I don’t know about you but I’ve missed cooperative gaming. Back when I was a kid, every other game was coop and those were, by far, my favorite. Yes, I love/loved Zelda but there was something rad about having a sleep over with your best friend and staying up all night playing contra together, despite being told to shut it off at 9 o’clock. Pffff… 9:00 pm… Do giant mutant tortoises stop destroying the city at 9? Oh, they don’t? Well then, I think mankind is counting on us to ignore you, mother.

Let’s take a look back at some of the great Coop games of our youth, just in case anyone forgot just how awesome they were…

The Original Mario Brothers

Battletoads

Double Dragon

Contra


So, I guess I’m saying there was a golden age for cooperative gaming from about the late 80′s to the early 90′s. Then, there was this dry spell. Suddenly it wasn’t cool anymore. There were definitely exceptions to the rule but we began to see less and less coop play and more and more versus/pass and play. This is not to say those game modes along with single player are not fun. I’m just always of the mind that if coop can be implemented, despite the extra dev time, it SHOULD be implemented. Still, we had a lull.

Now, it seems, however, cooperative gaming is seeing a real resurgence. It started slowly with sequels to Halo and then Gears of War. Started building up speed and then, all of a sudden, we have a number of games released with coop as a key component that are INCREDIBLY fun.

- Halo 3

- Gears of War 2

- Monsters

- Left 4 Dead

- Eden

- Left 4 Dead 2

- Trine

- Borderlands


Again, that is only naming a few. So, why this sudden increase in coop gaming? Why is it cool again all of a sudden?

I have a theory. I think theres an ebb and flow to it. Coop gaming is always there, always lurking. It just only gets the spot light every few years. Technology plays a large part. We need the hardware support to have a decent coop experience. Trouble is, innovation crushes what is consistently entertaining. Any new idea causes coop to take a back seat. Lets take the example of the birth of First Person Shooters. With the introduction of FPS gaming, we started to get less and less coop games. Its funny how that worked out considering one of the pioneer games, Doom, had coop right out of the box. Trouble is, innovation is immediately copied by every competitor. Rival companies look at the formula for the game and say A, B, and C elements were what people enjoyed. We need to include those in our game. Cooperative game play never makes that list. Back to the Doom example, from Doom on, we got a bevy of first person perspective games (A), with 3d environments and sprite enemies (B), that had some sort of shotgun (C). Coop is never seen as a priority when push comes to shove and that is a shame.

So what does this mean for those of us who love Coop gaming? Well, my suggestion is soak it up while buddy-soldier (Halo/Gears) and 4-man team (L4D/Borderlands) games are in. Soon they will be out and we’ll start getting only one decent coop game a year instead of five. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

- Squid out