Welcome to Retro Gaming Roundtable, where we take a bunch of retro gaming experts and enthusiasts, ask them a question, and see how they respond. Hopefully, the result is a rather thorough treatment of the prompt with some entertaining quips along the way.
This is our second article (read our first here). Feel free to share with fellow retro-game lovers, leave comments on the topic, etc., and check out the contributors, as they all have their own cool projects going on, many of which can be followed on Twitter.
Prompt #2: In your opinion, what was the single most significant innovation in gaming?
###
Father R.O.B., Temple Of Retro: ??In your opinion, what was the single most significant innovation in gaming??
I thought back and wondered exactly what this was?was it R.O.B. the Robot? Ugh, no. Was it the NES Power Pad? How about the Super Scope? Was it even a piece of hardware? What about the introduction of 8-bit gaming in itself? Honestly, I think the most significant innovation in gaming isn?t quite that old. In my opinion, the single most significant innovation in gaming is?
?the internet.
The internet and the World Wide Web forever changed the way that users played video games, and how programmers designed future games. The advent of online gaming is now seen in almost every new video game release, regardless of the console. While games now continue to have a ?single player? mode, a large majority of game libraries employ some sort of online campaign, or utilize an online component of some sort, be it playing against others around the world, or even just the addition of downloadable content and file sharing. When?s the last time you played a ?two player game? that didn?t involve or require a broadband connection?
Even decades after their release, the internet helps to provide gamers with their retro titles in the form of game-by-game walkthroughs, cheat codes and other content.
For a million more reasons that I can?t mention in this small space, it?s my opinion that the internet is the single most innovation in gaming.?
Beta Wizard, Twitter: ?Though there are many technological inventions that have changed gaming like the D-pad and such, for me there is but one thing, the unsung hero in gaming history, and his name is Mario.
Mario, I believe, is in more video games than any other character in history. Not only does he have his own franchise and is the poster boy for the most relevant gaming system, but he invented the Video Game Cameo. Here are some notable examples?
My case here is that Mario made video gaming personal and gave it humanity. Previous to him we only had Frogs and Aliens to relate too. Sure, Pacman may have been first, but I relate to him about as much as the the ?Hey, Kool-aid? Guy.
Without Mario there would be no Billy & Jimmy, no Megaman, no Zelda, no Sonic. I also don?t think that there would be any RPGs without him. He took the step for us. He put us in the game.
If we saw Mario on the street, he would blend in with the crowd. Nothing special about him. Now that trait, is what brings us further in. In a world where superheros are fake and unapproachable, we have Mario, the Bruce Springsteen of heros. The Everyman.
And he did it all with a mustache. I can just see it now, a board room of people trying to figure out how to make a stylized character with 8-bit graphics, and suddenly someone says? ?put a lip sweater on him.? People laugh and think it is ridiculous, until the bossman raises his hand to silent everyone and says? ?Brilliant!?
Mario is our Dad, or our weird uncle or us in disguise. He acted in silent films, who wrote turn of the century poetry in romania, he is a turkish king, he works at my local pizza kitchen.
But more than anything, he is who we want to be when we grow up. He teaches us to follow our dreams and not settle for less. He?s the person who life made a plumber, but imagination made a princess saving, block breaking, shell stomping Hero.
He is Mario. Anywhere that someone says that name, he is who you think of. There are no others.?
Christopher Earls, Gamefira.com: ?I would have to go with the Magnavox Odyssey on this one, not so much for the for the unit itself or the quality or entertainment value of the games but for what it did for the video game industry?which was bring it into THE HOME.
Believe it or not at one point in gaming history you actually had to leave your house to play games (gasp)! Arcades were the only outlet for burgeoning gamers seeking their pixel fix. And while arcades could be really cool (and sorely missed today) they were also VERY hard on the piggybank and some were known to be frequented by patrons of the less than savory variety.
With the advent of home consoles the video game industry was forever changed. Suddenly gaming was more readily accessible to a larger audience and while it was still several years before gaming would really skyrocket its way into almost every home, this one HUGE step from arcade to home console would be the catalyst to the beginning of a new era in gaming.
My hat is off to you Magnavox Odyssey?even if Atari totally knocked you out of the game a couple years later with their superior home consoles?Cheers!?
Mason Cramer, Year Of The Moth: ?Oh! A kind of paralyzing question, because in order to understand what the most important innovation in gaming is, we first need to clearly define what we mean by the word ?gaming? in the question. Does that mean the gameplay? If so then perhaps the D-pad would be the most significant innovation. Or does that mean gaming culture itself? That could mean the rise of disk-based games with snazzy graphics might top the chart. Or maybe something could fall in between ? maybe the most important innovation has actually been strategy guides, game genie and suchlike. I have a definitive answer, though. I submit to you that the most significant innovation in gaming was Pac-Man.
It was one of the first games to spend more than a year in production. It was designed to appeal to a wide audience, and in doing so coined the paradigm of ? ?colorful, fast, and complex gameplay derived from basic rules.? The board was designed with so much careful thought; the game is completely succinct with itself. Pac-Man induced such a massive response from the people, which helped the idea of video games take hold in the collective awareness.
A close second to Pac-Man would be Donkey Kong. Same ideas as above, but with Kong being the genesis of an entire style of game ? the platformer. Also the fact that all the random elements in the game were put there deliberately, to keep sucking up those quarters. Perhaps Donkey Kong could be credited with innovating by creating gamer rage?
Now that I think about it, I?d like to hear some stories from arcade owners in the 80?s about people going AWOL on the machines! Has anybody ever put a bar stool through the screen of an arcade game??
Nintendo Legend, NintendoLegend.com: ?Ugh, what a difficult question. Many stalwart candidates come to mind: The home video game console, the directional pad of the NES controller, polygons, online gaming, etc. However, my answer lies elsewhere.
Sprite animation.
Without the ability to move groups of pixels around the television screen, we would still be stuck playing space-war challenges on odd radar tubes or oscilloscopes. I do not even know what those terms mean, but I am glad that someone figured out how to code animated sprites. The comparison of a gaming world without those sprites versus one with them is like comparing a photograph of the set of Star Wars to first experiencing the film itself.?
Septicor, Septicor.com: ?To me, I think there were many items that were so innovative to video gaming, but I think the most significant, the one that really changed the face of gaming is the ability to save our games.
Game saves were originally used to save all the high scores at arcades, for games like Space Invaders and Frogger. This allowed competition among the local gamers to best others, and claim the top spot. This lead to more quarters being pumped in, and more motivation to get better at the game.
When home consoles came on board, they started with Password-based saves, to mark your progress. The big issue with passwords is that someone else can take that password, and claim to have beaten the game without proof. The biggest example would be Castlevania 2: Simon?s Quest. How many of us beat the game their first time, by entering the password that leads directly to Dracula? The other significant issue with passwords is that they were so long and some games were absolutely frustrating to enter, due to bad interfacing. Faxanadu anyone?
Saves let the individual keep track of their progress and let them get to the end on their own, without the need to sit there and forcing then to beat it at one go. While most games of the 70?s and early 80?s were measured in minutes of game play, games like Legend of Zelda, Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy provided hours of fun and excitement without having to be there for hours straight.
Saving is essential with gaming today, as almost all games have some form of saving, like auto-save and check points, and games are much longer, even as high as 30 hours of game play.
And ? Control-S, and we?re done.?
Rob Clay, Flailthroughs: ?The smartass answer would be ?the microchip,? without which video games would be impossible. Or maybe even electricity if you wanted to go that route. But I?m going to be serious here and stick to innovations made within the world of gaming.
And for that, I?m going with the console itself. When the heyday of the arcade was over by the mid-`80s, consoles persevered, and gaming changed and survived. The home console is what allowed for more elaborate games with more involved stories to become possible. Is Zelda or Final Fantasy possible in an arcade in its purest form? Absolutely not- even some platformers would be pushing it lengthwise. Before consoles the only home gaming available was through dedicated, single-game machines- would those games have gotten made if someone had to make a dedicated home gaming machine to play that one game? Again, no.
And while home computers allowed for multiple long-form games on one machine, the format wars of the early days and variances in computer specs (how much RAM? Joystick or no joystick?) meant that a completely standardized presentation was nearly impossible. So with consoles you get the shared experience of the arcade and the convenience and potential of home computers, and it?s little wonder that combination became the dominant video gaming medium from the mid-1980s forward.?
RetroGamerVE, Pixenario.com: ?Sin duda una de las preguntas mas dif?ciles de responder. Haciendo un repaso amplio, me he topado con opciones importantes y perfectamente v?lidas como: El uso de los pol?gonos, que sin duda marc? un antes y un despu?s en los videojuegos, o el modo multijugador, que para mi elev? la interacci?n a un nivel muy superior. Pero viendo esas opciones pienso que, sin ellas, los Video juegos tambi?n existir?an, ser?an divertidos y tendr?an un lugar en la sociedad, pero lo que de verdad pienso que hizo a los videojuegos ser lo que es hoy, lo que los convirti? en el tercer medio de entretenimiento junto al cine y la televisi?n, lo que ha logrado convertir a personajes ficticios en iconos de generaciones ha sido la invenci?n de: Las Consolas de Videojuego.
Antes de que Ralph Baer trajera al mundo a su Odyssey por el a?o 1972, los videojuegos eran exclusivos de PC y Arcade. Solo las personas que ten?an acceso a un computador o pod?an asistir a un sal?n de maquinas Arcade eran las que pod?an experimentar lo que era un videojuego. Si vemos que no todos pod?an darse ese lujo, los videojuegos estaban en un plano bastante restringido hasta que se inventan las Consolas Caseras de Videojuegos. Gracias a ellas, los videojuegos lograron entrar a los hogares y nunca se fueron. El n?mero de personas que pudo disfrutar de esta actividad se elev? exponencialmente y se le di? un giro importante al enfoque con el que se estaba manejando la industria, dando paso a desarrollos mas extensos y elaborados y que con el tiempo ir?an evolucionando a lo que es hoy.
Es por esto, y sin extenderme mucho mas, que para mi, el invento mas significativo en la historia de los videojuegos ha sido, Las Consolas, ya que llevaron la diversi?n electr?nica a los hogares de manera directa, agradable, sencilla y divertida y si eso no hubiese ocurrido, quiz? no tendr?amos a Los Hermanos Mario ni al mundo de Hyrule.?
Josh Miller, Lameazoid.com: ?So, I had a couple of impulse ideas here but I actually think i stuck with my first impulse. I considered cartridges as an answer, and the strongest competition to my ultimate choice. The convenience of a software package that is self contained and requires no installation or ?ready *.* ,8,1? anything to run is pretty innovative. Yet, PC games have never had this really and it?s quickly becoming a concept (even as the next evolution of disc) that is going away quickly. Plus, really cartridges have essentially been around since the start of Video Games, so it kind of feels like saying ?Video Games are the most innovative things in video games?.
So then I considered Memory Cards as my top choice, it was also my first choice, and ultimately, this evolved into my true answer of, ?The Save File?. This was a concept really pushed forward during the NES games so I?m going to be using it?s titles as examples a lot. Back in the early days of gaming, there was no way to continue your progress when you quit playing. Get to world 5-2 of Super Mario Brothers and now your mom is harping on you to go to sleep? Well, you could pause it and just let it run until you can come back, a tactic I used many times, or, you can turn it off, better luck next time. Too bad it took you like two hours to get that far.
Game Designers saw this frustration and created two solutions, only one of which ultimately one out: Save Files and passkeys. Passkeys or Passwords, depending on what you prefer, were a series of numerical letters and numbers that would allow a player to continue their game at a later time. Some passwords were simple, Bumble Bobble for example had only 5 letters to remember. The secret is that this was basically a code telling the game that hey ?I want level XXX?. Other games like River City Ransom, which had a myriad of stats to keep track of, gave massive 33 character passwords as a result. This was fairly impractical in the long run, I can?t tell you how frustrated I got when I?d discover later I?d mis-copied a 0 into an O.
Other games, such as The Legend of Zelda had a much more elegant built in save file system. Yeah, you were generally limited to three save files (three seemed to be the magic number for ages), but it was better than a lengthy password jumble. The drawback was that for some kooky reason you have to ?Hold in Reset and Turn off the Power? or your saves would be erased. As irritated as I?d get over messed up RCR passwords, I could often manage to guess which letter was messed up, I was more irritated at the loss of a save file. I had once managed to get most of the way through Zelda II and we had some company over. My uncle had gone off to play some NES games in my bedroom and later I came back to discover that he had accidentally destroyed all of my work.
But the technology evolved and got better over time. The Playstation and N64 era gave us memory cards, which could be swapped out and taken to a friends house, it allowed the trading of save files or even the ability to keep them backed up to a PC if you had the right gadgets.
Today everything is stored on a hard drive and it?s often backed up or synced across the Internet. Save files have evolved into a mechanism to keep gamer scores and track achievements, even on consoles. Hardly a game made these days lacks the ability to continue where you left off later. From a developer standpoint, the mainstreaming of save files allowed them to created larger and longer games. You could conceivable knockout Zelda in a few hours if you were good, but a massive 100 hour RPGs would be impossible without the ability to continue your game later.?
MAULERGWR, NintendoLegend.com: ?The single most significant innovation in gaming would have to be the Wii. It bought motion controls on the scene better than anything before. It stayed sold out for nearly 3 YEARS, due to such high demand. At one point, Wii Sports sold standalone for 100s of dollars, because that was the most popular game on the system. The Wii still has a high resell/purchase value and the price is not likely to drop anytime soon. The WiiMotion Plus enhances the already good sensor within the WiiMote, making control even more fluid on games like Just Dance 3 and Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. They are still churning out games for the Wii and even though there isnt a huge gamer specific markety for the console (i.e. no Halo, Gears, Uncharted, etc.), games like Rayman Origins and The New Super Marios Bros. Wii make the console connect with all types of gamers.
As a gamer, I prefer Skyward Sword, Metroid Prime Trilogy, and Super Smash Brothers over the more childish games, but can turn around and have a great time with friends with Mario Party 8 and Just Dance 3, or my child can join me for some Smash Brothers co-op or he can do his own thing in Lego Batman or Lego Harry Potter. Don?t get me wrong: I like the idea of Kinect and PS Move. They are fantastic ideas too, but in the end, they just seem to me like dumbed down versions of Wii Motion controls. Kinect has a small title base, but is slowly moving up to bigger and better things, and PS?Move has a large game support base and multiplayer functionality. The Wii just did it sooner than the others and it was done right. The innovation is there in the Wii, and in my professional opinion, it isn?t going anywhere for a long time.?
Peisinoe, Lady Retro Blog: ?When I originally got this question, it took me about 10 seconds to think of an answer. I thought it was a great question that required very little thought. I didn?t have the time to write my answer at that particular moment. Three hours passed before I started writing. When I sat down to type, I started to question what I thought. How could I determine what the most significant innovation in gaming is? I mean, there are so many things that are important to gaming. After?hours days of going back and forth with myself and actually researching the history of video games more thoroughly, I finally decided. So, here it is:
The Console
The access and growth of games would not be what it is today without consoles. Mainly, they are cost effective, put games in homes, and provide the option to play multiple games in one spot.
Prior to a box you could hook to your television, you had to run to the arcade and pay quarter after quarter in a machine to play. Each large machine was an individual game that took up a lot of space. You had to wait your turn to play, and if you managed to get a turn, you had other kids at your elbows pestering you about when they were going to get to play and teasing you about how they could do it better. When you ran out of quarters, you were done until your next allowance.
Compare that to a machine and a few games that cost approximately 1200 quarters. Say a family has two kids who play in an arcade regularly. They easily could spend that much money in two months at the arcade. A console at home saved families money relatively quickly.
Add to the money-saving aspect, a player doesn?t have to leave the house to play. More local access means playing more often. The more one plays, the more he is likely to continue playing and develop a sort of attachment to the games.
So far I?ve failed to mention the most important feature of the console. It is an entire arcade in a rather small unit. You could easily accumulate as many games as your local arcade, which you could afford because you?ve saved your arcade money. So, not only did you have an arcade in your living room or bedroom, you never had to wait for the other kids to finish, and you definitely didn?t have to listen to them chastise you for making a simple mistake.?
Retro King Simon, Red Parsley: ?This is actually a really tough one to answer, for me at least. I can think of dozens of fantastic, invaluable innovations, but the single biggest? The era of videogames that I?m most fond of saw many smaller innovations that gradually changed the industry and the way we played games. The introduction of colour graphics and the creation of home hardware with interchangable games were very important, but I suppose the biggest innovations have come more recently. Online gaming, perhaps? Or motion-sensitive controllers? Maybe, but I think the biggest was the advent of polygon-based graphics which completely changed not only the quality of the visuals the games were made of but made an entire third dimension easily accessible and in the process made videogame worlds as complex as the people designing them wanted.?
Mr. Retro Sports, Retro Sports Gamer: ?My gut reaction to this question was ?the home console? but it?s easy to overlook that variations of home consoles were available in the late ?70s (as Pong clones or whatever). In the same vein I?ll say the biggest innovation was when arcade games started to be ported to home video game systems and you could have that action without?it requiring a quarter or even leaving your house. The single biggest jump there was the early ?80s and Atari was a big part of that. Once this was realized, everything snowballed from there.?
Sean Ewington, UpUp-DownDown.com: ?
Before Activision?s creation in 1979, if you were a developer for the Atari VCS you made games and Atari published them. And that was that. Profits were high, but developers were not credited for the games or paid bonuses if the games did well. Some developers opted to work independently and managed to make more money. But four developers ? David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Bob Whitehead, and Alan Miller ? chose a different option and started their own publishing company, Activision.
Third party publishers was a new idea, and with their talent Activision made it a successful one. Sure other companies like Nintendo and Konami were transitioning their businesses into publishing around the same time, but Activision founders?s decision to split marks an important ripple of competition and innovation. Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead went on to found Accolade, which published titles like Test Drive and Hard Ball. Other Activision members went on to form Acclaim and publish games like Mortal Kombat (which is why we have the ESRB).
The beating hearts of third party publishers and developers owe their ferociously to these four men, and their decision to look at their proven talents and utilize them to change the landscape of game publishing.
You drop a pebble in a pond, you get ripples. Soon the ripples cross the whole pond. ? Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
[Source: The History Of Activision]?
Tyler Altrup, Twitter: ?The single biggest innovation is two things.
Confused? It?s ok. Everything is ok. (I will go slowly).
The single biggest innovation in gaming is the dual-analog control setup. So, yes, the ?single? innovation is a ?dual? thing. Not sold? Here?s a list of things that are NOT possible without a dual control setup:
1. Mario 64
2. Turk (that game is underrated, and the sequel criminally so)
3. Goldeneye 007
4. Halo
5. CallOfDuty/Battlefield//(Other Generic Shooters)
Ok, I admit it. I cheated and just listed a bunch of games that most people are fanatically in love with. I also included a few that are most likely not considered retro. It might be blasphemy for a retro group, but it helps me make my point, and, in the words of Cartman, ?I do what I WANT.? (Video Bonus)
Time For Serious Pants
More seriously, the dual control setup is the most significant innovation in gaming. Early consoles dabbled but it was the Nintendo 64?and a few developers? ingenious use of the C buttons (remember those little yellow buddies?) that advanced the scheme.
Mario 64, in its time, was not just the next Mario game?I?m looking at you Mario Sunshine?it was an evolutionary leap. Games went from amoebas to sentient apes overnight. Where were you the first time you saw it? The first time you played it?
I might not have been the N64 Kid, but I was so excited about the launch that I took two years of EGM Magazines and put Post-It Notes on every page that mentioned the console or any of its games. I was 11 and I was organized.
Looking Around Was Underrated
Do you remember the last time you got stuck in a game? Sure you do and I can probably guess the first thing you did?you probably looked around. Before dual control schemes, that was simply not an option. Control schemes have always evolved gaming?from the six-button Genesis pad to the Super Nintendo?s shoulder buttons to the Wiimote and Kinect. The dual control setup, and specifically the dual analog sticks, were the most significant innovation in gaming.
?
Michael Chambers, Twitter: ?As I began my response to this week?s question, I was convinced that the most significant innovation in the history of video games has been multiplayer. My argument met an impasse when it occurred to me that multiplayer video games have been around since almost the beginning. I began to think about the ways video games have impacted our culture since their inception. Surely, the key to the continued success of video games, as witnessed by sales that frequently eclipse the hollywood box office, is their ability to foster communal experiences.
It?s clear that as gaming has grown and stereotypes surrounding gamers have disappeared, the greatest tool in the development of gaming culture has been the internet. Before massively multiplayer gaming transformed the way that gamers interact, the internet was already a means of creating communities that arcade owners could only dream of. While the internet revolutionized all forms of communication, the tactile nature of gaming lends itself to creative output that often exceeds other forms of media. As much as the internet revolutionized the way that people play against one another, it also changed the way that gaming is seen by society. Most importantly, the internet changed the way that gamers perceive each other.?
Tigmo55, Tigmo55.com: ?In all honesty, I really struggled with this particular question. Although there have been countless innovations and creative ideas that have affected the world of gaming, which one (or two) stood out from the pack? Was there one particular thought or idea that changed the world of video games as we know it? And could I find something of this nature that affected gaming in a positive way (the Power Glove and Virtual Boy, while innovative, weren?t exactly world-beaters)?
As I thought about this, it wasn?t necessarily one particular idea as it was one name that kept coming back to me. It was none other than the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto. Simply put, what Miyamoto did for video games is comparable to what Bill Gates did for the computer industry. Miyamoto took an already great idea (video games) and was instrumental in completely revolutionizing the medium forever! While Donkey Kong was his first masterpiece, Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda were Miyamoto?s crown jewels! Super Mario Bros. established the beloved 2-D action platformer while The Legend of Zelda completely turned the video game world on its head by essentially being the first true multi-genre game (part action/adventure, part RPG, and part puzzler). There isn?t one particular aspect of these games that stands out in terms of innovation and originality. The beauty is in the completed project and when you look at either of these games as a whole, you see innovation and creativity at its finest!?
###
And there you have it ? somehow, a remarkable show of agreement yet diversity of opinion. I very much enjoyed reading everyone?s insights into this, and learned a bit along the way; so, my special thanks to the contributors.
Follow us on Twitter @RetroRoundtable and we?ll see you next time!
Popularity: 1% [?]
Source: http://loudmouthedgamers.com/blog/2012/02/01/retro-gaming-roundtable-2/
11 11 11 meaning miracle berry billy crystal veterans day thank you veterans day thank you nigel tufnel day black friday deals
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.