Wyrdness said:
pokoko said:
No, it really isn't. The cultural impact of Space Invaders and Pac-man were greater and more important for video-games. They raised awareness of video-games from nearly nothing up to pop-culture levels. Pac-man is especially important because it was the first cross-media success for video-games. Space invaders, even more than Pac-man, is celebrated for it's sheer immersion into society, as cabinets were everywhere, and is estimated to have grossed $14 billion dollars when adjusted for inflation, which sits comfortably at the top of all video-game earnings. Super Mario Bros., if you're wondering, is at $3.5 billion, while Pac-man is in second place at nearly $13 billion. Just think about that for a second.
Yeah, I know this is a Nintendo forum so I know how this is going to end up, but Space Invaders and Pac-man took video-games from irrelevancy to significant cultural mind-share. It's hard to get more important than that.
As for that video, my god ... some of those points are hilarious. Even if I disagree, I expected a far better job from someone taking the time to make a video. It's almost like satire.
"The verb of jumping just became the verb that you used in video-games. Every platformer after that, that's what you do, you jump. Nathan Drake jumps." Holy cats. Because games like Pit-fall did not exist. What the literal fuck.
They even praised it for having a narrative. |
You're arguing a point that's irrelevant to SMB's importance because when SMB launched gaming was dead for a second time this is why Pacman and SI aren't held as high up as SMB because the era the latter created is still running today, Pacman and Space Invaders were great games for their times but only inspired clones of themselves instead of inspiring new approaches. They're legendary games yes but the are aspects both technical and commercial that SMB did that only Pong can match, SMB inspired multiple genres, development approaches, games and so on that has built modern gaming to what it is today and the era is still going today, the hasn't been a crash since SMB. People like Carmack have come out and said how it inspired them to take a new approach, the fact that SMB can inspire Metroid, Zelda and Wolfenstein to name a few which themselves became templates for entire genres highlights importance.
Revenue doesn't indicate importance to the industry, Pacman and SI are iconic but what else did they inspire in the same regard and that's what it comes down to when looking at influence on the industry.
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Gaming was not dead. I have no idea what you're talking about there. Arcades did not die and, quite honestly, the popularity of arcades in Japan is why the home console industry rose again and would have done so even without Nintendo.
Also, if you're saying that nothing that came later in the industry was inspired by Space Invaders or Pac-man ... well, there really isn't anything else to say to that, because that's ridiculous.
