Blog:Grust's Top 10 Most Important Video Games

I like to talk either about the best games I ever played or the worst or horrible gaming moments. But one thing I never talked about are what games I think are the most important. So I compiled 10 games I view as having significant influence in the gaming world whether it saved a company, gave birth to a genre, or popularized a genre. Keep in mind while I say they're important there may be games that are still better for instance Super Mario Bros. 3 is way better than just Super Mario Bros, but Super Mario Bros. is more important than 3. So now onto the countdown.

10. Grand Theft Auto 3: This game gave birth to the sandbox genre allowing you to complete quests at your leisure while doing sidequests or goofing around (or mass murder). Without it we wouldn't have games like the sequels, Red Dead Redemption 2, or even Days Gone, a very underrated game.

9. Final Fantasy 7: This is the game that finally made JRPGs popular in the West. Before, very few RPGs could stand against other genres. Before FF7 platforming was considered the top genre for video games. This game even played a role in making me the RPG lover I am today though Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars helped greatly too. Projared believes this game made RPGs popular as it arrived when anime was booming in the west and now we play as 3D anime characters. Being a 90s kid myself, it arrived when I was becoming an anime lover myself so I have to agree. While not my all time favorite FF game, I hold this game with deep respect.

8. Minecraft: Minecraft was quite the accomplishment and is still well loved over 10 years later, still being updated. This gave birth to open world survival where you travel around gathering resources to survive. It also made the crafting system its biggest focus with it being necessary to progress in the game. Without it we might not have the crafting system as well done in later games like The Last of Us or again Days Gone. Even one of my favorite games, 7 Days to Die, might not have been made if Minecraft didn't do it first.

7. Halo: Combat Evolved: You know how First Person Shooters became massively over saturated at one point where jokes were made constantly over that fact? You can thank this game for doing FPS so very well. While technically not the first game to do it, this game popularized the use of both analog sticks for more precise aiming as you take down the Covenant and the Flood. Master Chief is pretty much the closest thing XBox has now to a mascot and he pretty much became an icon overnight. It also popularized online matches with XBox Live, though I myself am not a huge fan. While I personally love Doom 3 more, it wouldn't exist without Halo.

6. Super Mario 64: Again, this is one of my all time favorite games for setting a very high standard for 3D gaming. While Sunshine, Galaxy 1 and 2 and Odyssey are bigger and better, none would exist without this game. The game was intended to be even bigger than what it was but hardware limitations forced developers to create a mission system to make use of levels multiple times, introducing a mission system. This isn't the first time I've heard of hardware limitations adding to a game. Another example is A Link to the Past where the Dark World's image of the Light World is due to using up all the memory a SNES game could handle and the fog from Silent Hill was due to limitations but that added to the lore of that evil town. 90s developers were pretty creative huh?

5. The Legend of Zelda: This not only started what is my all time favorite franchise, but it set a high standard for action/adventure games in general. An open world, numerous secrets and finding secondary items for exploration or destroying enemies you can't beat without. This was also the most cryptic game of its time (still is to this day) which introduced a hotline and may have inspired walkthroughs and strategy guides. It was also fairly long for an NES game and became the first game to include battery back-up which evolved into memory cards and hardware back-ups. While I think Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time (my all time favorite game) may have made this game age poorly, I still hold this game with deep respect.

4. Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark: It's a twofer for this one because without both, we wouldn't have the survival horror genre which is my second favorite genre of games. Alone in the Dark was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and focused more on avoiding fights and managing inventory which along with Sweet Home (a horror RPG for Famicom) inspired Resident Evil which due to its release on the original Playstation helped make survival horror so well loved. It also popularized zombies which became a sub genre. Without them we wouldn't have franchises like Dead Space, Fatal Frame, Silent Hill, F.E.A.R., or Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.

3. Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest 1): Another twofer because these both set up the basics for JRPGs. Dragon Warrior set up attacks magic defense and exp and encouraged talking to NPCs (not the SJW meme), buying gear and items, all to save the princess from the Dragon Lord. Final Fantasy introduced animations for combat, the job system, customization, and possibly the first sidequest ever in a JRPGs, find a Rat Tail for Bahamut to upgrade your chosen jobs. SO GODDAMN many JRPGs owe their existence to these two games. However it should be noted that the Black Onyx was technically the first JRPG, but FF and DW were the first two to reach North America.

2. Super Mario Bros. This set up high standards for sidescrolling platforming when it came out with its fluent controls. While not the first Mario Game (he first appeared as Jumpman in the original Donkey Kong and had an arcade game called simply Mario Bros.), this is the game that introduced him as Super Mario. This game introduced longer games (at the time), secret warps, power-ups, and gaming's most iconic mascot. Without this game, not only would we not have tons of great platformers and sidescrollers, but gaming in the West would not exist as this helped kill The North American Video Game Crash of 1983. So what could be more important than this game?

Some honorable mentions
 * E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600): Often called the worst game of all time for it's role in the Crash, I consider it important because it should serve as a reminder of what happens when companies get too greedy as Atari not only gave Howard Scott Warshaw 5 and a half weeks to make the game when other games took 7 months to complete, they made more copies than there were Atari 2600s. And now look it's now an icon for what greed can do to a company, a lesson that sadly has not been learned except for some really good developers.


 * Depression Quest: This blog isn't about what's good or bad but what I consider important and even my most hated "game" of all time is still important. That is because this "game" pretty much exposed how truly corrupt, unethical, and untrustworthy game journalism has become. After this got "good reviews," a wordpress detailing the developer's unfaithfulness towards the author also exposed she slept with Nathan Grayson, a writer for Kotaku, pretty much destroying what little integrity game journalism had left.  Sadly things have not improved but have now gotten so bad that it's pointless to even make articles about Corruption in Game Journalism anymore.


 * Nintendo Entertainment System: Technically a console but I think it's the most important as it helped kill the Crash of 83 and gave us many I.P.s beloved even 35 years later. It's even an icon for retro gaming as well.


 * Game Boy: Again a console but this introduced interchangeable cartridges and allowed for bigger better games on the go, being basically an NES on the go. Without it, we might not have the DS, PSP, Vita, or the Switch.


 * 70s Games: As in the whole decade. This is where we have the classics, Pong, Space Invaders, the Atari 2600, and Breakout.  Some of which I actually still love and are still fun to play.


 * Dungeons and Dragons: Okay not a video game but this is why we have RPGs so it deserves a mention.


 * Board games: This is what we had before video games and some are still well liked to this day including Monopoly. I'm sure they played a role in helping us get video games.

Okay onto number 1:

So what could be more important than the game that saved gaming itself? How about the game that made it popular to begin with. So my number 1 most important game is....

1. Computer Space: Video games existed even before this but were exclusive to most college labs. However Nolan Bushnell fell in love with the game Space War! and tried to bring it to the mainstream. While he had rivals who made their own version called Galaxy Game, they put Galaxy Game near Tressider Union at Stanford university while Bushnell placed his Computer Space cabinet in a bar nearby. Though Galaxy Game came first, Bushnell's location choice gave Computer Space much more attention and helped to start the video game craze which is now much more profitable than movies or music. Because it helped bring video games to the spotlight, I consider Computer Space the most important video game of all time.

Any other game you think is important? Let me know in the comments.

