5 games that started a new genre

A lot of games have left behind their legacy, however, only some of them left their mark as a genre-defining piece of art.

It takes a huge amount of impact from a game to have its name denote a specific genre that defines how future games are designed. There are countless numbers of genres and sub-genres that exist. However, only a few of them are thoroughly noteworthy as they are the most popular ones currently in the gaming industry.

While some introduced a new way of playing some of the games, others implemented a completely new and unique style that left a mark on other developers' hearts. And from such inspirations, they created other games, marking the first one as the torch-bearer for a certain category.

In this article, five such games will be listed that ended up creating a whole new genre.

---

Top 5 games that created a genre

1) Rogue

Roguelike is one of the most famous genres to exist in modern gaming culture. It all started with the release of a game called Rogue back in 1980. Designed by Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, Ken Arnold, and Jon Lane, and published by Epyx software, it featured a dungeon crawling video game.

A level of Rogue (image via Rogue)

The game has many dungeon levels that were procedurally generated, which means no level seems the same as encountered in a previous run. The developers also made sure that there is a permadeath mechanics in the game that disallowed players to start a new journey with the same character that died in the previous run.

This special mechanic of losing all previous progress due to death was seen as a unique angle to what the normal gaming meta was back then. Henceforth, the whole world came together to call any game that featured the same mechanics of starting over every time as Roguelike.

---

2) Demon Souls

This PS-exclusive role-playing game created by Hidetaka Miyazaki and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment and Bandai Namco has created one of the most famous genres to ever exist, Soulslike.

Demon Souls was a seminal release in gaming (Image via Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Demon Souls first came out back in 2009 as it introduced a broader horizon of RPG gameplay. Not only was the game a work of art, but it was also extremely punishing for its player base. The game marked the reign of Hidetaka Miyazaki as one of the juggernauts of the gaming industry in the coming days.

This game dealt with death in a much more unique way than others. While most games had a save file where they could start over after dying, losing only the progress they make by traveling, in Demon Souls, one will also lose everything they own as the in-game currency.

This made it extremely difficult for players to move around recklessly as they might end up losing everything. Even to this day, any game created following the same recipe as Demon Souls is considered a Soulslike game.

---

3) Jet Rocket

The open-world genre has one of the vastest range of games. From medieval to futuristic post-apocalyptic worlds, this division has seen its fair share of variations.

Just like any other category, there was a starting point where everyone in the coming days drew their own references from.

Jet Rocket being played back in 1970 (Image via SEGA)

Back in 1970, SEGA introduced a new game called Jet Rocket to the world. The game utilizes a vector-marked movement system as the player pilots a spaceship from a first-person perspective.

Even though there was only so much players could do when it came to moving from one point to the other, they had absolute freedom to choose these points. This allowed players to choose their journey on their own accord.

Quite as the name suggests, the open-world styled games were introduced to the gaming industry through Jet Rocket due to its unique mechanics of letting the players choose their path.

---

4) Dungeon & Dragons

This masterpiece of tabletop board games paved the way for many modern-day titles that use the same formula. First created as a way of expressing one’s fantasy through story-telling and imaginative escape, it soon created a fanbase of its own through tremendous success and fame.

DnD being played

Even though Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) is not a traditional video game of the old days, it still created a genre strong enough for other titles to follow. The role-playing game genre, better known as RPG, comes from the very fact that in DnD, one can customize their own characters in whatever way they like and carry forward with their quest as their imagination entails.

---

5) Defense of the Ancients

The massively multiplayer battle-arena (MOBA) genre was first introduced to the world through a fan-made mod of the then-popular game Warcraft III. While it was a fan project in the beginning, the game soon made its headway as one of the most played and popular releases of the decade. Later on, it came to be known as Defense of the Ancients or DOTA.

This marked the start of the MOBA that developed into one of the most famous genres in recent times as the next iteration of the game, DOTA 2, and League of Legends reigned on the market as the top two in this genre.

---