4. Street Fighter
Why Its Controversial: Admittedly, Street Fighter isnt a game youd immediately single out as controversial per se, but it has been met with its share of criticism over the years, most notably for its portrayal of its female characters and its supposed involvement in the homogenization of the gaming industry. Most of the women in the Street Fighter franchise are buxom and most are half-exposed, garbed in skimpy costumes designed to draw emphasis to the sexy bits. Over the years, homogenization in gaming has meant that women are usually portrayed as big-busted and overly-sexual, in order to appeal directly to the largest gaming demographic: men, aged 18 35. While Street Fighter might not be the first or last offender, its certainly an extremely popular and critically successful one; hell, you could argue that it even set the bar at the time for how female video game characters "should" look.
Why It Influenced Gaming for the Better: Street Fighter II was one of the first of its breed; one of the first to include a playable roster of characters, to introduce command based, character specific moves to go along with a six-button configuration for maximum combat-system depth. And its success was meteoric. Street Fighter II is still popular today, and although its the re-vamped, super-special, alpha-beta-cappa-delta version that people play nowadays, very little has changed since the very first SFII release. In response to its unprecedented success, many rival gaming companies looked to produce beat-em up franchises of their own, effectively giving birth to an entirely new genre. And you can barely move for them now, but considering that beat-'em-up's are some gamers bread and butter, I wouldnt call that a bad thing. However, although many exist today, they owe their popularity and perhaps their very existence to the original and best: Street Fighter II.