My Own Ten Most Important Games
There's an article in the New York Times about the 10 most important games of all time, for possible inclusion in the U.S. Library of Congress. Their importance is based upon the fact that "Almost all of the games on the Lowood list represent the beginning of a genre still vital in the video game industry," thus making them "cultural artifacts."

That's a highly questionable assertion, certainly. I mean, Zork was based on Adventure, Doom evolved directly from Wolfenstein 3D (which itself evolved from Catacomb 3D), and (as Scorpia was quick to point out) there's not a single RPG on the list (which is still a very vital genre in the industry, thankfully).

But the fun thing about these kinds of lists is that they make us think, discuss, and come up with their own lists. Greg Costikyan created a list a few years ago about the games every game developer - and gamer - should know.

Now, I have some gigantic blind spots of my own. My game choices are very PC-centric, for one thing. And I think every gamer is influenced most heavily by their first gaming experiences, even if their first game was a total piece of crap. There may be some poor sap out there who's introduction to computer gaming was Trespasser, and they are forever tanited and have nostalgic feelings for it. That's probably me, too.

So here are the top 10 games that I feel were most important in MY life. It shouldn't match anyone else's list. To be fair, I cut it down to only ten - which is very hard to do! And these aren't my favorite games... merely the ones I thought were most influential on my life - whether they sucked up the most hours, or forced me to look at gaming differently and colored my perceptions of games (or even life) forever.

My Ten Most Important Games:

#1 - Wing Commander
I'm gonna cheat right off the bat by taking an entire series under one "game" heading. WC1 was probably my favorite, as it was a compelling diversion during a pretty boring summer in a strange town with no friends and a lot of stress. Because it was so blow-me-away cool, a childhood fantasy (Star Wars, anyone), and I was pushed into it by a need for an outlet, I was sucked into the Wing Commander universe and spent time not only playing the game, but studying the manual and reference documents. I knew the exact warhead yield of every missile, armor levels of every ship, and more.

It was also the game that made me decide to seriously look at becoming a game developer upon graduation. Because it wasn't enough to play the game - I wanted to make games like this! It was also influential in my decision to go indie and create Void War --- not that Void War's gameplay is very close to that of Wing Commander.


#2 - Ultima
I cheat again and use another series. Though really, what I'm talking about here is Ultima VII first and foremost, then Ultima IV, Ultima Underworld, and Ultima III - the last being my first introduction to really cool, sprawling, complete RPG worlds. You could go anywhere (though you might die if you tried), do all kinds of stuff, and get clues from talking to people. It was amazing.

Ultima IV (and, to a lesser degree, Ultima V through VII) gave us a glimpse of a possible future for RPGs and gaming in general. Where philosophy, morals, or ethics could be explored in an entertaining package. Unfortunately, that future has yet to present itself, and we're still chomping down popcorn and cotten candy most of the time.

Ultima VII - we may never see its like again, though I thought Baldur's Gate II came close. It was one of the most interactive worlds I've ever had the pleasure of exploring. That and a fascinating story of false religion, too! And Ultima Underworld was years before Doom or The Elder Scrolls, but let us explore a very interactive (with Physics!) underground world in the first "modern" action-RPG.

#3 - Doom
I didn't scream. But dang this game was awesome. Not only awesome 3D, but it included cooperative multiplayer as well as "deathmatches" (coining the term), AND it was extremely mod-friendly before "modding" was even a concept.

#4 - Adventure (Original, AKA "Colossal Cave Adventure")
The Colossal Cave. I've talked about this one in depth. The green dragon on the persian rug haunted my daydreams.

#5 - EverQuest
Anything that could consume that much of my life (most of which I still don't regret losing) HAS to be pretty darn significant.

#6 - Final Fantasy VII
I could just leave this one as the whole series, and I probably should. But FF7 was the mega-hit which sucked me in more than the rest. The game mechanics were mainly fairly pedestrian but with a few neat customization options. The story was weird but nevertheless highly compelling, the visuals (backgrounds - not so much the polygonal characters) were lush for the era. The combination was just magic. There's no other way to describe it.

#7 - Frontier (AKA Elite II)
Another game which sucked a good deal of my life from me for about three months straight. And I don't miss it. Open-ended gameplay and procedural content generation at its early 90's best. Frontier was as much a toy and a place to explore as it was a game. I mean, honestly, the space combat SUCKED in this game. But it didn't matter. It was just funto explore, upgrade, and try things out.

#8 - Falcon 3.0 / 4.0
Hardcore combat flight simming. Multiplayer. A virtual, interactive world that would change dynamically based upon your actions. Realism (particularly in 4.0) that has rarely been equaled and never exceeded. These games made you feel like you were THERE.

#9 - Neverwinter Nights
The original campaign that shipped with this game wasn't all that great. What was incredibly awesome was the incredibly powerful yet easy-to-use toolkit for content creation, so that anybody could make their own RPG with it. Now, that had been done before, with Bard's Tale Construction Set, Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures, and Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set. But this time, we had easy access to the Internet for distribution, and probably more power in the tools than ever before. And it was extremely easy for other users to run the custom module - a problem which plagued the slightly earlier game, "Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption".

AND Neverwinter Nights also had solid multiplayer support and a "Dungeon Master" mode, to exponentially increase the potential of the game. Again, it had been beaten to the punch by Vampire, but in NWN it was both more solid and more capable.

Many, many hours of my life were taken up running (and playing) multiplayer NWN games. And they were a blast. So to me, Neverwinter Nights wasn't so much a game as a tool to make and play games. And it was awesome at that.

#10 - The Sims
I liked it, but never loved it. But wow, did it ever innovate and show some really cool concepts of what COULD be done! Neat alternatives to UI, AI, interactions, perceptions in people of context when there was none... And it appealed to a huge segment of the market that had never been interested in games before. It's a game worth STUDYING by any serious game developer.

Labels: Mainstream Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:58 AM (Permalink)