Wolf3d is an evolution of Hovertank 3D, which had flat shading for walls, floors, and ceilings. Wolf3d then has textured walls but still flat shading on the floors and ceilings. Some other games came out after Wolf3d that had textures floors and ceilings while id worked on Doom.
Doom not only had textured everything, but also stairs. Trick was, you couldn’t develop a level that had a hallway going over another hallway. Not enough computer horsepower yet to pull that off. This is sometimes called “2.5D”.
Quake brings everything together. Everything’s texture mapped, your levels have true height with things built over other things, and the character models are even fully 3d rendered.
Sports games have been doing it faaaar longer. Madden started in 1988, released a sequel in 1990, then hasn’t missed a year ever since. The baseball and basketball counterparts existed just as long.
Boktai series: Hideo Kojima's most unusual work, and I mean that in the best way. These games were so near and dear to my childhood, especially 2. Really though you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but I love these games too much not to plug them anyway. Emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you'd have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: It's Castlevania. It's good. Also check out Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance, but AoS was by far the best of the GBA entries.
Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: If you've played any of the other Mario RPGs, this one's great too. Has a 3DS remake but I haven't played that version so I can't tell you how it compares.
Metroid: Zero Mission: The original Metroid has aged rather poorly if you ask me, but this remake does a perfect job modernizing it into one of the best games in the series. Fusion is good too, but some fans have opinions on that one.
Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven't played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you've ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There's a third game that's JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it's been stuck in development hell for years...
Holy shit boktai was kojima?! Only reason i about this series was the crossover chips and and endgame quest in MMBN4 and on. Super cool and unique concept with the solar panel stuff.
For first person shooters (mix of first introduced and popularised):
Doom: started and popularised the genre. Also started and popularised rasterized 3d graphics for gaming (though the game itself was still 2d). Also first fps multiplayer and modding
Quake: various game modes (Deathmatch, capture the flag), as well as being the first true 3d fps. Popularised multiplayer and modding.
Team fortress (quake mod): Different specialist characters.
Goldeneye 64: popularized multilayer console fps, taught character size can be a significant advantage/disadvantage, depending on if you got Oddjob or Jaws.
Half-life: started horror fps genre, (mostly) seemless world
CS: customizable loadouts instead of search for guns each time you spawn, more game modes
UT: AI bots
Perfect dark: secondary fire for weapons
Deus ex: rpg fps
Halo: finally figured out a decent controller control scheme (one stick looks, one moves, button for grenades rather than needing to select grenade from list of guns). First fps I remember vehicles in, too.
Battlefield: large scale multiplayer
Socom: fps game that isn’t first person, online console multiplayer
Call of duty: using gun sights to aim
Far cry: open world fps
Doom 3: used lighting (or lack thereof) to bring fps horror to a new level.
Crisis: famous for pushing hardware and people caring more about the benchmark results than the game itself (I tried the second one, it was ok but I didn’t really get into it)
Call of duty: zombies (and other alternate game modes), kill steaks, online progression (unlocking guns and attachments as you level, prestige levels)
HL2/portal: brought physics and its involvement in fps games to a new level
TF2: f2p, microtransactions (though not predatory or p2w so the game isn’t remembered for this)
Borderlands: loot-based fps rpg
Metro 2033: fps survival
Halo reach: custom maps
Destiny: MMORPG FPS
Overwatch: hero-based, and hero roles (dps, tank, healer)
If you’re counting the shields, Bungie’s Oni did it first.
Halo also had vehicles in 2001. Bf1942 came out in 2002. Other FPS games have had vehicles before that, but they were always clunky. Hell, there’s a vehicle section in Shadow Warrior(1997).
There is a UK petition in the works. It’s not quite ready yet, because thanks to your recent election the team behind the initiative had to redo all of their work. (Your government requires everybody to resubmit petitions if a new parliament is elected)
Street Fighter 2 popularized and pretty much set to stone what a tournament fighter game should be. Mortal Kombat came first, but its single-player progression was this weird “tower” with some gimmick fights thrown in, like you vs 2.
Thinking about it, I’d say Mortal Kombat popularized the “REALLY fucking cheap sub boss/final boss” that many other fighting games have (looking at you, SNK) - I mean, good luck getting close to Goro in the first place.
I wonder which korean mmo could be considered as the one that de facto popularized pay-to-win as an integral mechanic.
Diablo hands down popularized not only the action RPG genre, but also having enemies as loot mystery boxes. One lucky kill and you could get your hands on a really great piece of equipment. The amount of clones speaks for itself.
I think Gran Turismo popularized the “carreer mode” of racing games.
Yeah Goro was probably cheaper overall, but the CPU in general in SF had unblockable moves and invincibility that they used to interrupt your attack. Of course, input reading goes on in a lot of games and MKI was I’m sure no exception (found this MKII video about it). I think it just got ramped up even more for M Bison, so he ended up being pretty comparable to the MK bosses as well.
This might be a little on the side of the main topic but there was always something cool about Crash Bandicoot 100 Apples > 1 Life, and you could grind more to make some levels more forgiving, like semi-adjustable difficulty level based on your previous approach… And later on — warp zones, you get to choose from a few options so the progression has variation.
Another thing that comes to mind, not sure if a first game to do it, THPS for unlocking movies and later cheat codes, modes and characters for finishing the career. Plus the whole gap marathon for Private Carrera.
Oh, and chanting from Oddword where it had various uses, for saving friends or for changing into enemies, or using special abilities. This definitely was something, because I still remember thinking as a kid, “how cool is that this one ability has so many different uses”.
100 Apples > 1 Life, and you could grind more to make some levels more forgiving, like semi-adjustable difficulty level based on your previous approach… And later on — warp zones, you get to choose from a few options so the progression has variation.
100 coins = 1UP and warp zones? And… you think they’re from Crash Bandicoot?
Well, when I was writing that, after midnight I will add, I had this feeling that Mario was doing this thing earlier but for me Mario stands as an icon for the first level design overall as a golden standard for introduction to mechanics and really efficient use of memory for data, and one of the first uses of dynamic music… So you are totally right, Mario brought a lot of things, I’ve just played Crash much more.
Well then… To stay true to the history, we probably would have to go back to Galaxian from ‘79, which introduced 1-UPs / additional lives, bonus stages and player upgrades, plus simple summary / statistics for hits and misses.
The main core series, Super Mario, began with the platformer game Super Mario Bros. (1985) on the Nintendo Entertainment System. The main games consist of Mario trying to rescue Princess Peach from the villain Bowser and saving the Mushroom Kingdom.
As of June 2024, the Mario video game franchise has sold more than 900 million units worldwide, making it the best-selling video game franchise of all time. The main Super Mario series alone has sold more than 495 million copies worldwide.
Super Mario Bros. 1985 NES, estimated revenue $1,652,300,000
You’ve likely listened to the same or similar lectures I have on level design and I seriously apply those lessons to every single game and UI I have influence over!
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