Favourite odd gaming idea that had a good run but went away?

The question popped into my mind, and I’m curious what the answer is for you guys. “Gaming idea” could be anything from specific game mechanics/genres up to broader concepts.

Some examples for me are: plastic instrument games (it was a good excuse to do silly karaoke antics with friends), the entire concept of Streetpass (it was an oddly nice feeling knowing that a bunch of random schmucks around you on public transit or a school campus were gamin’ just like you, and Nintendo supported it surprisingly well), and cool boot-up screens on consoles (they’ve really gone by the wayside since the legendary PS2/GameCube startups).

So what’s that gaming idea that rode off into the sunset, but you can’t forget?

Save file icons come to mind. I wanna say some games even had different icons for their various saves? Sure, you had plenty of low-tier efforts like the EA football games that’d just be the game logo no different from today, but these were just fun screens to scan and connect the dots on.

https://mobile.twitter.com/PS2SaveIcons/header_photo

Controllers with screens. I never had a working Dreamcast, so I don't know much about VMUs and the Wii U went too far with it, but connecting a Game Boy to a Gamecube was really cool every time I had the chance to do it. Playing The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures with four players who had a Game Boy each is still one of my favorite gaming experiences ever.

The particular real-time combat mechanics that accompanied the tactical layer of Ring of Red (PS2). It was such a unique combination of moving lumbering mechs into and out of range for various attacks, loading cannons with special shells, and moving troops into the proper ranges to activate their abilities. So good.

Plastic instrument games is a good one. If only publishers could have shown a little restraint and released one or two of these per generation, instead of annually rehashing it into the ground.

Offline multiplayer games. Stuff like Knockout City would be a great split-screen experience.

Playstation Home was a neat idea. I'm sure someone will revisit it at some point but I love that idea of a virtual world leading to more virtual worlds.

@judaspete: How have offline multiplayer games gone away? There are literally TONS of local multiplayer games coming out constantly. I don't understand this one at all, except that one particular game you like doesn't have it. Local multiplayer is definitely thriving.

@eccentrix: The VMU sucked and was a bad idea. It made memory cards more expensive and also they could hold NOTHING. They did not add much to the experience either except for some very specific stuff. If you like screens in controllers then you should lament the Intellivision Amico failing because that was the whole idea.

Personally if I have to pick something it's going to be the fun, linear, polished AAA 8-12 hour single player campaign. Obviously this is not quite "dead" per se, but it's on life support. It seems like every game now is either a vast and often very bloated open world or multi-player focused. Or both! I really miss the days when you could get a game, play it, and move on. Of course I rarely wanted to pay $60 for that, but I still loved them when I got them on the cheap. A lot of those games hold up super well, like Shadows of the Damned, which has aged in many ways but is still a fun ride because the pacing is so good. Pacing in most modern games has gone to shit.

Hi-Fi Rush being a hit shows that there are ways to do these games today that will perform well, but they're getting fewer and further between. Even God of War and Sonic the Hedgehog are semi-open world and take 20+ hours to beat these days.

Boxed PC Games.

So, don't get me wrong, digital game distribution is mad better, but there's a certain magic that I miss from not having nearly everything available to you at all times - it made finding a random boxed copy of Omikron: The Nomad Soul in the back of a Zellers somewhere fell like finding actual treasure (and yes, that game is terrible). Even recently I saw a disc-copy of Black & White 2 on a shelf at a thrift store and had a fleeting moment of that magic (I didn't buy it).

Nowadays I can just buy the entire Legacy of collection on sale for eleven bucks and never play it. Not the same...

I wouldn't say it had a "good run" but in games like Valkyria Chronicles and Transistor there was a unique mechanic where using certain people or abilities unlocked more lore directly related to them. So in VC, if you used specific soldiers in battle you would unlock more of their history and backstories. It was a small mechanic, but I thought it was a great way to encourage players to mix up their styles and systems and still be rewarded in some way. It also helped build out more realized worlds and character backstories without just dumping them on you. Sadly I feel like it was never picked up by other games.

@drgonzo456: I think you can argue there is a version of this in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. You get characters called "blades" in that game and they build trust with your other characters as you use them in parties. This mostly unlocks skill tree stuff, but there are also these little cut scenes or extra missions that sometimes unlock as you climb the trust tree, and they reveal backstory and additional information.

There's a system in Scarlet Nexus that works similarly, where you built trust with characters as they fight alongside you and then you can get side missions or side conversations that reveal more about them as you increase your trust level.

Now in both these games you can sort of get around these systems by spamming gifts, but I don't think that really takes away from the similarities to what you're talking about. It's not lore exactly, but it's side content that contains lore.

Third person RTS.

I'm talking about games like Sacrifice, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Dungeon Keeper (possession spell). Even Starcraft Ghost and C&C Renegade scratched a bit of that itch by existing in a world you know from it's RTS roots. Black & White was also somewhat adjacent to the genre eventhough you don't have direct control over the creature and that the RTS mechanics in B&W 1 are not all that fleshed out yet. Shoutout to Dark Cloud too.

I just like being able to build shit while being in the thick of it yourself and figured it was a solid enough hook that we'd see plenty of that in the future.

@mach_go_go_go: I miss instruction manuals.

@onemanarmyy: I feel like Brutal Legend killed it. It was one of my favourite genres too.

The genre I have to mention is multiplayer first 4X/grand strategy games. Now, a good many of the games still come with some form of multiplayer element to them, but Civilization is a good example where it has become less and less of a focus, with even the netcode getting worse with each game, in addition to diplomacy playing a smaller and smaller role. Even then, what I'm thinking of is not this, but games that have been build from the ground up with multiplayer in mind. Games that take Diplomacy, the board game, as their starting point and do something new. Games like Redcon, Subterfuge, Dominions or even Armello. The creators of Armello are coming up with a game about demons fighting for power, but other than that the drip of these games have become less and less. If someone knows any good newer ones, DM me or something.

Being able to unlock characters in NBA Jam. Bonus points for real life people that don't feel like they belong in the game i.e. Bil Clinton.

Cheat codes feel like the obvious answer here. Although it didn't ride off into the sunset. It was forcefully retired and repackaged as purchasable DLC.

@shindig: This for real! Metal Gear had some of the best. I also remember ES Oblivion having an amazing one!