From the beginning of gaming to maybe early in the 16-Bit era, gaming was just ripe with ideas and innovations. We had a piano keyboard (called the Miracle) and a fucking exercise bike (Life Cycle) that connected to your Nes. We had things like the Sega Activator, Nes Zapper, U Force, Mouse Controllers, etc. We had a show called "Nick Arcade" that featured the future of video games--a big room where people got inside and interacted with video game images, much like the Eye Toy would eventually bring into our living rooms. Hell, the Nes came with a robot. A FUCKING ROBOT. Oh, I'm required to mention the Power Glove in this type of posts, too. I could go on. Seriously. I could talk about the controller for kids that couldn't use their arms (it used a straw that you had to suck and blow with), the U-Force, the Gameboy Camera, Turbo Touch 360, One handed controllers, etc. You get the idea. Look some of these up if you're not familiar.
You had to have been there, I guess.
As time progressed, most of these ideas failed miserably. We got new innovations like the NegCon controller, Side Winder, Dreamcast VMU, Analog Sticks, etc. Of course, many of these innovations can be traced back to earlier creations. That's because they're "innovations" and not "inventions". Sony crafting a controller with L3/R3 buttons is an innovation. Nintendo adding a stero speaker to the Wii Remote is an innovation and not an invention. Taking something outside of gaming and bringing it into gaming (like voice chat) is an innovation.
I guess, what Nintendo does better than anybody else is that they can take something that none of us were thinking of, things that failed in the past due to technological restraints of the day (I just watched Iron Man 2, in case you were wondering) and they make them work. They finally get it right. Tony Stark didn't invent the Arch Reactor--he finally got his father's design right.
Where I've made the mistake in the past (and many of you, too) was that I blindly believed that there was some top secret Nintendo lab in Arizona where Nintendo scientists created stuff like Flubber with guys who looked like Willy Wonka and The Nutty Professor. That's absurd. Nintendo is just a video game company. I guess they have guys that scout out new and pre-existing technology and say "That would be good for video gaming." To a lesser degree, Sony and Microsoft do this too. The only difference is that Nintendo's ideas tend to be something that makes us think, "That's crazy! It will never work!" while Sony/Microsoft's ideas tend make a lot more sense.
Often times, Nintendo's ideas DO fail miserably (just like the Eye Toy). The eReader, Virtual Boy, various Light Gun controllers--all epic failures. Sometimes, they become industry standards. The Controller (The Nes wasn't the first controller ever but it was the one that came out when 95% of companies were using joysticks), analog (call it digital if you want--for all intents and purposes, it was a 3D analog stick for 3D movement in 3D worlds), shoulder buttons, motion controls, Wavebird Wireless (again, wireless went back to at least the 8-Bit era with several infrared controllers) and more. When Nintendo gets it right, the whole world sees that it can be done and they do it too. Nintendo is the one that says, "Okay. The time is now. We can do this right."
Nintendo builds on the failure of others. Others build on the success of Nintendo. I'll post that sentence again.
