10 Videogames That Changed Everything - Part 2
Last week in 10 Videogames That Changed Everything - Part 1 we talked about 5 games that either created or revolutionized their genres. There are just so many games that were infused with all the passion and creativity of the developers, and so many great gaming memories.
It’s tough to think back over 30 years of gaming and pick ten definitive games out of all the memorable titles. Any list is going to come up short for some people, but I can tell from the responses that I struck a note with many of you. Let’s pick up where we left off and see if our gaming evolution continued on similar paths:
6. Star Flight / Star Control 2
First of all, I know that many read that bullet and cried foul. Ok, I have to admit that I completely missed Elite back in the 80’s. I will hang my head in shame for a minute of silence before I resume typing.
For those of us who missed Elite, later in the decade Star Flight was a PC game that received a superior Sega Genesis makeover. Part RPG, part space combat, part resource management, it was a refinement of an already established space opera genre. Star Flight placed you in what seemed like a huge galaxy with endless worlds to explore and exploit, and there was enough of an underlying story to tie it all together.
1990 saw Accolade release Star Control 2, an unrelated, but suspiciously similar game. The original Star Control featured turn based movement that was punctuated by realtime space battles. It wasn’t as deep as Star Flight, but had better battle sequences. Star Control 2 introduced a main game that was modeled directly on the Star Flight formula, but kept Star Control’s battle mechanics intact. In fact, Star Control 2 was like Star Flight on steroids. Star Control offered an underlying story, thousands of planets to explore and mine, and races to interact and battle with.
Games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the forthcoming Mass Effect owe much to the Star Flight and Star Control series. This was one of those games you really became attached to as you lost yourself in it, and it’s a shame that this genre died. I held onto my 3DO for a long time, just for this one title.
If you missed it, or if you no longer have hardware that plays it, go check out The Ur-Quan Masters. Thanks to the developers, Toys For Bob, who made the source public, a multi-platform freeware version was released. It’s as good as I remember it, and I’ve even seen some fan-made original content for it around the web. Go get it now.
7. Street Fighter 2
Street Fighter 2 wasn’t the first fighting game, but it was the first that drove normal people to the arcades and crossed over into mainstream culture. I’m sure that early in the life of the SNES, a good majority of systems were sold on the strength of the Street Fighter 2 port. Excellent hand drawn graphics, strong characters, and a motivation to play through to see every character’s end scene established a format still adhered to in today’s fighting games. Even SNK, whose fighters I prefer to Capcom fighters, took their cues from Street Fighter 2.
8. Quake
I see people crying foul over this as well, but let me explain why I picked Quake over Doom:
Quake came out roughly the same time as the original PC 3D graphics cards. It wasn’t long after Quake was released that the GL Quake and GL Quakeworld executables were unleashed on an unsuspecting internet. I had one of the first 3dfx cards, and let me tell you, GL Quake in 640×480 at 30 frames per second may sound ridiculous now, but it was mind blowing back then.
Unlike Doom, Quake was truly 3D. You could go up, down, sideways, you could jump, fall, climb. It was the combination of mechanics and graphics that made Quake so immersive.
And I haven’t even talked about the multiplayer yet.
Quake’s online multiplayer was revolutionary. Whereas Doom limited you to LAN via IPX, and online via commercial hosts that simulated LAN play over telephone modems, Quake supported free online gameplay with up to 64 players. It was remarkable. We had never seen anything like it. For the first year Quake was out, I played almost every waking moment. I would wake up at 4:30 or 5:00am to play a few matches before I had to get ready for work. I would rush home from work to play, and I wouldn’t quit until it was far too late.
Quake also introduced a phenomenal community of fan created content. Mods, new game modes, new maps, and entirely new games sprung from the Quake community.
In addition to all this, Quake was faassssst, and fun as hell. No other game in modern memory has influenced so much of what followed, on so many levels. Go find a server and play some classic Quake, it’s still a blast. Thank you id.
9. Super Mario 64
I had to think about it for a while before I relented and included this game, but I have to. What Super Mario Bros. did in establishing the rules for a platform game, Super Mario 64 rewrote for a 3D world.
Prior to Super Mario 64 there was some question as to whether or not a platform game could make the transition to 3D. The early attempts weren’t terribly promising. Super Mario 64 and the original Tomb Raider share a lot, they came out close together, both made platform elements in 3D work, and both made skeptics believe that 3D games could capture the magic that our 2D favorites had. Super Mario 64 completely rewrote the book on platform games.
Super Mario 64 was first out the gate though, and Nintendo squeezed every trick out of the Nintendo 64 to make it look the best it could on the system. Super Mario 64 had something that Tomb Raider didn’t have: a real sense of wonder. Some of the environments were truly awesome, and the things the game allowed you to do in those environments were new and exciting. It’s not my favorite Mario game, but I can’t discount the important role Super Mario 64 plays in gaming history.
10. Silent Hill series
Alone in the Dark came first. Resident Evil was scarier, and had really scary play mechanics to boot. System Shock 2 was smarter and had more memorable moments, even if it wasn’t truly a horror game. Silent Hill followed on the heels of Resident Evil, but where Resident Evil delivered an action movie take on the horror genre, Silent Hill plunged you into a hellish, unsettling and frightful abyss of darkness. The series had a slight misstep with Silent Hill 3, but the first, second and fourth in the series are solid gold for horror fans.
I won’t give up any spoilers for those of you who may have passed these by in the past. I will only say that the Silent Hill team has a dead-on sense of what makes the small hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Even on the graphically less than impressive Playstation, the first game established a dark, murky look that has held up through the series.
Great puzzles, great scares, more turn-on-all-the-lights-in-the-whole-friggin-house moments than you’d ever expect in a videogame, and hip, dark music unite the series. Go play these games if you haven’t already. There is no series that makes me anticipate a release date like a 10 year old waiting for Christmas morning like Silent Hill does. Evolution and perfection of horror gaming.
This was a lot of fun, reliving great memories of past games. Throughout my life my interests have changed and I’ve changed, but my love of a good game has been constant. I have a lot of fun watching my 14 year old son take enjoyment from gaming, and even more fun turning him on to some of the greats from the past. My two year old son wants nothing more than to jump in with Dad and big brother, and I look forward to being able to share this with him too.
Incidentally, my favorite game of all time didn’t make this list. Truth is, I could do a 100 Videogames That Changed Everything article and still leave out important games. The point is to remember some of the greats, and hopefully you and I have shared some of the same moments and the emotions those moments evoked.
My favorite game?
My I’m-stuck-on-a-desert-island-and-only-get-one-game-to-play-for-the-rest-of-my-life-game?
X-Com: UFO Defense, but that’s another article 
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Comment by Bush Mackel on 2 November 2007:
@Kmuzu - Nice list but I don’t think that those games “changed everything”. Even though I enjoyed Karatika, Populus and Spy Hunter amongst others, I just don’t think they were landmark games.
@Mv3gp - *thumbs up*