Welcome to the announcement of the 25 most significant video games!

Thanks to all who submitted a list in the competition. The Amazon voucher is still up for grabs as the top prize, and I might dish out more prizes if I'm feeling generous. I'll keep the games list and the player scores updated in the OP, although I won't be updating the scores after each game. It's more tense that way.

The Games

1. Pong (Atari, 1972)
2. Space Invaders (Taito, 1978)
3. Pac-Man (Namco, 1980)
4. Manic Miner (Matthew Smith, 1983)
5. Elite (Acornsoft, 1984)
6. Super Mario Bros (Nintendo, 1985)
7. Tetris (Alexey Pajitnov, 1986)
8. The Secret of Monkey Island (LucasArts, 1990)
9. Street Fighter II (Capcom, 1991)
10. Doom (id Software, 1993)
11. Night Trap (Digital Pictures, 1992)
12. Tomb Raider (Eidos Interactive, 1996)
13. Super Mario 64 (Nintendo, 1996)
14. PaRappa The Rapper (NanaOn-Sha, 1997)
15. StarCraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 1998)
16. The Sims (Maxis, 2000)
17. Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar Games, 2001)
18. Shadow Of The Colossus (Team Ico, 2005)
19. World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004)
20. Wii Sports (Nintendo, 2006)
21. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward, 2007)
22. Braid (Number None, 2008)
23. Angry Birds (Rovio Entertainment, 2009)
24. Minecraft (Mojang, 2011)
25. The Last Of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013)


The Players

Big Pete	14
Lionheart	12
X-zero	12
System	12
RT	10
PI	9
Sandylea	7

Pong
Atari, 1972



The yellow monstrosity with the two twiddly knobs you see above is Pong, created by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell and programmer Allan Alcorn.

Many believe Pong is the first video game. This is not true. It was predated, for example, by 1971's Computer Space, created by Atari founders Bushnell and Ted Dabney, although you can go back to the late 40s to see attempts to simulate interactive entertainment through digital means. However, what is unquestionable is that Pong is the first truly successful video game, raking in the quarters as the people lined up en masse to play a primitive simulation of ping pong on a black screen.

Advancements in technology allowed portable versions of Pong to be created and plugged in to a TV set, with additional features, allowing the public to enjoy this competitive digital experience in the comfort of their own homes.



Why is the game significant?

Pong was the first successful video game, triggering rival products from tech companies, and establishing the video game industry. The concept of an active form of entertainment that can be experienced on the TV, in contrast to passively watching a show, was novel and appealing to many. It was an advancement in technology that the average person could appreciate. The game's simplicity was an important contributor to its mass appeal. Anyone can see Pong and immediately understand the rules and know how to play. The simple competitive element drove repeat plays. It also had a semblance of strategy: the angle at which the paddle strikes the ball determines the direction it moves, allowing you to try and trick your opponent.

In the years following Pong, amusement arcades filled with coin-guzzling monoliths became a common sight, but in 1978, the success of one title catapulted gaming out of the dark, and further into the mainstream...

Space Invaders
Taito, 1978



Space Invaders was created by Japanese designer Tomohiro Nishikado. Not only did he program the game, he also developed the necessary hardware to run the game. It was inspired by, and built upon, Atari's Breakout (1976): a Pong-like game where you bounce the ball towards a collection of destructible blocks instead of another player's paddle.

Nishikado combined the "enemy destruction" element of Breakout with the shooting combat mechanics of his own previous game, 1975's Gunfight, and came up with a War of the Worlds concept, with the human player having to shoot down an army of invading aliens.

Those who have played Space Invaders know that the fewer aliens are on the screen, the faster they move. This was a consequence of the limited capabilities of the hardware: with fewer aliens to display on screen, their positions could be updated at a greater frequency. Upon discovering this, Nishikado kept it as an unintentional but highly effective difficulty adjustment mechanism.

Why is the game significant?

Space Invaders' significance is enormous.

Space Invaders was the first game with story and atmosphere. The plot is a bleak human versus aliens fight to the death. The enemy is invading: kill or be killed. The graphics, while primitive, clearly depicted different species of alien. But the most significant factor is the sound. The Star Wars-esque "pew" of the ship's cannon. The horrific explosion upon getting hit. The four note loop "Boop. Boop. Boop. Boop." sequence that generated a feeling of tension, increasing in tempo as the aliens sped up, augmenting the dread and panic that grips the player as he tries to wipe out the last high speed extraterrestrial before they touch down and destroy all humanity with their laser guns and tentacles and skin melting acid breath.

Besides the atmosphere and sound effects, Space Invaders introduced many gameplay concepts that have become ubiquitous: multiple lives, the ability to take cover, enemies that attacked the player, and high scores.

Building on Pong's success, it was the first video game to bring gaming into the mainstream. Space Invaders brought arcade machines to restaurants and cafes, thus becoming accessible to everyone. Televised tournaments took place in the UK, making it arguably the first ever e-sport. It made appearances in TV shows, such as the children's show Danger Mouse and, decades later, Futurama.

Space Invaders helped expand the video game industry from a novelty to a global industry. Furthermore, it inspired a handful of very important people who would go on to create highly significant games of their own.

Heading into the 1980s, pubs, cafes, and arcade bars rang to the sound of zipping lasers and white noise explosions. With this incessant focus on interstellar combat, games were in danger of becoming a chiefly male obsession. Games needed to become less abstract. What they needed was some kind of likeable character...

Pac-Man
Namco, 1980

Pac-Man was created by Toru Iwatani. He had a specific vision when designing the game and its characters. He wanted to remove the perception that video games were viewed as crude and male-oriented. Indeed, the explosion of video game popularity that followed the success of Space Invaders had a heavy emphasis on (very abstract) shooting and killing and violence. Iwatani wanted to create a colourful, non-violent, cheerful video game that appealed to women and children, tapping into an entirely new, and large, market. Amusingly, Iwatani made eating the main theme of his game, with the rationale that women love to eat sweet things. The end result is Pac-Man, a game where you control a gluttonous anthropomorphic circle while being chased by four ghosts in a labyrinth. 

While Pac-Man is ordinarily vulnerable to the ghosts, he can eat glowing fruit to become super-powered and turn the tables: devouring his pursuers. The idea was taken from the classic cartoon Popeye the Sailorman, in which Popeye gains superhuman strength after eating spinach.

The four ghosts were not mindless grunts like the aliens in Space Invaders, but fully-fledged characters of their own, with their own names, colours, and personalities.



Yes, that's right, I said personalities. Clyde is shy, alternating between chasing Pac-Man and running away. Blinky is a no-nonsense fast aggressive hunter. Pinky is smart, anticipating Pac-Man's movements and attempting to catch him out. Inky does not pursue Pacman unless other ghosts are near, making him appear harmless when Pac-Man is far away, but can assist in cornering Pac-Man in the right situation.

Pac-Trivia: the original Japanese title was Puck Man. It was changed to Pac-Man for international releases as a preventative measure against defacement of the arcade machines by changing the P to an F.

Why is the game significant?

While Pac-Man was initially only a modest success in Japan, the game instantly took off in North America, and Pac-Man soon became video gaming's first mascot. Consequently, he was the first big merchandising juggernaut in gaming. Pac-Man was a staple character in advertising; he had his own TV show, his own board game, and his own breakfast cereal.The dream to create a popular game with strong appeal to young girls and women was realised, which was a significant step forward for the industry, the first game to have a truly universal appeal.

Like Space Invaders before it, Pac-Man introduced many ideas to the world of video games. Most importantly, it was the first game with real characters, making the game a more wholesome and relatable experience compared to its predecessors. The reactionary behaviour of the ghosts is an early example of artificial intelligence in gaming: players felt like they were competing against actual fallible beings instead of moving pixels on a screen. It was also the first game to feature power-ups and cutscenes, concepts that would be repeated time and time again.

The USA and Japan had dominated gaming for most of the 70s but now the British were coming, and they weren't interested in some cute yellow bauble running around a maze gobbling dots. Britain saw an explosion of home computing in the 80s thanks to Clive Sinclair, who launched the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the first general purpose accessible computer that could play games. The ZX Spectrum would be a cultural symbol of British gaming in the 80s for reasons to be explained. One game personified this era above all others...

Manic Miner
Matthew Smith, 1983



In 1982, the ZX Spectrum home computer was released by Sinclair Research, founded by entrepeneur Clive Sinclair. Sinclair is one of those iconic figures in British history who doesn't get the recognition he deserves. He also invented the first compact pocket electronic calculator a decade earlier.

The ZX Spectrum was not the first of Sinclair's cheap, general purpose home computers, but it is the most important one. For comparison purposes, the American equivalent is the Commodore 64, released in the same year. From a video gaming perspective, the ZX Spectrum could play cartridge games, but also provided the hardware and software for users to program their own games using the BASIC programming language. The result was a boom in the video game market as shelves were filled with games developed by ordinary members of the public. The majority of commercial ZX Spectrum software was games, and the machine itself was immensely popular, not just among gamers. However, the computer was not tailor made for games: games would have to be controlled by a keyboard, and the colour and sound support was not so good. This forced creativity and resourcefulness from game developers, and dozens of quirky, vibrant games were released.

Which leads us to Manic Miner, starring Miner Willy and developed single-handedly in six weeks by a 17 year old, Matthew Smith. Manic Miner perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the early 80s home computer gaming scene. This can be seen from the moment the title screen appears, with its dazzlingly bright colour scheme and hideous music.

Manic Miner is a side-scrolling platformer. The player must navigate through different colourful worlds, leaping over bizarre alien creatures and other obstacles, collecting all the keys in order to make it to the exit. Each level has a different theme, a different set of enemies, different collectibles. The game also has an oddball sense of humour, which could only come from the mind of a 17 year old geeky British kid,probably under the influence of various drugs. One notable level is called Attack of the Mutant Telephones.



Why is the game significant?
I'll quote my source directly for this one:

Manic Miner makes it onto our list for being the quintessential Spectrum game, an idiosyncratic, peculiarly British homebrewed classic, still celebrated today.

The point they are getting at is that it is the embodiment of the proto-indie gaming culture that came out of the release of the ZX Spectrum. However, its significance to video gaming as a whole is not in the same order of magnitude as that of Pong, Space Invaders or Pac-Man.

Manic Miner was innovative in some respects. It was not the first platform game (Nintendo's Donkey Kong takes that prize), nor was it the first side-scrolling platform game (Alpha Denshi's Jump Bug got there first), but I can't find any examples of earlier games that seamlessly blended all these concepts together into one adventure, with different enemy types and collectibles. I'm not going to argue that it innovated anywhere near as much as the previous three games, or reached any serious level of popularity. It's not even a well-known game in the UK - I've never heard it in my entire life until I came across this list.

Manic Miner is one of several controversial entries from my source list. It's a interesting piece of history, but I don't really think it should be in any "Most Significant Games" list. To me it feels like the British tooting their own horn. So I'm going to go ahead and post the next game right now, since it occurred in the same time period and has a much more legitimate claim.

Elite
Acornsoft, 1984



While the ZX Spectrum and its games were making waves in the UK, the Commodore 64 had an even bigger impact in the USA. It was the most powerful computer of its time, especially with respect to video and audio generation, making it a huge success for both amateur game developers and the general populace. It naturally made its way across to the UK, creating a geek civil war between the power-hungry Commodore collective and the patrotic-but-meek ZX Spectrum enthusiasts. But even the Sinclair diehards could not deny that they had the inferior machine.

Another home computer came along in the mid-80s: The BBC Micro. That's the British Broadcasting Corporation you all know and love. You see, the BBC had a desire to promote coding, which is actually a pretty good idea. So they created the BBC Computer Literacy Project, and a company called Acorn Computer built a computer designed to introduce coding to kids. At the time, the BBC were seen as a bit posh, a bit upper class, not for the common folk. They had a bit of an image issue.

So their well-intentioned crusade did not take off as expected. In fact, the BBC Micro may have been relegated to a footnote in history were it not for the genius of two Cambridge university students David Braben and Ian Bell, who created the revolutionary and highly influential game Elite.

Elite is a space trading game. You are the commander of a space ship. You fly around the universe, exploring galaxies and stars and planets populated by all manner of creatures. You thought No Man's Sky, the open world universe game released in 2016, was an unbelievable technological accomplishment? Elite did it over three decades earlier.

The entire universe was not stored in the 32 kilobytes provided by the hardware: the developers used a technique called procedural generation. Essentially, instead of the world being stored in the game's memory, the software generates the worlds from scratch when the game is loaded, based on a pseudorandom seed. This is also how your favourite roguelike dungeon crawler works.

Credits - the in-game currency - is the tool you use to upgrade your ship and advance in the game. Credits can be accumulated through various means. One route is honest hard work: asteroid mining. Other paths, such as piracy or slave trading, are questionable.

It all seems rather purposeless - exploration and growth for its own sake - but the game also came with a 64-page book called The Dark Wheel, a combination of a novella and a game manual. The short story offers a backdrop to the Elite universe, and gives the player a motivation for playing the game, if futuristic space exploration isn't fun enough on its own.



Why is the game significant?
Elite is revolutionary and immensely influential.

Simulating the entire universe in a measly 32 kilobytes is an impossible-sounding feat of technological genius, especially considering the whole game was written in machine code, which is significantly more difficult than modern programming languages. The initial loading time of several minutes would be unbearable for any 21st century gamer, but considering the enormity of the game, it's perfectly understandable.

It wasn't the first game to use wireframe 3D graphics (notable predecessors being 1973's Maze War and 1980's Battlezone) or procedural generation (1980's Rogue), but it introduced a generation of gamers to these concepts, serving as as a huge inspiration for the future, felt to this very day.

Elite wasn't just a technological marvel but a conceptual marvel. It is the first ever open world sandbox game: there are no rules, no levels, no specific way to play the game. The player is free to do whatever they want. This feature, perhaps unintentionally, introduced a sense of politics and ethics into video gaming never seen before. Would a player be willing to blow up enemy spaceships - perhaps populated by fellow humans - to get a quick buck? Is trading illegal narcotics justifiable? Does it depend on how much money you make? Elite asks the tough questions.

Many subgenres of video games owe a huge debt to Elite: MMORPGs, open world, space exploration, flight simulation, and persistent world games such as Second Life.

Britain had enjoyed a mini-renaissance of early gaming, but the rest of the world wasn't just sitting around and giving up. Thousands of miles away, somewhere terrifyingly foreign, a boffin was working on a game so nightmarishly addictive it would soon enslave all of mankind and destroy the world as we knew it. Maybe. I might be exaggerating just a little...

Super Mario Bros
Nintendo, 1985

The character we all know and love as Super Mario first appeared on our screens in 1981's Donkey Kong. Back then, Mario was known as Mr. Video. However, the gameplay of Donkey Kong forced Mr. Video to have to jump. After all, what else would you do if a barrel was rolling towards you? Thus Mr. Video became Jumpman. Donkey Kong was Nintendo's attempt to tap into the North American arcade game market, and it was a resounding success. The follow-up, 1983's Mario Bros, was where Jumpman became Mario, the Italian plumber, fighting monsters in the sewers of New York with his brother, Luigi. Thus the character Mario was born, although he had yet to adopt his iconic appearance. Mario Bros was only a modest success, both natively and overseas, but it was an important stepping stone for what was to come.

Another huge factor at play was the video game crash of 1983 that afflicted the USA. I'm not going to go into the details here, but the main consequence was that the dominance in the home console market shifted from the USA to Japan. The driving force was the release of the home console known as the Famicom (Family Computer) in Japan, and the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in the USA. 1985's Super Mario Bros was one of the launch titles for the NES in the USA, although a future 1988 edition saw it combined with Duck Hunt on a single cartridge. The game was designed by living legend Shigeru Miyamoto, who deserves a picture.



It is at this moment in time that Mario became video game's most famous and most enduring icon, wresting the crown from Pac-Man. His colourful design of red cap, blue overalls, and signature moustache came directly from the limitations of the hardware: they were the only colours available that allowed Mario to stand out in his environment. The cap was placed on his head to avoid having to animate hair, and he was adorned with a large nose and a moustache to give him distinctive facial features, circumventing the design of facial expressions.



The attention to detail and hyper-thorough design is a hallmark of Miyamoto and the Mario franchise as a whole, guaranteeing an exceptional standard of quality. Super Mario Bros and its sequels are the standard bearers for the 2D platforming genre, with many fans viewing the early titles as unrivalled. The standard-raising quality enabled the franchise to demonstrate tremendous success in almost every genre of gaming, from RPGs to sports games and everything in between.

Returning to Super Mario Bros, the character design attracted the player base, men and women of all ages, just like Pac-Man before it. It is the level design that retained its huge audience, making them want to pick up the controller and play over and over again. Like any great game, the rules are simple and easy to understand, yet it is fiendishly difficult to master. The first stage is one of the best examples of teaching through level design: players are forced to explore the mechanics of the game to progress. The first mushroom is almost impossible to miss, its movement upon release ensuring the player will run into it, and see its ability to make Mario bigger. The decision to start the game as small Mario, like everything else, was deliberately thought out: better to smart small and have that rush of gratification when becoming big than to be disappointed by shrinking.

Players will die hundreds of times, but the game is fair, so they will never blame it, but themselves. This drives motivation: the player knows they can do better and make progress. Finally, some words must be said about composer Koji Kando, creator of video gaming's first great soundtrack. Every tune is enjoyable, memorable, and conveys the intended tone.



Why is the game significant?
Super Mario Bros is one of the best-selling games in history. In fact, it was the all-time bestseller for over 20 years until it was surpassed by another game, one we shall see much later. It helped North America to recover from the 1983 gaming crash. It popularised the side-scrolling platformer game like no game before (not even Manic Miner). It created video game's most recognisable icon, Mario, and it kickstarted the Mario franchise which has dominated video gaming to this very day.

From a gameplay perspective, Super Mario Bros raised the bar in many ways. The impeccable level design. The mass appeal. The music. The controls. The story. Super Mario Bros, and the Mario franchise as a whole, represents the pure, fun essence of video gaming. No game before, and few games after, have captured the sense of excitement, enjoyment, and childhood wonder quite like Super Mario Bros. It's easy to argue Super Mario Bros' case for being the most significant game of all time.

If one hyper-addictive, endlessly replayable game with an infuriatingly catchy theme tune wasn't enough, another one was about to be unceremoniously dropped onto the world...

Tetris
Alexey Pajitnov, 1986

Tetris was developed by the Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov. Like many of the early video game pioneers, his ambition was to use computers to entertain and to elicit joy. However, the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War did not have the same level of technology available compared to the USA, the UK, or Japan. The best computer available to him at the time was the Electronika 60, a machine not at all equipped for gaming. Pricnipally, it had no capability for graphics. Pajitnov would not let any obstacle stand in his way, however, and the first version of Tetris was displayed on screen using square brackets and spaces, a primitive form of ASCII art.



Pajitnov worked for the Soviet Academy of Sciences at the time. Upon completing the game, he shared it with his colleagues. Tetris hooked them so much that he had to ban it to restore productivity. This occurred before the game had levels or a scoring system.

Distribution of Tetris was difficult, since under communist rule his creation belonged to the Soviet Union, and getting stuff out of that region was generally a hard task. To cut a long story short, Tetris was eventually distributed to foreign consoles such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and the FamiCom, with resounding success. But that was only the beginning. Nintendo, now juggernauts in the video game industry thanks mainly to Super Mario Bros, appeared on the scene.

In 1989, Nintendo acquired the rights to publish Tetris on their consoles after long legal battles to acquire the necessary rights. Nintendo's ingenious plan was to bundle Tetris with the release of their first handheld console, the Game Boy, which was theorised to have more mass appeal than their original launch title of Super Mario Land. They succeeded in this plan for the North American and European releases of the Game Boy. In Japan, Tetris was made available for the Game Boy two months after the console hit the shelves due to the ongoing legal battles preventing it from being released on launch. Game Boys were flying off the shelves thanks to Tetris, single-handedly putting handheld gaming on the map.



Creator Pajitnov famously did not make a penny from the game for many years, but he didn't mind, stating that he was satisfied to bring some extra happiness to the world. In 1996, after emigrating to the USA, he founded The Tetris Company, and he started to receive his well-deserved royalties.

Tetris combined many of the strengths of older games. Like Pong, it was a simple game with simple rules and simple controls that anyone could understand. Like Space Invaders, it had a scoring system and a gradual increase in difficulty to fuel motivation. Most importantly, like Pac-Man, it had mass appeal. What made Tetris really stand out is that its mass appeal went far beyond that of Pac-Man, or any other game in history. Everyone you know has played Tetris, and probably enjoyed the experience. Most people you know have been addicted to Tetris at some point. That's not even mentioning the many variants of Tetris released, featuring multiplayer battles and power-ups, and a World Championship of course.



Why is the game significant?

Tetris is widely considered to be the greatest puzzle game ever, if not the greatest game ever period. It is certainly the most addictive, productivity-killing game ever released. It was the first pure puzzle game to achieve a noteworthy level of success, capturing the hearts and minds of millions. The Game Boy version in particular is one of the best-selling games of all time, with over 35 million copies sold.

Tetris is the first casual game: the kind of game that people would carry around with them and play, while on their way to work. It wasn't limited to gamers: many people were caught by the Tetris bug, including people who had never played a video game before. Interestingly, it was also the first video game to be the subject of academic research conducted to establish its cognitive effects.

Even as the Russians were chalking up their first big hit with Tetris, on our side of the Iron Curtain, Hollywood was starting to get seriously involved in the gaming industry...

The Secret of Monkey Island
LucasArts, 1990

In the 1980s, Hollywood entered the video game market. Specifically, George Lucas, the man behind science fiction phenomenon Star Wars. Lucas' company, LucasArts, was the first connection between the movie industry and the video game industry. Throughout the decade the company dabbled in a variety of gaming genres. Most of these were technically impressive but failed to make an impact. In the late 80s Lucasarts started to heavily incorporate film influences into their games, leading to their landmark release, The Secret of Monkey Island

Monkey Island built on the foundation laid by games like Zork, a text-based adventure which is best thought of as an interactive novel.



Needless to say, games like Zork weren't flying off the shelves. However, it was a core part of a winning formula, and Monkey Island added the remaining ingredients, namely the addition of graphics and a fully fleshed out, movie-like story. It is a brilliantly written comic adventure overflowing with character, creativity, and charm, taking influences from a range of sources including The Simpsons and Monty Python.



The protagonist of The Secret of Monkey Island is Guybrush Threepwood, an aspiring pirate who really did not have the character or the ability for his dream job. Nevertheless, he stubbornly persisted on his quest, finding swashbuckling adventure, romance, and encounters with ghost pirates along the way.

Players guided Guybrush through the world via a point-and-click interface. Click to move here. Select from several verbal commands to interact with your environment. The main challenge in progressing was solving puzzles, which had to be figured out by examining your surroundings. Combat is unconventional. Guybrush would win sword fights by out-taunting his opponent. The player would have to select from a number of tantalising putdowns to progress, and win, each battle.



The combination of an original art style, seamless animation, wicked humour, compelling characters and ease of gameplay (relative to the adventure games that preceded it) made it a big hit, particularly in Europe.

Why is the game significant?

The Secret of Monkey Island was the first great point-and-click adventure game, a new brand of video game which put the emphasis on story, characters and visualisation more than any game that came before. Specifically, it brought cinematic storytelling techniques to video gaming, opening up a whole new area for game companies to explore. Its legacy can be felt strongly in the 21st century, with critically-acclaimed games such as the Professor Layton series, L.A. Noire, and The Last of Us all owing a debt to the foundation laid by Monkey Island.

Although it never breached the mainstream, existing as a cult classic, it nevertheless places highly on many greatest video games lists. Critics cite its humour and dialogue as first-rate, the memorable script eternally fixed in the minds of its fans.

These wholesome, light-hearted games are all well and good, but when would games learn to focus on the really important things, like teaching children how to maim and kill? The answer, is soon...

Street Fighter II
Capcom, 1991

Home consoles have been the focus of the recent entries in the list, but the release of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Nintendo Enterainment System had not wiped out the arcade industry. People were still paying visits to arcade bars and dropping in their quarters. Japanese video game company Capcom, founded in 1979, had some success in this market, developing primarily arcade games throughout the 1980s. Among these was 1987's Street Fighter.

The first Street Fighter game is often forgotten given the world-changing nature of the sequel, but it was itself a huge innovator in the fighting game genre. It introduced the concepts of special moves, blocking, and the ability for a second player to interrupt a computer match in order to issue a challenge of their own. While the game was a huge step forward, it had some severe limitations which hindered its drawing power. Most significantly, you could only play as Ryu and Ken, who were essentially the same character with different appearances. Another problem was that the pressure-sensitive controls - hit the button harder to throw a more powerful strike - caused over-enthusiastic players to damage the hardware. An alternate version was released with six attack buttons (three punch buttons and three kick buttons). Although this now standard model of buttons was first deployed for Street Fighter, it wouldn't become well-known until the release of the second game in the series.



Street Fighter II was released on arcade machines in 1991, and for the Super Famicom (Japan)/Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Europe and America) in 1992. It instantly had a meteoric impact on the fighting game genre and video game industry as a whole. Not only did it popularise the aforementioned six-button model, it built on the foundation laid by the original game, introducing a whole slew of features that are beloved by gamers and copied by all future fighting games.

The main appeal of Street Fighter II was the competitive element, fuelled by the huge emphasis on player skill. This advanced on any kind of multiplayer gaming beforehand, which tended to rely on reflexes alone and sometimes luck. Each character has their own fighting style, introducing a deep sense of strategy. Special moves, which required complex combinations of buttons to be pressed, had to be memorised and executed perfectly on demand. Top Street Fighter players have to conceptualise strategies in their mind while reacting at lightning speeds to what is happening in front of them, simultaneously a physical and mental challenge. The difficulty in being a great Street Fighter player creates a real sense of accomplishment when you win, and can generate fan reactions akin to your favourite sports team pulling off an incredible feat of skill or teamwork, such as the following memorable bout.



Read the top comment of that video if you want an insight into why this moment is so amazing.

Why is the game significant?

Street Fighter II was the first fighting game to feature the following: multiple playable characters with distinct fighting styles and special moves, combos, and grabbing/throwing attacks. It also had state-of-the-art accuracy in detecting joystick movements and button presses, allowing skilled players to execute special moves and combos reliably and consistently. All of these mechanics were replicated in every fighting game series to follow, such as Mortal Kombat and Tekken, becoming ubiquitous.

Street Fighter II triggered an explosion in popularity: arcades had to draft in more machines to accommodate the overwhelming demand. It was the best-selling arcade game by far since the days of Pac-Man in the early 80s, revitalising the arcade video game industry. Its impact on home video games was equally important; its release being a major event that boosted sales of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It became a long-lasting system-seller for the platform.

It was also single-handedly responsible for popularising the concept of tournament-level competition in video games, by shifting the competitive element from high scores to direct combat. This paved the way for all types of competitive gaming, such as the beloved deathmatch multiplayer mode in shooting games. The Street Fighter games remain to this day among the most popular games contested in e-sports.

While Street Fighter is arguably a violent game, at least they're just kicking and punching each other. It's not like games are full of people running around shooting guns...

Doom
id Software, 1993

In 1992, the company id Software released Wolfenstein 3D. This would be the third game in the World War II nazi-hunting series, but the first of those to be a shooter. It is often referred to as the "grandfather of 3D shooters", establishing the fast-paced action and technical prowess that became a signature of the genre. It was the first truly popular first-person shooter (FPS). Wolfenstein 3D is a very significant game, but sometimes history can be cruel and it remains largely forgotten because of our featured game, which takes all the credit for establishing the genre. While Wolfenstein 3D put FPS games on the map, it was Doom that cemented the genre as a staple of video games. Fortunately, both games were made by the same people, so there's no real injustice here.

John Carmack, the lead programmer of id Software, created the game engine for Wolfenstein 3D, and developed an enhanced version for Doom, the first game in a new series of FPS games. Doom was a bolder, more innovative game than its already innovative predecessor. The level design was sophisticated, the game more fast-paced, and there were plenty of hidden secrets. Furthermore, Doom was a lot more advanced technologically than Wolfenstein 3D. Although both games look similar on the surface, Doom is faster-paced, had superior graphics, and is simply more exciting to play. The general brutality and ultra-violence also added to its appeal, albeit not without controversy.

The plot of Doom, if you can call it a plot, is that a marine is stranded on a military base in Mars. A base that has been infested by demons from hell due to secret science experiments going awfully wrong. Somehow, this marine is the last man standing, thus he is forced to conquer an entire demon army by himself. It's really a wafer-thin justification for the game to exist. Nobody cares about the story of Doom, do they?



Look at that glorious carnage.

One of Doom's greatest innovations was the ability to play multiplayer over a local area network (LAN). Doom was initially released on the DOS operating system, meaning it had to be played on a personal computer, which were becoming increasingly popular at the time. This turned out to be a very smart decision, as it significantly boosted the popularity of both PC gaming and multiplayer gaming, an influential double whammy. It also coined the term "Deathmatch", a term known to all gamers.

Why is the game significant?

Doom was packed with so many innovations it was almost embarrassing.

As mentioned, Doom's multiplayer functionality was a huge hit, motivating geeks to pick up their PCs, set them all up in one place, and have a bloody good time slaughtering one another. Almost every shoot-em-up game made after Doom included multiplayer functionality, and many modern FPSs have multiplayer as the only mode of play. All thanks to Doom.



Doom innovated in other aspects of PC gaming as well. Players were allowed to build their own levels and skins, giving birth to the modding community - a group of fans creating and sharing their own levels - another hallmark of modern PC gaming. It created a new model for fans to acquire games: shareware. Instead of gamers buying a physical box, they could download the first episode of the game for free. The second and third episodes cost money, but of course the vast majority of Doom players didn't hesitate to shell out their cash for more demon gore.

The state-of-the-art game engine that powered Doom was more sophisticated than anything seen before. 3D graphics flooded PC screens at an impressive frame rate, with monsters appearing at different heights, an appearance of three dimensions not previously witnessed. The stereo sound allowed players to detect which direction a noise is coming from, yet another technical novelty. Finally, it had an atmosphere that hadn't existed in video gaming up this point - Doom was a scary game. There was a certain feeling of dread when you approach a door, knowing that dozens of demons could be lurking behind, waiting to pounce on you. Not to mention the surprise panels that would catch you out, unleashing more bloodthirsty hordes, several times per level.

By 1993 technology had improved to the point where in-game characters could be represented by real people. The sight of real people mutilating one another proved to be a step too far for some...

Night Trap
Digital Pictures, 1992

Five teenage girls have disappeared after spending the night at the Old Lakeshore winery house of Mr and Mrs. Victor Martin.

Night Trap's opening line sets the scene. This unusual video game plays out like an interactive TV detective show. You are part of the Special Control Attack Team (S.C.A.T.). Your mission is to investigate the property in search of the missing girls. The game is played by looking at CCTV footage, setting traps for bad guys, and spying on the half-naked ladies themselves. All of this plays out in full motion video (FMV). FMV is the incorporation of pre-recorded video files into a video game which had seen a boost in resurgence in the early 1990s.

It was this FMV that made the game lifelike, much more realistic than the conventional video game graphics of the game. Combine that with the voyeuristic sensation of stalking females, and you get two things. The first is 🤯 's new favourite video game. The second is extreme controversy. It was this controversy that changed the video game industry forever.



Why is the game significant?

Night Trap was so disturbing that it, along with Mortal Kombat and Lethal Enforcers, triggered a United States congressional hearing in 1993 on the violence of video games. Public concern grew surrounding the game after claims were made that it included an extreme amount of violence and promoted sexual assault against women. As a result, Night Trap was pulled from the shelves of major video game retailers. The end result of the senate hearing was the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), a classification system on video games that is still used to this day.

The ESRB ratings system had five age-related categories, with additional descriptive terms to clarify the specific content that would be found in the game.





An important side effect of the new rating system is that video game producers now had free reign to produce ultra-violent games, provided that they labelled them in the right way. Hence, brutal games such as Carmageddon and Grand Theft Auto were released in this time period, targeted at an adult demographic: not suitable for children.

That is the legacy of Night Trap. While it's an awful game, it left a huge mark on the video games industry.

At this point in time, when women in video games weren't being kidnapped and spied on, they were often simplified, patronised and objectified. This portrayal of the female gender was about to be turned on its head...

Tomb Raider
Eidos Interactive, 1996

The mid 1990s saw the birth of the fifth generation of video game consoles. The frontrunner of these consoles was Sony's Playstation, which crucially had the ability to play video games from CD-ROMs. CDs are physically compact and capable of storing a lot more data than the clunky cartridges of old. Interestingly, it was originally Nintendo's idea to develop a CD-ROM addon for the SNES (this was before the Sega-CD was released in late 1991), and they approached Sony to develop this new technology. Sony and Nintendo signed a contract and started working together, but some time down the line they had a disagreement, leading to Nintendo cancelling the project.

After some years of legal battles, Sony went their own way and decided to make their own video game console with CD-ROM capability and a focus on 3D polygon graphics. Sony's problem was that they were not video game creators, so they had to reach out to third party developers to create some appealing launch titles. Fortunately, they were happy to get on board the Sony express in huge numbers, leading to the Playstation being a phenomenal success, outperforming its main rivals the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. The hardware attracted the third party developers, and the third party developers generated an immense variety and quantity in video games that could not be matched by Nintendo and Sega, who were developing all their games in-house.

Sony marketed the Playstation towards teenagers and young adults. It was the cool console, that offered cool games, instead of your bubbly safe kid-friendly Marios and Sonics. Crucially, they understood that there was something cool about putting a woman front and centre. Thus arguably the most iconic female character in video game history was born - Lara Croft.



Lara Croft is a strong, independent woman taking centre stage as the heroine in an action adventure game. This had never been seen before. You can point to Samus from the Metroid series, but she was only revealed to be a female after you completed the game, making her gender a well-kept secret. Iconic in retrospect, but not at the time.

Previously, only male characters were allowed to adopt such a cherished position. Lara Croft in all her mid-90s polygonal glory became not just a video game icon, but a cultural icon, gracing magazine covers, commercials, and even the big screen. While she was an inspiration to many young female gamers, other women did feel that Lara Croft was overly sexualised. This changed when Rhianna Pratchett was hired to write the reboot of Tomb Raider, released in 2013. The game portrayed Lara Croft as a deep, relatable character, with feelings and dreams and desires, just like any other normal human being. Not solely a woman who doesn't wear many clothes and shoots guns.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Back to the original Tomb Raider.



Why is the game significant?

As discussed in detail, Lara Croft is the main reason for the significance of Tomb Raider. The game's use of a hard-edged, female heroine has been hailed as revolutionary and boosted the awareness of women's portrayal in video games. The question arises - is she a positive symbol of female empowerment, or a woman being used as an object of male titillation? Perhaps the answer is both, but it is unquestionable that many young women became lifelong gamers because of Lara Croft, and her alone.

Tomb Raider made an impact in the video games industry outside of the protagonist. It was one of the first games to implement three-dimensional graphics with 360-degree freedom of camera control. Its heavy emphasis on exploring large open landscapes while solving puzzles to make progress served as a template for many 3D action-adventure games that would follow. While the game was released on Playstation, it was also playable on PCs, which helped to boost sales of 3D graphics hardware for home computers.

Sony had cemented their legacy as top players in the video game industry, but video game leaders Nintendo were not far behind. They would put their own huge stamp on 3D gaming...

Super Mario 64
Nintendo, 1996

About six months after the Playstation was released came Nintendo's fifth-generation console, the Nintendo 64. It was the last console to use cartridges until the Nintendo Switch was released in 2017. Nintendo 64 remained the second best-selling console of this era despite its main rivals, the Playstation and Sega, upgrading to CD-ROM consoles. A huge part of its success was thanks to its launch title, Super Mario 64.

Super Mario 64 is the first 3D platformer in the Mario series. Much like Super Mario Bros. set the standard for 2D platforming over a decade prior, Super Mario 64 created the template adopted by dozens of 3D platformers to follow. As always, great care was taken in every aspect of the design, from Mario's movement animations to the individual levels to the facial expressions of all characters and enemies. It adapted the skill-based running and jumping challenges of the 2D Mario platformers to the next dimension, while adding new elements such as puzzle solving and an emphasis on exploration.



Mario's abilities and powerups are far more diverse than those of previous Mario games. Mario can walk, run, crawl, puch, kick, swim, climb, and carry items. He has many different ways to jump, including a long jump, triple jump, wall jump, and backflip. Special caps are available to make Mario fly, walk underwater, withstand heavy wind, and walk through certain obstacles.



Why is the game significant?
Super Mario 64 was financially and critically an enormous success. It is the best-selling Nintendo 64 game, and it won numerous accolades and awards. It established an entirely new genre, the 3D platformer, and convincingly demonstrated how the platformer genre could become so much more with the addition of an extra dimension.

The design and gameplay elements were a key driver of its legacy. The 2D Mario games, good as they were, had a limitation of being solely run-and-jump games. Super Mario 64 introduced puzzle-solving, exploration, different worlds, and collectibles to the platforming genre. All of these became staples of the genre: you'd be hard-pressed to find a prominent 3D platformer that doesn't incoroporate some or all of these features.

Technologically, Super Mario 64 is a marvel. The graphics are stunning, the controls are intuitive and silky smooth, the controller was used to great effect to maximise the movement options of the player. Additionally, it was the first game to have a camera that could be controlled independently of the character and rotated with a full 360 degrees of motion thanks to the novel analog stick.

PaRappa The Rapper
NanaOn-Sha 1997

PaRappa The Rapper is a game about a musical dog with an orange beanie who learns the value of self belief by rapping with a kung fu onion and myriad of other equally bizarre creatures.



The gameplay is very simple - press the right button in time with the music. This dials back the complexity, a welcome change with all the intense shoot 'em ups, complex fighting games and intricate platformers flooding the market. The community welcomed the back-to-basics-mass-appeal game: it was a huge hit in Japan and a pretty big hit in the rest of the world.

Of course it wasn't its simplicity alone that made PaRappa The Rapper a hit. Its bizarre characters, memorable songs, humorous lyrics and psychedelic imagery made it stand out amongst the pack. Furthermore, it educated the kids on how to drive responsibly.



Why is the game significant?

PaRappa The Rapper's legacy lives on in the music rhythm video game genre. The Guitar Hero and Rock Band series of games are immensely popular, serving as the perfect casual party game. The concept was extended even further, with software being created to teach guitar using these rhythm-game methods. Granted, these games improved immensely on PaRappa The Rapper, which is a short-lived and primitive game, but PaRappa The Rapper is the pioneer of the genre, without which these games wouldn't have existed.

It is also significant for showing the world that offbeat characters and left-field visual styles can make an impact, inspiring game developers to flex their creative muscles. This influence can be seen most prominently in games such as the Paper Mario series, Okami, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Overcooked.

The worlds of TV and gaming rarely intersect. One of the key reasons is that TV executives believe no one wants to watch other people playing games. It's not like you're going to pack a stadium with two dweebs playing some geeky button-mashing thing. This perception was about to be turned on its head...

StarCraft
Blizzard Entertainment 1998

StarCraft is an immensely complex sci-fi war simulator, one of the most prominent games in the real-time strategy (RTS) genre. The player can choose from one of three races. The Protoss have the most powerful units and technology, but they are expensive and take time to manufacture. The Zergs have fast and cheap production, but weaker units. The Terrans sit in the middle, with versatile units. All three races are finely tuned so as to balance perfectly, while requiring vastly differently strategies to play effectively.

Street Fighter II and Doom laid the foundation for competitive multiplayer gaming, but it was still a niche activity until StarCraft was released. In South Korea, StarCraft became the first e-sport. What do I mean by that? Starcraft competition was treated like a sport instead of a hobby. In Korea, StarCraft matches are conducted in packed venues, with commentary and thousands of people cheering on. StarCraft games are broadcast on dedicated cable TV channels. Check out these pro-wrestling entrances for the finals of a 2010 StarCraft tournament.



Professional StarCraft players are nationally famous, media celebrities with legions of fans. They have huge salaries and contracts and sponsorships and all the lovely perks the best professional sports players get. Quite frankly, they deserve all the accolades they get because they have a tremendous amount of skill. Being a great player requires a combination of deep strategical thinking, a strong ability to adapt on the fly, and the superhuman ability to press keys quickly and consistently. This latter skill can be quantified using a measurement known as Actions Per Minute (APM).



Why is the game significant?

StarCraft was far from the first RTS game. It was predated by, most notably, Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, and Blizzard's own Warcraft series. However, StarCraft has been described as the standard bearer of real-time strategy games. StarCraft had a fully fleshed out single-player story with professional voice acting and memorable characters, novel to the genre.

The main reason for its reputation as the defining RTS game is its design. The three races are perfectly balanced despite not having any units in common. The concept was revolutionary in the genre: older RTS games started players on the same playing field with the same resources available to everyone. Its strategical concepts are so well-designed that the game has become the subject of academic courses and even US military training regimes on strategy theory, military strategy, and planning in a crisis situation.

StarCraft's cultural impact is the main reason for its significance. It single-handedly created e-sports. Its success was not limited to South Korea: Blizzard provided a free global matchmaking service called Battle.net, fuelling competition across the globe. Nowadays becoming a professional video game player is a good way to make a living, thanks to StarCraft, although there is still a strong stigma attached to any kind of non-casual gaming.

StarCraft was the best-selling PC game in 1998, and the best-selling release overall in the USA. Its popularity resulted in Guinness World Records awarding the game four world records, including "Best Selling PC Strategy Game," "Largest Income in Professional Gaming," and "Largest Audience for a Game Competition" when 120,000 fans turned out to watch the 2005 season final in Busan, South Korea.

We head into the new millenium, with technology consistently advancing. Another notable change in culture came with the birth of reality TV, starting with the infamous Big Brother. The phenomenon of watching regular human beings live their regular, boring lives was about to be captured in gaming as well...

The Sims
Maxis, 2000

Life simulation game The Sims was released in 2000. It was the brainchild of Maxim's Chief Designer Will Wright, whose previous creations include the SimCity series, SimAnt and SimEarth. Two years prior was the release of the Truman Show, where popular actor Jim Carrey plays a real man living in a world simulated for television. The TV show Big Brother, created in The Netherlands in 1997, was spreading around the world and injecting reality television into the global consciousness, where it remains, like an unshakeable pandemic. Big Brother is essentially the non-interactive version of The Sims.

Thus the release of The Sims was perfectly timed, tapping into the human desire to escape into another world, albeit a world full of normal human-like creatures living normal human-like lives. After all, who doesn't want to play god? The Sims is a life simulator. You create your own human beings, known as Sims, and guide them through their everyday lives. You build and furnish their home. You help them to sleep, to get dressed, to excrete, to go to work, to make love, to clean, to exercise, to leisure, and everything in between. You can even teach your Sims how to cook.



The Sims isn't just a means of easy, trouble-free escapism. It's actually a very difficult game if you want your Sims to succeed. You have to micromanage every aspect of your Sim's life and home, in order to keep their "Needs" (such as hunger, comfort, energy and fun) at a stable level. Believe it or not, this is very difficult to do, so The Sims can be quite a stressful experience. It took the American suburban dream and turned it into an endless point-and-click pain in the arse. In fact, that was the point: The Sims is a satire of consumerism culture.

Why is the game significant?

The Sims was an entirely new kind of video game. There was no objective, no end, no cutscenes, no plot. The pleasure came from the art of creating and helping your creations to thrive, or to die horribly, if you felt that way inclined. In this sense, The Sims has been likened to a virtual toy - such as a doll's house - as opposed to a fully-realised game. This genre is still thriving to this game. The Sims franchise has lived on, the latest instalment being 2013's The Sims 4. Animal Crossing is another immensely popular game with a similar playstyle.

Its pleasant aesthetic and open-ended gameplay made it highly successful in attracting non-gamers and females to the world of video games. It was the best-selling game in the USA in both 2000 and 2001, becoming the top-selling PC game in history in 2002.

The Sims is credited with opening up modding to a new demographic, making it easy enough to mod to allow for casual modders, in contrast to the more technical modding environment that games like Doom and Quake demanded. The Sims was designed in a way that it would be easy to add user-created content to the game: the intention was to put the player in the design role.

The Sims created a realistic world but then just made you conform in it to succeed. Luckily a game was about to come along that would let you indulge your darker side...

Grand Theft Auto III
Rockstar Games, 2001

The Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series of video games is one of the most famous and most controversial in the world. The first GTA game was released in 1997 for PC and Playstation, which was not world-changing but popular enough to spawn various spin-offs. GTA II, the next entry in the main series, was published in 1999. Both games featured an innovative top-down style of 2D graphics, and a penchant for unrestrained violence which became a trademark. The games were praised for their sound design and open world features, but as a whole they were rather primitive.



Despite receiving mixed reviews for their first two games, Rockstar Games surged forward and entered the world of 3D for the third game in the main series. Its initial release in late 2001 was delayed due to the September 11 terrorist attack: they were forced to edit the game to remove any insensitive or offensive content related to that fateful day. However, Grand Theft Auto III was not watered down, still retaining its unrelenting anarchic violence. The enhanced realism generated by the transition from 2D to 3D graphics transformed GTA from a cult video game series to a global phenomenon.



Similar to The Sims, GTA III places the player in a realistic world filled with realistic buildings and realistic humans, and allows you do whatever you like. The freedom was extremely cathartic: people gained the ability to do things in the virtual world that they could not possibly do in the real world. It turns out that having the ability to wreak havoc in a virtual American-style city had mass appeal. Take this charming British lady, for example, raging against the energy companies.



GTA III does have a story, progress is made by completing a series of missions culminating in a final showdown to complete the game. This adds an extra layer of freedom: gamers can follow the story as intended, ignore the story and do what they like, or they can interleave chaos-causing with the individual missions. GTA III's template was copied by open world games over and over in the years to come.

Why is the game significant?

Back in 1984, the unheralded classic Elite created the sandbox genre - where the player is dropped in a world and has the freedom to create their own story. However sandbox games remained firmly underground until GTA III hit the shelves, triggering an explosion in the genre. Suddenly open world sandbox games popped up all over the place. Some, such as Saints Row and Crackdown, were urban-carnage-themed copycats. Other companies took the concept to different worlds, such as the beloved Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. In this regard GTA III is revolutionary.

Despite the story not being its main selling point. Grand Theft Auto III received praise for its plot, characters and sound design. These elements all come together to deliver a presentation similar to a classic gangster movie. The designers were aware of their target audience and current trends, meticulously crafting their game to appeal to a modern fanbase. The radio station soundtrack in particular received high praise among fans and critics alike, and remains a staple of the series.

Grand Theft Auto is one of the few video game series to transcend the industry and influence pop culture - for example the films Drive and Nightcrawler may not have existed were it not for GTA. However the game is not always seen in a good light - governments around the world denounced the game and tried to legislate against it, citing that the games glorify violence and crime, and encourage its impressionable audience to act out their anarchic urges in the real world.

Grand Theft Auto is all about causing mayhem and not giving a fuck about the consequences. Increasingly, some games are prompting players to consider the repercussions of their actions, and they do it with surprising grace...

Shadow Of The Colossus
Team Ico, 2005

In Shadow of the Colossus you play as a protagonist known only as Wander. His mission is to resurrect a woman named Mono. The only way to do this is by slaying sixteen giant creatures, known as colossi, to appease a deity known as Dormin. Dormin warns him that there will be a great cost, but Wander is unwavering in his quest. Wander goes on his way, riding his horse and sole companion Agro to explore the vast, empty, yet beautiful landscape.



Every aspect of the game's design is intended to evoke emotion. The journey to each colossi involves a long horse ride through barren landscapes. These journeys are, crucially, silent. At first, the feeling is of awe, of excitement, of embarking on a grand quest. As you discover the colossi, interact with them through combat, and defeat them, the emotions change. Every time a colossus is slain, black tendrils barrage the protagonist, as if to punish him for his crime, and his image slowly becomes darker and more disturbing. He is being branded with the evil of his sins.



The long journeys no longer inspire a feeling of wonder, but of loneliness and despair. The colossi are amazing, gorgeous creatures, the only living beings besides Wander and Argo, and the player is willingly slaying them, one by one. It asks deep questions of the morality of your actions as a gamer.

Shadow of the Colossus presents a cinematic experience unlike any other seen in video games. Besides the vast, sprawling world, we have the colossi. They are landscape in themselves. Defeating them involves a combination of puzzle solving - to access their weak points - and technical skills to deal the killing blow. Most of these battles are truly breathtaking, matching or even exceeding analogous scenes in cinema.



Why is the game significant?

Shadow of the Colossus is significant because it helped forge a new way of looking at games, one in which the player could no longer be entirely certain they were the hero. It has a deep message, exploring how humans can be driven to perform acts of irreprehensible evil with a subtlety and delicacy that had not seen in gaming before. Because of this, the game is one of the first and most powerful examples of video games acting as art.

It wasn't just a game you could switch on, have a good time for a few hours, and then switch off. Through impeccable design and a minimalist approach, Shadow of the Colossus had the ability to evoke deep emotions in its players that stay with them long beyond the game's conclusion, in the same way that a great painting or a great movie can have a powerful emotional impact. In that sense, it was the first video game of its kind.

While Shadow of the Colossus didn't create or pioneer a new genre of gaming per sé, its innovative style lives on. The story of the lonely and melancholy quest has been mimicked in games such as Limbo, Journey, and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Its unique format consisting entirely of a series of epic boss fights was repeated in Titan Souls and heavily influenced the God of War series.

Games excel at making you stand in other people's shoes. Our next game made you stand in the shoes of the most fantastical, unusual, creatures...

World of Warcraft
Blizzard Entertainment, 2004

In the mid 2000s the internet was rapidly becoming a global phenomenon, allowing a degree of instant communication never seen before. All the lonely, misunderstood youths were able to express themselves in ways that were not possible face to face. Message boards, instant messaging services and social networks started popping up all over the place, giving birth to a completely new subculture of humanity. With it came trolls, illegal file sharing, and memes.

In 2005 one game came out that brought thousands of these internet denizens together into a glorious Dungeons and Dragons-esque fantasy role-playing experience. That game is World of Warcraft.



To play World of Warcraft you create a character, such as the fine gentleman above, and explore a fantasy world. In this world you join a faction, fight monsters, complete quests, find treasure, learn new skills, craft items, and eventually become the ultimate hero. World of Warcraft facilitates multiplayer interaction in various ways. Players can combat one another in certain environments or, more commonly, they can form a team and work together to take down gargantuan monsters.



World of Warcraft is one of those rare video games that permeates popular culture, although not necessarily for the right reasons. The boom of popularity shone a light on the geekiest corners of the internet. Combine that with its hyper-addictive nature and you enhance the stigma that video games are unhealthy and antisocial, causing youths to shut themselves indoors and neglect "normal" activities like going outside and playing sports, or whatever. The perception that all WoW players are basement-dwellers who had no life outside of Warcraft was captured in brutal fashion by South Park in the famous episode Make Love, Not Warcraft.



Despite its reputation, World of Warcraft isn't just for the nerdiest of the nerds. Casual players and even families flocked to buy a subscription and explore this virtual playground with their friends and loved ones, and that was no accident.

Why is the game significant? 

Although Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games had existed for many years, World of Warcraft quickly became the dominating title in the genre. It spawned dozens of imitation games, yet to this day it remains unsurpassed. World of Warcraft is the undisputed king of MMORPGs, staying ahead of its competition by continuously adding new content through expansion packs.

One large reason for its success is its accessibility. Many Role Playing Games (RPGs) bogged the players down in complexity and rewarded those who put in the hours. Blizzard surpassed its competitors by understanding that players shouldn't be placed at a disadvantage because they are not willing or able to invest as much time as the most dedicated players.

Blizzard incorporated features to specifically target and retain casual gamers. Examples include quick and painless recovery from death, and a quest-based growth system that minimised tedious grinding and made low-level characters equally as important as high-level ones. It worked like a charm, World of Warcraft being the first MMORPG to attract a huge playerbase outside of RPG veterans.

As mentioned, World of Warcraft made a huge mark in popular culture, becoming one of the few video games whose title was common knowledge to non-gamers. It has become synonymous with both the epic, fantasy world it presents, and the image of gamers as fat, acne-ridden social outcasts.

The first video games, like Pong, were simple to play. Over the years the complexity of controllers grew and grew, with modern controllers having more than a dozen buttons. One company understood that returning to a basic model would empower a whole new generation of gamers...

Wii Sports
Nintendo, 2006

Nintendo have been eternally leading the video game industry for two main reasons: innovation, and impeccable quality. In 2006 they released the Nintendo Wii, battling against the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. Unlike previous generations, Nintendo went in a different direction from their competition. While Sony and Microsoft continue to release more powerful but otherwise not very different versions of previous consoles, Nintendo decided on a completely new direction from their older Nintendo 64 and GameCube consoles.

Nintendo desired to reach people who had not played video games before, prioritising playability over cutting-edge technology. The main innovation was the controller. Instead of a multi-button monolith that is difficult for non-gamers to learn, they introduced the Wiimote: a motion-sensitive controller with only a handful of buttons. However, that wasn't enough. They needed a launch game that would make effective use of this controller to prove its viability.



Wii Sports was intended to offer a fun experience for both gamers and non-gamers. Sports were chosen as the theme because of the widespread familiarity with them. Nintendo bundled the game with the console because they did not expect players to purchase the Wii solely to play Wii Sports; Nintendo believed players would be more likely to play Wii Sports through this distribution method, and increase its popularity through word of mouth.

Players compete in five sports: tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing. The player moves the Wiimote in a similar manner to how the sports are played in real life, minimising the learning process. Motion-sensing actions, like pitching and hitting, were prioritized to make them as realistic as possible. Fans and critics praised the game's accessibility, realistic motion controls, and ease of play.



Why is the game significant?

Nintendo's visionary strategy was a huge success. Wii Sports is the bestselling single-platform game of all time, and the fourth bestselling video game overall. Its popularity changed the landscape of the video game industry, proving that having the best technology isn't all that matters. Consequently, video games became more marketable and more mainstream.

Wii Sports became a cultural phenomenon, featuring in commercials, news reports, and late night chat shows. The game has become a popular means for social gatherings and competitions among players of varying ages. It has been credited with attracting more casual, female, and elderly gamers, since there was no distinct advantage offered to younger or more experienced gamers. It is also one of the very few video games that has been cited as having a positive impact on physical fitness.

Motion-sensitive controls became a viable means of interaction with technology. Microsoft quickly leapt into Nintendo's newly-created market by releasing the Kinect, a motion-detecting camera that watched gamers wave their hands around like lunatics. The gimmick extended beyond video games, with motion-sensitive gizmos being added to all kinds of technology, such as televisions.

The gaming world taught people to perform a few gestures like some sort of monkey. But the gaming world hasn't finished invading our lives. As we'll see, the industry is after nothing less than your soul...

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Infinity Ward, 2007



Previous titles in the Call Of Duty series focused on World War II, but the fourth instalment was set in modern times, hence the title. It puts you in the shoes of a soldier, fighting with comrades against bad guys, in a hyper realistic simulation of modern combat. It features real guns licensed by real gun manufacturers, a kind of grim product placement.

Call of Duty 4 attracted some controversy because of its brutal, realistic depiction of violence in the modern world, further enhanced by its vile playerbase. The CoD4 community brings out some of the worst in humanity, with countless examples of irate humans yelling and cursing at their monitors with foam frothing from their mouths. Somehow the multiplayer experience has an ability to make people rage unlike any other activity.



Nevertheless, the game's tremendous craftmanship and success helped it to overcome these controversies, and it is lauded as one of the greatest games in the genre. The viability of war fiction is dependent on its accurate portrayal of horrifying events involved in the fight against evil, and Modern Warfare delivered the good with a level of intensity never before seen. This factor, coupled with a strong single-player story, attracted a large player base, which was retained by the cutting edge multiplayer gameplay.

Why is the game significant?

Modern Warfare received universal acclaim for its immersion and intensity, bringing a new level of war simulation that had not previously been experienced in the genre. Both the single-player campaign and multiplayer options were highly praised. The narrative is cinematic in scope and features some spine-chilling moments; while the deep multiplayer experience perfected the model that had been established by older games such as the Halo series.

While Call of Duty 4 did not bring anything new to the table, it perfected every aspect of the realistic FPS genre and set the standard for multiplayer FPS games going forward.

In the mid-late 2000s independent game developers were on the rise, driven by new applications that eased the game creation process. These were companies with small teams and small budgets who wanted to share their own creative vision with the world. It wasn't long before these games flooded the market...

Braid
Number None, 2008



In the mid-2000s, technology and tools for making games had advanced to the point where high quality games did not have to be published exclusively by huge companies with huge budgets. Around this time there was a boom in independent game development, with games being churned out by very small teams (sometimes a team of one) who wanted to share their creative vision with the world, usually funding the game out of their own pocket. The rise of game distribution platforms, such as Xbox Live Arcade and Steam, allowed indie creators to make their work accessible in ways that had never been seen before.

The game most credited with leading the charge of the independent gaming industry is Braid.



At first glance, Braid looks like a quirky but otherwise unremarkable platforming game. However, the game quickly introduces a remarkable mechanic whereby the player can rewind time indefinitely. Through this technique feats are achievable in this simple that are otherwise impossible to achieve through only running and jumping. In this way the 2D platforming formula perfected by Nintendo's Super Mario Bros series was completely reinvented.

Each new world adds another twist to the time manipulation. Hence, a game that is simple in appearance quickly becomes unfathomably complicated. Quite frankly, the level of genius that it takes to imagine these concepts and design a game around them is beyond my comprehension.

Braid was designed and developed by Jonathan Blow, who put $200,000 of his own money into the project. Some of this money went to David Hellman, who created the game's unique art design. Besides the innovative game mechanic, Blow put a lot of thought into the storytelling, exploring various philosophical concepts throughout the game's progression, as the trailer below indicates.



Why is the game significant?

Braid is considered the definitive title that launched wide interest in independently developed video games. Its success proved that non-mainstream video games were profitable, paving the way for many future indie games, and making independent game development a viable career path. Indeed, the scene exploded in the following decade, with some of the best and most successful games of the 21st century being produced by small teams competing directly against the established giants of the industry.

Braid also sparked a renewed interest in two-dimensional graphics, proving that video games could be profitable despite having graphics that were first seen in the early 80s and almost considered obsolete. Many games followed in Braid's footsteps, taking an established genre such as the 2D platformer and adding a gameplay mechanic that turned the genre on its head. Braid has also garnered academic interest and acclaim for its complexity, which marries pure mechanics and story into a philosophical platform. Much like Shadow of the Colossus, it is considered one of the most important examples of video games as art.

When video games were first created, everyone was in on the craze, whether it was arcade machines or handheld consoles. Although games like The Sims and Wii Sports were popular and received mainstream attention, an innocent-looking game released in 2009 took over the world in a manner that had not been seen since Tetris...

Angry Birds
Rovio Entertainment, 2009



Angry Birds, developed by Finnish company Rovio Entertainment, puts the player in control of a flock of multi-colored birds. An army of hungry green pigs have stolen their eggs. The mission is to eliminate all the pigs by firing angry birds in the form of catapult-like projectile at the pigs, or the structures in which the pigs are hiding. You have a limited set of angry birds to fire per level. As you progress through the game, you gain access to different coloured birds, each with their own special powers.



As far as gameplay was concerned, Angry Birds did not bring anything new to the table. Simple, physics-based puzzle games had been around for a while, implemented as flash-based browser games. The kind of game you could sneakily play in your internet browser during computer class at school. In fact the design was almost identical to one such browser game, Crush The Castle, from which the game took its inspiration.

Despite that, Angry Birds became one of the biggest global franchises in all video games. How?

Design of Angry Birds came initially from the simple image of colourful, angry birds with no visible wings or legs. This was the image, the Pac-Man-esque family-friendly mascot, of what was to become an empire. The decision to release it as a mobile game made it freely available to anyone who owned a smartphone, similar to Nintendo's decision to package Tetris with the Game Boy. It became a time-killing activity on the bus ride to work, in exactly the same way as Tetris was two decades prior.

While smartphones weren't quite as universal now as they were at the close of 2009, millions of people around the world owned them, and were therefore capable of picking up and playing Angry Birds. After its releae, word spread about the addictive, charming, funny game. It soon rose to the number 1 spot on the App Store, and never looked back. Rovio Entertainment made money. They released frequent upgrades and developed versions of the game for other devices and platforms to reach an even bigger audience.

Why is the game significant?

Angry Birds wasn't just an extremely successful video game, it became an extremely successful media franchise. Merchandise flew off the shelves, an animated series and two movies appeared on our screens, Angry Birds theme park rides popped up in various countries, and so on. In this regard it could be considered the most impactful video game of all time.



With its addictive, casual format, Angry Birds attracted millions of gamers of all demographics. It also pioneered the concept of games being developed for non-gaming platforms. Angry Birds could be played on Facebook (utilising social networking features), downloaded as part of the Chrome Browser web store, downloaded using a Smart TV, or played on e-reading devices. Therefore, Angry Birds can be played by almost anyone in the world.

Angry Birds wasn't the only indie game to build an empire. Another European company was about to come along, transplanting a popular children's toy to the video game world with enormous success...

Minecraft
Mojang, 2011



Minecraft, developed by Finnish studio Mojang, is an sandbox game which lets players shape their environment by placing or destroying 3D cube blocks. It's easy, it's creative, and it's social. Minecraft has several game modes. Survival mode pits the player against monsters. Players must construct a shelter, weapons, and armor to defend themselves, while also consuming enough food to stay alive. Adventure mode and spectator mode allow players to explore the spectacular and varied creations of the community.

Creative mode is the most popular mode: there are no limitations on movement or resource. In this way people can come together and create amazing virtual structures. The sophisticated modding facility allows users to express their creativity further by creating their own tools and even their own worlds.

Literally anything can be built in MineCraft. The video below shows replicas of fictional spaceships, real cities, fictional worlds such as Hogwarts and King's Landing. Not only that, but a working computer and the complete video game Pokemon Red have been replicated within MineCraft!



We all know how much everyone loves Lego. Imagine that, but on a limitless scale. Children are particularly enamored with Minecraft. They love to experiment, love to create, love to express themselves and so Minecraft is the perfect game for them. Schools have capitalised, using Minecraft as an effective and immersive teaching aid. Mojang created Minecraft: Education Edition specifically for this purpose. It's not a stretch to say that Minecraft is an excellent education tool and has significantly enhanced the formative years of thousands of children across the globe.

Why is the game significant?

Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 200 million copies sold across all platforms. Its immensely popularity has led to the creation of the Minecraft convention MINECON which took place annually from 2011.

Many publications have cited Minecraft as the most important game of the decade, or even the 21st century. Later video games have referenced Minecraft, and many Minecraft clones have been created, the most famous being Terraria.

Minecraft has many applications outside of being just a video game. As discussed, it is used as a teaching aid in schools: the game is used to support lessons in geography, science, computer programming, and even teaching good behaviour on the internet. Minecraft has also been used in Computer Aided Design to design buildings and parks. It has also been used as a tool for citizens to effectively describe what changes they would like to see in public spaces.

Throughout this countdown we have seen video games that capture the experience of watching a Hollywood movie, and video games as art. The final game in our list is the video game equivalent of a box set...

The Last Of Us
Naughty Dog, 2013



Naughty Dog were already well-versed in creating cinematic adventure video games as evidenced by their popular Uncharted series. Development on The Last Of Us started after the release of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The Last Of Us blends various genres: survival horror, action, and adventure, into a game that is considered as one of the greatest games ever made.

The story follows Joel and Ellie as they traverse a post-apocalyptic wasteland in search for a cure to an infection that has ravaged the human population, turning them into zombie-like cannibalistic mutants. The relationship between Joel and Ellie became the focus of the game's design, with all other elements developed around it. Hence there was a large emphasis on character development: making Joel and Ellie into deep, nuanced personalities who go through human trials and build an unbreakable bond with one another.

Veteran voice actors and composers were hired to make the presentation as realistic as possible. The end product is a game that more closely resembled an epic drama series than any game before.



Like any great TV series, it ends in dramatic and heartbreaking fashion, bringing tears to thousands of gamers.

Building on the legacy of games such as Shadow of the Colossus, The Last of Us made people think about video games in a different way. No longer are video games simply a mechanic to have fun and achieve a high score, but as a full-fledged emotional experience. With the capabilities of modern technology, video games are more realistic than ever, and The Last Of Us is one of the first truly effective cinematic games.



Why is the game significant?

The Last Of Us is significant because of its unprecedented level of storytelling, character development, and a positive, non-sexualised depiction of female and LGBT characters. In particular the relationship between Joel and Ellie received universal praise. The script was written with patience, skill, and authenticity. These characters had a level of depth never before seen in a video game.

The game also raised the bar of the use of technology in games, specifically survival horror. The implementation of sound, graphics, and combat was praised for its realism and its depiction of the brutality required to survive in such a world.