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)
WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Insightful)
Missing option (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Strange criteria (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:pong (Score:2, Insightful)
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 year someone will discover those old games for the first time.
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.
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
Re:Emphasis? (Score:3, Insightful)
Space invaders? (Score:4, Insightful)
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 :)
Rogue (Score:3, Insightful)
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:What are they smoking? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Why Doom instead of Wolfwenstein? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.]
What is the world coming to? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mercenary or Damocles?
*sigh*
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.
Emulators (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not true: emulators only violate "copyright" law when (A) there exists DMCA-like anti-circumvention language in said law, and (B) the machine in question actually uses anti-copying mechanisms. So unless both of these apply, you're pretty much in the clear to write emulators for whatever you want.
Subjective lists are good for arguments--that's it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WarCraft vs StarCraft (Score:5, Insightful)
This has got the be the single most stupid thing I've ever read on slashdot.
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:What are they smoking? (Score:3, Insightful)
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:One of these is not like the others (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Best game (Score:3, Insightful)
No Populous? (Score:3, Insightful)
(And no Elite either? For shame)
Re:Not a bad list but. (Score:5, Insightful)
dang, kinda makes you wish more artists made games.
Re:Wolfenstein was what attracted many people to i (Score:5, Insightful)
Bryan
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.
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).
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).
Re:pong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:pong (Score:3, Insightful)
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:3, Insightful)
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? No. Just very early 80's. Unlike "video games", Infocom games were (at the time) as full immersion as you could get. It might seem funny now, but for me and many others the nostalgia runs deep.
Most Important != First (Score:3, Insightful)
WoW is the standard setter not for its timing, but for its total package. Technically, the game is very impressive, marketing, customer service, balance, web experience... it's not perfect, but it is the closest anything has come on a large scale. 8+ million players can't be wrong.
Anyways, it's after 1:00am, I'm half passed out writing this, so I'll retain the right to rebut any and everything I may have said come morning.
-Rick
Re:What are they smoking? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One of these is not like the others (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not that obscure if you're not in America, north of Mexico.