They always say Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for what you have.  However, it seems that, really, all we do each year on the fourth Thursday of November is stuff ourselves stupid with turkey.  This year, though, I gave it some thought and realized, I do in fact have a handful of video game related items that I am extremely thankful for and here are the top five contributions the industry has given to me:

Wireless controllers as standard
I remember back in the days of owning my NES, when Acclaim decided to produce and release wireless controllers for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  In fact, I remember two specific things about these abominations:

1)  The commercial for these controllers made them seem really cool when I was about 7-8 years old and has the cheesy '80s, early '90s production everyone expected from that time era.

2)  Just like every other gimmick controller for the NES, they worked about as well as a refrigerator on the sun.  Thirty feet my ass.

When the video game store I worked for a handful of years ago started pushing wireless controllers for the Playstation 2, I wanted no part of it, understandably from my experience with previous wireless "controllers."  However, after one was cracked open in the store and I played around with the 2.4 GHz technology, I was pleasantly surprised and Nintendo's official Wavebirds blew me away (within a couple of months, I owned four).  After the release of this generation's consoles, I'm completely sold on wireless controllers and those pesky wires on items such as my Guitar Hero controller are starting to get a bit of an evil eye from me.  From here, I don't think the technology will ever revert back to wires and sitting back on the couch has never been easier or more satisfying.

Increased concentration of music gaming
Playing DDR used to mean a road trip and hoping no one you knew saw you flailing around on top of arrows but through the early run of the current decade, music gaming became an accepted niche as opposed to a weirdo minority fad.  What initially launched from the 1996 arcade release of MTV's Drumscape soon saw DJ setups in the form of Beatmania, dancing stages in the form of DDR and deluxe cabinets featuring guitars, drums, keyboard, maracas and more began exploding out of Japan - the U.S., not so much.  While Konami never saw the mountain of profit it had in Guitar Freaks, Harmonix and Red Octane took a dive into the deep end with Guitar Hero in 2005 and it completely shook the foundation of music gaming as we know it.

While the craze is beginning to get out of hand with horrible copycat imitations such as Konami's mind-bogglingly terrible Rock Revolution, we're starting to see a few chances in other areas, brining excellent titles such as DJ Max and Rhythm Heaven, which would probably otherwise never see the light of day in the States.  The independent scene has also seen the window of opportunity, bringing us a number of free, online flash titles and technical masterpieces such as Audiosurf on the PC.  Not only has music gaming surged gaming itself, however, the music industry has been bolstered higher than ever with musicians pulling in more money from game royalties than their albums themselves.  Smaller, cheaper dowloadable titles have been commonplace as well and with downloadable content, technically, a music game can now be played infinitely as long as you have the money to do so.

Downloadable games and content
Honestly, one of my favorite features of the Xbox 360 is the Xbox Live Arcade feature.  Instead of dropping $60 per game for a title I most likely won't have time to finish and fully enjoy, I can pay $5-10 bucks for a game I can come back to now and again and only spend 15 minutes on if I choose.  The convenience is there and services such as Virtual Console give players a myriad of unique, classic titles (well, they're deep in a sea of other crap, but they're there) that give newer game players a chance to relive some retro magic.

Not only can I now download entire games, though, I can download content that extends the playability of my retail titles.  While, honestly, most DLC add-ons are cheap cash-ins to rip another few bucks away from players, a developer has to make a buck somehow, and I don't blame them.  I'm not sure why Microsoft choose to make $5 equate to 400 points, but that's a mystery for another day and, regardless, I always try to have 1600 of the buggers onhand for when something I want hits the service.

The power of a console in a handheld
I loved my original Game Boy to death, but, man, that system was a chore to play at times.  The blur of moving Mario across the screen and poor lighting conditions never really turned me away from the system and stop playing it, but the technology pales in comparison to what players have today.  Even non-retail units such as Game Park machines are literally computers running inside of a tiny, compact shell and the Sony PSP can give players near Playstation 2 experiences on the go.  Now, instead of blowing through a portable cart in half an hour in the car, portable gaming has given us experiences that last months as well as ones we want to play even if weren't not on the road.

While the casual appeal of the Nintendo DS has brought a glut of poor-quality titles to the system, that same appeal has brought more people into gaming than ever before and has put Nintendo back on the map, so to say.  The full experiences portables now bring us are launching game genres such as first-person shooters, music games and survival horror, which were previously not even conceivable on a system such as the Game Boy.  It will be interesting to see where portable gaming goes from here as, much like the previous generation's console versus arcade superiority, we may soon see the point where line is blurred between portable and console experiences.

Increase in budget-priced game launches
Even though the Playstation 2 is finally starting to lose some of its spark, it's still easily one of my favorite systems to pick up new games for.  Not only is it seeing a number of deliciously niche titles, nearly all of them are launching at $19.99 or less and my wallet couldn't be happier.  I can pick up most of SNK-Playmore's library for $10 brand new and finally having games such as King of Fighters and Neo-Geo Battle Colosseum in my home has made me quite the happy camper.  While some game titles keep developers in wraps for a year or more there are thankfully those publishers who can pitch a game out much faster, whether it be through design or just a mere language translation, and pitch a lower price to the consumer.

Budget pricing is a nice strategy which entices purchases from consumers who normally wouldn't purchase the game at a full $50-60 so it does benefit more than just the gamers and with a number of casual titles releasing at low prices, more people are buying games than ever before.  While the price point can help a number of people, though, I have to admit I'm a bit selfish.  All that matters to me is I'm saving money.

All that typing has made me hungry - where's the turkey?

Happy Holidays everyone!