- I'm Jon-Paul Dyson, director of
the International Center for the History
of Electronic Games at The Strong Museum.
- And I'm Shannon Simons,
curator for Electronic Games
at the Strong Museum.
- And this is every iconic video
game for the last 40 years.
[rock music]
- [Shannon] When deciding
which game to pick each year,
we looked at a variety of factors.
The game had to be iconic.
People had to recognize it.
It had wide geographic reach
and was played all across the world.
It had cultural significance
with a lot of people even
outside the gaming industry.
- 1979, Asteroids.
In the 1970s Atari ruled the arcade scene,
but in the late 1970s
competition came from Japan
in the form of Space Invaders.
Atari needed a followup.
Asteroids was the answer.
This rock blasting game featuring
asteroids hurdling through space
inspired by the original Space War game
from the early 1960s,
but it proved to be a gold mine for Atari,
raking in the quarters,
both in the arcade,
and eventually when
ported to home console.
Asteroids combined this
amazing fluidity of movement
with excitement.
The sound ramped up, the action ramped up,
the asteroids came faster and faster.
It generated coins by the bucketful
and really made a lot of money for Atari
and brought internal fame
to Ed Logg and Lyle Rains the developers.
- 1980, Pac-Man, when creator Toru Iwatani
was eating a pizza and removed a slice
he got this image of this yellow ball
going across the screen eating pellets,
and he thought that
that would be something
that would appeal widely
across genders, across ages.
Not only did Pac-Man
do well in the arcade,
but it became the first game
to incite this licensing craze.
Pac-Man's fun for everyone.
All you have to do is go around a maze.
And it also had these wonderful ghosts.
In 1982 Ms. Pac-Man
became one of the first
iconic female video game characters.
- 1981 Donkey Kong.
Donkey Kong introduced to video games
two of its most important characters.
The first was the games
creator, Shigeru Miyamoto
who saved Nintendo when
they were desperately
looking for a game to replace
their failed Radar Scope.
It was a delightful game featuring
a character called Jump Man,
who saved this damsel in distress
from the clutches of an evil gorilla.
The second character
was, of course, Jump Man,
who we know as Mario.
Without Donkey Kong there may be no Mario
and video games would be very
different than they are today.
- 1982, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial.
E.T. is an example of a video game
that's remembered for
all the wrong reasons.
It's considered one of the
biggest commercial failures
of the entire video game industry.
It only took five and
a half weeks to develop
due to licensing rights and trying to get
the game out for the holiday season.
[video game noises]
The game just didn't play well.
Legend had it that
after the game's failure
Atari buried thousands upon
thousands of these cartridges
in a landfill in the New Mexico desert
that turned out to be true
during a 2014 excavation
when all of these cartridges were dug up.
E.T. is often credited as a great example
of why the video game
industry crashed in 1983.
A lotta games were being produced
and the console market
was glutted with games
that just weren't selling.
The PC industry was also
taking off at the time.
But when people talk about the crash,
they always talk about E.T.
- 1983, M.U.L.E.
When people think of video games
they usually think of the
games, not the creators.
But when Trip Hawkins founded
Electronic Arts in 1982
he wanted to change that.
He wanted to bring the
developers to the floor.
And so he got some of the best developers
in the business to create games.
One of those creators was Dan Bunten,
who later became Danielle Bunten Berry.
Bunten used to say that no one ever died
wishing they'd spent more time
in front of a computer screen
and wanted to bring that spirit
of a board game to a computer game.
M.U.L.E. did this successfully.
It's a game designer's game,
and one that is still influential today,
shaping how we think of multiplayer games
for a mass audience.
- 1984, King's Quest.
The game development
company, Sierra Online,
became synonymous with
graphical adventures,
mainly because of the success
of the game King's Quest,
developed and created by
co-founder Roberta Williams,
who became one of the most
iconic female video game designers.
King's Quest combined the best
of early text adventure games
with pioneering graphics
for IBM's latest computer, The PC Junior.
King's Quest allowed players
a freedom of movement
that they hadn't experienced before,
including being able to move in front of
and behind objects on the screen.
It's a game that appealed to everyone,
both women and men alike,
and people who perhaps
weren't even generally fans
of computer games at the time.
Although the PC Junior itself
proved to be a commercial failure,
King's Quest found new
life when it was ported
to other computer systems
such as the Commodore 64
and the Apple II line.
- 1985, Super Mario Bros.
Mario first appeared in
Donkey Kong as Jump Man.
It wasn't until 1895
when he first appeared
in his breakout series [foreign language].
Mario's gameplay became so popular
because it was so simple.
You scrolled in one direction,
jumping over enemies like Koopa Troopas,
and Goombas and try to
avoid falling in pits,
which made it easy to play for everyone,
no matter what level you were.
He has appeared in over 200 games
on every single Nintendo
console ever created.
And in the survey in
the 1990s more children
recognized Mario even than Mickey Mouse.
1986, The Legend of Zelda.
If you first played Zelda
on the Nintendo Entertainment System,
you might be confused as to
why we're introducing this
in 1986 instead of 1987.
But it actually premiered
on the Japanese only
Nintendo Famicom Disk
System as a flagship game.
It was initially thought
of by Shigeru Miyamoto,
the creator of Mario and Donkey Kong,
as a counterpoint.
Something that was a
little bit more complex.
It pioneered this open world feel.
This miniature garden
where players would explore
the entire land of Hyrule openly,
without having a discrete path to follow.
It gave rise to some of the most
iconic lines in video game history.
It's dangerous to go along, take this.
The Legend of Zelda is
still popular today,
even with some of the
more recent iterations
such as Breath of the
Wild and Ocarina of Time.
[video game music]
- 1987, Tecmo Bowl.
Every year sports games
dominate the bestsellers lists.
Games like John Madden
Football are purchased
by millions of players every year.
But early on, football games were
largely absent from the video game scene.
There have been games like
Atari's arcade game Football.
But it was a pretty boring
abstract game of x's and o's.
Tecmo Bowl brought to
video games live action,
two screens, four players.
It was a real hit in the arcade,
and also when it was ported
to the home console at home.
Tecmo Bowl had bright simple colors,
but most of all it was the action
that took foremost in the game,
and that's what made it really exciting.
While the teams in Tecmo Bowl
were not real, the players were.
A licensing deal with the
NFL Players Association
brought real named players to the game
that brought an extra level of excitement.
[video game music]
1988, Wasteland.
Role playing games had been
around since the 1970s.
First in pen and paper form
and then in computer games.
But mostly they're fantasy games,
things taking places in dungeons
with spells and wizards.
Wasteland was different.
Not set in a fantasy world,
but a post-apocalyptic landscape,
but one that was filled not
only with a little horror,
but also a lotta humor as well.
- 1989, Tetris.
Tetris was originally
created by a Soviet designer,
Alexey Pajitnov, in 1984 on an
Electronica 60 mini computer.
But it wasn't until its release in 1989
on Nintendo's Game Boy handheld
that it achieved real worldwide success.
The title's a combination
of the Greek word
tetra for four and tennis.
It also has its origins
in the game Pentominoes,
where players take puzzle pieces
and fit them together
in a box-like puzzle.
Tetris became famous as a
game that was easy to play
but difficult to master.
Tetris is still probably the most
popular puzzle game on the market.
It's something that people can enjoy
not only on their computers
but also on mobile handheld devices.
It's a game you can play really quickly
while you're waiting for the bus.
- 1990, Microsoft Windows Solitaire.
When we think of computer games
we don't usually think of card games.
But perhaps the most popular
computer game of all time
was a card game, Microsoft Solitaire,
introduced with Windows
3.0 operating system.
The game was crucial, not only in ensuring
that people wasted
millions of hours of time
playing this addicting game,
but also teaches them how to use a mouse,
a device that was completely
new to many people,
and so they could learn
how to click, drag,
do other things with this
device by playing a game.
- I totally don't play that
while I'm at work, do you?
- No, not at all.
- No.
- No, never have, never have.
[laughing]
- 1991, Sonic the Hedgehog.
In the early 1990s Sega and Nintendo
were locked in a battle
for the hearts and minds
of their console fan base.
Sega wanted to paint Nintendo
as a console for children.
They decided to have an
in-house design contest
to create a brand new character.
They came up with the
idea of this blue hedgehog
code named Mr. Needlemouse
who became Sonic the Hedgehog.
With Sonic the Hedgehog
they intended to appeal
to an older audience with
someone who was more hip,
cool, resonated with Gen X.
Then with the advent of the Sega Genesis
and especially with Sonic
the Hedgehog in 1991,
Sega vaulted forward and
just absolutely dominated
the 16-bit console market.
- 1992, Mortal Kombat.
Finish him.
[voice game sounds and screaming]
Never before has there been a game
that's created so much excitement,
or maybe I should say controversy.
Mortal Kombat was a fighting game
with over-the-top graphic violence
that today looks tame, but
back then, outraged people.
Some of those people were U.S. senators.
The result was not only
a wildly popular game,
but senate hearings that
led to the development
of the ESRB, the rating code
that continues to govern
video games today.
Mortal Kombat's violence
was not so much disturbing
to some people because it was realistic.
Ripping the spine out of our opponent
is not necessarily realistic.
But it was because it was so gratuitous
and also because [voice muffled]
it was marketed to children.
Who a game is marketed
to is sometimes important
in determining how people react to it
as to what it actually contains.
Mortal Kombat helped not only
boost the fighting game scene,
but also created an interest in games
that really were spectacles at the arcade.
Games like Street
Fighter Two would be ones
in which players competed
to see who was the best.
Mortal Kombat has an important legacy
not only for its sociopolitical effects,
but also just for its effects
in the game world itself.
1993, Doom.
Anyone who played Doom
when it first came out
will never forget the experience.
This was just mesmerizing,
adrenaline boosting,
sheer joy of blasting away
these enemies coming at you.
Its first person perspective
was revolutionary,
and as revolutionary was the
way that it was distributed.
The digital shareware.
You could download the first chapter,
play it, and get hooked.
John Carmack and John
Romero were the geniuses
who set this ammo-blasting,
adrenaline-fueled,
action-packed adventure
set to heavy metal music
that really just turned the
video game industry upside down.
Doom popularized the first person shooter,
showing how compelling it could be
to look down the barrel of your gun
at enemies swarming at you.
It was a game that was
impossible to turn away from
and you just had to keep
playing as long as you survived.
- 1994, Super Metroid.
Super Metroid is widely
considered the best game
in the entire Metroid franchise.
As bounty hunter Samus, you're
on this isolated spaceship,
going through, trying to capture pirates.
Players of the original
Metroid probably remember
that they reveal at the
end Samus was a girl.
Samus wasn't the first female
protagonist in a video game.
But she certainly did
become the most popular,
especially of the era.
And was the first to really be seen
as a non-sexualized character.
When she's in her armor
you really don't care
whether she's male or
female, she's just awesome.
Super Metroid was one of the first games
to have multiple endings.
Three in this particular case.
And it became very popular
in speed running communities,
as they raced to beat the clock
to get the best ending possible.
- 1995, Command and Conquer.
Command and Conquer wasn't the first
real time strategy game from Westwood,
but it was a game that brought together
in a perfect combination
all the elements of skill,
strategy, and speed to make for a good
real time strategy game today.
Command and Conquer really
showed other manufacturers
that RTSs, real time strategy games,
had an audience who just
craved the excitement
of trying to defeat your opponent
while so many things are
happening all around you.
- 1996, Tomb Raider.
1996 was actually a really
big year for video games,
with releases of epics like
Diablo and Resident Evil.
- [Woman] Look out, it's a monster.
- Let me take care of this.
[gunshots blasting]
- But we picked Tomb
Raider for one huge reason.
And her name was Lara Croft.
Lara was this no-nonsense
Indiana Jones-esque character.
She was doing everything
that the traditional action hero did
except that she was doing it in hot pants.
As awesome as Lara was, she can sometimes
be seen as a sex symbol as well.
Tomb Raider really set the
standard for 3D video games
with the ability for characters
to move in every direction,
to jump, climb, swing, and
in this particular case,
find some pretty cool treasure.
1997, Final Fantasy VII.
When Hironobu Sakaguchi released
the original Final Fantasy,
it wasn't the first role playing game,
but it was really the first
to take it to that next level,
but in 1997 when Square
published the seventh iteration
of their Final Fantasy genre
it really, really broke the mold.
Prior to this role playing games
were mostly super popular in Japan.
Final Fantasy VII exploded
the role playing genre
in America and Europe.
The game allowed you to explore
lots of different areas,
and as one of these original
four heroes of light,
as you tried to go out and save
the world from destruction,
you were able to explore different areas,
find treasure, and level up
all of your weapons and gear.
If you started out as a fighter
you definitely had a
cooler sword by the end.
With characters like Cloud Strife,
the devilishly handsome
Sephiroth, and Aerith,
whose death unfortunately remains
one of the most tear-inducing
moments in video game history.
[sad music]
1998, Pokemon Red and Blue.
1998 was a big year for Nintendo.
They released what's considered sometimes
the most popular game of all time,
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.
[video game sounds]
But in this case we're gonna
talk about a different game.
A smaller one that changed
the way portable play worked.
You might be a little confused
as to why we're introducing
Pokemon in 1998 when it actually
came out in Japan in 1996.
That was released as
Pokemon [foreign language],
Red and Green.
The original Red and Green
was only released in Japan.
And when it came over here
they decided to shorten it to Pokemon
from the original title Pocket Monsters,
because it needed to fit on
the small Game Boy screen
and it was just easier to read.
There was also a licensing issue,
because there was a Pocket
Monsters game already over here.
Creator Satoshi Tajiri was
this huge bug collector
when he was a child.
And he decided that he
really wanted to give
children in Japanese
cities the opportunity
to do their own bug collecting.
He had this vision of
insects crawling along
the game link cable that
connected two Game Boys together.
And thus, Pokemon was born.
Pokemon is still considered one of
the most popular RPGs of all time.
And its legacy can still be seen
in the 2016 augmented
reality game, Pokemon Go
as people walk around
with their smartphones
and collect Pokemon
right in their backyard.
Pokemon also created an
entire transmedia franchise
that included one of the most popular
trading card games of all
time as well as anime series,
movies, board games,
pretty much everything you can think of,
you can catch 'em all.
- 1999, Shenmue.
To the non-gamer, Shenmue sounds
like maybe a killer whale.
But in reality it's one
of the most exciting
open world games ever
created, a real pioneer,
which players were lost in a world
where they could do all sorts of things,
from battling enemies to racing forklifts.
Shenmue liberated players
to explore in ways
that they hadn't really explored before.
It's designer, Yu Suzuki,
was a brilliant designer
who knew how to make
worlds seem to come alive
in ways that really tasks the limits
of the Sega Dreamcast for players
was a revelation of how immersive
a video game world could be.
2000, The Sims.
One of the geniuses of Will Wright
is that he looked for inspirations
in the everyday world.
His hit game Sim City drew on the way
that a model train set can
bring alive a miniature world.
Similarly, with The Sims
he found a dollhouse
an inspiration for a new way of playing,
one that really changed the way we look at
how Sim games work and the
worlds that they can create.
People have been playing with
dollhouses for centuries.
But The Sims brought
alive worlds of players
who interacted with each
other, had emotions,
and did mundane, every day
things like going to work
or using the bathroom.
The game was strangely compelling.
Players spent hours
building their Sims up,
seeing them interact with each other,
and really creating this
digital world that felt alive
and the realism and the
emotions that the Sims felt
and related to one another.
- 2001, Halo: Combat Evolved.
A game called GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64
showed that first person shooters
could be successful on consoles.
In 2001 Microsoft broke into
the home console market with their Xbox.
They perfected it.
Or at least came really, really close.
Halo was a game that broke the boundaries
of what a traditional first
person shooter could be.
It had a sweeping plot line,
a highly developed world,
and characters that players
really, really bonded with.
It also pioneered some new game mechanics,
like the idea of only being able
to carry two weapons at a time.
That forced players to asses
and reassess every situation
that they went into in order to make sure
that they had the correct weapon.
Halo became known as
the Xbox's killer app,
which basically means that the
console might not have sold
nearly so well without it.
In fact, a full 50% of Xbox consoles sold
in conjunction with a
copy of the Halo game.
Halo also became extraordinarily
famous for its multiplayer,
which might seem odd because it actually
came out before the advent of Xbox Live
and players had to play on a
local area network connection.
But it allowed up to 16
people to play simultaneously,
which was huge for a console at the time.
- It may be an exaggeration to say
that the fate of the Xbox
franchise rested on Halo,
but not that much of an exaggeration.
The game was really
instrumental in cementing
not only the platform success,
but an image of what sort of player
really gravitated towards the Xbox.
2002, Metal Gear Solid 2.
Video games are usually built around
speed, action, and less so stealth.
But the Metal Gear Solid franchise
was really key in bringing that
game mechanic to popularity.
And yet this game had
its own form of stealth.
Metal Gear Solid 2 reshaped
the face of stealth games.
Hideo Kojima's brilliant
game really brought
the artistry of a stealth game
with its different demands on a player
to a new height that
hadn't been reached before.
Metal Gear Solid is the most enduring
stealth franchise in video games.
And Metal Gear Solid 2 was
key to making that happen.
2003, Call of Duty.
World War II is often
known as the good war,
with clear protagonists and antagonists.
The result is that it is easily
ported over to video games.
But no game has ever done it as well,
perhaps, as Call of Duty.
It put players on a
mission to fight the enemy
in a way that was thrilling,
and at the time, highly realistic.
Just as generations earlier,
little kids that played
with little green army men
in their sandboxes, now kids all grown up,
have an amazing time playing in this world
of Word War II in which you were
trying to fight the enemy and stay alive.
As a franchise, Call of Duty
has been a tremendous hit
for Activision and some of
the bestselling games of all time.
- 2004, World of Warcraft.
In 1997 Richard Garriott coined the term
massively multiplayer
online role playing game,
or MMORPG for short, for
his game Ultima Online.
But it wasn't until 2004
when Blizzard released
World of Warcraft when the
genre really took hold.
With its peak of 12 million players,
WOW really took the internet by storm.
Not only was it an easier RPG,
which allowed players who
maybe wouldn't be so interested
in in depth role playing game to play,
it also made it super easy
for people to catch up
with lots of XP giving
quests and not huge penalties
when you die.
It made novice players able to catch up to
the more experienced companions
a lot faster than normal.
World of Warcraft is still
the most iconic MMORPG on the map.
When people think of MMOs they still
think of World of Warcraft first.
- 2005, Guitar Hero.
In video games it's all
about the controller.
Think about the simple Atari joystick,
or the controller for the NES.
But most controllers are
variations on a theme.
With Guitar Hero players got
something completely different.
Here was a simulated guitar
that anyone could pick up
and know sort of what to do
with pretty much right away.
Guitar Hero was a party game
that expanded their reach of video games.
Anyone at a social gathering
wanted to pick up the guitar
and play and try to see how they do,
even if, in the end,
they probably didn't
hit all the right notes.
- 2006, Wii Sports.
You probably have an idea in your head
when someone says, "I'm a video gamer."
And the first thing you think of is
probably not your 90-year-old grandmother.
But wen it comes to Wii Sports
you might as well think about her,
because she's probably playing it.
Along with all of her grandkids.
Wii Sports became one of the
most popular sports games
and one of the most
popular games of all time
and launched the Nintendo Wii
console to massive success.
In fact, there were lots of people
who were buying Nintendo
Wii who didn't even know
that it could play a different game.
Wii Sports helped the Nintendo Wii
sell over 100 million consoles,
and its' motion-controlled
remote and nunchuck
even spurred Microsoft and Sony
to design their own
motion controlled system
the Microsoft Kinect and
the PlayStation move.
2007, Portal.
In 2007 Valve Corporation
released a really interesting,
almost funny-looking game
called The Orange Box.
It was a compilation of five games.
Four of them were first person shooters
from some of their more
popular franchises,
like Half Life Two and Team Fortress Two,
and there was this short
puzzle game called Portal.
Surprisingly enough, that small game,
which could be completed
in four hours or less,
ended up receiving more critical acclaim
than the other four games put together.
Portal had a unique gameplay
system using portal guns,
which allowed the shooter
to shoot in one area
and move in a different direction.
So you could exit one
room in one direction
and enter another in
the opposite direction,
or in fact move through
walls and ceilings.
But one of the most
enduring parts of portal
was its single vocalist.
- [GLaDOS] Very, very good.
A complementary victory lift
has been activated in the main chamber.
- Her name was Ellen McClain
and she played a darkly sarcastic
artificial intelligence named GLaDOS,
who promised to navigate you
through the Aperture Science Lab.
And as long as you perform
to her satisfaction,
you would be rewarded
with a delicious slice
of black forest cake.
Unfortunately the cake was a lie.
She actually tried to kill you.
[video game sounds]
- 2008, World of Goo.
Video games, especially
starting in the 1990s,
were made by massive teams
pouring massive amounts of money
into the development of the game.
But starting in the early 2000s
new tools began to emerge that
allowed single individuals
or small teams to create a game.
One of those games was World of Goo.
A fun, splattering game that really
had a playful spirit about it,
and yet, low budget looking animations.
The result was something attainable,
yet fun, and really spurred
the indie game movement
that really is a key player
in today's video game world.
2009, Angry Birds.
It's the first game that really
transcended mobile gaming.
Not only inspired people
sometimes to buy a phone itself,
but also to buy lots of other merchandise
inspired by the game.
Angry Birds was important,
not only for its popularity,
but the way it brought new
gamers into the fold of gaming.
Someone who would never
consider themselves a gamer
found themselves addicted to Angry Birds.
Eagerness to see if they could knock down
those devilish pigs and really try to get
to the next level in the
game that was frustrating,
fascinating, and most of all, fun.
- 2010, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty.
Starcraft is one of the best examples
of the real time strategy genre.
Unlike a lot of the most popular
real time strategy games,
it takes place in space,
with three very distinct races.
Humans, Protoss, and Zergs.
One of the things that
sets Starcraft apart
from its contemporaries
was the fact that each
faction was uniquely different
in how you could build your bases,
lead your armies, and
what your powers were.
The original Starcraft also
pioneered what we call today
the eGames Sports movement.
The eSports movement was
especially popular in South Korea.
But with Starcraft 2 it branched out
and became one of the most
popular eSport games worldwide.
- 2011, Minecraft.
A Lego brick affords a
lot more varieties at play
than the talking Barbie.
Both can be fun, but one opens
up many more possibilities.
Minecraft was the Lego brick
of the video game universe.
Add simple eight-bit looking graphics
that opened up a creative
world for players
to build things that they could imagine
in ways they couldn't build in real life
with those atom-based Lego bricks.
Result was a game that has yielded
millions of hours of gameplay as players
discover the possibilities
of building something
on the computer screen that
before they could only imagine.
- 2012, Journey.
Set in a vast desert where
the player feels small against
this wide expansive
sand and tall mountains.
Journey evokes this sense
of solitude and wonder.
Players are allowed to communicate
with each other only through chimes.
Not through a voice or text.
They can help each other but never hinder.
The game was also designed
to be so simplistic
that players wouldn't require
any in-game instruction
so they wouldn't be
taken out of their world.
Journey is also known for its
sweeping, evocative soundtrack,
which was the first video game
to be nominated for a Grammy Award.
[intense music]
- 2013, The Last of US.
Early video games were long
on play and short on story.
There's not much story in Donkey Kong.
It was a damsel in distress,
Jump Man rescuing his love.
Yeah, as games have developed over time
the stories have gotten more compelling,
and studios have learned how to tell
those stories more effectively.
The Last of Us, in some ways,
[voice muffled] very standard genre,
the zombie apocalypse.
With many video games there
are very artificial mechanics
that move the story along.
Maybe you get to a new
level, for instance,
or your character gains new abilities.
But The Last of Us, you're
in the story always,
as your main character and
the girl who is the sidekick,
went through the story,
developing almost like a novel.
It was compelling because it felt real
in a way that more artificial
systems would not have.
- 2014, Destiny.
Destiny was developed by Bungie,
best known for their Halo franchise.
And with Destiny they
created yet another hit.
Perhaps best known for its
persistent online world,
which means that things
continuously happen
even when you're not logged on,
Destiny creates a world where players
can do their own thing,
but also just randomly
meet up with other people
for worldwide events.
Maybe there's a boss fight that pops up.
Or a raid that needs to be completed.
Everyone can interact or you can ignore it
and just keep on doing what you're doing.
The choice is up to you.
Bungie also made a commitment with Destiny
that it was going to be
continuously updated,
they said until the end of time.
But probably at least until
the company goes out of business.
Because of that Destiny
receives continuous updates
and support so players never have to worry
that they're gonna run out of new content.
2015, Undertale.
Most video games are developed
by a whole crowd of people,
or at the very least one or two.
Undertale was developed, published,
written, and composed by
a single person, Toby Fox.
He created a game that he wanted to play.
And if there was an element
in a game that he didn't like,
he just didn't include it.
So for example, he hated fetch quests
because it made you go back
and retread old ground.
He also hated being forced to
grind for experience points.
So none of those things
appeared in Undertale.
One thing that did, however,
was a very interesting game mechanic
that allowed you three choices
whenever you faced a monster.
You could fight them and kill them
like you normally would in a video game,
but you could also choose to flea
or you could choose to befriend them.
And depending on you choice,
and your various choices
throughout the game,
you received a different ending.
That could sometimes even
continue on to subsequent plays
if you decided to play
the game over again.
- 2016, That Dragon, Cancer.
When Trip Hawkins first
started Electronic Arts,
he ran a series of ads
that asked the question,
can a game make you cry?
With That Dragon, Cancer, there was a game
that really had the potential
to move players to tears,
in large part because it was based
on the real life experience
of the developer,
who lost his son.
That Dragon, Cancer,
brought to the video game
the tragedy and sometimes the
tedium of what it was like
to wait with a sick
child, to experience that.
It's a game that anyone who
played it could not forget.
And it's a game that began to
show the power of the medium
as it developed to bring new senses
of what was possible in video games.
New ways to move players and
new ways to show the artistry
and the pathos that is
possible in video games.
- 2017, Fortnite.
The most important games
sometimes aren't the first games
to adapt a certain medium.
Take the battle royale
mode of video games.
Fortnite was not the first game
to use a battle royale mode,
in which you're the last player standing.
Think of something like
Hunger Games, for instance.
But something about
Fortnite was compelling.
Well, maybe that something was the fact
that it was free to play
and also the fact that it had graphics
that were accessible to anyone.
Meanwhile, a circle is shrinking,
limiting the amount of space you can go.
Meaning that in the end only
one person will survive.
It was not the first battle royale game,
but something about the game,
that combination of fast action,
of suspense, of accessible graphics,
and the free to play mode made
it a video game phenomenon,
brought new players in,
brought players of all
ages together to play.
- 2018, Celeste.
Some games you just enjoy playing.
There's not really as much
rhyme or reason for it,
you just really like it.
Celeste tended to be one of those,
with the gamers for whom it was popular.
Celeste had some
interesting game mechanics
that allowed you to do things
like double dash in midair.
It wasn't the first game to do that,
but combined with the fact that each room
was its own individual puzzle,
it made everything feel faster, stronger,
and it also allowed for a
great deal of replayability,
since each room had maybe
a different way to play it.
Several rooms also had
hidden cassette tapes.
If you found the cassette tape
it would unlock a b-side to the level,
which was a harder version.
If you beat every single b-side
it unlocked a c-side and allowed you
to play an even harder version.
Basically allowing for almost
endless replayability of the game.
But what really hooked a
lot of players to Celeste
was the protagonist herself,
a young girl named Madeline,
who was trying desperately
to scale a mountain.
She kept being hindered
by a reflection of herself
that she called a piece of me.
It turned out that this piece of her
was a metaphor for her own
internal anxiety and depression,
and it was only by combining
the two aspects of herself,
that she was able to
finally scale the mountain,
which is a really interesting metaphor,
I think, for most of us.
- [Jon-Paul] That was every iconic game
for the past 40 years.
- [Shannon] We hope you learned something
and had some fun doing it.
We'll look forward to seeing
what the next 40 years bring.
[light music]
