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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.'"
Do paddles count? I say they do. You shoulda seen the Pong pre-release.
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
Where does "computer-generated breasts on cover" fall into this list? Hey, I mean, it moves packages...
I'll tell you what changed games - Saving
Lets face it, nobody would have ever finished the original Zelda if you had to start from the beginning everytime. Saving is what made games evolve from 3-6 hours of maximum gameplay to the massive sprawling indepth masterpieces we know today. Playing a game over and over and over so that you're perfectly adept at every nook and cranny is for the kids who have hours to spend on it, and is frustrating as hell (Ninja Gaiden I through III, I'm looking in your direction). The older crowd doesn't have the patience or the time for that kind of thing. Saving has made replayability an option, rather than a requirement.
The same argument also applies the natural extension of saving, which is unlimited continues.
Oh wait, they said mechanics...
No Free-cam?
No "sandbox mode" ala Simcity/Grand Theft Auto?
Sniper Shots made it but "target locking?"
This list may all be great mechanics, but many of them are far from the best.
Demented But Determined.
Seems to me that having a canine companion premiered in Nethack. ...And which, I might add, flamebaitingly, happens to be better than all those other games!
Mario! No wait, he's a plumber, not a mechanic...
What about cheat codes?
(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 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.
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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
Nethack is a good example of no save cheating(well, not built in anyways.)
You can save and quit, but you can't save without quitting. When you load you can resume your savegame or delete. Outside of these two option, you can't do anything else. This way you arn't stuck playing continuously, but you also can't replay anything before your savegame. Either you're playing and 'live', or you're saved and taking a break.
Of course as a result, the vast majority of the game never gets more than half way through it, but that just makes it worth replaying. Most games today are just stuck on rails trying to tell you a story. Theres no way to fail, only fail to do what they want you to do forcing you to try again. You are not playing the game, the game is playing you.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
A seriously weak article. It had it spot on with a few of the entries, but come on, dog side-kicks transformed gaming???
How about:
Run and jump?
Scrolling backgrounds? (It changed shooters forever and then changed platform games forever).
Analog controls? Mario 64 introduced "push the stick a little to tip toe", "medium to walk" and "all the way to run". This feature is in 90% of character based 3D games now!
There are plenty more, but this article obviously didn't want to get too technical.
I love searching these articles for errors. There are fewer than I expected -- attributing the origin of a health total to a game by *SNK* seemed obviously false at first, but the game offered, Ozma Wars, came out shortly after Space Invaders. (That's real early.) And I respect the writers for remembering Gaplus.
Doesn't mean the article's entirely accurate though:
Power-ups: I'm reasonably sure Pac-Man wasn't the first.
Chain Reactions: Missile Command's "matchbook" explosions far predate those of Bomberman.
Time Manipulation: Ladybug has a freeze-the-enemies item, as does Q*Bert.
Spread Shot: Oh please, Contra was NOT the first game to do this.
Canine Sidekick: What? Stupid.
Co-op play: Eliminator predated Gauntlet.
They were the first to come up with it. A lot of the most interesting features in Elite were squeezed into the game in literally bytes. Initially, where the 3d map was there would have been two columns of numbers that told you where you were. It wasn't very intuitive, and the creators came up with the 3D map in a couple of spare bytes.
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.
Air control during a jump! Thanks SMB 1! That was a HUGE platform-game improvement that was carried forward all future platform games (that didn't suck).
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).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
Having a dog sidekick makes the list but for some reason interactive content doesn't?
You want to talk about mechanics that revolutionized gameplay. Here are some HUGE omissions from the list.
Pause Button
Save Feature
Online play
Mod tools
Creating dynamic content in game (like Sim Life or Spore)
Musical Gameplay
Force Feedback
Analog Controls
Alternate Endings
Unlockable Content
But having a dog sidekick beat out all those things.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The one I can't believe they skipped is "mouselook."
Seriously, a whole genere of game (FPS) depends on this mechanic. How could it have gone unremarked?
First time I saw this was SWAT from Quake1, then Actionquake2, the team from which Gooseman left to make Counterstrike. And then a billion other "realistic" games spawned a bevy of bullet-based FPS games.
The popular weaponry was rocket launchers, railguns, freaky energy weaponry and whatnot. Now many games have hit-scan bullet guns instead, and with recoil, stability, and locational damage.
So many FPSes are tossing in headshots and favoring bullet-based guns. I like the crazy fictional guns, too much same-ness in a pistol/shotgun/chaingun(in whatever form they may take).
The very idea that they would have one powerful enemy at the end whose sole purpose is to defeat the one person who had ever managed to cut through all the defenses makes no sense. He should instead be outside to support the other defenses, not held in reserve as a single defensive point.
Now give me a game where whether you're able to get to the end depends on you surviving your own character's fatigue, where your character really doesn't have the time or endurance to "clear the level" (and not by having infinitely regenerating enemies). Maybe dealing with that would get game designers to stop making games where all you have to do is keep mashing the A button.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?