20 gameplay innovations we take for granted

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!

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

Most bosses have weak points now adays right?

Some of them are good, but "ice"?

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.

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...

"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!!!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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

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

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!!

The best gameplay innovation was synaethesia & cel-shading. OK, maybe not, but hey, they're better than ice!