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Questions tagged [gaming-history]

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Questions about the history of games, conventions, customs, traditions and gaming terms, and how they have developed over time.

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12 views

First platformer enemy to stun players by jumping?

In platformer games, there’s a fairly common trope/mechanic of an unusually heavy enemy that, when they land after jumping, stuns the player if they are on the ground. Examples include Sledge Brothers ...
3
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0answers
42 views

What's the first game to feature sacrificing at altars as a general game mechanic?

In NetHack you can sacrifice sufficiently fresh corpses at altars for various benefits. Are there any earlier games where such sacrifices are a general game mechanic? Going by the TV Tropes page on ...
10
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2answers
249 views

What game came up with the Heart metaphor for health?

I'd like to know what game came up with hearts for showing the player's character's health. It's very common today in many games, but how did this come to be?
18
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1answer
360 views

Was SSI's isometric RPG “M” ever released?

Saw this waaaay back in the day in a FASA/SSI ad booklet that came in my Mechwarrior 2 box: Transcription: What is M? THE MOST VISUALLY STUNNING, TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED, INTRICATE AND COMPELLING ...
50
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1answer
8k views

How did Minecraft's Java/Bedrock split come to pass?

It's been a very long time since I've last touched Minecraft. Recently my interest was sparked again and to my surprise I've learned that now there are 2 dominant Minecraft versions: Java and Bedrock. ...
2
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0answers
96 views

Who was the first boss who had multiple HP bars?

It is commonplace in current video games that bosses, most likely final bosses, have multiple HP bars so that depleting one fully reveals another underneath, usually a different color, or sometimes ...
0
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1answer
91 views

Have videogames advanced technology? [closed]

I was reading about the PS5 and the new Xbox and it felt like game consoles improve themselves by using existing (high end) technology. This made me wonder if any new (at the time of creation) ...
3
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3answers
280 views

Why didn't the arcade machines keep on “scaling” as the years went by?

Growing up in the early to mid 1990s, visiting various arcades was truly fascinating. At home, the SNES already felt amazingly futuristic, and its games endlessly fascinated and impressed me. Yet, ...
42
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3answers
9k views

Which game first introduced the concept of weapon recoil?

Context This morning while watching a video of Wolfenstein 3D from 1992 and Doom (1993) I noticed that weapons don’t need to be compensated for any recoil. Then on my trip down memory lane I watched a ...
1
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3answers
205 views

Origin of game trope where you travel between similar realities to progress?

In the recent years, many games seem to use a trope where you travel between slightly different realities to progress, either as a core mechanic or in a single level. The examples I can think of are ...
0
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0answers
112 views

What is the first game to have first-person cutscenes where you can’t move the character but you can turn their head?

In many Bethesda-publisher games, such as Dishonored and Skyrim, you can move your head during cutscenes. Sometimes, the camera pulls you in a certain direction, like with the cutscenes with the ...
6
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1answer
201 views

Who made the game “Torus” in the 1990s?

I'm trying to find the publisher of a game from the early 1990s called "Torus". It was a 2d realtime puzzle game on DOS or Windows 3.x. Spinning rings of different colors fell from above onto spikes ...
10
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0answers
211 views

What is the origin of the standard color coding scheme for item rarity? [duplicate]

I recently started playing Hearthstone, and I realized I already knew the correct rarities of different cards without having it explained to me, because I'd seen it before. Stopping to think about it, ...
10
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3answers
997 views

What was the first console or handheld to have a user interface outside of games?

Consoles like the NES didn't have any sort of menus when not playing a game. Nowadays, however, stuff like the Switch and PS4 have all sorts of stuff built in: What was the first video game ...
0
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1answer
280 views

Did Game Boy emulation exist for the 486 era (MS-DOS and Windows 3.1)? [closed]

The title says it all: Did we have working emulators for the 486/MS-DOS era back then? Would a 486 be capable enough to run a Game Boy emulator? If so what were they like?
3
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2answers
2k views

Is Pearl the first Nintendo character to swear?

Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion has a song called "#$@%* Dudes Be #$@%* Sleepin", which was Pearl's demo before she joined Off The Hook. In it, Pearl earns a lengthy bleep to cover up some kind of ...
3
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2answers
859 views

Origin of the name “gaming console”

Why are they called "consoles"? AFAIK, In computing, the name "console" for machine interface came from the fact, that initially it was a literal console table with typewriter on it. But gaming ...
29
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2answers
4k views

What tools were used to analyze & challenge the records for Dragster?

I was reading an article on Polygon which was talking about a longstanding record for an Atari Game called Dragster. In the article it was talking about how people challenged the record by using "...
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0answers
181 views

Where did the Waluigi myth come from?

A while ago, I heard there was a myth about unlocking Waluigi as a playable character in the DS port of Super Mario 64. I've looked around the internet for the origin but all I can find are ROM hacks....
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2answers
2k views

Is there any truth to the myth of Polybius?

There is an old urban legend about an arcade game Polybius. An arcade machine that would have been made to be a government experiment, appeared just for a few days in a few arcades, and then some men ...
-6
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1answer
331 views

Around what year did games go widescreen? [closed]

I am building a WinXP box to play games I have trouble with on Win10, and I am thinking of placing a 4:3 screen on it, as I didn't think games really supported widescreen until probably well after ...
31
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3answers
12k views

Where does the colour-coded item rarity come from?

In most new titles, especially RPGs, item rarity is colour coded in an easy to remember white-green-blue-purple-orange progression, sometimes with omissions (no green, no orange) or additions (extra ...
47
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1answer
8k views

What happened on September 24 1990 (or 1998) at 08:24?

I’ve just bought Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. It’s a great game! Played through the first world already. There are retro pop culture references all over it! Anyway, in the opening scene there is ...
2
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1answer
742 views

What are Typing Jet and De La Jet Set Radio?

On the tag wiki page for jet-set-radio, I noticed that one of the listed platforms was java-micro-edition, with two Japanese only releases from 2001 under the names De La Jet Set Radio and Typing Jet. ...
5
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1answer
491 views

What is Blast processing?

Back in the Super Nintendo era, Sega's whole Marketing campaign hinged on one thing: Blast Processing. I don't think I've ever seen it explained. It was just "WE GOT IT AND NINTENDONT." So, What is ...
4
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1answer
297 views

What was the first Mario game that featured taking Bowser down with 3 hits

So in all of the Mario games I played (which is not that much), I have to take down bowser with three hits. I was wondering which Mario game first had that on there, since it seems to be adapted into ...
64
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1answer
6k views

Unsold Atari videogames dumped in a desert?

I've heard about a massive amount of Atari consoles and video game cartridges (most of them were unsold copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) buried in a sort of dump in the middle of a desert in the ...
8
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1answer
2k views

How did people discover the Konami Code?

Everybody knows it, everybody's done it, the famous Konami Code has been around for as long as cheat codes have existed, and is one of the most famous and well known cheat codes in history - most well ...
9
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2answers
460 views

Was the Atari 2600 the first home console to have a screen saver?

The Atari 2600 had a screen saver feature, where the colors of objects in the screen were randomly changed. Was it the first home console to have such feature, if not who holds the title?
7
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2answers
474 views

Where does the term “quick time event” come from?

I know what the term quick time event means and that one of the first usages of the gameplay element was in Dragon's Lair, but I don't know why they are called that. Was that the term used by Dragon's ...
1
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1answer
2k views

How were cheats for the GTA games on PC found?

I Googled around a lot but came across only 1 such example where some guy tried combinations (permutations?) on his PS2 controller. But that does not give me the reason how the ones on PC are found. ...
4
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1answer
2k views

When were achievements, especially their timestamps, introduced to Steam?

I need to know for a project centered around achievements, furthermore the date they were unlocked. I want to mitigate the fact that some achievements before a certain date had no timestamps for ...
4
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2answers
487 views

What is the etymology of the term “Console Wars”?

(After this discussion on Meta, the question has been undeleted.) As we know today, there is a competition between the holy trinity of the console gaming industry (Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft) about ...
65
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3answers
12k views

Why does the original Game Boy support four shades of grey? [closed]

Why does the Game Boy specifically support four shades of grey, why not three or five? Is there something about the hardware that made four colours optimal? Was there a precedent to using four shades ...
15
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3answers
5k views

How do people discover cheat codes in games?

Cheat codes are programmed into some games by developers. As an example: Have you ever played International Super Star Soccer 64? Well this game had several codes that would unlock new teams, give the ...
8
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2answers
809 views

What factors contributed to E.T's reputation as a bad game?

According to a documentary on Atari called Game Over it is stated that "ET" is the worst video game ever made. Why is that? I played the game when it was released, and although very young, I ...
21
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1answer
5k views

What sort of hardware was used to transfer Mew at Pokemon Red & Blue worldwide events?

Many years ago when Pokemon Red / Blue was immensely popular, I attended a Pokemon tour in Melbourne. For attending you got a showbag with a Pikachu trading card (with a gold logo stamped in the top ...
55
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1answer
3k views

Origin of achievements

Achievements have become pretty standard in games (and other gamified content, like Stack Exchange) these days. However, they definitely weren’t part of “classic” gaming, in the arcade/8-bit/16-bit ...
17
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3answers
2k views

How did the term 'buff' originate?

I was interested in learning that the term 'nerf' originated from Nerf gun toys. The opposite of nerf is buff, but I have found no information on the origin of it. In the video game community, how ...
31
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3answers
10k views

What is the origin of the WASD key scheme?

My gaming memories go way back to the Atari 2600 with its single-button gamepad, and with computer gaming I started with the PC XT. Back in the day, movement would be controlled by the arrows and ...
18
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3answers
14k views

Why do Electronic Arts games for Genesis (Mega Drive) have a different cartridge size?

Why do Electronic Arts games for Genesis (Mega Drive) have a different cartridge size? Jungle Strike Cartridge: NHL95: The Immortal: "Normal" USA/Europe cartridge:
6
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1answer
454 views

Who wrote the game 'The Pits'?

I'm looking for info on a game called 'The Pits', a text based adventure game which was on "The Source", a BBS computer system in the early 80s. Who wrote this game? Was it ever ported to more modern ...
23
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6answers
159k views

Where did 'Soon™' originate?

I've seen coming Soon™ attached to some Valve and Blizzard products, but did it start with one of them (and if so, which)? What was the first game (or other product) that was to be launched with the ...
11
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5answers
17k views

How did the term 'noob' originate?

The terms 'n00b', 'nub', and 'newby' are all over gamer culture, but where did they come from? Did someone just decide we need a general word for someone who is unskilled? Is it a corruption of 'new' ...