It's easy to play modern games and forget where it all came from. While there have been some truly groundbreaking games in recent years, most ideas we see now have been around longer than we really noticed.
Usually the first game to use an idea isn't remembered as the best game to use that idea.
You're probably familiar with some or even all of the games on this list. Even if you are, you might have forgotten about features that we take for granted now that were on display much earlier than you remember.
1. Phantasy Star Online
Playing games online is something we do without a second thought these days, but it wasn't always this easy. When the Dreamcast was released in 1998 (1999 in the west), it was the first game console to heavily focus on online play.
Phantasy Star Online was an online action RPG that owed as much to Diablo as it did previous entries in the Phantasy Star series, and it influenced games like Monster Hunter that continue to prove massively popular to this day.
2. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
Though it launched after the Dreamcast, Sony's PlayStation 2 wasn't internet-enabled at launch. Instead, it later got support for online gaming via a broadband adapter peripheral.
That didn't stop Neversoft from adding online play to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 before Sony's broadband adapter was even released. Instead it supported multiple third-party adapters (as well as Sony's) and was the first online game to launch on the PS2.
3. System Shock
System Shock was released in 1994, the same year as Doom II. While the latter retained the same simple action-focused gameplay as the first Doom game, System Shock was a massive step forward.
The game had you reading emails to figure out what had happened, taking cover during combat, and managing inventory. These are all fairly common in shooters now, but they certainly weren't in 1994.
4. Metal Gear Solid
There were story-focused games before Metal Gear Solid, but the vast majority of them were RPGs. This was one of the first games to take that type of storytelling and blend it into an action game.
You could argue that this was a bad thing, considering the number of games that spend a large amount of time telling a story that doesn't really need telling, but Metal Gear Solid still deserves credit where it's due.
5. Ultima VII
Ultima VII was released in 1992 and is still hailed by many as one of the best RPGs ever made.
The earlier Ultima games were equally important in many ways, but the seventh installment is the first in the series that wouldn't feel seriously unwieldy to play for first-timers right now.
The series is especially known for its NPCs, which have their own schedules and will even react to you killing other characters. Remember, this was 1992.
6. Shenmue
Open world games sort of existed before Shenmue, but the world had never seen anything quite like it.
Plenty of games that have come since from the Grand Theft Auto games to the more similar Yakuza series owe Shenmue a major debt. Maybe it even inspired you to want to go to Japan.
7. Dune II
When you think of seminal real-time strategy games, you probably think of Warcraft, Starcraft, or Command &Conquer.
Before all of those came Dune II. Developed by Westwood, who would later develop the Command & Conquer series, Dune II was essentially the game that created the RTS genre.
8. Perfect Dark
Yes, Rare's Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 was the game that nearly single-handedly popularized the console first-person shooter, but its follow-up was an even bigger step forward.
Perfect Dark was one of the most technologically advanced Nintendo 64 games, but its sheer variety of multiplayer modes and settings were what made it so ahead of its time.
And unlike Goldeneye, it had bots so you could still play the multiplayer modes even if your friends were busy.
9. Eternal Darkness
Sure, Metal Gear Solid had a character that could move your Dual Shock controller and tell what other Konami games you were playing, but Eternal Darkness took this idea and ran with it.
This is a game that would convince you it was deleting your save or that the game was crashing. In 2002, that was mind blowing stuff, and it's something that we haven't seen used much since, which raises the question: Why not?
10. Kill.Switch
When Gears of War came along for the Xbox 360, it seemed to do things no third-person shooter had never done before. This was largely true, except in the case of Kill.Switch.
This was a cover-based shooter that even included blind firing, released for the PlayStation 2 in 2003, three years before Gears of War. Designer Cliff Bleszinski even named Kill.Switch directly as inspiration for Epic's massively popular series.