1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die

[Dtrain]

You do realize that playing 1000 games would mean you played 33 different video games every year since 1980.

Even in a good year, including flash games, portable games, arcade games, etc, I doubt I hit 30 unique games in a year more than once or twice, if that. Maybe in the years everyone had a box full of pirated c64 games.

Maybe they're talking about games played, like "I was late for class once because I got into this 4 hour game of warcraft II."

[schild]

You do realize that playing 1000 games would mean you played 33 different video games every year since 1980.

There's a reason I said this book was a bad idea before it was announced.

[Margalis]

I probably had years where I played 100+ different games, but most of those would be arcade games. If by "played" you mean "played at least once" I would probably be over a thousand lifetime I'd imagine. Certainly in the high hundreds.

But of course not all 1000 of those would be worth playing.

Edit: I'm counting the number of titles I've played for various systems:

NES: 97
SNES: 92

Yeah I would go over 1000 I think. I've probably played 5 times as many arcade games as NES games (at least) and I've played some games from pretty much every system from Colecovision on. Especially when you're a kid you get exposed to all sorts of stuff at friend's houses etc.

[Velorath]

Counted 127 NES games that I've played.  When video stores started renting games I was pretty much playing something different every week.  If someone deliberately wanted to just play a large volume of games (play each game once or twice and then move on), it wouldn't be too much trouble to get MAME or an NES emulator and just blaze through a bunch of stuff.  Plus there have been a ton of compilation discs for Intellivision and Atari stuff, all the way up through more recent stuff like that Sega collection that came out a ways back. 

Obviously that wouldn't be the best way to come across 1001 must-play games, but with a small amount of research, it also wouldn't be too hard to make a list of games that a lot of people like that you haven't played yet.  Alternately, one could write a book that isn't part of a series that sets the required number at 1001 regardless of what the subject is about.

[Margalis]

The 1001 movies version is similar, in that you see the film to understand where films have progressed from. Take the movie "Metropolis", for instance - very important to sci-fi films, lots of imagination, boring as hell (and I haven't even seen the full version that I believe could run in at 2+ hours). Or you see a Kurosawa film to see all the things he did first, or watch Buster Keaton's "The General" as one of the best of that type of film.

I have a long held view that video gamers have an awful sense of game history and gaming is poorer for it.

All good points and I agree 100%. However movies have been around much longer than games and more movies are produced annually.

I'm a big proponent of understanding the history of any thing you're enthusiastic about but there simply are not 1000 games worth playing. At 1000 you're venturing into "The NES version of Blades of Steel, not to be confused with the arcade version listed separately" territory.

[Velorath]

I think it depends on how much minutia you want to get into.  If you want to show the history and evolution of games in general as well as a comprehensive evolution of each genre, I could see coming up with 1000 games fairly easily (FPS games alone would probably be a list of several dozen).    Of course it would be better broken up into separate books.  As this 1001 Video Games book is under 1000 pages though and thus can't even devote 1 full page to each game, they aren't going to be doing anything so comprehensive.

[schild]

Here's the deal, I've probably played 400 games on the SNES.

I wouldn't recommend more than 10.

And therein lies the problem.

Edit: None of these books are notably comprehensive.

[Morat20]

I think you're missing Velorath's point. If it's "games you should play because they're awesome and every gamer should know them" -- a thousand and one is WAY too many.

If it's "Here's the 1001 games that shaped today's gaming industry, and how and what is considered 'fun' and worthy of time, money and prodution" -- maybe. Still probably two or three times too many games, but not as obscenely stupid.

You want to talk about WoW (which will be on the list, for sure), and where it fits into the gaming genre and why it's the way it is -- you have to talk about EQ and UO (and EQ2 and SWG -- to show how they evolved), about the Warcraft brand and their RTS's, then talk about Wizardry, Ultima, even the Bard's Tale. (Technically, you should also talk about D&D, but tha'ts a bit far afield). Probably throw in some of the Gold BOx stuff -- Curse of the Azure Bonds, for instance.

Where CRPG started, how they changed, what became common and what was left behind, and how it jumped to online play -- and what did, and didn't work, what was and wasn't popular, and why. Then how it merged with a popular RTS franchise.

[UnSub]

Bad games need to be included as well. All gamers need to know about ET and Night Trap, for instance.

[Teleku]

Bad games need to be included as well. All gamers need to know about ET and Night Trap, for instance.

Oh man, I remember when I was very young wanting to play Night Trap so bad because it was so controversial.  Which meant it must be the greatest game ever.  Alas, my family was poor, and the Sega CD was way beyond the means of my family to afford.  It's sort of funny to look back on those days, and remember myself thinking I'll never be rich enough to ever play something like the Sega CD.

[Margalis]

Truth be told I kind of enjoyed Night Trap.

[WayAbvPar]

Rescue on Fractalus better be on there too, for the only game that ever made me literally fall out of my chair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=M8opv5u9nf0

 

Heh I knew what that video was going to be before I clicked the link. That was terrifying! The SS soldiers bursting into rooms screaming in German in the original Escape From Castle Wolfenstein was another pants soiler.

[Morat20]

Heh I knew what that video was going to be before I clicked the link. That was terrifying! The SS soldiers bursting into rooms screaming in German in the original Escape From Castle Wolfenstein was another pants soiler.

I think I had a moment like that in the original Unreal. I was walking down a corridor in the crashed ship, feeling distinctly unarmed (whatever weapon I had was something weak and scavenged) when the lights started going off, and then some giant evil snarling alien jumped out of the dark.

There was a good deal of random panic and firing. I love moments like that.

[squirrel]

Heh I knew what that video was going to be before I clicked the link. That was terrifying! The SS soldiers bursting into rooms screaming in German in the original Escape From Castle Wolfenstein was another pants soiler.

I think I had a moment like that in the original Unreal. I was walking down a corridor in the crashed ship, feeling distinctly unarmed (whatever weapon I had was something weak and scavenged) when the lights started going off, and then some giant evil snarling alien jumped out of the dark.

There was a good deal of random panic and firing. I love moments like that.

I fondly remember both of these events. The Unreal more so for some reason - that really got me. I think it was because that was one of the games I got when I built a new 3D kickass gaming rig.

EDIT: I can't recall 100%, but I think I had dual Voodoo's and Unreal was the uber shiny that year.

EDIT 2: Hah! Found a list. I had a Voodoo 5! It kicked ass. I think.

[Sheepherder]

I don't like monster closets, they're shitty.  I tolerate them if I need to, but even Ravenholm in HL2 pissed me off, and it was pretty cool when it wasn't pissing me off.