Most influential games.

[VG_Addict]

In your opinion, what are some games that have most changed gaming? I would say Mortal Kombat. While it wasn't the first game to have violence (Splatterhouse was pretty violent for its time, and that came out for arcades in 1987, 4-5 years before Mortal Kombat hit arcades), it definitely brought video game violence into the mainstream, and made how it affects our society a hot topic.

 

[LetalisK]

For better or worse, Call of Duty and Halo. I think these two franchises spearheaded video gaming's move into the mainstream, with all its benefits and pitfalls.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Mario, obviously. Not the first platformer by a long shot, but a sizable chunk of the gaming industry has pretty much grown on top and around it.
Also Half-Life, for teaching us games CAN give a fuck about storytelling without marring gameplay.

 

[Reven]

I'll throw my hat in and say Legend of Zelda Ocarina of time. It became the template for how to make 3rd person adventure games until literally this generation.

 

[Queen Michael]

Super Mario 64. I'd say that game's the main reason that platformers stopped simply being about getting from the beginning of the stage to the end and became more like action/adventures than before.

 

[TheIceQueen]

As much as I loathe the game itself, I'll throw in my two cents for Final Fantasy VII. The game was pretty much most people's first RPG and gave Sony a leg up in the competitive console market. For its time, it pushed the boundaries for not only what an RPG game could do, but what a game could do as well.

For another game, I'll say World of Warcraft. I shouldn't even have to mention why.

 

[Yopaz]

Super Mario 64. I'd say that game's the main reason that platformers stopped simply being about getting from the beginning of the stage to the end and became more like action/adventures than before.

Yeah, this has had a lot of impact and also added exploration to the platform genre.

I think I would have to say GTA. It's the earliest sandbox crime game that I know of at least and its open world has been a great inspiration for other games. Would we have Assassin's Creed without something like GTA? Would we have Protoype? It's hard to say how things would have turned out without that top down car jacking game, but one thing is for sure, we wouldn't have had GTA V which has broken records in terms of sales.

 

[FPLOON]

Portal... A game so perfect, even Yahtzee can't find anything wrong with it... (excluding fandom, if you want to get technical...)

Portal took the next step in combining story with gameplay as well as thinking outside the box in terms of puzzle solving from a first-person perspective...


(...or maybe I just find it influential... or I just really like the writing...)

 

[Maximum Bert]

Well the most influential games would arguably be the oldest games such as Tennis for two, Pong, the original MUDs etc then later you get things like Space Invaders, Pac Man etc.

Newer games havent been anywhere near as influential as the originators but that is to be expected as the emergence of something is much more likely to be more influential than a refinement or hybrid of existing ideas.

Also Street Fighter 2 was much more influential than Mortal Kombat.

 

[Snotnarok]

Sonic the Hedgehog, yes some of his recent console releases were crap but the more recent were fantastic but, the thing that makes his release special is it caused a large uproar of companies trying to make their own mascot.
Some terrible, some great.

While some are saying Mario 64 and Zelda OoT were super influential, I think things were doing just fine with other companies, Crash Bandicoot launched at a similar time and wound up being nice, and Megaman Legends was a damn fine game and again came out at a similar time.

 

[LaoJim]

Geoff Crammond's Formula One Grand Prix

One of the first simulation racing games and first to use proper 3D polygon graphics. Before this racing games were things like Outrun or Hang-on.

Dune 2
First RTS (Dune 1 was something completely different)

Tomb Raider
One of the first games after 3D became a thing to break away from the FPS genre and use the 3D to create worlds to explore.

Well the most influential games would arguably be the oldest games such as Tennis for two, Pong, the original MUDs etc then later you get things like Space Invaders, Pac Man etc.

Newer games havent been anywhere near as influential as the originators but that is to be expected as the emergence of something is much more likely to be more influential than a refinement or hybrid of existing ideas.

Not necessarily, ever noticed how nearly every FPS shooter these days plays like CoD. Most have a two weapons limit and regenerating health, something that I'm pretty sure Halo popularized. And even roleplaying games like Mass Effect borrow the whole concept of chest high walls from GoW.

Also Street Fighter 2 was much more influential than Mortal Kombat.

Sure, but the point was about extreme violence. SF2 was influential for popularizing the whole fighting game genre and also having multiple selectable characters with different abilities in a multiplayer game (c.f. Mario Kart)

 

[Asclepion]

Halo pretty much singlehandedly saved Microsoft's Xbox from extinction.

While not necessarily a video game, Dungeons and Dragons has had a profound influence on games and the fantasy and roleplaying genres as a whole.

 

[veloper]

DOOM obviously. In the '90s first person shooters were still frequently called doom-clones.
The most succesful game genre for decades now follows from DOOM.

+1 for the Dune2 mention BTW. No game studio has have invented a completely new genre like Westwood did with D2. And then they perfected it with C&C.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Well the most influential games would arguably be the oldest games such as Tennis for two, Pong, the original MUDs etc then later you get things like Space Invaders, Pac Man etc.

Newer games havent been anywhere near as influential as the originators but that is to be expected as the emergence of something is much more likely to be more influential than a refinement or hybrid of existing ideas.

Not necessarily, ever noticed how nearly every FPS shooter these days plays like CoD. Most have a two weapons limit and regenerating health, something that I'm pretty sure Halo popularized. And even roleplaying games like Mass Effect borrow the whole concept of chest high walls from GoW.

Not arguing that COD and Halo havent had influence but I would say games like Maze War, Wolfenstein and Doom had more influence COD and Halo just had an influence on the direction of a genre not on its foundations or general emergence.

Also Street Fighter 2 was much more influential than Mortal Kombat.

Sure, but the point was about extreme violence. SF2 was influential for popularizing the whole fighting game genre and also having multiple selectable characters with different abilities in a multiplayer game (c.f. Mario Kart)

I really dont see the influence of Mortal Kombat in the long term, (short term definitely) violence was in games before as the OP pointed out it just used it to stand out and make up for its sub par fighting engine. It caused controversy but I would say it had little influence on the direction of games even within its own genre. Street Fighters legacy is still felt Mortal Kombats died pretty quickly.

I suppose you could argue better known games have more influence because more people are exposed to them but I still think the originators influence more than what comes after merely because they have taken those first steps and laid a foundation upon which everything else is built.

 

[Kinitawowi]

DOOM obviously. In the '90s first person shooters were still frequently called doom-clones.
The most succesful game genre for decades now follows from DOOM.

+1 for the Dune2 mention BTW. No game studio has have invented a completely new genre like Westwood did with D2. And then they perfected it with C&C.

Herzog Zwei would like a word. So would Stonkers, for that matter.

If influence is defined as the perfecting and codifying the tropes of a genre while also breaking it to a wider audience, Starcraft takes that title. Very little about it is original, but it set the bar for the next ten years of RTS development. Ditto CoD (as much as that pains me), FF7 (which pains me even more), Super Mario 64 (I feel ill just writing most of this down) and Bejeweled (aaargh).

None of them have done anything new. CoD is still just Space Invaders tilted forwards. FF7 is Dungeons & Dragons with an interface. SM64 is just a 3D version of the same old formula they did best in SMB3. But all of them became the benchmarks for what gaming would do for the subsequent decade after their release. The fact that they all suck speaks volumes for where gaming is now.

 

[LaoJim]

Not arguing that COD and Halo havent had influence but I would say games like Maze War, Wolfenstein and Doom had more influence COD and Halo just had an influence on the direction of a genre not on its foundations or general emergence.

I suppose you could argue better known games have more influence because more people are exposed to them but I still think the originators influence more than what comes after merely because they have taken those first steps and laid a foundation upon which everything else is built.

Sure, it's hard to argue that Doom isn't one of the most influential games ever made. But if you think of Wolfenstein 3D as the first FPS, then the genre runs from 1992 till now so 21. years and are now by far the most common type of game. If you look at say platformers, starting with Donkey Kong in 1981 and run forward 21 years to 2002, no way was the genre still as popular as FPS's are today and at that point had largely disappeared (though through things like Xbox Live Arcade, they've become more common again). Pac-Man, as a one screen maze game, was old-fashioned when I got my first home computer (a Spectrum) in about 1886. So I think there is still room for including some of the modern FPS on a list of influential games, even though they are often improving rather innovating genres.

I really dont see the influence of Mortal Kombat in the long term, (short term definitely) violence was in games before as the OP pointed out it just used it to stand out and make up for its sub par fighting engine. It caused controversy but I would say it had little influence on the direction of games even within its own genre. Street Fighters legacy is still felt Mortal Kombats died pretty quickly.

I think if you were writing a book about the history of video games, you would have to write a chapter about the moral panics about video games which started in the 1990's over Doom and Mortal Kombat. Remember MK has digitized graphics of real people, where you could decapitate or pull the spine off them. That was different from the simpler graphics of things like Splatterhouse. Still, from a gaming mechanics and long term perspective, SF2 was definitely more influential.

 

[veloper]

DOOM obviously. In the '90s first person shooters were still frequently called doom-clones.
The most succesful game genre for decades now follows from DOOM.

+1 for the Dune2 mention BTW. No game studio has have invented a completely new genre like Westwood did with D2. And then they perfected it with C&C.

Herzog Zwei would like a word. So would Stonkers, for that matter.

If influence is defined as the perfecting and codifying the tropes of a genre while also breaking it to a wider audience, Starcraft takes that title.

No, it's a combination of having an original idea, gaining wide acclaim at the time and building a legacy.
Dune 2 has all this.

Herzog Zwei fails on all accounts. No basebuilding and resource gathering places the game outside the popular RTS genre, so there's no legacy. It's just an RTT. Not even it's basic control scheme survived. Last but not least, it's a fairly obscure title that hardly anybody played.
Stonkers likewise fails.
Starcraft has the acclaim but not the original idea.

Dune 2 it the only candidate for the RTS genre.

 

[SanguiniusMagnificum]

Planescape: Torment. It showed the gaming industry that games CAN be deep. Deep and meaningfull.

Not that they learned very much from that lesson...

 

[Vivi22]

Super Mario 64. I'd say that game's the main reason that platformers stopped simply being about getting from the beginning of the stage to the end and became more like action/adventures than before.

Yeah, this has had a lot of impact and also added exploration to the platform genre.

Platformers had exploration long before Mario 64. Mario 3 and Mario World actually being prime examples. Mario 64 just took it a bit farther, but where it's influence really lies for me is that it was the first 3D platformer that didn't play like complete ass. It's literally the template on which every platformer since has been based and the most amazing thing is that it's still better than 90% of them.

 

[Maximum Bert]

*snip for space*
I think if you were writing a book about the history of video games, you would have to write a chapter about the moral panics about video games which started in the 1990's over Doom and Mortal Kombat. Remember MK has digitized graphics of real people, where you could decapitate or pull the spine off them. That was different from the simpler graphics of things like Splatterhouse. Still, from a gaming mechanics and long term perspective, SF2 was definitely more influential.

I think we are sort of in agreement on the first part although I will just try and clarify my position anyway as I have said influential games are all over the place but the most influential are largely the first one in a genre. You seem to be going of on a tangent about popularity which I suppose is related but not exactly the same yes we do have a lot of FPS games now much more than platformers but that dosent change the fact that we still largely do what we do in subsequent games to what we did in the first of the genre.

In some ways they have changed a lot small tweaks here and there that build up and then shift around but really what do we do in a FPS we run around and shoot stuff in first person exactly like we did back in the day, what do we do in platformers run and jump to clear the level same as we did back in the day. This is why I am saying the first are the most influential because everything still largely follows their blue prints. Some game types are largely forgotten and not really made anymore and so in a way they are not that influential or relevant at the moment but they still have laid down something which we recognise and could be reiterated upon again. Lots of games are influential ofc especially if they are popular because lots of devs and publishers want that phat loot but I would still argue the most influential are the originators of brand new genres even though others after can still be very influential themselves.

As for Mortal Kombat if we are talking about controversy I would agree it deserves a mention I still remember when it first came out and people were going mad over it because of the poorly animated characters looked realistic to some short sighted people and there was ofc blood and fatalities basically it was all style over substance. I digress however influentially I would still say its impact was very minor it wasnt even the first game to use those sort of graphics in a game I think pit fighter was and ofc the whole violence thing was done before anyway. So I suppose it introduced fatalities thats it and that has had bugger all influence over anything.

I remember a racing game causing controversy before MK. I was so young I cant remember the name but it had a black screen with white line graphics and you had to run gremlin creatures over then a tombstone would pop up and basically you had to kill as many of these creatures as you could without crashing into the tombstones. Apparently it to was to realistic in its depiction of violence which as it turns out like with MK was not very.

Its controversy likewise had little influence over games in general and I dont think it advanced or hindered the evolution of games in the slightest. The only reason it is recalled with nostalgia is because of the blood, digitised actors and fatalities it has a place in the history of games but its legacy and influence on games is very little.

Purely for fighting games I would say the most influential are Karate Champ, Street Fighter 2 and Virtua Fighter. Not all of these are the most popular but all it takes is one to inspire someone to make something that is, whether directly or indirectly.