What games inspired you to start making games in Unity3D?

Hello everyone. I am just curious what games inspired all of you to start working in Unity3D? I assume everyone here are gamers or at least artists or musicians who took a special interest in their work in the games industry. I wll start off. Some games that inspired me are the following.


the 80's and 90's:

Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole

The Wonderboy series. Dynastic Hero, Wonder Boy in Monster World, Monster World IV

Secret of Mana

The Last Blade

Ghosts 'n Goblins

Mega Man series

Windjammers

Magical Drop 3

Splatterhouse 3

the Y's series mainly Y's Book I and II on Turbografx

Final Fantasy 2 and 3 SNES


More Recent:

Intelligent Qube on PS1

Tsugunai: Atonement

Ikaruga

Baldur's Gate II

Braid

Legend of Grimrock

Shining the Holy Ark

The Demon's/Dark Souls Series


That's only a few. I have been inspired of a mix of games from almost all genres. Although I play games from all genres. Sports are my least favorite though. Although I do like the occasional golf game and arcade style racing. I would like to hear what games brought you all here.

 

My inspiration has come from a different source. The role of VR, simulations and serious games in the learning and development industry. I still like to have a good awareness of the process of creating games though and keep an eye on different games coming out.


Thanks for starting this thread jforrest1980, your list does bring back some good memories.

 

Zork. It single-handedly got me into computer programming. I knew when I first played it that I had to understand how it worked. Once I managed to get a rough idea of how it functioned, as well as produced a rudimentary clone, I moved onto the next interesting game.

Years and several games later I ended up with an interest in realtime open world games. So I began learning OpenGL. Though I eventually got enough information to build my own engine, I came to the conclusion that it would be faster to just pick up a pre-made engine.

This was about when UDK came out and while it definitely was powerful it simply wasn't very user-friendly. So after a bit of digging around I found out Unity had released a free edition and decided to give it a shot. While I may or may not stick completely with Unity, it is definitely one of the first engines I now consider when considering a project.

That's probably way more lengthy than you were asking for though.

 

The Marathon Trilogy and its editing tools, Forge and Anvil. Unity was the first tool since then to feel as intuitive and powerful (Obviously far more powerful relatively), so I latched onto it almost from launch day.

 

There is one, and only one game that really inspired me to take the route of creating games.

Ultima Online.

Unity was just the tool a lot of people used when i started at University, so was a natural choice

 

Lets see... The 'top' games that make me want to make games are:

1. X-Com for its great game play - I think it was one of the first games I wanted to 'recreate'
2. MUSH servers, where I learnt about in-game coding and had my first taste of C coding.
3. Probably the #1 inspiration for me was the original Neverwinter Nights, and its amazing community of private RP-heavy servers. It was a great game for creative people and 'designing your own adventures', and I spent a fair bit of my free time ripping that game engine apart and learning how things worked (from models to programming to level design)..
4. Also finally, Ultima Online (more specifically the free shard emulators) - a ran a shard for years and really learned a lot about managing that kind of multi-player environmet - it was hard work but also a lot of fun.

 

Awesome! Y's was one of my all time favorite games.

I could probably go on for quite a bit, but to name a few off the top of my head.

Phantasy Star
Phantasy Star II - Another all time favorite.
Ghosts & Goblins

Fast forwarding a bit.

Street Fighter II
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat II
Killer Instinct

Some random games.

Resident Evil
Super Mario Brothers - Cliche, I know.
The Entire GTA Series.

Just to name a few.

When we were in high school, a good friend of mine and I always wanted to make video games. We would have all these awesome ideas, well at least what we thought were awesome.

However, we didn't know how to code, and didn't have the means to learn how to write code either, so our games never came to fruition.

Finally, a few years ago, I finally bit the bullet and took the time out to learn how to code.

While not the best, and there are others out there who can write way better code than I can, I can at least finally start creating games.

It's a challenge, but it's worth it.

 

@yourHost I grew up playing a lot of those as well, especially fighting games like street fighter II in the arcades. theres a barcade bst+arcade i still go to with my girlfriend and play SFII. sometimes with over 10 people in line. although i moved onto neo geo i wasnt influenced much by fighters, mainly because i thibk they would be really hard, especially to animate.

action rpg's are what really pulled me in though. games like secret of mana, the wonderboy series, and especially the isometric landstalker. my short term dream is to build a good action rpg. my long term goal is to make a game like dark souls game. demons souls is the game that recently made me go all in. playing demons souls i kept thinking it was the game i always dreamed of malking in every respect.

 

A lot of games I played growing up inspired me to learn Unity and how to make my own games. Some of them included Virtua Fighter 1-5R, Dead or Alive, Eternal Champions, the list goes on. And my background in computer graphics also propelled my love for game development.

 

Ahhh Eternal Champions. I spent a lot of time with that one growing up. And the others you mentioned too. The thing I really liked about Eternal Champions was the music. The only person I managed to beat that game with was Trident. I tried for months to beat it with Xavier, but it was OK because I really liked the music when your game was over.

Good Times!

 

Engine is called Unity, not Unity 3D.

 

1986 -- Grandparent's 286DX12 -- I learned Math Blaster, Oil Rig Driller, and a few other black and white character/text-based games including a dungeon type of game.

1992 -- Grandparent's Compaq Presario 486 -- Sierra's "LodeRunner for Windows" and the "Incredible Machine". My cousins and I played way too many hours and made way too many levels. I'm working on my own remake at the moment.

1990's -- I picked up a book on QBasic when I was 13 and tried to create my own text dungeon crawler.
1990's -- GoldenEye64. Tried recreating this on my own in OpenGL a few years later.

1995 -- Parent's Pentium 100....
1996 -- Microsoft's Monster Truck Madness
1997 -- Convinced my dad that he needed to buy a Diamond Voodoo 3D accelerator with 4MB of ram.

I tried OpenGL, even tried making my own game engine. Started learning C++ and OpenGL through NeHe.gamedev.net and realized that it would be a full time job and I'd never actually get to create a game. Was extremely disappointed at how much work it was going to take, because I really wanted to create my own GoldenEye clone. Went through university and discovered Alice Project. Also discovered Unity right before they changed the name to Unity... and it definitely wasn't ready for prime time yet. Kept it in my bookmarks, and then lost my bookmarks in a harddrive crash.

Splinter Cell 1-3... waiting for Ubisoft to come back to its roots, and also getting an itch to make my own software for fun and for others to enjoy. Enough of trucking/shipping software by others' rules.

Splinter Cell Blacklist. Darn it. They made it really well. Oh well, I'll make my own and better with my own flavor. But first, starting much smaller.... like a space invaders type of clone....

 

I haven't played that many games, to my own surprise, but the one that has had the biggest impact would be...Halo...Demo...and then Halo full for Mac. I suppose the death of those basically instigated a need to create something that gave me a similar experience but better, not that I'm gonna be trying to start that game project anytime soon...baby steps.

 

Pokémon Yellow

 

The first game I created in Unity (well, started creating) was a Metal Gear Solid clone. Of course, I didn't have any assets, so it was a MGS clone where you were a cube, but it did have stealth elements and such.

 

Wait, what's the question exactly? Because I started on dark basic! lol

 

Flappy bird

 

Sim city has been one of my biggest inspirations.
Along with roller coaster tycoon & transport tycoon deluxe.

I'd like to see more simulators & non violent games out there. So much of the gaming world is centered around war and killing. I want to inject some positive energy into the industry.

I also want to make some educational software that everyone can enjoy, not just kids. Maybe some more advanced subjects that teens & adults can appreciate. Maybe things like calculus & quantum physics would be so intimidating to people if presented in a more entertaining way. Just because we get a diploma or college degree doesn't mean we should stop learning.

 

The 80s rpg PoisonFaust 2.

 

Very... I will also mention that playing Splinter Cell truly launched me into my love of game development. I do this in my spare time so it is important that I enjoy it. I also have Aspergers, which is a gift for me

 

My RTS, Zombies vs. Knights was inspired by WarCraft3, as is my current prototype for its successor. The Hero's Journey was inspired directly by Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, with some nods to other JRPGs thrown in for good measure.

I've loved games for a long time, but I can't say that any particular game brought me to Unity. I started trying to write a small JRPG using QBasic on an old 386; things went upward from there.

 

This would be very cool. I have always wished there were good language learning games. Rosetta Stone and such is boring. And college classes don't help much.The DS tried to make a few. But there needs to be some really good ones, like maybe a rpg where you can't progress further because you have not learned the language enough thus far. Where there is some sort of mechanic in the battle system for attacking, casting spells and such where you are required to learn the language. Even some puzzles that required learning the language would be cool.

I have always also thought math or science could be intertwined into a good game. I think RPG's would do exceptionally well to teach these sort of things.

Even if someone made a game that required communication between people from different countries who wanted to learn a language. I am sure it could be made into some sort of non traditional mmo where you are actually immersed in the language with native speakers.

There are so many untapped possibilities in that area hopefully some day someone will do it right.

 

I hope you mean the original, warts and all.

It was The Hobbit for me.

>kill gandalf


Oh you mean Unity, that would be money. I'm getting practical in my old age.

 

Dwarf Fortress is what inspired me to start making games.

The inspiration for my games is inspired by the lack of inspiration.

 

The RPG/adventure genre would be great to teach almost any subject matter. Math & science can be mixed into a magic system. Language can fit well into the dialogue. History, mythology, philosophy can plug into the storyline.

I think a lot of people have apprehensions about certain subjects because at some point in their schooling they just had a crappy teacher. Present it in the right way anyone can really grasp any subject.

My sister is a special ed teacher, she knows a lot about alternative approaches to teaching, I'll be picking her brain.

 

Actually, I'd suggest this playlist by ExtraCreditz

This is a series they've started called 'Design Club'. They are popping one of these out every Thursday, and they talk about some great design considerations. So far they've been focusing exclusively on level design, but I'm pretty sure they'll be touching into other design areas too.

 

For me, the games that inspired me the most were minecraft and wurm online. I love the freedom you're given as a player, being able to shape your own world. They both have their problems though imo: Minecraft's performance (especially when using mods) is really terrible. Could be done way better. For wurm online, it is a f2p concept with premium members (you're basicly limited in a maximum skill level of 20 for all skills, which limits you in doing all sorts of stuff in game), but aside from that, achieving something in the game is so immensively slow. A bit more fast-paced gameplay would be way better, although I understand the design choices here, as it is f2p.

Latest games that fit in my list are 'the forest', also made with unity, and Everquest Next

 

My most beloved games are RPGs from "Golden era of RPGs", but when i try to find inspiration I`m looking in different media(movies, books etc) or in reality(often science).

 

Every game Naughty Dog has ever made.... Jak and Daxter series, Uncharted, etc.

 

and The Last Of Us for sure...

 

OMG ofc! Just..... perfect..... why can only one studio make these AAAAAAA games? Oh Naughty Dog, you will never disappoint!

 

Minecraft, Wurm Online, and the very first game that really sparked my imagination...Dungeons of Daggorath.