As a relatively young industry (at least compared to most), the gaming industry has undergone many major changes and trends throughout the years. Video games have definitely progressed a lot in the years they have existed. When one game does something successfully, many other game developers hope to imitate and build upon that. What are some of the most revolutionary games ever? Why? Are these games still good? When I think of revolutionary games, I think of Super Mario 64, first and foremost. It was the first 3d platformer that I feel was done really well. Many, many platformers since that time have borrowed the concept, the feel, and the overall composition of this game. That being said, Super Mario 64 hasn't aged that well. It's still a fun game, but it feels old to me.
Hrm...this is a problematic topic, at least for me. The game industry is propped up on nostalgia and a fundamental lack of imagination, and I wouldn't call any video game "revolutionary" just because it sets a trend...and, because it's a relatively young industry, it hasn't had many breakthroughs, so analysing it historically is difficult. The leap from 2D and 3D was pretty groundbreaking, but those initial 3D games were sorely limited because they are defined by the technology of their time. The drive to do something truly new and innovative is utterly non-existent, because games exist for one purpose: to make money. Companies don't care about making the best quality product, they care solely about making profits. If a game makes profits, everyone will want a piece of that success. To say video games have progressed a lot over the years is, in my opinion at least, a gross exaggeration; in fact, if these trends prove anything, it's that stagnation is rife in the industry, as companies desperately try to jump on one bandwagon after another to cater to consumer tastes, rather than set the trends themselves. It's the same thing over and over in a shiny new coat of paint. The improvements made to gameplay are mostly due to the hardware, rather than the software. ...and yes, I know people will throw Nintendo in my face when I saw the drive for innovation is dead, but let's REALLY look at Nintendo for a minute: the DS and Wii were truly revolutionary pieces of hardware, yes, because they did something that had never been seen before. But the 3DS was the DS attempting to capitalise on the 3D craze the movie business was experiencing at the time. The Wii U was a failure, and the Switch is basically what the Wii U would have been if Nintendo had gotten it right the first time. When you look at Nintendo's games as well, they suffer from severe repetition...or, in the case of Breath of the Wild, catering to current trends. There is no real change in gameplay across any of Nintendo's in-house games, and to call the originals or the more fondly remembered titles "revolutionary" on that basis doesn't really sit right with me, because at the time there was literally nothing else. Nintendo have definitely lost that innovative drive they had in the early-mid 2000s, in my opinion. Maybe that's a cynical perspective, but when a lot of ancient games hold up and even play better than modern titles - and get remade and remastered and ported to oblivion - it just goes to show, to me at least, how little the industry has progressed. And to call something "revolutionary" on the basis of nostalgia alone is a stretch. I think if you want to look at "revolutionary" in the video game industry, you need to look at the hardware, not the software. Unless you're looking on a solely individual perspective. Because I wouldn't say any video game is truly revolutionary.
Perhaps the most revolutionary game to me was Perfect Dark, particularly its multiplayer. Old farts like me remember when 007 Goldeneye on N64 felt ground-breaking, but Perfect Dark cranked that up even more. First, it ignited multiplayer FPS. Dev-made event-battle challenges, detailed records per player/profile, game formats like capture the flag and king of the hill and assassin, individual achievements and titles after every game, fine-tuning of features like weapon availability and AI personality. Before that was 007 with "choose one of ten non-customizable weapon lists, and you and your human friends just shoot each other." Perfect dark improved everything, and every change stuck, and I'm willing to say it single-handedly invented multiplayer FPS as we know it today. (by the way, I still have my Perfect Dark muscle memory and mental maps, and might very well be the best player of the game in the world right now) And if we're talking about hardware, how about this for pushing the N64's hardware to its limit. With the Expansion Pak in your N64, you could play a game of four local players and not two, not four, but eight AI players each with individual personalities. Sure, it would bring the game down to 10FPS having twelve players and calculating that many bullets, projectiles, hitboxes, and different AI personalities, but that just means they pushed the hardware hard. If any game was going to make the N64's hardware work hard and maybe melt, it was this game. It's too bad Rare couldn't keep partnering with Nintendo: just imagine what they would have done on the Gamecube's hardware!
Adventure for the Atari 2600. It was the first “adventure” game in the sense that it had no high scores. Without it, we wouldn’t have games like the Legend of Zelda. It was also the first game to include an Easter egg (just the developer’s name). Also have to give the original Dragon Quest some points for popularizing the RPG genre. It’s incredibly dated with it’s one save point, but the charm is still there.
Revolutionary is a word used so infrequently in the gaming industry. Masterpiece however is a different story and it isn't hard to see why when you look up the dictionary definitions of both.
