Generation Nintendo
filfre.net
filfre.net
There were moments that I would be idle, pondering how it was possible to pack so much brilliant design on a thing. I would then be also tremendously impressed by other games of the time, notably Zelda and Super Mario Bros 3. That I would become a big fan of Japanese game design for life. Investigating and following the individual game creators. Since then, I slowly noticed that the Japanese, and some Asians, have a unique sensibility that gives their games a peculiar flavor. Many people -mainly westerns- don't resonate with this peculiar uniqueness, that rarely exist in western games. And that is ok, just interesting. It is like they can achieve a laser focus on a particular set of simple, essential human emotions. It can be found on how they draw things, the stories that write, etc. That particularly inspires some people.
For many people, Nintendo games of the time were so dramatically better designed, compared to the standards of the time, that they were like gold compared to the others dirt. That was an important factor, possibly the biggest, in the creation of the generation Nintendo. It is very interesting to know what were the conditions and events, that allowed Nintendo the company, to come up with these absolutely brilliant products at the time. That allowed it to achieve legendary status among so many people.
Some of the ideas just seem wrong to my foreign experience. A designer might say "this is easier for the player to understand", as he suggests something which seems to me 100% opaque and blackbox. There are fundamental differences to how a japanese mega-corp develops a video game.
Doesn't seem like a "game design sense" anymore than the fact that they have an isolated culture and their games simply resonate within this culture.
We all know the 'asian websites' thing which is spoken about a lot. Their websites look like shit to use, but to them it is simply the better way.
Nothing "mystic" about it, it is simply how they do stuff.
At least this is what I think.
To be fair, I am kinda fed up as well of this American "Chickenshit Minimalism" ( https://medium.com/@mceglowski/chickenshit-minimalism-846fc1... ); If you've ever visited a US landing page, it's like it was designed for a five year old. Huge empty blocks of color, sentences consisting of three or four simple words in large type, very few links widely separated from each other, and almost completely static pages with very low information density. Are Americans illiterate or just easily confused? ;)
Joking aside, I'd argue the main reason for the rise of that style of minimalistic website was responsive design. It's much easier to design a website to be responsive if the content is sparsely laid out to begin with. There was a mobile-first trend in web design, and I believe the type of layout you're referring to was the result. Perhaps we'll find better ways of handling responsive design in the future (better in the sense of making sites that are able to better tailor themselves to available resources without a notable increase in code).
If you look at landscape design, blank spaces in modern Japanese architecture, minimalist poetry, painting, pottery, film, the websites stand out a lot. There is no "zen" in Japanese websites (again, generally speaking). The "mystic" is how we perceive their work. It exists because it's just hard to quantify art and design. We know something's there though. Famous designers and architects like Frank Lloyd Wright go to Japan and are completely floored. Did many other isolated cultures' aesthetics regularly floor their visitors? People don't get that from Japanese websites... we perceive them differently, without any sense of the "mystic." And that seems odd.
I think it's an interesting question (kind of like "Why is the USA bad at soccer?" which I've heard being discussed a lot before.) but only because of Japan's unquantifiable success in other areas of design.
I think it's because a website isn't a "downtown." It's more like a single building rather than an environment built by thousands of different people. But where is the Toyo Ito of Japanese website designers?
It's true those may be reasons why they look like they do, or part of the reason, but I think it's a question that is interesting. Even if Japanese websites get their "language" from those things, it at least seems like they should get their language from other places also, such as modern architecture or industrial design.
> such as modern architecture or industrial design.
Except for some landmarks, temples and gardens, contemporary architecture in Japan is surprisingly ugly and noisy.
I think most of the big sinners of Japanese webdesign are stores (at least the examples I can think of) and something like Bic Camera is more noisy and flashy in real life than their web presence.
I've heard the opposite. Think of all the LED and neon lights and the HUGE amount of advertisements in, say, Tokyo. It looks kinda like their websites imo.
For a lot of people, there isn't a good enough answer yet and that is why the question gets asked over and over again.
No no no... It's just that good web design is simply hard to find. No one is proud of these "asian websites". And it takes a while for updated good design practices to make it across the shore. Here is a decent site:
http://www.jp.playstation.com/psnow/
And for the record, a shitty "asian" one:
My main thing was that asian websites have more image-based content and their sentences and blocks of text look more blocky (due to uniformer characters and lack of spacing). I am not saying this is "shitty" - I am just saying that they have a different culture that makes these website the norm for them.
The rakuten looks quite busy, but at least it looks discoverable. I opened amazon and eBay and frankly they look hard to use since they hide some information.
But yeah the PS one looks more like a western page with a different language.
Also, if your ad blocker is on, you're probably not seeing these pages in their full glory.
JP Yahoo vs US Yahoo is a good contrast also, though the US site does smell of defeat as a portal (JP site is still dominant in Japan).
I saw similar differences in video game magazines. I've only had limited exposure to Famitsu, but it seems to favour a collage of smaller images laid out more evenly across the pages compared to something like Edge.
http://www.rpgland.com/content/media/2009/10/rpglanddotcom11...
http://perfectdark.retropixel.net/pdzero/scans/edge_november...
I like both styles, it's just an observation.
Google up the influence of Wizardry on JRPGs as just one well-documented counter-example. Japanese game designers in the 80s and 90s were designing in the 80s and 90s, not during the Tokugawa shogunate.
Funny you mention Wizardry because it's yet another example of galapagos syndrome in action. They took the basic ideas from the first Wizardry (even the spell naming schemes are still used to this day in games series like the Shin Megami Tensei) and then.. literally stopped looking at anything new in the series. It's like Wizardry 8 never happened in Japan. Their Wizardry clones to this day still play like Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, the first game of the series, just with "improved" (but anime-style) graphics. The innovations like the more open world, various interactions with world elements, improved positioning and movement to the turn based combat and so on. There's still no concept of movement and position (beyond being "frontline" and "backline" binaries) in games like Etrian Odyssey. And then games like Fallout came out and showed it was possible to integrate a large amount of variable interactions with the world and consequences to your choices and Japan was still making those Wizardry 1 clones as if the genre could never, ever improve on that basic game design.
It's only very recently in Japan, with the success of games like Skyrim outselling their own jrpg in their home country, that japanese developers started to take note that maybe, the genre could do better than replicate the same game from the 80s ad infinitum. Which is how they ended up with games like FF15 which finally dropped the primitive, limited combat system from early wizardries that weren't even position aware. I prefer turn based RPGs, but I would take the real time FF15 over a system that doesn't even simulate the space in which you fight ignoring all potential positioning and movement tactics. Something that even board based, pen&paper RPGs can simulate. Their own take on the ability to feature combat in an actual environment usually precludes any RPG features other than pure combat, like Fire Emblem. They have good turn based combat but that's all there is to the game. No dungeons, no exploration, no world, not much choices, no nothing, just a series of combat missions after combat missions. It's the kind of hyperspecialization and narrowmindedness that led to the galakei and the inability to build anything like the modern smartphone.
Nintendo is another manifestation of the galapagos that has just recently started to panic and understand that they won't be able to go on forever like that. The next Zelda will finally let go of the template created by Ocarina of Time and will play more open. That's a start, considering how much they love to remake the same thing again and again. http://digg.com/video/zelda-is-going-open-world-and-the-game...
I see this trend in MMORPGs as well, where they try to "action" up combat and you end up running around avoiding circles on the ground while plinking away with your backing attack because anything else is suicide.
And i would love to see some flip phones in western markets. All i see now is a slab of glass monoculture. Cover up the logo and you would not be able to tell who made the damn slab.
At least compact cars have the aerodynamics excuse to all look the same. But i don't see that applying to mobile phones.
The D&D spirit influenced both "Final Fantasy" and "Dragon Quest", two of the biggest selling games of 80s in Japan... which eventually grew into big games in the US as well. Tower of Druaga series also was D&D based IIRC. Legend of Zelda is very D&D-esque as well, Hyrulians are basically Tolken elves (magically inclined, pointy ears, "beautiful") while Kokiri are elves classic (magically inclined, short forest dwellers who help Santa build toys). Redead are your classic Zombies, and Wizards and magic items are the norm.
Its much like how the origin of "big eye anime characters" are actually traced to Mickey Mouse as the root of "big eye cartoon characters". There's a lot of influence from US to Japan, and vice versa (Lol Power Rangers)
The "strange" part is how language barriers seem to emphasize different parts. Like slimes in Dragon Quest are a major thing, but oozes / slime monsters have lost cultural significance in western D&D spin-offs like Diablo or Skyrim.
But go back to Bestiary 1.0 of D&D, and you'll see the significance in both Western and Japanese RPGs. Its just the different parts that the two cultures remembered about the book I guess.
Yeah. I like the stickers used in messaging in Asia. Asians, in my experience, were using this years before the US, and their messaging apps had it before Facebook.
I can type "sad" in Line and it'll show me a bunch of different characters with sad expressions [1] [2]. The stickers can make conversation more succinct.
Line is popular in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. I have no affiliation. This came to mind when I read what you wrote =)
[1] http://thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/08/l...
[2] http://www.taipeitimes.com/images/2014/12/13/thumbs/P10-1412... (says hahaha)
Some highlights include unlicensed cartridges using a "voltage spike" to knock out the chip, and the patent expiring in 2006.
Had they found a path towards a more contemporary-Apple-like management style, and some foresight for the third-party situation and the console lifecycle, they would have broken away from the scattershot focus, released a good, DRM-protected, backwards-compatible update to the VCS in the early 80's instead of the half-baked 5200/7800 efforts, insulated themselves from the arcade crash with original console software, and starved Nintendo's air supply at retail.
They might have even still released computers, just of a different sort - perhaps they would have kept Jay Miner's team and had an Atari-branded Amiga, with a console version released soon after(c. 1985-86) instead of 8 years later(CD32 - 1993).
More amazing is the founder also invented the Raman concept and motels dedicated to pimping in a small span of time. Plus, really cool toys. Innovative guy and company. Very unique.
EDIT: Forgot to add a piece about absolutely hating Nintendo for their contribution to DRM and lock-in. Sometimes I want innovators to think less. Bunch of A-holes. ;)
The Dreamcast didn't have that privilege. I'm not saying Sega's first party games were bad, but they were nowhere near the kind of popularity (I don't necessarily link popularity to quality) that could sustain a console maker. As for Sega's attempt to enter the handheld market, it began and ended with the same console, the Gamegear. It's still a mystery to me why Sega dropped that market, it didn't sell as well as the gameboy but its sales were still very high and well within the scope of what would qualify as a success, it was a much better console than the various Gameboys until Nintendo released the GBA too.
It had that, the 64-bit marketing, and was expandable with things like Turbo... whatever... that made stuff run faster. Sony did that later with PS One to accelerate old games plus have sleaker box. Also had the Gameshark like Sony. Idk if Dreamcast had one. It could help when you wanted some unlocks but had enough of a life that effort to meet requirements wasn't worth it. Perfect Dark comes to mind as we unlocked every gun/gadget in multiplayer that way. :)
The dreamcast issue is that no one wanted it. I was the only kid with a dreamcast in my entire school. The playstation won the previous console wars and the marketing surrounding the playstation 2 and its "emotion engine" (which in retrospect was full of bullshit and edited CGI) was so insane that it convinced people to wait for the PS2 and made them disinterested in anything that would've been released before it. You could say, Sega was already dead by the time they released the saturn as there were already very few people looking forward anything they'd make. People felt screwed by all the mediocre genesis peripherals (barely any game worth owning on megacd and 32x), the saturn did terrible, it's a miracle there was enough life left in Sega to even build the dreamcast.
Nintendo could've also died during that time period. It's only through the sheer strength of their first party titles that they could retain enough of a niche to survive. Something Sega didn't have. Sonic has never been their own Mario. They never had their Zelda or Mario and they didn't have much third party support beyond arcade developers. That really doomed the DC. EA refusing to make games for it didn't help. They tried to strongarm Sega into letting them be the only sports game developer for the platform, Sega refused and EA said they wouldn't develop for the platform then if they weren't given a monopoly on the genre.
With no strong first party games the kind that makes a ton of people buy a console solely for their sake, and with dropping third party support, the DC's sole niche was fans of arcade games, just like the Saturn. That's an extremely small niche. I still play arcade games to this day and thus keep up with the news in the genre and it's getting difficult for the specialized companies like CAVE to survive. They're now focusing on mobile games.. companies like Degica help retain the genre on lifesupport by porting the old ones to Steam but there's not much in terms of newly made games nowadays.
It certainly was in the Mega Drive/Genesis era. Sega dropped the ball between the Mega Drive and Saturn eras. Too many poorly-supported extensions to the Mega Drive (Mega CD, 32X), Saturn was apparently too hard to program for (especially for 3D games), those things are what appears to have damaged their 3rd party support the most.
As for Nintendo, I'd say Pokémon was key for them doing well in the early 2000s rather than Mario.
That's what happened in my area. I fell for it, too, esp as MGS2 was the game I was following and their people could actually deliver on that marketing a bit in gameplay demos. Little did I know that it was going to be quite the exception. :)
"It's only through the sheer strength of their first party titles"
What I just said to ZenoArrow. They didn't have strong, original, genre-defining content like Sony and Nintendo did. Microsoft was careful to avoid that mistake.
Of course this is purely subjective, but in my opinion the Dreamcast had one of the strongest game line ups of any console, especially considering that it was only a mainstream platform for a couple of years. Shenmue 1+2, Soul Calibur, Power Stone 1+2, Crazy Taxi 1+2, Jet Set Radio, Virtua Tennis 1+2, Street Fighter 3 (all three versions), Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Phantasy Star Online, Rez, etc... Was a great system, particularly if you enjoyed arcade-style gaming.
Plus, did it play all your old games? That was a nice selling point of PS2's although not strictly necessary.
When you say 'genre defining and blockbuster', are you referring to the quality of the games or how much they sold?
If you base quality on how many copies were sold, then you're not going to find what you're looking for. If you base them on the quality of the experience, then you will find what you're looking for.
Consider the fighting game genre. What games in the 3D fighting genre were the equal of Soul Calibur at the time of release? The N64 had very limited choices in this regard (I had an N64 too, so I remember this well, best option was probably Fighters Destiny). The PlayStation had some decent 3D fighters, but again nothing I would favourably compare to Soul Calibur. Even the Playstation 2 didn't have anything I'd put above it within its first year (Tekken Tag Tournament was okay, as was Dead or Alive 2, though the Dreamcast had Dead or Alive 2 as well).
I could go through a bunch of other high quality games that the Dreamcast had, but unless you've played them I doubt you'll believe me about how good they were.
Maybe both given nobody buying it might say something. Spreading like wild fire with people buying the consoles just to play the game... as was common with Nintendo and Playstation... would definitely say something. So, quantity matters. We can focus on quality, though.
"What games in the 3D fighting genre were the equal of Soul Calibur at the time of release?"
My memory problem is hurting me here as it's a gap. I do recall playing it and even bought strategy guide for artwork. I used to collect them for best games even if I couldn't afford the system/game. I recall really liking it. Tekken, esp Tekken 2, was the genre-definer in that one having come first, done 3D, and versatile style of gameplay. I played the crap out of Tekken 2 but did marvel at Soulcaliber's weapons and extra gameplay.
Note: Interesting enough, the same team developed Tekken and Soulcalibur.
"I could go through a bunch of other high quality games that the Dreamcast had, but unless you've played them I doubt you'll believe me about how good they were."
Less imagination than usual, buddy. It's called YouTube and Google. :P Just list a few in different categories along with their predecessor or mainstream alternative on other consoles. I can see Dreamcast (or just coding) improvements by looking at both. Then, I can assess whether it was barely better, a substantial improvement, or gamechangingly better.
To start with, I looked up Tekken 2 and Soulcalibur on Youtube on original, release consoles. Nice nostalgia moment. Tekken 2 looked like it ran on a system with barely any 3D hardware and tiny CPU. ;) Did have strong variety in fighting styles, particle effects, difficult gameplay, and some 3D movement.
Now, Dreamcast was 128-bit instead of 32-bit, had almost 10x CPU speed, 15x polygons/sec, 8x RAM, 8x VRAM, and extra dedicated hardware. This was quantum leap in performance. Just the character screen shows the difference. To fight, characters look 3D for real with smooth animations and extra particle effects. Movement, plus cameras, in 3D was better. Use of combinations was smoother. Characters seemed to have less variety but seems to replace it with weapon use variety.
Doing comparisons, Soulcaliber looks like a team started with Tekken on way better hardware then improved a few parts of its gameplay. It looks like a Tekken expansion pack rather than a gamechanger. A beautiful expansion that corrects significant deficiencies. Gotta pass on this one, though. Tekken's on PSX were game changers for 3D given style that continued to be imitated, number of original aspects, and sales volume. I'm impressed that Soulcaliber perfecting that style got it perfect scores by reviewers.
What else you got? Whether I agree or not on impact it might be fun looking at them. Especially those I never got to play. Like when I watched Nightwarrior videos for the Saturn wishing I had it given all the neat artwork and moves. :)
> "What else you got?"
I have a feeling anything I can come up with you will call an expansion (or something along those lines) to an older game you liked. It's a cop out. For example, Tekken wasn't the first 3D fighter, Virtua Fighter came first, so you could say Tekken was a variation on Virtua Fighter rather than looking at it on its own merits. Do you see why this type of historical argument can rob games of their own merits? For example, Soul Calibur pioneered 8-way running in fighting games, previous games relied on sidesteps and other small movements, even the previous game in the series (Soul Edge, a.k.a. Soul Blade). However, this style of movement completely changes the dynamics of the gameplay. In other words, if you boil a game down to its basic appearance, you can miss the wood for the trees.
To give another example of this, consider the party system in the Street Fighter 3 series (Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike is the most polished of this series, but the previous two had the same mechanic). This apparently simple change to Street Fighter radically changes the tactics available in game. On the surface it looks inconsequential, but instead it was the biggest change to Street Fighter gameplay since the invention of the combo.
If you want some more trips down memory lane, look up Shenmue, Phantasy Star Online and Rez. A simple explanation of Shenmue is 'Virtua Fighter RPG', but again that misses the point of the experience. I believe Phantasy Star Online was the first ever online console RPG. Rez is a rails shooter, a lot of the pleasure comes from the way the sound and visuals are synchronised with each other.
Memory loss kicked in here: forgot Virtua Fighter's details since I didn't play it. Further research showed it wasn't just the first (knew that). It had all the key innovations in it that others, including Tekken, copied. So, Virtua Fighter is the game-changer or prime innovator here with Tekken's improvements how it went very mainstream. Soulcaliber improved on Tekken 2 to make it the first one with totally smooth experience. Correction accepted. :)
EDIT: Another in this lineage, same company and year as Soulcalibur, was Ergheiz. It came out before or right with Soulcalibur on PSX limited hardware. It was a bit weird but quite unique. It had Final Fantasy characters on top of others, weapons, 3D environments, moving levels, use of environment as weapon MAYBE (memory...), upper floors, and movement all over. Also, RPG built into it from Square. Movement and blocking sucked. Really weird. 1st fight shows style & range of movement with 3rd showing multiplatform. Talk about ultra-3D.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSvLCDxvcrU
"Soul Calibur pioneered 8-way running in fighting games"
I gave it credit for that. This affect was already in other kinds of games, including my first one for PSX: WCW vs the World. You could run toward any corner or any rope (8 ways). Applying and enhancing something in other games to a new genre is clever. Definitely changed the dynamics a lot. It wasn't going from Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat to Virtua Fighter or Tekken. Or going from 2D wrestling matches with 4-way movement to WVWvW with 3D graphics and 8-way movement. See the difference?
EDIT: Remembered Ergheiz after I wrote the above. So, maybe Soulcalibur pioneered multi-way movement and maybe other one did. You could run, jump, or fly about anywhere in Ehrgeiz just not as smooth mechanics. Soulcalibur improved on and mainstreamed it either way. Both were published by Namco. So, who knows on that.
"consider the party system in the Street Fighter 3 series (Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike is the most polished of this series, but the previous two had the same mechanic). This apparently simple change to Street Fighter radically changes the tactics available in game. "
I agree. That's a bigger one. Wrestling games, a variant of fighting games, had Tag Team matches going back to the Wrestlemania games in early 90's. They get the innovation there. It was also a distinctly wrestling concept, too, given you would get a WWF or WCW reply if you said "match where teams fight and you tag them in one at a time" to average person watching TV or playing games. So, you've listed two that came out of 3D and 2D wrestling games respectively.
"I believe Phantasy Star Online was the first ever online console RPG."
Diablo, which it drew on, is the prime innovator in that space. Consoles didn't have internet at all or worth a damn before Dreamcast. Nonetheless, you chose a great example here because nobody believed online RPG's were worth it on consoles. They both delivered one and got console gamers into the online service model. Plus expanded market huge for Diablo-like games into consoles. I give this one credit as a game-changer in its niche. Maybe in industry in general tying in consoles to online services. Baby steps toward Xbox Live and such, wouldn't you say?
"Shenmue and Rez"
Out of time for today given fair videos take time to dig up and watch. ;) They're on my list. I plan to get some vids on Phantasy Star, too, as I forgot the visuals. You got any others you heard were game-changing or way ahead of their time on Dreamcast?
I agree. That's a bigger one. Wrestling games, a variant of fighting games, had Tag Team matches going back to the Wrestlemania games in early 90's. They get the innovation there. It was also a distinctly wrestling concept, too, given you would get a WWF or WCW reply if you said "match where teams fight and you tag them in one at a time" to average person watching TV or playing games. So, you've listed two that came out of 3D and 2D wrestling games respectively."
Sorry, this is a misunderstanding due to autocorrect on my phone. When I said party I meant parry. Here's a famous video showing the parry system at work, as you can see it has nothing to do with wrestling games.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JzS96auqau0
Also, regarding 8-way run coming from wrestling games, they aren't the same mechanic. In early wrestling games you need to press a run button to run, and when you do your potential moveset changes. Furthermore, your run is not relative to the other player but rather relative to the ring. This all gives it a completely different feel.
Lastly, Soul Calibur is not in the same lineage as Tekken. As I've already said, Soul Calibur was the sequel to Soul Edge. It's a completely different game series.
>"You got any others you heard were game-changing or way ahead of their time on Dreamcast?"
Before I answer that question, please answer this, do you know of any games that were game-changing or way ahead of their time on PlayStation 1?
That was an awesome vid. The parry system did change the fighting game dynamic a lot. Wrestling games, including WCW vs World, had counter moves for various strikes and grapples. I don't recall them making opponent go backward to deliver arbitrary, normal move. So, SF3's parry's are either original or an enhancement on wrestling counters. Definitely innovative for that kind of audience.
"Also, regarding 8-way run coming from wrestling games, they aren't the same mechanic. In early wrestling games you need to press a run button to run, and when you do your potential moveset changes. Furthermore, your run is not relative to the other player but rather relative to the ring. This all gives it a completely different feel."
That is true. It's why I added Ehrgeiz whose movement makes Soulcalibur look really limited. Maybe I'm misremembering it, though. Look at link below. Scroll past character descriptions to section IV: "basic moves and fighting techniques."
http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197216-ehrgeiz/faqs/4749
You'll see it had full, 8-way, arbitrary movement with 360 degree attack angles possible. Also crouching behind stuff in level, jumping on level, weapons, rolling, ground attacks, counters, tech hits, and instant 180's. It lacked the smooth flow and ease of use of Soulcalibur as players had to, a la Tekken, face the opponent's attack and direction precisely to counter it. So, you felt mastery when gameplay looked like a Soul game.
"Lastly, Soul Calibur is not in the same lineage as Tekken. As I've already said, Soul Calibur was the sequel to Soul Edge. It's a completely different game series."
The old making of soulcalibur writeup said the Tekken 2 team helped make it. It's why I thought it was a sequel to Tekken at first. The SC and TK2 team worked together on it. Presumably reused techniques in codebase from TK2 since they clearly weren't doing the artwork. That's speculation but SC was a team effort that included TK2 team. It's a joint lineage even if separate mechanics and artwork. Don't know why it bothers you as it's more like a good FOSS partly forks or works with another good FOSS to create a perfect-rated FOSS. I plan to replay it in future just cuz you had me look it up.
"Before I answer that question, please answer this, do you know of any games that were game-changing or way ahead of their time on PlayStation 1?"
Metal Gear Solid. Whole volumes written about playing in a movie, enemies' reactions to things, clever ploys by designers, stealth aspect... whole package. Landmark work that only a few tried (and failed) to copy.
WCWvsWorld or WCWvsNWO. Came out same year with similar mechanics including 8-way movement (ring-based as you said), grappling system, counter moves, team matches, weapons from crowd, and so on. NWO probably the innovator here. No Mercy and others copied it. WWF Smackdown would later take 3D wrestling back to fast-moving, high-flying, crazy roots in arcade games. Then, PSX vs N64 debates re their various games were more accurately New PSX vs Old PSX styles but N64 people pled ignorance of WCWvNWO or WCWvW. ;)
Twisted Metal. There's racing games. There's destruction games. There's 3D world games. This combined all three into what I guess was a new genre as people acted like they never saw it before.
Final Fantasy VII. I never played others before it on console so can't say anything to mechanics. Yet, combo of deep story, character development, and custom, classical score matched to events in game made a powerful impression I had never encountered in another game. That combo seems unique, esp leveraging classical for emotional impact. So, it's a maybe but I'm not certain.
Resident Evil. Characters, interesting plot, puzzles, unusual game mechanics, and scary kills pioneered survival horror genre in consoles.
Sports. I recall Playstation had some of first, sports games like NBA that mimicked life-like stuff instead of arcade stuff. I'm not sure if it was first on this but it was first I saw that reminded me of real-life.
Alright. There's a start. Feel free to accept or shoot them down with counterexamples.
I hope we never see that kind of destruction again.
BTW, I bicycled around Kyoto once and could not find any trash, even a straw wrapper. The Kyoto protocol is aptly named. I highly recommend visiting there if you have a chance.
For example, no Mario game ever features Brooklyn, even once. Yet the American movie and cartoon show are all about Mario being from Brooklyn. Then when Mario 3 came out, not only is he not from Brooklyn, but he wears a cat suit and turns into a Buddhist statue. That's a big f*-you message to America from Japan if I ever saw one. Pretty hilarious.