The Most Important Multiplayer Games Ever

Gamasutra's 'Quantum Leap' awards roll on, with game developers voting in the titles they see as the most important multiplayer titles ever made. These are non-massive multiplayer games that significantly advanced the pastime of playing videogames with other people. Some of the listed games are gimmes (Goldeneye, Tribes), but I thought an Anonymous submitter's comment about humble Pokémon was interesting: "Tajiri-san's introduction of the collect and trade concept opened the eyes of every developer, all of whom previously believed multiplayer was either head-to-head or cooperative. What Pokémon created with this breakthrough concept was a true sense of community centered about a game - a kinship among people which transcended the immediate game environment. With the inclusion of real-world Pokémon merchandise, and a constant flow of new, wicked-cute characters, it was easy for anyone to embrace the Pokémon lifestyle...not that I would ever admit to it." Any multiplayer classics you'd add to the list?

How about Pong?

[CrazyJim1]

Maybe not the first multiplayer game, but viewed as the first multiplayer game saw by the masses.

Re:

[pl1ght]

I think that list is fine, as long as they remembered to include Quake and Quake 3, i wouldnt argue about any other titles missing. While i know the Quake series really didnt attract everyone, quake 1 at least was really the first p2p via the internet fps to really just blow up the community. Quake 3 then brought legitmacy to professional gamers and the hard work that goes into becoming the best. While there may be "better" games not listed, few influenced the community as a whole as quake 1 and quake 3 d

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[Ucklak]

Sorry, Unreal blows Quake away.

The original Unreal had a multiplayer that was leagues better than Quake, Quake 2 and Quake 3.
That multiplayer bred Unreal Tournament that bore the familiar quips "Headshot" and "M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILL"

Unreal and UT (and subsequent) had alternate fire for weapons.
It had sniper rifle that Quake didn't. It's closest relative, the Rail Gun?? Sorry.
Where else could you get a blade gun and ricochet a round to get a head shot or even accidentally cut off your own head?

How about tel

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[king-manic]

Sorry, Unreal blows Quake away.


This is all a matter of taste. I never found UT to be all that different from Q2. It was a FPS that garnered a following, that rivaled the quake series. It looked good. Played well and had some innovations like alt-fire weapons. More like slight edge over a half year old game, innovations wise. Arguably Half life is really the one that blew Quake away and thats mostly because of counter strike. It soundly thumped Quake sales wise while UT is matched Quake 2.

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[Blondie-Wan]

Maybe so, but if the question is not about "the best" games but the most important, Quake may still deserve inclusion more than Unreal. Quake was there first, and had more influence in terms of igniting the whole multiplayer FPS phenomenon (so did Doom, for that matter).

Re:How about Pong?

[WhodoVoodoo]

I tend to agree, though the difference is that the original Quake spawned a huge online, multiplayer, and modding community by virtue of being timely, expandable, and versatile as hell as well as eventually giving to the greater community through the release of the source code. Also 3 years before Unreal. The article is referring to that aspect of the game. CTF, and RA are the big ones, but even a veeeery early Counterstrike relative was created on Quake, called Gooseman's Guns/Navy Seals. Refer to this interview here [firingsquad.com]

Quake definitely ignited the online FPS phenomenon, even though UT certainly refined it quite significantly, quake is responsible for countless mods, still played in some form to this day, the half-life franchise was built on the engine (as well as countless other games on Id engines) and who can forget The Adventures of Dank and Scud [pk.edu.pl]?

I'm uncertain about this, but I believe Quake was also the first game able to take advantage of consumer video cards for hardware acceleration.

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[Futaba-chan]

Other obvious omissions:

• Gauntlet
• MUD
• Netrek
• Snipes
• Warlords

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[Grey Ninja]

I always thought that Spacewar [wikipedia.org] was the first, made in 1961. But it appears that the oscilloscope Pong [wikipedia.org] predates it, being made in 1958. OXO would be the first game, but Pong would be the first multiplayer game. But the first consumer multiplayer game... would be Computer Space [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Kingrames]

It was called "Tennis for Two."

That might help you find more info on it.

Street Fighter 2

[Erioll]

Whatever you can say about "firsts" and "blood vs none" that happened in those days, SF2 was "the" game that popularized the fighting genre like no other. I'm not qualified to say what was "new" or "different" about it, but let's just say that in ONE SITTING with my friends and I, I MORE than covered the cost of the cartridge in games played vs quarters at the arcade. And to think the cartridge was around $80 in early-90s money, think of how many games we played. And that was HARDLY one session.

Re:Street Fighter 2

[digidave]

I wasted way too much of my life back then on Street Fighter II.

From my perspective, what SFII did to revolutionize video games is create a massive social aspect to visiting an arcade. It was not at all uncommon to see twenty or more people gathered around one arcade machine trying to keep track of who had their quarter in next. You could play complete strangers and have long conversations about the merits of Ryu vs. Ken, if Vega was a "cheap" character and how last week you saw some asian dude beat everyone while using Chun-Li.

When Champion Edition came out my friends and I traveled to arcades all over the city where we heard they had the game. I got kicked out of my favorite pizza parlor for "stringing" the game (taping a thread to a quarter to get tons of games).

I made more friends playing SFII than I did doing any other activity in my youth, including playing sports and going to school.

I have fond memories of the game, but I have no desire to buy the XBLA version of it. I've long since grown beyond those kinds of games.

How about...

[Pojut]

The original Gauntlet arcade game?

Or the simpsons/xmen-style arcade game? You get four people going at it...oohhhhhhh man, good times good times.

Re:

[Petrushka]

Totally agree about Gauntlet -- that certainly was a quantum leap -- not so much about Simpsons and X-men: good games, but they were in pre-existing genres.

I'd also pick out Wizard of Wor as an important game, if not terribly long-lived (or, arguably, a very good game either). The fact that you could approach the game either cooperatively or as PVP -- and that the game actually gave significant rewards for suddenly turning against the other player -- made trust a big issue, in a way which I didn't really s

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[Hatta]

What about NetHa... Oh yeah.

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[Pojut]

I remember the first time I played it. I was at a campground with my family, and they had an arcade that had some classics in it (for the record, this was in 1989. I was 5.) In it was Dig Dug, Pac Man, Gorf (which I ruled at, my dad had the stand-up arcade machine in his house), Gauntlet, and some side-scrolling space shooter (it's name escapes me)

I must have spent half of that entire week playing Gauntlet.

No Unreal Tournament?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

I somehow expected Unreal Tournament to be listed. End of 1999 was a big deal for FPS MultiPlayer, there was Quake3 and Unreal Tournament. Both served a very important part in the future of multiplayer FPS games.

And if it was up to me I would say Unreal Tournament was the more important one of the two.

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[scum-e-bag]

No.

Doom predates UT.

Doom spawned (scuse the pun) a new genere of the multiplayer game.

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[Thraxen]

True... Doom really kicked off the whole genre. But I'd say Q2 is where things really started to focus on multiplayer and then UT and Q3 pretty much did away with the single player campaign and focused entirely on mutliplayer. Sure, they have "campaigns", but those campaigns are basically just the multiplayer game with nothing but bots. Q3 did make the list, but I think UT is far, far better and launched at pretty much the same time. So I'd replace Q3 with UT.

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[ildon]

Quake is listed for the reason you're describing, which is basically creating the multiplayer internet FPS genre. The reason Q3 is listed is not for creating deathmatch, but for REFINING deathmatch. Q3 is still the most balanced, competitive, and skill-based tournament FPS in the market. That is why it's listed. UT didn't bring anything "new" to the table that was revolutionary when compared to the aforementioned Tribes and Quake, and was nowhere near as refined as Q3 for tournament play. Even after they tr

Here we go...

[Rob T Firefly]

Cue the swarms of "butbutbut their miserably tiny list didn't have my games! WTF???"

Here's a starter.. they mention two Quake games, but no Doom. WTF???

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[ivan256]

Doom? I don't recall the original even having multiplayer...

But if you're going to include two quake games, how can you not include Marathon?

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[Richard Steiner]

Sure it did, both via modem, and directly using a nullmodem cable.

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[PingSpike]

It also had native IPX network support, and later on...it could be played with a TCP/IP wrapper on the internets! I used to play those dos games on kali over my 14.4 modem back in the day!

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[Richard Steiner]

Doom Legacy has improved things tremendously. It uses a client/server model similar to that used by Quake, and it also added a LOT of new options, video modes, and a Quake-style command console.

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[mav[LAG]]

Doom's original native IPX support put out 100 packets per second before it was patched, more than enough to slow down the network to a crawl when we played. Fazel our network admin would wander down to the basement and mutter "I can't understand it - every lunch time the network falls over!" It was a widespread phenomenon; I remember a Cisco VP mentioning "Doom policies" in an interview and how companies should have them.

We never owned up. Forgive me Fazel, wherever you are :)

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[jandrese]

There was also a hack that allowed you to get up to 4 people in a deathmatch over the serial ports (and maybe a modem), by daisy chaining the computers together with null modem cables. It required that two of the computers have two serial ports (not a given in those days), but it worked quite well.

Of course there was always the jerk who wanted to join the game with his 486SX25 and kill everybody's frame rates. :(

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[Azarael]

The game mode coined 'Deathmatch' was first used in Doom. In the mid-ninties, most networks with 386's or better would have seen tons of Doom multiplayer action.

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[DimGeo]

The original Doom was the first FPS game with multiplayer. It was the first game to introduce the term deathmatch. It was the first FPS to have varying heights of floors/ceilings.

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[hal2814]

"The original Doom was the first FPS game with multiplayer."

I think you forgot about someone important [wikipedia.org]. Midi Maze is the reason there are so many qualifiers tacked onto Doom's "first" multiplayer achievements in the Wiki. Granted, Doom was more infleuntial to the modern FPS multiplayer, but if you really want to argue about who was more influential to the modern multiplayer FPS, I still would put Doom 2nd behind ROTT [wikipedia.org] which supported more players and had more modes of multiplayer, including the now-popul

MIDI Maze

[tepples]

The original Doom was the first FPS game with multiplayer.

Midi-Maze for Atari ST [wikipedia.org] was around in 1987, long before Doom (December 1993). Even the Game Boy and Super NES ports of Midi-Maze, titled Faceball 2000, were around before Doom.

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[drsquare]

Just because it was the first to exist doesn't mean it was the most important. Doom's multiplayer was pretty much a dud, Quake is the game that kickstarted the genre.

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[mfrank]

What? The day it came out on the net, four guys I worked with were playing multiplayer deathmatch on the corporate LAN after work. id used broadcast mode, though, and they got busted when an IT guy from another site twenty miles away drove over to see what the hell was messing with the network.

They got away with it by giving him a copy of the game. :)

Within a few days, there probably weren't many companies that weren't filtering port 666.

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[fistfullast33l]

Quake 1 definitely premiered multiplayer over TCP/IP, but Doom was really what kept BBSs alive, along with Descent. I remember playing both games over dialup to my friend's place way back when. Anyone remember DWANGO? Funny also that they mentioned Quakespy with no mention of Kali/Kahn which really were the first services that brought TCP gaming to the masses. I used to play 8 player Warcraft 2 over dialup via Kahn before Battle.NET was even in existence.

TA

[jcgam69]

Total Annihilation, the first 3D multiplayer strategy game.

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[madprof]

Still good fun!

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[Richard Steiner]

Best... RTS... Game... Ever... :-)

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[king-manic]

Best... RTS... Game... Ever... :-)

It had 3d before it's time and an interesting resource model. Other then that it was a pretty plain, RTS paint by numbers. Two identical side with different graphics. Over powered defene and a swarming monoculture mentality. It's C&C in 3d. The expansion helped a bit to differentiate the sides but it's much more about "hey, 3d is neat" then "best game ever!!!!111!1". A few years later War 3 does every thing except resource innovation better. Everything. Even custom unit

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[Richard Steiner]

Nah... Infinite movement/build/order queueing, semi-autonomous air units that are smart enough to repair themselves when they reach a certain damage threshold, open map and unit formats that make it easy for third parties to create new resources, and a rock-paper-scissors approach that makes typical swarm/rush attacks ineffective against a good opponent.

It's very different in feel and gameplay from C&C.

Check out TA Spring [clan-sy.com] sometime, BTW...

How about some other genres

[Itchyeyes]

Although there are some old school throwbacks, the majority of games on this list are first person shooters. What about other genres? I would think there should at least be a spot on there for an RTS like Warcraft 2 or Command & Conquer. Also, the article specifically does not include MMO's. Why? It hardly seems relevant to make a list of ground breaking multi-player games without at least mentioning Everquest or WOW. And of course there's the glaringly obvious omission of Counterstrike. I like Gamasutra, but this is a pretty poor list.

That's easy

[amliebsch]

Jones in the Fast Lane taught me and my friends everything we needed to know about success. That's why I'm the CEO of the factory, with a Post-Doc degree, and living on nothing but Monolith Fries.

UMMMM CS?

[otacon]

a little game called Counter-Strike?

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[badenglishihave]

I agree. Not that the games they picked aren't good choices, but CS really opened the door to computer gaming for non-geeks. So many of my friends who were strictly console got into Counter-Strike and subsequently play computer games to this day. From my point of view, it really changed the way people look at computers as a platform for easily accessible and innovative entertainment.

ummm NO.

[Seoulstriker]

Plenty of people played Counter-Strike, but it's just a rehash of old team-based multiplayer games, now with terrorists and counter-terrorists, rather than Red team and Green team.

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[ShakaUVM]

Counterstrike was a rehash of Team Fortress, but with less coding skill.

Doom 2

[CaseM]

Even before Goldeneye, Doom 2 was already "king" of multiplayer if you were tech-savy enough to get your two computers to hook up via a 14.4+ modem. Using a DWANGO server or something akin to it, you were able to get 4 players together via modem just like a lan...each (and this is the important point) with your own separate screen.

After playing Doom/Doom 2 on the computer I could never sit down in front of a TV divided into four quadrants and feel really good about playing a Deathmatch game where your e

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[NathanRF]

They're different animals, to be sure. I started out on consoles and had a heck of a time getting used to NOT being able to keep tabs. Certainly, it's a less realistic mode of play... I just viewed it as a particular gameplay element within the game. My friends and I actually rigged up four TVs, all running the same av feed from an N64, facing away from one another and each 3/4s covered with cardboard (it was the trashiest setup in video game history) so that we could play with 'solo' screens. I'm a big

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[k_187]

Heh, when I played goldeneye, I didn't look at my own screen unless I needed to aim. I do the same thing on split screen Halo matches.

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[tepples]

you were able to get 4 players together via modem just like a lan...each (and this is the important point) with your own separate screen.

Faceball 2000 for Game Boy had the same feature, with up to 16 simultaneous players.

After playing Doom/Doom 2 on the computer I could never sit down in front of a TV divided into four quadrants

That's good for a first-person shooter such as Doom or a real-time tactical sim such as Starcraft, but would a separate view per player benefit the players in a game like Bomberman or Smash Bros., whose ordinary multiplayer view is not split?

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[mnmn]

Real men just used common pins and speaker wire thrown across the street to deathmatch.

14.4 modem? Wow you guys were rich!

Just one?

[Avatar64]

Numerous MUDs for introducing the basic concept. Numerous Arcade / Home Console Classics for further introducing the GUI version of cooperative and adversarial interaction (e.g. Mortal Combat, Pong, Mario Brothers, Gauntlet...) If I had to choose one, I guess it would be Wizard of Wor, both cooperative and adversarial, and one of the first. I really would select Ultima Online except for the fact that it is an MMORPG and that is against the article's stated goal. I would not choose it for its MMORPG stat

Netrek

[Rob the Bold]

Netrek. It's multiplayer, it's online, it's been around forever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netrek [wikipedia.org]

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[C. Alan]

Man that game was addicting. I swear it cost me at least 0.2 of my GPA in college, but damm it, I ogged the base, and was NOT free beer.

Team Fortress Anyone?

[the dark hero]

Or even Descent 3. You can still find people hosting these games albeit in very thinned out quantities.

Joust, dammit

[Megane]

And get off my lawn, you damn kids!

Re:Joust, dammit

[Sponge Bath]

Megane: You see kids, you played a medieval knight flying around on an ostrich and avoiding pterodactyls.

Kids: Mom, grandpa is having acid flashbacks again.

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[KillerBob]

rofl...
@moderate(parent, +1funny);

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[SimHacker]

Alas, the Joust machine in the Metreon in San Francisco has a totally worn-out flap button... Now that's the sign of a good game!

-Don

My own uninformed opinions

[ReverendLoki]

I have a few that I don't see on the list...

• StarCraft - Not much needs to be said here. It took a lot of what already existed in RTS gaming and gave it multiplayer. Also of note is the fact that it managed to decently balance non-identical sides. As for overall impact, just look at what it's added to the multiplayer lexicon. Paired with Battle.net gave it a distinct leg up for finding other players over C&C or AoE or the like.
• Team Fortress Classic - There are many many great HL mods out there, a number of which you could pick out for this list, including the infamous favorite Counter-Strike and one of my favorites, Natural Selection (balanced disparate teams, and probably the first to combine FPS and RTS wel). But I really like TFC, so I'm gonna talk about it instead. It had the kit system like Tribes, but without the learning curve. I could join a game of TFC for a quick half-hour of enjoyment - in some other games, a half hour is about what it takes to get to your enemy. It balanced simplicity and strategy well.
• Dungeons and Dragons - OK, not necessarily a computer game, but still. It's influence on computer games has been incredible. A major inspiration behind nethack, almost all of the MUDS in the world, and who knows how many other dungeon crawling games.

But that's just my opinions. Not like I'm pulling down that high "games journalist"kind of scratch here...

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[nEoN nOoDlE]

warcraft 2 had multiplayer before starcraft did. What starcraft added was battle.net which made it easier to find matches, but I played multiplayer war2 for years. It was actually the first multiplayer game I ever played.

ahhh Kali

[BitterAndDrunk]

I miss good ol' Kali.

Re:

[ReverendLoki]

Actually, I believe Command and Conquer and Age of Empires also had multiplayer before Starcraft. It's just that SCs integration with Battle.net that improved upon it all. I did misspeak - I did not mean to say it was the first RTS with multiplayer, just to say that it broke new ground with multiplayer matching.

The other big thing was it's assymmetric balancing. In WC (I and II), each side is almost the same - there are slight variations in unit specs and of course they looked different, but really, e

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[Jack9]

StarCraft was arguably the best multiplayer game I have ever encountered. Extensible/Upgradeable, very high replay value, pretty/finished look, cheap to develop, networked with a matchmaking system. That being said, it's not eligible as being important. Nothing was done differently or brilliantly. It was a managerial milestone.

Herzog Zwei/Dune 2 were the most important of the multiplayer RTS genre as Herzog Zwei paved the way for Total Annihilation. Physics based projectiles, unit behaviors (seek out and re

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[ildon]

"TFC" was covered in the "Quake" section under Team Fortress.

Learn your history.

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[ReverendLoki]

I agree... in fact, it was playing the mods on a computer in a net cafe that convinced me to by HL in the first place. I know a lot of people were recommending HL as a great single player game, but I wasn't that interested in that at the time, but the multiplayer additions from the community drew me in.

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[ReverendLoki]

Ah, missed that bit under the Quake entry. I had played the Quake TF before, but to be honest, my twitch skills were not all that exceptional - I had to use tactics and strategy to compete effectively against some of the players reaction times. TF just didn't strike me like TFC, and that's probably part of the reason. To each his own - I just went and wrote about what I know.

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[Kentamanos]

TF (on the mini-GL port of Quake) was the reason I bought a Voodoo card back in the day and started paying for a dual bonded ISDN connection (128 kbps! which was not cheap back then). Such a great game and I totally agree about TFC not feeling the same.

Guarding the flag in "the well" as a sniper was loads of fun. Bonus points for sniping a potential thief in mid-air and creating what looked like a firework explosion of blood. :)

The great thing about TF was it's the first team based FPS that I remember havin

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[ReverendLoki]

You forgot the Engineer. I have fond memories of the intricate defenses and traps we would concoct to stave of the eventual base incursion...

I'm really looking forward to TF2 myself - and it will probably be the game (along with Portal) that will get me to buy HL2 Ep.2. It looks nice - the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] has some more info.

This list must be a joke

[Speed Pour]

To begin with, as another poster pointed out, it's limited almost entirely to FPS style or classic 1-screen-2-player arcades. This doesn't even scratch the surface of the multi-player games, and completely misses the fact that the genres are far more varied. Even within the list, it's missing necessary choices like Unreal Tournament and Counterstrike, two of the most influential FPS games to have rolled through history...yet we've got Quake 3 Arena? Not saying it was bad, just that it didn't break any ne

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[ostermei]

Leaving out Diablo is also insulting. If you include Tribes, it's absurd to leave out Diablo. This game paved the road for Everquest.

I can see why you (and others) would want to have Diablo on the list, as it was a very popular game (although I didn't bother picking it up until rather late in its lifespan, so the only multiplayer experience I encountered was thoroughly buggered by all the cheats people were wielding). However, saying that it "paved the road for Everquest" is not exactly accurate. Just be

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[Speed Pour]

I can see why you (and others) would want to have Diablo on the list, as it was a very popular game (although I didn't bother picking it up until rather late in its lifespan, so the only multiplayer experience I encountered was thoroughly buggered by all the cheats people were wielding).

That does seem a little dubious. Simply because you missed out on the more playable time frame doesn't mean it should be excluded from a list. If somebody figured out a way to hack the hell out of quake 3 arena a year or so after it came out, and you didn't start playing it until after that time, would it have still made the list? Just because a some people have a bad experience (or no experience) with a game, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be on the list. If that's the mentality, then the list should be

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[Thraxen]

I agree with most of what you said, but I have to say 'nay' to the idea of putting Mortal Kombat on there. I don't see how it's important at all. Street Fighter and Capcom defined the fighting game genre. MK is a cheap copy that threw in fatalities. The fatalities is where all the media and fan attention came from... and that really has nothing to do with how it plays as a fighter. It's just a flashy gimmick. Without that it would have been just another unknown fighter and we likely wouldn't have seen

M.U.L.E.

[SimHacker]

Wikipedia says it all:

M.U.L.E. [wikipedia.org] is a seminal multiplayer video game written in 1983 by Dan Bunten of Ozark Softscape. It was published by Electronic Arts. It was originally written for the Atari 400/800 and then was ported to the Commodore 64 and the Nintendo Entertainment System and to the IBM PC Jr.. While it played like a game, it was actually an economic simulation taking place on a small colony planet.

In 1996 Computer Gaming World named M.U.L.E. as #3 on its Best Games of All Time list on the PC.

Essentially, the game is an exercise in supply and demand economics that is set in space on the planet Irata (which is Atari backwards) and involves competition among four players. To win the game, the players not only must compete against each other, but they need to cooperate with each other for the survival of the colony. Central to the game is the acquisition and use of "M.U.L.E."s (Multiple Use Labor Element) to develop and harvest the player's real estate which can consist of: Energy, Food, Smithore (from which M.U.L.E.s are constructed), and Crystite. Players must balance supply and demand of these four elements (Crystite is available as an option during Tournament play only) as well as other events such as fires, theft, etc.

M.U.L.E. was revolutionary in the ease with which it allowed multiplayer interaction through a single game/computer console. (Its development came years before the advent of multiplayer Internet connectivity.) Though this failed as a trend setter at the time, the game is still heralded as the first game to make effective use of the multiplayer game concept.

The game was very popular in its day among certain groups. It did not become a bestselling title, but it has more recently become a favorite of retrogaming enthusiasts. Various clones for modern computers exist, the most recent commercial clone published in 2002. The original's addictive theme song by Roy Glover has been widely covered by remix groups.

Dani Bunten (previously Dan Bunten) was working on an Internet version of the game until her death in 1998.

Many game designers cite the game as one of the most revolutionary ever and an inspiration for many of their games. Will Wright dedicated his game The Sims, the greatest selling computer game of all time, to the memory of Bunten.

A modern version of the game entitled Space HoRSE was developed in 2004 by Gilligames and is distributed by Shrapnel Games.

Re:

[SydShamino]

100% agreed. The first thing I did when I saw this story was A) skim the article for M.U.L.E., then B) type "M.U" into page search on these comments. I'm quite pleased to find someone else already covered this with a well-modded post, as M.U.L.E. truly was the first great multiplayer game.

Marathon 2

[XxtraLarGe]

Marathon 2 was released for the Mac in Nov. of 1995, and featured multiplayer co-op & deathmatch, plus voice chat. It became cross platform game in 1996 when it was released for the PC. This game was light years ahead of the competition until Quake came out in June of 1996, which is probably one of the reasons M2 never quite got the attention it deserved.

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[Darkfred]

It never got the attention it deserved because.... (drumroll)... it was on the Mac. Despite the fact that it gets brought up in EVERY conversation about game history, none of us ever saw it, so it continues to rate a ~0 on the influence meter.

MU,CCOMBAT,USMK031

[Richard Steiner]

In 1979, there was NOTHING like sitting on an ASR33 connected via a 110 baud accoustic modem to one of the CDC timesharing systems we had access to (mainly MERITSS at the U of Minnesota and MTS [MECC Timesharing System]) and waiting the loooong 30 seconds for your lasers to cool before you can slam another Laser/Missle/Missle volley into your long distance opponent in real-time while a dozen or more other ships were hurtling around in space around you and shooting at each other.

There were also multi-channel

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[Teckla]

L2000M1M1

I have the FORTRAN source code for COMBAT. Let me know if you'd like a copy.

Re:

[Richard Steiner]

I might be interested. Clay (COSMOS) wrote his CCOMBAT/USMK031 version in COMPASS, I think, and he has a copy somewhere, but that isn't as easy to translate to other platforms.

What format is the source in?

Descent (I & II)

[RPI Geek]

The first multiplayer game I ever really got addicted to was Descent II over a serial link (this predated the time when computers typically had built-in NICs). My dad and I would sometimes fight each other and sometimes play co-op. I remember dialing in and using Kali to emulate a local IPX network so I could play Descent II with people from who-knows-where.

I never got tired of people's responses when they found out that I wasn't using anything but a keyboard while keeping up with the top players in each game B-)

Nice to see Bomberman. How about "Hunt"?

[Kris_J]

Nice to see Bomberman in the list, shame the screen shot is of the single player campaign. Anyway, plenty of people have already mentioned Doom, and frankly I don't see why any other FPS should be included. One person was also posted something similar to what I was going to post about MUDs, so that's covered. Anyone remember a text-mode top-down multiplayer unix game called "Hunt"? I reckon that should be in the list somewhere. As should Populous with its two-player null-modem option. That was fun.

Nibbles!

[RPI Geek]

2-player Nibbles was always a blast, especially if you'd seen Tron :-D

/ Double post... oops

Super Smash Bros?

[Andy Dodd]

While not as much of a contributor to "social multiplayer gaming" as Wii Sports might be, the Super Smash Bros. series definately started the whole "party game" trend that Wii Sports continued.

During my junior and senior year of college, many of my friends were of the opinion that for the most part, one should not watch TV or play video games at a party. Super Smash Brothers was the one exception - It got played at quite a few parties, especially my senior year. Like a previous poster's comments about Goldeneye for N64, it was able to keep a large number of people amused (not just the four actually playing the game) for rather extended periods of time. In fact, I recall one night when our neighbors (who were all close friends of ours, we intentionally got two four-bedroom apartments across the hall from each other) were hosting a party. Prior to attending, many of my apartmentmates decided to play SSB for a bit. Within an hour or so, most of the guests of the neighbor's party were either watching or playing the game in our apartment.

Of course, the fact that we were playing on my LCD projector probably had something to do with it. SSB is amazing on a ten-foot screen. :)

Yeah

[el_munkie]

I can't imagine the number of hours I clocked on that game. I really wish it had had a timer like Melee. In the dorm days we would regularly set the stock to 99 or the timer to the maximum and play a single match for hours. It never got old.

Since no one mentioned them...

[ObiWanStevobi]

Halo

I would say Halo at least deserves consideration. I think it helped bring alot more people to online FPS that wouldn't have made the plunge. It made online gaming easier than ever before. Other than impressive looks and sounds for it's generation, it didn't bring a whole lot new, but IMO, it didn't get anything wrong. It had plenty of user configurable game variants, good weapon selection (magnum was a bit strong), and reliable online play. Where I think it changed online play was by increasing t

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[Itchyeyes]

Actually, it wasn't until Halo 2 that the franchise adopted online multi-player. Halo CE, however did have LAN play for up to 16 players on 4 screens. Although nothing new for PC gamers, that was a big deal for console players who had been previously been restricted to 4 player split screen (not exactly the best way to experience a multiplayer FPS). If anything, I was a little miffed that they would include Goldeneye on their list but not Halo. Goldeneye is a great game, and a classic to be sure, but Ha

Tribes is listed. Good. Where's Unreal Tournament?

[Qbertino]

This article is pointless. I want my 3 minutes back.

Party Mix

[Stormwatch]

Party Mix [atariage.com], by Starpath, for the Atari 2600 + Starpath Supercharger add-on. Possibly the first party game ever, as well as the first split-screen multiplayer.

Descent - always missing from lists like these.

[M0b1u5]

Dunno of the author was too young to recall, but "Descent" is arguably responsible for developing P2P gaming, and for creating the first true 6DOF multiplayer environment. I think that counts for someting.

Plus, Descent 3, with its indoor-outdoor engine preceded Quake 3 by about 9 months - from memory.

Allegiance?

[aldheorte]

I recently came across a rather odd game called (Free) Allegiance:

http://www.freeallegiance.org/ [freeallegiance.org]

It's odd because it has a strange history to it in that it was originally a Microsoft game that was later open sourced. Seems to have a pretty dedicated, though small community, still running servers and improving the code base 7 years later. It's claim to fame seems to be an interesting mix of RTS and space combat, with separate interfaces for command and ship piloting. Anyone have any experience with this game

Lifestyle?

[KermodeBear]

it was easy for anyone to embrace the Pokémon lifestyle...

Sorry, but when Pokemon becomes a lifestyle you need to come up from your mother's basement and see the sun.

Speaking of, when did everything start becoming a "lifestyle" anyways? Eating a certain way is a "lifestyle". Recycling is a "lifestyle". Apparently, playing a video game is a "lifestyle". It sounds like a marketing gimmick of some kind.

Without a doubt the most important EVER

[macdaddy]

Sex. Now I know what you're think, Slashdot community. What the hell is sex? Allow me to educate you with a few [wikipedia.org] quick [sex.com] links [tinyurl.com]. Yes kids, it is a multi-player game, or at least it's more fun that way.

I just threw in that last one for kicks. Definitely NWS. Enjoy!

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wave Net

[Joe The Dragon]

was a cool arcade game with network play it's too bad that it was released before alternative broadband access was available so it needed a high cost T1 line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Mortal_Komba t_3#Ultimate_Mortal_Kombat_3_Wave_Net [wikipedia.org]

Re:The classic multiplayer 'game'

[otacon]

for the readers the article was intended for that is generally a single player game

Re:

[Cheapy]

This is Slashdot. The closest multiplayer game to sex that people have played here is using two hands at once.

Re:

[suso]

Diable - first multiplayer game I played that had a free online service, levels were randomly created, high customization factor and tons of loot

Everyone knows you meant Diablo. Actually, I think Diablo should be noteworth for its making player killing in RPGs popular (and troublesome). There was nothing like waiting at the entrance to the dungeon and typing "Hey, come on down to the dungeon and help me!".......... WHAM!

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[suso]

I played where people were bringing their "hacked" items online.

I never got the point of the hackers. They would get all their hacked items and put on their shield of godly fortress that protects you from everything and then they'd say "Ready to go kill some monsters?" Come on! I mean how much of a pussy are you that you're so afraid that your virtual character is going to get hurt a little or die. It was pathetic.

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[KillerBob]

Having lots of people play it doesn't make it revolutionary. Fact is that WoW is simply an upgrade/clone of EQ, which was an upgrade/clone of UO, which was....

They're just remaking the same game over and over again. If you're going to talk about MMORPGs, then I can really only endorse Ultima Online which started the whole genre, or GuildWars which did away with subscription fees. Neither was particularly revolutionary, though.

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[triffid_98]

I fully endorse Lord Gariott and his grand vision of a RPG involving PvP with naked miners, hacked crossbows and karma exploits.

If you're going to talk about MMORPGs, then I can really only endorse Ultima Online which started the whole genre, or

Re:

[ildon]

Believe it or not, Pokemon started as a Gameboy game in Japan, years before the card game was created.

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[jmorris42]

> And don't even get me started on the Pokemon card game. That was a retarded Bizarro world rip-off
> of Magic and I never saw its appeal.

Admittedly I don't really give a rat's rear about Pokemon, considering it retarded. But you can't really escape some exposure. (And there IS no safe exposure level.) On the fscking Pokemon cartoon it is pretty apparent they are just PLAYING the card game. So if the Nintendo versions are an improvement I say hurray!

Of course it does get worse, one of the cartoon/c