Summary
BAFTAcaused quite a stir when a poll it ranresulted in Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft being crowned the most iconic video game character of all time, and it may be about to do the same again. To celebrate its 21st Game Awards, BAFTA ran a poll to determine what is the most influential game of all time, andShenmuehas topped the list.
If you run down all 21 games that made BAFTA’s influential list, which you can find below, pretty much every game on there is a well-known title with clear influence (apart from number seven, more on that in a second). However, to see Shenmue rise above them all might be something that irks quite a few people, especially when the likes ofDoom,Grand Theft Auto, and the originalSuper Mario Bros.have been forced to settle for lower spots in BAFTA’s influential rankings.
While placing Shenmue at the top of the list will undoubtedly rub quite a few people the wrong way, the influence theDreamcastclassic has had on games to this day is undeniable. It changed the way developers approached open worlds, and perhaps more importantly, how players could interact with those worlds and everything in them.
BAFTA Latest Poll Determines The 21 Most Influential Games Ever
How Do We Feel About Shenmue At Number One?
Those elements were clearly a direct influence on the 3D GTA games that started to arrive just two years after the original Shenmue launched on Dreamcast, not to mention most other games that feature an explorable open world. Between that, its NPCs, and how it handled the in-game flow of time, Shenmue was inarguably the foundation for so much we see in video games to this day.
Moving on down BAFTA’s list, you’ll find the aforementioned Super Mario Bros. Without that first Mario game, we wouldn’t have 2D sidescrollers in the way we would come to know them via the games that followed. The same applies to Doom and first-person shooters, and 1993’s Doom rounds out BAFTA’s top three.
WhileTetris,Metal Gear Solid, andFinal Fantasy 7all deserve to be in there, number seven is the only confusing entry on this list. Those polled settled onKingdom Come: Deliverance 2being the seventh most influential game of all time. I’m not entirely sure how a game that was only released two months ago has managed to have that much influence on the games industry as a whole, and there’s no real explanation as to why those who voted feel differently. The new game is higher on the list than the likes ofDark SoulsandSuper Mario 64.
Remember, BAFTA didn’t do this. It ran a poll to determine the top 21, so if you want to blame anyone for the running order, blame those who cast their votes.
