The 25 Best and Worst Nintendo Innovations

What makes games worth playing? I know that's a totally loaded, subjective question, and everyone is going to have a completely different answer. For some, it's all about the action of games, whether shooting, punching, running or solving. For others, it's about the escapism of a virtual world. Still others it's about challenging yourself and overcoming adversity.

But for a few, the idea that a story can be told in a completely new method is what entrances them. It's become an engrossing enough subject that people can now go to college and study the concept in an official capacity. People get into massive debates about the importance of story in games, some say it's as important as plot in porn, others, that it's the ultimate goal of digital entertainment (such as in the attached video).

But who got the ball rolling?

Well, not Nintendo. Games like Adventure (1975) proposed the concept of a fictional world deeper than what graphics could display, but weren't terribly popular, and Pac-Man (1980) is arguably the first mainstream game with characters and bits of plot. But for the most part, what's now known as Interactive Fiction remained within the confines of a relative few, whereas most everybody else was rather content to shoot aliens or bat a ball back and forth with sticks of light.

It was in 1981's release of Donkey Kong, that the first full story came into a popular arcade game. Unlike Pac-Man, Donkey Kong had a definite beginning, middle and end, though It was crude to say the least: Ape steals woman, Man defeats Ape, Man saves Woman. But it gave context to an otherwise nonsensical set of actions (jumping over barrels and swinging hammers) that made the game easy to like, quite similar to Pac-Man, but just that little bit better.

This concept of applying a narrative framework with a definite end point was brought to most, and then eventually, all Nintendo games released in the 80's and soon enough other game developers followed suit. After all, even if you want to simply shoot aliens, it's nice to have a reason to do so. This is just a part of our human nature; add personal context to even the most illogical of situations!

In a lot of ways, Nintendo kind of wins this by default, since the NES was the first popular home console that had enough horsepower to actually deliver this to the masses, and surely this idea would have come about regardless of who provided the medium (especially once you consider the considerable growth PC games made in the same time frame). But due to the encouragement of the value of story by putting it into their own games, Nintendo ensured that the acceptance of at least some narrative was a standard, rather than an exception. And due to the sheer number of NES consoles owned across the world, it became the standard expect similar treatment, at the very least in the manual of a game. Even if it's just a "porn Plot", or a window dressing in many games, it's a heck of a lot better than having nothing at all.

And for some , these plots are just the start of something much larger.

Here's hoping we eventually get there.

Ever play a DS? How about the PSP? Maybe a Game Gear, or Mobile phone game, or possibly some of the other hand-helds?

Yes? Oh well, then if you enjoyed the experience, thank Nintendo!

Now I'm sure that you're going to assume that the popularity of the portable is due to the Gameboy. Well, you'd be partially right; at least after 1990, when the massive success of the Gameboy (still the highest selling console in history if you count every iteration) created enough decent competition to finally wipe those horrifying Tiger Electronics handheld games off the face of the earth. Thank God above, Satan below (and Pan off to the side) for that miracle.

But no, the history goes far deeper, back to 1980.

Back to the Game & Watch baby!

You see, back then Gunpei Yokoi, who was kind of a big deal (and will be featured heavily on this list) sitting on a train and watching some guy diddle around with his calculator. Then an idea stuck. "Man commuting is boring as s**t. I wish there was a way to both kill time and keep track of it at the same time . . .wait a minute. That's brilliant!"

And thus the Game & Watch was born. Now, while it wasn't the first handheld, as that honor goes to Mattel in 1977, it was the first to make the idea popular wordwide. It even had ideas that are still being used to this day. Two screens? That's silly. A foldaway case? That's just dumb!

Oh no, wait, those are good ideas.

Still, it did spawn imitators as well. In fact it's probably the direct cause of those terrible Tiger Electronics games that were the bane of every one of my early Christmases. But I guess no one's perfect.

Probably the most important thing Nintendo has ever done for console gaming, aside from saving the industry itself (more on that in a bit), is that they have defined what makes the perfect controller.

Now the NES controller itself is sort of the original Iron Man Armor version of this. Back before it existed, game controllers were a wild array of dials and knobs, or far too many buttons a placed on hunks of plastic that were fairly easily broken. The NES on the other hand was ergonomic for the time and highly durable. This was perfect as plenty of NES games made you want to throw the thing across the room.

It was perfect for its day, but as time went on and games became more complex, couldn't keep up with the games themselves.

Enter the Super Nintendo controller.

More ergonomic, but tossing in two more face buttons and shoulder buttons on top of an already established design made it the perfect example of what to do with a controller. The Super Famicom version even had color-coordination with its face buttons, which would become especially necessary in later years, when we entered the dark age of the QTE.

The base design of of the NES and SNES controllers has been so good that they've spawned legions of imitators, and though both Sony and Microsoft have improved upon the original design, they didn't create the principle.

So thank you Nintendo, for ensuring that controllers didn't suck.

OK, so I already mentioned above that the Nintendo Seal helped instill consumer confidence back into gaming, but that, like knowing, was only half the battle.

The problem was the retailers, despite being presented with the pure awesomeness that the NES obviously emitted like Nazi-death lights from the ark of the covenant, were hesitant to sell the thing to consumers they thought just wouldn't buy it after the disasters of Atari. In all fairness, it was a perfectly reasonable approach to take considering the times. They were living in a Material World back then, unless something could be presented as more than just a "set-top box" the retailers, they didn't think people would dig into video games after seeing so many pieces of crap available.

Enter your Friendly Neighborhood Robotic Operating Buddy!

Or FNROB for short. Actually, scratch that, R.O.B. works better.

This little guy only worked with a few, kind of bad games, but his purpose was far greater. He was the sacrificial lamb that allowed Nintendo to sell the NES and prove to consumers that it wasn't terrible. Retailers reasoned that hey, maybe the video games themselves might not sell, but the market for toy robots has always been strong .

For falling on his sword (or is it Gyromite?) in order to get millions of kids access to a totally non-creepy adult plumber, Nintendo should give a 21 Zapper salute to this little guy.