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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
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
No Pong.
No Space Invaders.
No Elite.
No Dune 2 (first RTW)
No Flashback (first motion capture)
No Doom.
All of those are top-30 for their initial and lasting impact, especially Doom. There are loads more too, you could argue that Jet Set Willy, Manic Miner and Zork all had an massive impact upon gaming.
This isn't the most influential games list, it's a favs list from someone born in 1990.
if they actually did a proper list no one would be talking about it.
i did notice the word console in the summary. of course, the second item on their list, tetris, wasn't a console game. It was ported to many consoles long after it was already a very old game. But it was an arcade game from the 80s that wasn't ported to any consoles until much later.
In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. -T.S. Eliot
Mario Kart??
Next year's list will definitely have to include Peggle Extreme.
The linked article uses the word "influential", while the Guiness Records list does not. Guiness uses this criteria: "a top 50 list of games ranked both on their importance and on how fun they are to play." In this case, importance doesn't mean influential. Reading the linked article, it seems that by "importance", they mean which games sold the most and for the longest time.
A list of influential games would be entirely different, with games like Wolfenstein 3D, Dune II and Ultima III at the top.
Desperately trying to stay relevant. When was the last time anyone cared about them?
As for the the liquid (just) form of Guinness.. now we're talking.
GameRanger - multiplayer gaming service for PC and Mac games
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*
Doom and Wolfenstein were the ones that I remember most. Oh, and the Microsoft BSOD - that game could just jump up by surprise at any time.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Additionally, fun for who? It's a thoroughly subjective thing.
As a good example, take The Sims. It sold more copies than the top two FPS _combined_, and got more women into gaming than any game before it. Some people obviously loved it. But put some l33t FPS'ers in front of it, and most of them will find it a pointles waste of time: where's the score? Where's the competition with other players? Where are the bragging rights? Etc. And make no mistake, viceversa too. A lot of the people who loved The Sims, thought that Quake 3 or CounterStrike sucked.
E.g., if we're talking about consoles, take _the_ number one flame-war from the N64 era: platformers vs RPGs. At a time when there were more Final Fantasy games sold than all N64 Nintendo games combined, the his-own-fanboy Hiroshi Yamauchi shot his mouth all over the place with such pearls as "[People who play RPGs are] depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms and play slow games" and (about RPGs again) "Stop playing boring games." Never mind that he was proud to never having played either kind of game (or any game at all, for that matter,) so he was basically just telling us "buy my game and not the competitors" in the most obnoxious asshat way. But lots of actual gamers did fall squarely into one of the categories:
A) "if I wanted to read, I'd get a book" vs
B) "what's the point if there's no story?"
And the flamewar between the two laid waste to many a board.
Which of them was right? Neither, actually. In a subjective matter of taste there is no "right" or "wrong".
But what I'm trying to say is: who decides which game is more fun? A lot of the guys from category A would have ranked FF7 as the biggest pile of crap, while a lot of those from category B thought that Mario 64 was a simplistic kiddie game. And both were right... for their own subjective tastes.
So basically it seems strange to me see such a list which combines something which can be measured objectively (sales, sequels, whatever you measure success and influence in) with something purely subjective (fun.) It's like claiming to make a top of cars based on horsepower _and_ how nice their colour is.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The list is totally fubar, but remember one thing: it's a console list.
I would put Pong ahead of Super Mario Brothers. Before Pong, there was no video game industry. It didn't exist. Not just consoles, but outside a few projects by various companies and people, there weren't any games at all. Super Mario comes in second, then Space Invaders I think.
If these are the most influential console games then thank god for PC games, otherwise we'd never have ANYTHING new.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
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.
These games are just ones that are popular now. A proper list would have to include the following at minimum:
1. Elite - Procedural generation, 3D graphics, open ended game play - in 1984 on a computer with only a few kilobytes of memory. Genius.
2. Starcraft - The game that became a sport. Still being played to this day by masses of people despite its ludicrously dated graphics
3. Doom - Wolfenstein came first, but it was Doom that made Id into software Gods and replaced the term 'first person shooter' with 'doom clone' for about 5 years
4. Counterstrike - A turning point for fps, made the 'tactical shooter' popular in addition to multi-player teamwork
5. Everquest - World of Warcraft is more popular now, but Everquest set the standard for 3D online fantasy worlds that are as immersive and addictive as being dunked in liquid heroin.
But of course, nobody cares about history, because people have the attention span of goldfish.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I know the series got some good mentions, especially Ocarina of Time that brought the series 3D but about the original, first game with a save cartridge, over the top perspective, huge world, second quests! Seriously, a big miss for this list.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
If it were truly the list of the "most influential" games, we should see the earliest most unknown games ever that inspired the would-be programmers who made the slightly less unknown games which inspired the would-be programmers who made the slightly known games which inspired the would-be programmers to make great, fun games.
I mean, let's just be honest - what was the most influential part of the barn burning I held last night?
one match and a piece of straw
what influences the avalanch? what influences the tsunamis and hurricanes?
glad as heck to see chrono trigger on there, but what about FFIII? and what the hell is FFXII doing up there? where is dragon warrior I-V?
but, actually, now that I think about it - they never mentioned what the object being influenced was? we all assume it is the game industry, but they could mean "what influenced us as players".
she was the daughter of a wealthy florentine pogen read em and weep was her adjustable slogan
I don't mean to be a jerk but. . . I have been a serious gamer since the early 80s. If you can't see how influential Guitar Hero has been, from a gaming standpoint, and if you think it is a "button masher" you are quite possibly the most clueless gamer of all time.
Have you ever even played it?
Why ain't it on the list?????
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I can't believe they don't have Starcontrol 2 in their coolness list. The best game ever made