Same here.. I didn't watch the whole thing but everybody tends to think Shen Mue and the like when really it was Dragons Lair and Space Ace just to name a few from 20 years prior. And I dunno, that was pretty badass to play in the arcade, even though you were just watching an interactive cartoon. But for context it was a freeplay arcade that you payed a few bucks to get into and stay until your mom picked you up.

So I guess I don't see anything inherently wrong QTE, but yeah, every NES game I played had an instruction manual, which you could read, or not. And I never read them, so it was self-taught, kind of like typing on the keyboard. I can play SNES and type without looking at the keys but I couldn't tell you which buttton is X on the X Box any more than I can tell you who the fifth president of the United States was. I might have heard it before, and it was probably repeated to me, but it didn't sink in.

Dragons Lair and Space Ace were different, though. In both cases, the entire game was like that, and the crap gameplay was forgivable, because the animated style was so radically beyond anything else seen at the time, and because the games themselves actually did involve a bit of skill and problem solving - their on-screen prompts weren't as immersion-killing, and the scenes were randomized, so you had to stay on your toes.

They were also sort of shitty games.

AFAIK, Shenmue was the first "game" to use QTEs as they are now known - as an excellent way to ruin otherwise fun games, by removing player agency in favour of obnoxious cutscenes.

Halo 3 changed the way AAA games are made by data-mining focus testing of the game to smooth down every bump in the road players may face:

http://archive.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/15-09/f f_halo?currentPage=all

That was the Genesis of the modern approach to gaming. Makes it accessible, and when balanced right it can work.

I do like Arkham Knight's approach - if you keep getting hit by something it reminds you of the button prompt to counter it, which is useful when there's 6+ different counters needed, but otherwise it leaves you alone.

Apropos of nothing, Mario did execute the spin jump with NES controls. In Super Mario Land 2 for the Game Boy you do it by holding down as you jump when you're Big Mario.

Also Dragon's Lair and Space Ace didn't prompt you with the buttons to push. If they had they'd have been MUCH easier games.

"No one's gonna get caught up in DDR?" Tell that to my shiny metal platform!

I dunno, I don't really game very much. I have Borderlands 2 and Fallout New Vegas, and I got stuck in New Vegas so bad that I couldn't get out. It was my own fault but I had to start all over. And BL2 holds your hand more, which is fine with me!

And you really can trace the prompting all the way back to Zork if you wanted to, or any PC RPG from around that time. I mean, I loved Shadow of the Colossus but taking down something that size like God of War is kind of Peanuts, so you might as well make it a minute long and get on with the game. And speaking of that game, I still never beat it.

I was never big into video games. The few games I ever remember really enjoying were Street Fighter 2 and its various incarnations, GTA Vice City, Doom, Goldeneye, and Super Mario World.

I don't know what that adds to the discussion either. Just putting it out there.

Vice City has to be my favorite though. Super Mario World is a close second.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for the N64 was also a minor hit with me.

I can't stand this "two guys pretend to have a conversation which is clearly scripted" video format, but they're completely right here.

At least COD's gratuitous use of Kevin Spacey can immerse me in a pretend story I make up as I go, where the whole game is a lost season of House of Cards. Vice President Underwood! What are you doing at my friend's funeral? Press A to break the fourth wall and make a soliloquy about government corruption while eating ribs

Nobody ever made a better video game than Tetris.