What is Gaming's Star Wars?

[Rednog]

Amazed at the amount of people that clearly didn't read the OP's post.
But I digress, sci-fi it is probably Halo.
Overall games it would probably be tetris, every one and their mothers have seen tetris in one shape or another, hell it comes standard on every device that can play it.

 

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

Mario. Every ************ under the sun knows who he is. You go anywhere the are video games and everybody knows what you're talking about.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Final Fantasy

Started out strong and beloved, but the creators just started losing it as time went on, and are now all about milking the name for what's it worth before the rest of their target audience catches on.

 

[Owen Robertson]

Call of Duty. Accidentally outstanding to begin with, then absolute fecal matter as of late. And the fans of the original 3 (Or 4 I suppose. But then again the selling out to multiplayer was what started the bashing.) seem to share contempt for then newer incarnations. But if it's supposed to be "The thing only geeks care about and seem to be obsessed with" I'd give the title to WoW. And if it's got to be "Sci-Fi that's slowly going downhill" then Halo wins. There's no Star Wars of Gaming. Just like there's no Pulp Fiction of books, or LoTR of paintings.

 

[Dragonpit]

Gaming's Star Wars, huh? That's a tricky one. Looking over the forum, there are plenty of nominations, so to be clear, let's go over the criteria that Star Wars itself sets.

1. The most obvious, it must be very well known and talked about. Whether everyone likes it or not is both debatable and not mandatory.

2. It must have some form of cultural significance to us gamers today. That means some time must have passed after its release before it can be considered our "Star Wars." Otherwise, it may as well be just a fad.

3. While it can be selected parts of a series, it cannot be a whole series. Why? It's statistically impossible. Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars are unarguably the most thought of when it comes to the Star Wars name, but at the same time, no one is actually cheering in load voices for its spin-offs, such as the prevalent Clone Wars series, or the Force Unleashed games. Just as equally true, it doesn't have to be one game specifically, since the Star Wars everyone holds dear is actually comprised of three movies.

4. It doesn't have to be the first ever great video game. Believe it or not, there were plenty of great movies before the advent of Star Wars; they just aren't as widely acknowledged.

5. It cannot be Star Wars itself. There may have been several great Star Wars games, but I believe that there are stronger candidates out there. Besides, going with Star Wars itself is essentially a cop-out in this case.

6. It can be any game, regardless of platform. It doesn't matter if it's console or PC. Some games appear on both, and besides, gaming is gaming.

7. It doesn't have to be as widespread as Star Wars. The series has been out for at least 40 years and has longer since made it to every form of media known to man. It has had a head start, so it's unreasonable to expect any game to reach the same level of cultural relevance. This is especially true, as video games as a whole have only been around for about 30 years.

8. And lastly, there is the whole "gaming as an art" argument. Truthfully, I'm on the fence about including this as a mandatory part of the criteria, simply because of the argument of what can or cannot be considered art. So if it can be considered art, that's great, but I don't think it has to necessarily fit the bill here.

And that's the criteria I believe we need. Feel free to amend as you see necessary.

Now, back on topic, I personally think Final Fantasy VII fits best. The answer as to why should be very clear.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

I cant decide between Final Fantasy and Call of Duty.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Perhaps you should explain just what you mean by "our Star Wars." If by that you mean our franchise that made a tremendous rise to the top making a huge impact on pop culture only to make a even more spectacular fall from grace, then I would probably say Final Fantasy.

 

[Puzzlenaut]

I see. Well, if you're looking for a single title or series, I dunno, but my 'off the top of head' suggestions would be: 'Age of Empires', 'Mario' 'Zelda' or 'CounterStrike'. There will always be a few people who 'haven't gotten into' the game of your choice, simply because they don't like the genre or whatever, but I think those are a fairly staple suggestion, at least to start with, as we're sure to see more as the thread progresses.

EDIT: Oh, only sci-fi games. Right. Well, Starcraft perhaps? The legion of followers of the first Starcraft title was unlike anything ever seen in the online community

The problem with this list is that for most of them, like Counterstrike, Starcraft, Age of Empires, only PC gamers, a minority within gaming, ever got into them.

I think Mario is a little more old-school than what he is trying to decide: Star Wars was not only a huge success in the film industry, but also changed a lot of things about cinema that came after it. It was not one of the earliest films released, but completely changed the game.

The game that to me that most represents this is Halo -- superbly popular, it revolutionised the shooter, began the later obsession with streamlining everything and increasingly grew into a joke as the series progressed.
Oh, and also, Halo was F-KING AWESOME.

 

[HardkorSB]

Now I don't mean something with like a point for point comparison here, I mean some artifact of Gaming culture that we can all point to and know what it is, something that even the highest l33ts and the lowest n00bs know along with maybe a character or a quote. Personally I'm gonna say Halo but that might be just me

Yes, it is just you. Halo is big.. in the gaming community. People who don't play games don't know what Halo is (well, they might know the halos over the heads of angels but that's about it).
I'm going to say Mario, Doom and Tetris are games that non-gamers might know. Tetris and Doom are fading out of the popular culture but Mario is still going strong. There's already a 3rd generation of gamers playing Mario games. Just like Star Wars, it's constant popularity is heavily reinforced by the endless milking of the franchise.

Also, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are quite known outside of the gaming scene.

 

[FilipJPhry]

Final Fantasy? It used to be revered and respected...nowadays it's a bit of a joke, isn't it?

EXACTLY like Star Wars, ha!

Hit the nail right on the head!
My selection is probably Super Mario World

 

[jaketaz]

It's Street Fighter, stop being ridiculous.

 

[dickywebster]

I cant help but feel that each genre really has its own star wars, cause games didnt really become multi genre until more recently.
But generally, id probably say the old nintendo main seelers, like zelda, mario etc, heck maybe even pokemon.

But considering star wars was expected to fail and take george lucas down with it by some people, maybe ff should be brought up, after all it saved square and lead to them becoming a major game company?

But then part of this depends on age, I started playing games on the snes so i could probably name a few more, but younger gamers might only be able to bring up games from say ps2 onwards, kinda a tricky question that way.

 

[the.gill123]

Command and Conquer, Tiberium and Red Alert Universes, they are known by almost everyone and were the games to which most RTS games were marked against, like I say WERE. I only hope that End of Nations will be good, I am intruiged to know how an MMORTS works.

 

[Silenttalker22]

Not trying to start a flamewar or an Offtopic discussion here, but seriously? Star Wars was damn far from perfection.

Shh. You're not being very secretive about being negative.

 

[Bad Jim]

I should mention that I never had a SNES and hadn't actually heard of Final Fantasy or Zelda until the internet age. I watched some gaming related TV programs and read one cross platform magazine but I never noticed them. They certainly weren't getting special attention. But Mario was very prominent, even though half the games were from the NES and made little use of the powerful SNES hardware.

Games like FF and Zelda take a while to get into, while Mario takes about five seconds to get into. Hence far more mainstream appeal.