The Most Influential Starting Levels In Video Game History

A plane crashes into the ocean. You swim to a lighthouse. The long, slow bathosphere takes you deep down into a grandiose underwater city… or what remains of it. You fight your first Splicer, before you even know what a Splicer is. The voice of a man contacts you on a radio, asking you if you’ll kindly help him. Take a deep breath, because your journey is just starting, and who knows when the water is gonna bust through all this old glass. It’s the perfect introduction to a groundbreaking narrative experience, the first glimpse at the city of Rapture, a world unlike any game before it. Plus you shoot fire and electricity out of your hands, and that's pretty cool.

Did I cry during the opening prologue level to The Last of Us? Naw, man. I like football and I like dude stuff, I don’t cry over zombies and family and the bitter loneliness caused by a global tragedy told in the most personal of ways. Naw, man, I’m not tearing up while writing this. The Last of Us only came out in 2013, but it’s opening prologue will stay relevant in gamers’ minds for years to come. With its poignant writing, acting, and visual effects, the prologue sets the bar so high, that the rest of the game arguably never rises above it.

This level solidified the rules for generations of gaming. It taught the world to smash Goombas under their feet and kick Koopa Troopas across the screen. It hid underground caves from only the most crafty of players who were smart enough to try pushing down on the + Control Pad while standing on a certain green pipe. It delivered the growth-spurt of the Super Mushroom, the flame-throwing of the Fire Flower, and the careless invincibility of the Super Star. There’s an alternate world where Level 1-1 in Super Mario Bros never existed, where gaming took decades to reach what Nintendo did in one stage, and wow, that alternate world sounds like a minus world to me, man, stay away from there, that’s a bug.

That speed. Those bright colors. The amazing sound effects when Sonic would bounce on the heads of his enemies to free those little forest creatures. This level made it so Sega could boast that their Genesis had “Blast Processing,” even if, you know, Blast Processing is totally just a made-up buzzword. But it didn’t matter. That speed. It made him the face of a console—the face of a company—and it made a bunch of kids super excited that Sega could do want Nintendon’t.

A Lakitu flies around the outskirts of Princess Peach’s castle with a camera dangling from a fishing pole. This is how Nintendo announces that they are fully embracing 3D gaming, a cartoonish declaration that “Hey, man, get ready, this camera about to be moving all over the place.” And yeah, like most early 3D adventure games, the camera in Super Mario 64 was a little annoying, but that wasn’t what we were thinking when Mario first popped out of that green pipe and into the hub world of Princess Peach’s Castle. It was like a world map, but now we were INSIDE the world map. We could walk from outside of the castle, into the castle. We could explore. And it wasn’t long before we were jumping into every painting, digging into every nook and cranny of this mushroom lady’s abode, having too much fun to notice we were wandering around what would become the foundation for all 3D adventure games after it.

No more mansion filled with zombies. No more small-town filled with zombies. Resident Evil 4 throws you into an Eastern European village filled with… are they zombies? It’s hard to tell at first. But when they surround you in that village, you look at their eyes and you know something isn’t right. The fear starts to fill you inside. They’re all around you. And then you hear the revving of something, and from behind you comes a man with a burlap sack covering his head, RUSHING AT YOU WITH A CHAINSAW. One of the scariest moments in gaming makes this one of the best opening levels as well.

The ghostly visage of The G-Man paired with his eerily robotic voice asking Gordon Freeman to wake up is the only introduction we get before that train throws us into the world of City 17. So much has changed since Half-Life 1, but instead of bogging the player down with exposition, developer Valve chooses to show everything through the eyes of Gordon Freeman himself. Did you pick up that bottle and throw it at the guard? Yeah, eff the police. When you finally get that familiar crowbar back and the world opens up, you know you’re in for an amazing player-led experience, free of cutscenes and handholding.

Everyone remembers starting off in Pallet Town in the life-changing experience that is Pokémon Red or Blue. You start off in your room, where you can interact with a PC to pick up a potion and learn to move through shaded areas that act as doors. When you initially step into the grass, Professor Oak comes to warn you that you can be attacked. After you're safely ushered into his lab, Professor Oak gifts you a starter Pokémon before you learn how to fight by battling your rival (and it's even okay if you lose). Nintendo does a great job of easing players into the world of Pokémon, teaching them the basics in that "first level" experience that is Pallet Town. You learn how to move, jump ledges, battle, catch Pokémon, and shop at the PokéMart. After that introductory start, the true journey begins to catch 'em all!

The first Uncharted was pretty good, but the opening train level in Uncharted 2 is developer Naughty Dog announcing to the player “WE WERE JUST GETTING STARTED.” It turns a crashed train vertical, making the things you’d normally sit on become the only things you can hold onto, as you make your ascent up a snowy cliff. It’s dangerous, it’s cinematic, and it’s all tempered with the biting sarcasm of Nolan North’s Nathan Drake. The train level in Uncharted 2 is the best action scene from the last decade, and you get to play through it with a PS3 controller.

Do you remember the first mission in GTA III? Me neither. Few of us played the first mission of GTA III first. The first time most people played GTA III was at a friend’s house, when they were handed a controller, and told to just go wild. In retrospect, those controls were clunky and those characters were blocky, but at the time? That was the most amazing open world any of us had ever seen. In that first rampage when we punched a random pedestrian, stole a car, rocket-launchered a SWAT van, and jumped our car over a police barricade all while classical music played—that was the best opening level we’d ever played because it wasn’t a level, it was a world.

People who played the very first title in the Assassin's Creed franchise will remember the smooth tutorial that eased gamers into the sci-fi fantasy world. It introduced different levels of stealth, movement, and actions in a fluid and clear manner. Rather than throwing first-time assassins into a fast-paced environment, the first level of Assassin's Creed masterfully got players acquainted with the controls of the game.

Capcom does a clever job of holding your hand in Mega Man X on the SNES until you're ready to stand on your own two feet. Game developers condition players to understand movement throughout the first level. Players immediately understand that they can only move left or right, and that they must move right to proceed as the background remains stationary if they do not go right. As they move forward, a spiked wheel comes hurling at them and they learn to jump. Then there's an enemy that's too large to jump over, so they learn to shoot. Suddenly, there's a flying foe that they must jump and shoot at. With each new obstacle, Capcon introduces new game mechanics without ever having to type a word.

I imagine that it was a hard sell to convince Mike Tyson that the game baring his moniker should open with the player fighting the wimpy, weak, cartoon Glass Joe. I imagine Tyson pleading with Nintendo executives: “My fansh shackrifishe all their hard earned cashshs for my video game, dey have to fightsh thishs clown?” But in reality, Glass Joe perfectly sets the tone for Punchout, teaching the player that this is more of a puzzle game than an action game. Doc Louis couldn’t have trained us better himself.

Metal Gear Solid 2’s opening mission was the largest bait-and-switch ever delivered to gamers. For months Konami had been showing off the sequel to the popular Metal Gear Solid, a game that seemingly followed the adventures of series protagonist Solid Snake. November 12th, 2001 - MGS fans run to their local Software Etc’s and Babbages and Blockbuster Videos to pick up Sons of Liberty. They excitedly play through the opening level, marveling at its graphics and stealth mechanics, only to find themselves shocked when Solid Snake dies, forcing them to play the rest of the game as new character Raiden. Fans were outraged, but the tanker level remains one of the best, most shocking opening levels in gaming history.

Here’s the internal dialogue we all had when we played through the opening of the original Metroid: “Oh, this looks cool. I’m like a neat space bounty-hunter dude. Let’s shoot some aliens. I’ll head to the right, because that’s the direction you go in video games. Cool, I shot some enemies. Wait, what’s this? Why can’t I make it through this gap? Why can’t Metroid crawl?” The opening to Metroid was so groundbreaking, because it taught many of us that we didn’t always have to go right in video games. Sometimes, the only way to get the morphball is to go left. I should write fortune cookies.

A great introductory stage that developers could take notes from is Witcher 3. Players are eased into movement first, tasked with looking around a room for a key. You're slowly adjusted to the two different kinds of sight and the movement controls. Then, in a charming twist, you're off to a race with a young Ciri. You learn to run, jump, and maneuver around obstacles. Right after that, you're sucked into combat training, where you learn how to use various weapons and magic. All in all, the tutorial transitions nicely into more difficult stages as it progresses.