Mechanics That Changed Gameplay Forever

grammar fascist writes "A feature at 1up.com explores the various gameplay devices that revolutionized videogaming, and you might not believe how simple they are: life bars, power-ups, bosses, and combos make the list. From the article: 'As good as these ideas may sound on paper, they don't always work in execution. Sometimes they don't even make sense. But every once in a while, a game designer comes up with a fantastic concept that engages the player -- and influences the work of other designers.'"

Comments

Re:Saving beats all of that....

[happyemoticon]

Generally speaking I'm in favor of saving, and when not available, emulator state saving and loading. Of course, I do feel like kind of a hack when arbitrary saving and loading allows me to essentially have infinite lives and ammo, since I can ensure, with scientific accuracy, that each encounter goes perfectly.

It sort of makes me wonder when the innovation of multiplying the actual length of the game by several times came about. You know, like when you get to the end of one of those really hard, old-school platformers and it tells you, "Actually, you need to play the whole game again - except now you have to finish the whole thing without getting hit once, and in this certain amount of time." This is frequently in those games on the other end of the spectrum - you know, the ones with no saving at all. I prefer a middle-ground myself. I mean, sure, I love RPGs and those rare platform-style games that allow you to save your progress, but back when I was younger, I was really freaking good at Mario.

These days I actually crave a hard game. When I get my new apartment, I'm planning on buying an Xbox specifically for Ninja Gaiden.

Re:They missed a biggie

[Hannah E. Davis]

The concept of a static image of boobs (particularly fake boobs) as a marketing tool is not limited to gaming, so I don't know if it would qualify as a gameplay mechanic. Boob physics, however... that's an interesting one. It took a long time for the game industry to come up with character models that jiggled in the right places, and I'm actually surprised that they didn't do it earlier. It's not quite as surprising how many... uhm... packages it moved when it was finally implemented, though.

spread shot

[fearanddread]

In fact, the only shooters where you're not likely to find the spread shot are those of the first-person variety, like Halo and Quake. Alas, this weapon of mass destruction would simply be too much of an advantage in multiplayer matches.

I disagree. The rocket launcher in Unreal Tournament had spread-shot capability that was devastating but in no way an unbalancing factor.

Re:Saving beats all of that....

[SharpFang]

Savegame - THE ultimate cheat.

I wish I knew how to make a game that allows you to save&quit, then resume gameplay freely the next day, disallow to "retry" the same part for better outcome (if you screw up, restart from scratch or live with your mistakes) while keeping you immune from crashes, bugs etc. There were some games that kept saves only with purpose of resuming the game, but a crash or a critical bug that killed your character would unfairly force you to restart. OTOH I feel quite guilty if I retry for the 6th time the same battle to get the grenade exactly through the narrow gap into the bunker. Oh, and games where saving costs you money, health, save crystals or such solves nothing.

Transcendence has a nice model....

[MrTrick]

(http://neurohack.com/transcendence/) You can save&quit, and resume later. You can purchase 'insurance' from a broker for protection against death (if your ship is destroyed you'll re-appear at the broker with full health) but the cost of insurance increases exponentially every time you make a 'claim'.

And RTS?

[loraksus]

And what about RTS's?
The genre has evolved by leaps and bounds in terms of gameplay in the last 5 years (try playing the original command and conquer and you can see the evolution. Ignoring the whole genre is doing a pretty big disservice.

Rhythm games...?

[AdamTrace]

The earliest I'm familiar with was Parappa the Rapper, but given the whole DDR/Guitar Hero trend, I think rhythm games are a whole genre that shouldn't be overlooked.

Adman

Balance

[owlman17]

Finding the right balance while keeping it interesting is hard. Starcraft is a very balanced game. And its probably why it ranks as one of the best all-time games out there despite its age. Of course, Warcraft and the original C&C also had balance in the sense that they had practically identical units, but Starcraft really makes this interesting. Its almost like playing a 3-way chess with the races. Heck, this could be the chess of the future. And yeah, the best games I ever played were always about gameplay, not graphics, though that helps.

Re:omissions (really: Origin of Gauntlet)

[kabdib]

The original "Gauntlet" was actually my roommates MIT thesis (you don't *have* to do a thesis as an undergrad, but he did). It was called Dandy, it ran on the Atari 400/800 computers, and it let up to four players play using the four joystick ports. Finished in the fall of 1982 or so, before he joined Atari.

Atari coin-op loved the game, and shamelessly ripped it. When Jack objected, he settled for a copy of the coin-op Gauntlet (which, being a roommate, I had to help schlep from apartment to apartment for a while, until he just brought it into work).