An Atari game selected as one of the "10 most important games of all time"

[Bill Lange]

10 most important games of all time

March 17, 2007 5:58 AM PDT

 

 

Video games, like movies, are worth preserving and studying as cultural artifacts. So says Henry Lowood, curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University, who together with game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; academic researcher Matteo Bittanti; and game journalist Christopher Grant came up with a list of the 10 most important video games of all time.

 

The chronological list, submitted for review and potential permanent preservation to the U.S. Library of Congress:

 

Spacewar (1962)

Star Raiders (1979)

Zork (1980)

Tetris (1985)

SimCity (1989)

Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)

Civilization I/II (1991)

Doom (1993)

the Warcraft series (beginning 1994)

Sensible World of Soccer (1994).

 

Spacewar, conceived by Massachusetts Institute of Technology programmers Steve "Slug" Russell, Martin "Shag" Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen in 1961 and initially released in 1962, is the first multiplayer computer video game, according to The New York Times.

 

It is also the first action game. Each player controls a ship and must shoot against the other ship while avoiding a collision with a nearby star. (The stars have a gravitational pull, but the missiles don't, because that'd take up too much processing power, according to Wikipedia.)

 

Additional links:

 

http://news.com.com/2300-1043_3-6168159-1.html

http://www.rome.ro/ (John Romero's [Doom] website)

[Allas]

A great list. But some people ask me... why Pacman hasn't been included?

[Christophero Sly]

A pretty poor list, IMO.

[Rybags]

What about Pong?

 

Brought video games to the mass-market - in fact was probably the only game easily accessable to most people for about 5 years.

[sidcrowe]

I give up on these "experts'" lists. My best albums of all time look nothing like that of the mainstream media.

 

I love Combat......but there's no Atari geeks around here to play with

 

Pac Man should be in there.

 

What's that Soccer Game?

 

Jeez, that imagic documentary makes me wish Atari ruled again. Great little system, gosh darnit (I reckon that's an understatement here).

Edited March 29, 2007 by sidcrowe

[Heaven/TQA]

sensible soccer? well...

 

no M.U.L.E.?

no Way of the Exploding Fist?

no Seven Cities of Gold?

no Space Invaders?

....

i agree...poor list...

[Rybags]

Space Invaders was probably the first blockbuster game - ie multiple machines in one venue, and production over 50,000.

 

Really, what is the significance of SMB3, or SW of Soccer?

 

Apple Panic could almost qualify too - wasn't it the first ever platformer?

 

and PacMan was supposedly the first game widely played by women.

[Tickled_Pink]

So called experts typically don't have a clue (just look at the 200 must-have albums ... Joshua Tree at number 5? Bought it way back when and it was boooring and samey. One very overrated album)

 

Anyway, I suppose it depends on what the actual criteria was. But likewise, I have no idea what the significance of Sensi or SMB3 was. I would also throw in the Warcraft series. World of Warcraft would probably qualify on its own, but the original games were nothing more than a rehash of Dune II, the first RTS (?). So if it were firsts, then Dune II would qualify ahead of Warcraft.

 

Pong should be there as well. Again, not too sure about Star Raiders. It wasn't really a game that started any genre or anything, but it did perhaps show what could be done with the 2600 with a bit of extra thought. But how important is that in the eventual evolution of games ... not very, IMO.

 

Not the most impressive list on the planet ...

[mimo]

If we listened to experts we would all be using windows on our PC's

[jdh]

I give up on these "experts'" lists. My best albums of all time look nothing like that of the mainstream media.

 

I love Combat......but there's no Atari geeks around here to play with

 

Pac Man should be in there.

 

What's that Soccer Game?

 

Jeez, that imagic documentary makes me wish Atari ruled again. Great little system, gosh darnit (I reckon that's an understatement here).

 

I agree about Sensible Soccer, it shoudn't be on that list.

IMHO it's just a refined version of Kick Off by Anco. Kick Off was the original iconic footy game, the first to get it right.

[mos6507]

A great list. But some people ask me... why Pacman hasn't been included?

 

They didn't include any coinop games.

[mos6507]

Again, not too sure about Star Raiders. It wasn't really a game that started any genre or anything, but it did perhaps show what could be done with the 2600 with a bit of extra thought.

 

They are talking about Star Raiders for the Atari 800, not 2600. Starship 1 and Starship (2600) came earlier but were far more primitive. Exidy's Star Fire came out around the same time but did not have the resource management/strategy aspect of Star Raiders.

[vdub_bobby]

This list was criticized a bunch over in the classic gaming forum:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=104312

 

My opinion:

The more I look at this list the more it falls apart.

No RPGs. No maze games. No shooters (i.e., Space Invaders). It looks to me like a list of a typical college professor's favorite games, plus Spacewar! thrown in for historical flavor.

 

 

They didn't include any coinop games.

Tetris was a coin-op, though they probably mean...well, I don't know which version they mean.

 

Poorly thought-out list.

[MrFish]

[double post]

Edited March 30, 2007 by MrFish

[MrFish]

A great list. But some people ask me... why Pacman hasn't been included?

 

Because, he doesn't shave anymore and he wears a patch on his eye.

 

It's lowered his popularity considerably...

[MrFish]

If we listened to experts we would all be using windows on our PC's

 

Aren't we?

[carmel_andrews]

Interesting that they should pick 'spacewar' and not computer space (space war w/graphics)

 

Pong wasn't picked i guess because Atari allegedly copied it from the magnavox original 'tele-tennis' which was the built in or 'pack in' game that came with magnavox's 'odyssey 100' or whatever it was called...so you could hardly consider 'pong' to being an original

 

Space invaders wasn't picked as even Taito (the origianl designers) admitted that they simply reverse engineered it from the Atari game 'breakout'

 

You forget one thing about star raiders, star raiders was the first game launched by Atari that wasn't based on an existing arcade game, plus the fact that it was the first and best known version of the 'star trek' theme of computer game that existed at the time, also and i guess this was the main reason why it was picked, it was the videogame/computer game equivalent to 'visicalc' i.e. the first 'killer app' in videogames...and lastly that Star raiders spawned imitators like codename matt, elite, mercenary, millenuim 2.2 and any other space exploration/trading game

 

I'm surprised they didn't feature the classic platformy type game 'miner 2049r' which altimately lead to the likes of sonic/super mario and donkey kong

 

Going back to 'miner 2049r' and it's famous 'rip off' or clone 'manic miner/jet set willy, i still can't see the connection between the two/ 3 games, the latter two are vastly expanded from miner 2049r

 

Also Swos was picked because it came out before player manager, in that it combined the capabilities of the classic strategy game 'football manager' by kevin toms and the 'overhead' football view pioneered by 'kick off' friom anco (i'm surprised that they didn't include either kick off or microprose soccer, which was the first footy game released that have an overhead view)

[Rybags]

Miner '49er came out after Donkey Kong and way after Apple Panic.

 

Actually, even Donkey Kong is more significant than most games on that list since it spawned the platform revolution, and had so many sequels.

[Deteacher]

Strange that Super Mario 3 was on that list. I would think that the Original Super Mario would be there first. Just my opinion. But I do agree the list isn't a very good one.

[potatohead]

Again, not too sure about Star Raiders. It wasn't really a game that started any genre or anything, but it did perhaps show what could be done with the 2600 with a bit of extra thought.

 

They are talking about Star Raiders for the Atari 800, not 2600. Starship 1 and Starship (2600) came earlier but were far more primitive. Exidy's Star Fire came out around the same time but did not have the resource management/strategy aspect of Star Raiders.

 

 

Yeah, and that's why I think M.U.L.E. should be on that list!

 

I am happy Star Raiders is getting the attention though. I've hooked up the original 400, I played as a kid. Man, that game is still loads of fun. And I still find it damn tough to get the better ranks too.

[Bill Lange]

I asked one of the authors of the list about the criteria used in selecting the games. Here is his response ...

 

 

Hi Bill,

 

I will post something soon to the IGDA Preservation SIG wiki or blog. I've been somewhat overwhelmed at the response to this project, so I am way behind in doing this.

 

One important point: Please note that these are only the first ten games to get into the "canon." We hope that the list will grow with an annual panel adding games, much like the work of the Film Preservation Board for movies.

 

Best,

Henry

 

At 11:40 AM 3/30/2007, you wrote:

 

Dr. Lowood,

 

I cross posted your list of "10 most important games of all time" to the Atari 8-bit Forum on the www.AtariAge.com website because of the selection of "Star Raiders".

 

There has been alot of chatter on the forum about the criteria of selecting the games and why such classics as Pong, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man where not included.

 

Is there a link to a description of the selection processes somewhere that I can read and reference on the atariage.com Atari 8-bit forum.

 

Regards,

Bill

[supercat]

Interesting that they should pick 'spacewar' and not computer space (space war w/graphics)

 

Does the code for the original Space War! exist in any form? I've seen pictures of the game, so I'm not sure what you mean by the "with graphics" remark.

 

From my understanding, the original Space War! was done on an XY screen (predecessor to vector graphics) rather than a raster display. XY displays were doing graphics long before RAM prices allowed bitmapped raster displays to be practical. Some XY screens (though, AFAIK, not the one used for Space War!) even included the ability to deflect the electron beam through one of many holes in a mask which showed numbers, letters, etc. in addition to various sizes of spots and markers.

[supercat]

Pong wasn't picked i guess because Atari allegedly copied it from the magnavox original 'tele-tennis' which was the built in or 'pack in' game that came with magnavox's 'odyssey 100' or whatever it was called...so you could hardly consider 'pong' to being an original

 

Well, the original Odyssey should have been included, then, I would think.

 

Pong was different from the original Odyssey in a few key ways, which I think would justify its inclusion in addition to the Odyssey. Computer Space is also worthy of mention. Computer Space was the first coin-operated raster-scan video game, and Pong was the first successful one. While I'm not sure, I would strongly guess that Computer Space would have been the first usage of "sprites" on a raster-scan display.

[+davidcalgary29]

I'd replace Doom with MIDI Maze XE: a remarkable achievement that really might have given the A8 line another few years of commercial life if it had been released. Sigh.

[Allas]

Is Star Raiders the first game that use hardware sprite technique?