Quote Originally Posted by Khedrac View Post
I think I would agree with this. It is probable that Basic D&D sold more copies at the same time, but it didn't forge a community of gamers, AD&D did, even if a lot were not playing AD&D but other systems. To me that makes AD&D the more influential game - it was the face of the RPG market (games and players) to the rest of the world.
It's kind of a split -- once AD&D came out and grabbed hold, it became the dominant version of TSRD&D in the U.S., but B/X and later BECMI got translated more widely and had more of a hold outside the U.S.