9 Video Game Innovations That Happened Earlier Than You Think

7. GPS Tracking & AR Gameplay - NOT Pokémon GO

Actually: Ingress

That first Summer with Augmented Reality game Pokémon GO making Pikachus and Charmanders show up down your local park was a magical time in our collective gaming past. Sadly, developers Niantic couldn't maintain server load and although Pokémon GO is for my money, the best Pokémon experience ever to this day, the whole ordeal gets referred to as a flash-in-the-pan experiment that few managed to carry forward.

All that said, many were screaming during Pokémon GO's rise to prominence that it had all happened before, and that there was another game - Ingress - that deserved some love.

Turned out, Niantic's own Ingress in 2012 had covered a lot of the same core ground as Pokémon GO, game-ifying Google Map data and letting players work together to unlock various rewards and features.

The tech developed for this title would form the basis for Niantic's pitch to Nintendo about doing a Pokémon-style take on what they'd created, yet if you ask someone to name a popular AR game today, it'll almost always be Pokémon GO.