Games with the most innovative, original concepts
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Yeah, I know this. Atari ripped him off huge, but Baer, first or not, didn't really flood the streets with the wave of arcade machines that Atari did. Pong sparked gaming, regardless of it's origin.black lincon said:It's my duty to inform you that the first games were made by Ralph Baer in his system the Odyssey.AC10 said:
as to the most innovative game, I would have to say that Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World had an interesting concept in terms of story. For those of you who don't know ToSoaNW's story, the original concept was that after the first game you united the two worlds in an attempt to create a peaceful society, and then shit starts getting bad for various reasons. It may not sound interesting but it was if you played through the first game, or it was interesting up until they abandoned the concept of making a good game and went with a shitty fan game.
EDIT:Once again, Ralph Baer, The Odyssey. in fact Pong was just a fine tuned version of one of The Odyssey's games, table tennis.CoverYourHead said:
I also want to say Star Fighter 3000, the 3D first game (to my knowledge) with fully destructible environments.
Probably Noughts and Crosses (OXO) or Spacewar. Also a Tennis Game sometime before Spacewar. Which were the first notable games ever. Though if I recall, there was a game made in the late 40's based on a WW2 radar screen. Name and exact date escape me though.
Ralph Baer made his first game somewhere in the late fifties. Though he did make the first gaming console (Probably your confussion) which was bought and renamed by Magnavox which I believe was renamed Odyssey. Poor guy had to get an award from Bush.... Sigh...black lincon said:
System Shock (1994) for introducing its signature style of RPG-FPS and storytelling through found expositional material, which would later be built upon by Deus Ex and System Shock 2.
Quake (1996) for supporting mod development in a big way.
SWAT 3 (1999) for having the most awesome squad commands system.
Command & Conquer (1995) for defining the modern RTS. Total Annihilation (1997) for evolving the RTS conceit.
SimCity (1989) pioneer of God sims. Civilization (1990) pioneer of the turn-based 4X game.
Adventure (c1975; aka. Colossal Adventure, Colossal Caves) the archetypal adventure game. King's Quest (1984) and Maniac Mansion (1987) pioneers of the graphical adventure.
Beyond Good & Evil (2003) for the camera gameplay mechanic.
GTA3 for pioneering the open world sandbox game.
And Portal of course.
Quake (1996) for supporting mod development in a big way.
SWAT 3 (1999) for having the most awesome squad commands system.
Command & Conquer (1995) for defining the modern RTS. Total Annihilation (1997) for evolving the RTS conceit.
SimCity (1989) pioneer of God sims. Civilization (1990) pioneer of the turn-based 4X game.
Adventure (c1975; aka. Colossal Adventure, Colossal Caves) the archetypal adventure game. King's Quest (1984) and Maniac Mansion (1987) pioneers of the graphical adventure.
Beyond Good & Evil (2003) for the camera gameplay mechanic.
GTA3 for pioneering the open world sandbox game.
And Portal of course.
In Planescape Torment you play an immortal who every time he's killed, will die and return again within the same body as a new individual. Thousands of years of years he's spent wandering the cosmos, having been both the greatest examples of good and the most terrifying examples of evil, all for the sake of an old witch who wanted to solve a simple puzzle:
What can change the nature of a man?
His companions consist of but are not limited to: A floating sarcastic skull, a chaste succubus, a suit of armor imbued with the soul of a man who refused to die till he's seen justice done, a walking-talking computer with a bad case of individuality, a cynical tiefling thief with a brogue accent, and a man who's been damned to burn perpetually for all eternity, his flesh growing anew even as it melts from his never-ending flames.
If that ain't an original concept, damn, I don't know what is. Amazing game too, probably the most interesting and thought-provoking story to ever be told in a game to boot!
What can change the nature of a man?
His companions consist of but are not limited to: A floating sarcastic skull, a chaste succubus, a suit of armor imbued with the soul of a man who refused to die till he's seen justice done, a walking-talking computer with a bad case of individuality, a cynical tiefling thief with a brogue accent, and a man who's been damned to burn perpetually for all eternity, his flesh growing anew even as it melts from his never-ending flames.
If that ain't an original concept, damn, I don't know what is. Amazing game too, probably the most interesting and thought-provoking story to ever be told in a game to boot!
I agree that Psychonauts was innovative but for different reasons. The theme was original in its own right but what truly set it apart from other games was the dialogue. You would be very hard pressed to find a game as consistently funny throughout the story as this game was.Doug said:
Also, Shadow of the Colossus, a game so far ahead of its time yet so unique that it could never be recreated.
It's not a matter of believing - this is how video games came into being:AC10 said:
- The first two video games were tennis for two and spacewar.. two games made by and strictly for geeky engineering professors and students, played on gigantic ENIAC-sized monolithic computers
- Nolan Bushnell (founder of atari) saw Spacewar, released it as a coinop called Computer Space.. it tanked.. It was sort of like a version of Asteroids without the Asteroids. Just 2 ships trying to shoot one another.
- Meanwhile, Ralph Baer invented a tabletop tennis game like pong for Magnavox
- Bushnell stole it, refined it a bit, released it in arcades as Pong and it exploded in popularity, becoming the first big video game success.
Baer ended up stealing a failed arcade game Atari, refined it, and made Simon. He's also the one who engineered the technology for adding digitized photos into a game, eventually leading to Mortal Kombat
EDIT: See its been mentioned already, that's ok
I'd have to say Audiosurf. What, don't know what I'm talking about?
Audiosurf is some sort of a racing game. You control your 'ship' by moving it left or right on the track. The interesting bit is the way the tracks are composed. Instead of having a predefined number of tracks shipped with the game, the racing track is generated based on any song on your computer! You can load an MP3 in the game, and it calculates the intensity of the song and then matches the track with the song. When the music is soft, the colours are mellow - purplish and blueish - and the track goes on slowly too. If the music goes faster, the track goes faster too, and the colours shift to more intense spectra - yellow to red.
Together with the challenging aspect - you have to grab some coloured blocks, while avoiding the grey ones (though there are other gametypes) - and the online nature of the game - once you finished the race, your score is compared to other players who played the same song - this makes for a very interesting game with quite the longevity.
To illustrate, a low res video with music by our lovely Wolfgang, played by yours truly. [http://www.xfire.com/video/aa6e/]
Audiosurf is some sort of a racing game. You control your 'ship' by moving it left or right on the track. The interesting bit is the way the tracks are composed. Instead of having a predefined number of tracks shipped with the game, the racing track is generated based on any song on your computer! You can load an MP3 in the game, and it calculates the intensity of the song and then matches the track with the song. When the music is soft, the colours are mellow - purplish and blueish - and the track goes on slowly too. If the music goes faster, the track goes faster too, and the colours shift to more intense spectra - yellow to red.
Together with the challenging aspect - you have to grab some coloured blocks, while avoiding the grey ones (though there are other gametypes) - and the online nature of the game - once you finished the race, your score is compared to other players who played the same song - this makes for a very interesting game with quite the longevity.
To illustrate, a low res video with music by our lovely Wolfgang, played by yours truly. [http://www.xfire.com/video/aa6e/]