Top 10 Games That Changed Gaming – GamerHeadlines

Click the pages for each spot in the top 10!

Credits go to their respective owners.

 

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#10: Virtua Fighter
Platform(s): Arcade, Saturn,Sega 32x, Tiger R-Zone, PC
Year: December 1993

Why Did It Change Gaming? (Genesis of Inspiration):

Sega’s Virtua Fighter actually inspired Sony to make the PlayStation a 3D-gaming platform, two alumni’s from Sony Computer Entertainment shared the importance of the game’s franchise to Sony’s history at an event in Tokyo entitled “Thinking About The Future of Entertainment”(source: 4Gamer). The former Sony Computer Entertainment producer Ryoji Akagwa said:

“If it wasn’t for Virtua Fighter, the PlayStation probably would have had a completely different hardware concept”.

Which definitely earns Virtua Fighter a spot on the list, shaping the future for consoles. It was also later inducted into the Smithsonian Museum in the year 1998.

#9: Jurassic Park: Tresspasser
Platform(s): PC
Year: October 28, 1998

Why Did it Change Gaming? (Physics):

While the game overall received harsh reviews from critics  it had some unique features and went for high expectations, especially for its time. Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, even stated it inspired Half-Life’s physics engine. The game featured no HUD which required players to look at a tattoo on the player’s chest to see health progress, conjointly containing no pre-animated characters, every animation used inverse kinematics which depicted odd enemy AI behavioral movements. Tresspasser was additionally the first game to use rag doll physics and happened to be one of the first engines to successfully portray exterior environments full of hundreds of trees not many computers could handle it at the time, causing frame-rate drops for players and reviewers.  The game was even celebrated by John Carmack (co-founder of iD software) as an inspiration for Doom 3’s audio logs, earning this game a 9th spot on the  list.

#8: Sim City
Platform(s): Mac, Commodore 64, OLPC-XL1
Year: October 3, 1989

Why Did it Change Gaming? (Building Simulation):

Sim City was a game created by developer Will Wright under the company Maxis (a division of Electronic Arts).
The success of Sim City spawned many other “Sim” titles including the spin-off series “The Sims” (released in 2000), which was the best-selling computer game up until 2012. Will Wright also admitted the game was inspired by features of his earlier title “Raid on Bungeling Day”. Will Wright also admitted Sim City was heavily influenced by system dynamics.

Sim City was a highly innovative game in the creative department; allowing players to explore their imaginations, letting them build their own cities where citizens could work and live throughout their very own creation. Will Wright redefined the mindset of players that games can be explored to be something else while still being fun, the Sims series seems to be a genre in it’s own right.

#7: Tetris
Platform(s): Everything
Year: June 1985

Why Did it Change Gaming? (Puzzles):

Tetris is one of the most well-known games of all infinity, the game was originally created by Russian game developer Alexey Pajitnov, with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky. Tetris has a game mechanic that is remarkably simple yet complex. The game soared into popularity quickly, bringing up one of the most interesting legal battles in gaming history. By 1989 multiple companies claimed rights to distribute Tetris for home computers; game consoles, and handheld systems, causing legal conflict between the top developers Atari and Nintendo. Tetris is highly respected in the gaming-community for its unique history and addicting game play. Alexey Pajitnov eventually spawned the company “The Tetris Company (TTC)” which now owns all the legal rights to the game worldwide.

Runner Up(s): Pacman

 

#6: Mortal Kombat
Platform(s): Arcade, SNES, Sega Genesis
Year: June 1992

Why Did it Change Gaming? (ESRB Rating System):

Mortal Kombat was known for it’s violence and using realistic digitized sprites with palette-swapping, for now well-known characters. Midway Games was some of the first developers to digitize characters, it seemed even game publisher Electronic Arts(EA) was inspired by Midways technique of digitizing live actors and ended up using the technique in many of their sport titles to create the sprite characters. Due to Mortal Kombat’s excessive use of violence and gore it later led to the creation of the ESRB rating system. It’s amazing that only four game developers impacted the gaming industry in such a way. The Mortal Kombat franchise currently holds ten world records in the 2011 version of the “Guinness Book of World Records” and overall the franchise sold over 30 million copies.

Runner Up(s): Street Fighter

#5: Star Fox
Platform(s): SNES, SuperFamicon
Year: February 1993

Why Did it Change Gaming? (Rail Shooter):

Starfox was one of the first true 3D games on the SNES, game developer Jes San, founder of Argonaut Software, created an impressive 3D engine that caught the attention of Shigeru Miyamoto, founder of Nintendo. The collaboration sparked one of the first 3D portable games “X”. The title was only released in Japan. This collaboration essentially happened due to the fact that Miyamoto was tired of the long development process of creating multiple angles for sprites, Jes San showed Miyamoto a prototype SNES game entitled “SNES Glider”, the game only ran at 3 frames per second. Jez San stated that:

“Without additional hardware support lower frame rates was all the Super Nintendo could achieve for 3D based games.”

Nintendo later gave Argonaut Games 1-million dollars to develop the necessary hardware which birthed today what most nintendo fans know as the “Super FX” chip. While building the game (Star Fox), Argonaut was constantly shut down by Miyamoto. He stated he’d rather have the game be more fun than cool, and while it was frustrating for the team it ended up working for the best.

Inari is a shrine built near the Nintendo headquarters, while Miyamoto visited this temple he was inspired by the multiple images of foxes throughout the Inari temple. He was inspired furthermore and decided to base the entire game on the fox images and statues connecting with the idea of ships flying through the interesting obstacles around the Fushimi Inari-Taisha Temple.
Star Fox was one of the largest released games at the time and it became the staple of the rail-ship shooting genre, EGM titled it to be the best shooter of 1993 in their buyers guide, fans everywhere praised it for its innovation and replay value. Nintendo’s Star Fox 64 was released 5 years later and came with a rumble pack that became a standard part in most video-game controllers even today.

 

#4: Minecraft
Platform(s): PC, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, iOS, Android, Xbox One, Xbox 360
Year: November 18, 2011

Why Did it Change Gaming? (Sandbox Genre) :

Minecraft is a game with no particular goals, instead it gives you the power of freedom. Each player can tackle the game however they see fit, this voxel-game broke video game rules down by allowing players to create just about anything they want. Minecraft passed 1 million sales within one month with no publisher backing making over 33 million in revenue. Minecrafts complex crafting system and a procedurally infinite generated world made it stand out and fun to play. Minecraft popularized the Voxel game-based genre and other companies took notice and quickly started to jump onto Minecrafts success, making similar titles after its release.

Runner Up(s):
Counter-Strike
Prince of Persia

 

#3: Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty
Platform(s): MS-DOS, Amiga, Mega Drive, RISC OS
Year: January, 1992

Why Did it Change Gaming? (The Genesis of Real Time Strategy):

Although most can argue Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft actually innovated the RTS genre even further; Dune II pioneered it.  Dune II is widely accepted as the first real RTS game and is still accepted even today as a great title.  Some key features that were first seen in the series were later seen in many other RTS titles, some of these features include:

• Resource-gathering to fund unit construction
• A world map system that allowed you to go to the next mission
• Building construction dependencies
• Mobile units that can be deployed as actual buildings
• Different factions each with unique unit-types and super weapons
• A context-sensitive mouse cursor to issue commands (introduced in later versions of the game)

Dune II received overall positive reviews from critics. CU Amiga magazine rated the game with a high score of 85% praising its innovation of features, controls, and smooth gameplay. Dune II changed the genre making this game stand in the number 3 spot on the Gamer Headlines list.

Runner Up(s) : Warcraft I

#2: Super Mario Bros
Platform(s): NES, SuperFamicon, Arcade
Year: September 13, 1985

Why Did it Change Gaming? (Side-scrolling platform genre):
Nintendo has appeared constantly on this list and for good reason. Nintendo had a golden-era of ground-breaking innovative titles that fans still love even today. Super Mario Bros is actually the successor to the arcade version of the game, which was released in 1983 entitled Mario Bros., The game’s development was aimed at keeping things simple and it worked. Other games attempted to follow its mechanics after the game’s massive success and its structure of popularizing the side-scrolling genre. Super Mario Bros eventually went on to be the second greatest selling game of all time selling 40 million copies (and later was beat by Nintendo’s Wii Sports).

During the early days most developers liked to use black backgrounds as to not distract the player, however Super Mario Bros used bright-blue backgrounds which made everything else complement each other, the green pipes that you could enter made it seem as if you were exploring multiple worlds. A rarity in most arcade games at the time of release. Super Mario was originally was meant to be a platform shooter, but those features were scrapped and replaced with fireballs. The power up mechanics were revolutionary and highly innovative at the time combining with great level design and music production, Super Mario Bros is one of the best game titles of all time…Of all time! *drops mic*

Honorable Mention(s)
Grand Theft Auto

#1: Halo: Combat Evolved
Platform(s): Xbox, PC
Year: November, 2001

Why Did it Change Gaming? (First Person Shooter Genre):

Probably one of the more recent games on the list, Halo‘s influence throughout the FPS genre is outstanding. While some can argue (again) that GoldenEye was a staple in the genre, it actually ended up being more of an introduction of what could potentially be done. Halo clearly innovated features that rippled as a must-have for other First Person Shooter games. Fun fact: Halo was also the first game to introduce health/shield regeneration which is something that occurs regularly in today’s modern shooters, both First Person and Third. Halo has wide-open spaces of interior and exterior environments with Co-op play and innovative controls, additionally the story was unique and well done. Other FPS titles that dominated the FPS genre at the time on PC are Unreal Tournament, Quake, and Doom. The titles heavily focused more on gameplay, which isn’t at all a bad thing, it’s just that the stories seemed to be linked as irrelevant and in addition to the game but not as a main feature. Here are some of the reasons in why Halo changed the gaming FPS genre:

• One of the first games to limit the player to two weapons
• It gave an actual button for melee instead of cycling through weapons to get a fist
• Revolutionized vehicle use in FPS games
• Later gave birth to most of the features in Xbox Live (Halo 2)
• Created the shield recharge system
• Inspired the most popular gaming league of all time “Major League Gaming”
• Popularized game stats (Halo 2)

Essentially, Halo was the first console shooter that managed to have smooth, intuitive controls, which at the time was thought impossible without having a mouse. Halo did some new things, but what truly made it a success was that it was a playable, smooth user-friendly FPS game for a gaming console; in addition it didn’t have any huge noticeable flaws. It had some of the best multiplayer, physics and AI for any console FPS at the time. Halo was highly appraised by critics receiving a 97/100 from Metacritic and by fans for its innovation in gameplay.

Halo later became one of the most successful best selling franchises of all time winning multiple Game of the Year awards, including winning the “Best Original Soundtrack” award from Rolling Stones. Halo’s multiple innovations of amazing gameplay, and a unique story respectively ranks this game as the top on our list.

Honorable Mention(s)
Doom
The Elder Scrolls: Arena / D&D: Baldur’s Gate

Agree with this list, think some games should’ve been included? Post your top choices down below.