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The Most Influential Games In History?
Kotaku reports on a list published recently by Guinness World Records which credits Super Mario Kart as the most influential console game in history. "Tetris ranks in at number two, according to the list, and the original Grand Theft Auto is in the number three spot. Where does Super Mario Bros. turn up? Way down at number 17, beneath Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." Several other franchises have multiple entries on the list, such as Final Fantasy and Resident Evil. What console games have influenced you the most?
Yes, it's fun, people love to play it with friends, it's a very casual game. But number one? No, sorry, not even close. The rest of the list looks very accurate, if not a little debatable, but Mario Kart is in no way the most influential console game ever.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
No doubt about it, one of the first games and also quite enjoyable
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What is this list, world history excluding everything the innovate programmers from the UK came up with in the early to mid 1980's? Ever heard of Rare, formerly Ultimate Play the Game, who dropped a little title called Knight Lore on the world and changed the industry overnight? Okay, so it led to a load of derivative rubbish, but I'd rather vote for a technically groundbreaking game packed into 48kb than a three-CD monster with pretty cutscenes.
And where is Lords of Midnight? And leaving Elite out of that list is like leaving Ms Hilton off a paparazzi's to-do list.
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I agree with the sentiment of the summary. IMHO the most influential *console* game of all time is without a doubt the original Super Mario Bros (i.e., the one that came with the Nintendo Entertainment System).
As an experiment to confirm this, anyone could go to their closer park and ask any passerby to try to recognize a song, first you could sing (or how is it call in English when you only do "ta ta ta taratata tata ta ra ta..." to the rythm?) the song of "Mario Circuit" and then the song of world 1-1 of SMB. Guess which song will be recognized more?
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'Super mario kart' most influential game? with that game at the top you can't take the guinessbook of record serious anymore.. there was nothing new about that game.. I guess Doom or wolfenstein3d should be on position 1 as that one was the most influential game ever (I'm not a Doom fan, but that one really changed the face of computergaming as we know it)..
BioShock without System Shock series? (And since BioShock is such a recent game, exactly what has it had the chance to influence yet?)
Advance Wars, which is just a glorified Empire?
Grand Theft Auto series picked because it's the "most controversial series"? Ever heard of this little game series called Doom?
No mention whatsoever of the Ultima and Wizardry series, which laid the foundation for pretty much all of the CRPGs ever?
*sigh*
No, a first person shooter would give you full control of the character's movement in a 3D environment. Games that let you control a target reticle, but give you little or no control over your character's moves and the game's scrolling -- such as Operation Wolf, Dynamite Duke, Virtua Cop, Cabal, NAM-1975 -- are shooting gallery games.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Actually, no.
- Many later games for the Atari 2600 included bank switching hardware.
- Perhaps all but the simplest games for the NES used MMCs.
- Several early SNES games used DSPs.
Circumcision is child abuse.
The Catacomb Abyss was the first FPS I ever played. It predated Wolf3D and ran on my 8086 with an EGA display, while Wolfenstein needed a 386. It was the sequel to Catacomb 3-D, another FPS using the same engine. This wasn't the first FPS though, it wasn't even the first FPS John Carmack worked on - Hovertank 3D, I think, gets that title. The first FPS was also the first networked game, and implemented its own networking system by chaining together MIDI ports.
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Then for example the Ishar and Eye of Beholder games are FPSes too?
True, they are from a "first person" perspective, but the gameplay is nothing alike.
In Ishar and EOB for instance, the concept of having to shoot at a target with precision is completely inexistent. You have a sword equipped, you click the sword icon, the character swings the sword, and the hit or miss is determined by a virtual dice roll. Being successful at Ishar 3 is a completely different skill as being successful at Quake 3, and mostly a matter of long term thinking, correct selection of equipment, using the right spells, doing the right thing at the right time, etc. The insane reflexes needed in Quake 3 to run and shoot precisely the instant an enemy appears are of absolutely no help.
Shooting gallery games also are nothing alike a FPS. They invoke different emotions even. In a shooting gallery you normally can't retreat, can't run away and hide behind a corner, can't run after a wounded enemy, can't have a battle between snipers, or to snipe targets from large distances, etc. Shooting galleries are very linear, and things like several people running around like crazy and shooting missiles at each other are inexistent.
All these were on console. Per scale, Blake Stone was more popular than Wolfenstein 3D and Doom combined. Commander Keen was the kindergartner game made by the Johns of ID Software. What topped all of these was moreso Halloween Harry than all of the others; it rocked more than Duke Nukem 3D, and without the gore.
I've seen all these on sonsole, customized through Apogee software and they all rocked.