Most people know about PlayStation innovations like the PS3™ system’s built in Blu-ray player or the 1:1 accuracy of thePlayStation®Move motion controller. This year’s E3 is showcasing even more revolutionary technology to take your gaming and entertainment experiences to the next level.
But what most people don’t realize is that much of what we take for granted in gaming today was originally introduced to the gaming industry by PlayStation. Here are five PlayStation innovations you may not have known about. Prepare to have your mind blown! Unless you already know about this stuff, in which case, you are awesome and should prepare for a pleasant refresher!
1. Controller-free Gaming
Motion gaming has been huge since last year’s E3 and the unveiling of thePlayStation®Move motion controller. But what most may not realize is that PlayStation had been leading the charge in motion gaming for nearly seven years.
EyeToy®: Play, introduced in 2003, was a game for the PlayStation®2 system that used the EyeToy camera to track your movements and allow you to physically interact with game-play elements without a controller. An image of you would appears on the screen while you took on challenges in sports, fighting and party games by waving your arms or moving your body. To select games or go back to the main menu, you simply needed to wiggle your fingers over buttons on the screen.
EyeToy: Play won Best Puzzle/Trivia/Parlor Game at E3 2003, and was followed up by two successful sequels: EyeToy: Play 2 and EyeToy: Play 3, which amped up multiplayer and showcased a slew of mini-games.
2. Rhythm and Music Games
Music, rhythm and dance games have exploded in recent years, but long before Rock Band, SingStar and Dance Dance Revolution there was the 1996 PSOne® classic, PaRappa the Rappa.
PaRappa the Rappa was the first console game that used rhythm and music as an active part of gameplay. Various characters rapped about such hard-hitting, urban topics as standing in line for the bathroom, baking a cake or going to the flea market. The raps aligned with PlayStation controller buttons, which, when pushed in the correct order with the correct timing, would allow you to repeat the rap to move ahead in the game.
The main character of the game was PaRappa, a rapping dog. On PaRappa’s heroic journey to impress his lady-friend Sunny Funny, he learns from rap masters like Cheap Cheap the Cooking Chicken and Chop Chop Master Onion. Who has a fu manchu. And is an onion.
Needless to say, this game was and still is awesome.
PaRappa the Rappa was also way ahead of its time and set the mold for successful future games like SingStar® Dance and Patapon.
3. The Modern Controller
The need for dual analog sticks in gaming is pretty agreed upon these days.Of course you need two: one to move your dude, one to change the camera perspective. Vibrating gamepads are also ubiquitous: when you fall or get smashed in the face on screen, your controller vibrates to inform you that your avatar’s nose is no longer attached to its body, and that this may hurt a little. In fact, practically all modern game controllers have adopted vibration and dual analog thumbsticks to increase the realism with which you can get your face kicked in.
But the evolution of these enhancements was gradual: early generation controllers had only one thumbstick or no thumbsticks at all, and none of them vibrated. PlayStation was the very first console to experiment with double analog sticks for smoother, more immersive gameplay. The first official analog controller from Sony was a little-known 1996 invention called the PlayStation Analog Joystick.
How sweet does that thing look? And it’s as rare as it is glorious. The PlayStation analog joystick was used for flight simulator games and was soon shelved in favor of the first standard game controller with two analog thumbsticks: 1997’s Dual analog controller.
Japan’s version of the Dual analog controller also had another PlayStation innovation: built-in vibration feedback. Built-in rumble that didn’t require an additional add-on only came to American shores with the arrival of PlayStation’s DUALSHOCK® Controller in 1998. It was an immediate hit.
IGN wrote, “The original Dual Shock PlayStation controller is probably the finest that we’ve ever seen for a console” and the rest was gaming history… until the DUALSHOCK® 2, which added pressure-sensitivity to all the buttons. Aaaand theDUALSHOCK® 3, which was wireless and had motion sensing technology. Ok, I’ll stop now.
4. Headsets for Multiplayer
In my day, when you wanted to yell at someone you were gaming with, you didn’t do it through a fancy headset. You had to put down the controller, lean out your window, throw a rock and hope they heard you.
These days everyone uses headsets for console multiplayer gaming. Headsets have proven incredibly handy ever since PlayStation premiered the PlayStation®2 USB Headset and distributed it with the original SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs in 2002. SOCOM was one of the earliest online titles available for the PS2™ system and used the USB headset for speech recognition and voice chat.
Of course, since then the headset has gone wireless and Bluetooth® enabled, making it all the easier to forget it’s there and loudly ask your mom to make you a sandwich in the middle of Killzone®3.
5. DVD for the Masses
DVDs are everywhere. Many of us have giant DVD collections and long ago tossed our VCRs into the dustbins of history. But the reason DVDs became so ubiquitous in the first place was largely because of the PlayStation 2 system
PlayStation pushed to make DVDs the standard optical disc storage format in the 90’s and DVD was declared the winner in 1996. The discs started trickling into the U.S. in ‘97 but it was only when the PS2™ system launched in March 4, 2000 with a built in CD/DVD player that DVDs actively infiltrated America.
The PS2 system was the first gaming console able to play DVDs and its wild popularity quickly drove sales of the discs. In fact, the PlayStation 2 system soon became the best-selling gaming console of all time: it’s in one in three U.S. homes and has sold 150 million units. To this day, the PS2 continues to be quite popular around the world – it costs about as much as a DVD player, but can also play over 1800 diverse games.
While other consoles soon adopted the DVD, Sony blazed the trail of making consoles about more than just gaming. So next time you watch a movie on your gaming system, embarrass yourself in a dance game, or yell combat commands into a headset, think back to those awesome innovations that brought us (and games) to where they are today.
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"In video game terms, RPGs are games that involve a form of separate battles taking place with a specialized battle system and the use of a system that increases your power through a form of points.
Sure, what you say is the definition, but the connotation of RPGs is what they are in video games." - dtewi
