Games which really impressed you with their innovation

[Finsbury Girl]

For me Gauntlet (and better refinded in Gauntlet II) was innovative in that it was a multiplayer game that could be both co-operative and competitive. As you could damage the other players health directly (by shooting them on certain levels) and indirectly (pushing into monsters, shooting food & potions etc). For me that was really ground-breaking and made for some of the best gameplay sessions I've had (even after all of the intervening years!!Gauntlet II for me is one of the best arcade games of all time.

[Team Andromeda]

Some of mine would be

Elite - Maybe one of the 1st games to boast open world gameplay

Halo - The shield and weapon system and the sheer vastness for a console FPS

Exhumed- combining adveture , platform action in to a FPS and then the Team dolls was a sheer work of genius

Panzer Dragoon Zwei - I'm not sure if it was the 1st, but Pandora box was a amazing feature

Mickey Mouse World of Illiuson - One of the 1st games to make Co-op a workable feature

Half Life II - 1st proper use of psychics in games I can really remember

[Widegoat]

Lemmings is certainly one of mine. I remember being compelled by the fact that there were so many potential ways to solve each level.

[speedlolita]

People have mentioned one of them already, but I remember being very impressed by Metal Gear Solid, Vagrant Story and (most of) Front Mission 3, for doing the much of their cutscene/narrative content in the game engine, rather than with pre-rendered sequences.

In addition to that, I loved some of the bizzare features of Metal Gear Solid. Changing controller ports to fight Psycho Mantis, him reading Konami game saves from your memory card, having to look on the back of the packaging for Meryl's codec frequency and the like. The codec frequency thing genuinely threw me as a kid. Got there in the end though.

But yeah, what you're saying is bang on too. I find it to stand up today completely, it's an amazing game.

[Asura]

Another one from me; the intro to Cardfighters Clash on the NeoGeo Pocket Color.

Firstly, it has this 3D effect rotating card, then sampled speech saying "CARD FIGHTERS!" - both of these were pretty big departures from the norm, back-in-the-day.

Also, Saturn Virtua Fighter 2 - it was the first home console 60fps game I ever saw, and, I hoped, the way future games would always be. Teenage me would be disappointed.

But yeah, what you're saying is bang on too. I find it to stand up today completely, it's an amazing game.

I agree; I think it's because it's so consistent, what with the lack of jarring cutscenes that look amazing, followed by gameplay that only looks vaguely similar.

[CMcK]

Also, Saturn Virtua Fighter 2 - it was the first home console 60fps game I ever saw, and, I hoped, the way future games would always be.

I take it you mean 60 fps 3D on a home console? Games on older systems like the MD and SFC were 60 Hz all the time.

[Asura]

I take it you mean 60 fps 3D on a home console? Games on older systems like the MD and SFC were 60 Hz all the time.

Yes, that's what I mean.

[nakamura]

Hz and frame rate are different! On consoles at least!

[speedlolita]

They're different on PC too.

[Cheeseman Battitude]

The AI in Grand Prix 2. Very impressive and decent AI is something that's lacking in modern games with online multiplayer.

[eastyy]

elite 2 on the amiga ....a whole universe on a single floppy disc my mind is still blown about it today

[Kit]

Recentish ones?

Left 4 Dead had the incap system which has literally been stolen by every FPS since. I thought that was true innovation in regards to the co-op experience.

Full body awareness in FEAR - seeing your entire body for the first time in an fps.

Team Fortress 2 with the bow sticking people to walls in multiplayer - don't recall being able to do that in a multiplayer game before that with decent physics.

Mirrors Edge free running in first person mode. Utterly sublime.