Doom (PC, 1993)

Doom (1993) collected an awful stigma after its initial release.  At the time, it was possibly the most violent, macabre, and distasteful game ever made (with close competition coming from the Mortal Kombat games).  It became the poster boy for politicians looking to outlaw video games after the shootings at Columbine High School.  The two boys responsible were avid players of Doom, and so it became a scapegoat that video games cause violent behavior.  So, why in the world am I adding this game to the Great Video Games?  For a couple reasons, actually.
The first reason is that it was a trendsetter for gaming.  The first-person shooter (FPS) is the most prolific genre of our day, but back in the early 1990's the technology to produce it was just becoming available.  Doom was not the first of these games, Id Software's own Wolfenstein 3D predates it, but it was the first to really nail how an FPS should work.  No, it isn't perfect, but the games of today owe Doom a lot for its innovations.
Doom's plot goes like this.  You are a marine banished to live on the Moon for violent crimes/treason, and during his sentence, a portal from Hell opens and starts leaking out the armies of Satan.  Bummer, right?  So he alone will use his arsenal of found weapons to fight back the demonic legions.  It's not a very complex story, and it would make for a terrible movie (as a matter of fact, it did) but this was still in the days when story was an underscore to the gameplay.  And boy, did Doom have gameplay.
The trouble with first person games before Doom were the controls.  There was no standard at the time for the way to move, attack, etc.  It set a new template for all of this that is still used to this day.  Move with the A, W, S, and D keys, aim with a mouse and shoot with the space bar.  You can carry a large amount of weapons, ranging from the basic pistol to the famous BFG 9000 (stands for Big @$#%ing Gun) which could wipe out a whole room of enemies with one shot.  You could reasonably charge into a crowd of demons and come out okay if you have the right weapon, but sometimes it pays to be stealthy and sneak up on enemies.  Sometimes, enemies will get the drop on you.
Doom's art style is a glorious conglomeration of all things demonic, macabre, and occult.  Decaying zombies will try to blast shotguns at you.  Cacodemons, floating bull-like heads, will spit balls of fire at you.  You battle the cyber-demon (a cyborg faun with rocket launchers for arms) while hiding behind pillars that wear the face of the devil on them.  If all of this sounds completely over the top, that's because it is.  Doom does not take itself seriously, and neither should you.  Aside from the testosterone fueled action segments, there are some genuinely scary moments.  For instance, on one level, you find a key card innocently sitting on the far end of a room.  When you pick it up, the lights black out, and enemies swarm you.
So does Doom hold any other significance?  Its unintended association with many violent crimes suggests that it should not be spoken in the same breath as games with better taste.  I think not.  Should we not hold ourselves accountable for our own actions, instead of blaming a piece of media?  Later games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto are also thrown into this heap, and I added one of them to the Great Video Games.  Doom never specifically endorses violence, and you never kill anything human in the game.  If it had not been for the tragic events at Columbine, I'll bet that Doom would have been remembered today as an oddity and influence on the medium of gaming, rather than an influence on unhealthy minds.