online access), it was a no-brainer for developers to explore this mysterious new realm.Īs we tipped into the new millennium, even on consoles the momentum was shifting towards online multiplayer.
Online gaming felt like the future, and given that PC came pre-baked with all the requisite hardware for it (i.e. Of course, we know now that online play can’t possibly recreate the joy and immediacy of playing alongside friends, but at the time this was trailblazing stuff. Games like Quake (1996) and Ultima Online (1997) suddenly made the idea of chopping your screen up into quarters to play with a few friends look a little primitive when you could play alongside dozens or even thousands simultaneously.
And while there was a cozy kind of fun to playing four-player Liero or two-player Super Street Fighter II Turbo and getting territorial about other players’ pinkies encroaching onto your side of the keyboard, the PC clearly wasn’t fit for multiplayer purpose.Īnd it wouldn’t really need to be, because in the latter half of the 90s the PC pulled off its greatest multiplayer trick - online gaming. Microsoft’s original SideWinder gamepad launched back in 1995 (Image credit: Microsoft)Īlternatively, you could just assign two players to separate corners of the keyboard.
