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Gaming's Greatest Generation

Posted by Zonk on from the sacrificed-so-you-don't-have-to dept.

The Escapist has an article up discussing what they refer to as The Greatest Generation of Games, ala the people who fought in World War II. From the article: "The decade between the Fall of Atari and the Rise of Doom was a dark age for many gaming companies, as wave after wave perished in an onslaught of returns and red ink. Arcade gaming vanished, seemingly, overnight. Computer gaming seemed like it was going to be relegated to geeks; console gaming, to children. But just as modern society was birthed only after the fall of Rome swept away Antiquity, so, too, modern gaming was born from the ashes of the Golden Age, with products from upstart companies like Nintendo, Sega, and Electronic Arts."

30 comments

  1. Too early? by OK+PC · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think its a bit early to start talking about the greatest generation, as gaming is a relatively new medium when compared to film, music and literature. Surely the greatest generation will come when gaming is seen as an equal to those?

    --
    Did you get that thing I sent ya?
    1. Re:Too early? by FidelCatsro · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I really do hope there will never be a greatest generation in regards to gaming... or in fact anything.
      A greatest means that it will all be downhill from there.
      Evolution of the medium is a wonderful thing and will hopefully continue as long as gaming exists .
      there will be high and low points as with anything , but i hope that the next low point will be better than the high point of say 10 years ago.

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
  2. bah by nomadic · · Score: 1

    Computer gaming seemed like it was going to be relegated to geeks

    Then maybe computer games would today be a lot better if it had stayed that way. The REAL "golden age" of gaming was the late 80s/early 90s, before Doom did to gaming what the blockbuster mentality had done to movies previously. Ultima 5, Ultima 6, Wasteland, Pirates, Civilization, Monkey Island, the list goes on.

  3. hmmm by Rabid_Llama · · Score: 0

    i think we need a renaissance.

  4. Erm what? by Turn-X+Alphonse · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I read the Escapist every week but please. It's a good way to waste an hour or two, but this article is not news worthy at all. It's a look back to the age a guy things was better.

    Why wasn't the article on the "homeless gamers" posted here instead? It seems closer to the mentality of many gamers(including myself) today. Go and check it out if you haven't.

    Right now the magazine needs a lot of work (AKA needs more people writing intresting things not just ranting on how yesterday was better, or they have boobs, or whatever minority group wants a whine for a while). Still it's worth keeping an eye on it, every week theres usually one or two articles I want to read (just a note to people, if you sign up to the subscription they will send you an e-mail when the extended edition is out, which is usually 2 more articles on a Friday), but it's nothing ground breaking. It'll bring back a couple of memories, maybe make you smile once ortwice. Make you want to pick up an old genre or game you left. It won't on the other hand insprie you to do much more..

    --
    I like muppets.
  5. Pedantically correcting info by FromWithin · · Score: 2, Informative

    What a ridiculously short article. I'd argue that gaming on the ST and Amiga was far more influential to games today (many developers these days established themselves on those machines).

    But anyway:
    "KQIV was the first adventure game to feature a female hero"

    Plundered Hearts by Infocom predates this with a female hero. It was released in 1987.

    Bah. Humbug and all that. I'm in a miserable mood today. Sorry.

    1. Re:Pedantically correcting info by nomadic · · Score: 1

      Plundered Hearts by Infocom predates this with a female hero. It was released in 1987.

      Oh such a fun game. I couldn't actually play it like you were supposed to be because I spent all my time trying to either get her naked or seduce the serving wench. Couldn't go all the way on either front, unfortunately. Anyway I probably would have felt squicky if I'd actually gotten to the end of the game and gotten together with the male lead.

    2. Re:Pedantically correcting info by cornface · · Score: 2, Funny

      Oh such a fun game. I couldn't actually play it like you were supposed to be because I spent all my time trying to either get her naked or seduce the serving wench.

      Kings Quest III and it's chamber pot provided me with hilarious, yet pathetically sad, hours of entertainment.

      "Drink pot."

      "Eat pot."

      "Wear pot as hat."

      "Smell pot."

      "Use pot." (hey that one's not a bad idea...)

  6. FPS!? by gameboyhippo · · Score: 1

    First person shooter is not the difinitive genre in my opinion. In the 8 & 16 bit days, it was the platformer. In the pre NES days it was the arcade like game. After that, there seemed to be no definitive genre.

    1. Re:FPS!? by I_Human · · Score: 1

      Pretty much how I felt too. For me the definite genre of the 1990's was the RPG (Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, FF, etc).

      --
      -JP
  7. Lack of Diversity? by DrHac · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From the article: "Doom brought us the first-person shooter (the definitive genre of the modern era)"

    I've never been a fan FPSs. The assertion that FPSs are "the definitive genre of the modern era" is rather unfounded. Perhaps every couple of years or so an FPS does something original but aren't they all otherwise very much the same? To define the modern era of gaming by such things makes me wonder what we can look forward to.

    This article is one guy's PoV and very little more.

    1. Re:Lack of Diversity? by DingerX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, Doom was a turning-point for a lot of things, but the reasons shift with perspective.

      At the time, Doom demonstrated the power of the internet as a distribution system, and the relevance of what today would be called "Independent games". Here was a company with no distributor, making a game that turned heads and dropped jaws.

      With a little perspective, we realize that Doom came out about the time the Amiga and Atari ST had ceased to be commercially viable game platforms -- we were seeing titles for them into 91, maybe 92, but that was it. By 93, if you had a personal computer, it was either an intel-based machine (usually running DOS), or a Mac. Suddenly, DOS became what it never was in the preceding decade: the primary platform for PC-based games.

      And, God yes, most of the stuff released in the "Golden Age" alluded to there was crap; most of it was industrial crap, mass-produced for a market.

      And, yeah, everyone has their own masturbatory history of video games, and their own lists of "most influential". Most of their work is based on memory and sweet nostalgia.

      BTW, the Earl Weaver Baseball article is pretty cool, and brought back some fine bits of Nostalgia.

    2. Re:Lack of Diversity? by Torgo's+Pizza · · Score: 1

      > At the time, Doom demonstrated the power of the internet as a distribution system

      Far from it. Doom was distributed primarily as Shareware disks in magazines or passed around from friend to friend. Only a small percentage of people obtained Doom from small world the Internet was at the time.

      If anything Doom only showed that the *shareware* distribution system established by Apogee and iD Software was a viable means of distributing software.

  8. Here we go again.. by CheechWizz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm getting sick of all these 'gaming used to be much better' articles because it's just not true.

    While I love classic games, I still play alot of my old favourites from all sorts of different platforms but only classics, It seems alot of people mistake old for classic. Just take a stroll through the library of any console, new or old, and you'll find that 90% of the titles are crap. It's those 10% of really good, inventive games that survive the test of time and still get played today - they're basically the reason gaming is fun.

    Also the idea that today the good, fun inventive titles don't get made anymore is utter nonsense they still make up that 10% and they're the reason I'm still gaming.

    1. Re:Here we go again.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      While what you said is mostly true of console games, the same can not be said for arcade games. There were a ton of excellent arcade games in the 1979-1988 (less so after '85) range.

      That was the true golden age. Everything was new and the games were fun (they still are actually).

      Computers and consoles took over after 1985 and there were some fun things there on the computer side (noteably the longer games, fantasy/adventure games like the SSI titles, Ultima, Bard's Tale). I have never cared for consoles much. I hated my 2600 when it was new because it couldn't match the arcade and I hated later consoles because they couldn't match the computer stuff.

      The later 80's and early 90's were absolute shit. Then Doom came out rushing in the era of FPS games which was no longer fun after the Quake2/Half-life time frame. Which brings us to the current generation of crap. Consoles still suck and computer games are lame because all the money is going into crap console stuff.

      So right now pretty much all I play is the original arcade games on my arcade cabinet that I built. Including some newer games like DDR on the DDR stage that I built.

    2. Re:Here we go again.. by CheechWizz · · Score: 1

      I disagree, even in the 79-88 period most of arcade games were crap, I'll admit that 90% is probably to much when it comes to arcades but still. You seem to forget the endless stream clones of pacman, space invaders, or some other succesful game, and these clones made up the majority of the available titles.

      And there's plenty of good stuff going on now, great upcoming console titles like 'shadow of the collosus' or 'okami'(the first ones to spring to mind but there are plenty more).

      Bottom line is that just like any other form of entertainment the truely great titles are few and far between.

    3. Re:Here we go again.. by superpulpsicle · · Score: 1

      Games nowadays are harder and more frustrating at times... but overall there are a ton of quality games to buy.

      I remember in the early/mid 90s when Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter was the best in store. That was it, I wasn't interested in anything else. It was sad thinking these were the last 2 games I would ever play.

    4. Re:Here we go again.. by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      I agree. I bought a "C64 classix" compilation, 500 C64 games, so many awful ones...

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    5. Re:Here we go again.. by dreamquick · · Score: 1

      I'm getting sick of all these opinion pieces /. keeps linking to by the Escapist and 1up.

      Seriously, Zonk, buy a new f***ing subscription, I'm tired of you getting most of your gaming fix from those two sites.

  9. I'm not going to trust any article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That describes Nintendo as an upstart video game company.

  10. Or... by MilenCent · · Score: 1

    Miss. Pac. Man.

  11. damn you Escapist by andy_fish · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Well, as long as we're going to post every single Escapist artile on slashdot, can we talk about their horrible, and almost criminal, abuse of HTML? Watch what happens when you make the window too small (and try scrolling). Watch what happens when you try to select a block of text. PLEASE, STOP THE MADNESS

    --
    & I wish I knew the password to your heart . . . &
  12. Am I the only one... by toiletsalmon · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one that thinks these "gamer publications" are getting a little too self important?

    I mean these are just GAMES after all. Right?

    Or am I just not an U83r-1337 LOLLERSKATER???

    To me, this just smacks of people who don't have real lives and/or real jobs...

    Where's the INSIGHT?

  13. What about X-Wing? by smaffei · · Score: 1

    No mention whatsoever. Now, if that wasn't a high water mark for the gaming industry circa 1993, I don't what was.

    --
    Sure, Windows PCs dominate the market. But so do cheap toupees.
  14. Sooo..... by tuxedobob · · Score: 1

    Where's the rest of the article?

    1. Re:Sooo..... by hapwned · · Score: 1

      "Next" button at bottom of screen...

    2. Re:Sooo..... by tuxedobob · · Score: 1

      Ah, the button that was not on my screen because my browser window is less than what they assumed!

      Gotta love bad web design.

  15. wuh? by Lynxara · · Score: 1

    This is pretty disappointing material from The Escapist. Their analysis is usually a lot closer to the mark and I've definitely come to expect better research from them. A lot of the assertions they're making about the industry's history here just aren't true, and have been debunked. Did the author just use fansites for his sources or something?