This is going to sound dumb. But the original Gameboy, and by extension Pokémon Red and Blue. They both completely changed he landscape.
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What Do You Consider to be the Most Significant Event in the History of Gaming
- Thread starter Deleted member 4034
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NES release is the most significant development in gaming in the West. Stores weren't even interested in carrying consoles. While Nintendo's methods at that time were draconian, they were also very necessary to ensure they were able to instill consumer confidence in the gaming industry. Nintendo had a huge uphill battle and navigated the mindfield of potential downfalls with ease.
Historically, it's hard to top Nintendo stabbing Sony in the back over the SNES CD. That one single event changed the course of the entire industry forever.
Here's some games that I feel like are influencing today's games the most.
Pong for mass producing and monetizing video games
Dungeons and Dragons for the birth of the RPG
Robotron for the birth of twin stick controls / twin stick shooter
Duck Hunt for the light gun shooter
Super Mario Bros. for its massive platforming innovation
Dragon Quest and the Ultima series for massive RPG innovation in video games
Space Invaders, Xevious, and the 19xx series for shmups and their innovations
Legend of Zelda for action adventure innovation
Metroid for further platforming innovation and for the Metroidvania
After Burner for flight / airplane games
Catacombs 3D, Doom, and Quake for defining, redefining, and re-redefining fast 3D graphics and for creating and defining the FPS genre
Tetris for puzzle games of the falling block variety
Populous and Sim City for God games
Super Mario Kart, Daytona USA, and Need for Speed for defining modern arcade and/or kart racers
Magic: the Gathering for the collectible card game
Street Fighter II for the modern fighting gameFinal Fantasy IV, VII, and X for modern JRPGs
Parappa the Rapper and Konami's Bemani games (Beatmania, Guitar Freaks, Dance Dance Revolution, etc.) for the rhythm game genre
Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Resident Evil 4 for defining controls in various 3D games like platformers, action-adventure, and 3rd person shooter.
Pokemon for the "catch 'em all" game and for having two variants of one game
Deus Ex and Half-Life for innovation in choices and story telling in video games
Everquest and World of Warcraft for MMORPGs
The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Morrowind for innovation in action RPGs and Western RPGs
Quake series for the arena shooter and for innovation in online gameplay
Goldeneye and Halo for console multiplayer FPS
Metal Gear Solid and Thief for the stealth genre
Touhou for bullet curtain shmups
Grand Theft Auto III for the 3D open world sandbox
Wii Sports for making a successful effort to broaden the video game market
Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead for hordes of zombies
Minecraft for the crafting/building/mining/survival game
My list isn't perfect... I keep remembering games every once in a while, lol. Also, I don't know where certain genres came from, like strategy games and especially real-time strategy games. And I can't think of any mobile games...
It doesn't include Pac-Man, a smash hit, because the maze / dot eating genre was very short lived. And it doesn't include Breath of the Wild, because even though people say it will innovate, it hasn't actually done so just yet.
Pong for mass producing and monetizing video games
Dungeons and Dragons for the birth of the RPG
Robotron for the birth of twin stick controls / twin stick shooter
Duck Hunt for the light gun shooter
Super Mario Bros. for its massive platforming innovation
Dragon Quest and the Ultima series for massive RPG innovation in video games
Space Invaders, Xevious, and the 19xx series for shmups and their innovations
Legend of Zelda for action adventure innovation
Metroid for further platforming innovation and for the Metroidvania
After Burner for flight / airplane games
Catacombs 3D, Doom, and Quake for defining, redefining, and re-redefining fast 3D graphics and for creating and defining the FPS genre
Tetris for puzzle games of the falling block variety
Populous and Sim City for God games
Super Mario Kart, Daytona USA, and Need for Speed for defining modern arcade and/or kart racers
Magic: the Gathering for the collectible card game
Street Fighter II for the modern fighting gameFinal Fantasy IV, VII, and X for modern JRPGs
Parappa the Rapper and Konami's Bemani games (Beatmania, Guitar Freaks, Dance Dance Revolution, etc.) for the rhythm game genre
Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Resident Evil 4 for defining controls in various 3D games like platformers, action-adventure, and 3rd person shooter.
Pokemon for the "catch 'em all" game and for having two variants of one game
Deus Ex and Half-Life for innovation in choices and story telling in video games
Everquest and World of Warcraft for MMORPGs
The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Morrowind for innovation in action RPGs and Western RPGs
Quake series for the arena shooter and for innovation in online gameplay
Goldeneye and Halo for console multiplayer FPS
Metal Gear Solid and Thief for the stealth genre
Touhou for bullet curtain shmups
Grand Theft Auto III for the 3D open world sandbox
Wii Sports for making a successful effort to broaden the video game market
Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead for hordes of zombies
Minecraft for the crafting/building/mining/survival game
My list isn't perfect... I keep remembering games every once in a while, lol. Also, I don't know where certain genres came from, like strategy games and especially real-time strategy games. And I can't think of any mobile games...
It doesn't include Pac-Man, a smash hit, because the maze / dot eating genre was very short lived. And it doesn't include Breath of the Wild, because even though people say it will innovate, it hasn't actually done so just yet.
Id say the creation of the changeable game cart was a pretty big deal.
So Props to Jerry Lawson RIP bro.
So Props to Jerry Lawson RIP bro.
Yes America was hugely influential with their Japanese games console.
Yes, in conjunction with the crash of '83. As someone who was actually alive and old enough to remember the crash, games were essentially gone. The whole thing, arcade and console, just sort of...went away, almost overnight, and it was widely agreed that the whole "video game" thing was a fad that had run its course. The NES brought the whole thing back from the dead in a way that nothing since quite compares to. The totality of the crash was such that even years after the NES' success and with the 16-bit era dawning, many still expected a second crash, as though that's just how games rolled. Read gaming mags from 1991-1992 and you'll see tons of letters from readers hand-wringingly concerned about how introducing new more powerful hardware was destined to doom the entire industry because 8-bits was plenty already. The impact of the NES cannot be overstated.
A lot of good ones have been said but I'm going with something different that I don't think has been said yet.
The introduction of the Gameboy. While yes many times the gaming landscape has been changed the Gameboy completely changed the gaming medium and its lasting effects still are being felt to this day. All of a sudden you didn't need a TV in order to play games and you could take them with you on the go, it was insanely popular and while other companies have tried to get into the same field no one has been able to match Nintendo not then and not now. Not just that though, the Gameboy paved the way for so much in our current industry from the success of the DS and 3DS to the birth of the Switch and even mobile gaming itself which is one of the biggest parts of our industry today. It all started with a big square brick that came with Tetris and the rest was history. It sold nearly 120 million units and lasted longer then any other system has on the market. Even systems with boasted higher specs, color, and other features couldn't match the behemoth that was the Gameboy and its legacy will never die.
The introduction of the Gameboy. While yes many times the gaming landscape has been changed the Gameboy completely changed the gaming medium and its lasting effects still are being felt to this day. All of a sudden you didn't need a TV in order to play games and you could take them with you on the go, it was insanely popular and while other companies have tried to get into the same field no one has been able to match Nintendo not then and not now. Not just that though, the Gameboy paved the way for so much in our current industry from the success of the DS and 3DS to the birth of the Switch and even mobile gaming itself which is one of the biggest parts of our industry today. It all started with a big square brick that came with Tetris and the rest was history. It sold nearly 120 million units and lasted longer then any other system has on the market. Even systems with boasted higher specs, color, and other features couldn't match the behemoth that was the Gameboy and its legacy will never die.
Thats easy: the launch of the NES.
Think of it in historical terms but in a much smaller proportion: if the early arcades in the 70s is when men first starting to walk the earth, and the rise of Pacman and Space invaders was the Roman Empire the NES was the birth of Christ. The face of videogames changed radically from BN (before NES) to AN (after NES, duh) forever and we're still to this day living consequences of that fateful day in October 1985 when Nintendo decided to launch the console in NYC.
The only right answer is the NES.
Think of it in historical terms but in a much smaller proportion: if the early arcades in the 70s is when men first starting to walk the earth, and the rise of Pacman and Space invaders was the Roman Empire the NES was the birth of Christ. The face of videogames changed radically from BN (before NES) to AN (after NES, duh) forever and we're still to this day living consequences of that fateful day in October 1985 when Nintendo decided to launch the console in NYC.
The only right answer is the NES.
I came to post this. Lawson made a massive contribution to gaming.
1. The souring of the relationship between Nintendo and Sony
2. The NES
3. The Dreamcast and Sega's relationship with Microsoft
4. The OG Xbox
5. Social media
2. The NES
3. The Dreamcast and Sega's relationship with Microsoft
4. The OG Xbox
5. Social media
I want to say PlayStation's intro to the market. I know there is a good argument for NES but for me the PlayStation seemed to make more waves. NES saved the industry but PlayStation seemed to make bigger waves and brought gaming to be more than just something kids played with.
I like to try to imagine scenarios like this. I think you vastly underestimate the influence NES and NES games had on future game development.
Atari would have been a big dog. Without Nintendo helping inspire id to greatness, and without Doom among other NES-inspired games in the 80's and 90's, IBM PC as a gaming platform probably wouldn't have taken off as it did (why would it?).
Of course Sony wouldn't have entered the platform wars as wouldn't have Microsoft.
So you have late 90's with Atari, Sega, and maybe NEC and a handful of others -- none of them advancing as fast in game development. Games would have more resembled arcade games into 1988 and probably beyond. You'd have a strong Amiga "PC" gaming presence into the mid 90's. It's hard to even imagine what else it would look like.
Some tech would already exist, no strong reason why Sega's Model 2 & 3 as well as Namco's System 11 and 22 shouldn't exist when that tech was already created by the US military & contractors before NES was even invented.
But it's absolutely certain that we would not have moved wholly into polygonal / 3D games in 1995 without a jilted Sony entering the market nor a tech-pushing id software. Yes of course 3D games existed long before it, but without the actors making it widespread...
There would have been more simulation type, low framerate 3D titles into the late 90's.
Everyone here is saying the NES, but I say it's the exodus of the gaming market from consoles to computers in the wake of the crash in 83 as well as the prominence of gaming on computers in Europe at around the same time.
Without that, you have no demoscene and fewer ambitious devs on computers. No Epic Games, no ID Software, probably no Bethesda, and no Western devs in Square-Enix. Microsoft may not have taken the steps towards DirectX and therefore not the Xbox. Real-time 3D graphics would probably be held further back with only OpenGL and proprietary APIs on console. Ready to go engines like ID Tech, CryEngine, and Unreal Engine probably wouldn't be a thing making development even harder and more costly (think about the difficulty of the HD transition for Japanese devs).
Without that, you have no demoscene and fewer ambitious devs on computers. No Epic Games, no ID Software, probably no Bethesda, and no Western devs in Square-Enix. Microsoft may not have taken the steps towards DirectX and therefore not the Xbox. Real-time 3D graphics would probably be held further back with only OpenGL and proprietary APIs on console. Ready to go engines like ID Tech, CryEngine, and Unreal Engine probably wouldn't be a thing making development even harder and more costly (think about the difficulty of the HD transition for Japanese devs).
The NES was hugely significant in helping shape the future course of console gaming but anyone saying video games were dead before it in any major region is absolutely wrong and is contributing to a very biased and twisted version of history. There were tons of quality computer and arcade games being made every year in the '80s as anyone who properly followed the industry back then can attest to.
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Nintendo and Sony CD-rom console deal not happening.
I think it created one hell of a butterfly effect.
2d gaming never getting to reach their true potential for that era.
3d games killing sega saturn and sega in general.
Early death of arcades.
Sony existing as a console encouraging Microsoft to enter the console business.
probably loads more to boot.
I think it created one hell of a butterfly effect.
2d gaming never getting to reach their true potential for that era.
3d games killing sega saturn and sega in general.
Early death of arcades.
Sony existing as a console encouraging Microsoft to enter the console business.
probably loads more to boot.
Nintendo backing out of their plans with Sony for sure.
It directly led to PlayStation and in turn PlayStation led to Xbox.
Ed Fries in an IGN Unlocked interview told a story about how in a meeting Bill Gates gave the OK for what would become Xbox so that they could compete with Sony in the living room.
If Nintendo hadn't gone with Phillips, and publicly embarrassed Sony, then the current landscape would be very different (Maybe SEGA would still be in the console space?).
It directly led to PlayStation and in turn PlayStation led to Xbox.
Ed Fries in an IGN Unlocked interview told a story about how in a meeting Bill Gates gave the OK for what would become Xbox so that they could compete with Sony in the living room.
If Nintendo hadn't gone with Phillips, and publicly embarrassed Sony, then the current landscape would be very different (Maybe SEGA would still be in the console space?).
Online gaming and services.
Many people who game today, wouldn't be gaming if not for online. Coming home after a day's work and chilling with a game of FIFA would't be as feasible if we still only had couch multiplayer. Online gave us MMORPGs, expanded the audience of shooters exponentially, allowed for DLC and patches, and made the indie game scene possible. And let's not forget mobile gaming.
Video games would still exist without the NES. Hell, Europe barely cared for consoles until the PlayStation, yet video games still were a thing there while the market had crashed in the US. America would eventually find a way for games to return without the NES. But online is what really gave video games a new social dimension.
Many people who game today, wouldn't be gaming if not for online. Coming home after a day's work and chilling with a game of FIFA would't be as feasible if we still only had couch multiplayer. Online gave us MMORPGs, expanded the audience of shooters exponentially, allowed for DLC and patches, and made the indie game scene possible. And let's not forget mobile gaming.
Video games would still exist without the NES. Hell, Europe barely cared for consoles until the PlayStation, yet video games still were a thing there while the market had crashed in the US. America would eventually find a way for games to return without the NES. But online is what really gave video games a new social dimension.
This is basically my list. The only things I'd add to this:
- Online multiplayer (even its start in the era of Netrek/BBS door games)
- The mod scene that came out of Quake, which saw amateurs make significant contributions, many of which later entered the industry
- The rise of handheld gaming
It's the PS1. Well more like the events that led up to the release of the system. Sony has utterly defined the modern gaming landscape.
Runner up is Xbox Live and Doom/ glQuake.
Runner up is Xbox Live and Doom/ glQuake.
Rather than give Sony most of the credit, I think this mostly had to do with kids born in the 80's simply becoming teenagers. Kids born in the 80's were the most significant gaming generation. They grew up with games and games grew up with them. Third parties would have made those games regardless of whether Sony, Nintendo, or Sega was the market leader.
Another way of putting it, is Sony didn't bring teenagers into gaming. Those kids were already hooked from the NES, SNES, and Genesis, and Sony was just market leader when they became teenagers.
Made handheld gaming hugely popular, and ensured Nintendo's fortunes for decades, even when their home consoles did poorly.
The MOS Technology 6502
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502
An 8-bit microprocessor developed in 1975, at less than 1/6th of the cost of other processors it enabled hardware to be priced for the average consumer, and powered the Atari 2600, the Commodore 64, the Apple II, and the NES.
No disrespect to the Zilog Z80.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502
An 8-bit microprocessor developed in 1975, at less than 1/6th of the cost of other processors it enabled hardware to be priced for the average consumer, and powered the Atari 2600, the Commodore 64, the Apple II, and the NES.
No disrespect to the Zilog Z80.