It is fair to say that video gaming has come a hell of a long way since Atari delivered the first widely accessible video game to the public in 1972 with Pong. The birth of the internet quickly cleared the path for gamers to be able to play with friends and strangers online which ensured 24/7 entertainment for a whole generation. Since the turn of the decade, gaming has never been more popular. An estimated two out of every five people across the world now classify themselves as a gamer according to FinancesOnline. The number of online gamers across the world is only set to rise too, by 2023 it is expected that there will be over 3 billion gamers worldwide.
With this in mind, we decided to take a look at the technologies which have made the most positive changes to online gaming. From Megaways slot machine games to Xbox Live, here are the top technologies which revolutionized video games.
Split-Screen Multiplayer
When split-screen multiplayer arrived on games consoles, gaming changed forever. Split-screen allowed a group of friends to get together and all play within the same game together. Probably the best example of this is in the Nintendo 64 game, Goldeneye 007. The James Bond first-person shooter offered players lots of characters to choose from including Oddjob and Jaws as well as multiple levels to play on based on the 1997 film.
Split-screen is simply a display technique that consists of dividing the graphics into numerous parts. The technology actually dates back to the late 1970s, but it hit the mainstream through the aforementioned Goldeneye 007 and Mario Kart 64. Since the advancement of online gaming, split-screen multiplayer has of course become used less often and is no longer a selling point of a particular game.
Gameboy Link Cable
Who recalls the good old days of playing Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow on the Gameboy? I certainly do. The early Pokémon games remain nostalgic for a generation of gamers. However, the main aim of the early Pokémon games was to complete the Pokedex, but this was impossible to do without trading with another gamer as each game version came with exclusive Pokémon (or yourself if you had access to all three Pokémon games). In order to trade Pokémon from one game to the other, you had to use a link cable from one Gameboy to the other, only by doing this were you able to complete the Pokedex.
Although link cables were easy enough to get hold of, it was always a little harder finding somebody to trade with. Unless you had a brother or sister it was difficult. Those were before the days of high-speed internet access in every home after all. The link cable technology though helped to bring Pokémon players together, even if the only reason such technology was implemented was for Nintendo to sell more products!
System Link
The System link allowed gamers to connect two separate consoles together so that someone could play the same game on two separate screens. This was essentially the same experience that players would later get from online gameplay, only you needed a long cable to connect your consoles in this case. System link cables could be purchased for both Xbox and PlayStation consoles although the System link option was much less used compared to split-screen.
With system link, you had to live in a household with two separate TVs and two separate consoles. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was rare for a household to have two of the same consoles! Regardless, the technology utilized to make system link gameplay available was a precursor for the new and bright future of online gaming.
Xbox Live
Xbox Live would help deliver the huge boom in video games that, even in 2021, is still ongoing. Xbox Live allowed players to play video games with their friends and with complete strangers, online. Online gameplay meant that game development companies would now begin releasing their main titles which revolved around online multiplayer gameplay rather than single-player/co-op campaigns.
One of the first games to benefit from online gameplay was the excellent Halo 2. In fact, some of the games released when online gaming was in its early stages were fantastic as they incorporated still fantastic single-player modes (this was to adhere to the majority gaming audience which still wanted single-player campaign games) with the brave new world of online gameplay. Now, more than 1.5 decades since the release of Halo 2, the most played video games consist of online-only battle royale games such as Fortnite.
Megaways Slots Engine
Online casino games remain some of the most widely played in the world. With the most popular type of online casino gaming being online slots, millions of people worldwide play a huge variety of online slot games every year. However, it was only in 2016 when the slot game industry began to boom, and this was down to the literal game-changing new slots technology called Megaways.
Megaways is an engine created by Australian development company, Big Time Gaming, that is added to online slot games. The tech uses a random reel modifier technology. This technology incorporates an extra reel to the online slot which adds the possibility of potentially unlimited ways to win. Before the advent of the Megaways engine, slot machines would usually offer a limited number of paylines (usually under 50). But slots fitted with Megaways gives players unlimited paylines to play on. This allows players to play the top Megaways slot games which have the potential to payout up to 50,000x their bet. Thus, online casino gaming is now more popular than ever.
Future Gaming Technology
The future is hard to predict, but the team here at GameSpace does its best to bring you all of the top gaming news before you see it anywhere else. With that being said, if you think we missed out on any details in our guide to the technologies which revolutionized gaming, please get in touch with us.
