Super Mario Kart: Most Influential Video Game in History

**juiceface** · February 27th, 2009, 04:26

what about pong?

**apex05** · February 27th, 2009, 04:40

If you talking about influential games, those early games i mentioned just can't ever be ignored, i mean the first time someone plays a Atari 2600 in the 70's and see's that pressing a button can like magic make things happen on a tv screen, anyone old enough to remember games like Pong will tell you the kind of influence it had on them

**CraigG** · February 27th, 2009, 13:05

What an unbelievably dumb list. I write for various gaming publications, so I know plenty about games of all ages, but even the man on the street would look at that list and go 'bwuh?'

OutRun 2 is a great game, but influential? Not remotely. After all, it's hardly spawned a flurry of arcade-oriented racers, and the game itself had forerunners.

That Robotron—the game that spawned dual controls—isn't even on the list is just unforgivable, as is the lack of Pong, Tank, Space Invaders, Battlezone, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, to name a few obvious omissions.

Hell, a bit of research and you can trace paths back easily enough. There are lots of horizontally scrolling platform games, and the most famous is SMB. Stick that on the list, or the game that inspired it, Pac-Land. For FPS games, go back to true milestones, Quake or Doom, not modern titles.

By that list, I'm actually shocked Tetris made it on at all, let alone got the #2 spot.

EDIT: OK, so it's a console list and of 'top games', not necessarily influential ones, according to Guinness, but it's still pretty subjective.

**DrBlue** · February 27th, 2009, 13:19

Number 1: Worms 3D
Number 2: world Cup Italia '90 (Master System)

It just makes sense.

**kojiro7** · February 27th, 2009, 17:15

Originally Posted by CraigG

What an unbelievably dumb list. I write for various gaming publications, so I know plenty about games of all ages, but even the man on the street would look at that list and go 'bwuh?'

OutRun 2 is a great game, but influential? Not remotely. After all, it's hardly spawned a flurry of arcade-oriented racers, and the game itself had forerunners.

That Robotron—the game that spawned dual controls—isn't even on the list is just unforgivable, as is the lack of Pong, Tank, Space Invaders, Battlezone, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, to name a few obvious omissions.

Hell, a bit of research and you can trace paths back easily enough. There are lots of horizontally scrolling platform games, and the most famous is SMB. Stick that on the list, or the game that inspired it, Pac-Land. For FPS games, go back to true milestones, Quake or Doom, not modern titles.

By that list, I'm actually shocked Tetris made it on at all, let alone got the #2 spot.

EDIT: OK, so it's a console list and of 'top games', not necessarily influential ones, according to Guinness, but it's still pretty subjective.

That list is for console games.But its all wrong,how can they have a game such as Lego star wars in it???

**DaviL** · February 27th, 2009, 18:35

i think who wrote this article never play.
most influential games was super mario bros.
STOP.

**Eyedunno** · February 28th, 2009, 01:47

Originally Posted by juiceface

what about pong?

That's a toughy. While it's historically important, I wouldn't say that it qualifies as very "influential", except on games like Arkanoid.

My top-ten list:
1) Super Mario Bros. (launched the platforming sidescroller craze and introduced a slew of famous characters)
2) Pac-Man (made gaming mainstream)
3) Tetris (was a shot in the arm for portable gaming and spawned a whole slew of imitators)
4) Wolfenstein 3D (was the first popular FPS)
5) Final Fantasy (brought Japanese-style roleplaying to the world at large)
6) Street Fighter II (brought sophisticated competitive play to a market otherwise saturated with platformers)
7) Space Invaders (another iconic game that did a lot for the popularity of gaming as a whole)
8) Legend of Zelda (mixed action and roleplaying elements)
9) Super Mario 64 (added a third dimension to platforming, while staying very fun)
10) Pole Position (first modern racing game)

Honorable mentions: Adventure (may not be all that influential on modern gaming, but brought entertainment capabilities to home PCs at a time when few of them could even display graphics at all, and is thus kind of a granddaddy to home gaming in general)

My list probably isn't perfect, but it blows away Guinness'.

***Darksaviour69*** · February 28th, 2009, 02:22

Originally Posted by DrBlue

Number 2: world Cup Italia '90 (Master System)

That was a AWESOME game!!!

SWWS on that saturn was they only footy game to beat it!

**JDvorak** · March 1st, 2009, 16:23

People as has been said before this is a console list. Most of the games you are listing are for computers and arcades. While games like space invaders and pac-man have shown up on consoles it was not the console versions that made them influential. Stick to a console list. I included Prince of Persia because the Genesis updated graphics and the better levels of the SNES stuck out in my mind as great console versions of the Apple II original. But I didn't include games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D because the console versions just sucked. I have the SNES carts for Doom and Wolfenstein 3D and the Sega 32x cart of Doom and they are just bad. The Saturn and Playstation versions of Doom are ok at best. The N64 Doom wasn't bad. But then again all the ports of the these games pale in comparison to the downloads of the Shareware version of Doom for the PC when it came out. On my old modem it took me 6 hours to get the shareware version of Doom for the PC and cost me a fortune in long distance phone charges from Alaska. It cost me more to get that game downloaded than to buy the special edition of Doom 3 in the collectors tin on the X-Box. And it included full versions of Doom.

**WhizzBang** · March 1st, 2009, 18:19

Originally Posted by Eyedunno

My top-ten list:
1) Super Mario Bros. (launched the platforming sidescroller craze and introduced a slew of famous characters)
2) Pac-Man (made gaming mainstream)
3) Tetris (was a shot in the arm for portable gaming and spawned a whole slew of imitators)
4) Wolfenstein 3D (was the first popular FPS)
5) Final Fantasy (brought Japanese-style roleplaying to the world at large)
6) Street Fighter II (brought sophisticated competitive play to a market otherwise saturated with platformers)
7) Space Invaders (another iconic game that did a lot for the popularity of gaming as a whole)
8) Legend of Zelda (mixed action and roleplaying elements)
9) Super Mario 64 (added a third dimension to platforming, while staying very fun)
10) Pole Position (first modern racing game)

Very well put.

I think Super Mario Kart was influential not just for inventing the kart racer, but also for it's handling of unlockables. Before SMK these were rare in games but afterwards they became pretty much standard.

Jet Set Radio was influential in that it introduced cell shaded graphics.

Knight Lore for the ZX Spectrum was hugely influential in its day for it's isometric view gameplay. There had been a few isometric view games before it, but there were loads that followed the Knight Lore style after it. These types of games died out with the advent of real 3d, but Knight Lore was reckoned to be the 2nd most ripped off piece of software ever - after VisiCalc which was the first spreadsheet program.