Everyone wants to pet the dog in video games. That desire led to the creation of a wildly popular Twitter account (back when the site was still called that and was useful for more than being called slurs), which itself made dog-petting a point of pride among developers. But way before it became a sought-after feature and a social media phenomenon, a wave of games made petting the dog the whole point of playing, and one of the best to ever do it was a perfectly named Nintendo game.
You only need to hear the title Nintendogs to know exactly what it is. Released on April 21, 2005, Nintendogs gave the Nintendo DS a virtual pet simulator and may have had more of an impact on the console’s success than it tends to get credit for.
