In the oldest days of video games, genres weren’t really a thing. It was just “a video game,” a thing that you played in some nonspecific manner.
It was in the same way that there weren’t “genres” of sports, for instance.
10 Genre Mashups That Work Incredibly Well
Multidimensional excellence is the best kind of excellence.
As gaming has evolved, though, there have naturally been deviations and specifications into particular genres of play and tone.
Many of these genres, while existing in mildly ephemeral states beforehand, were truly solidified in the public consciousness by certain games.
Remarkably, not all of these games were wildly successful in their own eras, but would go on to inspire numerous other games years down the line.
10Super Metroid
Metroidvania
Super Metroid
The games that inspired the Metroidvania genre areSuper Metroidand Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
However, Super Metroid did come out first in 1994, so it’s the real progenitor of the genre.
It was Super Metroid’s emphasis on non-linear exploration, upgrading, and speedy gameplay that would eventually birth the somewhat oddly-named genre.
While it’s not technically a part of the genre, Super Metroid also helped bring about the original speedrunners, a crowd that has long coexisted with the Metroidvania genre.
Roguelikes
Originally released in 1980 for Unix-based microcomputers, Rogue was originally the sole territory of fledgeling programmers and game designers.
Dungeon-crawling, permadeathPC games were a very niche sub-genre for several decades until they suddenly exploded in popularity in the late 2000s.
Of course, Rogue was an exceptionally difficult, unforgiving game, even amongst its contemporaries.
This is why we have separate distinctions for the subsets of the genre.
We have roguelikes, games that emulate its difficulty completely, and roguelites, which just take cues from the concept.
8PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
Battle Royale
PUBG: Battlegrounds
When you think of Battle Royale games, the first name that may pop into your head is Fortnite. That’s understandable, Fortnite is an absolute juggernaut of a game.
However, Fortnite likely wouldn’t have gotten as popular as it did ifPlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, better known as PUBG, hadn’t laid the foundation.
PUBG wasoriginally released as an elaborate modfor the survival crafting game DayZ based on the classic film Battle Royale.
In 2017, it was spun off into its own release in a beta state, where it began to instill the basic precepts of the genre into our minds.
7Demon’s Souls
Soulslikes
Demon’s Souls
Action RPGs have been around since the 90s, so the original release ofDemon’s Soulsin 2009 didn’t seem like that big a deal at the time.
However, this one game would spawn not just one of the most successful action RPG franchises to date, but an entire subset of butt-kickingly difficult action RPGs.
Tocall your game a Soulslikeis to let any potential players know that they will receive no mercy or reprieve from their foes, even if they attempt to pause the game.
In a similar vein to roguelikes, we’ve also started to see Soulslites, which incorporate similar design sensibilities without beating you quite as hard over the head with difficulty.
6Super Mario Kart
Kart Racing
Super Mario Kart
Early racing games were about just that: the racing. You control a car, you go fast, you try to come in first.
The release ofSuper Mario Kartin 1992 expanded what we understood a racing game to be, giving rise to thekart racing sub-genre.
Kart racers still had plenty of emphasis on going fast and coming in first, but the addition of items and stage gimmicks added additional layers of strategy and surprise.
Compared to the highly detailed realistic racers we have today, games like Mario Kart 8 still serve as a much more accessible entry to racing-centric gameplay.
First-Person Shooters
Doom (1993)
Games have been tinkering with first-person perspectives as far back as the vector graphics days, but those were positively primitive compared to what came later.
If you want to get technical about it, the first true FPS was Wolfenstein 3D, but the game that really made the concept viable was undoubtedly the original 1993Doom.
9 Games To Play If You Like Doom
From Bulletstorm to Borderlands, these frantic FPS games and series will keep all fans of Doom gripped.
Doom’s positively meteoric success spawned an entire genre of pretenders to its throne, jokingly referred to as “Doom clones” in their time.
It could be said that those many clones, and the careful gameplay and graphical iterations they led to, are what gave us the sprawling FPS genre we know and love today.
4Street Fighter 2
Fighting Games
Street Fighter 2
You might assume the original Street Fighter was the one that started the fighting game craze, but that game wasn’t actually much to write home about.
No, the game that really kicked off the fighting game golden age wasStreet Fighter 2and itsmany versions and upgrades.
In addition to the breadth of its characters and movesets, Street Fighter 2 was also the first fighting game to introduce combo strings.
The fighting games we enjoy today wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without the beautiful strings of punches, kicks, and fireballs that Street Fighter 2 brought into this world.
3Devil May Cry
Hack And Slash
Devil May Cry
By the time of the PlayStation 2, calling something a 3D action game usually implied a hybrid of combat, platforming, and maybe some puzzle solving. Combat was a feature, rather than a focus.
This changed with the release of the firstDevil May Cryin 2001, often cited as the archetypal third-person hack and slash game, also known as character-action or spectacle fighter.
In Devil May Cry and the genre it spawned, it wasn’t enough to just smack your enemies until they fell over.
It was about doing it in a precise, flawless, and above all else, stylish manner. It’s a genre that makes you really feel like an unstoppable force of nature.
2Parappa The Rapper
Rhythm Games
PaRappa the Rapper
Games on some earlier consoles like the NES made some efforts at musically-inclined gameplay, but those systems just weren’t advanced enough to facilitate it.
The PlayStation, however, could handle the necessary mechanics, and that’s exactly what it did with 1996’sParappa the Rapper.
Rather than making nondescript beeps and boops, Parappa the Rapper was about following along in time with an actual music track and chiming in when necessary.
Parappa provided us with the template for music-based games going forward, with colored prompts flowing across track bars to this day.
1Grand Theft Auto 3
Open-World Sandbox
Grand Theft Auto 3
While the first twoGrand Theft Autogames were technically open-world, their top-down perspectives somewhat limited the things you could actually do in them.
The game that really put the open-world in open-world sandbox was Grand Theft Auto 3.
As a fully-realized 3D world, Grand Theft Auto 3 let you disregard your story missions to find whatever assorted nonsensical shenanigans your heart desires.
The gleeful wanton chaos has spawned many other open-world sandboxes, many also crime-focused, though others found other ways to facilitate the wackiness.
15 Anime Series That Redefined Their Genre
Sailor Moon, Cowboy Bebop, and Naruto shook up their genres and set the bar high for what anime can be.
