dead ends in gaming

ideas/paradigm-changers that seemed like they might have changed gaming 4ever, but didn't really go anywhere. itt list them.

- katamari

- myst

full motion video games like Night Trap and Voyeur

Glove controllers

I don't really know how you could follow the inspiration of Katamari too closely without directly ripping it off. On the other hand, I feel like a ton of Wii games have a looser Katamari influence: twee/cute humor, emphasis on unique modes of movement, cartoony graphics.

The Wii

I don't really know how you could follow the inspiration of Katamari too closely without directly ripping it off. On the other hand, I feel like a ton of Wii games have a looser Katamari influence: twee/cute humor, emphasis on unique modes of movement, cartoony graphics.

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, February 22, 2010 2:28 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

good point. do any other games feature changing scale as a game mechanism as much as KD did?

VIRTUAL REALITY, what the hell happened to it?

first half hour of fahrenheit.

bullet time

dragon lair?

(xpost) bullet time still pops up in games, although it's now implemented a bit more subtly than "LOLZ U HAV MATRIX STYLE BULLET TIME SHOOT SUM DEWDZ!!!11one". A recent example would be the Dead Eye Targeting System in Red Dead Redemption.

I was kiddin bullet time is in everything

max payne is still my top single player game tho

xps Seriously, that early opposing protagonists stuff in Fahrenheit NEEDS to influence future games.

Dragon's Lair hasn't become a dead-end, if anything we're getting more involved QTEs in games now - unless you mean the idea of the FMV-based game, then yeah, I guess, but... Heavy Rain?

ugh, does anyone actually enjoy QTEs? that slippy slope in the Heavy Rain demo was so stupid.

lol I was going to post Shenmue but I think I just meant QTEs

games with fishing controllers

first half hour of fahrenheit.

heavy rain is out this week

prerendered "3D" characters... dkc, mdk, etc.

yeah, i'm glad we're not going back to that graphical style, as opposed to traditional sprites which are still plenty A-OK to me

do any other games feature changing scale as a game mechanism as much as KD did?

Takes a lot longer, but games like Spore/Civilization go from molecules/villages to space/space.

After Katamari I was secretly hoping for "Shit Sticks to Mario."

super mario shitstickers

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0f/Uniracers_boxart.png

http://img.youtube.com/vi/iCik6QOYXxA/0.jpg

Deus ex machina, for the sinclair spectrum. I never actually had it or played it but apparently featured a audio cassette that you played at the same time as the game. anyone familiar?

Also Adventure A, B, and C games for the sinclair

featured a single pixel as your player which you negotiated around the screen through a landscape. very underrated involving little rpg type thing imho.

did developers get together sometime in the early 2000s and decide that isometric RPGs were a dead end in gaming?

i guess the introduction of 3d cards put that one to bed, but not always for the better imo.

i'm thinking of star wars force commander (i know not rpg), after playing starcraft for so long i just couldn't get to grips with the awful camera control on FC. same goes for warcraft3.

I don't think motion controls will be a dead-end like pretty much every other Nintendo peripheral or "innovation".

Has the DS microphone ever been all that useful?

playing the spirit flute!

(so to speak)

talk about a blow job

^AUUUUUGH. I gotta admit I did like the Spirit Flute thing. It's bonkers that more games didn't use the incredibly obvious application of voice chat over internet multiplayer - I can only think of Planet Puzzle League that did this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP4TjzUfOeU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKKK6FH1vGw

man virtual boy ads were insane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH6quF5NYac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxJAJteeefw

Trackballs: dead end or hibernating?

reminds me of
http://imgur.com/w9hEJ.jpg

Trackballs: dead end or hibernating?

perhaps with the impending release of Missile Command the Movie, a comeback might be in order?

somebody remind me to put up the john braden missile command song sometime

never mind, here it is with the equally awesome "fly yar warriors fly"
http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=241825&song=Fly%2C+Yar+Warriors%2FMissile+Command%2FAtari+Theme

kind of deserves its own thread really

Trackballs: dead end or hibernating?

I use one all the time - wouldn't play an FPS without it.

Time Traveler (the 3D arcade game)

digitized sprites a la mortal kombat

Pit Fighter was the first to do that one, apparently

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/ATARI_-_PIT-FIGHTER_1990.jpg

basically the last straw for the trend imo:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/SS_SF_Movie_Gameplay.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/09/SS_SF_The_Movie_cover.jpg

Cell Shading? I know it's still used, but I'm nomming it because it's not been as widely accepted as perhaps expected?

Lots of people seem to dislike the Wind Walker zelda game solely because of this technique don't they

nah every likes Wind Waker now, its Twilight Princess everyone hates. and when the new Zelda comes out at xmas Twilight Princess will be a work of genius, new game not worth pissing on etc etc

ya, ppl are still feeling cel-shading-- it's not even a standout aesthetic anymore really. I haven't heard a single person moan about it re Borderlands

camera "zoom" and side to side "pan"

video cutscenes shot with real actors (or does that still happen) (or did someone mention it already)

at least the intro to Skate had video of real actors/skateboarders

I was thinking yesterday about how flight simulators, though not really a "dead end" since they were pretty popular for a while, really fell off the map at some point. When I was like 11-15 and my dad was first getting into computers, it seemed like flight simulators were the game genre that was really pushing the envelope in terms of graphics/"reality" etc. Now it seems like they don't exist anymore? Here are some reasons I thought of for why that could be:
* FPS like Wolfenstein/Doom taking the first-person perspective away from simulators and making it more fun/goal-oriented/game-like
* 9-11 (kind of seriously - it seems like a realistic flight simulator now would be so real that it could be accused of being helping train terrorists or something - I dunno)

its funny that a lot of entertainment went the same way; there aren't a lot of fighter pilot/helicopter pilot movies anymore.

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/4840/19761042320front.jpg

war vets dying off

flight simulators weren't quite "games" - like you say, n/s, no real goals other than spending 10,000,000 hours learning how to use your keyboard to control all the functions of the aircraft

gran turismo sort of shows how you can blend this approach with gameplay, though

watching "big trouble in little china" the other day i was struck by how few movies these days feature big trailer trucks and the men who drive them - for awhile in the 80s you were nobody unless you drove a big eighteen-wheeler

er, n/a i mean

i remember when i first played doom and i had to describe it to other, less with-it nerds, like it was "a flight sim, except you're just a guy"

"it's a guy sim?"

the "lounge around in your underwear drinking beer" level was considered revolutionary at the time

i didn't have a good comeback then and i don't now

I kind of enjoyed when they used the basic concept of flight simulators and applied them to other types of games. Stuff like Tie Fighter and Mechwarrior. I liked that it felt that you were controlling a pretty complicated machine. There doesn't really seem to be much of that anymore either.

needs a bigger controller

http://media.weirdworm.com/img/misc/7-weird-video-game-controllers/battalion-controller.jpg