Most important games in history

In my opinion this is part of the list:

Space invaders

Pac Man

R type

Shinobi

Secret of monkey island 2

Street fighter 2

Virtua racing/daytona

Doom

Tomb Raider

In your opinion?Which games I must delete?Which games I must add?
(the most important in history not means the better)

i'd agree with street fighter 2, tomb raider and r-type, but maybe make a case for each of them?

for example, why shinobi and not double dragon? yie ar kung fu? renegade? barbarian?

why monkey island 2 and not monkey island 1? or loom? or maniac mansion?

why doom and not wolfenstein?

why virtua racing and not road rash or outrun or chase hq?

if we're talking pivotal games then a few others to consider...

lemmings - puzzle game visionary.

another world - super stylish interactive film-like game far beyond others like dragon's lair in terms of gameplay and spawned the similarly impressive flashback that expanded on the original with shades of the classic mission impossible game.

it came from the desert - wonderfully atmospheric top down / fps / point and click adventure game story driven hybrid whose formula has never since to my knowledge even been attempted.

eye of the beholder - set standards for the rpg genre as we know it today.

sim city / theme park - compulsively addictive strategy / management / construction simulators.

kick off 2 / sensible soccer - the first non arcade based super successful and easy to pick up but hard to master soccer games.

and these are without even touching or considering early console titles like the mario games, sonic, mario kart, alex kidd, rampage, secret of mana, final fantasy games, zelda, wonderboy, castle of illusion etc and barely even leaving 1993.

nostalgia overload!

Final fantasy and zelda are the most important two I forgot.I think.
And games from 1995 to now?

Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI. Got to represent those JRPGs.

@vespuche: and Earthbound!

Is most important Secret of monkey island II or maniac mansion or an other in your opinion?

I mean important,not better.

Example:

Doom is important for its success.

@davide1979: I understand it's your opinion, but I can't help get a bit question'y. Even if you are not a fan of 2D Retro Platform games, how do you miss out a Super Mario Bros or Sonic the Hedgehog, for being "Important" but feel the need to add Shinobi? I'm speechless. . Is this an "Important games in history" discussion or 'favorite classics'?

Also why Monkey Island 2 when The Secret of Monkey Island had puzzles that made sense. And the sequel was mostly randomness. All the sequel did was be bigger, and more artistic (I like both, but Secret is the one that would be considered more important overall)

That's just me taking this subject too critically.

But as for what I find important. . . Hmm? Most my childhood was 128-bit gaming so would probably state-

Devil May Cry- Made CastleVania like games work in 3D, and inspired a whole new genre of action Hack n' Slash games. Without DMC, you wouldn't have Bayonetta, God of War or modern Ninja Gaiden.

Monster Hunter- Without MH we wouldn't have RPGs with far deeper combat mechanics. How? It has been stated to have inspired the likes of Demon's Souls by Miyazaki Hidetaka san himself, which we all know spawned Dark Souls and Bloodborne. The Witcher IIIs combat was stated to have been inspired by Dark Souls. So without MH, Action RPGs might have turned out differently. It's also worth noting MH4G is one of the best rated and best selling 3DS titles amazing game!

Resident Evil 4- Ok! For the record I'm actually a bigger fan of the Resi Remake. To me that's the definition of what a Remake should be. . . However 4 got developers mimicking the seamless over the shoulder view, and even improving upon it. Whether you liked it or not, it was a huge deal. And became a running theme for many games. Gears of War, Metal Gear Solid IV+, Vanquish and countless more_

Pokémon- Mostly mentioning this because of what it has done for gaming on the social side of things. This franchise has done much to inspire social encounters/ trading, sharing and battling. A lot of games mimic the appeal of Pokémon. Shin Megami Tensei, Yo Kai, Folklore, and Ni No Kuni.

*Could probably name some more, but four is a good lot added for this thread.

@RSM-HQ: thanks,super mario bros and sonic of course are other two I forgot.Also others,I see.

During the Atari days most gamers was casual. People wanted the Pacman experience at home. The Atari did for gaming what the Wii did. The Atari was a fad. During the video game crash there were still gamers. Just the core gamers stuck around.

Super Mario Bro's NES brought gaming to the forefront again. Super Mario Bros kicked off a whole new generation of gamers. Some like me are still around playing because of SMB.

Super Metroid goes down as one of the most acclaimed games of it's era with it's style of game play. Very few games have ever moved me the way this game did. 22 years later and it still shows up on most top 100 lists.

Mario 64 brought 3d gaming into the spot light. Many of todays games roots can be traced back to this game.

Resident Evil 4 revolutionized 3rd person action games with the best camera system ever invented.

These aren't the only games many others have contributed to modern gaming. But I think these are some of the most influential.

Continued.........

Zelda NES was inspirational with it's battery save back up and open world style.

Street Fighter 2 started the entire arcade fighting scene.

Mortal Kombat was the first time anyone had really seen gore in a game other then mild cartoon violence. I remember congress was flipping out about it on TV and thought it was the end of the world.

Virtua Fighter with it's 3d polygons was a big leap forward for fighting games.

Halo 2 was the god father of online shooters. It brought the experience to consoles.

COD4 Online game play was a phenomenon.

I've lived through all of this but I'm at the point of quitting modern gaming. The internet has given game companies the ability nickle and dime us more then arcades ever did. Broken launch games Stripping Content to later be sold as DLC Microtransactions Pay for early access. I'm at my whits end with modern gaming.

I will give you Doom, Street Fighter 2 and Pac Man, though I'm pretty sure Ms Pac Man was actually more lucrative, particularly for its appeal to female gamers (kinda weird considering they're nearly identical).

I would put Donkey Kong/ Super Mario Brothers up there because those games brought gaming back from the brink.

More of a regional pick - FFVII. If you like JRPGs, this game is pretty much the reason you've gotten to play them. Prior to FFVII, JRPGs in the US were few and far between. When the Playstation came out SCEA said specifically they were looking for sports and fighting games, alienating companies like Working Designs. FFVII came out and set sales records its first weekend, outperforming the number one movie for that weekened in revenue. It opened people's eyes to the existence of an RPG market in the US and because of it we got all those niche RPGs that came along later.

and in an era where just about everything is open-world, how can you forget GTA3? Today's open world games don't even look that different from GTA3.

World of Warcraft

Updated list based on your answers.

Pong

Space invaders

Pac Man

Donkey Kong

Super Mario bros

Zelda

R type

Outrun

Double Dragon

Secret of monkey island 2

Street fighter 2

Virtua racing/daytona

Wolf3d/Doom

Tomb Raider

Final Fantasy VII

Resident Evil

Devil May Cry

World of Warcraft

There are not Tekken and virtua fighter.Which of the two?
And mortal kombat?Already there is street fighter 2.
ANd ik+?I liked it a lot,can be an important game in history?

@davide1979: Virtua Fighter.

I prefer Tekken in every way. It's my most played series growing up. I spent so much in the arcades lol.

However, Virtua was the birth of 3D fighters, and respect for what it did should be acknowledged. Without Virtua we wouldn't have Tekken.

#TekkensStillBetter

It's a shame this is still believed. Splatterhouse came before Mortal Kombat.

1988 vs 1992

Only difference is Splatterhouse was censored for home platforms (all the red blood changed to green and blue). Though was still the first released game with a parental advisory warning printed on the front of the box (1989).

The Arcade version was the first time gore and morbid monster sprites of that level and degree was used in games.

Mortal Kombat however is still known for creating a age rating for games. It had to be made for MK, because its home platform release was not censored, on many platforms (Nintendo had blood replaced with sweat, and with changed Fatalities) otherwise was in all its original Arcade form.

OP is a bot. dont feed trolls, or bots

@hillelslovak: Can I ask how you can tell it's a Bot, and not just someone with grammar in-corrections?

These forums are loaded with bots, no profile picture, created within the last month, with 4-7 posts. And they always start super general, vague topics.

@hillelslovak: To be honest my English wasn't very good when I started using this account, and it also had a default icon. . . But perhaps you are onto something_

Do Bots have the ability to reply like TC has?

*I know so little about Bots o_o

Diablo
Doom
Final Fantasy
Grand Theft Auto III
Mario
Starcraft
Street Fighter II

All I know is that when people make accounts on gs, they need to add profile pics.

I look at a games importance based on how it changed the gaming industry for better or worse. Either by changing policies, laws, mass shock or just selling a heck of a lot of systems.

• SF2 ...SNES sold a crap ton of systems thanks to this game, probably more than most any other in history
• MK. (you can't count Splatterhouse because that game did not impact and cause such a stir about it's gore like MK did) Atari had porn games for crying out loud. Thanks to MK, we got ratings.
• GTA 3 or SA depending on your view of the media attention regarding violence it got.
• SMB's naturally led a big impact on platformer's to come and started the idea of gaming icon's being symbolic to a platform.
• I Robot...It did a lot in terms of getting the use and development of 3d polygon graphics to being more mainstream for other developers
• Doom, it popularized first person shooters and started a huge wave of similar games, that said not all popular games spawned the shear mass like Doom has.
• Double Dragon, popularized beat em ups and like doom, spawned a wave of similar games despite not being the first of it's type. Very likely that you can thank DD for Street Fighter...likely.

Naturally there are many titles that later inspired developers of iconic games but what's important are how certain games effected the industry, not just some early game you really liked or was popular.

@pimphand_gamer: I think comparing Splatterhouse to porn, and undermining it is a bit obtuse.

The original Arcade version of Splatterhouse was very gory and graphic on the level of the first Mortal Kombat, and was before Mortal Kombat.

Based on what @jdc6305 stated Splatterhouse was fitting for my reply. However, I do agree that it never had the worldwide following or attention of what Midway grabbed with MK.

Splatterhouse at its best was a passable horror themed Beat em' Up. And home devices couldn't purchase the Arcade version till the seventh generation of consoles.

Some games that I would consider to be most important would be:

- Pac-Man

- Street Fighter II

- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game

- Gauntlet

- Contra

- Castlevania

- Mega Man 2

- Virtua Fighter

- Resident Evil

- Metal Gear Solid

- Halo

- Resident Evil 4

- Gears of War

- Call of Duty Modern Warfare

- Doom

- Final Fantasy

- Final Fantasy VII

- Grand Theft Auto III

@RSM-HQ: I actually had a turbo and splatterhouse in 1990. I didn't know there was a arcade version. Splatterhosue was kind of a big deal but not many people were paying attention because the turbo wasn't well known. Most people never saw violence and gore in a game until MK.

@jdc6305: I never played it till the PS3 myself lol. I'd imagine it slipped under the radar for being a very difficult and repetitive game.

Frogger is one of the most important games in history because of the frog being able to move "up" on the screen. If it wasn't for frogger, mario wouldn't be able to jump.

Well, I think that the Beginner's Guide is one of the most important modern games ever because it introduces a whole new genre of abstract, meta-games and promotes them as a new form of art equal to, say, literature or music.

Where did you hear that?

@davide1979:

Hmm, most important games

Alone in the Dark -

Half-Life

Metal Gear Solid

Wolfenstein 3D

Grand Theft Auto III

Super Mario

Pong

PacMan

That´s my list

No shinobi

No R Type

No Virtua Racing

Add in FF VII (single handedly turned JRPGs in to mainstream, western juggernauts)

I agree with SF2 but you need to add in Tekken for it's impact on 3D beat em ups

The original GT and it's move into simulation territory, not just for racing but for sports games in general

Oh and Age of Empires II for it's impact in the strategy genre

@RSM-HQ said:

@pimphand_gamer: I think comparing Splatterhouse to porn, and undermining it is a bit obtuse.

The original Arcade version of Splatterhouse was very gory and graphic on the level of the first Mortal Kombat, and was before Mortal Kombat.

Based on what @jdc6305 stated Splatterhouse was fitting for my reply. However, I do agree that it never had the worldwide following or attention of what Midway grabbed with MK.

Splatterhouse at its best was a passable horror themed Beat em' Up. And home devices couldn't purchase the Arcade version till the seventh generation of consoles.

But Splatterhouse was not important, it did nothing for or against the gaming industry, that was my point. Also I never compared it to porn, I was saying Atar's porn games did not even make the impact, it takes something special.

@pimphand_gamer: You realise I acknowledged that MK is drastically more well known

"I do agree that it never had the worldwide following or attention of what Midway grabbed with MK."

As for the random Porn thing, you're the one who chose to bring that up regarding Gory games

"Atari had porn"

In the end Splatterhouse is a full fledged Arcade >game< published and developed by Namco. It was played, but how popular? I'm not sure. It was way before my time. Can agree it definitely wasn't a big hitter. However I wouldn't mention it near random pixel porn made by random perverts.

All in all already mentioned why I brought up Splatterhouse, and has been quoted as well. So enough of that. Let's think of other important games in gaming history_

Updated list of most important games in history of games:

I used also this list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games

so I inserted Minecraft,the best selling ever after tetris and call of duty and pokemon

Pong

Space invaders

Pac Man

Donkey Kong

Super Mario

Tetris

Zelda

R type

Outrun

Double Dragon

SonicSecret of monkey island 2Puzzle Bubble

Street fighter 2

Mortal Kombat

Virtua fighter

Virtua racing/daytona

Wolf3d/Doom

Tomb Raider

Final Fantasy VII

Resident Evil

Devil May CryHalo

GTAIII

World of Warcrat

Callofduty

Pokemon

Minecraft

There are games I must delete?THere are games I must add?

SECOND LIST

Games most famous in the world:

(not all the games most important in the history of games):

PacMan

Tetris

Super Mario

Street fighter 2

DoomResident Evil

Final Fantasy

Pokemon

Minecraft

Again,there are games I must add?I must delete?

THere is outrun in because you named it,but I think outrun is not the first racing game,I think it is instead pole positiion.

I dont delete r-type because it was THE space shoot em up of the 80’s.Instead I deleted shinobi and inserted Double Dragon.

THere is not unreal in the list.

Battlezone - first game I played to have that pseudo-3D, first-person feel

Pole Position - first racing game I tried

Galaxian - first game I played to have fast n fluid movement

Bruce Artwick and later Microsoft Flight Simulator - what got me into PC gaming in the first place

I loved Galaxian. One quarter went a long way.

Im Bias but THE LAST OF US.

Yeah, that's pretty bias. Because when you look at The Last of Us and what it has done for gaming. It wasn't very original. Neither is The Evil Within but I love that game, regardless, it has no place on this thread.

Not stating you can't enjoy TLoU. Far from it. However, it's yet another 3rd person action game with heavy cinematics.

Overall contributed little to changing the way 'you' play games. Resident Evil 4 on the other hand is the reason why TLoU, Uncharted, Gears of War, Dead Space, TEW exist.

Just keep in mind this thread is about noting games that help evolve the medium, crafted genres, pushed boundaries, and changed the way we play. Not your favorite games list.

Pretty sure if a Sony exclusive was mentioned for importance, it would be Little Big Planet. For making a level creation kit user friendly/ accessible, and being the first to do so.

I'm usually not into stories much in games. I'm more of a game play first type of person. Saving the princess is about good enough for me. The last of us story was a level never seen in games before. It's probably the best writing I've ever seen in a game and the acting was top notch.

Pac man double dragon bouble bouble shinobi out run wonder boy street fighter Resident evil gta3 shenmue Mgs mario zelda Halo GT sillent hill

Why this and not Dungeon Master ??

If you're thinking "important" as in important for gaming history I can't understand why you have sequels or other games based on the same type of games. Wolfenstein 3D should be on that list. It was the first FPS from IdSoftware and it laid the foundation for the FPS-genre for years to come. Having Monkey Island 2 on that list makes no sense. Maniac Mansion was the first "point-and -click" adventure game and the SCUMM-engine used by all other adventure-games by LucasArts was made for that game.

@bussinrounds: yeah it's fair point. my memory's hazy being so long ago but i remember it being widely regarded as the first rpg to completely topple dungeon master, and introduce a lot of new mechanics / concepts of its own. but dungeon master did come first. there's also the ultima games too although they're top down rpg games

Don't how you could forget Mario and Sonic.

IMO, I would probably say Halo 3 is included in that.

I disagree. Eye of the Beholder was a cool game, but Eye (and later real time blobbers) were more dumbed down and nowhere near as good as Dungeon Master & Chaos Strikes Back.

They tried to shoehorn D&D into that style of game, where it really would of been a better fit in a Wizardry style 1st person crawler, if anything.

maybe it's the graphics whore in me speaking but i remember eotb looking fantastic (for its time). the sound effects were really atmospheric and chilling too. both were far superior to dm.

and was dumbed down really a "thing" back then? i remember playing sierra adventure games where you had to type in the commands for your player. then lucasarts introduced point and click. is that evolution or dumbing down? i don't know if that's exactly analogous to the difference between eotb or dm but i do remember the interface of eotb was super intuitive.

but to be honest it's all far too hazy in memory for me to really debate any specifics. i'll concede dm probably deserves a spot on the list more than eotb

We would be nowhere if it wasn't of PONG, Tetris, Pac Man ...

Otherwise I think :

DOOM : even though it wasn't the first FPS it was the revolution

Ninja Gaiden : Stupidly hard game that is the epitom of difficult NES game, I'm sure Dark Souls is a direct descendent

Super Mario 3 : Platformer at it's best, with somekind of open world, secrets

Mega Man 2 : action platformer

Street Fighter 2 : A revolution in fighting game at the time, so many clone ....

Zelda A link to the past

Mortal Kombat : It was a huge thing on the SNES ... the first game to have blood, it actually the game that started the ESRB

Final Fantasy VII : An very important moment for JRPG as it set the bar for graphics, story and gameplay for many years to come. Many people discovered JRPG with that game.

Pokémon : And epic sucessor of Final Fantasy VII, very old school and very bare bone but it is so compelling

Elder Scroll : The incarnation in 3D of D&D, many game in the past did try it in text form but this ... this was something

Warcraft : RTS, so many game did try the same thing

Diablo : Action RPG with looting ... it was something huge at the time and Borderlands is clearly a successor

Resident Evil : First game to really put the survival horror in the mainstream, on the PSOne there was a lot of those game after this one came out.

Resident Evil 4 : More like a thriller than survival horror. Still a good game but not RE. It started a big revolution in 3rd person shooter.

Virtual Fighter : while I have the feeling it wasn't as popular as Tekken it was a big revolution after unrealistic fighting game all cloned from Street Fighter

Unreal : I hesitated between this and Quake but this one won because it is still played to this day, even the original ! It was something to behold in the arena shooter.

Halo : Showed the world how to make a shooter work on consol and walked in the foot step of Half-Life story driven FPS a thing

Forza : Realism in games

@RSM-HQ:

LIttle Big Planet may be the first giving the creation kit on consol but not on PC. I remember using the creation kit for Warcraft 2 and Star Craft

@Coco_pierrot: I never forgot them, had fun with the Warcraft III Map Editor. As the earlier Bliizard games was difficult enough to get running. let alone make levels for.

On that note, I don't recall them being very straight forward_

What part of "user friendly/ accessible" was difficult to read in my Little Big Planet summary? Map Editor was never as accessible as jumping in the Moon on LBP.

You could argue that even older P.C. games than Blizzards line also had Scripting/ Map editors, like D00M and Ultima; but none of them was very user friendly. You had to play with the tools for long hours at end or read a complex manual to really understand what you could do.

LBP is straight forward and far easier to grasp. It's very concept was later adapted into games like Minecraft, Scribblenauts, and Mario Maker.

You can't really argue what Little Big Planet did for accessible creation base games. It was way ahead of what other developers did in 2008.

Have you ever played Chaos Strikes Back ? It's pretty much regarded as the pinnacle of the sub-genre (real time blobbers)

Very nasty game with some of the best dungeon design you're gonna come across.

Here's the remake of Dungeon Master, Chaos Strikes Back, and Dungeon Master II. Plays and looks exactly like the originals but works fine on a modern OS without having to use DOSBox.

http://www.ragingmole.com/RTC/index.html

Dumbing down def was a thing back then too and yea, I loved the old text parser and being able to type in whatever you wanted.

But it's a shit load of work to do it well, otherwise you end up with:

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

I'm sorry, I don't understand

I'm sorry, I don't understand

I'm sorry, I don't understand

I'm sorry, I don't understand

Lends itself well to poor implementation, but done well can be excellent.

i haven't played chaos strikes back but the name sounds familiar although i may be getting it mixed up with chaos engine by the bitmap bros from the early 90s.

thanks for the link, bookmarked. will check out.

and yeah those text command driven games... i'd probably spend about ten mins fighting against them these days before quitting, yet i'd spend hours totally engrossed back in the day. some of those early sierra games were magical. i remember once spending about 3 hours trying to get into leisure suit larry because the "prove you're an adult" questions were so difficult (and all american themed). how times change...