[Spank-A-Thon]

Okay, serious discussion time folks. This one is going to require you lot to do some serious thinking and justification in your posts.

What I would like you to do is to pick a game, and explain why you feel it has in some way revolutionised gaming. I'd like to see some level of detail here. I don't wanna read stuff like 'GTA rocks man'.

What features did the game bring that were new or innovative? Maybe the game was simply excellent in execution such that it perfected existing ideas. Maybe it spawned (or popularised) a whole new genre of games....

Here's mine...

For me, one of the most influential games ever was called 'Defender' by Williams. For those who don't know about it, it was an arcade machine released in the early 80's and was ported to most, if not all, 8-bit computers. And it was the difinitive shoot-em-up...

Defender introduced a couple of concepts that were brand new to the gaming world - and these concepts definitely changed the face of gaming.

Perhaps the biggest concept was that 'Defender' introduced a game world. No longer was the player restricted to a single screen - in Defender, the screen scrolled. All of a sudden, the player had more to worry about other than what he could see. By making use of the radar (another first for gaming too), the player had to keep tabs on what was happening in other parts of the game world and respond accordingly.

This was a massive change from that of the millions of Space Invader derivatives - and coupled with the very quick gameplay - left a lot of gamers very confused... Defender became a game for the hardcore. A Defender expert, sublimely creating an amazing spectacle of vector colour, was something to watch indeed. Defender was the loudest, fastest and most colourful game of it's era. And did I mention the smart bombs? It was also the first game to have a smart bomb!!!

This is why I feel Defender changed the face of gaming. Now you tell me yours...

- S