Written by OMGLists_Team

Before this generation, gaming gave us quite a bit of pain to suffer through before enjoying the pleasure. Nowadays, it seems as though we’re being served everything we wished for on a silver platter. Here’s seven new advances in gaming that have made us happier, yet lazier.

7- Open Worlds

Back in the 2D era, games would be filled with interesting backgrounds you never could quite reach. Knowing our car, no matter how well we raced it, would never get to that theme park in the distance, or that those gigantic blue mountains in Super Mario World were never going to be traversed kinda took the wind out of our sails. While there are still barriers and deceptive backgrounds being used in games today, there are quite a few games that let us explore every nook and cranny of gigantic virtual worlds. Now how about letting us bust down doors instead of searching for stupid keys?!

6- Online Matchmaking

The history of multiplayer gaming goes as such–early gamers had to suffer through actual interaction with friends, most of which played at a much different profieciency level as you. Fast forward a few years to the dawn of internet gaming; back then most people had dial-up internet connections and the process of playing a game online went something like this: Call friend on the land-line to make sure they’re in the game. Hang up phone right before attempting to connect. After waiting ten minutes for them to show up in the waiting room we’d disconnect and call them to find out what happened. When we finally were succesful, we’d have to quit because our mom needed the phone. These days all we really need to do is push about three buttons and we’re automatically connected with 15 other players of similar skill in a lag-free, high-speed deathmatch. The best part? We don’t even have to look at them.

5- Console Based Web Browsing

While surfing the net on a gaming console or portable still can’t beat the simplicity of firing it up on your PC, it’s easy to tell the industry has already plotted a course that will place the console at the center of our internet life. The beauty of having an internet browser on a game console at this point in time is that there is almost no chance that anyone unfamiliar with gaming will come across our seedy browsing history or our download queue filled with weeks and weeks of porn. Thank God for modern technology. The downside is that while parents are now less likely to learn of your porn addiction, siblings are more likely to become suspicious when their downloaded games get erased.

4- Roster Updates

For hardcore sports-fans, every sports title is plagued with the industry’s version of Original Sin: outdated rosters. Back in the 16-32-64-bit days, our only recourse was to spend hours making trades and creating players so we could have your home team as accurate as possible. Still, we could never quite replicate the schlub our team called up from Triple-A. Thankfully, developers have made a modicum of effort to keep teams modern, if only to ensure a level playing field online. Those efforts usually die down around the time the next year’s version rolls around, but hey, any progress is good.

3- Easy Saving

With larger hard drives at our beck and call, saving has become a snap– if a game isn’t saving its progress for us, it’s allowing us to save wherever and whenever we damn well please. Why only a short time ago, we had to trudge for hours, uphill, in a blizzard, just to reach a save point. If we died before reaching a save point, that was it, and the resulting heartbreak often caused us to completely give up on a game. Even this save-point process was a luxury compared to the days where there was no such thing as saving. In those days we’d just leave the console running for weeks on end.

2- Downloadable Games

We’re ready for the revolution, America. Why are we still visiting retail locations to purchase products?! Okay, granted, we’ll buy the big products like the Hey, Lo and the Rocking Band at stores, but we’re ready to buy the big games from the comfort of our couch. Warhawk, Tekken, Geometry Wars, and every single NES and Genesis game we valued as a youth?! Yes, give us a credit card form, and we’ll enter our most vital info toute suite.

1- Wireless Controllers

What a hassle it was having wired controllers. After spending thirty-minutes unravelling cords we still had to worry about people or dogs running between us a the television. Modern wireless controllers make playing the video games of the past seem more like chores than fun. Nowadays we don’t even have to get up to turn the system on – removing the last 1% of physcial activity involved in gaming. Every gamer’s dream of beginning and ending a gaming marathon without engaging in physical locomotion has come true.

This list was created by OMGList writers Dave Rudden and Ben Karl.