Yeah pacman and pong were seminal but so was elite on the BBC, and Populous which I think was on the spectrum. Also unreal tournament, silent hill, vice city, homeworld, doom 2016, beam ng, I enjoyed em all but I can’t decide. Ppl here have done much more gaming than me, I’m wondering what you all think is the best game ever. Age, platform, genre, bla bla - what’s best ever?
I see. I still think claiming that Mario 64 and Zelda 98 are the foundation for most 3D action and adventure games doesn’t really align with reality.
Especially the piece about Mario 64 being the first 3D game were movement was fun. I understand that the definition of fun is subjective, but this is basically false.
Beyond Quake, in Frontier: First Encounters you could literally fly between solar bodies, do planetry landings, fly between cities. This is far more difficult to pull off well than the relatively primitive movement in Mario 64.
Same with setting the standard for player hubs. I haven’t played Mario 64, but I have seen friends play Mario Galaxy and the hub area in Galaxy is well designed, but simplistic and with no dynamism related to gameplay.
Not sure about how exactly target lock-on functions in Zelda 98, but target lock-on definitely existing long, long before Zelda and in more complex, dynamic environments.
Don’t get me wrong, you like what you like and clearly Mario 64 and Zelda 98 are good games, but it is strange to put them on the pedestal in this manner. Especially when many of your statements almost approach a PR level of what I assume is hyperbole (e.g. “first 3D game with fun movement” - this is clearly false).
Mario 64 was the first use of the analog stick in a console game. Push it a little bit to walk, push it all the way to run, and several states in between. Maybe you can find a simulator that had analog control, but I’m sure you can see the difference.
Ocarina of Time was a solution to that type of game in 3D space that, as discussed above in things like Tomb Raider, was far more awkward in its predecessors as the industry was figuring out how to make games work in 3D. It’s very similar to how Halo wasn’t the first console FPS, but it was the first one smart enough to put guns, grenades, and melee all on their own buttons, among other innovations.
I’d also add Mario 64’s use of a controllable third person camera - all the games @Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world mentioned are first person, and I don’t think movement in those types of games is at all comparable. The camera was the key point to making a 3D platformer even possible at all, and it immediately became vital to many other genres too.
I know that by today’s standards that camera is known for being rather antiquated, but it was revolutionary for its time. One detail I think deserves more credit is how they tried to anthropomorphize the camera as Lakitu to introduce it to players.