The Ten Most Important Games 577
Taking a page from the National Film Preservation Board, the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University and a group of five prestigious games industry figures have inducted ten games into a sort of 'canon'. The New York Times reports that some of these titles represent the start of weighty gaming genres, while all are laudable for their place in gaming history. "[Henry] Lowood and the four members of his committee -- the game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; Matteo Bittanti, an academic researcher; and Christopher Grant, a game journalist -- announced their list of the 10 most important video games of all time: Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979), Zork (1980), Tetris (1985), SimCity (1989), Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990), Civilization I/II (1991), Doom (1993), Warcraft series (beginning 1994) and Sensible World of Soccer (1994)." Most likely, future years will see additional titles inducted into this game canon.
pong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:pong (Score:5, Informative)
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What is Zork and what is so special about Mario 3?
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There's information about it in the internet. Use a "search engine" such as Google (www.google.com) and find out.
> and what is so special about Mario 3?
I didn't get that either. It's more significant than 1 or 2? I'd have thought they'd have been better of with games like Manic Miner or Elite. It's just a personal list though, albeit by more than one person. There's not the same problem with computer games as with films, as we can always play the originals using emulation. Every yea
Re:pong (Score:5, Funny)
There's information about it in the internet. Use a "search engine" such as Google (www.google.com) and find out.
> TYPE ZORK INTO WWW.GOOGLE.COM
Google suggests that the original poster try the Zork Wikipedia Entry [wikipedia.org].
It is almost 5:00 pm in your office. You are feeling a mite peckish.
> TRY THE NEXT LINK
Google's second link points to the Infocom-IF [infocom-if.org] page on the history of Interactive Fiction.
It is almost 5:30 pm in your office. You are hungry. Because Congress fucked up Daylight Saving Time, it is not yet dark.
> TRY THE THIRD LINK.
Google's third link points to a live PHP-based implementation Zork [thcnet.net], cleverly disguised as a 404 page.
By the time you're done with that, you will have either starved to death, or despite Congress' fucking up Daylight Saving Time, it will be sufficiently dark that you will have been eaten by a grue.
*** You have died ***
Your score is 2 out of a possible (+5, Funny)
Re:pong (Score:5, Funny)
Re:pong (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on how much you know about the history of computer games, I guess. Zork is a classic - probably the most important game on the list.
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Re:pong (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you've been gaming for more than 20 years, you don't need Google to know about Zork.
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Why?
Would you say the same if someone made a list of the "ten most important bands in history" only to have some clueless teenager say "who are the Beatles?".
Just because the reader is too young/ignorant to know all of the entries it doesn't make them any less relevant.
Re:pong (Score:5, Funny)
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I resent that. :-P
When it comes to resentments, tis better to give than to receive. heh heh
In general I'm not an ageist, I just wasn't gonna stand for Umbrel saying Zork is obscure and insignificant.
The one thing Zork, Adventure, Starcross (my fave) and Planetfall had is they really got your imagination going. Basically, they are non-linear interactive books, and the score is merely a way to tell if you've read the whole story or not. Or in the case of Adventure, whether you were worthy of receiving a copy of the source.
Re:pong (Score:5, Funny)
Three revolutionary things about Zork (Score:4, Interesting)
2. Zork used an interpreter (Z-code), so the game content was separate from the code. This allowed them to port to far more platforms than their competitors (and back then, there were a lot more platforms!)
3. Zork was marketed more like a book. When new games came out, the old games remained on the shelves because they still had value. This was a revolution in marketing game software.
Also, read this. It's a fascinating story about the company behind zork. [mit.edu]
Re:pong (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh, no, that's not quite it. It's just really old. There was no game industry at the time to have an "underground" or "indie" from.
Re:pong (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, a it's bit like Citizen Kane that way
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Apparently you're too young to have experienced spending an entire day in class just thinking of how to get across that damn ravine, or how to keep the lamp from getting wet, or how to get Floyd the robot to stay alive, or how to get the black rod. Infocom was probably as huge a part of my childhood as George Lucas (and if that statement seems silly to you, then you're really young and were tarnished by Jar Jar at too young an age). Underground? Indie? N
Re:pong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:pong (Score:5, Insightful)
And everyone is rightfully pointing out to you how you are very very wrong on that point. It's funny that you're sitting there saying that Zork was unimportant, yet you want to put Prince of Fucking Persia on the list? Warning: Bad Car Analogy Ahead - That's like saying that Henry Ford is insignificant in the world of cars, but that John DeLorean should be on the list because he made a car out of stainless steel (not that you'd know who John DeLorean is)...
It's very clear that you were born in the early nineties and that anything that happened before that is "unimportant" in your world...
Re:pong (Score:5, Interesting)
You are so wrong.
Zork was not the first text adventure, but the technical breakthough there was that it was able to pack lots verbose descriptions of places and events in a very small space (less than 48KB mem, 130KB floppy disks)). You forget the (lack of) power that home computers had in 1980.
AI: Zork's parser an incredible leap at the time. Previous adventures used commands like "USE SCREWDRIVER" unscrew a screw.
Zork did stuff like:
>> UNSCREW THE SCREW
Which screw, the Phillips screw or the standard screw?
>> STANDARD
>> You unscrew the standard screw. The control panel falls on your foot. Your scream of pain wakes up a grue, who decides to eat you.
ANd remember, artwork is more than graphics. Since the graphics on the computers of the time was either poor or non-existent, Zork made up for it with the verbosity of the descriptions.
In summary, here's a (likely incomplete) list of the technical breakthroughs of Zork:
1) A parser that could understand more that just two-word "Verb Direct-Object" commands (e.g. "GO HOUSE". Look at the old Scott Adams Adventures for more examples).
2) Paragraph-length (or more) descriptions of places and events, that allowed the player to become more immersed into the game. This all packed into the tiny computers of the late 70's.
3) Multi-platform. Zork ran on virtually every home computer from the Osborne to the Apple II.
4) Z-Interpreter. Zork was done as Z-code, ran though an interpreter. The same interpreter was used for several games.
5) Fun packaging. The manuals and other sundries that came with the game were interesting, and prized by collectors today.
I think you need a little more appreciation for the state of home computing in 1980.
Pong Parody (Score:3, Interesting)
Or scroll to the bottom of this page [cornponeflicks.org] for better resolutions:
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Simcity (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Simcity (Score:5, Funny)
Does anyone know the editor over there?
Re:Simcity (Score:4, Funny)
I "wiki-know" him.
He says he's a tenured professor of religion at a private university somewhere.
WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Informative)
Re:WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Informative)
Dune II was the first PC game (that I'm aware of) that had all the elements of today's strategy genre.
Warcraft was Dune II with orcs.
Command&Conquer was... the next version of Dune II.
Everything since has simply been a refinement of the same formula.
Re:WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing Warcraft had different was the humor and a fantasy instead of sci-fi storyline.
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You're off by about 12 years.
Dune 2 was a blatant knock-off of the earlier Sega Genesis game "Herzog Zwei." It is commonly believed that Stonkers, a ZX Spectrum game from 1983, was the first modern RTS; Stonkers has every game feature in Dune 2 other than network play, despite looking like ass. There are, however, good arguments for older games as modern RTSes missing simple features. Some people believe that Stonkers' game balance
Re:WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Insightful)
This has got the be the single most stupid thing I've ever read on slashdot.
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WarCraft (Score:2, Interesting)
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As I recall, Dune 2 didn't really have a plot. Command & Conquer would be a more appropriate comparison, but came slightly later than Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
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Re:WarCraft (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I played a hell of a lot more Dune 2 than I did Warcraft - who doesn't love running over Fremen with a harvester, or building rocket towers in the middle of the enemy base and watching the fun (yeah, the game had some issues)?
Dune 2 was a whole lot more significant than Warcraft, as it really broke open the genre (I'm sure it wasn't the first). Warcraft had a sense of humor, but other than that it had all been done before.
Not a bad list but. (Score:4, Interesting)
What about
Summer Games?
Combat?
Pong?
But two big thumbs up for Star Raiders!
Re:Not a bad list but. (Score:5, Interesting)
Aw, hell, this is as good a post to reply to as any.
Myst. It was artistically gorgeous, and it was rather unique in that it just tossed you in with no fancy instruction manual or tutorial. Hell, you didn't even know what the objective of the game. It was just kind of like, "Here, play this. Don't know what to do? Well, you're smart, figure it out."
Very cool game.
Re:Not a bad list but. (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed!
The puzzles in the game were fun, all if the "levels" were intricately designed and the atmosphere was other-wordly without being alien.
Shoot-'em-ups are OK for the kiddies, this was a game for adults. Perhaps that's why it wasn't on the list.
Re:Not a bad list but. (Score:5, Insightful)
dang, kinda makes you wish more artists made games.
Missing option (Score:5, Insightful)
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Life
I don't think board games were considered.
WarCraft series? (Score:2)
What are they smoking? (Score:5, Insightful)
How can Mario Bros 3 be considered one of the 10 most important games of all time when the original Super Mario Bros is the foundation is was built on in the first place? It wasn't even all that innovative if we're talking "grand scales" such as this (it was innovative, but not nearly the leap that the original was).
Then there's Donkey Kong Country, which to my knowledge popularized actually using 3d models for characters in a game.
The Legend of Zelda, anyone? Action/adventure one of those genres that never really took off or spawned a descendant that is considered widely to be the greatest game of all time? Ocarina is yet to be dethroned according to most critics (and gamers I know).
How about Doom? Or is FPS a fad?
I just find it hard to justify putting in WarCraft when it didn't even spawn the genre it "represents" in the first place, and on top of that not putting in the games that spawned much more prominent genres.
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Good call. Warcraft was a nice series and all, but hardly one of the most important games ever. Start Craft really set the standard for Multiplayer RTS while WoW has clearly set the standard for MMORPGs.
And as great of a game as Doom was, it's Quake that really was the break out point of FPS and the GP
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No way. Dune 2 was the first, and Warcraft was the first mass success. Starcraft came long after that.
while WoW has clearly set the standard for MMORPGs.
You are clearly too young. Ultima Online was the first (not counting MUDs), and Everquest was the first with the appearance of WoW. WoW has been (by far) the greatest success, but it didn't set the standards that it follows.
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Yeah, Doom makes no sense to me either, it was neither the first: Wolfenstien came out long before, nor probably the most popular: Quake or Halo probably recieve that honor. Wolfenstien was a huge hit... maybe not as much as Doom, but still large enough to be recognized in its spawning of FPSs. I'd also argue that Marathon and Rise of
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Most Important != First (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sure, but it was the first huge hit of that style of game. It spread through my school like wildfire when it came out, with ALL of the computer-game-playing kids obsessing over it for the longest time. This never happened with Dune, or... whatever other RTS game supposedly created the genre.
Re:What are they smoking? (Score:5, Informative)
While this is technically true, it is also true to say that very few people either played or remember the prototypes of the modern real-time strategy genre during the 1980s. Indeed, even the first game which mostly resembled the genre in its modern form (i.e. using the mouse to move units, gathering resources, etc...), Dune II from Westwood Studios in 1992, was not widely played and would not be immediately recognized by the average gamer. It was really the WarCraft series, beginning in 1994, from Blizzard that exploded the genre into the mainstream and cemented its long-term popularity. The Wikipedia article on real-time strategy [wikipedia.org] games really sums up the history quite nicely (including some obscure early games that I was previously unfamiliar with).
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Missing genres (Score:2)
- Street Fighter Hyper Turbo Super Deluxe vs. Capcom Marvel DC Comics Heroes edition-type fighting games?
- racing games?
- Final Fantasy / Dragon Warrior / Leisure Suit Larry, etc.?
- shooting games (Lethal Enforcers, T2, whatever-that-game-in-Back-to-the-Future-was-call
- niche non-Nintendo-licensed NES gems like "Bible Adventures"?
Holy crap these people are clueless (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
And most egregiously, where is Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave Adventure, to which Zork owes everything?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
My girlfriend and I play that all the time, and just after I hide the wumpus, she finds it. After she finds it, I always acknowledge with a "Nice Hunt" kind of thing.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks to the nested comment structure, I thought you were talking about "Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave Adventure"...
Which works just as well.
One of these is not like the others (Score:5, Funny)
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That makes some sense... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:One of these is not like the others (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh man, the hours I lost on those games on my 286(SWS) and Pentium(SWOS).
...shares the title with... (Score:3, Funny)
http://carvallo.ytmnd.com/ [ytmnd.com]
Zork? (Score:4, Informative)
Sensible World of Soccer? (Score:2)
And no Zelda? For shame.
Strange criteria (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called the tipping point. (Score:5, Informative)
A game that 80% of people played, that was the second game in a genre of which >50% of people ultimately played -- is going to be considered more important than a game that only 2% of people played, that was the first game in a genre that 100% of people play today. Popularity means a lot in importance.
The most important horror movie isn't the first horror movie.
Oh, and it's all based on DONKEY KONG, actually! :)
Wolfenstein was what attracted many people to id (Score:5, Insightful)
At least that's my opinion, I could be wrong... I'm not though.
Multiplayer (Score:5, Insightful)
I was a huge fan of both Wolfenstein and Doom (having wasted many hours of my college life on both), but I have to agree with their choice. Doom brought one huge factor into the FPS that Wolfenstein lacked: multiplayer capability. Before Doom, we used to hike up to Macintosh lab so we could play Bolo, a simple player-vs-player real network game where you fought each other in little tanks. It was actually a very fun and addictive game. But it was Doom that brought this concept to the mainstream. In Wolfenstein, once you solved the maps, there was no replay unless you downloaded your own level builder, but with Doom and multiplayer, you could play the same levels again and again. It made Doom highly addictive at the time.
I remember a couple friends of mine created a network of four computers in our dorm(at a time when they still gave out college credit to CS students who fought through the headaches of networking a couple computers), and for the next semester, there was a death match running until about 2 am every night. It was huge. Of course, later came Descent (a revolutionary game in its own right), Hexen, Quake, etc., but it was Doom that truly kicked off the revolution. Without multiplayer, it would have been a pretty substantial upgrade to the graphics, but the player-vs-player death match would change the gaming world forever.
Re:Wolfenstein was what attracted many people to i (Score:5, Insightful)
Bryan
Series... but no series (Score:5, Insightful)
Odd, why only pick Super Mario Bros. 3 and not the entire Super Mario Bros. series like they did with Warcraft? From the article...
Super Mario Bros. 3 added some interesting new elements to the side scroller, but I would argue that it didn't define the side scrolling genre. I think Super Mario Bros. 3 improved upon the genre defining Super Mario Bros. game, even if I enjoy Super Mario Bros 3 more. Could 'nonlinear' games be found before Super Mario Bros. 3? What about any RPG game like Dragon Warrior? It would have been better to just include the entire Mario series for their significance on the video game world. I think Mario 64 is far more revolutionary than Mario 3, but the entire franchises importance shouldn't be underestimated.
Cheers,
Fozzy
Space invaders? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Best game (Score:5, Insightful)
I have yet to have more fun gaming than playing Deus Ex (although a few games have come close).
To me that makes it an important game :)
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Rogue (Score:3, Insightful)
Dune 2 (Score:2)
Why Doom instead of Wolfwenstein? (Score:3, Insightful)
Duke Nukem Forever? (Score:5, Funny)
DNF is a very important game.. If it ever gets released, hell will instantly freeze over.
The criteria for greatness shifts (Score:4, Interesting)
My top 15 most important games... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Pac Man
2) Sim City
3) Wolfenstein 3D
4) The Legend of Zelda
5) Super Mario Bros
6) Mortal Kombat
7) Grand Theft Auto
8) NBA Jam
9) Tetris
10) Warcraft
11) Myst
12) Pong
13) Space Invaders
14) Tecmo Super Bowl
15) Final Fantasy
List hacked together... (Score:4, Insightful)
[God I'm old.]
Surely you actually meant... (Score:4, Informative)
The precursor to hack, which added at least a year to my sentence^Wstay at the University of Maryland in the 1980's?
The game referenced in the classic AI paper ROG-O-MATIC: A Belligerent Expert System [princeton.edu]?
What is the world coming to? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mercenary or Damocles?
*sigh*
What we need is a rubric (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, how do you compare Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers 3? Obviously Super Mario Brothers 3 was much more polished, but it only owes its success to the originality of the first. How do you compare a game with great graphics, sound and story lines, but whose gameplay is selecting from a menu over and over (like Final Fantasy VII) to a game that is almost pure concept (like Tetris)? How would you compare The Legend of Zelda, a great adventure/RPG game that everyone has played, with a game like Terranigma, a fascinating adventure/RPG game that was never released in the United States? Tomb Raider could be translated into a movie, which Civilization couldn't, do does that make it a better game?
For all of these questions and more, you have to have a rubric, a means of grading, that you can explain your choices. A rubric would include graphics, sound, gameplay concept, originality, cultural impact, popularity, immersiveness, technical achievement, amongst other things, so that we could fairly rate games against each other. Without that, its just tossing out suggestions and haggling.
No Populous? (Score:3, Insightful)
(And no Elite either? For shame)
Empire, the Wargame of the Century (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.classicempire.com/ [classicempire.com]
Yes, I wrote it
Marathon? (Score:4, Interesting)
There was nothing even remotely like it until after the realease of the second in the series, Marathon II Durandall. They even published the map editor with M2 and you could make your own levels and even modify the physics of the game. Monsters could be set to trigger on a variety of events, including each other, and it was possible to "pull" several other mobs so if you were spotted, by the time the mob found his way to you (and he WOULD find a way to get to you) he may have pulled several other mobs with him. MMORPG fans will recognize the "train" effect.
Mobs could even aggro each other. If a fighter's missile weapon hit a grunt one too many times the fighter would be on the grunt's aggro list and it was quite possible to get them sufficiently pissed off at each other that they would mostly kill each other.
Even with all that it had a flawless network play for up to 16 people. (admittedly poor internet performance, but LAN was smooth) Unfortunately multiplayer was only for the arenas, not for the actual game.
And the game... the depth of the plot and storyline was unheard of at that time. Even moving as fast as you could you might get to the end in a week. Most players took months to beat the game, and spent the next several months discovering the amazing variety of hidden rooms, secret weapons, and amazing powerups hidden on every level, of which there were what, 20? Large and unique, each map with a theme that set it visually apart from the other levels. (how could you not get tired of seeing the same room over and over and over again in Halo??) The different levels used different color pallates for the walls, ceiling, floors, etc, and all of them had a unique background sound.
Although it did not have dynamic lighting, individual map squares (3-8 sided polys actually!) could be lit individually, and even dynamically change by itself or due to player action. Ambient sounds were also present, and were variable by distance and in stereo - you could follow a sound to its source if you were wearing headphones.
It took almost four years for anything like Marathon I to come out on any platform, it was groundbreaking on every front. Doom was the only thing like it at the time and that was sad by comparison.
It occurs to me that in some ways Marathon was more real than even today's games. Think of a FPS game you like. Can you turn while you are falling? How is that possible? You can't turn while falling in Marathon. And ignoring the 999 bullets in your pistol, what happens after you have shot seven of them? You shoot #8 right? In marathon you see his hand come out, drop out the clip, jam in a new clip, and cock the gun. You can't shoot while you're doing that, so emptying a clip in preparation for a tough encounter was one of many strategy decisions you had to make. It was years before any other FPS decided that guns needed to be reloaded. Authentic sound FX too, and bullets that ricocheted off a wall would have one of several random visual effects result on the wall.
Not only did you have to worry about ammo and health, but some levels were hard vacuum and you had to manage your air as well. Certain mobs were resistant to certain weapons also, so you had to be peticular about who you used your limited fusion pistol shots on.
If something exploded on the floor beside you, you didn't just take damage. You were tossed up into the air and over
Where's Myst? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ingenuity of Myst was that it ushered in an era of adventure-puzzle games but in my opinion there wasn't even a close second until the sequel, Riven, came along. Some other notes of distinction attributable to Myst:
1. Prior to Myst's release on the Macintosh, CD-ROM drives were optional on computers. The timing of Myst's release with the emergence of Macintoshes that came standard with CD-ROM drives and the explosion in sales of Myst drove consumers to demand CD-ROM drives in their computers which quickly led to CD-ROM drives becoming standard equipment.
2. Myst was not originally ported to Windows and until it was, many consumers bought Macintoshes just so they could play Myst.
3. The use of Cinepak compression and other resource-conserving techniques resulted in a game that had outstanding still graphics and video for the time.
4. With the success of the independently developed Myst (by Rand and Robyn Miller) and, incidentally, the low-budget sleeper hit "The Usual Suspects", one could argue that the plot twist became a staple in entertainment culture... Games and movies developed suspenseful storylines often predicated upon a last-minute twist.
5. Myst was one of the few games where the objective wasn't merely to survive (you technically cannot die in the game).
6. The actual objective of the game, the concept, and anything beyond basic navigation is not even hinted at in the documentation. In fact, figuring out the objective of the game IS part of the objective of the game.
7. Myst was one of the first successful wholly-immersive experiences whereby visual and auditory cues were not merely window dressing but an integral part of understanding how your actions affect your immediate surroundings (e.g. listening to water flow in the Channelwood age to verify whether valves are set properly to power the machinery of that age).
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Then what is this in strict.dtd [w3.org], a mirage?
They're not even deprecated [w3.org].
Meanwhile, where's the WBR tag in that DTD? Did slashcode generate that?
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