The 50 most important games of all time

GamesRadar - Video games have come a long way since their inception. In the beginning, they often took the form of text-based adventures and ambiguous displays of pixels meant to represent characters or objects. Now? We've got visuals so stunningly realistic that it's sometimes hard to tell a virtual car from a real one, and bite-sized downloadables stylized as throwbacks to the old days. But we wouldn't be where we are today without the following 50 games--the most important ones of all time.

[imsocool1234]

Another of these types of posts.

[guitarded77]

Yeah, but I checked it out, and some real thought and work went into this list. Of the "these types of posts", this is a good one for discussion, and teaches some history to gaming.

[imsocool1234]

I understand that, but we get one of these every week though lol.

[Eyeco]

This list is a jumbled mess, some games are far too high on the list, some are far too low, some games shouldn't even be on the list regardless of the explanation like Angry Birds seriously Angry Birds

[legionsoup]

I think you're missing the point of the list. It says "most important" - not "best." Without the number 1 and 2 games on this list, for example, we wouldn't even have video games. And can you really argue Super Mario Brothers, Doom, and Zelda being up there?

[Eyeco]

I'm not missing anything, I agree for the most part every game included in this list, I just have gripe with the placement, because this is a top 50 most important games list, the higher the placement indicates how relevant each game was to gaming.

Do you honestly think a game like Angry Birds is more important of a game than the likes of MGS, Myst, Civillisation, Tetris, LOZ OoT. Or what about games not included in the list ,like Pac-Land, Pit Fall, Another World, System Shock 1-2.

Those games aren't on the list but Angry Birds, Wii-Sports, COD 4 are, and the arguments for them being on the list is purely commercial appeal.

When I think of an album, movie, book, or game being important, I think of something changing the respective medium for the better.
For example a game like COD hasn't really changed gaming for the better.

You could argue that COD's success is one of the biggest reason's as to why the industry is saturated with shooters, why where seeing an unusual amount of sequels yet so few new IP's, why where seeing half assed multiplayer slapped on to every game, why we've seeing campaign lengths drop from 10-15 hours to 4-6 hours, why the Survival Horror genre is pretty much dead, why the JRPG is almost dead, why this generation has dragged on for this long, why where still gaming on 2004-06 hardware in the year 2013, why there been a general lack of creativity in the industry this gen.

[Capt-FuzzyPants]

I feel like one day, years from now, KH will be up there. I feel like it has inspired a lot of people and a lot of the new developers that come into the business a couple of years from now will attribute their passion to KH.

[delboy]

If KH=Kingdom Hearts then hell NO

[superterabyte]

Am I the only person who doesn't understand why people play these weird anime games? here are my reasons:

.They are cartoons you are not children
.They often have ridiculous story's
.They use such outdated gameplay mechanics i.e. turn based
.They are sometimes perverted and some delve into what I consider pedophilia

I think maybe people 'like' anime because it's niche and they are closet hipsters.

[Greyslash]

>picture is Gears of War
welp, heres one article I'm not reading.

[xabmol]

Could have sworn that game was very important for the 360 and many games copied its mechanics though, so, like, yeah, and stuff.

And I am scoffing at #11. *Scoff* Even though it does belong on this list. Personally would have put it below OoT and MGS though...

[coolbeans]

50. Zork
49. Gran Turismo
48. ET
47. FarmVille
46. Resident Evil
45. Runescape
44. King's Quest
43. DDR
42. Civilzation
41. Gears of War
40. Starsiege: Tribes
39. Command & Conquer
38. SimCity
37. Warcraft III
36. Shenmue
35. Myst
34. Metroid
33. League of Legends
32. Minecraft
31. Diablo
30. Halo 2
29. Tomb Raider (original)
28. FFVII
27. Call of Duty 4
26. Starcraft
25. Metal Gear Solid
24. Tetris
23. Virtua Racing
22. LoZ: Ocarina of Time
21. WoW
20. Angry Birds
19. Goldeneye 007
18. Mortal Kombat
17. Super Mario 64
16. Space Invaders
15. Quake
14. Donkey Kong
13. Street Fighter II
12. Pac-Man
11. Wii Sports
10. GTA III
9. Half-Life
8. Pokemon Red & Blue
7. Everquest
6. Legend of Zelda
5. The Sims
4. Doom
3. Super Mario Bros.
2. Pong
1. Spacewar!

Don't you hate it when sites use slides for these? >:(

[legionsoup]

I would have personally added Virtua Fighter. Until that came out, every fighting game was in 2D.

[xabmol]

Still the best fighting series out there too.

[iRocket]

There's a reason why you can't really make these kind of lists, and that is, that so many people think differently. Somebody thinks that Ocarina of Time is the best game ever, someone might think that the new Bioshock is THE game, etc...

[legionsoup]

It's "important" - not "best." Meaning, "if this game never came out, what would the history of video games be?"

These games shaped video games. They weren't all the best. But they were the ones that everyone else followed.

[OmniSlashPT]

No Uncharted 2? Or Bioshock? Mass Effect? Or even Journey? Ico or SotC? CS?

Just because some games are fairly recent doesnt mean they havent change the industry in some sort.

[Deku-Johnny]

It's a list of 50 most important games, although the games you listed are good (in some cases great) none of them are important.

[ScubbaSteve]

I could see uncharted 1 as an important game reviving what is essentially the modern day tomb-raider type game. The others didn't really move gaming into a new direction tho. Mass Effect maybe with the romances and different plot lines, but Bioware somewhat fell flat on their face with things like DA2 and to some ME3.

Bioshock/Sotc/Ico are certainly great games but I think they're just high quality games and not so much influential to the gaming community. I can't really think of any other games that took direct inspiration or mechanics right out of those games.

Journey is the same a great game, but there are other games that started the indie/small dev trend and as for its multiplayer, I'd consider Demon's Souls before Journey because the concept is similar.

[Deku-Johnny]

There are some that don't deserve a place such as Gears, I think it should've been either that or Halo not both. And some that have been missed such as Tennis for Two. But all in all it's a decent list.

[ScubbaSteve]

It's hard to pick influential shooters because the genre is so saturated and cannibalistic that it seems every game draws inspiration from similar games. You could do an entire write up on influential fps, I know in my mind that Wolfenstein 3D was about as influential as Doom to me growing up.

It's probably possible to go back and find the evolution like this game added looking up and down, this game allowed you to move one way and look another, this one let you use a scope, this one moved the camera to 3rd person, this one added grenades, this one added online multiplayer, ect ect.

I've always just though it was a big breakthrough with doom/wolf3d and from there it has been micro improvements with varying degrees of popularity.

[DOMination-]

I think the reason for picking gears is the cover mechanics. Every shooter nowadays uses one and Gears, although not the first to implement it was probably the first to do it really well and actually be a good game. It influenced almost all third person shooters this gen, so whilst i dont really like the series, i can say it was a very important game.

I would liked to have seen Deus Ex in there. I think it did some important things for its time but overall i see what the author was trying to achieve and its a pretty good list, imo.

[VforVideogames]

WHERE IS HALO CE?????

[Tontus]

God of War. Is. Missing.

When God of War released in 2005 it perfected the genre and story driven action games. It is arguably the first truly cinematic game and proved that stories in games could be told via gameplay as opposed to just cut-scenes. And love or hate them, almost everything has QTEs nowadays as popularized by GoW. The amount of games that have cloned/been inspired by GoW is also very high.