15 Video Game Firsts We Take For Granted

1. The First Double Jump

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Those high jumpers? Everyone knows they can only get that high because they've mastered the super-secret technique of the double jump.

Double jumps are probably one of the most ridiculous things in gaming, yet the most common. They make absolutely no sense. Go try it now. Jump in the air, and try and jump again. Fell on your face, did you? Sorry about that.

Thankfully, gravity in gaming doesn't quite work as it does in real life, and the double jump has been used in countless games throughout history to get up those pesky higher ledges.

It originates in 1985 on a little dungeon crawler called Dragon Buster, released originally in arcades, then across several platforms including the NES, MSX and Sharp X68000.

That didn't mean that double jumping in Dragon Buster was easy; it required precision and didn't always like to register the input of the controller, which made actually pulling off the move very difficult. You need to hold up on the joystick to jump, which is just horrendous. Doing it twice? No thanks.

 
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Dan Curtis is approximately one-half videogame knowledge, and the other half inexplicable Geordie accent. He's also one quarter of the Factory Sealed Retro Gaming podcast.