I came here to say this exact same thing. Videogames are an art form, and the history of that art should be preserved, both the successes and the failures. People should be able to look back on what was a hit and what was flop, on the ideas that worked and the ones that didn’t, on the well made games and the badly made games. All of it matters, all of it is part of the same story.
Karateka, along with everything else Jordan Meschner did following it, starting the Prince of Persia series.
It’s a nice evolution of personal style.
I’ve more or less dropped out of mainstream gaming so have no idea how the more recent Prince of Persia games play, nor if he has any involvement… but anyone who knew the original games should understand that these games did something foundational with movement and interface, helping the player to feel involved in the action.
the last prince of persia Meschner directly worked on was Sands of Time, which is imho well worth playing.
the other 3d Prince of Persias by ubisoft upto two thrones are still good games, but they lost a bit of the 1001 nights feel. The darker parts where there in sands of time, but warrior within goes all in on dark and edgy and just loses a bit of that timeless flair and is very much a mid 2000s game.
can’t talk about ubisofts prince output after two thrones, they never found their way into my collection.
Alright, so here’s my case for Thief, the Looking Glass Studios game.
Thief, on its own, is a great game and basically shares the claim to originating a lot of ideas behind stealth in games along with MGS, which came out the same year.
What many don’t know is how incredibly innovative what they were doing with their engine tech was. In another timeline, id software were mildly successful action game makers while LGS became the industry defining mega success. The Dark Engine refines a lot of ideas present in Ultima Underworld and marries them to tech that was decades ahead of its time.
Thief had, probably, the first ECS in gaming. They also had their own rendering technique using “portals” that was a bit slower than id’s BSP trees but allowed for insane geometry. They also had an incredible system for events called stimulus-response that was doing things like Breath of the Wild’s “chemistry engine” again, decades before it would be rediscovered.
They weren’t just making games, these were really simulations of a limited world with complex interactions. If the rest of the industry had caught onto their good practices, who knows what the landscape would look like today!
pong, and probaly other examples of early home console games
wolfenstein3d, doom, quake, quake3, doom3 because all of them were technical milestones, had lasting impact on the industry and they show the rapid advancement of pc gaming in the 90s and 2000s
the elder scrolls series, as a simmiliar showcase.
final fantasy 1, 6 and 7, as a showcase of jrpgs through various generations and the fmv of 7 and onwards were imho precursors of 3d rendered movies.
half-life, because of the impact of it’s scripted set pieces and its level design
counter-strike and starcraft, as the games that probably gave us professional e-sport.
dota, because its for mobas what doom is for first person shooters.
deus ex and thief, pioneered the “immersive sim” and they are great showcases of the interactive nature of games
Pokémon, cultural impact can’t be denied and the trading aspect is a great example of a non traditional multiplayer experience
various Mario Games, but definitely Mario Bros. Super Mario World and Mario 64 and probably Galaxy as a showcase of the evolution of plattformers in 2d and 3d, maybe throw a spyro or banjo kazooie in there.
Grim Fandango, Kings Quest, Monkey Island, point and click adventures are there very own beast and often feature actual memorable characters. I definitely think more often about Manny Calavera than i do about Gordon Freeman or any Morrowind NPC, even though i played half-life and Morrowind much more than Grim Fandango
Minecraft
super meat boy, fez, hollow knight… lots of interesting indie games and they show how much more accessible game development has become.
Prince of Persia and karateka, the way they were animated alone would be enough, but they also featured an actual story, they were interested in showing and featured music used simmiliar to a movies soundtrack.
probably much more
games that are a product of a very localized culture (gothic could not have been made anywhere else but the ruhrarea for example)
the whole military complex is missing (from Mil Sims like Operation Flashpoint to actual recruitment vehicles like Americas Army)
more modern games, which i just don’t know or that have not been rattling around in my brain for long enough, but baldurs gate 3, the last of us, or alan wake would probably end up on my list in a couple of years.
Videogames are still a young medium, very diverse and changing so rapidly, that i feel like there is no established canon of ‘classics’ or ‘high impact’ works. We’ll probably end up with dozens of lists like this in such a topic, and might end up without a single game that made it onto all of them, besides tetris.
if a simmiliar question was asked in a movies community i’d bet any list with more than 10 entries would include metropolis, nosferatu, citizen kane and star wars, just because those are widely agreed upon movies that had an impact.
Amazing list. I personally would add couple games, that defined my "gaming hobby":
XCOM/UFO: Enemy Unknown - not sure how this fits in the list, but it was ground breaking for me: perfect blend of micro- and macro management, strategical decisions, tactical battles, what a great game and so much memories of it (and I'd put honorable mention of Jagged Alliance 1&2 here, 'cause they are very similar concept)
Civilization - genius idea, one of the 4X pioneers, easy to pick up, hard to master, and so much replay value; its overall depth is quite a feat, especially given it's from 1991, no wonder the franchise is still alive and well now
Fallout - esp. 1 & 2 might not be the best gameplay-wise, but their world building, characters and atmosphere are excellent... and everyone knows the legendary intro "War, war never changes..."
Planescape: Torment - similar to above, amazing world, unbelievable story, one of a kind game
Gothic - mainly 1&2 were simply awesome, there are no barriers (ahem), the world is your to explore, but it's deadly so you have to plan your progress, nothing is streamlined for you; I can't remember different game with such a vibe (other than piranha bytes later production)
VtM: Bloodlines - kind of similar to Deus Ex, but also taking from the table top; and in my book it has THE best atmosphere of all the games I've played
Witcher - this might be just European thing, but playing especially W1 felt kind of like folklore fairy tale from childhood turned into pretty grim adult game
Disco Elysium - this is probably the only "sort of new" game that I've played and which definitely deserves a place in the list, great characters, amazing story and writing
there are plenty of others too, but my brain farts
To my limited knowledge, it was the first games where true orchestral music was used. It was influential enough to be remade for PS3 and PS4, there are few games to get such a treatment.
i think that honour might go to total annihilation.
i also remember the final fantasies on the psx having an orchestral pieces jn their soundtrack, but those might have not been performed by an actual orchestra originally.
yes, arcade stuff is lacking on my list. The few i have played where mostly on an atari 2600 and simmiliar home consoles way after the fact and the only arcade i’ve ever seen was in a holiday resort thingy :D
Zelda: yep, was surprised there was no mention of it after i looked over my “finished” list, original Zelda and ocarina of time should probably be there, maybe a link to the past. did not play breath of the wild, so don’t have an opinion on it. But zelda -> altp -> ocarina of time is a nice showcase of 2d games transitioning to 3d, and the item based exploration and progression is found in a lot of games.
halo: i am not a console shooter guy and on pc it felt like a very good game, but atleast to me not ground breaking. through the lense of console shooters it’s probably a huge milestone.
unreal tournament: if i’d be listing my favourite games it would be there. but it did not have the impact on e-sport cs or the quakes had so it would be another technical showcase. the unreal engines became very important however.
sonic: yes, at the very least to show another take on plattformers.
gta: yeah, 3 onwards as blockbuster movie equivalents. don’t ask me why they are not on the list, no idea.
gran turismo: if we include simulators, we should also list a bunch of microprose work, richard burns rally, the microsoft flight simulators and so on. Definitely an interesting section of gaming, but not one iam part of so hard to tell what to include for it.
chrono trigger: yeah, my list lacks non western games and chrono trigger deserves to be there simply because of its ambitious scale and the fact that its one of the greatest games i’ve ever played, what was i thinking?
earthbound: never played it :(
castlevania: the early metroids and later castlevanias for what we know as “metroidvanias” today. I’ve played castlevania 1 and 2 and there is not much of what makes metroidvanias in them. fun games though.
bin.pol.social
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