Genre-Defining Games? 231
Gamasutra has up responses from its frequent feature, the question of the Week. This week's question was a call for the best of the best. "For any genre of your choice, what is the game that defines that genre for you?" From the article: "For the RPG, simply Final Fantasy 6. It has the best story, greatest variety of characters, tons of different music, and added many secret areas. It was the first game to truly to define a real experience of an RPG to the player.
-Anonymous" What games would you refer to as Genre Defining?
Re:Genre Defining? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Strategy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Zork, you insensitive yougins! (Score:3, Informative)
Someone actually mentioned rogue! (Score:4, Informative)
But by the standards they used for choosing the other games, I would have to say that Nethack really defines the genre that rogue started. More so even than Diablo.
I did like this, though:
"Best game ever - Nethack"
-John Root, id Software
Genre-defining games (Score:5, Informative)
Adventure:
I don't see how anybody can talk about genre defining adventure games without at least a nod to Zork. The license may have been driven into the ground since then, but it still has vast significance. Moving forwards, I guess the next big genre-definers were the Sierra adventures. I'm not sure which of these actually came first, so I'm just going to name the Police Quest, Space Quest, Kings Quest and Leisure Suit Larry games. Next came the Lucasarts games; I'm thinking particularly of Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max here, although Monkey Island also merits a nod. With the "no deaths" gameplay and the quirky humour, I think these basically represent the high-point of the genre. Finally, the Syberia games deserve a nod for trying to resurrect the genre on modern hardware.
First Person Shooters:
Wolfenstein3d and Doom were probably the big early genre-definers here. The former basically introduced gamers to the concept, while the latter really showed what the genre could do in terms of atmosphere and adrenelin. Quake probably represented the biggest technical advance, and hence has been massively important in defining the genre, but its single-player gameplay felt like a massive step back from Doom. Of course, it also popularised the idea of online gameplay to an extent that none of its predecessors have managed. I don't actually see Half-Life (or its sequel) as being particularly genre-defining... they were just examples of existing concepts done very well; they don't bring anything new to the genre.
Action/Platformers:
The early Mario games are obviously the most significant influences here, although I think Sonic also deserves credit for bringing a sense of fun to to the series (at least before the hideous 3d incarnations) that Mario never quite had.
Racing:
I think the most significant early racing game has got to be Outrun, which was massively popular in arcades for a while, with its big, shaking cabinet. Hard Drivin' was also significant; it had a more "realistic" feel than Outrun and its clones (despite the insane stunts) and I think modern racing games ultimately owe more to it than they do to Outrun. In the modern era, I think Ridge Racer was really responsible for bringing the genre onto modern hardware, while the Gran Turismo series have pretty comprehensively established the racing-sim category.
RPGS:
Ok, this is the section where I think the contributors to the article get it most "wrong". Very disappointing to not see a single nod towards the Ultima series. These defined the whole non-Japanese RPG world up until the early/mid-90s, even if the series did have a pretty dire ending. Of course, Ultima Online was also the first really successful MMORPG. Moving on to more modern games, it's probably right to recognise Baldurs Gate and its sequel, as they revived the fortunes of the "Western" RPG at a time when they were pretty low indeed. On the Final Fantasy front, I don't actually think VI is worthy of recognition, even though it's the one the fanboys like to drool over. It was essentially IV or V with a better story. I think you have to either point at II, which was the first to have any real story at all, or at VII, which was the first time that Square had the technical resources to do their story justice. Diablo probably deserves a nod as well, for largely inventing the action-RPG genre.
RTS
It's sad that so many people picked Starcraft here. Successful though it was, I fail to see how it defined the genre. Obviously, Dune 2 and Command & Conquer were the really important titles; I think C&C was more so, because it introduced the now-obligatory drag-click system, as well as multiplayer. Total Annihilation should get a nod for proving that RTSes don't have to look like crap.
...because Gamefaqs is *always* right. (Score:2, Informative)
It's a 1994 game.
Though the date you provided is eerily close to Everquest's release date -- Which should have been your first indication that maybe they had made a mistake.