? ...or does the first large-scale video game marketing push and the first large-scale home entertainment console just not matter? Come on... who didn't have it at one time, or knew about ten other people who did?

Well, that, and they're missing that other huge, still followed, pioneer of add-ons, pioneer of multiplayer, spawned a bunch of wanna-bes, biggest following, #1 most influential game of all time, but I forget what it was called.... hmm.... what could it be?

[Risen]

Who said Doom wasn't in there?? I just skimmed through it... take another look. I don't agree with all their choices, but at least they got this one right.

http://www.zdnet.com/gamespot/features/pc/most_influential/p15.html

[Hyena]

The fifteen most influential games of all time???

No way.

Where's Pong? Pacman? Space Invaders? Super Mario Bros? Wolfenstein?

Pong started the whole video game craze, didn't it?
Pacman's one of those games that everyone's heard of at one point or another, and everyone who's played anything has played it at least once. If you go searching for collections of games that are 5 years old or older, you'll find a crapload of clones. Nobody thinks much of it now, but in its time it was *very* influential.
Do I need to explain SMB? I remember ten years ago, when I felt like the moron who *didn't* have a nintendo like everyone else. Mario has become a huge success. Mario's everywhere. He's got TV shows, stickers, lunchboxes, and countless other articles of idiocy. I'm not saying it's influential for the amount of money it made. It's influential for its popularity worldwide.

Wolfenstein and doom are both very important for how the 3d genre started, but doom wouldn't exist if not for wolfenstein.

I'm not one to pointlessly criticize, but there's no way you can tell me that the 15 most influential games of all time came out within the last ten years.

By the way, TOMB RAIDER???????

[Guest Omniverse]

There are two.

Doom brought the first person shooter into popularity and was a technological achievement in and of itself. It is also the most downloaded shareware game of all time, bringing the whole shareware concept into popularity (anyone remember getting more than 2 or 3 levels for a game demo?!)

And the second is Super Mario Bros. Like Doom it didn't INVENT the platform genre, but perfected it and brought it into popularity. When you think about it; Super Mario Bros + Guns = Contra. Contra + 3D = Doom.

[AndrewB]

Yes, Risen. Who said there was no DOOM in it? Who really did say that?

[Zeku]

I know that being negative is pretty pointless, but each time some website has attempted to make some kind of categorization like this, its been a joke, both in concept and application. Here's the questions that should have occured to them:

1. Who cares?

2. You really think everyone won't disagree?

3. You actually think that you, some punk webmasters 20-30 years old, have some deep insight into anything whatsoever?

4. You think you won't make blatant ommissions, especially while choosing a number that is a multiple of the fingers on your hands? It seems like an accurate list wouldn't always contain 5 or 10 or 15 things.

5. Do you actually think that you have played or are aware of every great game that has been made, or influenced people?

6. Do you actually think that popularity is directly related to quality? It's a semantic relationship, but you are at least aware that the majority of the population prefers deadening sameness and familiarity, even while railing against it with their mouth?

7. Do you actually believe that each human being is not motivated almost entirely by their OPINION, based on their experience? People only bother with logic when it happens to agree with them.

PATHETIC!

And here's some startling hypocrisy. I would list Megaman 1+2 somewhere on there. This, like fighting games, began to flesh out the idea of 'tools' for achieving victory, rather than just shoot or punch.

[AndrewB]

Zeku, that was brilliant! Especially number four. I don't know what it is with this world's obsession with five and ten. In a perfect world, our number system would be Octal. And what we know as 512 would be displayed as 1000. Great points.

[Aardappel]

The number system would be hexadecimal. Superior to octal (2^4 aka 2^2^2 is more "regular" than 2^3). The only alternatives are either too inefficient (2^2) or too many (2^8).

sorry, very offtopic. Zeku: yup it is impossible to get right, but they could have very easily done SOOO much better.

[Guest q.pixel[rex]]

Sorry, RTS games are about strategy, not that "who can build more guys" sh!t that Westwood is so famous for. The Warcraft series was what set the standard for real-time-STRATEGY. For the first time the term "micro management" made a huge stand...the deep strategy involved with spellcasting was simply amazing. Westwood has never been able to acheive quite that...and I can see War3 kicking Red2's ass already ;-)

[Guest Grul!]

StarCraft beats the crap out of all C&C iterations. In StarCraft, every unit counts. It has more close micro-management, better explore-n-expand concept, it is way better balanced, it has more replayment value, etc. etc. C&C games are mostly not exactly bad, but they do not even come close to StarCraft.

[Guest Grul!]

StarCraft beats the crap out of all C&C iterations. In StarCraft, every unit counts. It has more close micro-management, better explore-n-expand concept, it is way better balanced, it has more replayment value, etc. etc. C&C games are mostly not exactly bad, but they do not even come close to StarCraft.

[NiGHTMARE]

Dune 2 / C&C vs. Warcraft / Starcraft

The question here isn't which is BETTER. It is which is most inspirational. And I can guarantee you that Dune 2 and C&C have inspired far more games than Warcraft or Starcraft.

For one thing, look at the mouse/keyboard control system in Warcraft 1. It's rubbish. Now look at the control system in Dune 2. Asides from only being able to select one unit at a time and being unable to set waypoints, it's pretty much identical to modern RTS games.

[NiGHTMARE]

Dune 2 / C&C vs. Warcraft / Starcraft

The question here isn't which is BETTER. It is which is most influential. And I can guarantee you that Dune 2 and C&C have inspired and influenced far more games than Warcraft or Starcraft.

For one thing, look at the mouse/keyboard control system in Warcraft 1. It's rubbish. Now look at the control system in Dune 2. Asides from only being able to select one unit at a time and being unable to set waypoints, it's pretty much identical to modern RTS games.

[NiGHTMARE]

Sorry for the double posting, the uni network crapped up.

[Guest space-dog]

computer space was not the first computer game, the first computer game was a pong-ish type thing that was played on an ossilloscope in 1948. Space wars didn't appear until at least 10 years later.
i reckon streetfighter2 was quite possibly the most influential game of all time

[Guest Jim Bentler]

I think that you got the year wrong. I believe it was actually 1958 not 1948. The game was constructed solely with hardware and was disassembled a few years after it was made.

[Guest Jim Bentler]

Sorry I misplelled your name, space-dog.