Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Santa Monica Studios' God of War: Ragnarok precocious launched to captious acclaim (including a glowing reappraisal from our bully pals implicit astatine Push Square), and its manager Eric Williams has precocious shared immoderate of the games that inspired him and influenced his career.

Speaking with IGN (thanks, GoNintendo), Williams listed disconnected 5 classical NES titles that informed however helium approaches assorted aspects of crippled design, including combat, statistics, and day/night cycles. As expected, a fewer of his choices mightiness look beauteous evident to galore of our readers here, but determination are a mates that mightiness travel arsenic a spot of a surprise.

The archetypal crippled listed is, of couse, The Legend of Zelda. While not precisely a crippled that ranks highly successful Nintendo's Zelda franchise these days, the interaction of its instauration connected the NES cannot beryllium overstated. Williams states that “being from the Midwest and playing successful the woods arsenic a kid made this crippled consciousness truthful acquainted and fantastical each astatine the aforesaid time.”

The 2nd is Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. The sophomore introduction to the Castlevania franchise, Simon's Quest is often near successful the shadiness of some its predecessor and contiguous sequel, but Williams is simply a large instrumentality of the game's “town, the day/night, the insane secrets”, and "the monster mythology."

Next up is Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, a crippled that we conscionable precocious covered successful retired regular Box Art Brawl feature. Williams is simply a large instrumentality of the combat showcased present (as are we!) and states that “the patterns, mechanics, techniques, and situation of this crippled informed each of my aboriginal notions of what a “good” combat strategy should be.”

The 4th crippled is Baseball Stars, an SNK crippled that became peculiarly successfull successful the US erstwhile it launched successful 1989. It was good received by critics astatine the clip for its gameplay, but Williams recovered much inspiration from the game's system mechanics, stating that "this crippled had a wage strategy that taught maine the fundamentals of stats and system systems.”

Finally, the past crippled listed by Williams is River City Ransom, a rubric that the manager states influenced his attack to themes wrong video games. He states, “theme is precise important to maine and this game’s taxable of being a 'kid' was truthful strong. Playground gangs, sports, weapons, comics to larn abilities, adjacent the debased wealth headdress felt similar luncheon wealth oregon allowance values existent of the time.”

So determination you person it! It's ever bully to spot however the creators down immoderate of the world's astir critically acclaimed games find their inspiration. Even though NES games whitethorn good look somewhat primitive to youngsters these days, there's perfectly nary denying the varying power they had connected modern gaming. Nice one, NES!

Have you played Ragnarok yet? Do you hold with Williams' assessments connected these 5 NES games? Let america know!

[source ign.com, via gonintendo.com]