Doom. Was on more PCs than Windows, defined a genre and is still referenced today.
Super Mario Brothers is what brought video games into the household.
This one game is why every game system was called “a Nintendo” for decades. Yes, other games came along and changed the landscape dramatically, but SMB1 created that foothold into the home.
Oh, it’s a “type your pick”, not a list of choice. Interesting
… and why it’s World of Warcraft.
Do I want that to be the answer? No.
Sadly, that’s actually a decent choice, as much as I hate to admit it.
That question is so broad it cannot be answered.
There’s a myriad of games which are or have been wildly popular (e.g. Mario, CS, GTA, WoW, Minecraft, Fortnite)
There’s games which pushed the borders to new limits (e.g. Tetris, Doom, WoW, VR Chat)
And there’s games which warped the industry or their players (e.g. mobile games, micro transactions, loot boxes)
Agreed. Up next: what’s the best song ever?
My vote goes to Dragon Quest. Early gaming was dominated by JRPGs like DQ, Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger. Pretty much every modern game has RPG elements. While there are earlier RPGs, DQ popularized them and invented the JRPG.
Of course, literally speaking, the first game ever is the most influential - therefore Tennis for Two.
Really, anything from the Game Canon is a good choice: Mario, Doom, Tetris, SimCity, Civ I, Warcraft, SpaceWar, Zork, that soccer game I don’t remember, StarRaiders.
I haven’t seen anyone mention Zork yet, and it really ought to be in contention here. Pretty much all video games can trace how their narrative is structured through gameplay back to the foundations laid by Zork, even doom. It drew on Colossus, sure, but it built on it so much that it became revolutionary to both games as a storytelling medium and to natural language processing. Really cool stuff.
Most of all time. GTFO.
Doom.
I can’t think of anything that really competes overall. It could be argued games like Pong, Pac-Man, Quake, Half-Life, WoW, ect. all were pivotal points in gaming, but I don’t think anything has had as direct and widespread influence as Doom.
I’d say Wolfenstein 3D is right there. Without Wolfenstein there wouldn’t be Doom.
Wolfenstein 3D was an evolutionary stepping stone to Doom sure, but you can say that about any game which came before.
Doom really was a huge step up over and above Wolfenstein. Game play, visuals, realism, mood. I remember as a kid playing doom late at night in the dark and actually feeling a bit scared. Nothing before could ever do that.
I bet noone’s gonna mention the great grandfathers of modern RPGs. Bard’s Tale, Ultima, Dungeon Master… all modern games are standing on the shoulders of giants.
While they’re important, I think they’ve also aged poorly in many ways something like Doom has not. I’d compare their importance more to something like Pong or Galiga. Good games, that pushed the limits of the medium for their time, and are foundational, but more acted as a steping stone rather than something other games were widely inpired by or modeled after.
I wouldn’t disagree that Doom is a very good choice here too. The fact that it has become a tradition and challenge to try to run Doom on all kinds of hardware alone proves how influential Doom is. However, I wouldn’t say Dungeon Master has aged more poorly than Doom. Both games are really fun today I think. Dungeon Master is just way more niche, it’s older, it had fewer players and the franchise has died a long time ago, while Doom is going strong. It’s a tough choice and I admit I’m a bit biased here anyway - Dungeon Master was my first true love when it comes to video games.
Probably Minecraft.
can someone help me describe ‘most influential’ for me here?
pardon my english
