Games without which everything would be different

[ValeVelKal]

First games in a genre create conventions that stay around.

Entire genres were poisoned by their ancestors, with no regard that these early birds were largely experimental themselves and that not every single thing they did was good or worth keeping. Some genres died or almost did because of a slavish obsession to mimic whatever achieved cultural osmosis first, like point-and-click adventure, 1v1 combat, or city builders.

Yeah, City Builder for a long time tried to do like SimCity, and failed for this reason - until Tropico and later City Skyline revolutionized the genre.
Now from my limited understanding of a genre I don't like, everyone tries to copy City Skyline.

PnC adventure actually I feel like it is a genre where there are few conventions and they took some time to stick : no "walking dead" scenario, and the gradual disappearance of the "verbs" over time.

1v1 REALLY not my genre so no idea what conventions were created.

 

[luj1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel

Without this there would be no Rpgs.

Yes, role playing games are combat simulations by definition

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Some where already said, here's a few others.

Devil May Cry 1 (2001)
The progenitor of the "cuhrazy" 3D brawlers.

Ultima Underworld (1992)
For obvious reasons.

Metal Gear (1987)
Regardless of what you might think of the franchise, the first game did set in stone most of the genre's design characteristics: a fragile PC that's bad in combat but hard to detect by other characters and can perform a wide array of actions; a large number of enemies that quickly overwhelm the PC in combat situations, but have predictable behaviours and movements; a considerate arsenal much more geared towards versatility than hostility.

Then the franchise would go on to single handedly spawn the concept of "movie-game" (plus post modernism in games in general) as we know it today. Mainly with Metal Gear Solid 2 - even though I don't like the game and loathe the infection it started, IMO MGS2 is still the only interesting game of this type, and it does show balls from Kojimbo for going foward with this project at the time.

Deus Ex (2000)
There's a reason it's still one of the best RPG's. It made alot of things just right and forever changed how videogames are made.

Ocarina of Time (1998)
The Zelda series in general had an undeniably huge influence on the industry, and between ALttP and OoT I think OoT had the biggest impact.

 

[anvi]

Team Fortress 2

Initially a mod for Quake 1 if I recall

QuakeWorld Team Fortress, amazing. It is Team Fortress 2 people know today, but done first and done better, in the 1990s. And not cartoonish, and not monetized at all. So way better. I miss it, it was kind of the last FPS I cared about.

EverQuest - never played it but I hear WoW copied everything from it (from the HUD to the class trinity) and everyone else copied WoW (maybe anvi can tell us more)

WoW - the "everything is colorful" palette which plagues art direction to this day

Yeah EQ took most of the design of the gameplay itself (stats and stuff) from a big MUD at the time. (Like a text based adventure/RPG played online in the olden days). But EQ put it together in a good looking 3d real time world so people all over the world could play together at once. It was a revelation, I had played Quake and stuff online but nothing like this, it was a total revolution. And the gameplay was amazing too, brutal as hell, kinda roguelike brutal but way bigger and deeper. It was amazing but they went too far with a lot of the harshness. Some of it is what made it so great and some is what made it unique, but a lot of it was so unnecessary and they never did anything about it because they were scared of ruining their success. They never intended it to be huge, but it ended massive (for the time), and was almost a household name. Millions played it, back when not that many people even had a PC, let alone a gaming PC plus the internet. But it got really big.

One of the head honchos behind WoW was a big EQ player and when it was time to make WoW they basically just took all the fun bits and cut out all the challenging and complex bits. Not exactly but... not too far off. WoW still had a fair bit of depth and some of the classes are really good, but it is casual enough that anyone can play it. Simpler, easier, and it runs on mom's netbook. It became enormous and now all MMOs basically evolve around WoW. Copying it, over and over and over... with slight tweaks to the formula here and there. Meanwhile all the things that made EQ so different and cool, has never been repeated. There was one game that came close but it barely made it to release from budget troubles. In a few years there is another one that has a chance to go back to the EQ style but a modern version of it.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Assassin's Creed
Brought about modern open-world gaming's habit of having to pick up random trash to get 100% completion.
Dangerous Dave
Before this, platforming on the PC meant screens that only moved when you reached the end of a screen, ala Dizzy games. Dangerous Dave was the first game to not redraw every pixel each time the background moved, which was a novel concept at the time.
Far Cry
Without this, we'd have no Far Cry or Crysis. Without Crysis, something else would take the spot as reigning graphics card tester. Without Far Cry, Ubisoft might not exist today.
Space Station Oblivion
As an early pioneer of 3D graphics its influence in gaming cannot be understated.
Test Drive
This was the first racing game to be in true 3D, as opposed to trickery that games like Outrun would use.
Ultima Underworld
While someone above me mentioned the reasons were obvious, I don't think its entire sphere of influence is. Certainly, it would affect RPG history, and the games Looking Glass would make, but it also had influence on John Carmack, as he was inspired to make the engine for Hovertank/Catacomb by his experience with it at a some game convention.

 

[anvi]

WoW did some amazing stuff too though which were new ideas. The Battlegrounds were so much fun, like a big FPS team vs team thing but with wizards and warriors and stuff. It was amazing, and evolved to have areas that the team needs to hold. Just a kind of sub game from WoW, but still part of WoW, and it was really fun. Surprised nobody else has copied it although it is heading that way now. Also the Druid in WoW is probably the best class I've ever seen anywhere.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Mortal Kombat - "Forget gameplay, here's real life graphics." Cursed gaming for 10-15 years after.

It should be noted though that in the realm of fighting games, Mortal Kombat was the game to really embrace and innovate the "juggling" mechanics you see in many other fighters today as part of their combo systems. It also brought in the idea of hidden characters, the notable one being Reptile which became a popular trend in fighting games moving forward. I believe it may have also introduced the idea of unlocking hidden fighters ala Smoke in MK3, but SSF2 may predate that with Akuma.

 

[Bad Sector]

Dangerous Dave
Before this, platforming on the PC meant screens that only moved when you reached the end of a screen, ala Dizzy games. Dangerous Dave was the first game to not redraw every pixel each time the background moved, which was a novel concept at the time.

Are you sure you are thinking about Dangerous Dave? DD is screen-based. Perhaps you are thinking of Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion? This is predated (and uses the engine of) Commander Keen, which AFAIK was also much more popular. Either way, both of these are predated by other games that did sidescrolling with partial screen updates, like Thexder (1987) and Captain Comic (1988). The main difference is that Commander Keen (and by extension Dangerous Dave in the Haunted mansion) does per-pixel scrolling in addition to partial screen updates which makes motion a bit smoother.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Dangerous Dave
Before this, platforming on the PC meant screens that only moved when you reached the end of a screen, ala Dizzy games. Dangerous Dave was the first game to not redraw every pixel each time the background moved, which was a novel concept at the time.

Are you sure you are thinking about Dangerous Dave? DD is screen-based. Perhaps you are thinking of Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion? This is predated (and uses the engine of) Commander Keen, which AFAIK was also much more popular. Either way, both of these are predated by other games that did sidescrolling with partial screen updates, like Thexder (1987) and Captain Comic (1988). The main difference is that Commander Keen (and by extension Dangerous Dave in the Haunted mansion) does per-pixel scrolling in addition to partial screen updates which makes motion a bit smoother.

Couldn't remember if the first Dangerous Dave or the second introduced that, because the first was a bit lame. I was aware about other games predating it doing the same thing, but the same could be said for other games predating Carmack's attempts at the FPS. Sure, they exist and they show that said idea wasn't developed in a vacuum, but that's not the point, is it? Any genre-defining idea would probably have been roughly thought out a bit later by somebody else. But it would be a different timeline, which is the point.
Also, I wasn't aware that Captain Comic was before Keen, probably because I never really played it for too long.

 

[Bad Sector]

Couldn't remember if the first Dangerous Dave or the second introduced that, because the first was a bit lame. I was aware about other games predating it doing the same thing, but the same could be said for other games predating Carmack's attempts at the FPS. Sure, they exist and they show that said idea wasn't developed in a vacuum, but that's not the point, is it? Any genre-defining idea would probably have been roughly thought out a bit later by somebody else. But it would be a different timeline, which is the point.
Also, I wasn't aware that Captain Comic was before Keen, probably because I never really played it for too long.

Yes, but none of the Dangerous Dave games were genre-defining. AFAIK of all the games i mentioned, as far as PC is concerned, Captain Comic would be the one you could say it was the most influential as it was a very popular game at its time and it influenced both the id and Apogee guys. It being released as practically free (it was shareware, but using the original shareware model where the entire program is released for free and you register if you like it - which also made it to fail commercially since very few actually registered it and was what prompted Scott Miller of Apogee to release shareware versions only using the first episode of their games) did help too.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Couldn't remember if the first Dangerous Dave or the second introduced that, because the first was a bit lame. I was aware about other games predating it doing the same thing, but the same could be said for other games predating Carmack's attempts at the FPS. Sure, they exist and they show that said idea wasn't developed in a vacuum, but that's not the point, is it? Any genre-defining idea would probably have been roughly thought out a bit later by somebody else. But it would be a different timeline, which is the point.
Also, I wasn't aware that Captain Comic was before Keen, probably because I never really played it for too long.

Yes, but none of the Dangerous Dave games were genre-defining. AFAIK of all the games i mentioned, as far as PC is concerned, Captain Comic would be the one you could say it was the most influential as it was a very popular game at its time and it influenced both the id and Apogee guys. It being released as practically free (it was shareware, but using the original shareware model where the entire program is released for free and you register if you like it - which also made it to fail commercially since very few actually registered it and was what prompted Scott Miller of Apogee to release shareware versions only using the first episode of their games) did help too.

Fair enough, Captain Comic is something I've never really paid much attention to. To me, it was just another shareware platformer that I didn't like as much as Keen. Not something on the level of the Skunny games, but something just passed over.

 

[DemonKing]

Half Life for me - the introduction of scripting fundamentally altered the way most FPS games were developed. Also AI slightly more sophisticated than simply charging at the protagonist.

D&D goes without saying - any game with stats, an inventory, XP etc is a descendant of the original RPG.

 

[akkadian5]

Most new ideas are due to the demands of the times, so if there isn't one, it's likely that there will be alternatives.

There are exceptions, and D&D is a prime example. If D&D doesn't exist or fails to spread, the game of today might be something completely different and Second Life could have been a huge success.
(Still, the German board games will not be affected)
A similar relationship can be said for Dune II and RTS.

Negative effects are another matter entirely: evil spreads faster than good.
FF7 destroyed a large number of adolescent brain cells, proliferated regressed JRPG patients, and the worst part of Oblivion was endlessly diffused, leading to the fall of the genre.

 

[Silverfish]

Not sure if it's for better or worse, but Minecraft. Between popularizing "wander around and build stuff" gameplay, attracting a huge audience of kids (it's basically zoomers' Super Mario Bros.) and launching the careers of dozens of youtube / twitch personalities, its influence is pretty staggering.

 

[Citizen]

Birthright: Gorgon's Alliance

 

[JarlFrank]

Fallout single-handedly created the Russian shovelware market of cheap Fallout clones. While Wasteland was an earlier post-apoc RPG, it's Fallout that had the larger influence. Russki shovelware was greatly inspired by it, as I already mentioned: Metalheart Replicant's Rampage, Planet Alcatraz, etc, they all have a strong Fallouty feeling to them. Then of course newer post-apoc games like ATOM, Dustwind, etc. Some games like Age of Decadence and Omega Syndrome even cloned its interface (even though the inventory interface is utter shit). And then Bethesda bought the license, made Fallout 3 and 4, had Obsidian make New Vegas...

Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne's tower defense missions. Tower defense missions were already made by the community in StarCraft maps, but with Frozen Throne Blizzard included a tower defense in the official campaign, which really helped the genre pick up popularity. Cue over six million tower defense flash games popping up on Newgrounds back in the day, and it's still a strong genre today. It has even brought forth some pretty good games (Gemcraft, Dungeon Warfare) despite the simplicity of the concept.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

For me this thread topic is like a game in and of itself, one which I have played for many years. Questions like "What game introduced element X?" and "What game popularized element X?" have been asked on the Codex numerous times. Sometimes the answer is in the game itself, sometimes it's in the meta surrounding it.

Example: Hovertank 3D is billed as the first FPS in the modern sense... but what game influenced its design? Would you believe me if I said it was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss? John Carmack saw an early demo for that game at E3, went home and cooked up a game engine that ran smoother than the UW demo. Hovertank 3D was the first game to use that engine.

There were also games out before them that both used the first-person perspective and involved shooting, but they were both trying to be deeper and more versatile games, and didn't have the smooth flow that the Hovertank 3D-engine had. Wolfenstein 3D became a smash hit because it had both the smooth engine and the simple arcade-esque gameplay.

 

[luj1]

any game with stats, an inventory, XP etc is a descendant bastard of the original RPG.

Fixed that for you.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Not all the most influential stuff is far the better, here are some ambivalent examples:

Grand Theft Auto 3 - I think the first open world game that really had mass appeal. Also one of the first games to include driving to navigate that large open world. It is also pretty good for the most part though some missions are awful. Huge sales, huge number of imitators, Rockstar have gone on to do a bunch of sequels and versions of it of which are at least workable. Most of the games it influenced though are shite and the chronic overapplication of "large open world" feels like one of the things killing contemporary gaming. Who wants to chase down a bunch of trivial crap over an enormous map?

Pokemon Red/Blue - not aimed at the audience that browses this forum but could be the most important RPG ever. I bet a significant for a significant fraction of people browsing this forum this was their first RPG. I think the original is a pretty well made game for the time without most of the stuff this is obnoxious about JRPGS: there is next to no grinding, there is very little plot and most of the stats actually do something in the game and are not just there for show. Never understood why Japanese players like to have gads of pointless, mostly effectively inactive, statistics.

Halo - popularised first person shooters in a big way. HL of course game first and is better but Halo was also very important. I even think the first 30% of the original game is good - after that it's clear that they're just regurgitating content and using zombies to pad it out. Bungie should have hired had more level designers. Not revolutionary at all but did a lot of important things together for the first time - first person on console with move+look similar to how PCs do it with WASD+mouse; vehicles; "sandbox" areas you can approach how you like (from memory, the "Attack on the Control Room" level is a series of these.

The first Call of Duty. At the time, I hadn't seen a first person shooter that had used so much scripting. The scripting gives it a really cool appearance but ultimately I think it's turned out to be pretty shallow. Even in the first game sometimes when you wander too far off piste you get magically blown up by artillery or similar. This is how the majority single player shooters are now and it fucking sucks.

Final Fantasy 6 (/3) - before FF7, this is the first RPG that Square did in their 1990s style. I think this game is influential because it's the earliest game I have seen that has filmic asperations and includes lots of story to break up the gameplay. Last of Us and jillions of other games feel based on this style but perhaps someone else can name something earlier. I think the "story beats" model where gameplay stops periodically while some plot is divulged is a big dead end.

Minecraft - never tried it but crafting is a tacked on, shitty mechanic in absolutely everything now and I think that's probably linked to a gross misinterpretation of why people like Minecraft.

 

[Kalin]

SMAC

 

[Bad Sector]

Example: Hovertank 3D is billed as the first FPS in the modern sense... but what game influenced its design? Would you believe me if I said it was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss? John Carmack saw an early demo for that game at E3, went home and cooked up a game engine that ran smoother than the UW demo. Hovertank 3D was the first game to use that engine.

Do you have any reference for that? Every book, interview and article i've read on the topic says that Ultima Underworld's influence was to put texture mapping on Catacomb 3D, not making Hovertank 3D (which used flat shaded polygons that weren't anything new at the time, e.g. Incentive Software's Freescape allowed for full 3D worlds using flat shaded polygons even on machines much slower than the PCs available at the time and Carmack was already into primitive 3D back in his Apple 2 days). Also E3 didn't exist at the time any of these games were mentioned. Also AFAIK it is Catacomb 3D that is often mentioned as the first FPS since you are controlling a single character (in Hovertank you control a tank), move in -supposedly- realistic locations and you see your own hand when casting spells.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Looking into it I am, once again, realizing that my memory is failing... I'm feeling that I've forgotten more than I've learned.

The first point is that the "Carmack seeing the UW-demo" is 90% likely to only refer to the texture mapper.

You are right that E3 didn't exist in 1991, but I think it was supposed to be the CES, or some other predecessor to it. The source I have for the E3-quote is Edward Lerner of Looking Glass Studios in an interview in Retro Gamer #177... which means he's off by a bit.

John Carmack saw Ultima Underworld at E3. He basically went "Oh Shit!" and went home and, because he was a genius, within like a month he had duplicated the tech and actually done it better.

 

[anvi]

It was far more than a prototype, it was way ahead of other stuff in terms of fun. And that's compared to other stuff at the time which in the late 90s was amazing. Tribes, etc. Most people were playing Quake online in deathmatch which was boring as fuck. Capture the Flag made it more fun. Team Fortress took Capture the Flag and added several unique classes that play in their own way with their own kit of gear and strength and weaknesses with their hp and movement speed etc. It was great, and TFC was different and not as good. Bunnyhopping was in both games. I never said TF2 was bad or faggy, I said it is cartoonish and monetized and not as good as QWTF, and all of that is true. Try some other idiotic strawman?

 

[anvi]

Then you should love it

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Capture the flag is way more boring as fuck than deathmatch ever was. It's the shittiest gamemode in every game ever. Only retards like CTF.

I think only the Tribes series did capture the flag really well.