No your right if anything it was ahead of it's time and was probably not publicised enough. Today the button conventions are (like we've discussed) focused on the triggers and r buttons.

That's why my admiration for Populous the beginning has only gone up over the years. Fully deformable terrain on a spherical world. It was an RTS god game where you could attack your enemies by spawning a volcanic eruption in the middle of their town. Pure evil, so much fun

I used to play that in LAN setup with my neighbor in the university dorm we were living in.

Yet nowadays, Forza Horizon 5 doesn't even remember what you knocked over the previous lap. Everything resets very quickly. I'm hoping SSDs make it also possible to create more persistent worlds. With SSDs it becomes feasible to store and retrieve changes in real time, not having to rely on a huge chunk of RAM to keep changes in. Halo Infinite also still has mr corpse clean up and janitor following you around.

Sometimes I get lost because everything is looking brand spanking new again after just a minute. Let me drop something on the floor as a marker, already been here or go there next, without the item disappearing. It's always silly to see bullet holes disappearing when you try to write something on a wall. End of buffer reached.

Skid marks in racing games also shouldn't be gone so quickly. Let the road become a painting of what happened over time at them. Every time you race on a track, new marks get added. Over time it can slowly fade, but not go back to a freshly cleaned track with pre defined skid marks every time. If I have an epic spin out crash on day one. Let me still see some traces of it on day 50.

Played populous 1 and 2 on the Amiga along with the racing game Skid Marks oops just noticed that you were referring to the tyre marks themselves, still apart from the skid marks name bringing out the best in puerile humor by being the name for undie stains it did leave those tyre  marks on the track.

I've seen more games that keep your skid marks for the entire race. However I haven't seen one yet that keeps them for the next race.

I see skid marks all the time while cycling in summer. Lot of people like to try out their cars on the quiet rural roads, so you see a lot of burnout marks and wobbly stops, sometimes full donuts painted on the tarmac. They fade very slowly to be mostly gone after winter. Yet in any racing game, new race, new track.

Making the driving physics more and more realistic while keeping the environment static and pristine starts to clash more and more.

Another one worth mentioning was the original N64 inverted trident controller. I love that controller so much. I always held it in a really weird way using three fingers to grip the analog stick, but it gave me a big advantage over everybody else who held it the normal way. I actually even managed to beat a semi-competitive gamer at Smash who would cream me in everything else including Melee and Brawl and I think it is mainly because of how I held that awesome controller: I just had so much control over slight movements of the analog stick.

I don't remember the N64 controller being hated that much back in the 90's and Nintendo obviously never saw the need to redesign it during the N64's life but man that controller gets so much hate nowadays.

Dreams from Media Molecule is such a gem. You can play the awesome levels from MM themselves. And they contantly add new playable content - big and small. So there is your game. Action, Adventure, Shooter, Stradegy, Dungeon, Point and Click, Walking Sim, Racer, Fighter, Platformer, etc.

BUT: you can also play the awesome levels other people have made. And there is some weird shit out there. Really cool stuff. Last time I played a game about a robot who is the last living thing. Super sad, super cool music. You never know.

AND: you can make your own levels. If you have a slight creative spark in you - just contribute - make assets, do voice recording for a team, write some dialogue yourself, draw concept art or programm interesting gamplay mechanics. Or write a piece if music. ...

It is so incredibly disheartening that this game is not a success. Why oh why?!? (I mean - the marketing was horrible, but still)

I wish all those content creation games were more successfull. Dreams deserves some love.

Simon's Quest

I'm not sarcastic or ironic

Yes, Xenoblade X is a great example of how important having the map always displayed can contribute to a better experience. Wind Waker HD is another example. Having the Sea Chart always available while I sailed the Great Sea was incredibly convenient and useful. Hyrule Warriors was better for it too. Being able to always follow the changes on the battlefield in real time on a big detailed map instead of a tiny minimap or by stopping the game not only made everything more fluid, but improved the decisions the player could make. Splatoon also benefited from the second screen in a similar way to Hyrule Warriors, but also made Squid Jumping far quicker than in the sequel.

I'm not complaining the Switch is lacking a second screen as I think the return to a more traditional control scheme and form factor brought more benefits than loses. But it is clear that we lost some very good things along the way, and the Wii U ports on any other systems are proof of it.

You know, I kinda wish every concept would have succeeded. I'm not too jazzed about where we are now. The majority want "more power.", "higher resolution.", "better framerate." but that's so boring to me. Just a better performing version of what we already had.

I'm a fan of the days when each generation brought something new and unique as well as a little improvement in graphics. Analog controls, motion controls, online gaming, multi-media functions, two screens, mode 7, 3D gaming, new controllers, etc.

We let a vocal minority convince us that performance was all that matters and that's all we got. That's why I gravitate towards VR and the Switch, I appreciate what we've gotten but many of us would never have known or cared. Now we're buying new TVs and sound equipment to say "Yeah. I can see the difference. It's a little smoother. It sounds a little better." When all that mattered was the experience. We've been molded into to audiophiles and graphics whores.

When we get our "next gen games" how many of them will make us feel emotions that we couldn't feel on 8th gen hardware? Or even 7th gen hardware? Once that "wow" factor wears off, what new gameplay options will we have?

Sorry. Got off on a rant, there.

I kinda loved and hated it back then but mostly because the D-pad was unresponsive compared to the SNES pad. The analog stick was super loose but it was still okay. 

I'd say the bigger issue was that there was just no way to hold it comfortably and easily each every button. You always had to sacrifice something-- the left shoulder and d-pad or z-button and analog. And lots of people just held it wrong.  People would be playing Mario 64 with one hand on the left grip and their thumb on the control stick. It was disgusting to witness!