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The Ten Most Important Games

Posted by Zonk on Mon Mar 12, 2007 04:56 PM
from the a-good-place-to-start dept.
Entertainment Games
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.
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[+] The History of Civilization 106 comments
You may recall back in March, when a group of smart folks got together to form a game canon. They essentially nominated the ten most important games, ever. Gamasutra has begun a series of articles which will explore the storied history of each of these titles, and they've started with Sim Meier's Civilization series. Benj Edwards' history of Civilization begins with a rundown on the series itself, and wraps with a lengthy Sid Meier interview. Required reading, essentially. "Meier [is] comfortable with a legacy inextricably tied to Civilization: 'I think that if that's what's on my epitaph, "Did Civilization," that would be fine.' In musing about the fate of his beloved series, Meier finds himself satisfied with what the future might hold for the franchise: 'There's probably somebody getting ready for their first day of college that's probably going to be a part of Civilization in ten to fifteen years from now. I think it'll be around for quite a while.'"
[+] Independent Games Festival Finalists Announced 20 comments
GameSetWatch notes that the 2007 finalists for the Independent Games Festival have been announced. The IGF is an annual event meant to highlight and praise the work of independent game designers of all stripes; it's run by Slashdot Games editor alumni Simon Carless. Simon puts the spotlight on the Seamus McNally Grand Prize finalists, the 'best of the best' at this year's IGF. My vote goes to World of Goo: "Building off the concepts from Tower Of Goo, one of Kyle Gabler's projects from the Experimental Gameplay Project at CMU, the first game from Bay Area duo 2D Boy uses the hitherto unexplored structural ability of blobs to make an addictive construction-based puzzle action title. There's no release date or demo for the game yet (aside from Tower Of Goo, a kind of 'prequel'), but there's screenshots and a trailer on the official site."
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The Ten Most Important Games 25 Comments More /

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  • pong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mastershake_phd (1050150) on Monday March 12 2007, @04:58PM (#18322385) Homepage
    What no PONG?

    • Re:pong (Score:5, Informative)

      by SageinaRage (966293) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:05PM (#18322501)
      Pong is significant for bringing video gaming to the masses, and being the first large commercial success. This list is more for games of great cultural significance, artistic works deserving of praise. I wouldn't really include Pong, fun though it may be.

        • Re:pong (Score:5, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2007, @05:26PM (#18322843)

          What is Zork...
          I think you need to look around and ask yourself "Do I really belong here?"

        • Re:pong (Score:5, Funny)

          by textstring (924171) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:32PM (#18322931)
          It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

          • Re:pong (Score:5, Funny)

            by Tackhead (54550) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:32PM (#18322933)
            > What is Zork

            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, Insightful)

              by Threni (635302) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:55PM (#18323301)
              > My point being that you shouldn't need to google for one of the 10 most important games

              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.

          • Re:pong (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2007, @05:35PM (#18322981)
            It seems to be something of an underground indie hit.

            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.

  • WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Insightful)

    by moore.dustin (942289) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:01PM (#18322437)
    I am happy to see that they recognize WarCraft as the basis for which the success of StarCraft was built upon.

    • Re:WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Informative)

      by freedumb2000 (966222) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:23PM (#18322807)
      And I am not happy to see Dune II by Westwood Studios not beeing recognized as the basis for which the success of WarCraft was build on.

      • Re:WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Informative)

        by Z0mb1eman (629653) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:48PM (#18323177) Homepage
        No mod points, but hear hear.

        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. :p

        Everything since has simply been a refinement of the same formula.

          • Re:WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Informative)

            by Wah (30840) on Monday March 12 2007, @06:24PM (#18323743) Homepage Journal
            Dune 2 was primitive because it was the first "real-time strategy" game. And they had to put that in quotes on the box too, since no one really knew what it meant.

            The only thing Warcraft had different was the humor and a fantasy instead of sci-fi storyline.

          • Re:WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2007, @06:33PM (#18323899)


            It's not clear that Warcraft was influenced by Dune 2 at all;


            This has got the be the single most stupid thing I've ever read on slashdot.


  • Missing option (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Overzeetop (214511) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:09PM (#18322557) Journal
    Life

  • What are they smoking? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sciros (986030) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:11PM (#18322599) Journal
    And where can I buy some?

    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? :-P

    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.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by msauve (701917) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:14PM (#18322649)
    Where's Hunt the Wumpus? Where's Lunar Lander? Where's Star Trek? Pong?

    And most egregiously, where is Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave Adventure, to which Zork owes everything?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2007, @05:34PM (#18322965)
      "Where's Hunt the Wumpus? "

      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.
  • "Sensible World of Soccer"?

  • Strange criteria (Score:5, Insightful)

    by omnilynx (961400) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:18PM (#18322713)
    There's obviously something going on with the criteria that's not being mentioned in the article. The one that sticks out most to me is Super Mario Bros. 3, when that game is obviously based on Super Mario Bros. (1, of course) Similarly, Zork is based on the earlier Colossal Cave Adventure. Apparently part of the criteria is not just genre-defining but rather some sort of popularization of a genre. So, like any supposedly defining canon, this comes down to a matter of opinion on what is "important".

  • Wolfenstein was what attracted many people to id (Score:5, Insightful)

    by twolfe (235277) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:20PM (#18322745)
    Doom was basically just a graphics upgrade and subsitution of aliens for german soldiers. Doom/2/3, Quake/2/3, Return to Wolfenstein, Quakeworld (arguably the precursor to the Battlefield series), teamfortress, Duke Nuke'em, Unreal et al would never have existed without the popularity of Wolfenstein which resulted in hundreds of thousands of pirated installs globally and raised the perception of FPS as a genre to levels that enabled all of these a viable demographic in the business.

    At least that's my opinion, I could be wrong... I'm not though.

  • Series... but no series (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fozzyuw (950608) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:20PM (#18322753)

    Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990), [...] Warcraft series (beginning 1994)

    Odd, why only pick Super Mario Bros. 3 and not the entire Super Mario Bros. series like they did with Warcraft? From the article...

    Mr. Grant, the editor of the popular Web site joystiq.com, who selected Super Mario Bros. 3, said the game was important for its nonlinear play, a mainstay of contemporary games, and new features like the ability to move both backward and forward.

    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

  • Best game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 26199 (577806) * on Monday March 12 2007, @05:34PM (#18322959) Homepage

    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 :)

  • Duke Nukem Forever? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Matt_R (23461) on Monday March 12 2007, @05:52PM (#18323243) Homepage
    What about Duke Nukem Forever?

    DNF is a very important game.. If it ever gets released, hell will instantly freeze over.

    • Re:Not a bad list but. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KingSkippus (799657) * on Monday March 12 2007, @05:38PM (#18323049) Homepage Journal

      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.

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