Every Year’s Most Iconic Video Game Since 1979 Explained | WIRED

I'm John Paul Dyson directed the International Center for the history of electronic games the strong Museum and I'm Shannon Simon's curator for electronic games at the strong Museum and this is every iconic video game for the last 40 years when deciding which game to pick each year we looked at a variety of factors the game had to be iconic people had to recognize it it had wide geographic reach and was played all across the world and it has cultural significance with a lot of people even outside the gaming industry 1979 asteroids in the 1970s Atari ruled the arcade scene but in the late 1970s competition came from Japan the form of space invaders Atari new to follow up asteroids was the answer this rock blasting game featuring asteroids hurtling through space inspired by the original space war game in the early 1960s but it proved to be a gold mine for Atari raking in the quarters both in the arcade and eventually when ported to home console asteroids combine this amazing fluidity of movement with excitement the sound ramped up the action ramped up the asteroids came faster and faster it generated coins by the bucketful and really made a lot of money for Atari and brought internal fame to Ed log and Lyle rein the developers 1980 pac-man when credo Toru Iwatani was eating a pizza and removed a slice he got this image of this yellow ball going across the screen eating pellets and he thought that that would be something that would appeal widely across genders across ages not only did pac-man do well in the arcade but it became the first game to incite this licensing craze that means fun for everyone all you have to do is go around a maze and it also had these wonderful ghosts in 1982 ms pac-man became one of the first iconic female video game characters 1981 donkey kong donkey kong in truth the video games – with most important characters the first was the game's creator Shigeru Miyamoto who saved Nintendo when they're desperately looking for a game to replace their failed RadarScope with a delightful game featuring a character called jump man who saved his damsel in distress in the clutches of an evil gorilla the second character was of course junkman who we know is Mario without Donkey Kong there may be no Mario and video games to be very different than they are today 1982 Ichi the extra-terrestrial et is an example of a video game that's remembered for all the wrong reasons it's considered one of the biggest commercial failures of the entire video game industry it only took five and a half weeks to develop due to licensing rights and trying to get the game out for the holiday season the game just didn't play well legend had it that after the game's failure Atari buried thousands upon thousands of these cartridges in a landfill in the New Mexico desert that turned out to be true during a 2014 excavation when all of these cartridges were dug up each he is often credited as a great example of why the video game industry crashed in 1983 a lot of games were being produced and the console market was flooded with games that just weren't selling the PC industry was also taking off at the time but when people talk about the crash they always talk about eg 1983 Mule when people think of video games do you think of the game's not the creator's but when trip Hawkins found Electronic Arts in 1982 he wanted to change that he wanted to bring the developers to the fore and so he got some the best developers in the business to create games one of those creators was Dan button who later became Danielle button berry but needs to say that no one ever died wishing they'd spent more time in front of computer screen and wanted to bring that spirit of a board game to a computer game you'll do this successfully it's a game designers game the one that is still influential today shaping how we think of multiplayer games for mass audience 1984 King's Quest a game development company Sierra online became synonymous with graphical adventures mainly because of the success of the game King's Quest developed and created by co-founder Roberta Williams who became one of the most iconic female video game designers King's Quest combined the best of early text adventure games with pioneering graphics for IBM's latest computer the PC junior King's Quest allowed players a freedom of movement that they hadn't experienced before including being able to move in front of and behind objects on the screen it's a game that appealed to everyone both women and men alike and people who perhaps weren't even generally fans of computer games at the time although the PC jr.

itself proved to be a commercial failure King's Quest found new life when it was ported to other computer systems such as the Commodore 64 and the Apple 2 line 1985 Super Mario Brothers Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong as Jumpman it wasn't until 1985 when he first appeared in his breakout series Mario's gameplay became so popular because it was so simple you scrolled in one direction jumping over enemies like Koopa troopers and goombahs and tried to avoid falling in pits which made it easy to play for everyone no matter what level you were he has appeared in over 200 games on every single Nintendo console ever created and in the survey in the 1990s more children recognized Mario even the Mickey Mouse 1986 The Legend of Zelda if he first played Zelda on the Nintendo Entertainment System you might be confused as to why we're introducing this in 1986 instead of 1987 but it actually premiered on the Japanese only Nintendo Famicom disk system as a flagship game it was initially thought of by Shigeru Miyamoto the creator of Mario and Donkey Kong as a counterpoint something that was a little bit more complex it pioneered this open-world feel this miniature garden where players could explore the entire land of Hyrule openly without having a discrete path to follow it gave rise to some of the most iconic lines in videogame history it's dangerous to go alone take this The Legend of Zelda is still popular today even with some of the more recent iterations such as breadth of the wild and Ocarina of Time [Music] 1987 Tecmo Bowl every year sports games dominate the bestsellers lists games like John Madden football I'm purchased by millions of players every year but early on football games were largely absent from the video game scene there have been games like Ataris arcade game football but it was a pretty boring abstract game of X's and O's Tecmo ball brought two video games live action two screens for players it was a real hit in the arcade and also when it was ported to the home console at home Tecmo Bowl had bright simple colors but most follows the action that took for most in the game and that's what made it really exciting while the teams in Tecmo Bowl were not real the players were a licensing deal with the NFL Players Association brought real name players to the game that brought an extra level of excitement 1988 wasteland role-playing games have been around since the 1970s first and pen-and-paper reform and then a computer games but mostly their fantasy games things seeking places in dungeons with spells and wizards wasteland was different not set in a fantasy world but a post-apocalyptic landscape one that was filled not only with a little whore but also a lot of humour as well 1989 Tetris Tetris was originally created by Soviet designer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984 on an electronica 60 mini computer but it wasn't until its release in 1989 on Nintendo's Game Boy handheld it achieved real worldwide success the title is a combination of the Greek word tetra 4/4 and tennis it also has its origins in the game pentominoes where players take puzzle pieces and fit them together in a box like puzzle tetris became famous as a game that was easy to play difficult to master Tatro is still probably the most popular puzzle game on the market it's something that people can enjoy not only on their computers but also on mobile handheld devices it's a game you can play really quickly while you're waiting for the bus 1990 Microsoft Windows solitaire we think of computer games we don't usually think of card games perhaps the most popular computer game of all time was a card game microsoft solitaire introduced with windows 3.

0 operating system the game was crucial not only in ensuring that people wasted millions of hours of time playing this addicting game but also teaching them how to use a mouse a device it was completely new to many people and so they could learn how to click drag do other things with this device at playing a game I totally don't play that while I'm at work too you know not at all no never have never have 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog in the early 1990s Sega and Nintendo were locked in a battle for the hearts and minds of their console fanbase Sega wanted to paint Nintendo as a console for children they decided to have an in-house design contest to create a brand new character they came up with the idea of this blue hedgehog codenamed mister needle mouse who became Sonic the Hedgehog with Sonic the Hedgehog they attempted to appeal to an older audience with someone who was more hip cool resonated with Gen X then with the advent of the Sega Genesis and especially with Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991 Sega vaulted forward and just absolutely dominated the 16-bit console market 1992 Mortal Kombat never before has there been a game that's created so much excitement or maybe I should say controversy Mortal Kombat with a fighting game with over-the-top graphic violence that today looks pain but back then outraged people some of those people were US senators the result was not only a wildly popular game but Senate hearings that led the development of the ESRB the rating code that continues to govern video games today mortal comas violence was not so much disturbing to some people because it was realistic ripping the spine out of your opponent is not necessarily realistic but it's because it was so gratuitous and also because there's a feeling that it was marketed to children who a game is marketed to sometimes is important in determining how we will react to it as what it actually contains Mortal Kombat helped not only boost the fighting game scene but also created an interest in games that really respect girls at the arcade games like Street Fighter 2 will be ones in which players competed to see who is the best Mortal Kombat has important legacy not only for its socio-political effects but also just for its effects in the game world itself 1993 do anyone who played doom when it first came out will never forget the experience this was just mesmerizing adrenaline boosting sheer joy of blasting away these enemies coming at you this first-person perspective was revolutionary and as revolutionary was the way it's distributed the digital shareware the download the first chapter play it get hot John Carmack and John Romero were the geniuses who set this ammo blasting adrenaline fueled action-packed adventure set the heavy metal music that really just turned the video game industry upside down doom popularize the first-person shooter showing how compelling it could be look down the barrel of your gun enemies swarming at you it was a game that was impossible to turn away from and you just had to keep playing as long as you survived 1994 Super Metroid Super Metroid is widely considered the best in the entire Metroid franchise as bounty hunter Samus you're on this isolated spaceship going through trying to capture pirates players of the original Metroid probably remember that big reveal at the end Samus was a girl Sam this wasn't the first female protagonist in a video game but she certainly did become the most popular especially of the era and was the first to really be seen as a non sexualized character when she's in our armor you really don't care whether she's male or female she's just awesome Super Metroid was one of the first games to have multiple endings 3 in this particular case and it became very popular in speedrunning communities as they raced to beat the clock to get the best ending possible 1995 command & Conquer command & Conquer wasn't the first realtime strategy game from Westwood but it was a game that brought together in a perfect combination all the elements of skill strategy and speed to make for a good real time strategy game today command & Conquer really showed other manufacturers that RTS is real-time strategy games had an audience who just craved the excitement trying to beat your opponent while so many things are happening all around you 1996 Tomb Raider 1996 was actually a really big year for video games with releases of epics like Diablo and Resident Evil but we picked Tomb Raider for one huge reason and her name is Lara Croft Laura was this no-nonsense Indiana Jones asked character she was doing everything that the traditional action hero did except that she was doing it in hot pants as awesome as Lara was she can sometimes be seen as a sex symbol as well 2 meter really set the standard for 3d video games with the ability for characters to move in every direction to jump climb swing and in this particular case find some pretty cool treasure 1997 Final Fantasy 7 when he had or Nova's Sakaguchi released the original Final Fantasy it wasn't the first year old playing game but it was really the first to take it to the next level but in 1997 when Square published the seventh iteration of their final fantasy genre it really really broke the mold tired – this role-playing games were mostly super popular in Japan Final Fantasy 7 exploded the role-playing genre in America and Europe the game allowed you to explore lots of different areas and as one of these original 4 Heroes of Light as you tried to go out and save the world from destruction you were able to explore different areas find treasure and level up all of your weapons and yeah if you started out as a fighter you definitely had a cooler short by the end with characters like Cloud Strife the devilishly handsome Sephiroth and Eris whose death unfortunately remains one of the most tear inducing moments in videogame history 1998 pokemon red and blue 1998 was a big year for Nintendo they released what's considered sometimes the most popular game of all time The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time but in this case we're gonna talk about a different game a smaller one that changed the way portable play worked you want a little confused as to why we're introducing pokemon in 1998 when it actually came out in Japan in 1996 that was released as Pokemon ocotillo Midori red and green the original red and green was only released in Japan and when it came over here they decided to shorten it to pokemon from the original title Pocket Monsters because it needed to fit on the small Gameboy screen and it was just easier to read there was also a licensing issue because there was a Pocket Monsters game already over here creator Satoshi Tajiri was this huge bug collector when he was a child and he decided that he really wanted to give children in Japanese cities the opportunity to do their own bug collecting he had this vision of insects crawling along the game link cable that connected to game boys together and this Pokemon was born Pokemon is still considered one of the most popular RPGs of all time and as legacy can still be seen in the 2016 augmented reality game Pokemon go is people walk around with their smartphones and collect Pokemon right in their backyard Pokemon also created an entire transmedia franchise that included one of the most popular trading card games of all time as well as anime series movies board games pretty much everything you can think of you can catch them all $19.

99 Shenmue 2 the non gamer Shenmue sounds like maybe a killer whale but in reality it's one of the most exciting open-world games ever created a real pioneer which players were lost in a world which they could do all sorts of things from battling enemies to racing forklifts Shenmue liberated players to explore in ways that they hadn't really explored before is designer Yu Suzuki with a brilliant designer who knew how to make world seem to come alive in ways that really taks the limits of the sega dreamcast for players or the revelation of how immerse a videogame world could be 2000 the Sims one of the geniuses that will write is that he looked for inspirations in the everyday world his hit game SimCity drew on the way that a model trains app can bring alive a miniature world similarly with the sims he found a dollhouse inspiration for a new way of playing one that really changed the way we look at how sims work in the worlds that they can create people have been playing with doll houses for centuries but the Sims brought alive worlds of players who interacted with each other had emotions and did mundane everyday things like going to work or using the bathroom the game was strangely compelling players for hours building their Sims up seeing them interact with each other and really creating this digital world that felt alive the realism of the emotions that the Sims felt and related to one another 2001 halo combat Evolved a game called Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 showed that first-person shooters could be successful on consoles in 2001 when Microsoft broke into the home console market with their Xbox they perfected it or at least came really really close halo was a game that broke the boundaries of what a traditional first-person shooter could be it had a sweeping plotline a highly developed world and characters that players really really bonded with and also pioneered some new game mechanics like the idea of only being able to carry two weapons at a time that forced players to assess and reassess every situation that they went into in order to make sure that they had the correct weapon he will became known as the Xbox's killer app which basically means that the console might not have sold nearly so well without it in fact a full 50% of Xbox consoles sold in conjunction with a copy of the Halo game halo also became extraordinarily famous for its multiplayer which way'd seemed odd because it actually came out before the advent of Xbox Live and players had to play on a local area network connection but it allowed up to 16 people to play simultaneously which was huge for a console at the time it may be an exaggeration to say that the fate of the Xbox franchise rested on halo but not that much of an exaggeration the game was really instrumental cementing not only the platform success but an image of what sort of player really gravitated towards the xbox 2002 Metal Gear Solid 2 video games you built around speed action and less so stealth but the Metal Gear Solid franchise really was key in bringing that game mechanic to popularity and yet this game had his own form of stealth Metal Gear Solid 2 reshaped the face of stealth games Hideo Kojima's brilliant game really brought the artistry of a stealth game with his different demands and a player to new height that hadn't been reached before middle gear solid is the most enduring stealth franchise in video games and Metal Gear Solid 2 was key to making that happen 2003 call of duty world war 2 is often known as a good war with clear protagonists and antagonists the result is that it's easily ported over to video games but no game has ever done it as well perhaps as Call of Duty it put players position to fight the enemy in a way that was thrilling and the time highly realistic just as generations earlier little kids have played with little green army men in their sand boxes now kids all grown up have an amazing time playing in this world a world war 2 which you're trying to fight the enemy and stay alive as a franchise Call of Duty has been a tremendous hit for Activision and some of the best-selling games of all time 2004 world of warcraft in 1997 richard garriott coined the term massively multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG for sure for his game Ultima Online but it wasn't until 2004 when Blizzard released World of Warcraft when the genre really took hold with its peak of 12 million players wow really took the internet by storm not only was it an easier RPG which allowed players who maybe wouldn't be so interested in an in-depth role-playing game to play it also made it super easy for people to catch up with lots of XP giving quests and not huge penalties when you died it made novice players able to catch up to the more experienced companions a lot faster than normal World of Warcraft is still the most iconic MMORPG on the map when people think of MMOs they still think of World of Warcraft first 2005 Guitar Hero in video games it's all about the controller think about the simple Atari joystick or the controller for the NES but most controllers are variations on a theme with guitar hero players got something completely different here with a simulated guitar – anyone could pick up and know sort of what to do with pretty much right away Guitar Hero was a party game that expanded the reach of video games anyone at a social gathering wanted to pick up that guitar and play and try to see how they do even if in the end they probably didn't hit all the right notes 2006 Wii Sports you probably have an idea in your head when someone says I'm a video gamer and the first thing you think of is probably not your 90 year old grandmother but when it comes to we sports you might as well think about her because she's probably playing it along with all of her grandkids Wii Sports became one of the most popular sports games and one of the most popular games of all time and launched the Nintendo Wii console – massive success in fact there were lots of people who were buying in the Nintendo Wii who didn't even know that it could play a different game Wii Sports helps the Nintendo Wii sell over a hundred million consoles and it's motion control remote and nunchuck even spurred Microsoft and Sony who design their own motion control system the Microsoft Kinect and the PlayStation Move 2007 portal in 2007 valve corporation released a really interesting almost funny-looking game called the orange box it was a compilation of five games four of them were first-person shooters from some of their more popular franchises like half-life 2 and Team Fortress 2 and there was this short puzzle game called portal surprisingly enough that small game which could be completed in four hours or less ended up receiving more critical acclaim than the other four games put together portal had a unique gameplay system using portal guns which allowed the player to shoot in one area and move in right direction so you could exit one room in one direction and enter another in the opposite direction or in fact move through walls and ceilings but one of the most enduring parts of portal was its single vocalist her name was Ellen McLain and she played a darkly sarcastic artificial intelligence named GLaDOS who promised to navigate you through the Aperture Science Lab and as long as you performed to her satisfaction you would be rewarded with a delicious slice of black forest cake unfortunately the cake was a lie she actually tried to kill you 2008 World of Goo video games especially starting in the 1990s for me by massive teams pouring massive amounts of money in the development of the game but starting in the early 2000s new tools began to emerge it allowed single individuals or small teams to create a game one of those games is World of Goo a fun splattering game that really had a playful third about it and yet low budget looking animations the result was something attainable yet fun and really spurred the indie game movement it really is a key player in today's video game world 2009 Angry Birds it's the first game that really transcended mobile gaming not only inspire people sometimes to buy a phone itself but also by lots of other merchandise inspired by the game Angry Birds was important not only for its popularity but the way it brought new gamers into the fold of gaming someone who would never consider themselves a gamer found themselves addicted to Angry Birds eager just to see if they could knock down those devilish pigs and really try to get the next level in the game that was a frustrating fascinating and most of all bond 2010 dark craft 2 wings of Liberty Starcraft is one of the best examples of the real-time strategy genre I think a lot of the most popular realtime strategy games it takes place in space with three very distinct races humans Protoss and Zerg one of the things that sets Starcraft apart from its contemporaries was the fact that each faction uniquely different in how you could build your bases lead your armies and what your powers were the original Starcraft also pioneered what we call today the in-game sports movement the eSports movement was especially popular in South Korea but with Starcraft 2 it branched out and became one of the most popular eSport games worldwide 2011 minecraft a Lego brick affords a lot more variety to play than a talking Barbie both can be fun but one opens up many more possibilities minecraft was a Lego brick of the videogame universe had simple 8-bit looking graphics that opened up a creative world for players to build things that they could imagine in ways they couldn't build in real life with those atom based Lego bricks result was a game that has yielded millions of hours of gameplay as players discover the possibilities of building something on the computer screen that before they could only imagine 2012 journey 7 a vast desert where the player feels small against this wide expanse of sand and tall mountains journey evokes the sense of solitude and wonder players are allowed to communicate with each other only through chimes not to avoid our text they can help each other but never hinder the game was also designed to be so simplistic that players wouldn't require any in-game instruction so they wouldn't be taken out of their world journey is also known for its sweeping evocative soundtrack which was the first video game to be nominated for a Grammy Award [Music] 2013 The Last of Us early video games were long on play and shortened story there's not much story in Donkey Kong the damsel in distress jump man rescuing his loss yeah as games have developed over time the stories have gotten more compelling in studios have learned how to tell those stories more effectively The Last of Us in some ways used to a very standard genre the zombie apocalypse with many video games there were artificial mechanics and move the story along may you get to a new level for instance your character gains new abilities but the Last of Us you were in the story always is your main character and a girl who was his sidekick went through the story developing almost like a novel it was compelling because it felt real in a way that where artificial systems would not have 2014 destiny destiny was developed by Bungie best known for their Halo franchise and with destiny they created yet another hit perhaps best known for its persistent online world which means that things continuously happen even when you're not logged on destiny creates a world where players can do their own thing but also just randomly meet up with other people for worldwide events maybe there's a boss fight that pops up or a raid that needs to be completed everyone can interact or you can ignore it and just keep on doing what you're doing the choice is up to you Bungie also made a commitment with destiny that it was going to be continuously updated they said until the end of time but probably at least until the company goes out of business because of that destiny receives continuous updates and support so players never have to worry that they're gonna run out of new content 2015 undertale most video games are developed by a whole crowd of people or at the very at least one or two undertale was developed published written and composed by a single person toby fox he created a game that he wanted to play and if there was an element in a game that he didn't like he just didn't include it so for example he hated fetch quests because it made you go back and retread old ground he also hated being forced to grind for experience points so none of those things appeared in undertale one thing that did however was a very interesting game mechanic that allowed you three choices whenever you faced a monster you could fight them and kill them like normally what in a video game but you could also choose to flee or you could choose to befriend them and depending on your choice and your various choices throughout the game you received a different ending that could sometimes even continue on to subsequent plays if you decided to play the game over again 2016 that dragon cancer when trip Hawkins first started Electronic Arts he ran a series of ads ask the question can a game make you cry with that dragon cancer there was a game that really had the potential to move players to tears in large part because it was based on the real-life experiences the developer who lost his son that dragon cancer brought to the videogame the tragedy and sometimes a tedium what it was like to wait with a sick child to experience out it's a game that anyone who played it could not forget it's a game that began to show the power of the medium as it developed to bring new senses of what was possible in video games new ways to move players and new ways to show the artistry and the pathos that is possible in video games 2017 fortnight the most important games sometimes aren't the first games to adapt a certain media take the battle royale mode of video games fortnight was not the first game to use a battle royale mode which you're the last player standing say something like Hunger Games for instance but something about fortnight was compelling well maybe that's something with fact it was free-to-play and also the fact that had graphics that were accessible to anyone meanwhile a circle is shrinking limiting the amount of space you can go meaning that in the end only one person will survive who's not the first battle royale game but something about the game that combination of fast action of suspense of accessible graphics and the free-to-play mode made a video game phenomenon about new players in about players of all ages together to play 2018 celeste some games you just enjoy playing there's not really as much rhyme or reason for it you just really like it celeste tended to one of those with the gamers for whom it was popular Celeste had some interesting game mechanics that allowed you to do things like double dash in midair it wasn't the first game to do that but combined with the fact that each room with its own individual puzzle it made everything feel faster stronger and it also allowed for a great deal of replayability since each room had maybe a different way to play it several rooms also had hidden cassette tapes if he found a cassette tape it would unlock a b-side to the level which was a harder version if you beat every single b-side it unlocked a seaside and allowed you to play an even harder version basically allowing for almost endless replayability of the game but what really hooked a lot of players to Celeste was the protagonist herself a young girl named Madeline who was trying desperately to scale a mountain she kept being hindered by a reflection of herself that she called a piece of me it turned out that this piece of her was a metaphor for her own internal anxiety and depression and it was only by combining the two aspects of herself that she was able to finally scale the mountain which is a really interesting metaphor I think for most of us there was every iconic game for the past 40 years we hope you learned something and had some fun doing it we'll look forward to seeing with the next 40 years brain.