yep, some wise men compiled another list

Spacewar! (1962)
Star Raiders (1979)
Zork (1980)
Tetris (1985)
SimCity (1989)
Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)
Civilization I/II (1991)
Doom (1993)
Warcraft series (beginning 1994)
Sensible World of Soccer (1994)



huh? where are Pong and Pacman?


so what about you? agree? disagree? what games do you think are missing? or what are your personal Top 10?



* * * * * * * * * *

http://www.nytimes.com/20...ref=slogin

Is That Just Some Game? No, It’s a Cultural Artifact

When Henry Lowood, curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University, started preserving video games and video-game artifacts in 1998 he thought it was closer to professional oblivion than a bold new move into the future.

In just a few years, however, Mr. Lowood’s notion that video games were something with a history worth preserving and a culture worth studying has gone from absurd to worthy of consideration by the Library of Congress.

On Thursday at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Mr. Lowood announced a game canon, an idea that grew out of a proposal submitted to the Library of Congress in September 2006 by a consortium made up of Stanford, the University of Maryland and the University of Illinois.

“Creating this list is an assertion that digital games have a cultural significance and a historical significance,” Mr. Lowood said in an interview. And if that is acknowledged, he said, “maybe we should do something about preserving them.”

Mr. Lowood and the four members of his committee — the game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; Matteo Bittanti, an academic researcher; and Christopher Grant, a game journalist — announced their list of the 10 most important video games of all time: Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979), Zork (1980), Tetris (1985), SimCity (1989), Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990), Civilization I/II (1991), Doom (1993), Warcraft series (beginning 1994) and Sensible World of Soccer (1994).

Mr. Lowood’s canon was closely modeled on the work of the National Film Preservation Board, which every year compiles a list of films to be added to the National Film Registry, managed by the Library of Congress since 1989 (a consequence of the National Film Preservation Act, passed in 1988). The first list of films included “Casablanca,” “Citizen Kane,” “The Searchers” and “Nanook of the North.”

Almost all of the games on the Lowood list represent the beginning of a genre still vital in the video game industry. Spacewar!, for example, created by a group of early computer programmers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the first multiplayer, competitive game, and the first action game too. The first three Warcraft games represent the introduction of real-time strategy overlaid on a narrative; and Zork introduced the world to the adventure game.

SimCity helped establish the genre known as god games, in which players take on an omnipotent role, controlling the game world rather than simply participating in it. It also broke convention by refusing to establish criteria for winning, leaving the decision of what constituted success up to the player.

SimCity was selected by Mr. Bittanti, a researcher at the Humanities Lab at Stanford who works with Mr. Lowood. The game is “one of the most important art works of the 20th century,” Mr. Bittanti said, adding: “It completely reinvented the whole notion of games. And then it transcended the game world to become a cultural phenomenon.”

SimCity and its four follow-ups have sold 17 million copies, and the franchise it spawned, the Sims, has sold 85 million copies.

Mr. Grant, the editor of the popular Web site joystiq.com, who selected Super Mario Bros. 3, said the game was important for its nonlinear play, a mainstay of contemporary games, and new features like the ability to move both backward and forward.

Mr. Lowood said that preserving video games presented certain challenges. For example the hardware that games are played on changes so frequently that there are already thousands that can only be played through computer programs called emulators, which, while readily available on the Internet, technically violate copyright laws.

“We have to be really careful here because the technology is just going to make this harder for us,” Mr. Spector said. “The game canon is a way of saying, this is the stuff we have to protect first.”
[Edited 3/15/07 6:25am]

BombSquad said:

I know enough about games to know that this should say Wolfenstein instead.

ahh. sorry for that other double thread. the org crashed on me

retina said:

I disagree. Wolfenstein had no multiplayer network mode (I think...) and the revolution in Doom was not only the first person shooter, but taht folks suddenly carried their computers together in some attic meeting and started the first private LAN parties

BombSquad said:

Doom was a better game, but Wolfenstein was the real landmark. Nothing like it had ever been seen before, at least not to my knowledge. I remember being pretty damn impressed.

retina said:

oh I agree. I stayed up til the early morning hours with Wolfenstein/Spear of Destiny. still I was playing Wolfenstein all alone, but the Doom nights with freinds became a regular event!

Pong
Space Invaders
Pac Man
Defender
Wizard of Wor
Doom
Tekken
John Madden Football
Mortal Kombat
Grand Theft Auto III

Yes, Tekken should be on there. I played that constantly at one time.

grand theft auto III should really be on there.

and i've never even heard of this sensible soccer thing.

cborgman said:

and San Andreas.

LittleSmedley said:

But GTAIII set the standard. Without it, there would be no SA. Same with MK & Tekken.

uPtoWnNY said:

It did, but San Andreas set other standards, in scale, attention to detail, etc, that shook up the whole industry. IMO.

LittleSmedley said:

Any of the Grand theft Auto Series.

Its nice to come home after a stressful day, pull out a beer and go on a killing spree, Drive really fast cars, avoid the police and generally cause Chaos & Disorder.

Then I can turn it off after a couple of hours safe in the knowledge that I have not hurt anyone.

Ain't that cool

The Ten Most Important Video Games of All-time? Here they are, in order:















Wow, that was tougher than I thought.

For me....

Defender (arcade)
Gran Turismo
Madden
Tecmo Bowl
Xerious (arcade)
Tekken
Flight Simulator


nothing else really gets me riled up.....

Fifa '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99... revolutionary, every single one

Ok, maybe not.

I'd agree that GTA III should be in there. Actually the original GTA could go in there too since it did ultimately inspire the genre. Gran Turismo on the PS was graphically a big leap and also for the sheer number of cars offered.

I think Microprose F1 was pretty advanced at the time and set standards for racing simulations too.

Also, FF7 and FF8's cut scenes were incredible for the PS. They still look amazing.

...
[Edited 3/16/07 1:33am]

BombSquad said:

No Space Invaders?! No Manic Minor?! No Secret of Monkey Island?!

peterfalconer said:

Yes, I'm no real expert, but I thought one of those LucasArts adventures should definitely be in there.
[Edited 3/16/07 2:52am]

Myst also is worth a mention

BombSquad said:

I had that. But I didn't understand it AT ALL. Think I made it onto another island or something but that was it.

Where's Zelda? Pac-Man? Space Invaders?

This is not a real list. It was probably compiled by 12 year olds who never heard of the real games who are responsile for the games we have today.
[Edited 3/16/07 13:38pm]

zelda
ape escape
tomb raider
iko

BombSquad said:

Pong, Pacman, and Grand Theft Auto are definitely missing from that list.