BAFTA’s recent public poll has crowned Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue as The Most Influential Video Game of All Time. This surprising result has ignited a fervent discussion, with fans and detractors alike debating the game’s enduring legacy.
A Dreamcast Classic Redefined
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Shenmue was praised for its innovative open-world approach, detailed settings, and narrative complexity that set new standards for interactive storytelling. Yu Suzuki’s vision of Yokosuka is celebrated as an astonishingly vivid portrayal of real-life Japan, influencing countless developers in the years since.
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Shenmue was also notable for introducing Quick Time Events (QTEs), a mechanic that has since become ubiquitous across various genres of video games.
The Top 21 List Unveiled
Joining Shenmue at the top of BAFTA’s countdown were classics like:
- Doom - Pioneering 3D shooter and genre-defining work
- Super Mario Bros. - Establishing a blueprint for modern platformers
- Half-Life - Innovations in narrative integration, a hallmark of first-person shooters
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - One of the most revered games ever made for its gameplay and storytelling
A Mixed Reception Amongst Fans
While many consider Shenmue an epochal achievement, some critique it for its awkward controls and clunky dialogue. However, over time, these aspects have often been viewed as part of the game’s charm rather than hindrances.
What do you make of the BAFTA’s choice? Is Shenmue truly the most influential video game ever created? What game would you put at the top of the list?
I hyped this game so much when I was a kid but nobody here had a Dreamcast for me to play it.
20 years later I finally played and was still blown away by all the technology and details in the world, it truly was ahead of it’s time.
My friend was such a champion of this game. He barely slept for days when this game came out. He turned me onto it and I’ve been a big fan ever since. Unfortunately he passed away a little over 20 years ago. I know he would be rubbing this in everyone’s faces.
More than Super Mario Bros, Doom, GTA3? Nah, son. False.
Tetris has a better case, think of all the casual games that have spawned since.
SMB, and Doom, or an early RPG imo.
I think the point is that GTA3 would likely not exist the way it did without Shenmue. Shenmue was a life sim with a hyper interactive 3d world with tons of different gameplay mechanics, non-playable characters with schedules, day and night cycle. It had a hyper cinematic story with dynamic cutscenes (interactive cutscenes), 3d melee combat, just a ton of stuff that no one was really doing at the time.
The game itself left no impact on gamers because of how ‘weird’ it was, but devs completely changed the way they make games. GTA3 as an example.
EDIT: Reading the list, they specifically mention then “Living and alive world” aspect of the game. Something at the time was novel, but every modern AAA game has tried to achieve.
But then GTA3 was already the natural progression for the series. It’s not that different than the 2D GTA games in terms of design… the technology just wasn’t there yet to build it out in 3D until that point. I’m sure they were already in process of developing the game before seeing Shenmue and it would have turned out very similar had that game never existed.
I feel like this list has some games that are too new to put on a “most influential” list. Let’s give it at least a few years to see how Baldur’s Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 influence the industry.
On the other end, how is Rogue not on the list? The number of games calling themselves “roguelikes” or “roguelites” has been ballooning every year for the better part of a decade now, and some of its ideas have found their way into other genres, especially the use of procedurally generated level layouts.
Edit: Ohhhhh the poll methodology was to ask people to pick one game, and then they sorted them by popularity. So even though I think Rogue is definitely a top-20-most-influential game, it’s harder to argue for it being top 1. But… that makes it even crazier that KCD2 is on the list. A significant number of people voted for KCD2 as “THE most influential game of all time”? It just came out!
Any poll that asks the general public to pick something is inevitably going to turn into a popularity contest, irrespective of its original intent.
I wholeheartedly agree with Rogue. As far as “New” games that are the most influential, my vote goes to Vampire Survivors.
Shenmue was insanely cool when it came out in 1999. To consider Ocarina of Time came out the year before, open world games were a brand new thing. Shenmue paired that with an epic action life-sim. It was just so unexpected; so many minigame-like mechanics for doing things around the world. It was incredibly immersive and ahead of its time.
I don’t think it has as big an impact on players as it had on developers.
The Yakuza series sticks out as greatly inspired by Shenmue / spiritual successor, as with Persona series. Also games like Lake, Fahrenheit / The Indigo Prophecy, GTA/RedDead, FFVII Remake, all owe a little to Shenmue.
I don’t think it has as big an impact on players as it had on developers.
I think that’s a good way of explaining it. Shenmue can be a love/hate kind of game and with the Dreamcast’s short lifespan too it isunderstandable that mainstream gamers have never played it.
As a Japanese kid growing up in Canada, Shenmue felt like I was visiting my grandparents from the comfort of my basement. It was so insanely new but also nostalgic at the same time. I was so sure the Dreamcast would dominate lol. How naive of me.
Dreamcast was the best console of the sixth generation. If Sega hadn’t spun up MegaCD, 32x, and Saturn in such a short time, I think developers would have embraced the Dreamcast more rather than be weary Sega would abandon it for another system a couple of years later.
The actual BAFTA article with the full list starts off by mentioning most influential game on popular culture, which is going to be different regionally. Shenmue may have been the most influential in Japan or the UK, but it sure didn’t have the effect on pop culture in the US that Mario, Zelda, or Minecraft has had, not even close.
at least with influential you can argue that Shenmue influenced a lot of major games in the pop culture even today (although none quite as popular as Minecraft) even if it itself is a bit obscure. last year they declared Lara Croft the most iconic video game character or something like that and that one i can’t quite figure out from any angle
They are big pyramid fans
Wasn’t the entire game of Dragon’s Lair based on Quick Time Events? That predates Shenmue by like 15 years.
I am pretty damn sure QTEs existed even before Shenmue. For fuck’s sake, that’s how Plumbers with Ties on Sega CD operated and pretty much every Philips CD-I game with a few exceptions, like the Zelda game where you play as Zelda.
Fuckin’ Dragon’s Lair.
It’s really just their phrasing of introducing QTEs that I have issue with. Shenmue did start the trend of them being used so often in the early 2000’s. People hated them before, and they hated them then too; but Shenmue was good for other reasons, and those are just one of the things they copied trying to capitalize on its success.
Don’t the biggest games all owe some of their presence thanks to either doom or half life?
Quick Time Events are abysmally stupid and just destroy my enjoyment of a game. Horrible and stupid.
A game most people have not heard of is the most influential? I only read the headline, but that just seems unrealistic
It all depends on how you’re defining “influence”. As an example, let’s look at the first Resident Evil game and it’s predecessor, Sweet Home. More people have played or heard of Resident Evil than a movie tie-in game that was never officially released outside Japan. However, a huge amount of RE’s DNA (indeed, things that fans will say are necessary to capturing the feel of early RE games) stem from Sweet Home. Hell, RE was initially conceived of as a remake of Sweet Home, until they realized they didn’t have the rights. Below is an incomplete list of features from Sweet Home that were incorporated into the first RE.
- inventory management puzzles
- exploring an intricate, cohesive location inhabited by monsters.
- narrative communicated through found notes and cutscenes
- deliberately clunky combat to emphasize player vulnerability
- protagonist characters each have a thing they can do that others can’t (presaging Jill’s lockpick and Chris’s lighter)
- door loading transitions
So, which is the more influential game? The one that popularized all of these concepts, or the one that originated the concepts? I think a case can be made for both, but I lean towards the originator.
