Most Influential games ever

[Ansger]

i dont know this really old games, but for my play-time the most important and gamebreaking games where:

diablo 1
starcraft
half - life
(the good old Ufo)^^

 

[GamerEX]

I think that a lot of you guys/gals out there have forgotten to mention Command And Conquer. Many of the RTS games that are out there have copied the basic gameplay style of C&C, not to mention some of the features of the games that followed(Red Alert, Red Alert 2, Tiberian Sun, Generals)

 

[Ansger]

Dune and Warcraft 1 was there before C&c 1

 

[cabey]

Manic Miner, started the age of platformers that in the end led to Super Mario and the other great platformers that we have now

 

[alphanumeric]

Squall and Rinoa were I guess the second couple of Squaresoft coming close behind Cloud & Aeris. I mean then came Zidane & Dagger and then Tidus & Yuna.

You're forgetting Rosa and Cecil (FFIV).

Granted, FFVII was AMAZING, and did a lot of cool things, all of those were in terms of presentation. Final Fantasy had established the story telling techniques in FFIV and VI.
Yes, FFVII altered people's opinions about what an RPG could look like, but RPG gamers will all agree, the games are more about story, characters, and (to a lesser extent) gameplay.

 

[Legzman]

Mario Bros from nintendo got ALOT of people hooked on video gaming, myself included!

Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake...early FPS brought that era into being, though I think the early Contra games had a little something to do with that...not FPS but still lots of shit to shoot at!

Pong of course should be at the top of any list...wasn't the VERY first video game but the one that brought video games into people's homes!

R.C. pro am very good early racing game along with pole position brought in the racing era!

Mortal Kombat for the blood and violence era!

EVERY video game today can trace it's lineage back to either nintendo or atari for it's roots! They came from very humble beginings!