12 Video Games Created By Accident

It's interesting how some of the most influential and popular aspects of gaming weren't meant for this world.

Fog was inserted into Silent Hill, not to build tension, but to hide processing limitations. Stealth was never meant to play a part in Metal Gear. Space Invaders created the concept of a difficulty curve by mistake!

But it gets weirder. There have been times where developers devised a video game... without meaning to. At first, it might be hard to wrap your head around such a statement. How can a developing team spend months on a gaming project without realising it? Were they being mind-controlled??

It may sound silly, but it does happen. (Not the mind-control part.) Sometimes, developers will stumble upon a cool mechanic while playing around with software, encouraging them to create an entire game around it. In the eleventh hour, developers might decide to revise central characters, plot lines, levels, or the genre itself. Games can be tweaked so often, the finished product has no resemblance to how it started.

Even though many games on this list went on to great success, their existence was an accident.

It's genuinely challenging to comprehend how influential Doom was, not just to the gaming community, but to the whole world. In 1995, Doom wasn't just the best-selling game, but the best-selling software. (It even outsold Windows 95.) Some people bought a PC solely to play this masterful FPS. Certain businesses reprogrammed their computers so Doom couldn't run, because employees kept playing it instead of working!

And yet, Doom could've been very, very different. Shortly after id Software was formed, co-founder, John Romero, convinced his team to work on a grisly monster-filled shooter called Green and Pissed. (It was a working title.)

As the project started taking shape, id Software realised it had many similarities to James Cameron's movie, Aliens. Believing they could turn the game into a movie tie-in, the developers tried to cut a deal with 20th Century Fox.

When these plans fell through, id Software rejigged everything, turning the project into a new IP called Doom. When you think about it, the busted deal worked out for everyone, since it gave id Software far more freedom with the game, allowing them to create the most influential first-person shooter of all time.