If you could choose 1 game to be wiped from history forever... What would it be?

[Archemetis]

Pong, I wish they had destroyed all the chips and all the plans for games. And just let us keep on jerking off in peace

Contrary to popular belief, there were games before Pong.
at least that's what a documentary lead me to believe.

 

[Cheesus333]

or animal crossing!

*cries sombrely*

Your soul is a void!

 

[Isaac Dodgson]

The argument is an interesting albeit fruitless one.

What argument? Well the one for any game whether it should or shouldn't by wiped from the universe. If a game was quite simply never made, never developed, never conceived, another equally similar and flawed game would take it's place. I'll use Halo for an example. Given that the gaming industry progressed as far as it had when Halo was created, if it was however never made at all, another "Halo" as it were would ultimately fill it's place, as the idea of a space marine super human thing fighting other alien things and saving the world is a concept that just sells, and is easy to think up on any level.

Any game that one wishes to be wiped clean from the fabric of space and time would ultimately be replaced by something similar...but then again if I had to choose...

WoW

 

[Sir_Montague]

WoW or Viva Pinata... Ugh.

 

[BmC]

World of Warcraft, not that it's bad, but it's the drug of the nation.

 

[Bowstring]

WoW or Viva Pinata... Ugh.

Oi. Don't go hating on the Viva. It's got pretty colours. I like pretty colours.

 

[Johnny Ringo]

Halo.

Without the first installments the sequels won't be a problem. From then on we wouldn't get so many bloody copy-cats and then maybe, just maybe, we'd get some more original ideas.

 

[Woe Is You]

Halo.

Without the first installments the sequels won't be a problem. From then on we wouldn't get so many bloody copy-cats and then maybe, just maybe, we'd get some more original ideas.

I don't see this logic, really. A much more likely scenario would be companies copying something else that's as profitable.

 

[Blind0bserver]

I'd have to pick Halo: Combat Evolved. If that game, along with the Halo franchise, never even existed, it would arguably improve the entire FPS genre. I mean come on, how many FPSs did you see come out after the first Halo that shamelessly tried to copy it's gameplay mechanics to make a quick buck?

Let's be honest, we'd all be better off. Hell, XBox Live might have had a lot less douchebags if Halo never came along in the first place.

 

[buckythefly]

I've got some sick and twisted answers, and then a real one.

If we wiped out Mario Bros in its infancy, we'd still be playing games where you couldn't steer while jumping.

If we wiped out Golden Eye every shooter would still be a point to point frag-fest, wait every modern shooter still is...never mind that one.

In all seriousness, I'd nuke Halo, I'm sick of all the fan-dom for a mediocre game,
It also managed to outshine a bunch of more specialized games that I love dearly, like Timesplitters: Future Perfect came out at the same time, and the multi-player was insane and frenetic and all around more fun then halo's "wait 5 minutes, get raped" online game play.

 

[buckythefly]

Pong, I wish they had destroyed all the chips and all the plans for games. And just let us keep on jerking off in peace

Contrary to popular belief, there were games before Pong.
at least that's what a documentary lead me to believe.

Yeah i heard that too -- i'll just use pong as a blanket term.

It actually was like a board with some blinky lights, that could cycle and flash, I'm waiting for the XBLA remake.

 

[buckythefly]

In all honesty, most of the criticism I've seen levelled at Final Fantasy VII is merely nitpicking; typically having to do with triflings such as the imperfections of polygonal character models, a materia system that apparently detracts from the indidividuality of the protagonists (god help us), and a handful of typos through the script that are typical of RPGs in general prior to when, oh wait, FFVII catalyzed the genre in the western hemisphere. Funnier still is when the same people who so exuberantly critique it laud a title like Diablo, which didn't have half the influence on the genre, was lightyears less gratifying in terms of atmosphere and narrative, and that's central innovation in gameplay consisted of click, click, click.

Because really, when you shed the superficialities of mechanistic game criticism (i.e. the most important aspect of a game is its mechanics rather than how affecting it is à la art) and elitist "wasn't-as-good-as-the-last-one" posturing you'll find that beneath all the reactionary knee-jerking FFVII is a pretty damn fine game, if not one of the best RPGs ever. It's influence obviously attests to this: it revolutionized the way narrative was presented in RPGs - consider how much more immediately engrossing the game was than its predeccesors as a result of its manipulation of painted backgrounds, orchestral scoring, FMV, etc. - popularized JRPGs in North America, and managed to successfully reinvent the FF series by offering a fuller visulization of the cyberpunk themes suggested in FFVI. Moreoverly, it managed to do all of this while reprising the now-venerated gameplay of its forebearers, thusly offering up a tried-and-true core concept in a new - and radically innovative - packaging. Sounds good to me.

Dismissals of the storyline are patently ludicrous for a whole other set of reasons. Call me a populist, but I would argue that the continued popularity of FFVII today has largely to do with the relevance and relatibility of its narrative, which subtly touched on alot of issues - corporatism, sectarian spiritualist renewal, and environmentalism among them. That many reviewers chalk up the game's popularity to the fact it was the first FF a large portion of the gaming populace played, and deride its storyline for being convoluted, shows how out-of-touch they are: yes, FFVII was a new experience when it was released (and in actuality, whether you had played the originals or not) and yes, the plot occassionally suffered from a lack of clarity, but that does little to change the fact that the storyline was in many respects brilliantly presented, complimented as it was by bleak futurist stylings and excellent scoring. Case in point: remember that point early on the game when you come to a swamp region only to see the game camera rise slowly and depict one of the creatures that lives in it speared effortlesly by Sepiroth? Or when you travel to the village below the casino overworld to find that it's utterly impoverished, evidencing a polarity of wealth that may remind some players of their own country or planet post-Friedman? These are both examples of expert didactic skewering. And to think people still call Metal Gear Solid the "first postmodernist game".

Of course, Square's follow-up, Final Fantasy VIII, wasn't as good as its predecessor. Few games ever will be. Perhaps, then, FFVII was the beginning of the end: for me, personally, all of Square's titles that followed on the heels of it lacked the effulgence of either it or its NES/SNES precursors (minus maybe FFIX). At this point, though, I'll end this argument, before it turns into a rant about how FFX and MGS2 are both equally intolerable because they're so damn talky.

I agree with you, But i'd like to add this. Final Fantasy VII in its heyday was an amazing game, the fact that people haven't let it go is a testament to its quality. but, I believe that people just need to let go.
When any 6 people out of a group of gamers will jump to Sephiroth's defense when I call him a "Murderous Backstabbing ****" and explain fervently that he had his reasons for everything, and that he's the most bad ass man on earth, they need to go hang themselves.
If people just let the game go, and stop buying all the terrible sub-story games, The FFVII name might go out with a bit of dignity.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

The Grand Theft Auto series...nothing but pointless wastes of time if you ask me, as all crime games are.

Yeah, because no true games ever include homicide, theft, kidnapping, prostitiution...

Hold on...

 

[Fraught]

All simulator games (The Sims, SimCity, Spore)
All Atari2600 games (because they have uber-poopy graphics, and they suck in EVERY way)

 

[meece]

Every game for the PC where microsoft attempted their dumbass "microsoft live" online multi-player.

Microsoft might have gotten way with that kind of retarded idea with the x-box but PC games with it don't deserve a single sale!

 

[Rahnzan]

FF7, And I'll make a separate thread to explain why.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.74098#821849