My ALMOST Most Important Games List
A couple of days ago, I decided to list my personal "Ten Most Important Games." Shaving it down to only ten was really painful, and excluded a lot of games that I thought belonged there... except for the ten that belonged there only slightly more.

What can I say? I've played a LOT of games.

So here are some of the alternates that didn't end up above the fold when I sorted them all out. Not all of them are more than a decade old... :)

Diablo: How many people played Rogue / Nethack / Moria / Larn / etc. and said, "Gee, this game would really rock if it had better graphics and a cleaner UI?" Well, almost everyone who played them and wasn't an ANSII purist. Also, game developers and armchair designers for YEARS were debating how to properly do a decentralized multiplayer RPG. So Blizzard finally decided that a good game now was better than a perfect game a decade later, quit debating and over-analyzing, and did it. And in the process, got credit for reviving the flagging PC RPG market (the whole "RPGs are dead" thing never happened on the consoles - people were too busy playing their RPGs to notice, I guess).

Rainbow Six: The "thinking man's FPS". Along with Thief, this proved that there was a lot more that could be done with an FPS-style game if you only bothered to think outside the box.

Galaga: I don't know if we've ever gotten closer to perfection with top-down shooters. We've got different, but I don't know if we've gotten better. Galaga was of the best arcade games ever developed, and still very playable and enjoyable today. (Ms. Pac Man is perhaps the other best arcade game of all time).

Thief: Wow. The first (and best) "First Person Sneaker." The game made you FEEL like a medieval(ish) thief. Thief I and II were among the most tense and exciting games I've ever played. The missions were designed to have fairly open-ended solutions. The designers didn't seem to enforce any kind of expectations as to HOW you would complete the missions --- you could meet the goals by any means you could devise. We need more games like this one.

Super Mario Brothers: It signalled the world that videogames were not a fad, that it wasn't over after Atari went bust. And on top of that, it was awesome. With all due respect to wonderful previous games such as Atari's Adventure, Pitfall, Star Raiders, Breakout, and others... I think Super Mario Brothers was the first "great" ("masterpiece?") console game. And it was the best-selling game of all time, at over 40 million copies sold. I don't suppose it hurt that it was bundled with the NES... And no, I never finished it.

Civilization: The evolution of the old game, "Empire," taken to the extreme where it could qualify as a new entity altogether. It also paved the way for more great strategy games, including "Master of Orion."

Starfire: Terrible, terrible game. But it blew my mind in 1980. It was ... like... being in Star Wars! Wow! I played a sit-down version, with the speaker set right behind by back, so I felt every explosion. I couldn't stop talking about it for two days. Few people were familiar with arcade games back then (this was pre-Pac Man), so they had no clue what I was talking about

Warcraft: I missed Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans, but Warcraft II was awesome. I don't remember if it or Command and Conquer came first, but though C&C was spiritual successor to Dune 2, I'm giving the nod to Warcraft to popularizing the concept of the real-time strategy genre. And no, Dune 2 wasn't the first either - not by a long shot. Neither was Siege, by Mindcraft (the Magic Candle guys), which was an awesome game that most closely resembled the modern RTS.

Atari Adventure: The first known Easter Egg in a console game was hidden here. And it was kinda-sorta the first real-time, graphical adventure game. But a generation of us thrilled to being chased by a hollow yellow duck.

NetHack: It's almost like it's been one, unbroken development project stretching from around 1976 into the future...

Mechwarrior II: The game that got me into hardcore competitive Internet play. And it wasn't even Internet-capable!

Dance, Dance, Revolution: The game that combined physical fitness with videogaming fun. One of my favorite ways of getting exercise.

Guitar Hero: As Thief made you feel like a medieval thief, and Falcon 4.0 made you feel like a real fighter pilot, so did Guitar Hero make you feel like a rock 'n roll legend. This had so much potential to be a "nothing" game --- but the music selection, the tilt sensor for star power, and the "garage band" ambiance all combined to make this game more of a historical event.

Grim Fandango: I don't know how this one beat out The Secret of Monkey Island on my list, but somehow it did. It was graphical adventure gaming at its best --- and for a while, it seemed to be a swan song for the genre. Fortunately, rumors of the genre's death seem to have been exaggerated. Amusingly enough, this was a game about death - and life afterwards. One thing that struck me was how much heart the game could have, even in a comedy with such a bizarre premise.

X-Com: Do I really need to add to the chorus of fanatical ravings about this game? Okay - I will. A little. IMO, it wasn't the tactical combat (which was awesome) that made this game. It was the strategic "meta-game" and context underneath it. And the UFO mythology woven into it. These gave the tactical game context and meaning.

So, taken with the previous article, there's my 25 most important games, which I feel far more comfortable with. Though I'm betting I'm forgetting one. Your mileage SHOULD vary! (If anybody else has Starfire on their list, I may weep openly).

There are a lot of games conspicuously absent, but I've already pushed the line back once... I think I'm gonna keep it at 25.


(Vaguely) related text garbage:
* My Own Ten Most Important Games
* A Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Different
* Overheard Near a Galaga Machine
* Who Are The Best Game Villains?
* Game Moments
.

Labels: Mainstream Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 AM (Permalink)