The Most Influential Games In History? 254
Kotaku reports on a list published recently by Guinness World Records which credits Super Mario Kart as the most influential console game in history. "Tetris ranks in at number two, according to the list, and the original Grand Theft Auto is in the number three spot. Where does Super Mario Bros. turn up? Way down at number 17, beneath Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." Several other franchises have multiple entries on the list, such as Final Fantasy and Resident Evil. What console games have influenced you the most?
Mario Kart?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Space Invaders (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No oldies (Score:5, Interesting)
And where is Lords of Midnight? And leaving Elite out of that list is like leaving Ms Hilton off a paparazzi's to-do list.
Re:Mario Kart?? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's plenty wrong with that list. One that struck me: THREE grand theft autos on the list. Another: Lego Star wars, the complete edition. It's nuts.
Re:No oldies (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with the sentiment of the summary. IMHO the most influential *console* game of all time is without a doubt the original Super Mario Bros (i.e., the one that came with the Nintendo Entertainment System).
As an experiment to confirm this, anyone could go to their closer park and ask any passerby to try to recognize a song, first you could sing (or how is it call in English when you only do "ta ta ta taratata tata ta ra ta..." to the rythm?) the song of "Mario Circuit" and then the song of world 1-1 of SMB. Guess which song will be recognized more?
uhm.. (Score:1, Interesting)
*sigh* (Score:3, Interesting)
BioShock without System Shock series? (And since BioShock is such a recent game, exactly what has it had the chance to influence yet?)
Advance Wars, which is just a glorified Empire [wikipedia.org]?
Grand Theft Auto series picked because it's the "most controversial series"? Ever heard of this little game series called Doom?
No mention whatsoever of the Ultima and Wizardry series, which laid the foundation for pretty much all of the CRPGs ever?
*sigh*
Re:No oldies (Score:4, Interesting)
No, a first person shooter would give you full control of the character's movement in a 3D environment. Games that let you control a target reticle, but give you little or no control over your character's moves and the game's scrolling -- such as Operation Wolf, Dynamite Duke, Virtua Cop, Cabal, NAM-1975 -- are shooting gallery games.
Re:What about... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, no.
- Many later games for the Atari 2600 included bank switching hardware.
- Perhaps all but the simplest games for the NES used MMCs. [wikipedia.org]
- Several early SNES games used DSPs. [wikipedia.org]
Re:No oldies (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mario Kart?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Super Mario Kart, the original for the SNES, is definitively not your average casual game, quite the opposite. Some characters such as Bowser or DonkeyKongJr are pretty much completly undriveable unless you have some real skill and tracks like Rainbow Road were the tiniest mistakes is punished by a huge time penalty isn't exactly what you expect from a casual game either. Now the Mario Karts that followed after it were very much tuned for casual gameplay, the insanely difficult Rainbow Road got a balustrade, making it completly harmless and boring and the hard to play characters got a lot easier and the overall singleplayer difficulty went down an order of magnitude.
Anyway, calling it the most influential game in history might be bullshit, but so would be calling any game, different games had influence in very different areas. However that doesn't mean that it influence wasn't huge. You just have to look at some pre-Super Mario Kart racing games to see that there was quite a bit of difference between what came before and what came after it. Super Mario Kart pretty much nailed all those elements that you consider given these days, replay, ghost driver, weapons, 3D track and plenty more.
Re:No oldies (Score:4, Interesting)
Then for example the Ishar [mosw.com] and Eye of Beholder games are FPSes too?
True, they are from a "first person" perspective, but the gameplay is nothing alike.
In Ishar and EOB for instance, the concept of having to shoot at a target with precision is completely inexistent. You have a sword equipped, you click the sword icon, the character swings the sword, and the hit or miss is determined by a virtual dice roll. Being successful at Ishar 3 is a completely different skill as being successful at Quake 3, and mostly a matter of long term thinking, correct selection of equipment, using the right spells, doing the right thing at the right time, etc. The insane reflexes needed in Quake 3 to run and shoot precisely the instant an enemy appears are of absolutely no help.
Shooting gallery games also are nothing alike a FPS. They invoke different emotions even. In a shooting gallery you normally can't retreat, can't run away and hide behind a corner, can't run after a wounded enemy, can't have a battle between snipers, or to snipe targets from large distances, etc. Shooting galleries are very linear, and things like several people running around like crazy and shooting missiles at each other are inexistent.
Ahem.Console had BlakeStone,HalloweenHary,CmdrKeen (Score:1, Interesting)
All these were on console. Per scale, Blake Stone was more popular than Wolfenstein 3D and Doom combined. Commander Keen was the kindergartner game made by the Johns of ID Software. What topped all of these was moreso Halloween Harry than all of the others; it rocked more than Duke Nukem 3D, and without the gore.
I've seen all these on sonsole, customized through Apogee software and they all rocked.