Where did it come from?

We live in an age where we play games without much thought for how they were made or where their origins lie.

Turn-based combat systems, the FPS perspective, taking cover behind a wall – all these features were used in a game for the first time once, and we take a look at when and where it happened.

Cel Shading

Borderlands brought cel shading to the forefront of our gaming minds, utilising its artistic look and feel with great success.

Back in 1994, way before Jet Set Radio, a title by the name of Doctor Hauzer was the first game to use this visual feature.

Doctor Hauzer was a survival horror released in Japan, and you can make out the beginnings of cel shading on some of the the game’s characters.

Cover System

Forget Uncharted and Gears of War, Winback was the first title to bring the cover system into our lives.

Released in 1999, Winback was a third person shooter that can be credited with inspiring some of the stealth games we play today, displaying sneaking and peaking around corner mechanics that are popular in games like Metal Gear Solid.

The Guiding Arrow

Although not as popular in games as it used to be, the guiding arrow showed many a player where they had to go during their virtual adventures.

The guiding arrow first appeared in Crazy Taxy in 1999, and was a dynamic foreword to the modern day GPS overhead maps we see in most games today.

Let us not forget the green arrow, and all the fares it helped us collect.

Active Time Battle

The ATB, also known as the Active Time Battle, was first introduced in Final Fantasy IV. Although Square Enix invented turn based combat, the Active Time Battle took a few editions of the Final Fantasy series to be implemented, after which players had to wait for their time bars to fill before they could attack. This all went down in 1991.

First Person Shooter

The first person shooter is one of the most dominant genres of all time, with developers battling one another to claim the tile of FPS king.

The first FPS to be released was Maze Wars in 1972, and saw players walking around a maze in first person perspective.

The game was also the first to feature an avatar, with players represented as an eyeball, and peer-to-peer network play. Talk about breaking new ground.