From the Leipzig Games Convention, Telespiele exhibition comes this list of the most influential games of all time. Tetris was voted #1, but here is the chronological list:
1972 Pong (Dexterity/Arcade)
1978 Space Invaders (Dexterity/Arcade)
1979 Pac-Man (Dexterity/Arcade)
1980 Ultima (Role Play)
1984 Elite (Space Trading Simulation)
1985 Tetris (Dexterity/Puzzle)
1985 Super Mario Bros. (Jump’n’Run)
1986 The Legend of Zelda (Action/Adventure)
1987 Maniac Mansion (Adventure)
1989 SimCity (City Building Simulation)
1991 Civilization (Strategy)
1993 Doom (First-Person Shooter)
1996 Tomb Raider (Action/Adventure)
1999 Counter-Strike (First-Person Shooter)
2000 The Sims (Relationship Simulation)
2004 World of WarCraft (Online Role Play)
I am not sure about the word influential here – World of Warcraft has not nearly as influential as, say, MUD or even DikuMud that influenced WOW. And though I have fond memories of Elite – was it really that influential? Perhaps if you count is as an “open game”, that leads up to Grand Theft Auto. And so on.
Still, lists are fun.
Which games are missing here? Which games shouldn’t be on the list?
Although I?m not a fan, I must say I miss a fighting game on the list. That?s not a very celebrated genre today, but it was huge once. So why not include, say, Super Street Fighter 2?
Hum… and what about River Raid?
Oh yes, and Breakout.
Finally, I would say Bejeweled (most influential connect 3 game?), unless that clashes with Tetris – then Tetris should figure alone.
I agree, this list miss several titles, but this kinds of selection is deeply subjective.
IMHO WoW is too “young” to be stated as “influential” as games likes Doom or Maniac Mansion.
I also miss games likes Street Fighter 2, Colossal Cave Adventure (text-based games), and maybe “Alone in The Dark” for survival horror. “GTA 3” for the crazeness on “open games”.
But If you mean “influential” as “major piece of culture”, you should add games likes Final Fantasy or Sonic, in order to keep a list of games known outside of the videogame industry…
IMO Influential is not necessarily about whether the game is classic just about how much a game has pushed a genre or style into the public (and developers) conscious, leading to a slew of games which copy and or expand on the original (the greater the number of derivative works the greater the influence.) In which case I think SF2 is definitely influential and Elite (again, IMO) is not.
However, this list seems to include the idea of games as landmarks in game development in the definition of influence; EG. SMB was (I think) the first scrolling platform game but Doom was the first FPS which pushed the genre into the ‘mainstream’ conscious.
Wouldn’t the game Adventure (or Colossal Cave Adventure) not be a very good candidate for this list? It was the first adventure game and spawned a whole lot of interactive fiction offspring. If that wasn’t influentual, what was?
Also, this list wouldn’t be complete without the first ever computergame Spacewar! (1961) being mentioned.
Where is MYST? Oh my god, how did you forget?
maybe we should define “influential”.. during the last years we should admit that MMORPG have changed the perception of games as a massive entertainment system. From this point of view World of Warcraft with its huge amount of users is Influent. Obviously there are always something that should had been added and was not.
I believe Final Fantasy did get overlooked as being one of the most influential. It certainly created the Japanese RPG genre, and no other genre is so focused on epic storytelling like the JRPG due to the linearity of its design. It’s a very different style of video game than what is usually made by major American companies, but that doesn’t mean such games are not influential or important.
Dune 2 is also considered the mother of modern RTS games, and Metroid was another game that did away with strict levels structure and created an environment of “openness”. However, these two have been influenced by Civilization and Zelda, respectively. Games like Quake 2 and Half Life should also be noted for their importance to the modding communities, opening up the doors for independant game programmers (Counterstrike is after all a HL mod). I’m not sure about WoW on the list either because it was preceded by MUDs, Ultima Online, and Evercrack. Er, Everquest. Although it may be on the list since its so visible in mainstream culture right now, and has a certain cultural influence Everquest didn’t.
But if we are talking about cultural influence, what about Starcraft? It singlehandedly shaped a significant portion of South Korea’s youth culture :)
There’s always something that inspired a certain game. For the first (video)game, it would have to be something that was not a videogame, so, where does it end?
Everything influences other things. How just should we decide when this influence is great enough to be of importance? Would that indeed be measured against cultural influences, or rather the offspring in games it created? Or the popularity of that offspring?
And, should the genre of the game be taken into account? For all their differences, they also have many likenesses. Most games tell stories and require the player to ‘win’, whatever that means and trough whatever means. Because then, certainly, a compilation of only 20 games would not suffice.
But who’s to say? I certainly think there are games missing on that list, already quite a few are mentioned here. However, Telespiele obviously has it reasons to believe their list is complete.
I second the Niels’s opinion : this list is the “Most Influential Games list from Telespiele point of view”.
But I guess Jesper meant “If you could etablish your own list of influential games, what games will you choose ?”
Personnaly, i would definitively add to this :
– Street Fighter 2 (for it’s use of combo and special moves)
– G.T.A. 3 (because the first two were lacking a real plot with suitable narrative techniques)
– Final Fantasy (for it’s development of the japanese rpg codes)
– Thief (included many essential ideas to infiltration games)
– Fifa 94 (major influence for “a new licensed game each year” way of creating money. Er i meant “videogames”)
– Theme Hospital (One of the most successful management games featuring a large dose of humour, which many crappy “tycoon” games still fail to achieve).
– Pokemons (I never likes those games, but I admit its a major license in the videogame history, especially when speaking about how videogames hit others cultural spheres)
– Mortal Kombat (As far as I know, the “violence scandal” created by this game (alongside with Doom) was “influential enough” to force the industry to create the ESRB ;))
And the list could still be longer.
So I would like to ask you a more precise question : “What game would you choose to represent the whole videogame culture ?” i.e. What game you think is the most representative of what a videogame is ?
I would add an RTS – Dune2
I hope this is a list of video games and video games only. If it’s not, they’re missing quite a few games.
Belatedly – it’s hard to argue against anything on this list. I agree that if you admit text adventures as video games, Adventure should really be included, since it developed complex virtual spaces, a variety of meaningful actions, and puzzle-solving, none of which are specific to text. It also led to the dominant form of computer game at the beginning of the 1980s. But only corporate products are included on the list, so it’s no surprise that the non-commercial Adventure was left out, as was Space War.
Of all the other genres of games that aren’t represented with an example, I don’t think it is side fighters or RTS games that are most conspicuously absent. What about sports games, which account for about 20% of the market? Is there no notable example to include?
If I were to argue for one more game, I think it would be DDR, which seems like a great example of an influential game. Its impact extended outside the arcade to the home. Besides being very important to the dance/rhythm genre, it introduced different and more physical ways of interfacing with games that helped to pave the way for Guitar Hero and the Wii.
History seemed to repeat itself a decade later:
1996-Super Mario 64
1998-The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
I think most of the most influential games weren’t video games. :)
But is that cheating?
It is cheating, I believe.
But it would be interesting to map the influences of non-digital games onto video games.
Dark Souls 1 (2011) my dude.