what would you vote most important computer game in the history of gaming?

i asked this on another forum,but would be interested in your thoughts also (excuse my cut/paste)am a lazy sod 😳

what i mean is,what game do you think is the standout candidate for most defining moment in gaming history?

there are plenty of candidates (pong/space invaders/pac man e.t.c).

my choice though would have to go to doom.

i remember seeing wolfenstein (shareware version) back in the early 90’s.i remember my jaw dropping to the floor when i saw it.

BUT!

it was when i bought a 3do back in 94-95 (it cost me over £400 i think).i bought doom for it (arguably the worst port of the game/the best music though 😉
i was just gobsmacked when i loaded it up for the first time.

“BY THE GODS,THIS IS AWESOME!” i remember saying to myself (i had literally never seen/played anything like it before).

just the 3d game world,the monsters,the weapons 😉

and then watching the monsters fighting among themselves when one monster accidentally hit another one (fantastic 🙂

the chainsaw

AND THE B.F.G 🙂 oh yeah baby!

i have to admit that doom has left it’s indelible mark on me forever since that first time i played it.

i believe that it is my most important game in history for a few reasons.

1. you could actually see where gaming technology was heading for the first time (a fully 3d world almost 😉 i know that there were previous 3d games made (driller on c64 for example) but it was the first time that it seemed to work properly,feel cohesive.

2.it was VERY addictive (just one more power up/got to see what the next level/monster/weapon is).

3.as said above the monsters actually fighting among themselves (i cannot think of any game before/since that has also done that/i may be wrong though?)

4.the weapons (b.f.g/berserk power up/chainsaw 😉 every weapon in the game felt t good to use/each weapon had a different strategy for use.

5. perhaps the most important reason.it was easy to pick up and play.you could give the controller to anyone,and within a few minutes,they would be able to get the hang of it.

so there’s my 50p worth as to my vote.

would be interested as to what your vote would go to 🙂

Manic Miner for me.

Possibly ‘Fifa’ as a genre rather than any particular version. It wouldn’t be too hard to put things like CoD and HALO in there too.

I’d guess it would depend a lot when you were born and got into gaming.

Some may argue Donkey Kong… some Pac Man… some would be later and go for CoD.

Doom as stated above changed the world of gaming… epic huge game beyond comprehension.

Pro Evo Soccer for me was an epic adventure as it got me more into on-line gaming..

Championship manager, UFO enemy unknown both caused me many sleepless nights.

Predictable… but Elite trumps it on all counts.

Yeah, you’d have to go Elite.

Have to agree that the 3d engine in doom was a real leap forward.

I spent far too much time becoming an Ace at Harrier Attack though.

Too young to play Doom but i would have to say Quake

Impossible question to answer, to many land marks. Doom created the genre, counter strike created/cemented the multiplayer aspect of it or maybe golden eye did? Who knows and who cares. Mario kart 64 is still the best game ever.

I mentioned Elite in a thread last week, but it was Elite II for me… that was simply epic, getting my status, missions and ship up. I always ended up with the Imperial cruiser, it was fast, could jump well, carry big weapons and cargo… just brilliant. jumping for hours until one day you get a bad jump and end up 4,000,000,0000,000 light years from anywhere and out of fuel.

space invaders – pacman

but as above I recon Doom was revolutionary and a massive leap forward.

I hope in future it will be remembered as such… and it was free too !!!

as above really, Doom/Quake and maybe Elite.

quake

For me it was Half-life, but no Half-Life with Doom, so yep, Doom.

Space Invaders or Asteroids.

Thread finished.

Wolfenstein.

Agree with doom and manic miner etc.

Duke nukem is on the list for me as it was the first game I multiplayed on. Took my pc to my mates house and connect the com ports to death match.
First online game would be star siege tribes, then unreal the battlefield etc

BF3 etc now due to the advances in gameplay and graphics etc.

Gauntlet (the arcade version) in terms of introducing hardcore multi-play. I don’t think any other game attracted so many people around it when it first launched, basically because it let players come and go so long as they had another 20p or whatever.

Other than that …

– Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy
– Elite
– Knightlore (for the esoteric fans)
– Doom and Quake
– Half Life 1 (and 2)

Wolfenstein.

yes that. forgot that came before doom.

The thing is, there were 3D games before Doom. There were multiplayer games before Gauntlet. There were space/adventure games before Elite.

There were no games (really) before Space Invaders and Asteroids.

In fact, actually, I’m wrong and I’m changing my mind.

Pong.

ah Gauntlet! 🙂

Streetfighter 2

My most recent favourite is Half-Life 2 and the episodes.

Unreal Tournament – I still play this on my work pc, brilliant game, and yet it’s 13+ years old now.

Gauntlet… awsome

“Wizard is about to die…”…

Ignoring pioneering games such as Pong, from the late 80s when games developed charisma and universal appeal there was Dizzy, Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg, Prince of Persia, Lemmings, R-Type, Tetris, Double Dragon; so many to choose from.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Half Life

People are always going to be biased towards the ones that influenced them. Having grown up with and Amstrad-megadrive-playstation still the two games that had the biggest effect on me were Gran Tursimo (first game on my playstation and a giant leap from anything I’d had before) then GTA3 for the fact you could wander around the city and explore while doing missions as opposed to following a very linear game path. That and Goldeneye cause I liked that but didn’t have a copy myself.

What’s that one on the internet – the massive multiplayer fantasy thing?

Unreal Tournament? Blimey! I remember, years ago, 5 of us in the studio used to spend our lunchtimes blowing each other to pieces on that!

The MD had to get us to reign it in a bit as if any clients came in at lunchtime they’d be met with blood curdling cries of DIE YOU BASTARD!!! DIE!!!! 😆

It’s a tricky one, most of the old classics have already been mentioned. Another you could add in is Populous for kick-starting the god game genre. Personally though I’d vote for Everquest for making MMOs/MMORPG actually massive for the first time. I only got into it myself as I was heavily into Quake 2 and watched Immortal totally bomb out in one of the champs, it turned out he’d being playing Everquest rather than practising so I figured I’d best have a look at what all the fuss was about, I’ve not put anything close to the amount of hours into another game that I did in the first 3 years playing EQ (I’m over MMOs now thankfully :p ).

My son seems obsessed with this game called minecraft at the moment.. I looked at a couple of screen shots and it looked like a spectrum game from the 80s. Surely it must be better than that ❓

The first Tomb Raider was absolutely epic

Probably my most pivotal gaming moment was when I played golden eye on the N64 for the first time… thats the game that sticks out most prominently even though in the scheme of things its not that old.

before that I liked Virus, fly round killing infected trees? Mario will always be up there for me as will Mario Kart original snes version.

changed my mind about 600 times whilst typing this so I’m pressing post now.

Half Life series.

HL2 was _very_ important from a hardware/graphics technologies point of view.

Some good replies here already.

Doom for essentially creating the FPS genre (I know there were earlier titles, but it exploded with Doom). Elite not for the 3D or open world approach (both of which were revolutionary) but for the absolutely mental way they used memory to fit it into 32Kb. (Read up on it sometime, it’s twisted genius).

I was going to say Knight Lore for its use of isometric 3D, but that accolade goes to Sandy White’s Ant Attack a year or two earlier.

I adored Manic Miner (and was playing it on a real Speccy a couple of weeks ago) and JSW, but I’m struggling to see how it was a ‘landmark’ game for any reason other than being really, really good.

Ignoring pioneering games such as Pong, from the late 80s when games developed charisma and universal appeal there was Dizzy, Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg, Prince of Persia, Lemmings, R-Type, Tetris, Double Dragon; so many to choose from.

As an aside; was Prince of Persia the first game to use motion capture for the sprite animation? I’m struggling to think of anything earlier. PoP was a landmark game for that reason alone, I think.

What’s that one on the internet – the massive multiplayer fantasy thing?

world of warcraft

before that I liked Virus

As Grum points out, Virus was a conversion / update of Zarch on the Archimedes.

I’m going to go all modern and say Portal.

It proved you can make a brilliant game with a great story without actually needing even one gun! Finally got round to playing Portal 2 at the mo and loving it even more!

Stoner – Member
Have to agree that the 3d engine in doom was a real leap forward.

I spent far too much time becoming an Ace at Harrier Attack though.

Harrier Attack, that bring back some memories! My Grandpa had an old Amstrad computer which took cassette/tape games, and Harrier Attack was one I played as a kid all the time! Although, at the time I thought it was called “Arrier Attack” because of his accent 😆

Another vote for Doom, remember playing that when I was young, can’t quite remember when it came out though!

Sonic the Hedgehog? Mario Bros? Tertis? Great games that I wasted alot of time on!

Finally, more recent, GTA3. First 3D GTA was just amazing!

world of warcraft

Yeah, in terms of MMORPGs, Everquest was first (I think) but we’ve got to count WoW as a landmark title. For sheer volume of players and longevity. It’s been running, what, eight years now, and still massively popular.

We can probably add Diablo II to the list for similar reasons as well.

HL2 was _very_ important from a hardware/graphics technologies point of view.

Can I be controversial and suggest System Shock?

the whole sonic v mario battle took gaming into the mainstream in a big way, so I’d say those two games, on the megadrive and snes