10 Nintendo Gaming Innovations That Changed Everything

5. Four Player Multiplayer

Any gamer of a certain age probably remembers Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 with a rose-tinted fondness. It might be ugly as sin and handle like a large jet now, but in the '90s this was the height of first person shooters.

Those who played it will certainly remember the multiplayer mode; from the frustration of being shot with the Golden Gun by Oddjob to the brilliance of the Facility map, everyone will have their own memories. This was all made possible by the four controller ports on the front of the console. Before the release of the N64 most consoles had just two controller ports as standard. Games like Goldeneye, Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros and WWF No Mercy proved that while gaming may have been a largely solitary experience in the past, people wanted to play together. The current era of online mass multiplayer owes a lot to Nintendo's realisation of the importance of multiplayer.