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The Ten Most Important Games
Taking a page from the National Film Preservation Board, the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University and a group of five prestigious games industry figures have inducted ten games into a sort of 'canon'. The New York Times reports that some of these titles represent the start of weighty gaming genres, while all are laudable for their place in gaming history. "[Henry] Lowood and the four members of his committee -- the game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; Matteo Bittanti, an academic researcher; and Christopher Grant, a game journalist -- announced their list of the 10 most important video games of all time: Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979), Zork (1980), Tetris (1985), SimCity (1989), Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990), Civilization I/II (1991), Doom (1993), Warcraft series (beginning 1994) and Sensible World of Soccer (1994)." Most likely, future years will see additional titles inducted into this game canon.
Pong is significant for bringing video gaming to the masses, and being the first large commercial success. This list is more for games of great cultural significance, artistic works deserving of praise. I wouldn't really include Pong, fun though it may be.
What about the original "Adventure" (aka "Colossal Cave") by, if memory serves, Crowther and Woods? Nothing wrong with "Zork" but it wasn't the first of its genre.
Look at the reason stated: "The first three Warcraft games represent the introduction of real-time strategy overlaid on a narrative"
As I recall, Dune 2 didn't really have a plot. Command & Conquer would be a more appropriate comparison, but came slightly later than Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
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And I am not happy to see Dune II by Westwood Studios not beeing recognized as the basis for which the success of WarCraft was build on.
Meanwhile, where's the WBR tag in that DTD? Did slashcode generate that?
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No mod points, but hear hear.
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Dune II was the first PC game (that I'm aware of) that had all the elements of today's strategy genre.
Warcraft was Dune II with orcs.
Command&Conquer was... the next version of Dune II.
Everything since has simply been a refinement of the same formula.
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Sensible World of Soccer was one of my favorite games ever. First appearing on Commodore and Amiga, it was a hit in the UK and eventually made it to the US. It allowed you to build teams and play as either Club or World Cup teams with a perspective (bird's eye) not often used in soccer games. It eventually made its way onto SNES and Genesis, but the gameplay is addictive (very quick paced and responsive) and overall ball control is fantastic. One game I wish hadn't been left off was "Alone in the Dark." That game built the entire genre that the highly successful Resident Evil and Silent Hill series are based on.
Dune 2 was primitive because it was the first "real-time strategy" game. And they had to put that in quotes on the box too, since no one really knew what it meant.
The only thing Warcraft had different was the humor and a fantasy instead of sci-fi storyline.
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I just find it hard to justify putting in WarCraft when it didn't even spawn the genre it "represents" in the first place
While this is technically true, it is also true to say that very few people either played or remember the prototypes of the modern real-time strategy genre during the 1980s. Indeed, even the first game which mostly resembled the genre in its modern form (i.e. using the mouse to move units, gathering resources, etc...), Dune II from Westwood Studios in 1992, was not widely played and would not be immediately recognized by the average gamer. It was really the WarCraft series, beginning in 1994, from Blizzard that exploded the genre into the mainstream and cemented its long-term popularity. The Wikipedia article on real-time strategy games really sums up the history quite nicely (including some obscure early games that I was previously unfamiliar with).
A game that 80% of people played, that was the second game in a genre of which >50% of people ultimately played -- is going to be considered more important than a game that only 2% of people played, that was the first game in a genre that 100% of people play today. Popularity means a lot in importance.
The most important horror movie isn't the first horror movie.
Oh, and it's all based on DONKEY KONG, actually! :)
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...rogue?
The precursor to hack, which added at least a year to my sentence^Wstay at the University of Maryland in the 1980's?
The game referenced in the classic AI paper ROG-O-MATIC: A Belligerent Expert System?
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But Dune was inspired by Herzog Zwei on the Genesis.
Dune 2 was primitive because it was the first "real-time strategy" game.
Nope. The first was The Ancient Art of War from way back in 1984. If there ever was a game that deserved a remake, this is it!
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In general I'm not an ageist, I just wasn't gonna stand for Umbrel saying Zork is obscure and insignificant.
The one thing Zork, Adventure, Starcross (my fave) and Planetfall had is they really got your imagination going. Basically, they are non-linear interactive books, and the score is merely a way to tell if you've read the whole story or not. Or in the case of Adventure, whether you were worthy of receiving a copy of the source. Some googling will reveal that someone has made a modernized "player" for the old Infocom games, and I'm sure a little more digging will, ahem, reveal where you can find the data files for any of these games. If you've never played one, I strongly suggest it to anyone. In 10-15 years from now, when they start offering courses in geek culture at various universities, certainly playing one of these games will be part of the curriculum.
cat
Dune 2 was primitive because it was the first "real-time strategy" game.
You're off by about 12 years.
Dune 2 was a blatant knock-off of the earlier Sega Genesis game "Herzog Zwei." It is commonly believed that Stonkers, a ZX Spectrum game from 1983, was the first modern RTS; Stonkers has every game feature in Dune 2 other than network play, despite looking like ass. There are, however, good arguments for older games as modern RTSes missing simple features. Some people believe that Stonkers' game balance is closer to a tactical rush game, and that The Ancient Art of War is a better candidate for first RTS.
The earliest networked RTS I'm aware of with all the major features of Dune 2 is a largely forgotten BBS door called Yankee Crossfire!, from 1985.
Dune 2 was primitive because Westwood was underfunded and poorly managed. It was, at the time, basically a bunch of talented developers trying to bootstrap a company by working really really hard. That game gave them enough money to build Westwood into a real company with real management. Pity it didn't last. Basically, contracting Eye of the Beholder to SSI got them enough money to pay for a bunch of artists and musicians.
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