The game that started it and the game that made it...

[Loony BoB]

Inspired by the Zelda clone thread... what are the major games when it comes to the birth of a genre? For me, it goes in three stages... the game that first does it at all, the game that comes up with the more defined formula that actually works, and finally the game that makes it go mainstream. Two more well-known examples would be FPS & RTS.

First-Person Shooter
The First: Maze War (according to Wikipedia, anyway!)
The Formula: Wolfenstein 3D
The Definer: Doom

Real-Time Strategy
The First: Stonkers/Cytron Masters (according to Wikipedia, anyway!)
The Formula: Dune II
The Definer: Command & Conquer

So... thoughts on these or other genres? Fight it out, you know the debate is out there!

[Vyk]

I'm a fan of strategy RPGs. But I'm sure there are varying stories. Especially for the formula and defining games. But I think in a lot of cases its probably something like Fire Emblem as the first, probably Tactics Ogre for the formula and Final Fantasy Tactics to define the genre, which went on to even more popularity when Disgaea got ahold of it

But for me, since I never played Fire Emblem, or any early strategy games, as I'm pretty sure none of them were released in America (pretty sure Warsong was like the third game in the Langrisser series or something like that. Its been a while since I read a history on it) if I recall correctly, Shining Force was actually the first strategy RPG in America. Or at least close to it. But regardless, it was my first foray into the experience. So at the very least, that's the formula layer for me. I'm still looking for my definer in the genre, as FFT didn't appeal to me. Too convoluted. I'd love to say Disgaea, 'cause that had a great story and characters, and the combat wasn't so complex. But it did add needlessly more complex formulas with the stupid colored tile crap. I hate when SRPGs do that kinda stuff. And of the simpler tactical games, none of them have the fun and charm of the ol' Force games. Though this may not even be meant to be personal opinion anyway :}

Point and click adventure games would be another interesting category to look at. Though unfortunately I'm only on my break at work, and quickly skimming Wikipedia for the first graphical point-and-click adventure game is a little hard to discern. As they started out text based, then slowly evolved graphics. Phooey. Good topic though

[kotora]

Dune 2 and C&C are not turn-based dude

[Loony BoB]

Oops. I have no idea why I typed in Turn-Based. Adjusted!

[Madame Adequate]

DooM defined FPS games for some time, but I'd say that Goldeneye defined them for consoles for awhile, and Halo was another genre-definer.

[Bolivar]

RTS is one of the hardest genres to identify its origin; some people point to a German Genesis game called... ok I forget what it's called. Personally I would say:

The First: Dune II (as far as point-and-click RTS goes, with the trinity of base building, resource gathering, and combat control)
The Formula: Command & Conquer
The Definer: Starcraft

C&C has a big place in my heart, but even I have to admit people associate the genre with Starcraft.

Unfortunately you all took the genres I could think of... what about Turn Based JRPG's?

The First: Dragon Quest
The Formula: Final Fantasy
The Definer: FFVII (going with my define definition from RTS)

[Loony BoB]

Dune 2 definitely came up with the formula before C&C. Not sure if you've played it?

DooM defined FPS games for some time, but I'd say that Goldeneye defined them for consoles for awhile, and Halo was another genre-definer.

I wouldn't agree with that. They may have set the benchmark at the time, but Doom still defined how those games played out when it comes to the basics of the gameplay. You move around and shoot things. I'd say Wolfenstein 3D defined it but you couldn't move up and down throughout floors.

However it's possible that one could point out the first game that allowed you to move in one direction while looking in a different direction (eg. mouse + keypad)... but then, even in W3D you could strafe.

It should be noted that by 'define' I don't mean 'is the most famous'...

[kotora]

C&C pretty much started the whole multiplayer thing but it didn't do anything new, gameplay-wise as far as I know. The Warcraft series (and eventually Starcraft) turned out to be far more influential for RTS as a genre.

[Roto13]

Coincidentally, 1up posted an article about the real origins of game mechanics.

First Person Shooters and Multiplayer Deathmatch - Credited to Doom (1993) - Beaten by 19 years


If you're the kind of person who likes reading about the history of video games (and if you're reading this, I assume you are) you've probably noticed that no one can pin down what the original first person shooter was. Lots of articles reference Wolfenstein 3D (1992) or Catacomb 3-D (1991), still others mention Battlezone in the arcades (1980). When you read about early multiplayer FPS games, you inevitably read about John Carmack implementing deathmatch into Doom over the course of an afternoon. Doom may have made deathmatch mainstream, but it was preceded by twenty years by a game called Maze.

Going by the names, The Maze Game, Maze, and Maze War, Maze (as we'll call it for the sake of brevity) was created by two NASA programmers, Steve Colley and Howard Palmer, in 1973 for the Imlac PDS-1. As a sidenote, the PDS-1 was the first machine to have a graphical user interface similar to what Xerox, Apple, and Microsoft would eventually adopt and turn into the Macintosh and Windows UIs. Though the most advanced machine available at the time, it was incredibly primitive. Colley described the difficulty of rendering even a simple cube, let alone an entire maze, on the glorified adding machine in his retrospective on Maze: "In 1973, I was trying to do simple 3D displays on the Imlac PDS-1. The first one I did was a simple rotating cube, in which the hidden lines of the wireframe cube were removed. The complexity was in doing the sines and cosines on a slow machine with no multiply or divide."



Still, Maze in its original form wasn't an FPS. The game was a first-person game, but not a shooter. The goal was simply to escape the labyrinth. At some point either Thompson or Palmer took the work that NASA had been doing on ad-hoc LANs, and paired it up with Maze to make it a multiplayer game. Each player was represented by an eyeball, and the goal switched from escaping the maze to killing the other player. In one single game, Palmer, Thompson, and Colley invented not just the FPS, but deathmatch as well.

Game Mechanics That Are Older Than You Think from 1UP.com

[Loony BoB]

C&C pretty much started the whole multiplayer thing but it didn't do anything new, gameplay-wise as far as I know. The Warcraft series (and eventually Starcraft) turned out to be far more influential for RTS as a genre.

It took the genre to the mainstream and was the game everyone talked about when talking about RTS. "It's a real-time strategy game. You know, like Command & Conquer". I didn't like it, personally, but I still concede that it was the one that started the masses of clones. Although one could point at Warcraft, I'm not sure which of them came out first. But annoyingly (again, since I preferred Warcraft to C&C on every level) C&C was definitely the one that took the genre to the mainstream and was the game used to define the genre for years to come. Even if it should have been Dune II, because I found Dune II way more enjoyable for some reason. Which is strange considering the lack of user-friendly features. It just played so well!

[Levian]

Survival Horror

The First: ??
The Formula: Alone in the Dark
The Definer: Resident Evil

Something like that, maybe?

[Vyk]

Oh crap, well there was a Clock Tower game on SNES that was only released in Japan, so that was pretty early survival horror. And there was like a game or two that Capcom dabbled with back in NES/SNES days that set the groundwork for Resident Evil, but I can't remember the details. I think it might be in GameTrailers.com's retrospective videos though

[Bolivar]

I never played Dune II, I've only seen some footage in it in videos about C&C and RTS, I guess I just assumed that C&C shaved off the fat and worked on the general interface that all RTS used today. I don't know if I'd say Warcraft/Starcraft were more influential, I really can't think of anything they innovated or standardized, except maybe a map editor and the unique characters of Warcraft III, but even then the only thing I think they started with that was the level progression they could undergo.

[kotora]

I never played Dune II, I've only seen some footage in it in videos about C&C and RTS, I guess I just assumed that C&C shaved off the fat and worked on the general interface that all RTS used today.

except most RTS games follow the warcraft style of UI and gameplay

if you don't see how Warcraft and Starcraft influenced the genre aside from some ty heroes then you just don't know that much about RTS games

[Madame Adequate]

Um, there are quite a lot of RTS games you're all overlooking here. The genre is bigger than C&C, War/StarCraft, and their franchises and clones. No mention of Total Annihilation? Age of Empires? Warzone 2100? The RTS games Relic have made haven't really fit the C&C or WC formula, especially DoW2. What about Sins of a Solar Empire, which could be called either RTS or RT4X? Homeworld is something all of its own again. What about Populous? What about Act of War or World in Conflict?

Properly speaking, games like Evil Genius, Dungeon Keeper, and Tropico can be called RTS games as well, though they have a different slant. So are games like Hearts of Iron or Europa Universalis.

The foremost names might be Westwood and Blizzard, but the genre is much much bigger and more diverse, and much less unified around particular ideas, than y'all seem to believe.