10 "Firsts" That Changed Video Games Forever

First: Quake II (1997)

PC Gaming has come a long way in a considerably short amount of time, and continues to offer the most diverse, varied gaming experience possible, allowing players to customise nearly everything about the experience, from control preferences to graphical amendments. Still, there are several constants that never seem to change, one of those being the default keyboard controls responsible for character movement, which are pretty much always W, A, S and D.

Surprisingly – well, surprisingly for anyone under the age of thirty – WASD wasn’t always the default keyboard controls for computer games. In fact, Quake II was the first game to implement the configuration, the vast majority of previous games defaulting to arrow keys, and permitting the use of WASD only as a secondary option – one which many players ignored, or weren’t even aware existed.

Since Quake II, WASD + Mouse has become the standard, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Honestly, it’s difficult to imagine using anything else, but prior to 1997, it just wasn’t the norm.