Wolfenstein 3D, for the obvious reasons, and one less obvious. I spent $60 in long distance charges to connect to the Apogee BBS in order to download Wolfenstein 3D (and a few other classic Apogee games) back in the day when I saw it listed in an old issue of Computer Gaming Monthly. W3D redefined what gaming could be on PC, as well as raised the bar insanely high for shareware games in general. (for those that weren't using computers connectedly prior to 1994, a BBS - Bulletin Board Service - was a single computer you dialed up via modem that allowed you to download files, e-mail other people, etc... each of those systems would usually connect to other servers using the same software and transfer data, updating their databases, etc. so that people could communicate in what was effectively the precursor to e-mail and forums).
Smef said:
Tribes 2 was a classic FPS. The new Tribes Vengeance isn't nearly as good of a multiplayer game, but it has a fun single-player mode.
While I'm glad to see a mention to Tribes in general, the fact remains that most (nearly 90%) of all people who played Tribes 2 that had also played Tribes 1, went straight back to Tribes 1 after the fallout of the release of Tribes 2. It did everything it could to damage the system they had put into place to make the original great. (virtually destroyed the skiing system by making it easier, but slower, the graphics were too muddy and made things more difficult to see, the number of players, built in, was dropped from 32 to 16 - though this was fixed with mods, mine-discing was eliminated, etc... and then the bugs, OMG, the bugs)
For those that don't know. Tribes DEFIED the genre, as well as defined it. While other games were using the directional keys, Tribes is the first game (that I'm aware of) that used the WASD key system for play (EDIT - Quake is the first, just found it on Wikipedia). It also, to this day, (aside from half a dozen low quality and/or foreign - i.e. non-english MMOFPSs) to host such huge multiplayer games (up to 128 players simultaneously), on maps that spanned several square miles, that also had indoor to outdoor play (something quite common today, but was pioneered by Starsiege: Tribes). And here's the key - the 128 players WORKED... unlike most games that have some paltry multiplayer team based systems, Tribes was DESIGNED for team/squad based multiplayer CTF... While other games were trying to get more people to play Multiplayer, it DROPPED single player like a bad habit, and forced upon its users a learning curve second to none, but with a reward that was/is/ and may always be, the greatest reward one could ever feel. The knowledge, not by dent of congratulations, or by the false ego we boost ourselves with when we accidentally get something done right, but by our own sheer understanding of the quality of our abilities. You HAD to be good to play in the game, and it spawned some of the most beautiful, almost choreographed ballet-like battles to have ever been seen. People knew their place and played it so well that a 128 player game played out like synchronized swimming between two teams of 64 players. There is no beauty greater!
When, in quake, people accidentally shot a rocket and hit someone flying through the air, and everyone cheered at the coolness of that accidental hit, people in Tribes were flying through the air, throwing a mine at the enemy, then shooting something akin to a rocket at them, then the blast radius set off the mine which happened to be perfectly flying to explode and kill them in mid air... And this happened with such frequency as to rarely be congratulated. You *might* have been congratulated if you managed to time a 5 second mortar shot perfectly enough to hit someone AND explode at the exact same time, killing them. That's how good you had to be, and that's how good so many people got playing that game.
And that's another thing. Flying. EVERY character had jetpacks on that were so well designed that it felt as if all FPS's should have had them from the beginning. The ease of use of the jetpacks made each level, especially the largest levels, become sandboxes to play in. They were not small by any stretch of the imagination, but being able to move with such speed, made the entire experience one of the greatest in gaming I've ever had the pleasure of playing. I still have the game installed on my system 11 years after it was released.
NOW, don't get me wrong, Tribes 2 was an awesome game in its own right, and even Vengeance played better than most FPS's (despite sucking compared to previous iterations of the system), I still feel that Tribes 1 is probably one of the best games I've ever played, and the only game to have gotten me fully into FPS's in general. Without it, I wouldn't have gotten into games like Halo, Portal, Half-Life, Deus Ex, Left 4 Dead, or any of the other multitudes of good/great games that exist out there in the FPS genre.
To add to the greatness that is Tribes - while other non Quake and UT games of the time were simply paying huge royalties to use the respective engines, Tribes was built under its own engine which was, in some aspects, light years ahead of Quake and UT. The netcode was second to none, which inspired the great terms like, "HPB" (high ping bastard - I don't know how many people have ever heard of it - most have heard of the other side - the LPB, or Low Ping Bastard), where people with shoddy modem connections of 28.8Kbps or worse could still play and even dominate in many a multiplayer Tribes match (I know I was regularly on at around 26.4Kbps).
I'm also one of MANY who paid through the teeth for the only real upgrade to dial-up internet at the time, just to lower the ping and give ourselves a little bit more of an edge, and well, to just make the game feel more fluid and responsive - which was still far better than most other multiplayer FPS games. For me, I was paying around $350 a month for ISDN (the precursor to DSL), which still only provided 64k connections (or 128k if you used both ISDN telephone lines simultaneously). There were others who had T1 lines installed into their homes for this game alone.
Yes, we were, and are, obsessed
P.S. - as per Wikipedia
Game Firsts
Mods to the original game made Tribes one of the most innovative games for years to come. Most of the mods done to the game would be copied later on by other software titles. Some of the most memorable mods would give users items that were mimicked later by other software titles:
* Grav Gun- Made popular by Half Life 2 and thought of as revolutionary, yet was created in Tribes many years earlier
* Ability to build bases and place base items- A first for a 1st person shooter game- And still has not been implemented to the amount Tribes allows. You can deploy things like doors, wall, force fields, turrets, inventory stations, supply stations, sensors, missile launchers, turret control stations, teleporters, jails, amongst many other items.
* The SEX Mod had machine guns that launched self deploying laser turrets, allowing the user to deploy hundreds of automated turrets anywhere on the map, even while fighting
* The original Warzone mod would let the players build their base from scratch (building, turrets, and stations) and then let the players play with their custom bases.
* T-Mail- A serverside mail system which automatically gave connected players a MailBox/InBox/OutBox/SentBox/Contact List/SaveBox and many other options that popular e-mail systems have all within the games Score TAB Menu.
* Demo Drop- Feature that allowed the game to record your first person game play with an automated format type to save it, convert it, store it, watch through the Tribes gaming client, but moreso it made it to where you didn't need Fraps, or Gamecam or any third party screen capture to record your games. The feature also did not diminish fps or gameplay, making it VERY easy to run and perform on all systems.