Best Debut Game of All Time

(Hip Hop and Gaming)

One of my passions since the late 80’s has been gaming, which should be obvious, however another passion of mine since the early 90’s has been hip hop music. Growing up in the 90’s was essentially a golden age of both music and gaming.

On the gaming landscape, you had epic battles between Nintendo and Sega with Sony entering the fray in the mid 90’s. “Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis when I was dead broke, I couldn’t picture this” said Biggie and it shows that no matter the circumstances, everyone shared the same adoration for these systems.

Musically, compact discs were slowly becoming the standard, there was no Spotify, and Napster likely wasn’t even a thought yet. If you wanted to buy a new album you would go to the music store and buy the disc and you discovered new artists with listening stations placed around the store.

This meant that artists spent a lot more time working on albums as a whole, trying to craft the best possible project from start to finish, including liner notes and inserts. It was less about the stream and how to get a certain percentage of your song streamed.

There is always a discussion about the best MC’s dead or alive, which can vary from person to person. However, When talking about best debut hip hop albums, that discussion is a little more consistent across the board. Some of the most iconic debut albums of all time either launched illustrious careers, or put that MC in a different realm for the rest of their existence and even if they lost their magic they are still remembered for the their amazing early work.

Some of the more common hip hop debut albums that get brought up when talking about the GOAT include Notorious B.I.G with Ready to Die which was recorded at 21, Nas with Illmatic which was recorded at 21, and Jay-Z with Reasonable Doubt, recorded at 27.

Best Debut Games

Just like music, it’s hard to have an impeccable debut that people remember for a long time. If it was easy, then many of the best debuts wouldn’t be almost 30 years old. Even a lot of the developers that you would assume have been making masterpieces all along had to find their footing.

Many of the developers that I thought would be shoe-ins such as Nintendo had many games before the popular ones, that we might think were their first, such as Donkey Kong. Including games for their first system, the Color TV game in the late 1970’s, including block breakers and games inspired by Space Invaders which took the world by storm at the time.

Naughty Dog, which I thought with their first game after rebranding from JAM software was Crash Bandicoot which at the time was getting more out of the PlayStation than was originally thought possible, however, Naughty Dog didn’t release until 1996. Naughty Dog released Keef the Thief in 1989, Rings of Power in 1991 and Way of the Warrior in 1994. Most of these games with the exception of Way of the Warrior people will have never heard of.

Even games like Pac-man which was developed by Namco, had many games before the little yellow dude started munching quarters in 1980. Games like Gee Bee which isn’t the household name that Pac-Man is or even after Pac-Man when they found their stride with games like Pole Position and Galaga.

Here are five examples of debut games that best personifies a debut album. These games have lasted the test of time as people still regard these games highly and most of them are actually brought up when discussing some of the best games of all time.

Minecraft

It’s hard to believe that just over ten years ago, a small independent team from Sweden released a very basic, blocky looking sandbox adventure by the name of Minecraft. In just a few short years of public release, version 1.0 released in 2011 and in 2014 were acquired by Microsoft. Minecraft feels like it has been part of our culture for much longer.

In hindsight, it seems easy to see why Minecraft became such a phenomenon as it has all of the basic elements for success. On a technology front, Minecraft isn’t a very demanding game, with limited graphics and its signature minimalist art style, Minecraft has the ability to run flawlessly on any platform and it has nearly graced everything.

Minecraft is accessible to all ages, which is a large reason why it has sold over 200 million copies as there will always be a new audience for the series as kids are always growing up and entering the ecosystem. When parents are looking for a game that is safe for their children to play, what better option than a family friendly sandbox that not only has the ability to play alone but with other members of the family.

Minecraft not only has the simplicity for anyone, seriously anyone to pick up and play the game but it also features plenty of depth and complexity that can lead to endless fun as the world is procedurally generated, meaning that the only limit to what or how long people can play Minecraft is limited to their imagination.

As you would expect with the best selling game of all time, following that success and trying to match it would be a nearly impossible feat. In 2014, Mojang released Callers Bane, a collectible card game, in 2016 Crown and Council and in 2020 Minecraft Dungeons.

I would stake a lot on the fact that the average person has not heard of those first two games, making Minecraft Dungeons easily the best Mojang has done since. With the success of the Minecraft universe, the team finally realized that instead of trying to create a new IP and catch lightning in a bottle twice, the best course of action would be to expand the Minecraft universe.

Minecraft Dungeons received a lukewarm reception and in our review, the story felt a little empty, there were some technical issues, especially on Switch, it missed a lot of what makes a good dungeon crawler and it even forgot a lot of mechanics that Minecraft is known for. The potential was high but the original Minecraft wasn’t a hit upon its early access in 2009 and even during its 1.0 in 2011. It took some time and updates to achieve the zeitgeist that is Minecraft as we know it today.

Minecraft Dungeons did capitalize on the IP as even with tepid reviews across the board the series has still managed to sell over ten million copies in less than a year, solely on the back of having Minecraft in the name. This is the exact same luxury that is afforded to some of those hip hop artists that released stunning debuts. No matter what they release, even nearly thirty years later, it still garners enough attention.

Half Life

Yes, there were plenty of first person shooters well before Gordon Freeman and Half Life released in 1998 including Wolfenstein 3D, Quake and, of course, the first person shooter that put the genre in a league of its own with Doom. However there was one thing that those games were all lacking and that was a story. Instead of just mindlessly, and extremely violently mowing your way through Nazis or Demons, Half Life provided a smart and rich narrative.

You didn’t control some super human space marine, you were just a basic scientist and the wrong place at the wrong time who was able to find a crowbar and survive. Unlike Minecraft, a game that became the best selling game of all time, the debut of Half Life made a different impact on the industry. Half Life arguably built the foundation for steam which was originally built as a way to update Valve games easily which launched in 2003

Steam is the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming and in 2013 held 75% of the market and in 2019 had over 95 million monthly active users or MAU’s Most games that were likely thought about during the creation of Steam include Half Life mods or the lineage can be easily traced back to Half Life.

Not only did Half Life change how first person shooters were made after its release but it essentially was a major force in the reason for the development of Steam which is something that was light years thinking ahead of just following up Half Life with more games, it revolutionized digital distribution.

While the original Half Life isn’t among the best selling games of all time among the likes of Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto and Tetris which are all over one hundred million copies and it wouldn’t even be in the top ten of Switch games sold, there is no debating the mark that Half Life has left on the industry and gamers.

Thats not saying that the original Half Life didn’t sell well because it did. According to Valve in 2008, Half Life had sold 9.3 million copies and by now has likely sold over ten million due to its timeless nature. Outside of the graphics which of course look a little dated by today’s standards, Half Life is very playable today.

The legacy of Half Life as the debut from Valve goes much farther than just sales figures. Four decades apart from the original release in 1998, fans are still begging for a Half Life 3 and hopefully with the recent release of Half Life Alyx, Valve might have a rekindled love for the series and create more.

Limbo

Not every game on this list will have revolutionized the digital distribution of games or will have set the record for most games ever sold. Sometimes, the end result doesn’t need to be that grandiose to leave a lasting effect.

Prior to Limbo there was a clear distinction between games and art. Playdead blurred that line and figured out a way to take that to the mainstream. Limbo was considering by many as one of the best games of 2010, which speaks volumes for a Xbox 360 Arcade title before Indies really gained notoriety as noteworthy titles. Also being considered as one of the best games of 2010 in a year that saw the release of games like Red Dead Redemption, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Mass Effect 2, and Starcraft 2 shows just how much of an impact this small indie game made.

There were good Indies before Limbo, but Limbo also seems to have been the straw that broke the camels back and made the mainstream take notice of independent games. In 2008, Braid and Spelunky were released, but to much less fanfare than Limbo garnered. Post Limbo, we have seen many more games get attention for GOTY including Edith Finch, Journey and Inside. We now even see the big companies like Microsoft go big with Indies with their ID@Xbox program and Nintendo with their Indie Games Showcase alongside how many Indies show up first or exclusively on the Switch.

Playdead Studios still lives on today with their third game deep in development led by Arnt Jensen, one of the co founders. However, after a short run with two highly acclaimed games that felt akin to a shooting star, a rift was created between Dino Patti and Arnt Jensen. This is not a studio that faded away into obscurity but instead delivered two of the best games of the decade and left a mark on the industry.

The name that Playdead created for themselves with just two games is the reason why their upcoming game is highly anticipated even with just half of the co founding members even without a title and a release date. Playdead has afforded itself the luxury of delivering a title when it is ready.

It’s also the reason that during the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase during E3 2021, Somerville from Jumship, the studio formed by Dino Patti after his departure at Playdead garnered as much attention as it did. The showcase featured some of the best that Xbox has to offer in the near and upcoming future. The inclusion of Somerville in the showcase is not by accident as it seems to share much of the DNA that Inside and Limbo had.

SimCity

In the late eighties, Maxis was founded and their first game released was actually a game that was already available as they had already released SimCity independently from their basement.

Fast forward to 1997 and Maxis was acquired by Electronic Arts for a measly $125 million dollars. Sure it was the 90’s and money isn’t what it was back then but just based on the value of the IP alone, EA made one smart purchase, especially in hindsight and seeing what EA was able to do with the Sims brand. To put how cheap maxis was into perspective, in 2014, Microsoft bought Mojang for 2.5 Billion, in 2020 Microsoft purchased ZeniMax media for 7.5 Billion, also in 2020 EA acquired Codemasters for 1.2 Billion, One of the studios behind one of the best selling games of all time sold for a fraction of these acquisitions

When you startup a business, your goal is to do what you love and get paid to do it. When Will Wright and Jeff Braun started developing games, I doubt they thought that in around a decade they would sell to EA for over a hundred million.

The legacy that Maxis and SimCity created still lives on strongly in 2021 with The Sims 4, being a large part of EA’s revenue stream. It was also one of the first if not the first game that didn’t have an end goal objective kind of like Minecraft.

Tetris

What can you say about Tetris in 2021 that hasn’t already been said? It singlehandedly made the Nintendo GameBoy a necessity and if it’s not the best pack in of all time, I don’t know what is. You could even make the argument that without the success of the GameBoy, which in large part was rocketed off the starting line thanks to Tetris, Nintendo might not have seen the massive success that followed with their handheld hardware including the GameBoy Advance, The DS and the 3DS.

In an article from Polygon in 2019, they ranked the 30 best GameBoy games for a celebration of the systems 30th anniversary of 1989. It’s no surprise that Tetris is highly ranked, and to be honest I find woefully low on their list at number 6, but in the top ten there are only two games that were released in 1989 and that was Tetris and Super Mario Land. The rest of the top ten games stretch to as far as 1998 with the Pokemon series.

My theory is that since Super Mario Land wasn’t the same experience that people were used to on the NES, the system likely wouldn’t have gotten off the ground the way it did. The GameBoy and GameBoy Color ended up selling over 118 million but would Nintendo have continued to support the handheld without a solid install base thanks to Tetris. We have seen, over the years, Nintendo abandon support for hardware and peripherals that didn’t land they way they were expecting. The WiiU comes to mind, the Virtual Boy comes to mind and even most recently Labo, which seemed like an interesting concept that could have been taken further.

In the same argument as the chicken and the egg, would Tetris have sold over 43 million copies if not for the GameBoy or would the GameBoy not have become one of Nintendo’s best selling systems that established the company as a dominant force in the video game industry since the late eighties.

The Tetris IP has continued to stay relevant decade after decade. This isn’t in the same sense that something hangs around for years and you wonder how it can be possible. Sure, there were some rough patches over the years but even some of the most recent iterations of the series have critically and commercially successful including Tetris 99 on the Nintendo Switch in 2019 and Tetris Effect originally released on Playstation in 2018.

Tetris on the GameBoy sold over 43 million copies, EA’s paid mobile version of Tetris has more than 100 million downloads and if you factor in the thirty plus variants the series has seen over the almost 40 years , you have to be assuming that total series sales are well over 200 million.

Conversation Starter

It’s very easy to see the correlation between these amazing debuts and post release success of these studios in varying degrees. People are highly anticipating the next games from Playdead and Jumpship, Mojang was purchased by Microsoft on the success of Minecraft alone and is now able to release a hit as long as it has Minecraft in the title, Maxis was eventually absolved into EA but SimCity Mobile and The Sims 4 is a still a important part of their portfolio, Alexey Pajitnov may not be working in games today but he still sees royalties from every Tetris game sold and the IP is still thriving almost 40 years later, and Valve is still one of the most highly regarded developers alongside still being the biggest digital gaming platform in existence.

They might not drive Bugatti’s, wear gold chains, or have private yachts in the Polynesian Islands but these studios revolutionized gaming in some form. Next time you are talking with your friends about best of lists, try thinking about the best gaming debuts and you would be quite surprised at just how few studios nailed their first attempt.