10 most important video games of all time, as judged by 2 designers, 2 academics, and 1 lowly blogger

Oh yeah, and Halo revolutionized nothing -- except annoying fanboys. Halo has done nothing that has not been done before in a shooter...thus making it nothing more than a ______ clone.

should of had atleast 7 Madden's on that list

er, what about Ultima, Wizardry, or Bard's Tale (the original)?

Warcraft? I loved those games, but seriously...

And what about games like Karateka or Pitfall?

What about online gaming... like Everquest?

And to the fools yappin about Halo, it would have made the list if videogames didn't exist before 2000. Since they did, please refer to Wolfenstein3D, Doom and Marathon.

Its all subjective but the games that I think deserved to be on the list include:
M.U.L.E. (simply the best game ever)
Exodus Ultima III
Karateka (or Bruce Lee)
GoldenEye
Zork
Super Mario 64
Halo
G.R.A.W. (First true next gen game)
The Lords of Midnight (ZX Spectrum)
Rescue on Fractalus

Phew, what a nostalgic trip. Probably spent more time on those games than any others.

The most important FPS from 2000-now would be CounterStrike (the mod was 1999, but the first official release was 2000). CS is historically important because it showed that companies could be successful by assimilating the best mods, and it's still the most popular online FPS of all time.

All Halo added was regenerating body armor which as far as I'm concerned ruined the entire game by making me invincible. Halo was important to the history of the X-Box, but not to the history of gaming.

Halo didn't add regenerating body armour, Tribes had it first. Though it was only one of many armour loadout it was there. As a rule of thumb anythig that you think halo addded, in reality tribes did first.

My last post, #95, was directed towards #89.

@#94, You're definitely right about Dune II being way ahead of WarCraft 1 and even 2, but if I had to pick one RTS, I'd pick StarCraft. SC is historically important in that it showed the world that you could be on a cereal box and become the king of Korea if you polish off your Zerg rush. And have you seen these StarCraft shoes?

http://www.blizzard.com/images/html_insider/017/scshoes.jpg

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Well I've never played Tribes, but if what you say is true, I blame Tribes for Halo's suckness.

I hate regenerating, unless it's only for enemies. I liked the Nightmare mode in old Dooms, in which the enemies would respawn after 8 seconds and you wouldn't. But if my character regenerates, it's too easy and I can't enjoy it. There's no suspense.

@95&96

halo added tons of things to the FPS genre.

being able to drive any vehicle the player can acces.
picking up any weapon and trading the with teammates.
the party system. proximity voice. mute annoying players.

the layout and gameplay of halo has influenced almost every FPS after it.

and the halo control scheme has been copied so many times its amazing.

@95&96

halo added tons of things to the FPS genre.

being able to drive any vehicle the player can acces.
picking up any weapon and trading the with teammates.
the party system. proximity voice. mute annoying players.

the layout and gameplay of halo has influenced almost every FPS after it.

and the halo control scheme has been copied so many times its amazing.

"halo added tons of things to the FPS genre.

being able to drive any vehicle the player can acces."

Uh, Tribes.

"picking up any weapon and trading the with teammates."

Also in Tribes.

"the party system. proximity voice. mute annoying players."

Once again, Tribes...

@103.

dude some that i listed didnt come until halo 2

and what year is tribes and whats it about. noone played tribes on XBL for 8 hours straight.

and i dont believe that EVERY feature in halo was in tribes first. otherwise why dont people talk about tribes like its so great. hell, i havnt even heard of tribes

Pac-Man, Pac-Man, Pac-Man, Pac-Man. Pac-Man.

You simply cannot deny the importance of the first video game to have EVER hit mainstream. Pac-man Fever anyone? Board games, cereals, TV Cartoons, T-Shirts, MUSIC ALBUMS, and on and on and on. Also, Pac-man was played by both genders, being one of the first games to bridge that gap.

There is no game more important to the history of video games than Pac-Man. more so than Pong, more so than Space War.

@ Steve 17, but the points you make are all largely inconsequential

granted, Halo and those features set the standard for the modern FPS, but other games blazed the trail for the whole concept that you enjoy in Halo today, games like Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, and Quake (and Tribes, lol)

lemmings!

Chu chu rocket FTW!
lol.
soccer what?
who snuck that one on the list?
stupid underpants gnomes.

Only the soccer game doesn't quite make sense (this is America after all.) And, like other rational people are saying, this is an inaugural list. Lots of other games will be added later. Not to mention that it doesn't mean your favorites are bad. They're just less important now and will continue to grow less important until they finally vanish from all consciousness. Now quit the fanboy bitching. It's embarrassing.

Needs more Poland.

How about we find a spot on the list for fallout, the best RPG ever.

@ Steve 17
The original (starsige)tribes came out november 30 1998, though the sequal, which is the one I got into, came out march 28 2001. The main reason you don't hear all that much about the tribes series is because of how high the learning curve is plus the fact that the single player was a joke (kinda like halos) made it so that new players had one hell of a time joining. I only started playing halfway through its life span and for the first week of playing I could rarely even hit anyone not to mention score kills in any consistent manner. This isn't really as big of a probleme in tribes as it would be in another FPS because of the number of supporting roles thier are to play, such as base repairs, pilot, enemy base sabatoge etc.

Hell, I think if they keep adding games to the list Tribes definatly deserves a spot around year 3.

Donkey Kong is the first game ever that let you jump over things. I think that's pretty important. Wikipedia says Donkey Kong was the 2nd platformer ever made, preceded only by Space Panic. Space Panic had platforms and ladders, but the key difference here is that Space Panic did not let you jump over things. There's a reason Mario was originally named JUMPMAN. He invented JUMPING. Donkey Kong belongs on that list more than anything else.

Yeah, I remember how huge Sensible Soccer was back in the day! I'd roll out of bed, which was clad in Sensible Soccer sheets, turn on the radio in hopes of hearing that old Buckner and Garcia hit Sensible Soccer Fever, go downstairs to a big frosty bowl of Sensible Soccer cereal, and then sit with it on my lap as I watched that Sensible Soccer Saturday morning cartoon. After that, it was off to the bookstore to sneak a glance at a copy of that paperback that had the patterns for Sensible Soccer, and then I headed to the arcade to spend the afternoon at the Sensible Soccer machine.

Ahhhhh, memories!

Steve 17:

Tribes is before your time, and not only did it have those features in a team-based FPS, it had more.

It was the first FPS I played that had "roles" built in. You could be a Heavy, Medium, or Light. From them you could get repair packs, mine kits, deployable turrets and all that.

That was in 1998. It was also sci-fi based, and it was actually pretty damn popular.

The reason you don't see people playing it to this day is because in general, people are retards. People kept playing the game like it was Quake. So, you'd have one team of people who "got it" and played like a team, and other people who fired at your vehicles so the vehicles would blow up and THEY could pick up the one you wanted.

Halo and Halo 2 did NONE of those things you mention first. It also didn't do sticky explosives, dual wielding, or any stuff people like to give it credit for first.

It was one of the first on a console, but that's not enough to crack the top 10 most important games of all time.

I noticed a lot of people said Pong and/or Pac Man. But did either of those really create a genre or does either really have any roots in gaming today? They were popular arcade titles, but there is really no significant development today that can say "I was inspired by Pong" Both were incredibly simple games and were merely steps on the evolution of gaming, not spawners of new genres.

Quake 3 I think did more for online games then either of the halos did.

@120 dukemeiser:

First, you don't have to be a spawner of new genres to be important in gaming history, for one thing. That isn't what this is about. In terms of cultural impact, no game is more significant than Pac Man (it introduced a new form of entertainment to many, many, many people... games of today are being mostly played by people who already play games).

Secondly, I hate assuming you are young and what-not, because you could be 40 for all I know, but maybe you didn't see what happened to the arcades after Pac Man. EVERY GAME was a Pac Man clone of some sort, practically. From Mr. Do to Lock and Chase to Mouse Trap... everything was a Pac man clone. In fact, you could even say games like Mario 64 are more Pac Man clones than an extension of the 2-D Mario games (avoiding enemies while trying to collect stuff). Pac Man basically created the entire gaming concept of trying to get things while avoiding enemies through a maze. How different, really, is Symphonies of the Night and Super Metroid than Pac Man? Theyy are all, really, just extensions of that one singular concept.

Ooh nice way to break down all games to the core of collecting stuff while avoiding enemies. I'm convinced. Pac-Man belongs on the list! And so does Donkey Kong. I think jumping is more important historically than collecting stuff. Collecting stuff is in about 90% of games today, but jumping is in 95%!

@75 It's not about switching. It's about the opinions of five random (yes, random) people and the 10 games they chose. I'm sure they could think of 1000 more, but there are only 10 spots.

also known as

5 idiots tell us what games are important and leave out Karate Champ and or Kung fu

1. Space Invaders (allowed video games to overtake pinball and led to games such as Centipede, Tempest, Defender and shooters in general)
2. Karate Champ (led to fighting games such as Street Fighter II and Mortal Combat et al)
3. Donkey Kong (led to all climbers/platform games and introduced the world to Mario)
4. Pac Man (because when a game leads to a phenomenon this large and causes the Japanese to make more coins you have to excuse the fact that maze games died relatively quickly)
5. Wolfenstein 3D (led to Doom, Quake, Halo and all smoothly moving mouse/keyboard FPS)
6. Night Driver (led to first person sim games like Battlezone and Star Raiders and all racing games from Pole Position to Gran Turismo)
7. Sim City (led to entire sandbox genre like the Tycoon and Sim-XXX series)
8. Civilization (lifted turn-based strategy games above being merely wargames about WWII and the Civil War and led to games like Master of Orion)
9. Ultima (led to everything from Zelda to [with the online verion] Everquest and World of Warcraft)
10. Dune II (led to the Romulus and Remus of RTS games, Command & Conquer [directly] and Warcraft [indirectly])

WTF? SMB3? The video game industry would have probably died if it wasn't for the first Super Mario Bros. Why have SMB3 instead of the revolutionary SMB?
Where's Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Super Mario 64? and SF2 and GTA3 probably deserve places aswell.

In short a really crap list.

Halo brought a lot to shooters, especially console shooters. It set the standard. While its features may not have been totally original, they were popularized and standardized them to the masses. Very few cared about Tribes and it wasn't that good of a shooter. I never owned an Xbox but had tons of hours on Halo 1-2 with my buddies. I can't play a console shooter without being constantly reminded of Halo.

Checkpoints
Weapon pickup/drop
single button grenade
general aiming/movement feel
vehicle system, esp. coop vehicles
online things

Seriously, Halo was the first FPS millions of people played with those things in it and now they are so standard it isn't even funny. Halo feels like just another run and gun just because of it being copied so much.

I hate when people comment that PONG was the first video game. Get your facts right before you post. It was a game called OXO (Tic-Tac-Toe Game)

The list is called "10 most important video games of all time, as judged by 2 designers, 2 academics, and 1 lowly blogger"

I guess that fans of Madden football games tend to forget that people outside of U.S. kind of don't know what American Football is and who Madden is. Soccer on the otherhand is kind of BIG in the rest of the world.

Sensible Soccer was a massive game for its time. I don't know what everyone is complaining about. Just because the Americans haven't heard about it, does not mean that the game isn't important.

What about Duke Nukem?????
as far as i remember ist was prior to Wolf3D and had also a deathmatch mode...

Dungeon Master (Chaos Strikes Back) definitely deserves a spot on the top ten.