Most Important Game Ever Made

[Savage Cabbage]

Ok, not sure if this has ever been discussed before (burn me down if it has).

What do you think is the most important game ever made and why?

[DanJW]

Pong

No pong, no games industry.

[Kenty]

Super Mario Bros. Everything that's good about gaming can be traced back to this landmark title.

[lailoken]

tetris no competition

[Savage Cabbage]

You see I thought Pong for that exact reason but something tells me there must be something else that got us to ICO for example like Mario. BUt i dont know if Mario is the most important. Does the creation of Pong and Mario give us Gran Turismo or WOW?

Currently bleeding Ridge Racer Type 4

[spaceship789]

Super Mario.. the game that put the NES into 1/4 of American households.

Crash Bandicoot was pretty important. It was the killer app that put Sony where they are today. Without it they could have easily been to consoles like what Nokia was to hand helds.

Doom. Started the chain reaction that made Network support a must have feature for many types of games.

Halo on Xbox. the killer app for XBox. Dunno about in the states but down here in Australia, the multiplayering goodness of Halo had some of the most ardent windows haters dropping their guard for the sake of male bonding.

[baconian]

Ok, not sure if this has ever been discussed before (burn me down if it has).

What do you think is the most important game ever made and why?

well, one of the reasons games are appealling to me is that they are completely unimportant, but on a scale from 0 to 2, I rate the following important games:

pacman: 2

streetfighter 2: 1.7

simcity: 1.6

tso monkey island: 1.86

counterstrike: 1.5

[Thrik]

Most important game? Well, I'd have to go with Super Mario Bros. The damned thing introduced so many things to gaming which still live on today that it simply cannot fail to be at the top. The third Mario Bros game was also very important, bringing with it a lot of improvements to an already strong game which continued to be imitated in 2D platform games for a long time to come. Until the 3D explosion, most platform games ended up borrowing from these.

However, more recent games can be traced back to the aforementioned Doom a lot more easily, and so I'd have to lean towards that one as being a huge part of the current gaming scene being what it is -- a plethora of first person shooters. Half-Life also deserves some credit, with the improvements to the genre which resulted in a far more interesting FPS experience undeniably an incredibly strong influence on those games which came after it.

[ysbreker]

Doom? Lets make that Wolvenstein 3D then. No wolvenstein, no doom, no multiplayer as we know it.

[netmonkey]

Donkey Kong.

Before that, games looked too abstract. Donkey brought in a simple storyline and good looking and recognizable characters!

[SoccerDude28]

Doom. Multi-player??? First Person shooter??? Almost half of the games at E3 this year where first person shooters and without Doom (or wolf 3D), there might not be an FPS. Think about it, Halo for the XBOX arguably sold the system, so no DOOM -> No Halo -> XBOX does not sell as much.

[baconian]

fyi;

http://www.3000ad.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=37;t=000192;p=1

also, I vaguely remember this _very_ early first-person version of The Living Dead, where you're trapped in a shopping mall and have to solve puzzles and shoot stuff to escape.

[SoccerDude28]

fyi;

http://www.3000ad.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=37;t=000192;p=1

also, I vaguely remember this _very_ early first-person version of The Living Dead, where you're trapped in a shopping mall and have to solve puzzles and shoot stuff to escape.

Good find

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Underworld

" id Software programmer John Carmack has himself said that the engine used for Wolfenstein 3D was inspired by a technology demo of the first Ultima Underworld game."

[Tanukitsune]

I second Pong....

[ThunderPeel2001]

Mario Bros. hands down. It brought gaming into our homes, where it's been growing ever since.

[Marek]

A lot of these games can't be credited for inventing things, just popularizing them. So it really depends how you interpret the question...

[Jake]

Doom. Multi-player??? First Person shooter??? Almost half of the games at E3 this year where first person shooters and without Doom (or wolf 3D), there might not be an FPS. Think about it, Halo for the XBOX arguably sold the system, so no DOOM -> No Halo -> XBOX does not sell as much.

But without Super Mario Bros there would be no Commander Keen, and therefore no Wolfenstein 3D and therefore no Doom

Stretching.... I know.

I don't know or care, though, which video game is the "most important."

[Marek]

If you want we can code a bot to delete all your posts older than two hours. Would save you a lot of trouble.

[Twilo]

I don't like choosing one, because the most important games only have very minor overlap with regard to the games they influenced

ADVENT; in there with the first computer games, it's a humourous adventure game. Being the first text adventure (and available on networks), it can also claim the MUD as a descendent. An argument can be made for it as an indirect ancestor of the MMORPG twice removed.

Doom; Cry Wolf if you like but it's this that made the FPS scene the beast it became in the following years.

Dragon Quest; I don't like this series at all, but without it (arguably) you wouldn't have any Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Lunar or any other of a hundred other japanese rpgs.

Street Fighter 2; nuff said.

[Dingo Chavez]

I think it's really about what type of games you're into, some would say Mario or Zelda, others would say Wolvenstein or Doom because that's the type of games that they like. So it's really about taste for many (not all) people.

For me it's the original Donkey Kong. The game brought Nintendo from a considerably successful card maker to the reviver and innovator of gaming, and it also gave birth to Jumpman a.k.a Mario. So without Donkey Kong there may have never been a Super Mario Bros. And Nintendo wouldn't be the giant that it is today.

Or Pong.

[Lechimp]

I thought that either Space War or some other game called Tennis for Two (basically pong) was the first game ever, I suppose the first game ever would be the most important. But it's not like that no one else would never make a game if those weren't invented.

[spaceship789]

I thought that either Space War or some other game called Tennis for Two (basically pong) <snip> But it's not like that no one else would never make a game if those weren't invented.

Good point LeChimp,

In terms of gameplay styles, lets face it - many game play styles were * inevitable*

If platoon or colony, or ultima, or wolf 3D didn't invent the FPS - then someone else was going to.

If Doom didn't invent FPS on a network, then someone else was going to.

Ditto for sports games, including pong. There would be a tennis sim eventually.

Final Fantasy, MUDs - as long as there was D&D, there would be similar games.

All are as inevitable as car games.

etc.

But how about more abstract styles of games - ingenious games that paved a path that would otherwise have never been paved?

I'm beginning to think that these are much more important...

Donkey kong - maybe

Tetris - yes (As well as cementing nintendos hand held reign that continues til this day!)

Lemmings- yes!

Pacman - no. being chased thru a maze was popular ven back in greek ages, as were topographical maps of mazes.

Katamari - yes!

Truly original games. They are important games because without them, the history/future of computer games is pretty much predictable.

[netmonkey]

I want to add another comment that in my heart, my personal most important game ever made is Monkey Island 2. Before then, I thought computer games was just software or simulations of real life...

*Insert something poetic and romantic here*

[nsps]

Here's a list of the "essential" games that I think is a bit silly in its format, but does provide some other ideas as to key points in gaming history.

http://classic.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3116290

Now, the definition of "essential" here is incorrectly considered to be landmarks in gaming history rather than games that are key to understanding the pleasure and possibilities of video games. For example, I'd call "Grim Fandango" essential even if it wasn't the most influential game, because I consider it the greatest game ever made, so it's certainly essential for someone to play. Likewise, I wouldn't put "Super Mario Brothers" 4 spots under ET, which is apparently important because it was so bad it almost ruined the gaming industry.

The editors reveal a complete lack of any perspective other than chronological. Look at the years of each game and you'll see that this could almost be a timeline of landmarks in the history of video games, which would have made it a much better article. They do say that it's more based on chronological order, but they still present it as a ranked and not entirely chronological list. Oh well. Sorry to rant, just thought I'd clarify my opinions of the list if I was going to link to it.

Now, to the question at hand: Based on my studies of other arts like painting and film, I'm reluctant to call the primitive games the most important. For example, a decade and a half had passed before The Birth of a Nation came out and put all the elements of cinematic language together, and 28 years later Citizen Kane was another major landmark. (I'd highlight many films in between, but am speaking in very broad and general historical terms.) So I'd probably favor Super Mario Bros. with props to Donkey Kong for opening format and also bringing video games into the mainstream. But I'll keep thinking.

This opens another interesting question: When was the golden age of video games? Has it happened yet?

[Chris]

This opens another interesting question: When was the golden age of video games? Has it happened yet?

Well, one of them probably has. I think games have the potential to get much better but I think by the time the industry goes through another really strong period it will already have been way too commodified and turned into an Entertainment Industry (I mean, it already has) to really be considered a "Golden Age".