The most influential game

[Lee]

Whilst the greatest game of all time list is going on, IC25 sent me an idea for a thread based on an article he read. The question it asks is what is the most influential game of all time, not the greatest, but the one that has influenced so much more. So I got thinking, what is the most influential game, is it Tetris? WOW? Doom? Pong? Pac Man? Super MArio Bros? The Legend of Zelda?

In my opinion it is neither of these...Come with me, if you will, on a journey through time and space to the year 1981, Mario had never met peach, nor had he ever been to the Mushroom Kingdom. His brother's AWOL, and his pet Monkey has kidnapped his girlfriend. The game is Donkey Kong...

This brought Nintendo to North America
This brought us Mario
This game helped the Video Games crash in the mid 80s
This game showed Nintendo what Miyamoto could do, he went on to make Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda...no Donkey Kong...none of these.

The influence is huge...

 

[drwow]

It depends on what genre you're talking about. I don't think there was one game that truly started the all the games today, there are so many different genres, I can try and name one from each catogory though.
If you're talking about platformers, then I would %100 agree that donkey kong is the most influential game.
But did this type of game really have that much of an influence over other games? You could say that Donkey Kong was a type of game that was inspirational to some of the creators.
But if you look at games like Halo and Call Of duty, They got there influence from Doom (I wasn't big on FPS during the snes times, so I can't name a ton of FPS during that time).
The influential game for simulation games was Sim City.

That's really all I can think of right now.

 

[NSL]

I'm not going to state the obvious games of OutRun, Mario, Pitfall, Madden, and such...

Instead...I'll list some recent games to be a big influence on the gmaing world:

Halo - THE game to own for the Xbox/Xbox 360. Changed first-person shooters and war games...

Need For Speed Underground - It wasn't an original idea, but it made racing games go outside the box, and do more than just driving fast and turning left

NBA Jam - Made sports games available to casual and non-fans. There's no need to do an 82 game season, when you can just go crazy in a 2-on-2 and score 200 pts. Made NFL Blitz possible

Last but not least:

Sims - Gaming for people that didn't play video games. Basically reality TV, on your computer screen, pre-YouTube. Made Second Life possible...