Compared to other entertainment mediums like film and television, gaming is a mere infant. Despite this it has made huge progress in its forty plus years of existence. In the time it takes from a baby to grow into a man-sized baby and then a slightly wrinkly, greying man-baby, gaming has leapt from two dimensions to three, from arcades to living rooms and from living rooms to our pockets. Its got to the point where people can play Doom on an ATM and printers can play Mario music. Quite simply, games are everywhere. Gaming has changed for sure, but there is one rule that has been present ever since the beginning: in every console generation there are a handful of games that shock the industry with ground-breaking, innovative features that are then shamelessly copied by developers hundreds of times over. The following 20 games are so important and innovative that gaming as we know it today would be very different without them. Love them or hate them, they came up an idea that set off a chain reaction that made our beloved industry improve, expand and reach a wider audience. That can only be a good thing, right? Lets begin!
20. Angry Birds
Why It Is Important: Angry Birdsbecame the first killer app for smartphones. Angry Birds is the Tetris of the smartphone generation. It's something that you, your uncle, that guy you don't really like and his pet goldfish have all played at some point. It proved that people were more than up for playing cheap and cheerful games on their smartphones that drained their battery in 30 minutes. Ever since 2009 players have been using their fingers to catapult poor birds at structures and pigs. Over the years the franchise has expanded with numerous spin-offs like the excellent Bad Piggies. There's even two games set in the Star Wars universe that surprisingly don't suck (mostly because George Lucas had zero involvement in them) and feature more action-based gameplay, equipping the birds with blasters, lightsabers as well as giving them the ability to use the force. Angry Birds paved the way for Plants vs. Zombies and every other smartphone game that we play for a few minutes when we're waiting for a bus or when our friends are talking about boring stuff we really don't give a toss about.