Questions tagged [gaming-history]
Questions about the history of games, conventions, customs, traditions and gaming terms, and how they have developed over time.
64
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What are examples of games that were tech demos? [closed]
There are a bunch of games out there that brought with them a new engine or showcased new technology. Games like Quake 1-4, Quake II RTX, Doom I, II, and 2016, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and Unreal 2 ...
- 97
0
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0
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34
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Was there a game very similar to "Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O' Fun"? [closed]
I remember playing a game one day at my friend's dad's Macintosh computer in the early to mid 1990s.
I vividly remember the scene/mini-game where you were throwing knives at a spinning blindfolded ...
- 411
2
votes
0
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93
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How many games did Romero and Carmack create before Doom?
Both Romero and Carmack created many games and sold them to computer magazines in the 80s as their initial foray making games.
I think I remember a line in Master of Doom that they had both created 80-...
3
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2
answers
153
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Which was the first game to use multiple Rock Paper Scissors mechanics?
There are many games that use a tactical or elemental Rock Paper Scissors mechanic. Some of them try to make things more interesting by modifying the mechanic, such as by changing the number of ...
- 231
9
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1
answer
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What console game has been released with the highest number of optical discs?
Nowadays, games being released in 1 or 2 discs is considered normal (for example, RDR2 for PS4/Xbox One in 2 50GB Blu-ray discs and GTA V for the Xbox 360 was 2 9.5GB DVDs), but I remember that around ...
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5
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1
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205
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What was the first FPS game with strafing?
What was the first FPS game that introduced strafing?
As far as I remember it was there in Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, which were my first encounter with PC games.
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25
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3
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What is the record word size for a gaming system?
Related: What does 8-bit / 16-bit actually refer to?
I remember the "bit wars" of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Genesis/Mega Drive and the Turbografx-16 were heavily marketed as having ...
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39
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9
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What's the longest speedrun world record?
Various classics have been speed run in surprisingly short amounts of time, for example Mario in under 5 minutes and Ultimate Doom in about 20 minutes and many others (Zelda, MineSweeper).
I learned ...
- 549
4
votes
1
answer
209
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What was the first ever FPS with secondary fire?
What was the first ever first person shooter to feature a secondary fire mode? I can think of a couple of 1997 examples (Outlaws, Blood) but I wouldn't be surprised if it had been done a year or two ...
- 325
2
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1
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128
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What are the oldest electronic (electric?) arcade games?
Up until now I was more than sure that the history of electronic or electric arcade games (played be teenagers in "game saloons") were around early seventies / late sixties of twentieth ...
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First ever game to alternate platforming or run-and-gun stages with scrolling shoot em up stages
Title pretty much covers it. I think the predecessor to Cybernator is the earliest I know (1990) but I wouldn't be surprised if there are earlier examples. I suspect the inspiration may have come from ...
- 325
6
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3
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350
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Is there a standardized rating system for game difficulty?
I was recently reading about the various game content rating systems in place in various areas of the world. When describing the PEGI system, Wikipedia observes, "The age rating does not indicate ...
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1
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Is Avenging Spirit the first game that features a possession gameplay mechanic?
I was recently playing an old arcade game named Avenging Spirit that has a main character that is kind of similar to Nintendo's Kirby. It features a "possession" game mechanic, where the ...
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30
votes
1
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What is "Horse and Pony II", created by the Battlefield devs (Refraction Games)?
Refraction Games were a company who famously developed "Codename Eagle", the precursor to modern Battlefield games. Shortly after its release, the developers were bought by DICE and went on ...
33
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1
answer
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How was it calculated that Dream cheated on his Minecraft v1.16 glitchless speedrun?
The speedrunner Dream has recently been accused of cheating in his Minecraft Java v1.16 glitchless speedrun.
How did the Minecraft Java speedrunning mods calculate if Dream cheated?
user273012
0
votes
2
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183
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What examples of games break the fourth wall and direct the player to read the manual? [closed]
There are video games that break the fourth wall and talk directly to the gamer. The best example was always the TV show "Hugo" where you control the character with your telephone. He would ...
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3
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1
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185
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Was return to castle wolfenstein ever released in Germany or Austria?
In countries were any type of Nazi imagery is outright banned how did a game like Return to castle Wolvenstein ever see a release?
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2
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276
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What was the first game to have a livestream mode to try to avoid legal issues?
Cyberpunk 2077 has an option to remove copyrighted music to (try to) avoid legal issues when live streaming:
Was Cyberpunk 2077 the first game to have a livestream mode to try to avoid legal issues?
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10
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Are there any non-fiction games? [closed]
There are fiction books like Harry Potter, and non-fiction books (like a Biology textbook for example), but I think all of the games I've ever played were fiction.
So are there any non-fiction games?
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0
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41
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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 ...
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6
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1
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332
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What games were released for the PS2 in China during the Console Ban? (if any)
This Kotaku article from 2013 mentions that:
The PS2 didn't make its original launch date. Instead, Sony waited till 2004 to launch the PS2 in China. Even then, there were issues with game releases, ...
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4
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0
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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 ...
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2
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888
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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?
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1
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1k
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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 ...
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55
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1
answer
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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. ...
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2
votes
0
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174
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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 ...
- 137
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1
answer
117
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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) ...
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votes
3
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910
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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, ...
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4
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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 ...
2
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3
answers
272
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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 ...
- 141
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1
answer
210
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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 ...
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1
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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 ...
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0
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226
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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, ...
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3
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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 ...
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0
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1
answer
440
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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?
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2
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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 ...
user149305
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2
answers
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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 ...
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29
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2
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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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0
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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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2
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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 ...
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1
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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 ...
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35
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3
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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 ...
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1
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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 ...
- 657
4
votes
1
answer
939
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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.
...
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6
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1
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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 ...
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4
votes
1
answer
656
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What was the first Mario game that featured taking down Bowser with 3 hits?
In all of the Mario games I played (which are not that many), I have to take down Bowser with three hits. I was wondering which Mario game first had that specific gameplay mechanism, since it seems to ...
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68
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1
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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 ...
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1
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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 ...
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2
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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?
- 1,440
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2
answers
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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 ...
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