I feel selectable characters have always been a basic video game staple. I don't go back THAT far, but dungeon master, syndicate, gauntlet all used this to add variety to the game play. If there was a time this was lacking it was probably due to technology limitations.
Sliding is definitly a good one at least for the mega man series. Metal Slug also us the Down+Jump to slide function... but what other games?
Nobody has yet mentioned combos, which became such an integral part of fighting games that a fighting game without them is almost unthinkable.
I'm not sure if someone has already mentioned this in some way, but being rewarded for advancing in the game by enhancements to your character/car/whatever is also something that often gives incentives to keep playing (a staple in role-playing games, but also works in things like racing games, where winning races earns you money which you can use to enhance your car, etc)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
funnyhair wrote:
On the Snes, Even the crappy games were at least a bit fun. They always tried to keep everything fresh, and new, and difficult.
I get it, you're kidding. Good joke.
Oh wait, you're not kidding? :(
Seriously, if the current generation of systems is full of generic/crappy shooters, the 16 bit generation was full of generic/crappy platformers. Innovation which is implemented well is a rare thing, no matter what the technology, and the SNES/Gens was just as full of filler as the PS/xbox is (although I don't think any system will ever match the Wii for poor signal/noise ratio)
Let me narrow down what I am looking for. See it all makes perfect sense in my mind, but trying to verbalize the dividing line is very hard.
I don't consider something an innovation if gamer's have always wanted it. Things like Open-Worlds and Online play are not innovations in my book because people always wished and hoped that the game world could be HUGE and I could do ANYTHING and everything was destructible and I could interact with everything. Or I wish I could play with my friends.
But some kind of gameplay element that wasn't really around finally popped up, and changed the genre. Like bullet time for example. There are so many games now with some kind of slow-motion bullet time mechanic built in. it's not always done well, but it was technologically possible for a long time before it really "happened" that is what I call an innovation.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud. As it was, so it is now, and will be. We don't remember the cruddy games of yesterday because, being cruddy, they weren't memorable.
And I challenge that the NES had a worse SNR than the Wii.
VirtualAlex wrote:
Let me narrow down what I am looking for. See it all makes perfect sense in my mind, but trying to verbalize the dividing line is very hard.
You're gonna have to work on this if you want to write articles for others to read. :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Perhaps not exactly what you were looking for, but "Down+Jump = Slide" sure caught on after Mega Man 3 (I think) introduced it.
I believe that was Strider (arcade), released a year prior. It also was a hugely popular and influential game at the time that basically started the whole acrobatics thingo in platformers that you can see in Hagane, Spawn, Super Gunstar Heroes. But there may have been even earlier examples, likely among other arcade games since they had a huge hardware advantage over home consoles up until mid-90s. Like, for instance, NES Ninja Gaiden (1988) probably was the first game with walljumping.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud. As it was, so it is now, and will be. We don't remember the cruddy games of yesterday because, being cruddy, they weren't memorable.
And I challenge that the NES had a worse SNR than the Wii.
VirtualAlex wrote:
Let me narrow down what I am looking for. See it all makes perfect sense in my mind, but trying to verbalize the dividing line is very hard.
You're gonna have to work on this if you want to write articles for others to read. :)
Nobody has yet mentioned combos, which became such an integral part of fighting games that a fighting game without them is almost unthinkable.
Wasn't that more of an accident than anything else. IIRC correctly MKII had an oversight that allowed characters to be hit in mid-air while they were falling, thus allowing skillful players to juggle there opponents and sometimes infinitly if they were trapped against a wall. I remember Virtua Fighter being an important inovation by making button bashing less effective by emphasing more on well timed attacks and predicting your opponent (at least at a high level).
The most important thing missing from your list someone else suggested: achievements.
Along the same lines, for platformers: And another, for platformers: yoshi coins (a collectable designed to encourage more exploration of a re-enterable stage)
But it took the notion of achievements to really make them powerful.
The very idea of bailing out from levels without penalty in platformers was important.
I think checkpoint saving is a good one, but I've always thought that the most ruthlessly implemented 'quicksave' was a great idea also, where you can save anytime (bypassing the checkpoint system) but you MUST load it next time you boot the game, or else it is lost. This provides a compromise between the design niceness of checkpoint saves and the reality of a battery-powered console.
Here is another one: animations in response to player performance in puzzle games which otherwise have no player control over unique characters, thus enabling a greater degree of characterization and engagement than would otherwise be possible.
I'm not sure where any of these ideas come from. That will be interesting research.
And one final proposition: WASD + mouselook, without which we would still be stuck in the dark ages of shooter controls.
I don't know if it was already said, and quite frankly I don't care that it is a technology based innovation.
Pong was what brought video games into households. Whether or not it was the first video game, it sure as hell was the first popular faux-wooden box to reach mainstream success.
Whenever it comes up in conversation, the older generation will get sparkly-eyed nostalgia. "When I first saw I could control that thing with this stick, I was like 'WOW! THAT IS SO FAR OUT!'"
Can you really beat the innovation of gaming itself?
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Seriously, if the current generation of systems is full of generic/crappy shooters, the 16 bit generation was full of generic/crappy platformers. Innovation which is implemented well is a rare thing, no matter what the technology, and the SNES/Gens was just as full of filler as the PS/xbox is (although I don't think any system will ever match the Wii for poor signal/noise ratio)
Double post and quoted for truth.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Yeah I am not sure how I didn't think og achievements on my own. They are not on every major console as well and steam and even iphone. Great idea with collectables as well. the huge DK coins from DKC2 are one of the best examples of that because the level actually had this DK icon when you found it. If you didn't find it, it feels like you didn't finish them game properly.
How do we define this form of collectable object though? Extraneous collectables?
Adding both to my list.
I'm going to say the wiimote.
Not because of the waggle bullshit, but because it actually gives you plenty of space between each side of the controller. There's plenty of length for your hands to be in comfortable positions, and you even have the option of the 'non standard' controller layout, being analog stick in the right hand, buttons in the left.
It's like dual wielding keyboards, one hand on each keyboard. It's far more comfortable than using one keyboard on its own (to me, anyway).
Here's a big one. User created content.
You might start out with editing a texture of your character to add some personality. Moving up to making new levels for your favourite FPS. This will expand to modding, where you might create a new weapon or gameplay mechanic, moving up to some total conversions like the early DOOM wads, or a game like DOTA for Warcraft 3. User created content has exploded so much in the past couple years that now we're seeing games like Little Big Planet 2, where users are given an extreme amount of freedom to create and modify the game, even as far as generating new gameplay styles.
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 700
Location: suffern, ny
Warp, maybe you are right. I went back to think about it, and there were good 3-D games, but they really stopped after the game cube generation. With the Wii being targeted to casual gamers, and casual gamers making most of the market of video games, Everything is dumbed down and the same. Really I would say that some of the things that Virtualalex like regenerating health and what not just makes games today to easy. I mean even hard mode is easy. I remember when hard was hard. There are no consequences for dying anymore. you die and it puts the game on pause for a little bit. THen you come back And its like nothing happened. I liked it when the game reset after your died, sure you had to collect everything again, but at lease it gave you incentive not to die.
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese
[19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
Combos, I like that. I was trying to think about fighting game innovations, and the only think I could really come up with is like.. counters.
Super meter. Super meter used for things other than supers. Air dashes. Chains. Push blocking, instant blocking. Parries. Focus attacks.
Look at early SNK fighters and the oddball Capcom fighters like Darkstalkers and JJBA for fighting game innovations.
Warp, maybe you are right. I went back to think about it, and there were good 3-D games, but they really stopped after the game cube generation. With the Wii being targeted to casual gamers, and casual gamers making most of the market of video games, Everything is dumbed down and the same. Really I would say that some of the things that Virtualalex like regenerating health and what not just makes games today to easy. I mean even hard mode is easy. I remember when hard was hard.
I think there are many great 3D games "after the game cube generation". (Well, I don't know if for the Wii because I haven't played it.) And some are quite hard. For example Half-Life 2 is quite great, and quite hard at the hardest level.
There are no consequences for dying anymore. you die and it puts the game on pause for a little bit. THen you come back And its like nothing happened. I liked it when the game reset after your died, sure you had to collect everything again, but at lease it gave you incentive not to die.
Having to start over would be extremely frustrating, and most people wouldn't buy such a game.
Nevertheless, there are some games where dying imposes some penalties, for example in the form of having to start over from the last checkpoint. I think Rainbow Six: Vegas is a good example of a game with a good balance between the game punishing you for dying but not too much, which gives you a good incentive to avoid dying.
There are no consequences for dying anymore. you die and it puts the game on pause for a little bit. Then you come back And its like nothing happened. I liked it when the game reset after your died, sure you had to collect everything again, but at lease it gave you incentive not to die.
Agreed, when I found out that dieing in Bioshock did nothing but move you to a vita-chamber, I immediately stopped paying attention to my health. The incentive not to die should be made a lot bigger in games, especially multiplayer games. I mean, in single player, if you ruin your own experience by not caring about dieing, fine, I don't care. But if you run around in an online shooter knifing everybody to death, that does kinda ruin it for the other players.
On topic: Quick-time events?
Yeah quicktime are on my list. They aren't always done right but I definitely think they are a good idea.
I loved them in Prince of Persia 3 (Xbox) They are also pretty awesome in the God of War games.
