‘The 10 greatest innovations in video games according to me’

From the very starting point of 2-bit graphical fidelity to 128-bit, when they stopped counting, I think I’ve seen it all when it comes to video games. I’ve not though.

I was a late adopter last gen and I’ve not been enamoured enough to even countenance the current generation. I’m not going to slate Sony for releasing the PS5 Pro. It’s purely an option.

I bought my first PlayStation back in the ‘90s and it changed the way I saw gaming. I saw it as a positive medium, finally going into mainstream consciousness. It was an advancement of the digital uprising.

We are all armchair critics, holding the big companies to the flames that they may create for themselves, whether they intended it or not.

I’m going to side with the positives of gaming, so this is purely my own personal nostalgia of things that gaming got right. I’m going to now reel off my top 10 experiences in gaming that blew me away. Let’s go!

1: Shoulder buttons on the SNES joypad. Wow. I never knew I had such dexterity, but these are essential to me now and Sony and Microsoft adopted and ran with this concept, so that we now have four! I’ll address the Z-trigger later on.

2: Rumble. Lylat Wats/Star Fox 64. This mad lad dropped with an option of ‘feedback’. Although I found it initially crass, I appreciated the intentions of their endeavour. It’s now a built-in thing but thankfully, purely optional.

3: Analogue sticks. An absolute revolution in gaming. It took me into gaming in 3D, where I’d just accepted that things were always going to be 2D with only digital controllers. Not so. Firing up Super Mario 64 for the first time was one of those moments.

4: Frame rate. Woo hoo. This will divide a lot of people, as we are talking 60 vs. 30fps nowadays and I don’t know what is what but the Dreamcast was a lovely introduction to a silky smooth (seemingly to me) rush of joy. I remember playing Sonic Adventure solidly for an afternoon and feeling a bit woozy after that fact. It literally blew what I perceived gaming to be out of the water.

5: Touchscreen. We all take this as a given now, but I can’t help but think that Nintendo were the forebears of tactile gaming. The DS was a watermark of gaming and hardware design. Lots of rubbish games were spawned but the true games and love attributed to them shone through.

6: VR. Contentious, I know. Not everybody got to get on board with this and understandably so. It’s relatively new tech. The price point was/is prohibitive. But I guarantee anyone that wears that dunce hat for the first time will be blown away by the sheer immersion it affords the participant. My first was Moss, second was the Star Wars one. Third was Astro Bot: Rescue Mission. As flawed and cumbersome as that tech is it left me in wonderment. Resident Evil 7, I’ve not even completed because it terrifies me!

7: Good Games. Zelda, Bioshock, Splinter Cell, Katamari et al – genuine good games that bend precepts. I know there is a growing fervour for GTA 6 but don’t forget the glory of GTA: Chinatown Wars. Just good games.

8: The ‘Start’ option. It’s now just the button closest to the main control: the right thumbstick. I like it that some games still use the prompt without it being a thing. ‘Press Start’, oooh nostalgic. It’s a little bit of magic to me.

9: Trigger Button(s). Nintendo again. Who knew what the ‘Z’ was? Well, it’s here to stay now. I admit that I used that as my aiming reticule on GoldenEye 007 and I used the flat buttons to fire. Transitory, I know, but I appreciated the tactility of it all. As I mentioned earlier, I’d get back to this. The ‘Z-trigger’ now sits happily in opposition with the other trigger. A polite evolution.

10: The social aspect. Gaming is always going to be a niche hobby, but the Wii effect tore down that wall. I’ve had the best times gaming with my beloved and frenemies. Gamers and non-gamers; each session breeding respect and mirth. The social aspect has put me into touch with genuinely good people overseas over the years, with the addition of Xbox and PlayStation servers.

So that is my take. Maybe I’m looking at it with rose-tinted glasses but that’s just my hot take on where gaming is right now for me. For those about to Press Start, we salute you.

By reader D Dubya