20 gameplay innovations we take for granted

by James Ransom-Wiley { Jun 15th 2006 at 4:55PM }

1UP has erected a list of 20 important gameplay innovations. And while the list does not contain every crucial addition to gaming's evolution, each entry is significant, and more so than not, is taken for granted by today's average gamer.

Imagine Double Dragon without combos ... Bomberman without chain reactions ... Gauntlet without co-op ... Bionic Commando without the grappling hook ... Contra without the spread shot! Heck, imagine no life bars or power ups! Or how about this: no boss battles! Yes folks, gaming would be bleak without the great minds that have carved out its history.

1Up's list of 20 important innovations (divided by category):

The Basics
Life Bar / Hit Points
Power Ups
Magic Spells
Bosses

Handy Features
Grappling Hook
Character Customization
Sniper Shot
Enemy Power Acquisition
Omni-Directional Fire

House of Style
Combos
Ice
Transformers
Chain Reactions
Time Manipulation
Spread Shot

Side By Side
Canine Sidekick
Cooperative Play
Tag-Teaming
Vehicles
Online Communities

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

unimental @ Jun 15th 2006 5:15PM

Spreadshot is so key. There must have been 100+ games that designated that power-up as a box with three lines of dots. Awesome in Contra (to the point of hating life if you accidentally picked up another power-up while you had it) and any side-scrolling shooter.

Also, the moment I read "sniper shot" I thought of Golgo-13. Thanks for that!

Justin C. @ Jun 15th 2006 5:16PM

What about the special "Hit the enemy in its weak point" move :)

Most bosses have weak points now adays right?

n3rrd @ Jun 15th 2006 5:26PM

Some of them are good, but "ice"?

striderhayasa @ Jun 15th 2006 5:32PM

jeez, how could 1up mention bosses and not mention the bosses in Turok and Turok 2. The Campaigner, The giant Fly and the T-Rex from Turok one are flat out awesome. Even the Triceritops riders with the rocket launchers on the side and the mech defense units were hot.

Turok 2 has the Mantid queen, Mother and the Primagen, some of the greatest bosses to appear in a game. How could 1up not mention these? I never could kill Mother either, it would always retreat into the shadows. But the animation, sounds, and just sheer size of these beasts set the stage for boss battles today.

Shame on you 1up!!!

great article otherwise though.

Devin @ Jun 15th 2006 7:24PM

What about being able to inexplicably steer yourself while in a freefall? Ever play a game where you can't? It's crazy hard. Or double jumping...

Pheonix Gamma @ Jun 15th 2006 7:24PM

"2. What about the special "Hit the enemy in its weak point" move :)

Most bosses have weak points now adays right?"

Attack the weakpoint for massive damage!!!

Ch @ Jun 15th 2006 7:36PM

The wall-jump! I think the first game I played that had this feature was Batman for the NES. I am playing through SM64 (again) and that has to be one of my favorite gameplay mechanics ever. However I never could get it to work in Super Metroid.

Derick @ Jun 15th 2006 10:03PM

They mentioned Health bars, but what about HUDs?

sure, they make a game feel totally unrealistic (unless it's say...metroid Prime) but they are damn helpfull.

Travos @ Jun 15th 2006 10:08PM

What about the ability to save? Not having that sure would suck.

Sloan @ Jun 15th 2006 10:58PM

This article is half-baked. It's not just the innovations themselves - I want to know which game was the first to have each of these features! Is Contra indeed the first game to have spread fire? Is Bionic Commando the first game with a grappling hook? And what was the first game with a life bar? C'mon 1up, I expect more from you.

cyberfrog @ Jun 15th 2006 11:57PM

Health bar is so big. Go play any old school arcade games, one hit, dead. Wow...

Here's a few important ones i think they missed:

Side scrolling, heheh, remember when games didn't have that? Just one screen, yay.

Vs play began with pong, but vs play with characters or vehicles with different characteristics (sf2), now that changed arcades as we know it.

For shoot em ups, definately the evasive/destroy everything limited move.

Bender @ Jun 16th 2006 12:04AM

Argh that damn 1up site must contain some major errors in the coding, me regular vanilla IE6.x doesn't render the page! Operation Aborted it tells me.

Helpful!

idioteraser @ Jun 16th 2006 1:32AM

1up has a lot of adware cookies it tries to infect you with. That is why IE doesn't want to load it.

Thing is the cookies are imbedded into the 1 up pages.

ChronoDK @ Jun 16th 2006 1:50AM

Gauntlet was not the first game featuring cooperative gameplay. Fire Truck was first.

They should have fact checked with gameinnovation.org...

rockintom99 @ Jun 16th 2006 2:41AM

What about doing barrel rolls? Peppy thought they were pretty important...

tj @ Jun 16th 2006 9:40AM

when the PS3 comes out we can add real-time weapons change to the list.

Danny W. @ Jun 16th 2006 2:16PM

WOW this is missing some other very important things...

What about say saving...you would be leaving your system on for days just to keep your data...until of course you beat the game

Cheats...look at alot of games its not needed but to me Grand Theft Auto is just boring without tapping in codes

The HUD look at halo2...now take away the radar, amount of bullets you have, and your shield meter.
You would never know when to take cover and when to reload. You would have to actually think... such as trying to remember how many times you shot

Artifficial intellegence...what would you do in a halo without enemies...every single game would me multiplayer playing against another human...or be like marble blast ultra (single player)or the extra level in super smash bros. melee where you race to the door, where it is just a race against the clock

Graphics, imagine halo 2 or any first person shooter with graphics no beter then pac man or pong...

The list goes on and these few are alot more importent then lets say.......????ice???? or Canine side kick or even the grappeling hook... Now 1up please re-do your list and take longer then 5 minutes writing, and actually think about it this time!!