Every industry has a handful of turning points – moments where someone did something so different that nothing after it was quite the same. Gaming has had more of those moments than most people realize, and the games responsible for them are still worth understanding today whether you lived through them or not.
This isn't just a nostalgia list. These are the ten games that changed what games could be, what players expected, and how an entire industry built itself. Some of them you can still play right now. All of them left fingerprints on virtually every game released in the decades since.
Pong (1972)
Space Invaders (1978)
Pac-Man (1980)
Donkey Kong (1981)
Super Mario Bros. (1985)
The Legend of Zelda (1986)
Doom (1993)
Street Fighter II (1991)
Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Half-Life (1998)
Before Pong, there was no video game industry. There were experiments, prototypes, and university projects – but no commercial market, no arcades, no home consoles built around interactive entertainment. Atari's Pong changed that by doing the simplest possible thing extremely well: two paddles, a bouncing ball, a score. That was enough to put coin-operated machines in bars and bowling alleys across America and prove that people would pay to play.
Pong was not technically the first video game ever made, but it was the first to create genuine commercial demand. Its success gave Atari the foundation to build the Atari 2600, which brought gaming into living rooms for the first time at scale. Without Pong's early momentum, there's no home console market, no Nintendo, no PlayStation. Everything downstream traces back to this small rectangle and a blinking dot.
Why it still matters: Pong is a masterclass in designing around constraints. The entire game is one mechanic – and that one mechanic was enough to launch an industry.
Where to play it: Multiple Atari Anniversary collections on PC and console, or through browser-based emulators.
Space Invaders did something no game before it had: it made people obsessed. When Taito released it in Japanese arcades in 1978, the country reportedly ran short on 100-yen coins because so many were being fed into machines. It was the first game to generate that level of cultural saturation, and when Atari licensed it for the 2600 in 1980, it became the first killer app in console history – the game that made people buy hardware just to play it at home.
Space Invaders also introduced the concept of a high score that persisted, giving players a reason to keep coming back to beat their own record rather than just play to completion. That simple addition – a number with your initials attached to it – created competitive gaming culture. Every leaderboard, every speedrun community, every ranked mode in a modern multiplayer game is a direct descendant of Space Invaders' high score screen.
Why it still matters: It established the loop that drives gaming to this day: play, score, improve, repeat. That loop hasn't changed.
Where to play it: Available through various Taito anniversary collections and arcade compilations on modern platforms.
Pac-Man is the most recognized video game character in history, and that recognition isn't accidental. When Namco released it in 1980, it deliberately targeted an audience that arcades had mostly ignored: women and non-gamers. The designer, Toru Iwatani, wanted a game without violence that anyone could sit down and understand immediately. What he created became a global phenomenon.
Pac-Man was the first game to be comprehensively licensed for merchandise – toys, lunchboxes, a Saturday morning cartoon, a Billboard-charting song. It was the moment gaming stopped being a niche hobby and became a cultural property. The game also introduced character-based gaming and gave players a protagonist to identify with rather than a ship or a paddle. That shift toward character and identity is now the default assumption of the entire medium.
Why it still matters: Pac-Man proved that simple, character-driven design could reach everyone. That lesson shaped Nintendo's entire philosophy and the development of gaming's biggest franchises.
Where to play it: Pac-Man Museum+ on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch includes multiple versions of the original.
Donkey Kong is where Shigeru Miyamoto introduced the world to Jumpman – a character who would be renamed Mario and go on to become the most famous mascot in entertainment history. The game itself was a revelation in arcade design: instead of a flat playing field, it had multiple platforms, ladders, and a vertical structure that felt genuinely three-dimensional for 1981.
The gameplay loop of Donkey Kong – navigate obstacles, save the character in peril, reach the goal – became the template for platformers, and the introduction of a narrative (however thin) into an arcade game was new. Games before this were largely abstract. Donkey Kong had a story, characters with names and roles, and a goal beyond just surviving as long as possible. That combination changed what players expected from a game.
Why it still matters: Donkey Kong established platform game design and introduced character-driven narrative to arcade gaming. Mario alone makes this one of the most consequential releases in the medium's history.
Where to play it: Available through Nintendo Switch Online's Game Boy library and various retro compilations.
In 1983, the North American video game market collapsed. The crash wiped out billions in revenue and left retailers so burned they refused to stock gaming products. Two years later, Nintendo released the NES alongside Super Mario Bros. in the US market, and it single-handedly reversed the collapse by demonstrating something the industry had forgotten: a game could be excellent, polished, and inventive enough to make people trust the medium again.
Super Mario Bros. defined what a side-scrolling platformer should feel like – tight controls, a sense of momentum, hidden secrets that rewarded exploration, and a difficulty curve that felt fair even when it was hard. Every element of its design was deliberate. The fact that you can still pick it up today and immediately understand how to play it is a sign of how clearly its design communicates. The game sold over 40 million copies and established Nintendo as the dominant force in gaming for the next decade.
Why it still matters: Mario's jump physics – the feeling of weight and momentum in the air – became the baseline that every platformer since has been measured against.
Where to play it: Available through Nintendo Switch Online.
If Super Mario Bros. defined the platformer, The Legend of Zelda defined the action-adventure game. It was the first major console release to feature a battery-backed save system, which meant for the first time players could stop, turn off the console, and come back to exactly where they left off. That sounds basic now. In 1986, it was a fundamental shift in what a game could ask of a player.
Zelda trusted players with an open world, limited direction, and a set of tools that could be combined in different ways to solve problems. There was no hand-holding. You explored, found dungeons in whatever order you discovered them, and pieced together the world through play rather than instruction. That design philosophy – give players a sandbox and let them figure it out – runs directly through every open-world game released in the past twenty years, from Skyrim to Breath of the Wild to Elden Ring.
Why it still matters: The Legend of Zelda invented the template for adventure game design that the industry still uses. Every open-world game with a map, dungeons, and a progression system owes it something.
Where to play it: Available through Nintendo Switch Online's NES library.
Street Fighter II didn't invent the fighting game, but it perfected it so completely that it effectively started the genre over. Its release in arcades in 1991 was an event – machines had queues, players studied character matchups, and a dedicated competitive scene emerged almost immediately. The game introduced the concept of character selection with genuinely different playstyles, special move inputs that required real skill to execute, and a balance that made high-level play look fundamentally different from casual play.
Street Fighter II is the direct ancestor of esports culture. The competitive community that grew around it developed tournament structures, terminology, and a training mentality that became the template for every fighting game community – and eventually for competitive gaming broadly. The Evo Championship Series, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, traces its roots directly to Street Fighter II competitions in the early 1990s.
Why it still matters: Street Fighter II created the framework for competitive multiplayer gaming. Tier lists, matchup knowledge, frame data analysis – all of that culture started here.
Where to play it: Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.
By the mid-1990s, games had stories – but they were mostly thin narrative scaffolding around gameplay. Final Fantasy VII changed that by delivering a story with real emotional weight: complex characters, a villain with coherent motivation, themes about corporate exploitation and environmental destruction, and a plot moment so unexpected and affecting that players who experienced it in 1997 still talk about it today.
FFVII was also a pivotal moment for the medium's commercial reach. Its marketing campaign – "Not just for kids anymore" – was a deliberate statement that gaming was a legitimate storytelling medium for adults. It sold over 10 million copies, introduced a massive Western audience to Japanese RPGs, and demonstrated that players would invest 40+ hours in a narrative if the characters were worth caring about. Modern story-driven games from The Last of Us to Red Dead Redemption 2 exist in the space FFVII helped open.
Why it still matters: Final Fantasy VII proved that games could tell stories with the emotional depth of film or literature – and that players wanted them to.
Where to play it: The original is available on PC via Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. The remake series is available on PlayStation and PC.
id Software's Doom wasn't the first first-person shooter, but it was the one that made the genre unavoidable. Released in December 1993 as shareware – the first episode free, the rest for purchase – it spread virally across early internet networks and bulletin board systems, becoming one of the most-installed programs on personal computers within months. It was fast, atmospheric, violent, and technically stunning for its time.
Doom established the visual and mechanical language of the FPS genre: the first-person perspective, movement speed as a core mechanic, resource management through ammo and health pickups, and level design built around flow and combat encounter pacing. It also pioneered modding – releasing tools that let players build their own levels – which created an entire culture of user-generated content that runs directly through Steam Workshop and every mod-friendly game released since.
Why it still matters: Every first-person shooter from Halo to Call of Duty to Apex Legends is building on foundations Doom laid. The genre's DNA is still recognizably Doom's.
Where to play it: Doom + Doom II (2024 rerelease) on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, with updated multiplayer and mod support.
When Valve released Half-Life in 1998, it changed the expectation for what a first-person game could do. Every FPS before it interrupted gameplay with cutscenes – you'd play, a cinematic sequence would play, you'd play again. Half-Life eliminated that entirely. The story unfolded while you played, through dialogue from characters around you, environmental details, and scripted sequences that never took control away from the player. You were always Gordon Freeman, always in the world, never watching from the outside.
This design decision – keeping the player inside the experience at all times – became the new standard for immersive game design. Beyond its narrative approach, Half-Life also launched Steam (indirectly, through Counter-Strike, the mod that became Valve's most important product) and established Valve as one of the most influential studios in gaming history. The standard for single-player FPS design that Half-Life set in 1998 is one the industry is still trying to clear.
Why it still matters: Half-Life's approach to environmental storytelling and seamless immersion became the blueprint for modern single-player game design. It's the standard every narrative FPS is compared against.
Where to play it: Available on PC via Steam, with Half-Life: Source also available as an updated version.
These ten games represent ten different moments where the industry asked "what else can a game be?" and answered the question in a way that permanently changed the answer. Pong proved games could be a business. Mario proved they could be art. FFVII proved they could make you cry. Half-Life proved they could make you forget you were playing.
If you want to understand modern gaming – why things are designed the way they are, why certain genre conventions exist, why players expect what they expect – start here. These aren't just history; they're the foundation everything else is standing on.
Can I still play all of these games today? Yes – most are available through modern digital storefronts or subscription services. Nintendo Switch Online covers the Nintendo catalog, Steam carries Doom and Half-Life, and several compilations bundle multiple titles together. Emulation is also an option for titles not officially re-released, depending on your region's laws.
Which of these games is best for a complete beginner to retro gaming? Super Mario Bros. is the easiest entry point – the controls are intuitive, the design communicates clearly, and it holds up better than almost any other game from its era. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong are also immediately accessible.
Are any of these games still genuinely fun, or are they just historically significant? Both, honestly. Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Doom, and Half-Life are all genuinely enjoyable by modern standards. Some of the earlier arcade titles (Pong, Space Invaders) are more interesting as historical artifacts, though they still have charm in short sessions.
Which game on this list had the biggest impact on modern game design? That's genuinely hard to call, but The Legend of Zelda and Half-Life are the two most frequently cited by game designers as direct influences on how they approach their craft. Super Mario Bros. is a close third.
Why isn't [popular classic game] on this list? There are hundreds of legitimate candidates – Tetris, Minecraft, GoldenEye 007, Sonic the Hedgehog, Wolfenstein 3D, and many others all have real claims. This list focuses on games that introduced mechanics, design principles, or cultural shifts that the industry then adopted broadly. Different criteria would produce a different list, and that's a reasonable debate to have.
What's the best way to experience these games if I've never played them? Original hardware is the purest experience but the most expensive. For most people, the best approach is Nintendo Switch Online for the Nintendo titles, Steam for Doom and Half-Life, and one of the Namco or Atari anniversary compilations for the arcade classics.
The History of Pong – Atari – atari.com/blogs/the-history-of-pong
Space Invaders: The Game That Changed Everything – Smithsonian Magazine – smithsonianmag.com/innovation/space-invaders-40-years-180969393
How Pac-Man Changed Gaming Forever – WIRED – wired.com/story/pac-man-40th-anniversary
Super Mario Bros. Review and History – IGN – ign.com/articles/2013/02/02/nes-classic-super-mario-bros-review
How Street Fighter II Created Esports Culture – Polygon – polygon.com/2016/3/10/11194806/street-fighter-esports-history
Final Fantasy VII's Legacy – The Verge – theverge.com/2017/1/31/14390264/final-fantasy-7-20th-anniversary
Doom and the Birth of the FPS Genre – PC Gamer – pcgamer.com/how-doom-changed-gaming
Half-Life's Impact on Game Design – Game Developer – gamedeveloper.com/design/postmortem-valve-s-half-life
The Legend of Zelda's Open-World Legacy – Nintendo Life – nintendolife.com/features/the-legend-of-zelda-at-35-how-it-changed-gaming
Donkey Kong and the Origins of Mario – CNET – cnet.com/culture/the-history-of-mario
