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The Top 15 PC Games Of All Time
jerkychew writes: "The UK Web site Gamespot recently released its list of the 15 most influential PC games of all time. It's a pretty extensive and well-prepared list, covering the obvious games, as well as a few I had forgotten about. The article can be found on their Web site."
I think that an honorable mention should go to the RTS Gangsters. If nothing else just for concept.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
>(Plus, you need[ed] a central server for Novell networks...)
Just a nitpick, but you could play IPX/SPX games without a server. Me and my university roomies did a helluva lot of IPX/SPX Doom at home, no NetWare server at all.
But yeah, the NICs weren't cheap, and the hubs were outrageous $$$, so it was coax all the way. It still amazes me that I can walk into the mall and buy a cheap hub.
Yeah... And Lemmings!
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
I mean how can Half-Life, Quake and Doom be influential? All of the were improved copies of castle Wolfenstein.
Games missing:
Rogue: Ancestor of all turn based role playing games, nethack, diablo....
Bard's Tale: First great first person role playing game
Elite: First 3D vector graphics game which combined commerce and battle.
Infocom's Zork or Adventure: the first adventure games
Super Mario Brothers: Restored arcade machines
Way of the exploding fist: One of the first great combat games (Tekken...)
Mule, Pirates: Action and economy in one game
Fort Apocalypse,
Pole Position: First car racer with 3D (sortof) graphics!
Pong: First coimmercial game
ARCHON
The guy who made the list was not a day older than 20, and has absolutely no clue about the old classics from the eighties. I mean Wing Commander was nice and maybe influential, btu it was an Elite rip-off.
Moritz
I credit tetris with popularizing the whole genre of puzzle games. It spawned more clones than any other game I can think of, due to it's simplicity and addictiveness.
I'm not surprised it didn't make this list. The list wasn't a survey of PC gaming, so much as a subset of PC gaming for the teenage boys who comprise the most avid members.
Steve
I know from playing EverQuest, that this was a hugely addictive game (just ask my ex-wife, ex-boss, ex-friends, j/k). Since it's so recent I don't know if you can say it's one of the "most influential games" of all times, but I think if you look at a similar list 5 years from now, EverQuest will definately be up there.
If shoppers shop, and buyers buy, what do customers do?
But where's Leisure Suit Larry? :) I mean, come on, I started off with the "classic" adventure games, but Larry got me "gripped", so to speak, on the whole computer gaming scene.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Total Annihilation should replace Dune on the list. I know dune started the whole RTS thing but TA has changed it in a way unduped by the creators themselves. TA: Kingdoms sucked and was lacking many of the quality landscapes that TA brought us. I also don't agree with Half-Life. I didn't enjoy that game at all. In fact it made me realize why ID was in the lead for first person shooters. There's no reason for a storyline. What's the point. All the built in levels are just prep for online play.
Who moderated that as offtopic? Impossible Mission was the first c64 game with digitized voice, it was a technical marvel for the day and a lot of fun. I remember cranking up the volume on the TV and jumping off platform after platform so I could hear the guy's scream fade off into the bottomless pit.
AAAAaaaaaaggghhh.....
AAAAaaaaaaggghhh.....
AAAAaaaaaaggghhh.....
The thing is, doesn't "influential" mean "people played it"? Being completely honest with myself, I'm not too entirely sure that anybody besides me and my roommate played Maze Wars. Not too sure how influential that makes it.
OK, Firstly, the actual article claims its the "15 Most influential games of all time" therefore NOT PC only. Which begs the question, which deserves to be there more... Half-Life or Pac-man? Tomb Raider or Space Invaders?
I think you can see what I'm getting at...
I think the most influential games list, would include only a single game from each genre. That single game need not be the "first" in the genre... but instead, the one that gave it a kick-start. (Catacombs 3D was the first FPS, but DOOM, Wolf3D and Quake gave the FPS genre the momentum it has today)
I'm pretty amazed Tomb Raider made it onto the 15 most influential... I reckon I could think of 15 games not listed that were more influential than Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider's marketing was influential, not the game.
Platform games != Console/arcade games
Platform games == games in which the main character jumps from platform to platform.
Examples of platform games:
Tomb Raider is on Gamespot's list. It's arguable whether Tomb Raider is a platform game because platformers are usually cartoony whereas Tomb Raider approaches realism, with natural ledges and realistic, though slighty exaggerated, proportions. Some people would say the realism puts it in its own genre, but I consider TR a platform game, because you jump from platform (ledge) to platform (pillar).
The 3D platformer started, as far as I know, with Mario 64, and the differences between it and Tomb Raider can all be traced to the fact that TR is grounded in the real world. Thus Tomb Raider is not influential because the style broke new ground -- it's on the list simply because it popularized the genre and expanded the audience, allowing great games like Soul Reaver and Indy & the Infernal Machine to exist, and because Lara Croft had such a huge spillover into the mass media -- arguably the biggest ever.
The reason that no other platformers are mentioned is because the PC hasn't produced any other influential or ground-breaking platform games. Commander Keen and all of Apogee's stuff is great, sure, but you can't say it hadn't been done before. Consoles and arcade machines are the source of ground-breaking platform games. This is part of the reason why people confuse 'platform games' with 'console games.'
Hasn't anyone learned yet that gaming magazines have sucked for the past six years? Computer Gaming World was nice before Ziff-Davis bought it up, then down the hole it went!
This list has some good choices and many bad. Influential is a hard word to pin down: I'd like to believe it means a game that spawned many of the cliches for a genre or outright made one themselves.
Going down the list... Wing Commander still has its claws on space sims now: Whilst the storyline has slowly been removed over time, the gameplay style has been the same. This isn't technically a good thing, as any game after WC1 lost strategy and basically got to 'Get the lead indicator in your reticle and shoot.' At least games like Terminus went past that.
Ultima 3 I can't disagree with, although I think U4 was better about it. Can't disagree with Alone.
Ultima Online? It was the first 'massive multiplayer' game simply because it had the funding and marketing for it. Otherwise it's essentially a big MUD, and a poorly designed one at that. (That Evercrack is another poorly designed one is of no surprise, so I guess you could say the influence is there.) I cannot disagree too much, but this is another influence I wish we'd get away from.
Tomb Raider? Yay. It's third person. It's 3d. It had mass market appeal for no apparent reason whatsoever besides topheaviness. It must be influential. Cultural, indeed. Even they state that it had been done before on consoles, they were just the first for the pc.
Falcon I can't comment on. SimCity is unarguable in its influence, although clones are far and wide, despite its influence towards today's realtime 'strategy' games. (I don't know why that wasn't mentioned there... It's there if you look.)
HALF-LIFE?!?!?? Uck. Half-Life was Quake with a litshoad of scripting and movie sequences. I guess all I can say about it is that it was one of the first to bring things to mass market appeal; most of what had happened there had been done before and done better under less popular games.
Can't disagree with Civ.
Diablo? There have been virtually no spinoffs of Diablo, it hasn't influenced any of the RPGs out there now, and it was a cheap ripoff of nethack (Blizzard admits this) in the first place. This doesn't deserve a spot.
Dune 2. Yup, and RTSes haven't changed all that much since. KQ4? I thought Lucasart's were better and more influential towards adventure games on the whole, but oh well. Myst is a big'un, but there haven't been many offshoots so much as staking out a genre for itself.
Doom. Can't argue there; Doom is the one that brought actual levels of 3d (well, 2.5d if you ask me) to games. It was a real eye opener, and all id games following it were the same, only lamer.
Quake brought multiplayer and scriptability to a new level, as well as the console. You can see every one of these in every FPS since.
And that's that. It's kind of sad how few genres there really are these days when you look at it. Not many have really been brought to view; I can think of a few games that deserved spots that are still around today. Oh well.. Flame away on my opinions. ;)
I got yer name A-n-o-n-y-m-o-u-s C-o-w-a-r-d...
You think you're so big.
Oh if I had my mod points now I'd...
What? I have to wait five days for my mod points? But I'm angry now!
This
I guess they hadn't heard of Commodore or Atari, or the myriad of even older companies.
It's too bad Wizardry didn't make it on that list. That was THE defining role playing game for me. Mapping out the levels, building up characters, fighting monsters. That was the first time I've seen that in a game. Fight Fight Fight, Parry Parry Parry...
And what about Lucas Arts Monkey Island series ? Or their 1998 Grim Fandango. Every game lucas arts makes is a breakthrough. Monkey Island was a 256 color game in 1989! Not to mention Day of The Tentacle, a full talking game in 93 or 94...
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Scorched Earth. HELL YES.
...customize the "talk" files. I thought they were a little too tame. ^_^
The first thing I'd always do was
This is a Chao. A Chao says "Mu."
No sports games made it to the top 15 here. Althought Quake/CTF MIGHT be considered a sport since CTF is played in real life.
Deer Hunter and Test Drive were among the runners up, though no basketball, football, baseball or soccer games, made it in either list.
Hmmmmmmm. I wonder what this says about the geek community. I for one like it!!
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63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Other AlleyCat players? Wow! That rocks. I love the theme music.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
I thought Wolfenstein 3D was an Apogee game, not id Software.
I definitely think Elite deserves a place in this list. Another game I think worthy is the original Might & Magic. IIRC, it was the first role playing fantasy game with a first person perspective.
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For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
The list was "most influential" and while GPL certainly is one of the best racing sims ever, it has had almost ZERO influence on the genre simply because it is too difficult of a sim for the mass-market. Papyrus is just now getting around to using some of the foundation of GPL in another sim (N4), so GPL has had very little influence on other products even from the company that created it. Perhaps when a few of the high-end vaporware sims hit the market this year (World Sports Cars for example) then we'll see some other sims with a physics model close to what GPL offers.
I haven't read anything on UK Gamespot site, so let's see hows my conception of this differs from theirs. Further, I'm putting in numbers, some games you just can compare them to anything.
Wolfenstein 3D: Everybody, I think, will agree with that: no Wolfie no doomie, no quakie, no unreal no anything... Well, maybe, but Wolfenstein is one of the first succesfull First Person Shooter.
Dune: I'm not even thinking with this one.
Civilization: Same as above.
Ultima Online: I'm not a freak of this game, but hey it got some style other games don't.
Populous: All I remember from this game is incredible amount of sales it generated for it's time.
King Quest: That's the reason why i'm a geek. Spy Hunter: That's an old one.
Prince of Persia: The game deserves the spot.
Homeworld: This is too ground braking.
Myst: I'm not stating any reasons.
Test Drive: That's the first driving game I've played.
Gato: ha ha remember this one, I played this classic submarine game on my XT.
Sim City: I think every single "sim" game comes from this one.
X-Com: for the merc turn based genre, I think this is the first one.
Flight Simulator: I played that on my commodor 64 back then.
I think that's it, now let's see that gamespot article...
Somebody else pointed out that the inclusion of Doom and the exclusion of Wolfenstein 3D is ridiculous, and I've got to back this up. Additionally, leaving out King's Quest I is most unfortunate. It spawned a whole genre of games, and also brought in a whole new type of gamer.
-Waldo
They forgot American McGee's Alice! I am sorry, it might be a new game, but for anyone who has played it, you can agree with me..... It is one badass game. I have never seen so much creativity put into level details ever. Does anyone else feel the same?
Castle Wolfenstein wasn't on there.
That was my first FPS, I'm also supprised Another World wasn't on thier (come on, you remember it, the game where the guy gets teleported to another planet, and the first level is super hard cause you got to run from this lion thing that chases you.)
I still play that periodically, its a pretty awsome game, and the graphics aren't too bad on a p2 400 either. I tried to play it on my 386 laptop, but it sucks on that.
BTW, does anyone know of a Java2 compiler (preferably free), which will work on a 386 sx, and be small enough I could transfer it over on Floppys?
I want it because I got a book on coding in Java for christmas, but want to be able to work elseweres besides my desk.
I only played Thief a little bit and found it boring. I'd be interested, seriously, to know why you find it more influential--whatever that might mean--than, say, Wolf3D or Doom (or whatever you'd take off the list to make room for Thief). What subsequent games has it had an effect on?
Global Thermonuclear Warfare
The only way to win is not to play at all.
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Agree. King's Quest was one of the best.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Good to see Falcon 3.0 on the list. It's a shame that this is a dying genre. There's simply no real market for realistic flight sims.
Defecation occurs.
Allright, alright. First of all, everyone's going to have a different list of games they think are the most influential so bickering isn't necessary.
I would like to suggest that Rise of the Triad (aka "ROTT") by Apogee has been more influential than a couple of the ones on the top 15 and several on the runners-up list. I would also like to back this up with evidence. There are too many reasons to post here, so just check out this great article written by Kevin Bowen: ROTT in Hell.
I am still waiting to join the class action lawsuit against Microprose. I suspect that the diversion of time from productive pursuits to Civilization was the real cause of the 91 recession. I know it affected my productivity. Orson Scott Card wrote that it delayed the release of at least one of his books. If that guy wins his cell phone case, I am going to have give him a call and get the ball rolling.
I was a little surprised at selecting Dune II over Warcraft. I had never heard of Dune II, but Warcraft was a huge. I guess I have to respect their claims of influence.
I can only think of one game that held a powerful influence over me that did not make the list, Zork. I don't know anything about gamespot, but is it possible that some of the contributers to the list hadn't been born yet when Zork was released? Does PC mean IBM-PC compatible or does it mean personal computer?
I'm on a very slow connect and they want me to load up all their ads and images for each game when all I want is a list... could someone help out a slow brother?
'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
I've found a handful of gems at the dollar stores. Unfortunately, Tulsa, OK, really isn't a software mecca, and the good games don't always make it to the dollar stores, since they really didn't get here in the first place.
BTW, Masters of Orion is very cool, but showing it's age. You may need some skill at getting the old DOS games to work, and I had to mess around with sound drivers, etc. Still, it's nice to see where games like Stars! got their start.
System Shock I and II were good games, but not influential. Their genre had already been established.
What? What games established the RPG FPS before System Shock? What FPS had a full, crowd pleasing plot before System Shock?? What game used sound to establish fear as in System Shock II (it was the sound that made that game scary)?
Look at Deus Ex (also done by Warren Spector)... what a fantastic game that is! Warren Spector breaks the barriers of game genre's. System shock series combined the action of a FPS, and added the intricate strategy and skills of a RPG. Deus Ex allowed for at least three solutions to every puzzle (because it is another RPG FPS). These games will influence every new FPS that comes out.
People don't want to play a straight shooter like Quake anymore. They need something else, and I think System Shock broke the barrier for FPS. Because of System Shock, FPS aren't just kill everything in site, and collect keys to get to the next level. Halflife is a great FPS because it had an excellent plot, but SystemShock was the first FPS to have a good solid plot. Look at Counter-Strike, and Unreal Tournament (sure, UT has Deathmatch mode, but it has a bigger population in the other modes).
System Shocks broke the ground on making a FPS more than just hack and slash.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
PC does not have to mean IBM PC.
Fuzzy
I'm glad to see the idea of an Angband interview getting modded up. There would be two good results:
1) We'd actually get to show our appreciation, get some questions answered, and get to see what these programmers are doing now,
2) Everyone would be reminded how good this old-school stuff is, and some of the younger slashdotters could get hooked.
That being said, do you think there would be a measurable effect on the economy if all the techies started playing Angband / Moria / Rogue-like games all at once? Maybe Greenspan would start talking about Binary Download indicators, and their effect on productivity, blah blah.
Now I want to see the top fifteen console games of all time. Super Mario Bros., anyone?
Oh no oh no oh no.
Thanks for the link to the Underdogs. I can't believe I never found it before. Also, thanks for causing me to lose my free time for the next three years or so.
Myst was never, ever a game. It was a pretty picture slide show masquerading as a puzzle. Just because people have been lumping the words game and puzzle together for years does not mean the two are similies now.
A true game allows one to redefine the rules and change the game into something new. A puzzle will always be the same thing. One may assemble it in an infinitude of ways, but the end is always the same (or the same set of endings, as in Myst). Myst was even more restrictive than an average puzzle - there were a few "story arcs", but that was it.
Quake, specifically Quakeworld, was a game far more true than Myst could ever hope to be. QW allowed people to create their own games and their own worlds. The article on Gamespot is slightly accurate - there were at one point more people playing mods such as TF, RA and CTF than regular DM, and that point was reached relatively early in Quake/QW's lifespan. It was the mods themselves that kept QW alive and kicking for so long. Players of Myst, on the other hand, didn't have much else to do once completing the thing except sit around and wait for the sequel.
So-called "adventure" gamers by now will have sniffed and snorted that stupid Quake players know nothing of "story" and "atmosphere". These people regularly fail to realize that QW players were in the process of making their own stories and their own worlds. I've got 2.5 years of my own stories from playing Team Fortress, all of which were far more interesting than any "adventure" game I have yet to see.
At any rate, Myst is a great puzzle, but don't try to tell me that it's a game.
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----- The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them.
Castle Wolfenstein
Good catch. I knew several people who got into games based on CW and Duke Nukem. It was a good draw for the "Mario with a Gun" crowd.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Thanks for the reply. I dimly remember hearing that Zork came about that way, but it was cool hearing it from the Implementor himself.
God I had forgotten about M.U.L.E. & Archon (well Archon II) We games like this.
What about Miner 2049 & chopper commander. God there were SO many
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
yeah. castle wolfenstein, zork 1-3, adventure, lode runner, wizardry, sublogic's flight simulator. ultima iii? alright, but ultima ii kicked ass. super fast- and what about ultima 1 and akalabeth (from the seventies!!)- all written by lord british. wizardy iii (don't remember the scenario name) incorporated windows technology on a 2mhz, 64k ram, 143k floppy drive box. pretty cool even if it was super-slow. choplifter went from a pc game to an arcade standup console.
Yea, and the same goes for the noise in Doom when a door opens or closes, I hear that noise all the time on t.v. all the freakin time.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
Mods??? Sure, that last comment was slightly OT, but isn't the whole thread in that case?
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
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"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
"Ah, another visitor. Stay a while. Stay FOREVER!" "Destroy him, my robots!" Cool game. I remember it well.
Let's see... They got a few right, they had some good games that were fun, but not very "influential", and they got some dead wrong.
A few right: Civilization, Doom, Alone in the Dark, Ultima (though not necessarily III, but OK), SimCity, Tomb Raider (though more for consoles than PC's).
Fun, but not influential: Myst comes to mind. How many games are there like Myst, other than its sequel, Riven? None that I can think of... How influential is that??? Falcon 3.0 was also fun, but there were tons of flight sims before it. This game added some features, but didn't influence present flight sims as much as some of its predecessors did.
Dead wrong: Quake and Half-Life. Sorry, folks, they're fun, they're fast-paced, and they're just like Doom in almost every way except graphics and better network support. What was Gamespot thinking? Ultima Online influenced nothing! Both EverQuest and Asheron's Call were well into development before UO was ever released. They had their own worlds, interfaces, and character systems that had nothing to do with Ultima Online. Dune II was barely a blip on the radar, too. Someone at their office must have enjoyed the hell out of it, but it wasn't very influential, to be gentle about it.
The glaring omissions: Adventure/Zork was one of the first problem-solving adventure type games. Rogue/Nethack/Moria/Angband introduced the concept of "graphics" to gaming, as well as gave the first 3rd person adventure game life. The MUD's were massively multiplayer before whole Ultima series became popular. The Bard's Tale was the first party-based RPG, and was also the first to have 3D scrolling graphics, Warcraft (or another of it's genre) has become vastly popular, influencing many present games, Donkey Kong inspired Mario Bros, and, in turn, it's sequels and copycats... Making it the granddaddy of platform games. Finally, most definitely something from the sports and wargame/strategy genres, which I'm not a big fan of, but I know there are a whole lot of folks that are.
They also included a few games that I did not mention. This is because I have either not experienced these titles, or have mixed feelings about their choices, and my discussion of them would be unfair or overcomplicated.
My own personal list of most influential games. Note that this is a personal list, i.e. games that influenced me (usually in bad ways like skipping class, not sleeping, etc.).
Tunnels of Doom (a game on the TI99/4a)
Moria (successor to Rogue)
Wing Commander
MechWarrior
Civilization
Castle Wolfenstein
Mortal Realms (a MUD)
Half-Life
OK, Midi Maze was on the Atari ST, but we're talking about the 15 most influential games, not most influential DOS/Windows games.
In fact the article states "15 most influential PC games". If this weren't the case, I'd be jumping in with dozens of more important 8 and 16 bit games, as well as many console games.
I think this may explain the absence of Lemmings, since it was ported from the Amiga (?). The same may go for Monkey Island.
I think nowadays 'PC' is taken to mean x86 IBM PC descendants, and not the more general "personal computer" which could include everything from the Spectrum, through Atari ST, to a modern PowerPC Macintosh...
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-- Steve
0xF: Wing Commander
0xE: Ultima III: Exodus
0xD: Alone in the Dark
0xC: Ultima Online
0xB: Tomb Raider
0xA: Falcon 3.0
0x9: SimCity
0x8: Half-Life
0x7: Civilization
0x6: Diablo
0x5: Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis
0x4: King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella
0x3: Myst
0x2: Doom
0x1: Quake
And the 10 runners up:
0xA: The Seventh Guest
0x9: WarBirds
0x8: Pool of Radiance
0x7: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
0x6: Deer Hunter
0x5: X-COM: UFO Defense
0x4: Populous
0x3: Myth: The Fallen Lords 0x2: Test Drive
0x1: MechWarrior II: 31st Century Combat
Wow what a stupid list! This looks more like an effort to keep sponsors happy than a list of "all time" most influential games. Here's my top 10 list:
0xA. Star Raiders. (the first, 1st person shooter, or was that Tail Gunner?)
0x9. Pitfall. The first scrolling run and jump game.
0x8. Wolfenstein 3D. The first 1st person 3D shooter.
0x7. Pac-Man. The father of maze games.
0x6. Donkey Kong. The first platform game. Note: All sequels and anything else Mario sucked.
0x5. Tempest. Truly one of a kind genius. Nothing ever compared to this. 0x4: Tetris. Stunning simple and brilliant.
0x3: Missile Command. The epitome of cold war era games. If you didn't live back then or see "The Day After", you'll never understand.
0x2: Asteroids. First vector game and first to let best players enter their initials. 0x1: Pong! What more needs to be said?
I understand many classics could not be mentioned, as this is a PC game list. But what about TETRIS? I'd say the most cloned game of all times should be considered, at the very least, influential! I have written a tetris clone myself while learning C (it's the only game I've ever programmed). Another PC game I'd like to have seen mentioned is Another World. It was a really artistic game in every aspect. And, even though I hated it, I have to say that Castle Wolfenstein should be mentioned as the game who started the whole first-person shooter crap.
Third person shooters, been there done that. First person shooters -- *so* done that. What I want is a SECOND person shooter -- where you walk around looking through the eyes of the closest monster to you. Or perhaps even little subsets of your screen (think Jeopardy) for each monster within firing range (actually, I REALLY like that idea)... So you have to aim the controls so that the gun is aimed at "you", and when you hit the fire button -- the bullet/shell/BFG-9000 blast comes right at your face. (assuming you shot straight). Can I get a AMEN?
Well, it is "PC Games"...
Homeworld rocks!! It brought 3D-realtime space combat to the PC, at least brought a realistic controllable 3D environment. Other games had tried and failed. Plus it has an awesome storyline.
I really like Thief. Thief 2 was even better. They were among the first 3D first-person games that involved more than killing everything in sight. As other posts in this thread have mentioned, System Shock 1 & 2 had similar elements, yet in a space environment. Half Life was somewhat more involved than standard first-person shooters too. I think there's going to be a lot more games in the future influenced by Thief. Just yesterday I downloaded the Hitman: Codename 47 demo. It's pretty fun & it definitely takes more thought than Doom, Quake, etc.
It seems very odd to me that there isn't a *single* point & click adventure in there
King's Quest Somenumber was in there, representing the genre.
Big thumbs up to Angband. It has spawned myriad variants including Zangband, Pernband, Cthangband and Oangband. Totally addictive and contains one feature I have never seen in recent PC games: If your character dies it is *D*E*A*D*. No saves, no respawn at the start. It certainly makes every move count, knowing the next move could lead inexoriably to your last.
Big thumbs up to Adventure, inspired a whole bunch of adventures from Infocom and Scott Adams (the other one).
All that talk of online interaction, PK problems wrt Ultima Online is old had for any Mud afficianado.
Even though the above started out on time sharing comupters, they are all available for PCs and are definitely influential.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Our list did warrent listing itself- don't think about it too much, it will hurt your brain.
Top 10 Most Ridiculous and Irrelevent Top 10 Lists
Remember trying to balance your good players with the evil ones? And cool spells, like tiltowait and badios?
Don't remember the spells. I think I remember the super-bishop. Remember fighting the ninjas?
Remember Locksmith and setting the parms?
Marathon 2: Durandel was released for Windows
THen I went and joined a Flight Group on Prodigy's BBS service. I was soon a Lieutenant flying specified missions over Iraq and posting my results on the BBS. Sometimes I'd come up with a lot of kills, air or ground, and sometimes I'd wuss out and return to base early.
Then we got a 486DX/33 with 8MB of RAM and a 300meg hard drive. Falcon was great! I soon mastered the art of recording varioius parts of my mission with the recording feature and would send those to my commanding officer by simply dialing up to his computer and transferring the file over our 14.4kbps modem. I became a Captain, then a Major, then a full bird Colonel. I was 16 years old and had just moved to a new town. No friends except for my comrades on Prodigy who shared the same enthusiasm for Falcon 3.0 that I did. It truly was a revolutionary product, and I credit it with being very influential in starting online gaming and clubs.Well, that's back when NICs cost a few hundred bucks, so I can see the cost argument. (Plus, you need[ed] a central server for Novell networks...)
One reason for the huge success of early net games like Doom and Warcraft was the Stay Late at Work phenomonon, which probably nobody would have expected or marketed too as games were 'home' software.
Doom was especially good because pretty much any ol 486 on the company LAN could get into a game. Nowdays, with 3D cards virtually required, you don't see so much LAN gaming (my work PIII-700 with craptacular i810 video was groaning playing UT, for example; forget about playing anything beyond Quake 1 on my po' ol' 233 laptop, if I only had DOS to load it up with.)
>> I would have said 7th guest and 11th hour
>> where influenced by myth.
I assume you mean *Myst*, since Myth and
7th Guest aren't very similar. But in either
case it is not true, since 7th Guest came out
years before either game.
Chris Mattern
Perhaps because the article was about PC games, not platform games? That's just a thought though...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Wolfenstein? Many a hours wasted in front of that game...
King's Quest IV was on the list
Failed Novelist: True. Baby does need new booties.
Hack #2: What about a feature on the poor quality of game software? Drivers, patches, 3d cards, it's all falling apart.
Failed Novelist: That would require actual reporting skills.
Hack #1: What about another crappy top 10 list?
Hack #2: People love that. It generates rancor, churns the boards and generally boosts hits.
Failed Novelist: Yeah, people are stupid.
ALL: Agreed.
We have the utmost respect for our readers
Actually, Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was the first first person role-playing game, released in 1981, while Might and Magic I was released in 1986.
And without Wizardry there wouldn't be a CRPG industry; I cannot fathom why they left it off the list entirely. Oh, yeah, it was released before 1990, wasn't it?
Death is but a doorway.
Death is but a doorway.
Here, let me hold that for you.
>this list does seem rather computer-centric
How dare they only include computer games on a list of the top 15 PC games of all time!
The NERVE!
-LjM
Scorched Earth
(and GORILLA.BAS for the minimalists out there)
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I think if they felt they could include both Doom and Quake, then they should have included both Dune II and Command and Conquer. Personally, I think C&C was much more than a more popular version of Dune II. It wasn't simply a question of popularity versus precedence.
The innovations that improved C&C over Dune II were colossal. First, they did all the obvious stuff. Improve the graphics, the sound, the animations. Second, they added more variety in terms of objectives (in the single player levels). Finally (and I think this is the most important), they improved the user interface.
Requiring three clicks to issue a single command to individual units (select unit; select command; select target) was tremendously cumbersome. Reducing it to two and allowing the selection of multiple units (and in the process, allowing the player to keep the mouse pointer on the playing field at all times), made game play so much better, that I consider C&C and Dune II to be completely different games. In addition, they had user-definable hotkeys, and a much improved button bar.
Red Alert, on the other hand, was hardly any improvement at all over C&C.
You might argue that C&C's innovations are fairly obvious after having played Dune II. But you can't deny that Westwood was right on the ball, being the first one to release the much improved version, whose user interface set the standard for all the RTS games that followed.
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
God I hated that GoldFish bowl!
My UID is prime!
You give the impression that nethack is not under active developement, version 3.3.1 came out rather recently. It can be found at http://www.nethack.org. Other roguelikes worth mentioning are ADOM (don't worry, he's better at designing a game then a website), and Angband. There are several derivatives of Angband and Nethack, while ADOM is closed source. A good list of other roguelike games (with links) is available at http://www.skoardy.demon.co.uk/rlnews/links.html. All of the popular roguelikes and most of the rest have linux binaries, and the source code is often available too! Nethack is even released under the GPL license.
The other side of text-based gaming are text-based MUDs, a nice list of them can be found at The Mud Connector.
The article also fails to mention that there is a free version of civilization that will run on Linux and has multi-player capability. Check out www.freeciv.org for information and downloads.
The list is almost painfully incomplete without Worms, Tetris and Magic Carpet. Wolfenstein belonged where Doom is, and like it or not - Windows Solitaire belongs up there as well.
Hard to believe that Descent II didn't make it even to runner-up status. I wasted more time on that than I like to think about. And maybe it's too new, but Everquest certainly belongs among the most influential. I don't play it, but I know a couple of people who do, and it's like talking to drug addicts; it's taken over their lives.
At least they remembered Test Drive. That was a good one. I remember taking screen shots of my record setting runs to take in to school. The only thing that game needed was my precious stainless steel car...
Rock on John ZD! drive stainless!
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
Possibly still influencial. Here's the link to the on going work: http://www.lysator.liu.se/eamon/
In the year 1980 the software company Med Systems released a game called "Rat's Revenge" for the TRS-80. This game was written entirely in BASIC. The player was a rat and had to find a piece of cheese in a maze before starving. It was one of the first commercial games which used a 3D-graphics of a maze (a long, long time before DOOM! ). Although the maze graphics was drawn "only" with characters, it was really kind of cool in those days. The instructions in the game even explained the more difficult views of the maze for beginners.
In the same year they brought out the two predecessors of Asylum:
"Deathmaze 5000" (by Frank Corr, Jr.) and
"Labyrinth" (by Frank Corr and William Denman).
Both games used almost the same graphics as "Rats Revenge" but they had actually items and puzzles (?).
While the only goal of "Deathmaze 5000" was to survive and to get out of the maze, in "Labyrinth" there also was the quest to kill the Minotaur.
In 1981 the first Asylum game (curiosly enough called "Asylum" ;-)) was released for the TRS-80. This Frank Corr / William
Denman production had again the 3D-graphics, but there now were lots of items, puzzles and persons to interact with.
The follow-up "Asylum II" (A William Denman production) came out 1982 also for the TRS-80.
In 1985 Asylum II was released as "Asylum" for the Atari 800 and the C64. The mazes and the puzzles were almost identically, but these versions used a scrolling bitmap 3D-graphics for the maze and bitmap graphics for the inmates. These programs were again written by William F. Denman, Jr. and the art was by Michael O. Haire.
No shit. I agree. And Wolf3d came from Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, which followed Castle Wolf...
The original Wolfenstein had a RANDOM DUNGEON long before Diablo.
C'mon, blastin' those SS with grenades kicked ass!
---
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
> Anyone notice that Myst didn't have any games
> listed that were influenced by it?
Actually, they did list games that were influenced
by it; they just did it in the main text instead
of in a big sidebar. However, aside from Riven,
I'd never heard of any of the games they listed...
Chris Mattern
>. I was no longer working there in '92 but I'm
>fairly sure there was an active R&D effort on
>Multima by then
There was at least active discussion by a number of folks about a Multima-type product in '91 while I was there, but I'm not sure about an official R&D effort.
As mentioned, remember that internet usage was pretty small at this point.
-LjM
JSW.
They forgot Lemonade stand on the Commodore64, and what about all those games for the PET that had to be loaded off a cassette tape?
All that said, however, Advent/Zork was still far more influential than Diablo ( a mere graphic derivative ), IMHO. That reflects the biggest problem with "Top X Important Things" lists: they're always VERY subjective. I find myself wasting too much time worrying about other people's misguided opinions. (Slashdot included :-)
John
John
I've spent years playing myth, and I can really say that the 3d world was only half of what made the game great, and so revolutionary.
The article totally fails to menton, that in the age of Warcraft me-too's they went out and did something *totally* different. Myth was the RTS first game to make use of a 3D world, but that wasn't really revolutionary, everyone knew where things were going, and Bungie beat them to the punch.
Myth was so enchanting for me because it truly broke the mold of RTS gameplay. In every other *craft out there, one gathered resources, built infastructure, built units, clicked on a bad guy, and hoped it died. In Myth there was no resource gathering, no base building, and no unit construction. You were given your units at the start of the game, and that was all you got.
This was the first RTS game I played that ever required skills beyond building a base fast. The 3D environment and other game mechanics made formation important, as well as suprise, and choosing where on the battefield you wish to fight. Combat tatics, in other games nothing more than Click on the guy, and your rabble starts shooting. Now it required planning, foresight, an intuition to decide what your enemy was going to do, because if you lost your units, you were out of the game. No producing more.
Myth's multiplayer component really complimented this gameplay style. In most *craft games, allies are just two seperate armies who don't shoot at each other. In Myth, allies were part of the same team. 3 Team members did not get 3 armies. They got one. The designated captain had to deal out units and assign them roles. Since they each had only a subset of the army to control, they had to depend heavily on others to do their job correctly. One player couldn't dominate everything.
Of course, other stuff was good too. The sound was simply exceptional, and, a far cry from most games, it had a real story *gasp!*
Obviosuly, while I'm glad Myth made this list somewhere (simply because I played it obsessivly for 2.5 years, more than any other game, ever) I think choosing it for being 'The First RTS game with a 3d world' is terribly shortsighted, and really, meaningless. Perhaps these guys should remove their 3d cards and THEN, just to break the mold, go looking to decide the most revolutionary games based on Gameplay...
(Note: I'm not claiming that Myth was the first game with the no-construction/all-combat game style. It's just the first I played, and it was a really really good one.)
castle wolfenstein was the first fps i ever played, and i played it through. unfortunately this had the side effect of totally, completely, and utterly boring me to death on the whole fps genre. i didn't play any more fps's until a friend finally convinced me to play half-life. the story progression was great. then i played system shock 2 (another excellent game)... RPG/FPS with great plot and sound thrills. the latest is Deus Ex, which IMO is one of the best games i've played so far. RPG/FPS with great realism, excellent writing/plot/triggers/sound/etc and multiple ways to do everything, with a persistent world (mostly). unfortunately RPG/FPS doesn't translate well to Multiplayer (shock2 and deusex both had multiplayer hacks(patches) added to them after the fact, but neither was very good, because neither was really intended/written to be multiplayer from the start.)
anyway...
another $0.04 from
eudas
ps. oh, and one more thing. GAME DEVELOPERS: while i realize that 'god mode' cheat codes are most likely really useful when testing a game, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take them out before you ship the game. Cheat codes suck! they're an infernal temptation.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Lessee... The BEST implementation of Pool of Radiance... Raid on Bungeling Bay Raid over Moscow Beachhead 2 -- "You can't hurt ME. HAHAHA!" Bruce Lee Breakdance Pitfall 2 Manic Miner Hover Bover (ok - so it was a stupid lawnmower game...) "The Games" series by Epyx M.U.L.E. - I don't know why it wasn't on Gamespot - those fools... The first game for the home computer that implemented multiplayer, IIRC... Too many other games to mention...
In general, modern problems have medieval solutions...
didn't find themselves on the list
then I would be mighty mighty pissed.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I think that Zork had a tremendous influence in its day... but, sadly, that entire lineage is now dead.
;-)
Zork spawned games like 'Wizard and the Princess' and 'King's Quest', games which added graphics to the text. All of these were more like interactive novels than video games; they were stories which unfolded around you if you were clever enough to find your way through them. They weren't quite role-playing games in the traditional sense, since they didn't involve hit points or levelling up. These works of interactive fiction were a distinct genre of their own.
Unfortunately, aside from work being done by fans to keep the genre alive, I don't think there have been any interactive fiction games of this sort released in the past several years. Myst and Riven pale by comparison; next to Zork's clever parser, those two games are mere slideshows.
I think modern gamers just don't like having to type -- or maybe kids these days just can't spell.
>To my knowledge, no game company has developed a text
>parser which even comes close to matching the
>sophistication of Infocom's earliest engines.
Oh well, the last succesfull text adventures came from Magnetic Scroll:
Remember "The Guild" ? They were excellent, I loved them.
Moritz
That's a reasonable list, as far as it goes. But I'd have to add another game or two, based on one type of game that's omitted. None of the games listed were pioneers in creating characters that people truly love, characters for which they play and continue to play the game(s), time and again. By and large, computer games have nameless non-individuals for the player to live through--a grunt, a soldier, an alien, etc. Tomb Raider is on the list and has Lara Croft, sure, but people didn't play the game because of her character's personality or alluring history--she's just a hot CG chick with large polygons, no one actually cares about her life and character traits that much.
So, there are two games I'd include on the list, for pioneering memorable characters whose lives are important to the game. *The* pioneer here would be the young Commander Keen, 8-year-old boy wonder who built a rocketship out of old soup cans and dons his football helmet to become Commander Keen, defender of Earth and galactic hero. Much of the allure of the Keen games is the character's personality--he's the kid in all of us, and the uber-geek to boot, in a game that's full of his kitschy and quirky predicaments. Without Keen and his character as revealed in numerous text screens, the Keen games wouldn't be as likable and successful. They were clearly character-driven.
Second would be an all-time favourite, Duke Nukem 3D. An immersive 3D world, but inhabited by 2D characters and sprites, the game is technically inferior to many of its contemporaries, including of course the original Quake. Resolutions are low, adding to the game's technical inferiority. And yet, many people continue to play Duke Nukem 3D to this day, and new mods, user levels, and total conversions continue to be made all the time. There are arguably more mods, user levels, and TCs floating around for Duke Nukem 3D than there are for Quake. Why? Because Duke Nukem is an awesome character. Just as Commander Keen is the kid, and the uber-geek, in all of us, Duke Nukem is the swaggering and macho male in all of us. Babes in bikinis, strippers, and posters for adult films litter every Duke level, and Duke is heard to say "shake it, baby!" and give strippers wads of cash. The user mods and TCs have become an integral part of the Duke Nukem community, allowing Duke's macho lewdness to be taken further than the game company itself could, even though the mods are hosted on their servers. Basic mods for DN3D take the clothes off the strippers, while more advanced and very popular TCs like the Vixens and Vixens 2 packages add more female characters, more sexist scenarios, and the ability to screw the strippers for health points instead of just giving them cash to "shake it." Penthouse Magazine commissioned and sponsored a special map. Some user levels are almost insanely elaborate, and impossible to play without using cheat codes there are so many enemies--such as the 666 TC. Whether you love Duke's sexist machismo for the playfulness it really is, or whether you hate it because you take it too seriously, Duke Nukem is a very character-driven game which has remained popular solely on the strength of its character and the user community's support of him through mods and TCs to a technically inferior game. Its publisher has largely abandoned the PC for creating console Duke Nukem games, and stated that Duke Nukem 3D will never benefit from the enhancements made to its textures and sprites for the console versions. But many PC gamers have yet to abandon Duke Nukem 3D, because of Duke's character.
I think those are the two best examples of character driven games, games whose attractive main personalities have earned them a place in gaming history. Just MHO.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
I've heard great things about System Shock I, but one small problem - I can't get a copy of it anywhere! Maybe someone's selling it on eBay, but otherwise, I have to take the word of a handful of people who played it back when it was state-of-the-art. Meanwhile, I'm tracking down a copy of SS2, knowing that the same people say it's not as good as the original... It may be a great game, but if you can't even find a copy, and no one is trying to port it to modern systems, how influential can it be? Sorry if I sound troll-like, but I'm serious. I used to play Angband for months, loving every second of it, thinking it was one of the greatest games ever. But since the world-wide market is tiny, I would never nominate it for a most influential list. Maybe Hack or Rogue, for starting the genre, but that's it. And, IMHO, Half-life should be on the list, if only for the fact that they have fostered a great mod community that keeps me playing longer than any other game I've ever played. Yes, Counterstrike, Team Fortress, and all those are great, but they wouldn't exist except for Half Life.
"Sopwith Camel" was the name of the game, but I don't know if DOSEMU plays it.
This is my
This is my
--An Oldie, but a Goodie!
dynamo
First, thanks I've got an ugly, slow connection today.
Second, there seems to be a distinct lack of sports and driving games from the list.
They're not generally my cup of tea (in fact, the list is a pretty good match to my tastes; minus Deer Hunter, Myst, and FPS), but I have a friend that has timed the upgrading of his computer to match the yearly installments of NBA Live 95,96,97,98,99,200 etc. and the bi-annual installments of Need for Speed. I'm sure his list of influential games would either include these two games or their conceptual predecessors...
Also, the various boxing/martial arts games (Street Fighter, Tekken(?) etc.) seem to be missing. What was the first game in this genre and wouldn't that be a "most influential"?
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Never hit your mother with a shovel, it will leave a dull impression on her mind.
That's how I heard it first. Can't remember what movie, though. Someone's singing it to themselves... hmmm....
anyway, I think "dull impression" milks the joke a bit more than "bad impression."
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Gamespot's list seems to be heavily skewed toward titles which sold very well and managed in the same breath to be influential. All of the games are personal computer games, meaning that console and stand-up arcade games are completely ignored. Because of the factor of sales, they are of course going to be limited to the last decade, by and large, since the computer gaming industry didn't really become a huge playing field until then.
All the same, they do give a nod to the 80's with "SimCity" and "Ultima III." By both of their apparent criteria, they wouldn't really be able to avoid these games.
They completely ignore some of the biggest genres of the past, however. Some are because they were primarily console games, but they completely ignore some of the most influential titles in favor of flashier, more recent games.
Text adventure games, from the simple "Hunt the Wumpus" to "ADVENT" to "Zork" and Infocom's entire line are given the shaft, despite their contribution in showing the possibility of translating a rich world (and in many cases, complex plot) into a computer game. To my knowledge, no game company has developed a text parser which even comes close to matching the sophistication of Infocom's earliest engines.
They also ignore the hybrid text-adventure games pioneered by Sierra, such as the early "King's Quest" line and such classics as "Leisure Suit Larry" (which showed the viability of an adult-only game).
Early turn-based strategy games, such as the ASCII "Starbase" and its clones are likewise ignored, along with "Rogue," "Nethack," and its (still maintained) successors in the "Angband" line.
Early first-person adventure games, such as "Wizardry" and "Bards Tale" were left off completely, as were their predecessors in the table-top RPG world ("Tunnels and Trolls," "AD&D," and the like).
The shareware craze of the late-80s and early-90s is also left off, despite the fact that folks like Apogee and id Software brought the entire gaming industry kicking and screaming into the world of "this demo is more than a guided walkthrough for the first five minutes of the game; it's actually the first quarter of the game, uncut." What game reviewer worth their salt could ignore this craze?
They also completely ignore ganes which were influential in their development on the computer, such as ChessMaster, its predecessors, and its successors. The AIs developed for chess have shaped our perception of Man vs. Machine indelibly, especially recently, with the defeat of Kasparov.
All these (and many other genres) aside, of the list they selected, there are many games I would have chosen from other deveopers. They give - in my opinion - sufficient props to id Software for Doom and Quake, but they seem to ignore other game developers that deserve kudos. Blizzard they credit only with Diablo, and they don't mention Looking Glass at all. While Dune II might have been the formative stages for real-time strategy games, Blizzard's XxxxCraft line defined it.
I could go on, but it has been better covered in other posts, and I have to do some actual work today. :)
I might even do this if I get a bit of free time (meaning...when I get bored enough to bother :).
Draw a chart showing what games or other concepts each game was based on. Something similar to the
unix chart displaying all the different flavors of unix and what they were derived from. Almost every video game in existance is based in one way or another on some previous game, even though it might not be directly derived from a computer based game.
For instance, Myst might have been an influential game, but consider the fact that Myst is really an overglorified Mystery House with a different theme. KQ1 (which influenced most of the Sierra games after it) was influenced from the text based adventure games and had a graphical element added to it.
Wolfenstien 3D was definitely influenced by Castle Wolfenstein and possibly Ultima Underworld, and it in turn influenced Doom, which influenced Hexen, Quake and Duke 3D (influenced by Duke 2D as well)... And so on and so forth.
Like I said.. when I get around to it, it might be a fun project.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
(or at least most of it!)
- ------
Totally!!! Quake is rated as "Another influential shooter". Ouch! It is the next most-revolutionizing thing after doom (and, definitely, wolfenstein3d). Half-life is the best shooter? I happen to own a copy. It is decent, but, despite all the hype about their new animation techniques and super-intelligent AI, it still is inferior to quake3. They have a good mod or two, like counter-strike, but where is the long-awaited TF2? I think, Q3F totally beats TFC hands down, and TF2 is no-where to be seen, and, if tribes2 does live up to the hype, TF2 does not even need to be released. Ever. Which reminds me - where the heck did Tribes go? It is one of the most revolutionizing, balanced and intriguing, though complex, games ever.
And the last. If you go on to mention dune2 (which, I believe, totally rocks the world), you've got to mention a couple of somewhat similar, yet totally rocking things - starcraft and TA (total annihilation).
Yes, they do seem to base their review on what's sold well (unfortunately mostly due to the marketing hype), but not on what's actually been good, what's got good independent reviews, and what's changed the gaming community and will be remembered by the generations of gamers to come.
------------------------------------------
Jobs? Which jobs?
Just a note about dying. Diablo2 has a hardcore mode where if you die, you are DEAD.
It is possible to ressurrect your dead guy in the single player hardcore mode, but if you play hardcore on the secure battle.net servers--dying is permanent.
I had a level 20 Barbarian a couple nights ago due to a firewall spell from the Summoner, a mage boss.
You want a challenge? Go play Diablo2 in hardcore mode.
/// Zoid.
First and foremost: Elite! That spawned an entire genre itself. Then there is Revs (on the BBC) which founded the realistic F1 simulations rather than the arcade racers that abounded.
I also think Battle Chess deserves a mention for breathing new life into bringing board games to the PC, rather than the rather boring online translations that preceded it.
I agree with others that missing off C&C was a mistake. Nice to see my personal favourite Counterstrike (Half Life mod) was there. I don't think Wolf3D deserved to be in there though as it lacked the compulsive gameplay Doom and Quake had.
Lemmings is one that no-one seems to have mentioned.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
What?
Have you played an adventure game lately? Found a key to open a door? Distracted a monter by feeding it?
Of course, nowadays most of the puzzles amount to:
hotspot=getnextpuzzle();
for item in inventory
{
drop(item, hotspot);
if (puzzlesolved(hotspot)==TRUE) return SUCCESS;
}
but on the positive side you don't have to type:
>say hello to troll
what?
>speak to troll
what?
>talk to troll
there is no troll here.
>talk to hairy troll
the hairy troll just got bored and left.
there is no hairy troll here.
>stupid computer
what?
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
You're telling me Fallout or Fallout 2 doesn't even get an Honorable Mention?!? Come on, while those games didn't have the popular, mass market appeal of Quake, SimCity or Diablo, they were an incredible combination of graphics and storyline.
Rangers Lead the Way!
But couldn't the same be said of Muds, but they weren't on the list..
Someone should remake M.U.L.E (of course there are emulators for linux).
As for Archon, haven't played it much but it appears that xarchon is true to the original.
The Underdogs provides downloads and reviews of the best underrated games for PCs and other platforms. Particularly relevant is their Hall of Belated Fame.
Given this is a list of PC games, I believe the first PC game should be counted in the most influential games of all time, being the forerunner to all the other games.
So that leads to the following question.
What was the *first* PC game? I'm sure it wasn't SimCity.
For the true geek, writing programs is the best and most enduring entertainment that a PC has to offer.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I think they limited the field to PC games, preferably those that are native to the platform. i also think there is a trade off between 1st and most influential. you can't make a list of most influential games without doom. i do agree that the list was compiled by an idiot, but my additions are 1. Tetris 2. M$ Flight Simulator 3. Castle Wolfenstein 4. Test Drive (top 15)
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Aaaaah!
And you have to start all over again until you get it.
And then you get within one second of your best score... noooo!
And then, your dear sister goes and beats your best score...
I'm sorry, but this game must have wasted more hours of people's lives than any other.
And was you char a *WINNER* in the end?
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
It's about time someone remembered Wing Commander... That game was absolutely mindblowing in its time. Too bad you need a go-slow prog to play it today...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
There is no way you can call those the 15 most influential PC games of all time. Most are from the 90s. Most require good graphics by today's standards, if not excellent by the days standards.
I don't see how any list of most influential games could be complete without:
1) Zork (the mother of all adventure games, but not infocoms best)
2) Wizardry
3) Doom (Which they mention, but only after Lara Croft and half-life)
4) Something like Lemmings, Pitfall, etc.. I can't think of a title.. What was the first big side scrolling game?
5) Pacman. There have been thousands of clones and the sound effects are still heard today in movies.
quack
I think they should have made room for Panzer General in the top 25.
I'm an old school war game player, when playing war games meant clearing a large, horizontal surface the size of akitchen tabel for a week, setting up hundreds of little cardboard counters, and spending 20 hours reenacting WWII in Europe, or the siege of Stalingrad.
Now, with a curious 4 year old daughter, the only time I attempt something like that is when she's away. The rest of the time, there's Panzer General.
The AI isn't bad, I don't always win, and the scale is nice enough to allow for tactical decisions.
Has anyone played with the Wargame Publisher? This looks to be the salvation of paper and cardboard wargames.
Hmmm, I've never heard "platform" used in that way, but I could see how that would make sense. However, I retain my argument against "Space Invaders", "Asteroids", etc. since they were not PC games.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I loved the article though :)
dynamo
I'm very surprised they left Wolfenstein 3d off their list. Their top two entries, Doom and Quake owe their existance to it. Wolfenstien 3d is crude by current standards, but it was influential, and controversial. It was banned in Germany for obvious reasons... Mein Leiben!
They might as well have called it "what we think are the best games that we have played since being in business on computers" Where is Wolfenstein? Isn't that what MADE Quake/Halflife/Doom what they are. Yes, I know Teminator2064 was kindof a FPS too, but noone payed attention to it, making Wolfenstein more INFLUENTIAL. Where was Monopoly? There is no doubt that Sim City and Civilization could not have been produced without that well known game. Where was The Colossal Cave? It spawned Alone in the Dark, Tomb Raider, the first Ultimas, etc. Where was LIZA? The first attempt at simulated AI I thought /. was news where I didnt have to read about pop BS.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I would have said 7th guest and 11th hour where influenced by myth. At least the puzzle solving with some flashy graphics.
You know, even though there are 0 women playing games it seems, Lara Croft sure is a 10 point woman! :) prrrr
I'm not using one yet.
Ok, so it might not be influential, but it certainly is a blast to play and it is a PC game (it even says it's written for the IBM PC in the title screen).
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Wolfenstein is not even a runner up. Gamespot sucks my bag.
Cunning linguists
Garriott's response was that he didn't think there would be a market for networked games (he didn't think that gamers would be willing to invest in networking equipment for games :)
That's hard to believe. I remember frequent conversations at Origin as early as 1987-1988 about how insanely cool it would be to build a "Multima" product. We knew exactly what we wanted to do way back then; UO is a pretty faithful incarnation of what was being discussed. I was no longer working there in '92 but I'm fairly sure there was an active R&D effort on Multima by then (as in, at least one programmer actually tinkering with code.)
Richard wasn't always right about the direction the market would take, but he called this one a good 10 years before it happened.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
You may wish to note that these weren't the "15 Best Games", but the "15 Most Influential" games. System Shock I and II were good games, but not influential. Their genre had already been established.
Half-Life was influential because it combined a well-done plot and immersiveness with good fps action WITHOUT BEING A RPG! That's the key. All the previous immersive games plot-wise that were fps's were RPG games and had various skill levels and such, like System Shock. Anyway, good game, but not influential.
Justin Dubs
Man - I remember the F-F-F-P-P-P well. I sure burned a lot of time on that game on the old Apple ][+. Remember Locksmith and how you needed to use "synchronized" tracks to get it to copy and it didn't work well anyway. The 3D wireframe dungeons were so cool at the time. Ahh - the good old days before responsibility...
Why not Angband or Moria? Because more people played Diablo, and happily forked over another $50 or so to play the sequel. It proved that it wasn't the hacker types looking at a text display that loved these games, and that people would pay for the graphics and interface. Moria, Angband, Hack, and Rogue may be the grandfathers, but this one showed the world what they were missing.
And yes, I've played Angband, which has much greater replay value than Diablo. When you are trying to sell a game, there is presure to make it a limited experience, so the user will pay for the next incarnation. I remember uniques at a depth of 1000ft giving me more trouble than Diablo.
BTW, wouldn't it be an interesting interview to talk to either Ben Harrison (the previous maintainer, whose efforts to clean up the code spawned a thousand variants), or the current maintainer (Robert Rühlmann????) It would be a nice bit of advocacy to remind Slashdotters of the great classics that are still being developed.
I'm wondering what exactly makes these games so influential. Good Graphics? Good Concept? A little of both? Anyway, A game that started role playing, and one that I would most definitely add: Rogue, and Nethack (and all variants). Fun, engrossing, multifaceted. Yesss.
They were not so recent (yes not so recent)
Some examples?
A. DIABLO? NO! the original Diablo was...... NETHACK!
The Great interface game? SYSTEM SHOCK (the orignal)
Instead of Doom? Wolfenstein (admit it. it was the orginal "Violent" game)
Instead of Quake? Doom (admit it. it was the orginal "good" shooter.)
How about the original game? ADVENTURE. (Don't get lost in the past? Yeah right but that was the first true game)
Then they put in TOMB RAIDER? It might have been revolutionary at the time but the award is revoked for stupidity (5 games now 1 engine.. no upgrades? even microsoft isn't that dumb)
Kings Quest 4? no Quest for Glory 1 (or any) or any of the original Sierras (Btw Thank god it is not KQ5)
Now for MYST? I have to leave it. (love it or hate it you have to respect it.
Now just so you know these are all off the top of my head
P.s. If you have not played System Shock GET IT NOW! it was the most awsome game that came out before Doom. if you can get the CD version you will be amazed. (possibly the greatest game ever made in the history of games. and the sequal sucked.)
I'm gonna have to say the first Massively Multiplayer Online Games originated with the popularity of Trade Wars as well.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I was asked to make a boot diskette, that loaded DOS and Windows, and runs Solitaire. The thing boots straight into Windows, and then loads solitaire as the shell.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
then: xcom 1 & 3 (even despite the graphics in 3) now: swat3 (gung-ho but oh so sweet with big men in blue being very serious indeed)
ooh, yeah...
my friend introduced this to me when it was still free beta versions... and we still play it today. =)
great game.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
I am sorry to say this. and it may sound like a flame but you sir are an idiot.
A. CIVILATION is a SID MEIER GAME!! (if you don't know that you should not be talking about games.)
Second They talked about INFLUENTIAL GAMES not good games. influential means they changed games for ever. ROTT and DUKE 3d while good changed NOTHING they might have been fun but they don't change anything.
Third Diablo Did change the world (But they should have mentioned NETHACK or Rogue (ohhh ROGUE!!! hehe ) and of course Quake should not be on but IT IS NOT LAZY NOR IDIOTIC! please don't talk shit about good games. I don't even know where lazy or idiotic came from unless your comparing it to its children.
Other then that I agree with what you said. Pong definatly should have been given atleast honorable. Solitaire (while I would not put it up there could be up there)
And This final comment is for all people. Don't be an idiot about games. NEVER substitute Recent games for good games.
Civilization is a drug for me, the best $2 I ever spent at a garage sale.I have it on my 486/40 laptop, and that's why I haven't deleted the DOS partition to make it an X Window client.
I could spend hours straight playing it, heck, I did at my hotline job.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I think what you mean to really says is that they all are EGA not monochrome (where the REAL roots are)
Personally I think there has been 3 great VGA games. Wolfstein, DOOM, and System Shock.
Othere than that everything else was basically rehashed old stuff (yes I know doom and wolfstein CAN be traced back but the jump is the point.. the jump makes them powerful)
Anyone know more about the history of Zork?
Some people think it this is some sort of internal, hardware based program that is the reason their employers bought them that 900 Mhz PIII.
Juln
Too bad it's such a pain getting it to run.
What... no Zork?
Defecation occurs.
the ultimate dungeon crawler - Dungeon Master? And my FAVORITE game of all time, the Sundog for the Atari ST by the same group, FTL. Anybody that hasn't played Sundog is missing out. Of course the list wouldn't be complete without Civilization II and Homeworld.
Damn! My Java is too hot again!
Also, Myst? Huh? Honestly now. What games did it influence? Riven? Anything else? I mean, the game was gorgeous and were it not for the COP OUT ending, I'd have bought RealMyst already. But come on.
:)) Up to that point, you could still get a game on floppies, if you wanted, and it was one of the first popular games (that I've encountered, at least) that made good use of Quicktime. The "game as a hypercard stack" was a great idea, especially since back in those days Macintoshes still came standard with the Hypercard authoring software (not just the player), which meant that you could show the game to a young tyke, and then show him how to make his own hypercard stacks.
Well, there were also there parodies "Pyst" and "Driven." How many computer games spawn parodies? I'm not entirely sure if Total Distortion counts as Myst-genre, but it made similar Good Use of multimedia authoring (Macromedia based, in their case) and had a similar mazes and puzzles bent, except with more guitar battles and less wondering where you are.
But seriously, I agree with the article's assessment that Myst was influential because of its use of CD-ROM based multimedia features. (Note syntax: that was the article's assessment. You read it, right?
For more Dungeon Master stuff, visit:
...uh, Infocom? Zork, perhaps?
If you want something later and with more PC sales, Deadline was the first game to use kewl packaging for market appeal and copy protection, and one of the first to include non-combat NPC interactions and a mainstream genre plot. It sold a bajillion copies, which should also add to its ``influence.''
Too bad they didn't choose the 15 most influential computer games of all time. Then we would of gotten to be reminded of the *real* classics: Adventure and Trade Wars.
It's not on video tape, but it was during a question answer in front of a bunch of people.
:)
I still have his business card if that would help...
At least it made it to the runner-up list.
I thought for sure that when the article said "The most influential turn-based strategy game", it was going to be X-Com. I was wrong. What a downer!
In case you didn't know, the first 3 X-com games have been re-released, and given a nod by GameSpy.
Also, don't miss this X-Com Graphic Novel, all done in Legos!
Surely the very first first-person shooter is influential. It is what gives game developers a framework or the idea for creating news games based on that original concept. Not only was Midi Maze the first (to my knowledge) in 1987, it was deathmatch. It even came with a map editor! Just because this game was deployed in a niche market doesn't mean game developers were not exposed to it. Far from it.
Gamespot.co.uk is a little slow?
mirrored
No star control 2? What a jip.
ideal; model tiny; codeseg; org 100h; start: cli; hlt; ret; ENDS; END start
Anyone remember the old Identify "9" exploit? Also, I was the F-F-F-P-Tiltowait-Tiltowait kinda guy myself. With my delightful "CRITICAL HIT" 3 ninja front line and my dominant bishops waiting to level whatever remained standing... ahh! Gaming bliss.
Only problem was my poor characters were old farts by that time. I can just imagine my geriatric party cruising through the dungeons with walkers and dentures. Monsters were more in danger of being gummed to death than anything else.
- Remove the spam for email.
When will people compiling these lists realize that sales isn't everything? They seem to think that sales=influential, simply due to the fact that the more eyes that see your game, the more influential it will be towards others.
Well, DUH!
Still, there are a lot of games out there that didn't sell boatloads, but are arguably more influential than, say, Falcon 3.0. M.U.L.E?
Prince of Persia was not so hard, and POP2 - I still play that one! Works fine in a DOS window under '9x. 'Course I can go through it in my sleep now, but it's still a lot of fun.
Another World was great except for being too short, and the joystick didn't work. Had to play with the keyboard. Ugh. But it was still a lot of fun.
Thing is, I am hard-pressed to come up with any other games that these guys influenced. The platform side-scroller pretty much died after POP2.
Edith Keeler Must Die
The list only goes back to the apple //e era. Its forgetting some arcade clasics.
I loved ultima III . I think it is one of the most engrossing games ever. I date myself by saying I played and played till I won. Doom was also great (also a great time waster....)
Although i fail to see how Quake and Half-Life are listed. They're almost the same as doom with fancier graphics.
I guess the list depends on what games you were exposed to when younger.
More people played bought and played Diablo, but I have yet to find an Angband player that preferred Diablo.
Bear in mind that Angband does not have flashy graphics, does not have a major amount of marketing, did not get every games magazine on the planet raving about it - it just casually sucked up the lives of pretty much everybody I knew at university, and quite a few since.
Angband provides depth and gameplay I still haven't come across in commercial games. I'm still playing Zangband (disclaimer : I helped introduce one of the Zangband maintainers to Angband in the first place) and yet even Baldur's Gate 2 (infinitely better than Diablo/2) only had 3-4 months of longevity. I have been playing Angband (and its variants) since 1992, and can still get so hooked into a session that I forget to go to bed.
I do agree that Diablo gained more success; given the introduction to Angband I suspect that most (non online) Diablo gamers would love the game and forgive its primitive graphics. (Although I don't even see them now - D is an ancient dragon, no matter what you claim!
Having said that, and to stay on topic, Angband is a 'roguelike' game. As is Nethack, and even Moria. Rogue is truly one of the most influential games I've even known.
~Cederic
Yeah, those electric thingies always get me :-(
I tought I was the only one still playing it! :-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
entirely agreed on both points; this list does seem rather computer-centric, and if they were going to include Quake and Half-Life, why not include Goldeneye? Or LLL? "influential" is so vague...
Try my nuts to your fist style!
Trying to load that site reminds me of CmdrTaco's all-time favourite PC game (and what a fun one it is):
SLASHDOT THE BASTARDS!(tm)
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
btw, re: interview. Why not Geoff Hill or Sean (eek, forgotten his surname) who did so much work to prepare Angband for its first wide release (2.4.frogknows).
~Cederic
Was Hover Bover the one with the Endless rendition of "English Country Garden". And the stupid dog too..... I remember that. I was addicted to it for about a month... with the sound off though.
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
A friend of mine who is very, very into role-playing games advances a theory that British geeks are far geekier than American geeks. His primary evidence is the AD&D "Fiend Folio" and the Warhammer 40K game.
This list has a lot of Ultima games on it, and while that's laudable, they got a lot of things a little mixed up, as far as I'm concerned.
Like leaving off Zork, for God's sake. Or Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, the first really _good_ edu-tainment program for the K through 6 market. Enough posters above have come to the defense of rouge/nethack/angband.
I never played that Ultima Underworld, but from the screen shots it looked suspiciously like Dungeon Master.
Ultima Online? Do you mean MUDing? MUSHing? Oh, it has to be graphical? Neverwinter Nights, guys.
Pool of Radiance, as far as I've been able to tell, was influential on PoR sequels developed by SSI/TSR. As a matter of fact, CFRGs pretty much died after SSI became the dominant maker: you had PoR clones/sequels, Ultima games (some of which, I've been told, got really bizarre, like you go to an alternate history Mars in one, right?), and the Eye of the Beholder Series. Interplay put out Wasteland and Dragon Wars both within a year or so of PoR, and I've never seen a CRPG as good as those two games (I actually prefer Wasteland to Fallout).
Finally, I'd like to point out that, while not a PC game, and not really so much a "game" as a simulation, Space Travel, the program Thompson & Ritchie ran on a PDP machine at Bell Labs, deserves mention as one of the "most influential" games of all time. (The more ridiculous accusations of the UNIX-haters listserv claim that they created UNIX just to get the game run on this surplus machine no one else was using, I'm not too well versed in Unix history, but if the game had the slightest role in the development of Unix, it's definitely more influential than friggin' Tomb Raider.)
Except that Diablo doesn't have the Keystone Kops!
Tom
I have discovered a wonderful
Now sereiously, how can you say Ultima multi was the first Internet RPG, or the best? Where is it now? What about DikuMUD? It still has a huge following, in its many derivatives and clones (ROM, LPMud, MERC, Circle...). Just look at www.mudconnector.com if you don't believe me! Hundreds of worlds!
And what about Tetris? The greatest action-puzzle ever. It probably has more clones on more platforms than any other game! It's even been ported Texas Instruments and Hewlett-Packard graphing calculators. Maths teachers the world over live in fear of Jimmy Mardell's ZTetris ruining their classes (look at www.ticalc.org).
Shooters? What about Marathon and Sensory Overload? Maybe not as popular as Doom, but in the same period, and clearly superior.
And how could you not include even one platform game? What about Lode Runner, Pitfall and Super Mario Brothers? A Huge genre of games that just isn't there. They were all very popular!
These guys just looked at the games that had the best advertising campaigns!
Games before VGA:
- Ultima III: Exodus (CGA: 320x200x4c)
- SimCity (64K EGA: 640x350x16c)
- King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (64K EGA: 320x200x16c)
- Test Drive (EGA: 320x200x16c)
--
begin 644
Talk about a walk down memory lane. KQ4. When I saw that listed in the top 10 list I was so happy it made it. I have most of the games on that list (even Falcon 3.0) and have a great deal of good memories of those games that helped launch me into the relationship I have with computers today. What a beautiful tribute and what a beautiful article.
Jumpman (Followed closely by Lode Runner)
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
Yes, the F-F-F-P-P-P was ingrained in the muscle memory for a while... Plus, you could use that trick to make the super-bishop, which would kick ass.
Remember trying to balance your good players with the evil ones? And cool spells, like tiltowait and badios? That was the coolest. My Apple IIe was never so happy.
Zork II
Aces Over Europe
Pirates!
Warcraft II
Duke Nuk'em 3D
Pirates! rules the Earth. I wasted many hours I could have been studying, which would explai the 6 years it took me to end up with a 2.8 GPA
This
Simple, the keyboard layout was the first useful one. They finally figured out that the keypad is annoying. And heck, peaking around a corner is just too cool. Also the sound was much better IMHO.
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
I've never heard of that either. I always thought of consoles to be platforms (ps2, sega, nintendo, etc), not the type of game (side scroller as in mario, crash bandicoot, sonic, etc), but doing a quick google search comes up with this page at about.com which seems to list 'platform' games as the original poster describes. I guess I learn something everyday I read /.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
I loved ROTT. If fact I still play it occasionally nowdays. Also cannot forget HERETIC. I loved playing networked casting the egg/chicken spell only my poor hapless victims.
Elite. Indeed. Nights and months of my life, dedicated to become Elite. Never made it, though. What about Deuteros and Millennium 2.2? First games to use a "research tree"
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
However, I think in shoot-em-up category there's probably Castle Wolfenstein - actually a predecessor of doom - which introduced the 3D scenario into gaming. Also Duke Nukem should probably be on the list.
What I missed is the best game ever crafted:
The Castles of Dr. Creep
BroderbundThat sucker merged adventure into arcade into role playing. And - it was proof that frizzy graphics and dorky sound effects are not really essential as opposed to the actual scenario of a really great game.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Well, once you have the source, it becomes possible to resurrect characters. I had to do that many years ago, when I was playing Angband on my NeXT computer. My wizened high-level mage was running away from an Undead Trotskyite and fell through a hole to the next level down, and landed in the lap of an Ancient Multi-Hued Greenpeace Activist, and I was smoke in no time.
Having invested most of June building up this character, I didn't want to spend the rest of the summer mentoring a new Elven Ranger: instead, I just fired up Emacs and started editing source code. In no time flat, my character was back in fine form, and ready to play Roshambo with the Balrog.
Who needs a saving throw, when you've got the source?
Yes, EverQuest is the only game that actually says they picked up most of their rules/concepts from LPMUDs. (Diku somewhat, since you have to drink/eat). lpMUD/DikuMUDs, MUSH, MUCKs, they are what spawned UO, EverQuest, but don't blame them on AC... I have no clue where they got the ideas for that game... whew.
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
Now where is Pacman?? ... it was realeased over 20 years ago ...
I still play it
I really HAD another userid
It was all about Oregon Trail baby.
I used to play this in school when I should have been learning to type.
Hunt to survive!
Dare you ford the river?
Oh yeah, that's what I am talking about.
If it were not for this computer game, I would not have known anything beyond Atari.
Wing Commander - Space shooter/RPG
Falcon 3.0 - Flight sims
SimCity - Create a [insert complex object here]
Civilization - Turn-based strategy
King's Quest IV: Perils of Rosella - "epic" RPG's
Ultima III: Exodus - "combat" RPG's
Dune II: Battle for Arrakis - RTS
Doom - FPS
Ultima Online - MMORPG
All those above I agree with - they were the true groundbreakers of a genre, and while I'm not completely sure that Ultima *3* and King's Quest *4* are the right ones, the series certainly belong there.
Alone in the Dark
Tomb Raider
Diablo
Myst
Well.. maybe - they were all *big* hits, but did they really do that much new and influental, or did they simply did a lot that had been done before, only very well?
Half-Life
Quake
You got to be kidding me - you already have Doom and yet you want to add *two* other, making FPS games *3* out of the 15 most influential games in the entire industry? Forget it. There are more genres out there...
My biggest candidate for the top spot would be Test Drive from the runner's up. No CAR game whatsoever? So what inspired Test Drive series, Need for speed, Rally games, F1 sims, Grand Prix, biking games and just about every other race sim out there?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
-Don
The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat
Farmer, 1993: Farmer, F. R. (1993). Habitat Citizenry. In Loeffler, C. E., (ed.), Virtual Reality: A Survey of Technology and Culture. Van Nostrand Rheingold.
Farmer et al., 1994 Farmer, F. R., Morningstar, C., et Crockford, D. (1994). From Habitat to Global Cyberspace. In Proceedings from CompCon '94. IEEE Computer Society./ papers/habitat/hab2cybr.txt
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/communications
Chapter Six: Real-time Tribes. By Howard Rheingold.
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
where is digdug? Nothing more original then diggin
in dirt and pumping up enemy's with air until they explode.
The 7th Guest didn't even make it into the top 15? That game was one of the first ones to be released only on CD (never mind that it was originally supposed to be released on floppy, too . . .), and one of the first to have lots of in-game movies. I think that T7G had to be one of the key games in the puzzle series, making it more visible to the mass market. Who can forget "SHY GYPSY SLYLY SPRYLY TRYST BY MY CRYPT"? Or the bishop puzzle? Some of those puzzles were REALLY creative, and likely influenced a few puzzles in later games.
after playing this for an hour or two, i'd go home and play ADOM for 3 or 4 hours. to purge that guilty feeling
my other main complaint about diablo2 is that i can't feed shopkeepers to my pet dragon (gotta love nethack's wand of polymorph!)
--
15. Wing Commander
14. Ultima III: Exodus
13. Alone in the Dark
12. Ultima Online
11. Tomb Raider
10. Falcon 3.0
9. Sim City
8. Half-life
7. Civilization
6. Diablo
5. Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis
4. King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella
3. Myst
2. Doom
1. Quake
And.. for your enjoyment.. the 10 runners up..
The Seventh Guest
WarBirds
Pool of Radiance
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Deer Hunter
X-Com
Populous
Myth
Test Drive
MechWarrior II: 31st Century Combat
I've got a few rants about the games chosen.. but I'll leave that to you guys.
Well, nintendogen.com has a slightly different definition:
Still, quite a bit different than what I had always assumed was meant by 'platform'.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
While that was an interesting look back, it didn't look back all that far. Except for Kings Quest, they basically ignored anything pre-1990. Doom? Nobody has heard of Wolfenstein? They need to look back to the real influential old games, LORD, and BBS door games ;-).
Just my £0.02
If you can't figure out my address, just drop me an e-mail and I will explain.
I play alot of games and, looking through that list, I've only played 2 of their "Top 10". Aside from the notoriously buggy Falcon 3.0(patch "g") they seem to ignore military strategy/action games almost completely. Another thing that's annoying is that they seem to veer between the games that started a genre and those that were the best in that genre. Maybe two lists would have been better.
Subspace, From Virgin Interactive, is the game I feel is the first massively multiplayer online game. It was in beta test in 1995, when it wasn't uncommon to see over 100 players in an arena (I seem to recall seeing above 200 players on at times). It was released in late 96 or early 97, though, which was around the time Ultima Online was released.
Virgin Interactive went bust, so now the game is widely distributed for free with nary a lawyer in sight. There is still a community of around 10,000(?) players, with maybe 500 on at any given time. The game is a small download (3 megs), which can be found at http://www.subspacehq.com/
Looking Glass Studios' games weren't even mentioned.
These people mentioned Half-Life, a 1998 game but didn't mention System Shock I, published much earlier (1994?), with similar graphics (even though it lacked OpenGL/Direct3D support and was a DOS game) and a MUCH better plot/gameplay/engine.
I agree that perhaps Counter-Strike should've been mentioned, as its counterpart, Rainbow 6, is pretty weak, but there is _no way_ that Half-Life is better than System Shock I.
And there's also Flight Unlimited, which defined the standard regarding photographic landscapes and non-military flight models.
And what about Thief?
I'm outraged.
Flavio
--
I love those old WWIV BBS gamez!
Tradewars
Leech
Piss Wars
Dick Wars
Sex Wars
cpeterso
What no Pong, or Adventure were these not the games that started it all?
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
And I know exactly which contest you're talking about! You know, the contest was run by a guy (Dave Taylor) went on to work on DOOM ..
.. ah, memories!
I have his business card, and got him to sign my Ultima 7 manual
(I don't remember who won the contest that year though)
right. um. how about system shock? that game was amazing...
----- go to www.questionexchange.com.
C64. Does anybody remember Lode Runner? Early 80's. Chessmaster series? First computer. Got about 30 games. Back to the archives every now and again.
What on earth is Diablo doing in the list? It's a half-hearted rip-off of Angband (or any of the other rogue-like games), but with all the gameplay removed and replaced with flashy graphics. The game has *no* depth to it at all, and I can't see me still playing it in a few years. In fact, I don't play it any more now. In contrast, I'm still playing Moria (in it's Angband form) over a decade after I first played it. That's the mark of a true classic...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
should of been on that list. While during the course of my life I have played almsot every game mentioned in there picks. My parents never touched them. They sure did get down on some solitaire though.
A friend and I were discussing the best old DOS game a while ago...he thought that the honour should go to Darklands, and I thought it should go to Star Control 2.
I still play StarCon2. It's an amazingly addictive space exploration game put out by Accolade...it's got amazing music, great humour, and great graphics for a game made in 1992.
Like I said, I still play it. The only other old DOS game I still play is Master of Magic, so yeah.
ugh.
Oh Grand Prix Legends is THE best racing sim ever. And it's old now.
This
...in no particular order of influence (just like the article was, or did I read something wrong?). Forgive me if this has already been done; I'm browsing at a +2 cause of the slow ol' modem in my folks' computer and I haven't checked every single post.
1. Rogue/Nethack/Moria/etc.
2. Zork/dungeon/etc.
3. Civilization
4. SimCity
5. Doom
6. Alone in the Dark
7. Ultima III
8. Command & Conquer
9. Marathon (really brought the FPS genre to the Mac, and was one of the first of its type with a detailed storyline)
10. Tomb Raider
11. Mechwarrior II
12. Falcon 3
13. Warcraft
14. Myst (didn't spawn too many memorable imitators, but was one of the first on CD, and also one of the first with high-color rendered graphics)
and, of course,
15. Microsoft Solitaire
Who knows, most of you will find my list just as unfair as the original article's in some way or another, but it seemed to me that the article focused mostly on games that (a)were made in the last ten years, and (b)were extremely popular, yes, but not necessarily influential. Oh well.
the coolest club on
Holy shit! Agent USA...Holy shit...you just made my freakin head spin, that game was fuggin fantastic. Holy shit...I'm gonna have to find a C64 somewhere and find that game somewhere and play it...wow...
Here is an adult version of the top ten list. The real g-spots of them all.
Man, Stonekeep was cool.
I know that it is not that old, and perhaps not very influential, but it rocked(still rocks)!
I think more people should make games like Stonekeep. I lost my copy, though I still have the novel it came with. I still need to read that thing.
this is really rubbing it in. When most of these games were released I was hacking away on a C-64 and the UNIX boxen I could connect to with my 1200/75 baud modem. I occasionally got to play on a PC at a user group or a friend's house (a friend of mine actually owned a computer shop but we weren't allowed to play games on the PC's). When I finally did get a PC (why parents sold the family home and splashed out to buy me one) I was utterly suprised to find that I could program in C on it. Luckily the first game I got on my new PC was Another World. A truely revolutionary game, both in it's graphics and story line and in the fact that it was put together by one man (ok ok, and a musician).
How we know is more important than what we know.
Ultima III wasn't really the Ultima that kicked off the series. Ultima IV was. Ultima III was just an enhanced version of ultima II. It WAS an improvement, don't get me wrong. But U3 didn't yet have the depth that U4 did.
The ironic thing is U4 and U3 had almost the exact same engine, but U4's subtle yet powerful background theme is what made it such a great game and it set the stage for all the games to follow in that series. It set up the system of virtues and strayed from the old hack&slash mentality of the first 3 games. You HAD to be virtuous or you couldn't win the game. However, nothing in the documentation implied this. You had to discover it for yourself through gameplay.
They managed to maintain this level of gameplay through Ultima VII. After that something went wrong. I'm not exactly sure, but it couldn't be only a coincidence that Origin was bought out by EA at approximately the same time the powerful story in the series took a nosedive and instead arcade gaming style, 3D graphics, and multiplayer revenue streams took priority.
Pity.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
it says "influential" not best games :)
btw i agree with you civII is among top5 games ever made. civ. ctp was quite good also, i hope loki will release ctp2 for gnu/linux so i can try that one too...
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
ZZT was one of the few shareware games of it's time that included a built in editor/scripting language (the shareware version has it too). Thousands of ZZT games were created and released over the years by players of this game. ZZT is an Ansi adventure game, and though I am not a big RPG fan, this game has me hooked. I've even started on a level myself.
--Oh you played the USA... um me too...
USA USA Uber Alles Uber Alles USA...
This
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
Maybe someone already mentioned this, but wasn't Descent released before Doom? If not Doom I, then certainly Doom II. And DEFINITELY before Quake. And yet, Descent had a true 3d engine many years before Quake. Even before Duke 3D's pseudo-3d engine. Yet it was not mentioned in the GameSpot article at all. Sad.
:)
The line "Quake revolutionized the genre by introducing a fully 3D world" is plain bullshit. Descent I and II were both released before Quake, and those games had a truly 3d engine, and full 3d movement - you were not stuck to the ground like you are in Quake
Just my 2 cents.
moo
The article is interesting, but they are really limited in their scope. They only consider relatively recent vintage PC games (although they cite classics like zork, adventure, wolfenstein and king's quest). I would think that space wars at MIT, asteroids, pong, breakout, space invaders, street fighter II, centipede, tetris, tank commander, and mine sweeper were all influential. Although I'm not generally a fan of sports simulations, surely there was an early sports simulation that caught peoples attention. What about Microsoft flight simulator (maybe not the best but widely deployed early on) and Windoze Solitaire (talk about influence, how many hours of work are lost to those games each year :-)?).
I think the The Way of The Exploding Fist, The Great American Cross-country Road Race, Pitstop II and Loade Runner are surely one of the best C64 titles ever...
Damn! My Java is too hot again!
Influenced by MYST: Journeyman Project series Obsidian Lighthouse Amber: Journeys Beyond The X-Files Game Every game by Dreamcatcher Interactive Tomb Raider (for the puzzles)
gameDB
I noticed a few people lower down the thread actually mentioned Space Invaders which is good and I can tell they were from my era. Space Invaders was the first game that was actually taken seriously by many kids (me included). I remember when it first came out, I used race down to the local fish & chip shop with my 10c (yes folks 10 cents) and pile them up on the glass cover over the game machine. I wasn't going to let anyone get in until I had dropped every coin down the slot :) All the other kids just used to watch and wait until my turn was up so that they could pile their coins on the glass. Those were the days!! Eveyone used to get so excited about it all and we even gambled a little to see who could get the highest score on the day. The loser between friends often had to shout a drink or some chips hehehe....
Anyway, Space Invaders as far as I'm concerned was the game that really got people thinking and was a major turning point in terms of having fun. It made kids turn away from doing other activities such as playing basketball or handball after school.
Heck, Space invaders even made it on tele with it's own song that made the top 10 Count Down charts and had many many news articles written about it. What other game has EVER achieved that ???
Ausmosis
OK, Midi Maze was on the Atari ST, but we're talking about the 15 most influential games, not most influential DOS/Windows games. If you want a good list, use CNet's Hall of Game Innovation list.
Judging the influence of any game is always a difficult thing; I would argue that the classic Infocom adventures deserve a place in the list, and that Elite prefigures Wing Commander, but later games such as Quake and Half Life have arguably had a bigger impact upon the success of the PC as a gaming platform, set against the mac, consoles, etc.
So, a pretty well-compiled list. It's a bit of a shame that it'll probably get lots of people all worked up (such is the nature of these lists). What I find most interesting about the list, though, is that it's presented as much from a cultural/sales point of view as from a more critical perspective -- in other words, it includes Myst, Deer Hunter, Tomb Raider -- not games I'd consider classics when compared with some other releases, but certainly milestones in home computer gaming that have changed the landscape in some manner. There are games that perhaps have a greater influence in the minds of the developers and hardcore gamers, but these are the games that shifted units, spawned hundreds of clones, and developed good ideas into genres in their own right.
They started to loose there charm when it didn't take text input anymore, but they were still very cool.
Oh well.. *sign* memories....
--
Free Mac Mini
Isn't civilization a Sid game?
How could they have forgotten Leisure Suit Larry?
Back in the day this was as close to pr0n as you could get on your computer.
Look at us now pr0n is everywhere, all thanks to Leisure Suit Larry
Ok, maybe not...
Jumpman.. no doubt and IK+.. god I love that game.. at least once a year I download a C64 emulator and IK+ and have a few games. It's just not the same without the Atari joysticks though.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I know it's not a PC game, but if you want influential, check out the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man. Horrible game, but you can't watch a movie or TV character play a video game these days without hearing the "death" sound from it.
-- ShadyG
Nerd Rock In Progress
Most influential games of all time? Most of those games are in the last decade. In fact many of them were after I stopped playing games in every minute of my spare time, so I've never seen them. I don't suppose the writers at Gamespot remember text adventures like Zork, or wire frame space arcade/sims like Star Wars, scrolling shoot em ups like Space Invaders (Xenon II Megablast!), or the old days of platform games, or ...
Why are there no platform games ???
Where are "Manic Miner", "Commander Keen 4", "Prince Of Persia", "Lemmings", "Flashback" ? Also, what about all time favorites like "Bratacas, "Breakout",, "Asteroids", "Space Invaders" , "Pac Man"?
Come on, let an older journalist write such articles !
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Shakes Magic 8 Ball:
Is l33t j03 insane?
Most signs point to "Yes!"
This
I was dissapointed not to find Elite on the list. I believe that it was the first open-ended 3D space shooter. Almost every 3D space game owes a lot to Brabham and Bell's Elite.
What an off-kilter list! First of all, Diablo was nothing more than a straight dungeon crawl, believe it.
Secondly, they negate all the arcade classics... Spyhunter, pacman, Pong! Where the hell are these "influential games?" Every single one of these earlier games did a lot more influencing than these new-age brethren.
And QUake is nothing more than an extension of doom, incorporating both is both lazy and idiotic. By the way, they missed all Sid Meier games, Rise of the Triad, Duke 3D, and Solitaire
Cheers, oh and i totally agree with you, Newbies need teachin the Hard way ...:)
It seems very odd to me that there isn't a *single* point & click adventure in there -- no Maniac Mansion, no Monkey Island, no Sam'n'Max, no Day of the Tentacle.
These games are influential both in the sense that they were hugely popular, and in the sense that they influenced the games of today -- Monkey Island 4 is just out and selling well.
--
Hi? Greatest game ever made? Ringing any bells here? 12-odd years since I first laid eyes on it and I'm still engrossed by it. Dungeon-based RPGs, ah... hell. 90% of FPS games take place in a dungeon, so there's no mistaking the influence this one had; the rogue(like)/variants are superinfluential badboys. Also, Myst? Huh? Honestly now. What games did it influence? Riven? Anything else? I mean, the game was gorgeous and were it not for the COP OUT ending, I'd have bought RealMyst already. But come on. Also, totally not getting the Cult of Half-Life. The game was good, but not mind-blowingly so...
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Cool.
(That's a motor cycle, right?)
Jacco /var/log
---
# cd
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
I bet if the top fifteen games of all time were to be compiled, Windows would be low on the list! Ahead would be the Atari 2600 and whatever, but that does not mean that they are superior in other respects!
I'm sorry that this is the second time today that I have replied to you, perhaps I should just leave you alone, eh!
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
What aboug Rogue (aka Moraff, Nethack)? and Zork? I mean come on, your making a list of the 15 most influential (computer) games of ALL TIME. Some of those games are listed as following a pattern, yet they are also in the top 15...
witty sig goes here
"Top 15 Most Undeservedly Uninfluential Games of All Time"
Here, I'll get them started on some games that I wish they would make more like.
The Fool's Errand
Darklands
Heaven and Earth
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Perhaps in a few years time we will see some sort of free game released that never would have been developed because it just wouldn't sell.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Here is my list of the games that have consumed the most hours, days, and weeks of my life. All of them were good games. The one thing most had in common, they all had a "just one more level/planet/room/battle" mindset.
15. Tetris (we had it installed at my work-study job in college)
14. Total Annihilation
13. Outlaws (a lucasarts western FPS)
12. Zork (and a few other infocom games)
11. Privateer and Privateer II (really cool Wing Commander spin offs but I still haven't finished either...)
10. StarCraft (thanks to battle.net)
9. WarCraft (especially once we got two computers connected on a null-modem)
8. Diablo
7. Baldur's Gate
6. SimCity and SC II (days)
5. XCOM (days)
4. Master of Magic (days/weeks)
3. Master of Orion (days/weeks)
2. Civilization and Civ II (weeks, months?)
1. NetHack,Rogue,zangband,moria, etc. etc.
Probably spent more time on these than all the others combined. Can download quickly onto any computer, can play at work without anybody noticing, always interesting, and very, very hard to break away from...
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I spent ALOT of time in 1990 playing M-1 Tank Platoon from Microprose. This game blew me away with its 3-D graphics (sort of 1st person shooterish, but with a tank rather than a person) but the thing that really got me was the AI. I marvelled at the games use of heuristics to coordinate attacks from both my platoon of 4 tanks and from large numbers (say 20 or so) enemy tanks using terrain for cover, etc. This was really something in 1990!
Frank W. Miller
Though, I haven't had times to play any of them lately.
Back in '92 (before Doom was out and before the web was popular) I worked on a programming contest where we wrote a video game. Garriot was the speaker at the actual contest and a graduate student who was heavy into MUDS asked Garriot, "why don't you take these MUD back ends and put some really cool graphics on them."
:)
Garriots response was that he didn't think there would be a market for networked games (he didn't think that gamers would be willing to invest in networking equipment for games
Archon - still a classic, play it with MAME
Star Raiders - people bought Atari 800s just to play it
Bolo - consuming copious net resources when the 'net was young
Zork, original Adventure (Colossal Cave) - nuff said
Marathon - Mac only, but outclassed many of its PC contemporaries
X-Wing - for pulling in the story, music, & feel of Star Wars
Maelstrom - fun and highly editable
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= John Reinert Nash -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Interesting, how there was nothing influential before VGA.
I guess we were all stuck playing text-based solitaire... and not enjoying it.
Ah, the memories.
M.U.L.E.
Archon
Racing Destruction Set
Tapper
They did do a remake of Archon for the PC but it sucked.
I'd really like to see a modern Racing Destruction Set. Use the Carmageddon 2 engine, but include a track editor and a car editor. Carmageddon has land mines, but needs to add oil slicks.
To name just a few classics off the top of my head:
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Anyone notice that Myst didn't have any games listed that were influenced by it? With the exception of its sequel, Riven, I can't think of any games either. Just because it is the top selling game of all time, doesn't mean it is influential. Case in point, n'SYNC sells more records than Radiohead does, but a band like Radiohead will inspire many more people to get into music than n'SYNC will.
Games like Myst are enjoyed by many, but try finding a game developer who liked it.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.