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!
I just came back to Vampire Survivors and to my surprise it got new content updates and new DLCs since I last played it (last year). The reason for coming back to the game was a nice little indie game called Cozy Space Survivors which is exactly what the name promises.
Jonathan S. Harbour of the University of Advancing Technology argues that Tomb Raider (1996) by Eidos Interactive (now Square Enix Europe) is “largely responsible for the popularity of this genre”.
Hell, Max Payne was definitely more popular, and it came out in 2001.
Well you are right but I’m talking about the style and feel that one of those earlier pivot resident evils created. It plays the same as gears of war and all other cover shooters that followed. Sure third person existed but everything today plays in a way that series established.
yeah it was such an improvement so instantly adopted that people forget 3rd person shooters used to put your character right in the middle before that.
Prince of Persia: realistic animations with weight. also popularized a platformer subgenre, which was called cinematic platformer but unfortunately the life of the subgenre was cut short due to the advent of 3d.
Diablo: ARPG genre, and even more so loot rarity system (especially the four tiers common/rare/epic/legendary) and affixes in loot as well.
Half-Life: a lot of good things, sure, as pointed out by other comments, but I will also never forgive valve for popularizing the game not fucking starting for ages.
Rogue and maybe more so Nethack: roguelike mechanics.
some really obvious ones are Tetris: falling block puzzles and Sokoban: pushing block puzzles.
also now pretty much obsolete but Overwatch: loot boxes. they existed before, but Overwatch made them an industry standard.
i don’t think they were as influential no. overwatch loot boxes were not only a monetization venue but also the main leveling system. whether you paid or not you always played toward a loot box. and couple with the game’s massive success and popularity it opened the floodgates to this form of monetization to be a standard.
Another one that comes to mind (that someone can correct me on). Was Uncharted the game that made the “no health bar, but redder screen as you are close to dying” popular?
Nah, CoD2 switched to health regen and dumped the health bar before them. It was partially to adapt to the console gameplay pioneered by, IIRC, Bungee with Halo.
But for real, i struggle to play games with wasd default and now keybind changes. Part of it is as simple as my hand is just used to using esdf and I constantly hit the wrong keys in those games. But the loss of useable keys on my pinky just feels so bad.
Used to play Warframe pretty religiously with wasd, where shift was part of a key movement combo. After a year or so, developed significant pain in my left pinky.
Shifting to esdf was damn awkward for about 2 weeks. The sheer pinky comfort though.👌
I wish I could upvote twice. It just allows so much more customization, that allows much more comfortable hand positions. I often with disable my caps lock and use A and caps lock as run and crouch.
I am unable to play Fallout 4 because E is hardcoded to be “Use.” You can change all the movement keys, but for some reason you cannot change that keybinding. So you can make E be forward movement, but every time you approach a door or chest or person you will automatically open or talk whether you want to or not.
I never understood this for first-person shooters. You can’t walk forward and backward at the same time, so I don’t see why being able to press the forward and backward movement keys at the same time would be useful at all.
Top down games with 8+ directions of movement it’s great, though.
It’s not about being able to push both movement buttons at the same time, it’s about being able to push more buttons in general. For hero shooters, mobas, MMOs, and other games with lots of inputs spreading out your reachable keys is really good.
If naughty words cause you a level of righteous indignance, my recommendation is to abstain from online activities until one reaches the age of majority
Been RDFG since about 2002. One of my roommates in college was in the top thousand on Unreal Tournament. He talked me into it. God, I get good at that game playing against him.
I remember using wsad on an ascii graphics game I played back in 85 or so. I think it was called dungeons and dragons, but was not made by tsr. Larn, hack, and Moria were all similar games but I did not play those until later.
yeah HL definitely was the one popularized it as default. quake players changed the bindings for it; i know because i played that game with old-school doom/duke controls
Rogue for the rogue mechanic. Progressing in a game as far as you can until you die, then using some form of enhancement mechanic be harder faster better or stronger to go again.
Be careful; you’re stepping into a holy war. There are some who stick to “the Berlin Interpretation”, where there are far more criteria to what makes a roguelike, and from my perspective, it makes those games so close to Rogue that it’s not worth giving it its own genre, plus this classification came out just before Spelunky ruined it. Colloquially, you’re typically right though. Most will call a game roguelite if your progress gives you upgrades that make the next runs easier, whereas a roguelike may still have unlocks that add more variety or “sidegrades” that are neither better nor worse.
I think the Berlin Interpretation is quite outdated and was not even good at the time, but I will defend it on this one point. It does not provide a threshold for what is and is not a roguelike, the Berlin Interpretation just lists criteria that are important to consider when determining how roguelike something is. The heap paradox is an exercise for the reader.
Funny enough, Rogue doesn’t have a set of permanent enhancement for a wider meta game. In Rogue you start over from scratch always and every time. That’s the difference between a roguelike and a rogue liTe game. Binding of Isaac and Spelunky are roguelike. You die, you start over from scratch. Hades and Slay the spyre are rogue lite. Every run gives permanent enhancements that change the next runs, so each time you start slightly different or progressively better.
Hades, yes. That’s a premier Roguelite with meaningful meta progression.
Slay the Spire is fuzzy on that point. I would not recommend it to someone looking for a Roguelite. It straddles the line in that it has very limited meta progression which is quickly exhausted and basically works as a tutorial. Once you’ve maxed out the card unlocks for each character it plays with the same feel as a Roguelike game. It’s still not a pure a Roguelike since the starting boon choice and the card swap event allow some minor meta-influence between runs, but there’s no more meta-progression.
A roguelite is ostensibly something that has enough features of a roguelike to be noted, but not enough to be considered one. And I’d argue there is way more to what makes a roguelike than permadeath with no meta progression.
Also Slay the Spire has less meta progression than Issac. Hades is in a whole nother ball park.
I’m curious if it’s actually a different one. That’s the biblical “source” but I feel like there was a long gap before the indie scene picked up that theme in droves. I’m now unsure what it was that started that more modern trend.
Rogue was the originator, but NetHack and ADOM did more to popularize Roguelikes than Rogue itself ever managed. NetHack was the first one I ever heard of, and it’s the only reason I know Rogue existed in the first place.
There are many ai companies pirating millions of songs for their profit and they are operating without problems, what they’re going to do to an individual that “stole” a couple songs?
I tried UO, AC, EQ1+2 and can say that WoW’s beloved IP, look and feel, and relative lack of clunkiness in the controls and animations were big differentiators for me.
The question was, “what games popularized certain mechanics.” The question was not, “what games created or introduced certain mechanics.”
Yes, there were other MMOs before WoW, but WoW took MMOs to a completely new level of popularity. I didn’t play ANY MMOs before WoW and wasn’t really interested to, but it was so popular that I jumped on to see what the deal was. Since then I have played ESO, LOTRO, AOC, and one other whose name I forget.
Other MMOs were popular among gaming nerds before WoW, but WoW made MMOs popular to normal people.
because it’s flat out wrong. WoW aped most of its systems from Everquest, which most of WoW’s development team was actively playing. They made some improvements on the genre, but the bones existed as early as 1997 with Ultima Online.
sure, we can quibble on the threshold of “popular” here. but you can’t question that WOW caused an absolute explosion in MMOs after it. not like anything before.
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