Who's he kidding about SimCity being all about creation and not destruction? When I was in middle school it was all about the induced natural disasters. :-p

Aesteval

@Polite_Society: you're thinking of Amiga when it comes to music. The original C64 still pump chirpwhirl, not music.

rainofwalrus [XBL]

@labrats5: I love Chrono Trigger as much as the next otaku, but to say any 2D game is more beautiful than Crysis is a bit absurd. Crysis is the most beautiful game I've ever seen! 2nd would be Flight Sim X.

@mescalineeyes: you know he can't run Crysis, right? LOL.@

Zensation: an excellent post. kudos.

rainofwalrus [XBL]

Maybe somebody should point out to Meier that the "Seal Of Quality" was just to signify that the company paid Nintendo to use the cartridge design. Unlicensed games didn't have the seal, despite in some cases being superior to the licensed version (i.e. Tengen Tetris).

point09micron

@themissinglink_42: Superman 64.

Tcata

@Krellie: EA itself doesn't make good games, just some of its more recent "acquired developers". What we call EA itself makes barely anything good.

Tcata

@themissinglink_42: And to show you that iam not bullshitting you with the old Wii tites even this new piece of crap has the nintendo seal.

[www.gamestop.com]

MURDERFACE

@themissinglink_42: nope it's still on all the shitty Wii games.

Click on the back of the box view the Seal is still there.

[www.gamestop.com]

MURDERFACE

i cant believe no one said the mouse. while games went a while with out using it, the integration of the mouse changed the face of pc games.

Zensation

@jayntampa: I was wondering if someone was going to mention archon. One of the best games ever made. I think thats the first game I ever noticed EA's branding on. Made by freefall though.

Greatest innovations though..
C64 for it's accessibility and introduction of real music to games.

IBM for it's exandability, which has allowed such growth in the gaming world... though i think has also been it's downfall. I mean, how many people can keep their pcs up to spec these days, really?

Optical Storage formats, for allowing much greater amounts of data to be used for gaming.

and the Wii, for bringing gaming to the mass market, and completely changing the direction of game design and control.

That's pretty broad, but they are the things that come to mind that really changed the way things are done.

Polite_Society

@labrats5: dude, have you SEEN crysis?

mescalineeyes

I wish today's Seal of Quality actually do its purpose, the Wii is now being flooded with shovelware by Data Design Interactive (Ninjabread Man, Anubis II etc)

astrixzero

@gamadaya: I would've taken 2 far over the other two.

EgoMonk

Wasn't the seal of quality geared more towards piracy and knockoff games?

Unlike knockoffs, whose legality is sometimes questionable, anyone using the Seal of Quality unofficially is breaking trademark law, which is much easier to prosecute.

zdude255

The Nintendo Seal was never an actual seal of quality, despite what it said. The seal just said that the game you were buying was an officially licensed Nintendo product. The only quality that assured was in the manufacturing of the cartridge.

It also did nothing to prevent another games crash - when the flood on Atari crashed the market and when Nintendo stealthily brought out their NES, treating it as a toy instead of a game console, they brought back the developers who had learned from their mistakes (sometimes) and created a more controlled stream of titles released.

By the time of the SNES, a development team would be large enough that there would be a significant difference in quality between most games made by one guy and most games made by a professional developer. So Nintendo's mandatory developer licensing (The Seal) ensured that only financially-sound companies developed games for the SNES and all consoles since then - preventing independents from publishing on the SNES, but also preventing crap from flooding the game shelves.

It's 2008, now, though, and the industry would now be better off without the seal, its approval process, etc. The truth is these things are in place so that Nintendo can control the public image of their consoles, not to ensure that the users are happy. If I were to sit down and put together my own unplayable, ugly game in two weeks, and for some reason a publisher picked it up and printed 1,000,000 discs of it (not gonna happen), and a retailer decided to carry this unheard of, crappy game (not gonna happen), the consumers would not buy it. The industry has matured to that point. However, if talented (but financially challenged) developers aren't open to develop on the Wii or DS, then those systems will miss out on a lot of potentially awesome and creative games. If you don't believe me, look to what the independent game developers have done on more open (or close-to-open) platforms like the PC or in Microsoft's XNA platform for XBLA and Community Games.

vinternet

The Nintendo Seal of Quality does NOT equal no shovelware. People seem to get the idea that Nintendo would play every game released on the NES and SNES to make sure they were the "best game evar." That was never the case. After the Atari crash, Nintendo used the seal to ensure that every game made on the system was first approved by them, compatible with the system, and free of game-destroying bugs. Quality in that context is much different from the quality of, say, a 10/10 video game.

Has anybody here actually seen some of the games for Nintendo's old systems? Watch the Angry Video Game Nerd, check some garage sales, and walk around suspicious alleyways for a while and you will find NES games that make today's shovelware look like Super Mario Galaxy.

Ninja-Z

@jayntampa:

To name two innovations;

Sims and soon to come Spore. In short, they have mister innovation on their team ^^

TakeoNinja

When I was a kid, I first gamed on a PC (8088, 286, 486) and I didn't know anyone with a PC. Like, 5 years later one friend got an Amiga.

By the time I was about 8 though, I was the only one without an NES. The first time I saw it it was like video gaming suddenly leapt 10 years into the future. Eventually I got my own and it was awesome. Other than adventure games, the games I had on PC were pretty feeble in comparison (whatever you can get off a BBS in the mid-80s...)

I'd say the NES really brought gaming to the masses. It was at least 1995 before I heard anyone who wasn't a fellow computer geek actually talking about using a computer.

fuchikoma

I find it interesting that he'd cite Sim City for demonstrating that video games didn't have to be about destruction given the freaking massive horde of non-destructive video games that preceded it, but I'm glad he decided not to be a hypocrite and give props to his own Civilization, given how much war you have to wage in that game. I mean, you _do_ have to vanquish the entire world as one of the two winning scenarios, right?

@modeps:
No, now they've switched the text to read "Offiial NINTENDO Seal", but it's still essentially the same thing just with plausible deniability on any crap product that manages to get "sealed".

@themissinglink_42:
But perhaps that was one of the things that helped drive away all the 3rd party devs leading into the N64. They felt the regulations on the SNES were overly restrictive, and bailed for the Playstation.

Purple Dave

@xboxsab:

I know this is going to sound retarded, but 3d gaming is what is destroying the pc market. Before three-dee, the type of hardware used for other computing tasks, namely logic and 2d acceleration, was the same as what was needed for gaming. So even if you didn't buy your pc with gaming in mind, as long as it was a modern machine it could play most games. But 3d acceleration is a completely different beast. Most applications have absolutely no need for it, so you really have to specifically request it when buying a pc. Integrated graphics is more than enough to play DVD's and Flash programs, but even the most advance GMA processor has trouble running Half-life 2 (a nearly 4 year old game) at minimum resolution. A return to 2d would make the pc relevant again, but I don't think anyone is willing to suggest something so radical. This is even depspite the fact that from a traditional non-gaming view of aesthetics, 2D games from 10 years ago are still more beautiful than Crysis. Once 2D hit 16.7 million colors and nearly infinite sprite counts, 2D became only limited by how well you're artists could draw. 3D gamis are still restrained by poly counts and texture resolution.

labrats5

@cduran: Intellivision's gamepad predates Colecovision's gamepad by a year and a half.

rainofwalrus [XBL]

@onomeister: just throwing you a bone or two:

1. It's Text-based Adventure Game. There's no such thing as a Text-based Video Game.

[en.wikipedia.org]

2. NES/Famicom wasn't the first D-Pad.

rainofwalrus [XBL]

@CaptLtrl: The Nintendo Seal of Quality meant that games like the 2600's "ET" wouldn't ever mar the face of the industry again. Still, "Where's Waldo" somehow made it...

GenericDude

Yeah, disregard what themissinglink said, He clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. The Nitendo seal of quality was on LOADS of shitty games on the NES, SNES, GB, VB, N64, GBA and GAMECUBE. They altered the seal in 2003 due to confusion about its meaning from people who thought similarly to missinglink. The seal had nothing to do with how good a game was, just that it was compatible and licensed for play on the Nintendo consoles.

subnet6

@themissinglink_42: In regards to your Nintendo Seal of Quality response. If that were true, Friday the 13th on NES would not exist.

AkumaX

@themissinglink_42: I thought that it was still here? All my Nintendo DS games have the seal on.

Estel

Limiting the top gaming innovations to just three is extremely difficult! How about 20? (not gonna list them) Wasn't there a Kotaku article posting a link to a Gamasutra or Edge or Next Gen article that lists their top 20 innovations? ...I can't seem to find it at the moment...

Anyways, here's mine:

1. Text-based video game - Started the whole "video-games-can-be-created-and-enjoyed-at-home" craze)

2. The D-pad (first created for NES) - Without this innovation, perhaps the analog stick would never have been created. And would we be playing Bioshock with an Atari-type joystick and/or mouse?

3. Pong - Is this the first ever non-text based video game to reach the mass population and be a hit? I say yes.

...l

*EDIT* aha! found the article (Top 50 Game DESIGN Innovations):
[www.next-gen.biz]

onomeister

IBM as a first pick? Why? It shouldn't be a pick at all. Gaming had been brought to the masses well before that.

The IBM PC was not even a good gaming machine and PCs had only become half-decent gaming machines by the end of the 80s. Until '85 only about 5.5 million PCs were sold, including clones, and that is hardly bringing it to the masses.

Arcades, Atari, Commodore and Apple all did much more to bring gaming to the masses.

TrekVogel

I whole heartedly agree that the Nintendo Seal of Quality should be brought back...it means so much more to so many now thats its gone its its just sad.

Go Team Venture

@MURDERFACE: You obviously don't know what your talking about. The Nintendo Seal of Quality no longer adorns the boxes of games. Nintendo no longer uses the seal, which is why all the crappy games exist.

@SchoolBusDriver: The nintendo seal of quality was not a logo. It was a promise. A promise that the game you just purchased was well made and deservied to be played. You might not necessarily like the game, based on your tastes, but you know that the developers put the time and effort in to make sure their game was worthy of a nintendo console

themissinglink_42

Nintendo should bring the Seal of Quality back. That would put an end to all the crappy games flooding the wii and ds. Or at the very least it would make it easier for stupid people to tell a bad game from a good game, because the bad games would not recieve the seal of quality. This would give third party developers incentive to improve their games in order to maek them worthy of the seal. However, if the seal is brought back and simply placed on every crappy game that comes out, then it's not a good idea, because it would simply tarnish the good name nintendo used to have when it came to quality.

themissinglink_42

A lot of these lists in the comments are decent for sure. I have to agree with them more so than Sid's list.

Loyal2none

Greatest innovation? Sid Meier himself. Let's give it up for his parents!

Mantra_

"

In an ode to Nintendo's seal of quality, my 3 pics are:

1 - Power Glove (crappy gimmicky peripheral that attempted to blind people's judgement)

2 - Virtual Boy (crappy gimmicky console that just blnded)

3 - Wii (the crappy gimmicky peripheral that blinded people to the fact that they would never make more than 5 good games that actually sold)

Sincerely,
A bored Wii owner "

-Quoted for being lame.

subnet6

Sorry if this is a repeat.

@tofoomeister: His. His field of journalism. Unless "Stephen" is a she. That's what I get for being an internet tough guy.

tofoomeister

@tofoomeister: His. His field of journalism. Unless Stephen is a she. That's what I get for being such an internet tough guy. =/

tofoomeister

@tofoomeister: PWNT! I'd killed for M.U.L.E. on the DS!!1!!!1ONE1one!11!

rainofwalrus [XBL]

FTFA:
To get a measure of how much journalism about games has changed, I asked Meier how long it was before he was interviewed by a woman. He laughed and said it was awhile and that it took at least until one of his colleagues became one. Became a woman, he meant? I thought that, but didn't ask, as the inside joke reverberated from Sid to his wife to another member of the Firaxis team. We moved on.

Sounds like somebody's never played Seven Cities of Gold, M.U.L.E., or even keeps current in her own field of journalism.

tofoomeister

I think allot of the people don't understand what the seal of approval fundamentally means.

On the Atari, any one could release any piece of crap they so pleased. There was no standards, and it was destroying the industry. People were constantly undercutting each other, in both price and quality, to such an extent that people just weren't paying for the games any more.

Nintendo's seal of approval isn't just saying "good game inside" but much much more. First of all, Nintendo manufactured ALL games for the system (with the exception of some Chinese knock offs, but its not like they were selling those in every k-mart country wide) and to have your game manufactured it had to go through a very strict approval process by the people at Nintendo. So that basically meant that no, you weren't going to have 8 progressively shittier versions of pacman like the Atari did.

The games release today on wii might not be anything special, but their quality is most definetly much higher than the majority of the crap that was released on the Atari during the early 80s.

Spenze

@ErskinPig: LOL, did you stop wearing your Nirvana t-shirt(s) when you saw that jocks were wearing them? Did you cry when Jimmy Eat World* "sold out?"

(* insert your own indie-rawk / pun-crock sellout and run with the joke.)

rainofwalrus [XBL]

@jayntampa: Battlefield 1942 was the most inspiring FPS since Quake I. SKATE is the best skateboarding game of all time.

rainofwalrus [XBL]

@jayntampa: fair enough. But the same could be said about TI, which did it first and is worth more GEEK POINTS. My points stands stronger than ever.

rainofwalrus [XBL]

the IMB was pretty good but most people had those knockoff IBMs. - but i think arcades brought gaming to the masses or perhaps even home game consoles. how much did an IBM/IMB cost? how many people actually had one relative to, say, an atari or access to an arcade?

How about the modem (and thus remote multiplayer gaming)?

I assume he's talking about VIDEO gaming and not gaming in general though, otherwise the humble dice may make it to the list.

Rajio

Actually I wouldn't say IBM brought computer games to the masses. I would say Commodore with the VIC-20 and the C64 were THE computer games machines, this is when the jump from consoles to PC happened.

My List would be:
1) Commodore (RIP)
2) Game engines (such as DOS-Doom Operating System)
3) Gamepads (Joysticks were horrible on consoles and PCs, first gamepad btw was the colecovisions controller, it was kind of a cross-over from joystick to gamepad)

cduran

In an ode to Nintendo's seal of quality, my 3 pics are:

1 - Power Glove (crappy gimmicky peripheral that attempted to blind people's judgement)

2 - Virtual Boy (crappy gimmicky console that just blnded)

3 - Wii (the crappy gimmicky peripheral that blinded people to the fact that they would never make more than 5 good games that actually sold)

Sincerely,
A bored Wii owner

Ndogg550

My list:

1. Game Saves
2. Laser Disc Games
3. SNES controller - PERFECT design, awesome Dpad, yeah, so maybe it's not an "innovation" but it was definitely 2D perfection.

Tiger-Fever

1 and 3 are my picks too, but I don't know about 2. I might have picked handheld gaming systems.

gamadaya

The Nintendo Seal of quality never meant anything. It got so bad that at one point they had to drop the Quality part and it just became the Nintendo seal. It didn't really stand for anything.

CaptLtrl

@Sherlock_the_Barbarian: C64 was definitely the best "gaming system" of the 80s, hands down.

xboxsab

Going strictly by gaming's innovations, I would have thrown the ability to save (battery or memory card, whichever) in there. More recently would be dual analog sticks. So many modern console games just wouldn't be any fun without them. *glares at my PSP*

Wolfers

@Modus_Operandi: It didn't really change the world of gaming back in the 90s when it was introduced.

The Nintendo Seal of Quality is rather strange. The whole reason it was created was because there were third party products for the NES that operated by sending a current directly into the NES. Pretty much every single game that wasn't directly manufactured by Nintendo had to use this method to get it to boot their code. Naturally this was both a huge blow to Nintendo as they were not reaping in the profits and a potential blow to the consumer as it could potentially destroy their system.

The Nintendo Seal of Quality meant you were getting a product that would boot normally (using the system Nintendo had put in place) and as such wouldn't screw up your system.

Perhaps the first actual "licensing" for a console and it set the stage for most modern consoles where games can only be authorised by the console manufacturers.

It's got a pretty interesting history:

[en.wikipedia.org]

[en.wikipedia.org]

Dioxen

I've said it before & I'll say it again: PLCs and the games industry do not mix. Stay independent or help ruin the industry by selling out. Your call.

ErskinPig

@Krellie: I think a lot of people fail to realize that the large software companies have to play it safe because those numbers drive their business. A lot of these large companies make money in gaming ONLY. It's the same reason people constantly nag on Nintendo for using a lot of of their franchise mascots, or Square for re-releasing/remaking so many of their old games. You people forget that they don't just magically generate money from the core of the Earth. Since development prices continue to climb upward, so does the price of entry to make new games, or new franchises.

Not that EA is some perfect angel of gaming or anything, they've certainly done their best to stifle things down to 'This is as good as you're gonna get!' levels, but I think that's mainly because of the previous direction of the company. They over-inflated themselves well before the market was so booming with cash, and had to make everything brainlessly safe just to keep themselves from toppling into failure.

Ampillion, now with TV Frank's hairstyle.

God. Sid's list of top innovations makes me feel like I'm too young to play videogames. And I'm 26.

BtownDesignGuy

@Dragonzigg: Last I checked, they were not using the Seal of Approval anymore... so I'm not quite sure what you mean.

modeps

@Krellie: They don't push the release schedules on games where the developers have such a following that the developers can push back ;)

If I was judging EA on past merits, I'd be in love with them -- they've made some of my favorite games ever (Archon and Mail Order Monsters come to mind) ... but, in the long run, they're doing the entire industry a disservice by removing diversity.

jayntampa

1. Video games.
2. Directional pads.
3. Game saves.

PhantomSpaceman67

I'd say the Commodore 64 and the Amiga did more for PC Gaming. As the Commodore line made PC Gaming a mass market phenomenon at a time of 2 to 3 grand PC's that really didn't offer much performance for the money, and you still had to buy a 200 dollar sound card (Ad-Lib or Sound Blaster), or a new video card (not GPU) and some ultra expensive ram at that time.

ktseymour

(Okay, they are somewhat worse than Ninty and Squeeny.)

Krellie

@ErskinPig: Please evaluate.

@jayntampa: While I agree to some extent, they (EA) has lately shown that they atleast let their bought up companies keep their creativity, and dont push their release schedules etc.

Dont get me wrong. Im not saying EA is the BEST company out there, but I dont think they are any worse than SquareE or Nintendo either. (And I say that being a big fan of named companies.)
I buy very few games from EA, but still..at least I dont judge them on past merits.

Krellie

Yeah i remember when Nintendo's Seal of Quality actually ment something but not anymore now it's on every Wii shovelware game out there ..............DAMN YOU CARNIVAL GAMES AND HANNAH MONTANA DAMN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MURDERFACE

Greatest Innovation: Color Monitor (Oh how long we dealt with b/w or even...green or amber)

Seal of approval? Forshame as this allows for abuse of the said seal. And the clubbing commences...(btw, this is like the Microsoft approval...just means you paid into the club.

Would the game, Life, be foremost, at creating? I would think Adventure was a foremost "thinking" game. Forget about graphics and go North and look.

SigmundTheSeaMonster

I will always maintain that the Commodore 64 was more important to computer gaming than the IBM and its clones. The reason is that the Commodore (the clearly best gaming machine of the 1980's) was relatively inexpensive, and was the first computer of many Atari gamers, and transitioned them into computers. Later, when Commodore died out and IBM clones dominated the market, they moved over to it.

Sherlock_the_Barbarian

@Krellie: They're not hated on simply because of their games, it's because we find their business practices distasteful. I, and many on here, believe that EA's incessant consumption of smaller publishers harms creativity. A large company is required to show a profit to shareholders so they are less likely to take chances ... the company will produce safe products that sell.

I honestly can't name one extraordinarily creative product to come out of EA in years.

jayntampa

@Krellie: EA is a good company, lmao. I pity you.

ErskinPig

IBM? Sweet, Will Wright Sweet,

Nintendo Seal of Quality a great innovation? Uhh I don't think so. Stickers saying AWTHOME PRODUCT INSIDE were invented along time ago.

Sid ... sit down. That's like saying the Ferrari logo is the greatest invention in the auto industry?

SchoolBusDriver

Wth is going in with the EA hate these days?
Around year 2002 you could pretty much ignore EA games by default. You knew theyd be shit anyway.

But 2008? Not anymore. EA is a _good_ company today. They make and publish great games (well, good AND bad games, like just about any company besides Valve). Anyone with a bit of a clue would see this.

Hating on EA is very old, kids. Try something else.

Krellie

@Nintenboy01: IBM

Snappywave

My Apple IIc was what changed my view of gaming. My dad had the IBM for work. Back then I never really thought of the IBM as a gaming machine.

Adam

Man, I miss the Nintendo Seal of Quality.

gusiskirby

@Dragonzigg:
How so?

I understand what your going at, but thats two completely different kinds of "crap", which you should be aware of if youve been around longer than since the 360 was released.

Meant as a joke? Not very funny im afraid. 5/10 Showelware

Krellie

EA should be subject to a seal of quality and maybe then, people wouldn't hate them as much, I mean they release a great game or two a year but that doesn't outweigh the crap they make a year

ban_hammer

@rainofwalrus [XBL]: IBM made computer gaming mainstream ... of course there were other computers with games, but IBM got it into the mass market.

jayntampa

He should hang his head in shame for saying he'd welcome being absorbed into the EA Collective.

Corner of shame Meier! Get thee haste!

ErskinPig

I'm sure it's simply a typo ... and, yes, the IBM computer was a huge deal. I remember playing King's Quest on the IBM PCjr when I was a kid and being blown away.

jayntampa

How about 3D acceleration?

xboxsab

but TI beat IBM to the punch in the gaming dept. you would think Sid Meier would know that.

My list:

1. Laserdisc gaming
2. D-Pads
3. GPU

rainofwalrus [XBL]

What is the IMB Home Computer? I heard of the IBM, but not the IMB.

ProfWho

IMB or IBM computer?

Nintenboy01

I like the duality that plays out when you think why the Seal was important back then for it prevented and what it could be ushering in now.
But anyway I think most recently one the greatest innovations in games has been online play. I think online play has set the stage for the next decade of gaming.

Modus_Operandi

Anyone up for a game of Homie Rollerz?

Old-school Sonic fanboy

Unfortunately, the Nintendo seal of quality is now hilariously ironic.

Dragonzigg

wasn't that seal only used on nintendo made games?

freespeech

Ok, i think i need to clarify what i said. I didn't mean to imply that every game was great, or even that it didn't absolutly suck. I was saying that they were ensureing that the games were at least worht playing to some degree.

Also, to those who claim the seal still exists, it is no onger the Nintendo Seal of Quality, it is just the Nintendo Seal.

themissinglink_42

@Aesteval: lol. so true.

rainofwalrus [XBL]