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Absolute firsts in video games

Sorry I can't easily post a video on my phone, but I believe R.C. Pro Am on the NES (made by RARE) was the first racing game to use boost pads.

Excite Bike has things that look like boost pads, but really just cool your vehicle down. They aren't traditional boost pads.
 

Trago

Member
If I'm not mistaken, Skiing is the first third party published video game. Published by Activision. (1980)

$_35.JPG


I actually played this game once a looooong time ago.
 

Phediuk

Member
Die Hard Arcade (1995) was the first modern useage of QTE's in a video game, well before Shenmue (1999) popularised them and the coining of the term.

Some think games like Dragon's lair were the first instances of QTE's but I don't think they count.

There are a bunch of FMV games before then that should count, though, like Ninja Hayate, Time Gal, Road Avenger, etc. Many of those were released for the PC Engine and Sega CD in the early 90s, and I believe some of those ports also included button prompts.

So I don't think Die Hard Arcade can be considered the first game with QTEs.
 

Zabant

Member
There are a bunch of FMV games before then that should count, though, like Ninja Hayate, Time Gal, Road Avenger, etc. Many of those were released for the PC Engine and Sega CD in the early 90s, and I believe some also included button prompts.

So I don't think Die Hard Arcade can be considered the first game with QTEs.

I agree to an extent, but i feel QTE's can only be considered as such when they're part of a game that isn't wholly based upon them like FMV games. Die Hard Arcade was a Polygonal Beat'em up that had QTE's when you travelled to each new area.

FMV games were just videos where you would press a button in a time frame and if you didn't you died and the scene restarted.

In Die Hard Arcade, if you fucked up the QTE you had to beat him up the normal way.
 
Die Hard Arcade (1995) was the first modern useage of QTE's in a video game, well before Shenmue (1999) popularised them and the coining of the term.

Some think games like Dragon's lair were the first instances of QTE's but I don't think they count.

We'd probably need to come up with a consensus definition for a thing before we can definitively, absolutely say something is the first instance of that thing. Several 'what was the first game with QTEs' threads have appeared on GAF in the past and for any given value of 'QTE' there's a different game to be the first with QTE events.
 
Light gun games also have an interesting history. Looking back as far as the 1920s, mechanical sharpshooter games the likes you'd find on fairs were somewhat common, but in 1936, Seeburg created Ray-O-Lite which could be considered the first light gun game. The goal was to shoot down a flying duck. It was very much mechanical of course, but it introduced the principle of light-sensing vacuum tubes.

Mk8m5EE.jpg


Decades later, in 1968 SEGA released an electro-mechanical target shooting arcade game called Periscope, with cardboard ships, light animation and mechanical sounds. It was wildly successful for SEGA and it's also notable of being the first coin-op arcade game to cost a quarter per play.

PQcpr8G.jpg


In 1973 Nintendo introduced the Laser Clay Shooting System, played in bowling alleys. It was huge and used an overhead projector to display moving targets. It was reduced in size and released as the Mini Laser Clay in 1974 with the first appearance of Wild Gunman. The first Wild Gunman used full-motion video with live action footage, way before the arcade and NES game we all know and love.

58wpyKW.jpg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmdOHmnbYHw

It's worth noting that in 1972, just a couple of years earlier, Magnavox Odyssey, the first commercial home video game console was released with the Shooting Gallery light gun game. It was kind of a gimmick though, as it used plastic overlays that you put over your TV, so the "game" just flashed the whole screen or portions of it with white color, the light being visible only through the various shaped holes in the overlay. The lightgun would then register light when the player pulled the trigger and you'd make a hit. The system was so simple that you could easily just point the gun at a light bulb and you'd still score a hit. But it introduced the lightgun principle into people's homes which was of course later made widely popular by Nintendo on the NES.

4GxcCZA.jpg
4O1olFY.jpg
 

Majukun

Member
is it true that the original legend of zelda was the first game that let you save your game without a password?i heard it somewhere...

also,ocarina of time should be the first time for the z-targeting
 
I dream that you guys will put together all of these firsts, and then dissect modern games, showing where their gameplay originally comes from. So, something like CoD would include, first FPS, first jumping, first health pack, first deployable health pack, etc. Like DNA or a family tree of some kind. Surely someone could visualize this well.

Once all the heavy lifting was done, you could produce the entire genome of each game that comes out, based entirely on various game play elements.

Oooh, Pandora for video games, cool idea.
 

Adnor

Banned
is it true that the original legend of zelda was the first game that let you save your game without a password?i heard it somewhere...

Maybe the first console game that let you save, but I'm pretty sure lots of crpgs did let you save before that.
 
is it true that the original legend of zelda was the first game that let you save your game without a password?i heard it somewhere...

I remember hearing that, too. However, if true, it would have to strictly be relating to cartridge games. (I believe that certain cassette tape games saved on the cassette before then, and of course PC games and external storage devices existed. The 1984 Family Basic for the Famicom saved on cassette via a peripheral, for instance.)
 

DaBuddaDa

Member
I dream that you guys will put together all of these firsts, and then dissect modern games, showing where their gameplay originally comes from. So, something like CoD would include, first FPS, first jumping, first health pack, first deployable health pack, etc. Like DNA or a family tree of some kind. Surely someone could visualize this well.

Once all the heavy lifting was done, you could produce the entire genome of each game that comes out, based entirely on various game play elements.

That interestingly was the theory and hope for the Giant Bomb wiki: the ability to trace elements of games, be it mechanics, objects, technology or characters, through time.
 

Nerdkiller

Membeur
In 1973 Nintendo introduced the Laser Clay Shooting System, played in bowling alleys. It was huge and used an overhead projector to display moving targets. It was reduced in size and released as the Mini Laser Clay in 1974 with the first appearance of Wild Gunman. The first Wild Gunman used full-motion video with live action footage, way before the arcade and NES game we all know and love.

58wpyKW.jpg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmdOHmnbYHw
Looking this up on Wikipedia, the thing used 16mm film on two separate projectors?

Wikipedia said:
It consisted of a light gun connected to a 16mm projection screen. Full-motion video footage of a Wild West gunslinger was projected onto the screen and when his eyes flashed, the player needed to draw and shoot. If the player was fast enough, the projection would change to that of the shot gunman falling down, otherwise it would show the gunman drawing and firing his gun. If the player won, then they would face off against several more gunslinger opponents.
The thing's probably super rare now, seeing how unreliable film would be in an application like this. Still, I'm goddamned amazed at how they managed to do FMV before file storage formats were a thing.
 

LoveCake

Member
First First Person - Shooter Maze War circa 1974
First God game - Populous - 1989
First Real Time Strategy - Herzog Zwei - 1989
First 3D driving sim - Hard Drivin - 1989

Full Spectrum Warrior - 2004 first game where you can take a college back to a medical location to be tended to, also the first game for the masses to be used by the military for helping soldiers.
 
What was the first game with regenerating health, and a cover system?

As far as I know, Killzone 2 is the first game to use a first person cover system.

Time Crisis (both arcade and home versions) released in 1996 and 1997, respectively, specifically use a manual cover system.
 
First power-up item in a game was in Pac-Man.

I love the idea of this thread - and if a videogame DNA project is happening, I'd love to work on that too!
 
Looking this up on Wikipedia, the thing used 16mm film on two separate projectors?

The thing's probably super rare now, seeing how unreliable film would be in an application like this. Still, I'm goddamned amazed at how they managed to do FMV before file storage formats were a thing.

I've found very little on the technical specs so I'm not sure how it all worked but yeah, the 16mm film has degraded badly as seen on the YouTube video I posted as well as these two:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBwG0svJWI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxwikshonsk

The concept is insane and wonderful indeed. Another interesting tidbit about that system is that by 1974, Nintendo was nearing bankruptcy so the redesigned Mini Laser Clay and the numerous games that came with it pulled them out of the gutter. Gunpei Yokoi did wonders.

And another insane thing regarding the first Laser Clay System, taken from nitnendo.wikia.com:

After opening, Nintendo encountered several problems that were fixed by Genyo Takeda, who had just joined the company. Something terribly wrong occurred and without Takeda's help the opening day could have been a disaster. The programming of the system had a glitch that resulted in it not registering the player's actions. In order to fix the problem, Takeda went behind the screen and personally controlled the clay pigeons and delete them when customers shot at them. He also had to raise the score when a user successfully shot at a pigeon. After the day was over they managed to get everything under control.
 

Phediuk

Member
First First Person - Shooter Maze War circa 1974
First God game - Populous - 1989
First Real Time Strategy - Herzog Zwei - 1989
First 3D driving sim - Hard Drivin - 1989

Full Spectrum Warrior - 2004 first game where you can take a college back to a medical location to be tended to, also the first game for the masses to be used by the military for helping soldiers.

A few points here.

#1: Herzog Zwei was not the first RTS.

That would be Stonkers (ZX Spectrum, 1983): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonkers

#2. Utopia (Intellivision, 1981) is turn-based, but allows you to make as many actions as you're able to within a time limit, making it a proto-RTS.

#3 The idea of God games goes back at least as far as Hamurabi from 1968: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamurabi . Also, Utopia, mentioned above, is basically a God game with timed turns.

#4 Hard Drivin' was not the first polygonal racing game. That would be Namco's Winning Run from 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G01FZUtIMX0
 

K.Sabot

Member
Was Winback the first cover shooter?

And I mean that in the 2014 definition (aka a stop n pop cover shooter a la Gears of War)
 
First 8bit home console - NES
First 16bit home console - TurboGrafx-16
First 32bit home console - Amiga CD 32

The Magnavox Odyssey had an 8-bit processor.

First (only) RPG with the goal of self-improvement and not beating some Foozle - Ultima IV?

Edit: Beaten like Mondain by Adnor on the Ultima IV reference. =)

Was Ultima II the first game that shipped with a cloth map? Ultima II may be the first with feelies of any kind, as it beat Infocom's Deadline.
 

Log4Girlz

Member
A few points here.

#1: Herzog Zwei was not the first RTS.

That would be Stonkers (ZX Spectrum, 1983): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonkers

#2. Utopia (Intellivision, 1981) is turn-based, but allows you to make as many actions as you're able to within a time limit, making it a proto-RTS.

#3 The idea of God games goes back at least as far as Hamurabi from 1968: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamurabi . Also, Utopia, mentioned above, is basically a God game with timed turns.

#4 Hard Drivin' was not the first polygonal racing game. That would be Namco's Winning Run from 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G01FZUtIMX0

Man that racing game looks awesome
 
#4 Hard Drivin' was not the first polygonal racing game. That would be Namco's Winning Run from 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G01FZUtIMX0

Well, one could argue that Speed Freak (1979) could be considered the first 3D racing game, since most of the bare-bones elements are there, even though it has kind of pseudo-3D vector graphics so it wouldn't perhaps fit into the "first filled-polygon 3D racing game". I'm only mentioning this because Battlezone is often regarded as one of the ealriest 3D FPS games so by that criteria, Speed Freak would fit the description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQWJMj9K_4Q
 
What was the first RPG that let you import your saves from the previous game?

Hmmm, maybe Wizardry 2: Knight of Diamonds? If not, I think it was the first to require that saves be imported.

Though Wizardry 2 is 1982 -- surely a RPG allowing imports came before... Did Curse of Ra?
 
#4 Hard Drivin' was not the first polygonal racing game. That would be Namco's Winning Run from 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G01FZUtIMX0

lol it is awesome looking at that 3D game with CD quality music, yet it has that very old arcade / NES font. (The one used in several old arcade games and old NES games including Mario and the localized Zelda).

Speaking of which, that is another first someone should figure out. That font was used in so many old games, which was the first one? I recall seeing a really old black and white Atari arcade game with that font...
 

Ivan

Member
Bungie's Marathon and 3D Realm's Rise of the Triad share the claim on "first rocket jump". They released on the same day.

I think Marathon was the first game that used mouse for free look.

Bungie did it first, ha :)
 
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First secret character

Someone likely already mentioned it; but this isn't true.

Just off the top of my head I can already tell you that Shining Force was released in Japan before Mortal Kombat released anywhere. Shining Force had many secret characters. I'm going off the assumption that you mean optional characters that are playable; which require puzzles or other mechanics to unlock them.

I can't imagine it was the first either.
 

Jado

Banned
I think SMB arcade was the first game with scrolling maps rather than single screen maps

It wasn't. Defender (1980) was the first game with a scrolling screen.

That depends entirely on how "3D" is defined.

For example, Star Ship for the Atari 2600 (1977) could also be considered "3D": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2XmthOEEgo

Escape from the Mindmaster (Atari 2600, 1982) could be considered 3D too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yf430Ls7Ew

Tail Gunner (1979) is probably it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4hb9UJBs9k

First 8bit home console - NES

Not even close. Many of the late 70s and early 80s consoles had 8-bit processors (Fairchild F8, Colecovision, Atari 2600 and 5200, Vectrex). Someone mentioned Intellivision being 16-bits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...on)#Early_8-bit_home_consoles_.281976-1983.29
 
Activision - first non in house publisher/developer for a home console

Activision is often referred to as the first third party develeper/publisher, but the entire concept of licensed parties didn't really exist until the NES. Anyone could produce carts for the Atari VCS, there was no lock out mechanism, as there was no licensed publishers.
 
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