Currently Online 
| The_Liquid_Laser said: There is so many, that I have to say more than 1. But I'm going to limit it to 5: #5 Mike Tyson's Punch Out - This game is basically all boss fights, and the bosses are huge. It had to have inspired games like Shadow of the Colossus and Dark Souls. (Not to mention the "time it just right" then dodge/block then counter-attack gameplay shared with Dark Souls.) At the end you fight the real life Heavyweight Champion of the World and he knocks you out in one punch just like if you really got punched by Mike Tyson. #4 Super Mario Bros. - This is the first game I remember using music throughout the entire game. The game also scrolled for the entire level. (I remember Pitfall 2 doing a little of these things, but not to this extent.) It has a crapload of secrets, and most importantly is how high the quality of gameplay was. I remember feeling so powerful with the fireflower the first time I played this (which was in an arcade). And also warp zones...there really are a lot of innovations in this game. #3 Wii Sports - This game invented the entire genre of motion controls and became a huge cultural phenomenon bringing in many people who would normally not play video games. I would love to see motion control games make a comeback, because I think Nintendo just scratched the surface of what was possible in this genre. Wii Sports was amazing though. #2 Donkey Kong - It's the first platformer that uses a jump button. However, it's also the first game with a coherent story. You see Donkey Kong carry Pauline up the skyscraper in the opening cutscene, an by the end of the 2nd stage Mario makes him fall down and saves Pauline. It actually is a more coherent story than the one you experience while playing Super Mario Bros. not to mention a whole lot of other games. #1 The Legend of Zelda - This is the game that killed the arcades. It took several years, but this is the game that made it happen. The gameplay of Zelda 1 was not possible in either an arcade or a home computer at the time. You needed to be able to save your progress, which was something arcade games couldn't do. And the game was too twitchy for any home computer in the mid 80's. It's the first action RPG, taking Ultima 1 gameplay, but then making it an action game. It also took the item ideas from Adventure and then took them so much further too. The game has tons of secrets. It's the first open-world action game. The game overworld feels huge compared to any action game that came before, and it has 9 dungeons. Zelda 1 just went so far and beyond every similar game that came before it, and since you could only experience this type of game on a home console, it ended up killing the arcades. That is why I put it as Nintendo's #1 most revolutionary game of all time. A true revolution has to overthrow the existing status quo, and that is exactly what it did. Gaming used to be defined by arcades, and even the best selling games on the Atari 2600 were mostly arcade ports. Zelda 1 showed you could make home console games that were a bigger draw than anything that was possible in the arcade. Zelda 1 shifted gaming from games made for arcades to games made specifically to be played on a home console. |
Yeah Wii Sports would be one of my picks too.
There's a lot of revisionist history where those who didn't like motion controls/the Wii claim that it's breakthroughs went nowhere, but I'd argue that it did more than almost any other single game this century to open up gaming to new audiences, growing the "casual" market who make up a large presence to this day on mobile/PC and on Switch/2, helping propel the success of games like Animal Crossing New Horizons, Ring Fit Adventure, etc.
