Video games are like a living thing, always changing and growing. Every week, developers bring out new games with fresh ways to play, new goals, and different interfaces. It’s not like movies, where watching one pretty much prepares you for any other. If you’ve mastered a fantasy epic, you’ll still need time to learn a complex strategy game. But some games didn’t just add a new twist; they completely rewrote the rules or even built the playground we all play in today. Let’s dive into ten such legendary video games that, one way or another, changed how all games are played.
10 The Stanley Parable
If you’ve spent even a little time with The Stanley Parable, you’ll understand its spot here. Often called an interactive drama, this unique title penned by William Pugh sparked a wave of indie “non-game” experiences. These games focus less on traditional objectives and more on exploration and narrative choice.
In The Stanley Parable, you play as Stanley, an ordinary office worker whose life takes a bizarre, mind-bending turn. A narrator describes Stanley’s every move, but right from the start, you can choose to disobey. This creates a fascinating tug-of-war between you and the narrator, leading to utterly unexpected places. Players might find themselves backstage of the game itself, or even in a completely different game. It’s a journey that cleverly pokes at big questions about free will and storytelling in games, making it a world away from simple titles like Pong.
9 SimCity
SimCity didn’t just create a genre; it built the foundation for a whole new way of thinking about video games. This groundbreaking title is the ancestor of every game that involves city-building, base-building, or any kind of construction management.
Designed by Will Wright, SimCity came about interestingly. Wright discovered that designing the levels for another game he was working on was more fun than playing through them. So, he decided to create a game entirely focused on that building aspect. Beyond construction, SimCity pioneered the idea of “software toys” – games that give players tools to create their own fun rather than follow strict, pre-set goals. Its surprising success showed game companies there was a huge audience for experiences beyond action shooters, forever changing game development priorities.
8 P.T.
If you’ve heard of P.T., you likely know two things: it’s incredibly terrifying, and its creator, the famed Hideo Kojima, packed an astonishing amount of unsettling content into its short playtime. P.T. (Playable Teaser) was actually a demo for a since-canceled Silent Hill game, but its impact was immense.
The premise is simple yet terrifying. You find yourself in a looping hallway. Each time you try to exit, you reappear at the beginning, but the hallway changes, becoming more surreal and frightening with each pass. There isn’t much of a traditional ending. This “bottle-episode” style, combined with its never-ending psychological torment, became a blueprint for countless modern horror games. Even horror titles that don’t strictly follow its formula often include segments inspired by P.T.’s unique brand of inescapable, personalized dread.
7 Grand Theft Auto III
Open-world games, often called sandbox games, have been around almost as long as video games themselves. However, Grand Theft Auto III didn’t invent the sandbox; it perfected it and set a new standard that many popular open-world titles still follow today.
What GTA III did so brilliantly was combine its sprawling city environment with complex simulations that operate independently of the game’s main story. This mix led to what designers call emergent gameplay – unscripted events and interactions that happen naturally within the game world, often surprising the player. For instance, the traffic in GTA III, both cars and pedestrians, follows basic rules and behaviors. This means players can interact with the city’s systems at any point, creating nearly endless variations in how encounters play out, making the world feel alive and unpredictable.
6 Assassin’s Creed
Speaking of open worlds, have you ever noticed how many modern open-world games feel quite similar in how they play? Think about large, explorable environments, a mix of sneaking through tall grass and open movement, parkour-style climbing, attacking from ledges, and maps divided into sections unlocked by climbing a “tower.”
We can thank the Assassin’s Creed series for popularizing many of these now-common mechanics. The first game, and its successors, introduced a compelling blend of historical settings, stealth action, and acrobatic movement that resonated with millions. Games like Shadow of Mordor, Horizon: Zero Dawn, the Arkham trilogy, Ghost of Tsushima, and Insomniac’s Spider-Man games have all iterated on or been heavily inspired by the formula that Assassin’s Creed established.
5 EverQuest
EverQuest is, for many, the original Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO). Almost all modern MMOs owe a significant debt to this pioneering title. While other games had dabbled in large-scale online multiplayer, mostly through text-based adventures, it was EverQuest’s release in 1999 that truly birthed the MMO genre as we know it.
Nearly every core mechanic you find in today’s MMOs can be traced back to EverQuest. This includes its Dungeons & Dragons-inspired character classes and statistical combat, the use of a vast, persistent open world, the blend of P_layer-vs-Player (PvP) and Player-vs-Environment (PvE) challenges, guild systems for social organization, and cooperative raids against powerful bosses. EverQuest laid the groundwork for entire virtual societies and economies.
4 Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat wasn’t the first fighting game, nor was it the genre’s initial breakout hit. Ironically, its most significant impacts on video games had less to do with its core fighting mechanics and more with elements surrounding the gameplay, like its over-the-top violence and hidden content.
While Street Fighter set the stage, Mortal Kombat took the fighting game formula and cranked up the intensity. It popularized complex button combinations for special moves, including its trademark gory “Fatalities.” It also made hidden characters and secret stages, often unlocked through obscure conditions, a staple of the genre. Most notably, Mortal Kombat’s graphic violence sparked widespread controversy, leading directly to United States Senate hearings in 1993. The result was the establishment of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the system that assigns age ratings to video games, fundamentally changing how games are marketed and sold.
3 Doom
The reasons Doom ranks so highly might surprise some. While it, alongside Wolfenstein 3D, undeniably solidified the first-person shooter (FPS) genre, its lasting changes came from two other key innovations: local multiplayer and modding.
Doom allowed players to connect computers via local area networks (LANs) to fight each other in what became known as “deathmatches.” This was a revolutionary concept for 3D shooters at the time and paved the way for the multiplayer-focused FPS games we see today. Furthermore, Doom’s creators at id Software made the game’s engine source code, the Doom Engine, publicly available. This generous act allowed players to design and share their own levels and modifications, a practice now commonly known as modding. This fostered a vibrant community and extended the game’s lifespan immensely, influencing how many games engage with their player base.
2 Super Mario 64
It’s simple: 3D platformers exist because of Super Mario 64. When designing this masterpiece, the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t just make a game; he wrote the rulebook for 3D platforming. Even over two decades later, its core design principles remain influential.
Miyamoto and his team developed SM64 before 3D gaming systems were even commonplace. They had to conceptualize a 3D world using hardware primarily built for 2D, and then invent entirely new control schemes for players to navigate these new spaces. The game’s single most crucial contribution was its invention of a player-controlled, 360-degree analog camera. This brilliant innovation allowed players to move the camera freely, essential for exploring and understanding a truly three-dimensional environment. It set the standard for camera control in 3D games for years to come.
1 The Legend of Zelda
Saved games. That’s the headline. Before the original The Legend of Zelda arrived, beating a video game often meant doing it in one sitting, or relying on cumbersome password systems to return to certain checkpoints. Zelda changed everything by including a battery-powered RAM chip right in the game cartridge, allowing players to save their progress and pick up right where they left off.
It’s nearly impossible to overstate the impact of this feature. More than perhaps any other single innovation, the ability to save progress allowed game designers to create longer, more complex, and story-driven experiences. Arcade-style, single-session games began to share the stage with sprawling adventures that players could chip away at over days, weeks, or months. Because of this fundamental shift, coupled with its own incredible design and sense of adventure, The Legend of Zelda is arguably one of the most influential video games ever created, consistently earning a spot on “best-of” lists worldwide.
The video game world is always pushing forward, with new ideas and technologies emerging all the time. Yet, the foundations laid by these ten titles, and others like them, continue to shape the games we play today. They introduced new ways to interact, new stories to tell, and new worlds to explore, leaving a legacy that inspires developers and delights players generation after generation.
These ten games are just a handful of the titles that have pushed boundaries and redefined play. Which games do you think fundamentally changed the video game landscape? Share your thoughts and your own list of game-changers in the comments below!
