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The Game of the Millenium
by Steven Kent for Gamers Today
Who could possibly know what the the term "Game of the Millenium" means? If it means the most significant game, there are several candidates with valid claims.
You could argue that Pong is the most significant game because it was the game that launched the video game industry. But what about the tennis game on the Magnavox Odyssey -- the game that inspired Pong? What about Computer Space -- the first video game to appear in arcades? And how about Spacewar -- the game created by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that inspired Atari founder Nolan Bushnell to create Computer Space? (True purists may also argue that the tennis game that Willy Higinbotham built out of an oscilloscope in 1958 deserves a nod as the earliest game, but Higinbotham created his game in a vacuum -- it did not impact the creation of later games or the evolution of the industry.)
You could also argue that significance can be determined by sales volume. Don't get too excited, you Myst fans, top CD -- ROM sales don't count for much when compared to other media. Sure, Broderbund sold over 4 million copies of Myst, but Nintendo has sold more than 40 million copies of Tetris for Game Boy, and that does not include the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super NES, PC, Macintosh, Commodore, PlayStation, Saturn, and arcade versions of the game.
You could also argue the impact of games by the influence they have had over the design of later games. But that brings up a bunch of chicken v.s. egg arguments. Sure, Super Mario Bros. changed the way people looked at side-scrolling games, but Scramble (an arcade helicopter game designed by Konami) and Crazy Climber (a vertical scrolling arcade game from Nichibitsu) were the first side-scrolling games out of Japan.
And what about Atari Football? Atari Football undeniably influenced the way later sports games were made, but it was also the first game to feature a scrolling field. Was Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, influenced by Atari Football as he designed Super Mario Bros.?
And how about Gotcha -- the 1973 maze game from Atari? Did that influence Toru Iwatani in the making of Pac-Man?
Since there is no scientific method for selecting the most significant game of the Millenium, the determination process falls back on aesthetics and personal taste. For the purposes of this article, The Legend of Zelda is the all-time winner.
If you're looking for significant firsts, The Legend of Zelda has some minor ones. The Legend of Zelda was the first Nintendo cartridge to have a built-in battery backup. It was the largest game of its time -- the first multi-megabit game. It was also one of the only two Nintendo games that Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa did not think could possibly catch on in the United States. (The other one was Pokemon.)
Arakawa was so insecure about The Legend of Zelda that he created a toll-free help line for consumers who bought the game but could not solve its puzzles. He put in a single telephone line that was answered by employees of all ranks. That service has expanded over the years, and Nintendo now has over 200 employees manning its telephones. The service is no longer toll free, but who can blame Nintendo -- the company averages over 100,000 calls per week. (Interestingly, The Legend of Zelda is the only NES game still covered by Nintendo's automated help line.)
Why Zelda:
Aside from its less than overwhelming firsts, The Legend of Zelda is notable for the one aspect of games that does not change with technology: storytelling.
Cutting-edge graphics technologies come and go, sometimes becoming extinct in a matter of weeks. Consider Sega's Dreamcast. No one could believe their ears when Sega began leaking details about Dreamcast. "A 128-bit processor? Impossible!" But it did not take Sony Computer Entertainment long to evoke considerably higher polygon counts once Sega released Dreamcast.
The original Legend of Zelda came out before 128-bit processing, 3D graphics, or polygon counts. It was not a spectacular-looking game when Nintendo released it in the United States in 1987, yet it still dazzled millions of players worldwide.
What Legend of Zelda lacked graphically, it more than made up for in storytelling. This was the game Miyamoto used to show that he could create intelligent puzzles. Prior to Zelda, Miyamoto was known for twitch games like Super Mario Bros., Popeye, and Hogan's Alley. With Legend of Zelda, he went from testing player's reflexes to working their imaginations.
Legend of Zelda took place on a huge playing field. Too big, according to Arakawa. Worried that players would get lost and frustrated, he had a map packed with each cartridge.
The Legend of Zelda balanced action and storyline perfectly. Players needed timing and traditional skills to beat certain enemies, but they also had to read clues and look for hidden passages. The story of a young elf going out to save a princess, The Legend of Zelda was as much an interactive fantasy movie told in primitive graphics as it was a game.
Many people will question the selection of The Legend of Zelda as the game of the Millennium, but before you reject this choice, try one simple experiment: Ask gamers over the age of 20 who purchased NES consoles if they owned The Legend of Zelda. If they did, ask them how many times they played the game through. People tended to play Zelda through again and again. Armed with this information, ask friends who own Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot 3, Sonic Adventure, Sonic The Hedgehog, or any other popular single-player game how many times they have played through their favorite titles. In most cases The Legend of Zelda will win. That's what makes it the game of the millenium.
