10 Video Games That Were Ahead Of Their Time

[Music] like marty mcfly in 2015 some games were simply ahead of their time i guess you guys aren't ready for that yet just to qualify we aren't actually saying that these games literally time travel to the future to get some of their ideas that would be ridiculous no this is all about those titles whose ahead of the curve designs and out there concepts wouldn't hit the mainstream until years later some games influenced future releases directly by setting the trends while others were just so advanced for their time that nothing could come close to them for years to come this list isn't definitive either there are lots of games out there that were revolutionary for their time each with their own varying levels of importance so to call any of them a certified best is a near impossible thing to do with that in mind i'm peter from triple jump and here are 10 video games that were ahead of their time number 10. eternal darkness eternal darkness was a critical darling when it came out on the gamecube considered the next step in horror gaming silicon knight's masterpiece is one of the most unique games well ever it takes place over a 2 000 year span transitioning between 12 playable characters throughout the two millennia with all of the protagonists being in some way linked the story is good the combat is well a bit iffy to be honest but the atmosphere brought on by the sanity system is exceptional the lower your sanity gets the more the game messes with you from seeing things in the darkness that disappear when you get near to the game playing with your volume levels and fake outs like pretending to delete your save file and emptying your inventory our psychomantis the sanity system will keep you constantly on edge unfortunately while the system as a whole is ahead of its time nobody has been able to use a similar approach like this in the years since this is because nintendo patented it and considering that intense horror isn't really their shtick don't expect to see it used again anytime soon hopefully as u.s patents last 20 years and eternal darkness came out in 2002 we may see a new game using the system in the not too distant future and no amnesia doesn't count that was just a wibbly screen effect he can't patent vaseline nintendo number nine harvest moon a quote from electronic gaming monthly an rpg about farming talk about a hard sell it's a statement that in hindsight seems a bit silly farming sims and other casual titles like stardew valley ooblets animal crossing and spirit fairer have proved that these types of games are incredibly popular but in the mid to late 90s there wasn't anything like harvest moon so it's understandable that the idea would seem strange harvest moon was years ahead of the game when it came to the casual sim in fact it's even more impressive when you realize what was on trend in the mid-90s when it came out high octane action and violence just looking at the magazine that the aforementioned quote came from is evidence enough of that of all the games on this list this is the one you could most call genre defining farming games are incredibly popular as of late and they all have harvest moon to thank for it especially star g valley the series still exists today but it's now under the name tale of seasons a name so forgettable i bet he didn't even realize that that's not actually the name it's story of seasons yeah got you good don't worry i wouldn't have realized either number eight donkey kong country in 1994 donkey kong country was a graphical marvel there are some games that come along and look nothing like their contemporaries in a good way dragon's lair did it for the arcade and donkey kong country did it for the snares the 3d models of dkc were unheard of on the snes a system considered to be behind the times in 1994. it was after all the same year that the playstation released giving us a glimpse into the disc based future of gaming but even though the playstation may have been more powerful and allowed for bigger games to be made it's sacrificed the bright colour palettes loading times and smooth graphical style of the cartridge cartridge-based systems so when the technological wonder that was donkey kong country released with its clean graphical style and smooth animation it was still arguably better looking than anything the high-powered playstation could muster take tekken for example it may have the impressive fully rendered 3d world but the clean crisp design of dkc with its lovely weather effects and flowing animations just looks better than the murky pixelation of the ps1 it would take a long time for disc based games to get the smoothness that the cartridge could still offer and maybe that's why it took nintendo until the gamecube to make the jump number seven crisis crisis is more meme than game series nowadays the immortal phrase but can it run crisis will still come up whenever discussing any gaming tech even if the joke isn't relevant anymore as proved by the release of crisis remastered on the nintendo switch of all things just look how far we've come while the idea that a modern console wouldn't be able to run a 13 plus year old game sounds a bit odd in principle you have to think back to what crisis was like in 2007. the shooter was known as a system killer with only the most elite gaming pcs having a chance to run it at anything other than low settings while still maintaining a frame per second count higher than a powerpoint presentation about the importance of teraflops krytek's cryengine is known for one thing graphics with their games being notable for their visuals mainly crisis and far cry i think i can see a common theme here oh they're both video games it's this high demand performance which set crisis apart from its contemporaries in 2007. just compare crisis with another game from that year and you can see how graphically far ahead of its time it really was not that assassin's creed 1 was ugly in 2007 quite the opposite but that's just how advanced crisis was it's just a shame that nobody could run it number six angry birds apart from the common trend of very rarely being allowed in our top 10 lists we usually associate phone games with one of two things free to titles that primarily exist to exploit as much money out of people as feasibly possible by purposefully slowing the gameplay to the point where it's almost unplayable and then subtly suggesting microtransactions that can speed it back up or snake two what no angry birds didn't start as a free-to-play game but of course it got there eventually being arguably the first major name in mobile gaming to make the jump it's why angry birds proved to be ahead of its time in two ways initially being the first mobile game to achieve mainstream success showing there was a real market for the medium and pushing forward the free-to-play model for which the likes of cut the rope and candy crush would soon follow free to play and freemium as business models didn't begin on mobile rather it was the mmos years earlier which released this curse onto the world but aside from world of warcraft mmos haven't had quite the widespread cultural impact of mobile gaming after all would the likes of league of legends team fortress 2 and fortnite have gone free to play if not for the success of mobile gaming perhaps not therefore it can be argued that all of this was brought on by angry birds god who knew that this could do so much damage oh i'm horrible you said it buddy number five jurassic park trespasser trespasser was a critical and commercial failure even though it had the jurassic park name and boasted a lot of revolutionary new features the horrendous frame rate high spec demand glitches wobbly ai unpredictable physics and just about every other feature was in some way broken however it did a lot of good too instead of a conventional heads-up display trespasser used a series of visual and audio cues to get across the necessary information with an on-screen chest tattoo showing your current health bar and the protagonist audibly telling you how many bullets you've used empty the game at least tried to do something new in the quest for fully immersive gameplay there's also a heavy focus on physics primarily using your character's arm in a way you'd recognize if you played 2013's surgeon simulator admittedly wiggling an elongated arm out in front of you like you're a sesame street character having a meltdown will ruin that immersion that you got from the lack of hud but at least it was an interesting idea taking into account the sheer size of the world and the quite impressive graphics for 1998 you have a game that was far too ambitious for the time but that's not a bad thing after all where would we be if nobody bothered to innovate on old ideas a bethesda a a get a new engine number four system shock 1999 silent hill 1998's half-life and metal gear solid 1996's resident evil all games that are considered landmark steps in defining the art of storytelling in a 3d world they use the area around them as part of the narrative rather than just as an inert stage on which the action plays out it allowed for a more organic rich and believable story nuanced and subtle but before all this there was 1994's system shock for those too young to have played system shock in the mid 90s its reputation as the spiritual precursor to bioshock should tell you everything you need to know system shock influenced its more popular underwater sibling in far more than name alone this is seen most prominently in the story told through audio logs and dynamic in-world scenarios rather than stationary conversation and cutscenes being the primary method letting players feel that they were the ones guiding the story rather than the developers if you think now of a modern open world or semi-open world game that encourages multiple play styles like hitman breath of the wild skyrim or dishonored chances are the one in your head was inspired in some way by system shock number three shenmue the shenmue series has a special distinction of managing to be both far ahead of and far behind its time shenmue's popularity comes from its reluctance to follow what came before it by going its own path in almost every regard the game was unlike any other of the time while shenmue 3 technically did the same thing by ignoring every gaming innovation in the 18 years since shenmue 2 the first outing in the series at least had some genuinely novel ideas quick time events started with shenmue it was also the inspiration for later titles such as gta 3 and the yakuza series with its technological advancements and levels of depth pretty much setting the bar for every other 3d open world game going forward oddly though shenmue's most ahead of its time feature was its budget while final fantasy vii was the powerhouse blockbuster at the time in terms of cost mainly marketing if you go by development cost shenmue dwarfed that game even if you were to lowball the figure going by director yu suzuki who said the game cost 23 million dollars less than previously reported it would still be a decade until it was eclipsed by the era of aaa blockbusters like modern warfare 2. so you could say as well as all its novel features it was ahead of its time by being overly expensive which is something number two animal crossing right this might sound odd at first but hear me out animal crossing has potentially had the most negative impact on gaming of any other game in history oh that's quite the claim to make in 2020 of all years isn't it so uh buckle yourself in this is going to need some serious elaboration the way that animal crossing or animal forest if you want to get japanese about this used the gamecube's internal clock was genius by syncing the gameplay up with real life time and date animal crossing became the first true life simulator putting aside its unique gameplay though we're more interested in how it handles its clock i said clock with an l behave yourselves just think about this take the mechanic of purposely slowing the gameplay down so you have to leave it for a day and return on a regular basis and add it to the addictive nature of being rewarded for those repeated behaviors and what do you get free to play mobile games of course now it wasn't really animal crossings fault that their addictive gameplay loop was abused by money hungry mobile developers nintendo still keep microtransactions out of their mainline games to this day even though monetizing them would be easy and very profitable however there's no doubt that the way in which people play animal crossing did in some way inspire the model used by mobile developers and nintendo aren't pure as the driven snow either in 2017 they just couldn't help themselves and released animal crossing pocket camp in-app purchases and all still at least it took them 16 years to do it would have taken ea about 16 minutes and number one tomb raider lara croft transcended gaming while mario is probably the most famous game character ever lara had a special kind of mainstream appeal that the chunky plumber could only dream of and no i'm not only talking about her ski slope chest lara was arguably gaming's first mascot that wasn't one dimensional mario was relentlessly cheerful doomguy was a walking gun sonic was cool by 90 standards anyway crash was crazy pikachu was cute link was green but lara could be witty serious emotional sarcastic and appeal to people from all kinds of demographics for all kinds of different reasons indeed she played a major role in removing the games are for kids image that had stopped the medium from properly reaching the mainstream this was proved with the box office success of the tomb raider movie while it wasn't the best gaming movie ever made we've ranked them all by the way it was the highest grossing game based movie at the time and it took a whole nine years for that record to be beaten on top of all that as though this entry needs any more evidence not only was lara ahead of her time as a cultural phenomenon but the tomb raider games themselves were also some of the most revolutionary titles to grace the early 3d they still stand up today as great games overall despite the bits that haven't aged as gracefully which is something that can't be said for almost all of the fledglings of the 32-64-bit era well done core design well done idos interactive and well done lara and that's our list but of course there are many games that were ahead of their time certainly far more than can fit on a top 10 list so let us know some of your favorites in the comments below you can follow myself and triple jump on twitter here and if you want to support the things you enjoy then check out the rewards on our patreon finally don't forget to like the video share it with your friends and subscribe to the channel i've been peter from triple jump and thanks for watching

Channel: TripleJump

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Keywords: games ahead of their time, top 10 games ahead of their time, video games ahead of their time, cutting edge games, innovative games, innovative video games, most innovative video games, most innovative games of all time, most innovative games, games, ahead of their time, video games, before their time, donkey kong country, donkey kong country snes, donkey kong country super nintendo, tomb raider, lara croft, animal crossing, harvest moon, teamtriplejump, list, top 10, top ten

Id: FWpRY_03NP0

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021