Pole Position

Rank: 9
Release date: 1982 (in arcades; was released on other platforms subsequently)
Platform: Arcade; Computers: Atari 800, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore C64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, PC DOS, PC Windows; Consoles: Atari 2600, Atari 5200, GCE Vectrex, Atari XEGS, Mattel Intellivision, Atari 7800; in Namco Museum: PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox
Vehicle Example: 1983 Formula One race car

Pole Position + click to enlarge | view slideshow >

Video game historian and author Steven L. Kent says that cars in games didn't start looking realistic until Pole Position debuted in 1982. The cars handled like race cars, and the tracks looked like racetracks, too, Kent says.

Christopher Swain, co-director of the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California, likewise raves. "You wanted to talk about influential? I would pick the game Pole Position," Swain said. "I would say that's the one where you really got a good racing experience in an early, early game."

Swain points out that Pole Position was an early move away from a top-down perspective and into a 3-D environment. Indeed, early-'80s arcade-goers used a steering wheel and gas pedal to wind their virtual way around the Fuji Speedway, while Mt. Fuji itself, capped with snow, stood off in the distance. In the real world, by the way, the Fuji Speedway track in Japan hosted Formula One races during the 1970s.

Release date and platform information from Wikipedia.