Quantum Leap: Which Nintendo-Created Game Moved The Industry Forward?

[Natoma]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13505

Here's the count from the article. Developer and gamer commentary are also in the article as well.

7 Super Mario 64
2 Super Mario Bros.
1 Pilotwings SNES
1 Wii Sports
1 Super Metroid
1 Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
1 Game & Watch series

My personal Nintendo game that pushed the industry forward? Starfox (SNES). It was one of the first true polygonal games, ran at a steady framerate, played wonderfully, and was a gorgeous game for the time. All this and it was a cartridge game!

The only other polygonal game that I can recall around that time was Silpheed, a Sega CD game which wasn't nearly as well received in terms of gameplay.

Anyway, I've put up a poll. Thoughts?

 

[one]

Why no Nintendogs or Brain Training, or Pokemon? No handhelds?

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

Super Mario 64 gets my vote.

Super Mario 64 pretty much brought 3D platform gaming to the forefront IMO.

 

[Rolf N]

I see Mario 64's heavy reuse of stages as a wonderful way to make the most out of a limited medium, but all the designs are lifted from Super Mario Bros and the 3d platforming controls themselves are ... not excellent IMO.

I think Nintendo's biggest contribution to gaming is Metroid, but it wouldn't be right to lift it out of the larger body of work. In its time Nintendo had lots of games that moved the medium forward, and wasn't so afraid to mix and match concepts, and have some overlap between games. Super Mario Bros, Kid Icarus, Punch Out, Metroid, Zelda 1. That was an excellent phase in Nintendo's history, and all the ideas that came out of there seem much more significant to me than the move to 3d graphics.

 

[Nesh]

Super Mario 64.

This is the game that made people go crazy with its free roaming enviroment. Me included. Although I think Tomb Raider would have done the same if Mario64 wasnt released a little bit before it

 

[Sis]

I see Mario 64's heavy reuse of stages as a wonderful way to make the most out of a limited medium, but all the designs are lifted from Super Mario Bros and the 3d platforming controls themselves are ... not excellent IMO.

This quote from the article explains best why I disagree with you:

The near-flawless execution of the "Mario" Camera. For the first time, it enabled the player to explore a 3D world with controls that didn't feel bulky and awkward.

Plus, wasn't this the first game to demonstrate the new analog thumbstick? That in itself is something we take for granted now.

But for my vote, where's the original Legend of Zelda? It not only hinted at how large and complex game worlds could become, it demonstrated that with its own large and complex game world.

 

[Rolf N]

This quote from the article explains best why I disagree with you:

Plus, wasn't this the first game to demonstrate the new analog thumbstick? That in itself is something we take for granted now.

I think with Sunshine the scheme has been perfected, but I'm not feeling it with Mario 64. The camera has a tendency to rotate out of place and that makes it challenging to go in straight lines, which it absolutely shouldn't be. Mario also has a whole lot of inertia and the jumps are very high (in context of what the camera can show you, i.e. precise landings depend a lot on camera wrangling). The camera is in a way another gameplay element, but the ideal (which was later achieved) is a camera that is purely for presentation, not for play. Mario 64 was an important step toward that goal, but it's not where it should be.
Ocarina Of Time did a lot of great things for in-game cameras and third-person control, and IMO it handles those fundamentals better than Mario 64, but I'll have to grant you that the absence of jumping limits the comparison.

But for my vote, where's the original Legend of Zelda? It not only hinted at how large and complex game worlds could become, it demonstrated that with its own large and complex game world.

To me it looks like the participants of the poll could name any game they wanted, not just one selected from a list, and between the few participants those were the games that have been mentioned.
I agree that Zelda 1 would have belonged on such a list.

 

[Sis]

I think with Sunshine the scheme has been perfected, but I'm not feeling it with Mario 64. The camera has a tendency to rotate out of place and that makes it challenging to go in straight lines, which it absolutely shouldn't be. Mario also has a whole lot of inertia and the jumps are very high (in context of what the camera can show you, i.e. precise landings depend a lot on camera wrangling). The camera is in a way another gameplay element, but the ideal (which was later achieved) is a camera that is purely for presentation, not for play. Mario 64 was an important step toward that goal, but it's not where it should be.

That's very true. The camera was a step forward, but not the leap I remembered--my memory was likely misled by my nostalgia for the game itself.

 

[LunchBox]

I voted for super mario 64.

AFAIK they were the first game to have a free-roaming camera...

before that, the 3D games had a fixed camera...

 

[Blade]

It's either SMB or SM64. I voted SMB on the basis that... I mean, Christ, it's SMB.

It was a good year or two ahead of anything else at that time, in terms of raw size and playability. On the NES, on the PC, everywhere.

 

[Fox5]

It's either SMB or SM64. I voted SMB on the basis that... I mean, Christ, it's SMB.

It was a good year or two ahead of anything else at that time, in terms of raw size and playability. On the NES, on the PC, everywhere.

I agree that it's one of those two, but I lean towards 64.
SMB seemed like it was a natural evolution of games, they were already heading in that direction. But with mario 64, as evidenced by the countless other 3d platformers out before it, they weren't naturally heading to the "explorable linked world" idea. Mario 64, imo, was different from any game before it because it wasn't just more, and it wasn't just a 2d idea done in 3d, it really was a game that could only be done in 3d.

 

[Titanio]

I voted SMB, though my initial intuition was SM64. But then I realised it was difficult to gauge its impact since so few games directly fell out of the trail it blazed. There were a couple of clones, but the 3D platformer seemed to become a very niche concern..perhaps because SM64 was just so hard to better. But I guess some of the stuff it did transcended genre.

 

[PARANOiA]

I agree that it's one of those two, but I lean towards 64.
SMB seemed like it was a natural evolution of games, they were already heading in that direction. But with mario 64, as evidenced by the countless other 3d platformers out before it, they weren't naturally heading to the "explorable linked world" idea. Mario 64, imo, was different from any game before it because it wasn't just more, and it wasn't just a 2d idea done in 3d, it really was a game that could only be done in 3d.

You've summed up my vote for Mario64 so well, I don't need to add anything else.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

7 Super Mario 64
2 Super Mario Bros.
1 Pilotwings SNES
1 Wii Sports
1 Super Metroid
1 Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
1 Game & Watch series

I'd vote for Game & Watch. Everything else, that I know of, wasn't radically different to the point alternatives weren't around or likely to appear. Whereas G&W was the real start of (handheld) gaming and was the birthplace for many of Nintendo's IPs.

 

[inefficient]

I vote Mario64. I played the hell of that game when it came out. I played with no strategy guide till I got all 120 stars - that's how long it held my attention. It was totally new an unlike anything before it.

I love Zelda64 as well. But that game came out pretty damn late. If it came out earlier, maybe it would have had a bigger impact on games in general. Truthfully, in my book, Majora's Mask is the better game. That whole time thing is something I still have not seen done as well in any other game.

 

[soylent]

This quote from the article explains best why I disagree with you

This quote explains best why I disagree with you:

Plus, wasn't this the first game to demonstrate the new analog thumbstick? That in itself is something we take for granted now.

That's exactly right and it's a horrible input device. Ever since consoles went 3d and settled upon this terrible stop gap solution I completely lost interest in console games with the exception of zelda, which is good enough to endure the terribly imprecise control method and it's low dynamic range.

 

[NERO]

I voted for other, more specifically Zelda 1 for NES. I'm pretty sure it was the first cartridge based game that allowed saves, was relatively open-ended at the time and had a large world for the time.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I voted for Super Mario Bros. Sure, Pitfall came out 3 years earlier, but with Super Mario Bros, I think the big thing was the secrets and the varied worlds. It had this huge replayability factor, because you could do anything from see how quickly you could beat the game to try and beat the game without skipping a world, see if you could find every secret, try to take out Bowser with fireballs, and so on. There was just so much to do, and so many ways to play the game and get through a level, that it just really opened up the concept of what a game could be. With the time and expense that goes into making a level these days, I doubt we'll see much of optional levels and secret routes anymore.

 

[Sis]

That's exactly right and it's a horrible input device. Ever since consoles went 3d and settled upon this terrible stop gap solution I completely lost interest in console games with the exception of zelda, which is good enough to endure the terribly imprecise control method and it's low dynamic range.

Would you prefer that we be stuck with the d-pad? I understand it might not be perfect, but there's a reason why it's successful. I can certainly think of different input devices that would work better for particular games, but one nice thing about the analog thumb stick is its versatility. Plus, the software plays a large role in how you might perceive it...