While I missed the actual presentation for this at GDC because of illness, the New York Times has written up The ten most significant games of all time.

Before you start flying off the handle: The criteria they used was "what was the first game to introduce a gameplay element that is still in use today". Even so, I only agree with half the list. Christopher Grant's choice of Super Mario Bros. 3 is very suspect; he says it's included because you can go backwards which leads to non-linear gameplay. Considering that Wibarm, Metroid, and many other games already did that by the time SMB3 came around, I don't agree with his choice.

The problem most videogame journalists today have, IMO, is that they aren't 35+ years old. As a result, their memory only goes as far back as the NES.

Yes, the inclusion of SMB3 is probably the most ridiculous part.

Not that all other choices are justified. While I can say nothing against the inclusion of Tetris or Zork, why exactly was Warcraft mentioned? I thought "Dune" was the genre-defining game for RTSs.

Same with "Doom", my personal taste aside, it did nothing revolutionary, neither in engine or gameplay aspects. Nothing that Ultima Underworld or Wolf 3D haven't done before. Actually, there was another 3D shooter even before Wolf 3D, forgot its name.

Also, they left out Ultima (or any other RPG, for that matter), and this I will never forgive them. Never.

Do you say that because an earlier title should have been chosen, or because you think that platformers shouldn't be on that list at all? :P

The first reason :)

Actually he says that because he's pissed at them for leaving the Ultimas out. You gotta hand it to him, though, for managing to hold the Doom-bashing for two entire paragraphs :P

Heh, true. And I'm just as amazed as everyone else that not a single RPG is on the list. Ultima IV also seems like the best candidate to me.

Hehehe, say what you will about these lists, Doom is always going to have a place, and deservedly so too. :)

id themselves had the Catacomb 3D series and Hovertank prior to Wolfenstein, and there were a smattering of similar games previously.

In another forum someone was arguing that since neither Hovertank nor Catacomb had you controlling people (Hovertank was a tank) with modern weaponry (Catacomb used magic blasts), and weren't at the time referred to as first-person shooters, they don't count. I don't buy that argument.

Agreed, but they were beat by MIDIMaze on Atari ST by a few years, if you want to get technical.

"Catacomb", that's the one I was referring to. That's exactly what I meant. "Doom" was included in that list only because of its popularity, and what made it popular was anything but revolutionary concepts or introduction of new kind of gameplay.

That's highly debatable.

The use of texture mapping certainly made Wolf 3D make quite an impression, that's for sure. But correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Doom introduce differences in altitude in FPS games?

Doom deserves to be on the list because it introduced the following:

Non-orthogonal walls (walls weren't at 90-degree angles)

Multiple height levels on the same map

Fully-textured surfaces on modest hardware (it was 30fps full-screen in low-res mode on a 386-40)

(most importantly) Multiplayer gameplay

Most Mobygamers are obsessed (apparently) with identifying which game came first in the strictest chronological sense, and then saying it "defined the genre."

I don't agree with this approach. Kudos to games should be given out based on innovation *and* quality. Wolfenstein 3D came before Doom, but Doom was obviously the better and more influential game. The same goes for Dune II...aside from the fact that it sucks almost as bad as Westwood's other RTS games, the game loses out to Warcraft simply because not many people played it. (Besides, if being obscure doesn't disqualify you, then Herzog Zwei should beat out Dune 2!)

Perhaps an RPG should be included on the list based on pure artistic merit, but the role-playing community has always been a minority of gamers. You just can't be massively influential if not many people are playing your game, or games like it.

Agreed.

Yes, "most important" is not the same as "first". Although you can't really say that the RPG community is a minority. At least not anymore. Just look at the sales numbers of, say Oblivion or Final Fantasy.

That statement makes me think you were born around the same time as the release of Dune II. It sold a whole lot of copies, you know. Just look at the amount of reissues. Can you imagine Warcraft being developed without having a precedent in Dune II? That's the difference between games such as Herzog or Mule, and Dune II, in that the other ones didn't define a genre so strictly as Dune II, which looks exactly like any modern RTS.


There you go again. Herzog should beat out Herzog Zwei.


Final Fantasy sells quite a lot of copies, you know.

(deleted as John Romero's comment (quoted elsewhere in this thread) made me see the error in my original reply here.)

Did they really need to include Civilization and SimCity? Sure, there are important differences between those games, but if they limit the list to ten games one of them should be enough.

Also: SimCity was selected by Mr. Bittanti, a researcher at the Humanities Lab at Stanford who works with Mr. Lowood. The game is “one of the most important art works of the 20th century,” Mr. Bittanti said, adding: “It completely reinvented the whole notion of games. And then it transcended the game world to become a cultural phenomenon.” When did this happen?

I just wanted to say that.

A pretty great list all in all.

Though Warcraft is a little strange. After all it is was just a Dune II clone, better maybe, but only refined in details.

Don't know enough about sports games to judge Sensible World of Soccer's inclusion.

As for Mario 3, I think the best reason for its inclusion is not that you can go back, but the whole "run straight through the game and you'll miss 50% of the content" design. Did any game did that before?

And Unicorn's right, no RPG? Ultima IV would probably be the worthiest. They could have thrown out either Civ or Sim City to fit it in.

But picking just 10 is tough, so again, I think it's a great list.

This was about things that are still used today and Ultima IV was "only" an improvement on the earlier games by Garriott. If I had to choose one RPG it would be Ultima I. I haven't played it, but AFAIK, it included the dungeons, the outdoors, the hero group and all the other stuff you still see in todays RPG's.

RPGs still have stories today ;-) U4 was the first game to actually have a meaningful story besides "go kill the bad guy". All the RPG elements that were in U1, Wizardry, Dunjonquest, etc. were just the dice-rolling from pen & paper games brought to the computer. U4 brought some of the role-playing aspect back.

Correct Terok if he's wrong.

Um, Mario 1??

What does Mario 1 have besides a few warp zones? I thought it was pretty linear, unless I missed something. Mario 3 has optional levels, all sorts of shortcuts, the mini-games, tons of secrets including huge hidden parts of levels, etc. I think the difference is pretty substantial.

Substantial or not, does it deserve to be called one of the top 10 greatest and most influential games of all time?

I just played through SMB 1-3 the other day. In SMB 1 you could not go backwards, although it probably was the first mega-hit game to feature a playing field that took up more than one screen.

SMB 2, on the other hand, *did* allow you to go backwards (and upwards, and downwards...). SMB 3 lifted this, and a lot of its graphical style, from SMB 2.

*cough* Pitfall *cough*

*cough* Defender *cough*

You seem to have some salient points from the message I posted three days ago caught in your throat ... I do appreciate your trying to bring them back up 8)

Definitely Strange that Mario 3's on the list but not Mario 1. Even though it's Mario 1 that's ingrained (especially the first level and especially it's music) into an entire generation of casual and serious gamers alike.

Just check youtube at any given time and you'll find that people tend to reference Mario 1 a lot more than most other games, and definitely a lot more than any other Mario game.

Then, how could you explain the inclusion of Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979) or Zork (1980)? And what about Spacewar!? I didn't even know that such a game existed!

Top Ten lists, or lists that limit their choices one way or another have always been subject to criticism, and this list is no exception. Super Mario Brothers 3, Warcraft Series and SimCity!? Maybe SimCity 2000, not SimCity because it surpasses the original in almost every area. For example, it changes the boring top-down view of the original and brings a rotatable isometric view, "which gives a pseudo-3D impression" as IJan has mentioned in his review for the game. I always liked the isometric view of God games like Populous and only in SimCity 2000 it was perfected. And they have included an uninspired sequel like Civilization II to their list!?? I totally agree with the original Civilization, but Civilization II??

Also Sensible World of Soccer comes as a big surprise. I always liked this game, but is it really such a great game?. It's the incredibly simple and beautiful gameplay that I have played Sensible, not for its very limited management system. Anyway, it's really great to see that Sensible Soccer is appreciated!

Read the charter again: "what was the first game to introduce a gameplay element that is still in use today".

And in SimCity's case it was the whole idea of being a "God" that works the game world, not just participates in it.

SimCity is not really a "God" game, it is a city-building game. And you forget Populous. I have referred SimCity 2000 mostly because of its innovations, though the original was, I guess, the first of all city-building games. But how could you explain Civilization II, and all the warcraft series when you read the charter literally?? And how about Sensible World of Soccer? Where's the original Sensible Soccer then? I guess they thought Sensible World of Soccer is a better game all-around.

It's actually a little bit offensive, as well as stupid, to put Warcraft on that list instead of Dune 2. Blizzard licensed the Dune 2 engine from Westwood! The game was more like a Dune 2 mod/total conversion than anything else.

Ah well. At the end of the day, people will keep on making lists, and people will keep on disputing them. What's it matter, really?

I also find the tone of the article quite amusing: Supposedly, this guy was in danger of committing professional suicide when he started caring about something as silly and worthless as videogames! Gasp!

I didn't forget Populous, but I couldn't be bothered to check when it came out. I thought it was released later than SimCity.

I'm not commenting on the rest of the list. I'd have to make my own first before I would like to get into that discussion, this was just a comment on the fact that some people seem to have missed the idea of that list. It is *not* some "greatest of" list.

Actually, Utopia should have been on the list to replace BOTH SimCity AND Civilization. Would've freed up a slot for Wolf's RPG games :)

That isn't necessarily a problem. There is such a thing as proper research, which can be done even if you were born in the 90s. Platform bias is often another problem with this kind of journalism, since people tend to regard their childhood platform as the definition of the era, whether they were born in the 60s or the 90s.

SimCity helped establish the genre known as god games, in which players take on an omnipotent role, controlling the game world rather than simply participating in it. It also broke convention by refusing to establish criteria for winning, leaving the decision of what constituted success up to the player.

Well, I always felt like failing when my city accounts were broken, and I don't think much people would think "hey look, I'm broken, my city is a complete chaos, I'm winning"!

I thought everyone had heard of Spacewar, or played some remake of it on the net.

You gotta love this quoting system!

Why is Sensible World of Soccer on there? I;d never heard of it and the etry here says nothing to indicate it's an incredible, groundbreaking game.

Where's Luís when we need him?

errr, hi.

Sensible was the first sports game on a personal computer that managed to include the fluidity and gameplay of console versions, while innovating in several aspects (zoomed out view allowed long, accurate passing instead of just belting the ball upwards and accurate short range passing) and later on the series a simplified managing mode was implemented. They are perhaps the highest rated of all Amiga games, I'm pretty sure all versions had averages over 90%. It's popularity also attracted a lot of other competitors (September 1994 half of UKs top 20 titles were football titles), but Sensible spent around two years on the charts.

I'd say they were pressured to add a sports game, and being Yanks I'm surprised Sensible appeared over Madden or NHL. Could just be them just trying to score elitist points (the same as me mentioning Madden as one of the best 16-bit games back then), but either way, it's totally deserved. Along John Madden Football and NHL 94, maybe only ChampManager 2 could claim to be on that list.

Actually, you said something there. Why isn't the original Football Manager there? It invented the whole genre, and a genre that is still going strong, too.

Super Mario Bros. 3 is very suspect; he says it's included because you can go backwards which leads to non-linear gameplay. Considering that Wibarm, Metroid, and many other games already did that by the time SMB3 came around, I don't agree with his choice.

My understanding is that Pitfall! is generally considered to be the first bi-directional platformer (and, if you like, Defender the first bi-directional non-platformer 8)

Certainly there is room for SMB3 on such a list: at ~18 million units moved, it's the top-selling console game of all time for a reason... it's just that the rationale they pulled out of their ass was a bit of a shady one 8) Certainly when you consider the leaps and bounds made between SMB1 and SMB3, it's an astounding achievement even to imagine that they were made for the same machine... albeit at opposite ends of its life cycle 8) (its cited nonlinearity also was both pretty unprecedented and enormously influential in subsequent platform games, methinks.)

(... and then there is Star Raiders, which I think merits the kind of innovation distinction Dragon's Lair does: a footnote, not a place on the list 8)

The problem most videogame journalists today have, IMO, is that they aren't 35+ years old. As a result, their memory only goes as far back as the NES.

If this group of fogeys suffered from that condition, there's no way Star Raiders (or heck, even Zork) would have ended up on the list.

I don't have a problem with the inclusion of both SimCity and Civ... though the interface premise is similar, the gameplay is sufficiently different to satisfy me. Really I think the wide world of video games needs at least a top 20 to even begin to cover all the necessary bases, where we can cover our ass with Pong, Pac-Man, Ultima IV, King's Quest, XCOM, MS Flight Simulator, Populous, Sargon chess, Grand Theft Auto, Street Fighter 2 and Windows Solitaire.

I would include Myst but I couldn't stomach bumping one of those for that polished turd 8)

With my amendments the list is now sufficiently broad that you have to dig more than a little to find a title that doesn't owe a lot to at least one member of the list 8)

And no Silent Hill 2? How DARE you? >:(

I'm not sure your list is quite correct for the intent of the NYT canon we are discussing. As far as I understood it, the requirement for inclusion was that a game had to have introduced elements used in games up to this date. This is also one problem with their canon; it is so entrenched in what happens to be trendy right now, that many otherwise innovating and influential games are not included.

I'm not sure your list is quite correct for the intent of the NYT canon we are discussing. As far as I understood it, the requirement for inclusion was that a game had to have introduced elements used in games up to this date.

Guilty as charged. My picks reflect a more idealized notion of how I'd like the industry to look today 8)

That said, according to the stated metrics, Zork probably shouldn't be there 8)

Well, I'm glad Zork is in there!

By the way: am I the only one who noticed that Grant is wearing an Infocom t-shirt in the picture?

Big German news site Spiegel Online has a story about the proposed canon. MobyGames gets a mention, being described as a "meritorious site"!

Well, I'll be damned! A decent article on videogames on a German news site! It even puts that darned term "Killerspiele" in quotation marks. Very interesting, especially after reading that lazy article in the current issue of Die Zeit.

They had a point in the lack of any MUD-type game on the list, considering how big WoW is now.

King's Quest I. How in the hell can King's Quest I not be on the list. I don't like the game that much, but we all know that King's Quest I should be on every darn freakin game list!!!

But Indra, no-one makes adventure games anymore.

Here is what John Romero has to say about the article and the inclusion of Doom: DOOM named as one of Ten Most Important Games

"Some people have been arguing that Wolfenstein 3D should have been mentioned in place of DOOM because it was the birth of the fast-action FPS but I disagree. If you can remember, following Wolf3D's release there were several other 3D FPS's released that had minimal impact on the industry (Ken's Labyrinth, The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, Nerves of Steel, Escape From Monster Manor, Isle of the Dead, the Catacombs sequels, Blake Stone 1 & 2, and many others). Most of these Wolf3D clones, not DOOM clones were released post-DOOM. Only Heretic has the distinction of being the first post-DOOM clone as all the other games released up to the end of 1994 were ray-cast engines laid out in a Wolf3D-style grid.

DOOM had a real impact in launching the genre beyond what Wolf3D achieved because its 3D technology rendered a world more realistic than anything yet experienced at an amazing framerate, high-speed multiplayer deathmatch was seen for the first time and we opened up our data files for the world to modify. Oh, we also gave it away for free. You only paid money if you wanted to play the rest of the series.

Quake may have launched the era of the true 3D high-speed FPS, today's world of 3D graphics adapters, internet FPS play and professional gaming, but the FPS genre really took off with DOOM."

How disappointing, I thought he'd try to cram a mention to Daikatana in there.

I recall some industry expert saying Doom was the first time someone who wasn't into video gaming could be impressed by a game's audio/visual experience.

*rolls eyes* at Von Katze