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In realtivly recent times id say

Doom: The father of all shooters

Tomb Raider: For me, kicked off the action adventure genre

Metal Gear Solid: Amazing

Half Life: First shooter featuring a real indepth and cinematic story

Unreal Tournament: The father of online shooting (in my opinion)

Goldeneye: Set down fundamental roots of split screen gaming, leading to success of games like timesplitters 2

Gta 3: Shockinly perfect sandbox gameplay, shifted gaming forward.

Eldar Scrolls 4: Incredible detail, each person has a set routine each day

God of War : Added alot to the table in terms of cinematic story in game, along with incredibly fluid control mapping

Halo: Revitlised the shooting genre, added things to the genre that nearly all shooting games have adopted

Age of empires 2/ Starcraft: RTS's done perfectly

I think those are the games that stand out for me, although i dont have alot to say for the fighting and driving genre.

Please no 12 year olds turning up here raving about their latest game, just try and explain which games you think are responsible for how gaming itself has progressed.

Doom - The classic fps and father of the shooter

Mortal Kombat - Brought some much needed blood and guts to the beat em up. C'mon who didn't enjoy doing the fatalities?

Soulblade - Innovative weapon based fighting, which has now been improved upon in it's various sequels.

Resident Evil - gave us the survival horror genre

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - set the standard for 16 bit adventuring and in my opinion is still the best of the Zelda series

Manhunt - took the sneak em up to a whole darker, grittier level

Thanks Excommunicate Traitoris !

I can always count on dakkadakka to get real discussions going.

You certainly filled in many gaps i coudnt, i hate forgotton about zelda, mortal kombat, RS ect

Keep it coming guys, let us celebrate in our geeky hobby.

Here is one that I feel is missing:

Marathon - The first ever 3D shooter and an awesome dark gritty setting.

I confess i had never played that game, only ever heard of it second hand.

But the screenshots sure look ahead of its time.

Technically Alone in the Dark (the old one) was the first of the survival horror genre games, but Resident evil did take it to new heights and actually make it popular.

Zero Wing...

Gran Turismo games added a level of realism to racing games that was pretty impressive (and mostly unnecessary).

I'm still waiting for a racing game where I have the optio n to drive a manual, and pu t the damn car in NEUTRAL around any gear.

Wolfenstein was actually the father of the first person shooter. Doom was simply based off the Wolfenstein 3D engine, though it was much more popular.

And someone beat me to it; Alone in the Dark was the first game classified as Survival Horror, though Resident Evil refined it and made the concept popular.

Street Fighter - Gave us what we now know as the Fighting Genre. Even though the first Street Fighter is terrible by today's standards, it is still responsible for one of the most popular genres.

Virtua Fighter - The first three-dimensional fighting game ever made. I'm sure it deserves some accolades just for that.

Mortal Kombat - Though this might be considered a bad thing to many people, Mortal Kombat was so controversial that it actually played a part in the creation of the ESRB. Not many games have had that much effect on the gaming industry as a whole.

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - The first game that made you question exactly how much content you could fit in a game (if you can forgive the poor quality, it actually has a bigger game world than any other game I've ever seen). Daggerfall is also responsible for The Elder Scrolls series' extremely innovative leveling system, in which you perform a skill to level up said skill, instead of just killing monsters for experience to level up your character. Though it was made in 1996, it's still surprisingly relevant, even today. I still pick it up once in a while.

Metal Gear Solid - Created the relatively niche Stealth genre (Which may also be attributed to the game Thief, though Metal Gear Solid pulled it off in a completely different way). It also told the world that videogames are the medium with which you can surpass any movie or book in the storytelling department.

The Silent Hill Series - Not including Silent Hill Origins, or Silent Hill 5. I have seen plot analyses and psychological profiles of the characters in this series hundreds of pages long, done by psych majors. Not only is Silent Hill the most disturbing game ever made, it also has a level of depth to it's storytelling that cannot be found anywhere else. What it gives you on the surface of the game seems to be a relatively easy-to-follow story, but when you dig deeper, you will be absolutely astounded at what Team Silent is capable of. Took storytelling to a new level, not just in videogames, but period. Also responsible for the creation of two genres of music, by composer Akira Yamaoka.

Final Fantasy Tactics - The turn-based strategy that has yet to be surpassed, even more than ten years later. The amount of depth in the job system is absolutely astounding.

Ultima Online - Though it doesn't own the title to 'First MMO' (That actually belongs to Lineage, which is a simple translation of a MUD into a graphical game), it became the first extremely popular MMO (Prior to Everquest, it owned the market). It has done things that no game has before or since. You can do literally anything you can imagine within a medieval setting. The depth here is astounding, though now the quality of the game is not.

Quake - The first widely played 3D First-Person Shooter. Though it wasn't the very first of it's kind, it was close. Quake is responsible for Half Life (Which is based on the Quake Engine).

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater - The first game of it's kind, that spawned many imitators. Though the series is now seen as stagnant, cheesy, and pretty much dead (Especially with the onset of the Skate series, which boasts an extremely 'realistic' control scheme that makes skating actually difficult and rewarding), it is still responsible for the entire 'extreme sports' genre.

Super Mario 64 - Not only did it create the 3D platformer, it did so in a way that's still relevant and fun to play, with it's massive amount of levels and extra content. The camera might suck terribly, but it's worthy of forgiveness.

Neverwinter Nights - Other games might have tried to implement the Dungeons and Dragons game system, but Neverwinter Nights was the first game to do it right.

Diablo - Redefined the 'Dungeon Crawler'. The sequel, though it hasn't changed very much from the original game, is still played to this day, years later.

Grand Theft Auto III and IV - Grand Theft Auto III refined sandbox gameplay to a point where it actually made for an extremely fun and compelling game (Driver was the first 3D game of this kind, though it was extremely repetitive and the open world was all but pointless). Grand Theft Auto IV created a world with more depth than any other game. One of the few current generation games to actually innovate to a ridiculous degree, the inclusion of things like television, a working cell phone that lets you call up your friends and engage in numerous activities, and the euphoria engine used in animating the entire game, creates a world more immersive than any game ever created before it.

Dune II - defined the Real Time Strategy as we know it. Though it certainly took inspiration from other sources, Dune II plays nearly identically to any other RTS you'll pick up today, and it was the first to do so. Not only is it innovative, it is one of the few (good) videogames to be based on something that is not an original IP, which is impressive in it's own right.

Doom 3 - Graphically innovative. The first game to have truly 'next generation' graphics, it beat out most of the competition by years. The first game to have textures completely comprised of bump mapping (flat textures with the appearance of depth). Though it's not quite as impressive by today's standards, it may just be responsible for how amazing games tend to look in the current generation.

Half Life 2 - Still possibly the best physics engine ever created. Every single object in the game has an individual weight. This is not just some pointless addition, as with the inclusion of the gravity gun, the weight of objects actually has a profound effect on the puzzles found within the game.

Devil May Cry - Revitalized the Action Genre. Rewarding you for having a certain finesse and style propelled the game beyond being a simple button masher, as most games in the genre were before it. It also required a sense of timing and rythm that has been a benchmark for the genre ever since. The father of games like God of War and Ninja Gaiden.

I'll be able to come up with more eventually.

@ Darth
Could you explain why smash bros is the father of modern gaming. I loved the series.... but the father of modern gaming?

Didnt see steel panthers on the list. IMO theres not a better wwII sim out there.

Masters of Magic: The first video game that I became hopelessly addicted to. I played it so many times that I beat it on Impossible without the patch.

Strimen wrote:Here is one that I feel is missing:

Wolfenstein 3D - The first ever 3D shooter and an awesome dark gritty setting.

Corrected that for you. Wolfenstein 3D (1992) lead to Doom (1993) and Marathon (1994).

Hey,

When i get more time i will edit and add to my list in great detail, as there is sure alot more to put.

I didnt mean smash bros, i meant mario 64 sorry!. The reason being is (imo) no other game expanded the console market in such a way.

@Chrysaor686 very good list!, however i must disagree on gta4 being a more detailed world than oblivion. The fact that each person in oblivion has a home, a daily routine, a huge amound of voice acted possible conversations and a diffarent visual appearence is incredible.

Not to mention massive secrets and hordes of quests covering the large world

Secret of Mana:

First Action RPG + Class Changes

Metal Gear Solid 4 - IMO the first truly 'next gen' console game, it combines innovative gameplay with a story every bit as epic as it needed to be (I know the game has its critics, but just look at the amount of awards it has won).

Final Fantasy 7 - When you look back at the "classic" JRPG game this really was the genres swansong, with most JRPG's now moving towards the action rpg and strategy rpg mode the classic IGOUGO system has all but died out, this is simply one of the best games ever made and is another example of how a story can be told through the medium of gaming.

Mass Effect - Truly shows how Western RPGs are also great games, an expansive universe to explore, fluid conversation controls, choice all the way through the game, gripping story and clever leveling and combat controls made for a masterpiece in gaming that hopefully other developers will follow.

Fallout 3 - Innovative piece of game design by Bethesda, hopefully they should be able to take what they learnt from this game and make Elder Scrolls 5 an even better game.

Darth wrote:@Chrysaor686 very good list!, however i must disagree on gta4 being a more detailed world than oblivion. The fact that each person in oblivion has a home, a daily routine, a huge amound of voice acted possible conversations and a diffarent visual appearence is incredible.

Oblivion might have all of these things, and they might sound great on paper, but in context, they hardly effect the game at all. Each person might have a different daily routine, but that mostly consists of doing the same exact things as everyone else, just at a different time of day. An NPC is either eating, sleeping, or going somewhere. That's basically it. Since they all use the same exact animations, it doesn't amaze you to simply watch them go through with their routine after you get over the fact that they have one. I doubt you would even find out about the routine unless you heard something from Bethesda, or perhaps something within a review.

Each person having their own house is truly impressive, but it does limit the amount of NPCs you'll see in the world. Even the Imperial City won't have more than ten people walking around in a district, when it feels like it should be absolutely packed with people. Aside from some of the Storyline Characters, the voice acting is performed by two people per race (one male, one female), and you will often hear exact lines repeated by different NPCs (It would be ridiculous to ask for anything else, but it's still something that serves to kill the immersion a bit). Also, the load times that pop up every time you open a door also kind of remove you from total immersion. I'm not complaining about them, and I understand why they're necessary, I'm just saying. The huge world gets repetitive; you will see content repeated over and over again. The different appearances of characters were more than likely randomly generated (as a lot of them look really malformed).

Grand Theft Auto IV, on the other hand, actually has things that are immersive while also affecting what you do within the game. You can lose hours logging into the internet created specifically for the game (with somewhere around 200 working websites that sometimes actually effect the game, such as the dating websites or missions you get through your e-mail), watching the television programming (which is often as hilarious as the series' trademark radio, including spoofs of real life shows like 24 and CSI), going to a Comedy Club and watching real acts of Ricky Gervais and Kat Williams (Kat Williams even re-wrote his routine to include references to Liberty City), calling up a friend to see if they want to go get drunk, play pool, or any of the other numerous minigame activities (Your friends also have a schedule, and will get pissed if you call too late, or ask you to pick them up from a different location depending on what day and time it is), or even dialing 911 and asking for the 'assistance' of the Police, Firefighters, or an Ambulance.

Beyond things that actually effect the game, if you actually stop and take a look at the world for a moment, you will be amazed. Grand Theft Auto IV uses the Euphoria Animation Engine, which uses artificial intelligence to create natural physical responses to any situation (For example, instead of two pedestrians bumping into each other like idiots, they will naturally put a hand or two out to gently push each other out of the way). Stop and look at the people for even a minute. Everyone acts differently. You will see a homeless man hunched over and scratching at his forearm like he needs a fix, while a guy in a suit will typically have a suitable uptight stroll. People also react to situations differently. Say it starts raining. Those that look fairly well-to-do will probably have an umbrella on hand, and will take it out, while those less fortunate will run towards their destination, covering their heads. People are more likely to step into a fight and help if you're hitting a woman. Little nuances like that just help to create total immersion, especially when you can actually have an effect on them, instead of just being a bystander. You will see repeated pedestrian skins, but that is totally forgiveable when there are hardly any load times, and well over 500 voice actors lending their voices to the game.

Nothing against Oblivion. It is really a great game, and has some really good ideas. But none of the 'immersion' really makes you feel like you're a part of the world. You might as well not even be there. The only thing that really effects the gameplay any differently in Oblivion (As opposed to Morrowind), is that someone you need to find will not be in the same place consistently. This might actually be a problem, if they didn't implement the waypoints, which took a ton of difficulty out of the game. All in all, I prefer Morrowind to Oblivion, simply because they cut so much content, made the game way too easy with compass and Magicka regeneration, made leveling up worthless, and the world feeling much more generic than Vvardenfell. It's almost like they did all that at the expense of making the world feel more alive. Immersion is not as important as strong gameplay, and I wish they could've seen that.

This debate is going to become somewhat awkward as i have much respect for both games. Although i again agree with many of you're points i still feel that oblivion is a more immersive world, albeit subjective to the type of player.

When walking along the docks in oblivion i realised that a woman was painting an image of the dock, and upon returning another day i saw her again. Me and my friends decided it would be intaresting (although sad) to investigate if the engine really did have a routine for her. As i said earlier, it turned out she had a house, meals and a relationship with her husband, this astounded me.

I should also note that there isnt a strict mission finding system, in the sense that you can't be approached and converse with people on the street.

This particular detail to residents lives and personalities is what puts oblivion (and eldar scrolls in general) in a totally seperate league to other games, and at least makes it impossible to determine whether it is "more" immersive than gta4.

I'm surprised you felt like a tourist of tamriel, as i felt a tourist of liberty city. As you said, the character models and posture's ect of gta4 is impressive. But at the end of the day, thats all they are, characters. You cant talk to them, they dont have lives they just dissapear. You wont find little jacob or brucie on the streets. And you certainly wont discover great secrets such as a rideable unicorn in the woods, or a group of non conformist religious cultists deep in a cave (or vampires!). I just feel that gta4 sticks mainly to a traditional guiding of the player, or perhaps i just demand to much dominance.

The whole phone system although intaresting doesnt spell immersiation for me, its not as if you can just call and have a chat as 95% of the time you will go straight to answer phone.

Loading times are indeed annoying in oblivion, i also feel that some of the enviroments become samey, especially the oblivion hellholes themselves.

I agree with you that morrowind had some fantastic features that were left out of oblivion, yet i feel that if ES 5 ever emerged, and encorperated a mixture of morrowind and oblivion done perfectly, it would be the best game of all time.

ES5 is in the works and is supposedly being set in Skyrim.

Eve: Online.

I can not believe no one has said what i think the 2 biggest ones are. The original sonic and super mario bros games are what lead gaming to be so big in todays homes

So you're saying a fat plumber and a blue hedgehog are more influential than Doom?

Anyway, I think that Mortal Kombat set the scene for fighting games. Street fighter, while fun, just wasn't satisfying.

Cheese Elemental wrote:So you're saying a fat plumber and a blue hedgehog are more influential than Doom?

Anyway, I think that Mortal Kombat set the scene for fighting games. Street fighter, while fun, just wasn't satisfying.

On your first point, I most certainly would. Maybe they didn't influence your game-fan-dom, but they influenced and promoted video gaming, and were practically the mascots of their respective licensing companies. Console gaming evolved quite seperately to PC gaming, though, and I was fortunate enough to interact with both from a young age.

But to be honest, Mario and Sonic were more or less designed to be kid's games. Doom and Mortal Kombat forged a path for mature gamers. Heck, without that kind of game, every game nowadays would be a child's platformer.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Anyway, I think that Mortal Kombat set the scene for fighting games. Street fighter, while fun, just wasn't satisfying.

But the question wasn't 'what games marked the evolution of gaming that you also liked', it was just what marked the evolution of gaming. Street Fighter was first. Mortal Kombat was arguably better, I liked it more as well, but something was always going to come along and be better, the point remains that Street Fighter was the first of its type and a massive commercial success as well.

Cheese Elemental wrote:But to be honest, Mario and Sonic were more or less designed to be kid's games. Doom and Mortal Kombat forged a path for mature gamers. Heck, without that kind of game, every game nowadays would be a child's platformer.

The ability to stand, or glean some sort of enjoyment from, the sight of blood and gore does not make you any more mature. That point is completely debatable anyway. Doom and Mortal Kombat may have been the first games to have the stones to push the envelope, but you know that similar games would've come along eventually anyway.

Not that I'm agreeing with the point that Sonic or Mario were responsible for gaming evolution (aside from Super Mario 64), as they were not the first games to do what they did, and they did not bring anything radically new to the table. It caused an evolution of the sales of consoles, perhaps, but that's not necessarily a change in gaming itself.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Anyway, I think that Mortal Kombat set the scene for fighting games. Street fighter, while fun, just wasn't satisfying.

Then please, tell me. Why is the Street Fighter series still enjoying extreme success while Midway just claimed bankruptcy? Street Fighter 2 tournaments are still held around the world. Mortal Kombat basically died along with the decline of American Arcades and it's switch to 3D.

About the only 'satisfaction' you can get from Mortal Kombat is the ability to rip someone's spine out of their body. Have you come to terms with yourself that you just might be a sadist?

@Darth: I will concede that The Elder Scrolls has the most detailed, nuanced, immersive fantasy world ever created (Maybe concede isn't the right word). The information you can find from reading the numerous books, and even listening in on people's conversations (as well as the old standby of simply asking for information) ends up shaping a world that's absolutely rich in fictional religious philosophies, political intrigue, and other drama. The world of the Elder Scrolls is more detailed than any fantasy book I've ever read, and it's actually believable. If there were a world with Magicka, 'classic' Fantasy races, and everything else that comes along with High Fantasy, I think the Elder Scrolls is by far the closest to hitting the nail on the head with the end result. It feels like you're dealing with a real world, and while it might initially seem like it will be chock full of cliches, it's not. That is amazing.

I guess I've basically been playing the Elder Scrolls from a power-gamer perspective ever since I completely beat Morrowind (I've beaten literally every single quest in that game, and gotten all of my skills up to 100), and so I don't pay much attention to the world anymore. I feel like I already know everything there is to know about it (Yes, I've read through all the books in the series, too). When I first heard that all of the NPCs would have individual lives, I was amazed. That was one of the biggest faults in Morrowind. Once you're done with everything, the world feels stagnant. But it didn't change that like I thought it would. More than likely, that's due to other factors, like having absolutely no reason to level up your character, since all the enemies are permanently gauged to your level. Or maybe it's because I would've liked to see this done with Vvardenfell, which is an interesting take on a Fantasy world unlike anything I've ever seen (With the architecture and scenery, mostly). Cyrodiil is a much more generic world, of your more popular human-centric variety, with architecture that's already been seen in just about every fantasy world yet.

However, look at it this way. The content required to make an actual believable rendition of the present-day world is ridiculous to even think about (I didn't think it could be done with the current generation's hardware, to be honest). It may be less amazing to you, simply because it's things that you've no doubt seen before. But just think about how much more work went into this game. If it's any indicator, the rolling of the credits took over half an hour to complete from start to finish. That's impressive, I don't really care how you look at it.

Take into perspective that programming AI for daily routines and practically copy-pasting houses for all of the world's inhabitants didn't take nearly as much effort as it did to create a living, breathing New York City in modern day, complete with nearly anything you can think to do in real life. Though I've wished for that out of videogames for a long time, I didn't think it would come true for years to come. Grand Theft Auto IV is a game that is far beyond it's own time. All it really requires to see that is a slightly deeper look.

Cheese Elemental wrote:So you're saying a fat plumber and a blue hedgehog are more influential than Doom?

Anyway, I think that Mortal Kombat set the scene for fighting games. Street fighter, while fun, just wasn't satisfying.

No I am saying that I think they are in my opinion more influential then some of the others because they seemed to open the door to what gaming is today. The Playstation might not be around if was not for Sega coming out with the Segacd and Nintendo pissing of Sony when they where trying coming out their version. So all i am saying is if it was not for that as you put it fat plumber and a blue hedgehog we might not have the games we do now

The fact that the blue hedgehog fought a fat, red-suited man with a moustache was a nice parallel to the video console wars. On the Nintendo side, a fat red-suited man with a moustache took powerful drugs, defeated spiky opponents in inventive ways, and nailed the girl.

Back in the day when you just had your genesis/mega drive and your super famicom x, Sega and Nintendo was all there was for the non-computer gamers, and the news was all about how they were competing.

Unfortunately I believe that Sega failed to adequately market their products, and couldn't rely on the 'household name'-status of the more established Nintendo. The Dreamcast, despite being an incredible console, fell through, and hammered in the last nail in the delivery box that sent them off working for everyone else.

I agree that the Mega-CD and Saturn developments were very important.

On the PC side, Shareware kicked into full swing, and you could buy shareware versions of games that contained up to a third of the game's content, and were often satisfying enough to play on their own (unlike demos). Then you could legally give them to anyone who wanted a copy.

I guess I'm saying that marketing strategies like these were also very important to the overall development of games as we know them. Before I go, I'll add Virtua Fighter to the list. First 3D-rendered fighter.

Arctik_Firangi wrote:Back in the day when you just had your genesis/mega drive and your super famicom x, Sega and Nintendo was all there was for the non-computer gamers, and the news was all about how they were competing.

Poor old Amiga, always the forgotten, red headed step child.

I didn't mention my beloved old Commodore 64 either. Anyone ever play Pool of Radiance? The dark ages are ever dark, for I'm not quite THAT old.

Darth wrote:Age of empires 2/ Starcraft: RTS's done perfectly.

Well C&C created the the genre. Starcraft was the most popular

Shogun Total War father a genre all of its own and it (and its usccessors) has yet to be bettered.