The Ten Greatest Years in Gaming

Ground Glass writes "Next Generation has posted an abbreviated version of gaming's history by only chronicling the high points - the ten best years in the history of the medium. While it doesn't cover 1998 (and therefore forgets the birthdays of Half-Life, Starcraft, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time), most of the memorable moments are there. What was your best year for gaming?"

Comments

Link dead already

[Cinnamon Whirl]

Fast work guys. Nice!

Re:Link dead already

[Robmonster]

http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/222733443c847e741 a8f3b197b4aa059/index.html

Re:Link dead already

[pneumatus]

Corel Cache version also available here

Re:Link dead already

[Anonymous Coward]

Mirrordot should die if they don't get serious about caching articles. They don't cache images, and only cache the first page of an article, which is useless on the case of this article, and many others.

You would do better to recommend Coral Cache

Re:Link dead already

[Vo0k]

Nope, they just forgot to mention him. He'll be back in the new Zelda for Wii.

Re:Link dead already

[InsaneLampshade]

Aww... the grandparent got my hopes up for nothing. T_T

Re:Link dead already

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

Coral Cache should die if the don't get serious about using port 80 so I (and most people at work) can see TFA!!!

1972

[mccalli]

Well, they got 1972 right. 28th January, 1972 - happy birthday to me! I really couldn't have played a thing without 1972...

Cheers,
Ian

Re:1972

[bohemian72]

I got 18 days on you.... whippersnapper!

Re:1972

[paro12]

Actually, you couldn't have played a thing without 1971 ... well unless your parents are freaks of nature and your mother popped you out in 27 days

That would be a record (not to mention make the entirety of the female population jealous of your mother)

Re:1972

[Chris Burke]

Well, they got 1972 right. 28th January, 1972 - happy birthday to me! I really couldn't have played a thing without 1972...

Not true. Without 1972, you would have been born in 1973, and everyone would be scratching there heads over why the calendar skipped a year. Bartenders would have been pissed, to be sure.

ironic domain name

[The Mighty Buzzard]

If the next generation of web hosts get slashdotted as quickly as this one, we're in trouble.

Re:ironic domain name

[Rob T Firefly]

Slashdotted off the Games section, no less. That's like being a super-villain with the Superfriends after you, and being busted by Marvin and Wendy instead of Superman and Batman.

Re:ironic domain name

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, that made my day

Re:ironic domain name

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be relevant last year. Nowadays, every article is posted on the main page.

Re:ironic domain name

[drinkypoo]

This would be relevant last year. Nowadays, every article is posted on the main page.

AFAIK you don't have to see them; I'm certain you don't have to click on them.

1993-1994

[unity100]

Those were the best years. Innovation, new ideas, great titles, content, gameplay were king. Star Control 2, Indiana Jones and the fate of atlantis, Aces Of Pacific, and many more.

Re:1993-1994

[epiphani]

I have to go with 1996-1997. Simply because of Final Fantasy VII. That game revolutionized the industry, made the playstation a true contender, and has haunted my dreams ever since.

Re:1993-1994

[arivanov]

The entire article is a load of utter garbage.

It follows mostly console development and visual development and is severely biased towards shoot-em-up retards and their taste. The other branches of game genealogy are not followed at all.

It does not mention Rogue-to-Nethack and dungeon exploration games of old, Larry, Civilisation series, Sims to name a few.

The apogee of quests games does not even get an honourable one-liner. Neither does the original Castle Wolfenstein.

Yuck...

Re:1993-1994

[Evanisincontrol]

...Final Fantasy VII. That game revolutionized the industry...

Cue the FF7 Vs. FF3 Vs. I-HATE-ALL-SQAUREZ flamewar.

Re:1993-1994

[hkgroove]

Add in 1995 (or was it 96) for Goldeneye.

Re:1993-1994

[Jugalator]

Agreed these are good years, especially for adventure gaming. :-)

Also...
- Day of the Tentacle, 1993
- Sam & Max, 1993
- Legend of Kyrandia, 1992-1994
- Simon the Sorcerer, 1993
- Myst, 1993

But not just that genre, how about:
- DOOM
- X-Wing
- Pirates!
- Syndicate ( I hope you didn't miss this one! :-) )
- X-COM
- Frontier: Elite 2 (some purists didn't like it, but I did)

A funny aspect of this is that these games look pretty old and bland in effects and such things, but then you consider Jurassic Park with its realistic dinosaurs and breakthrough in CGI was also done in 1993 and the mind boggles a bit.

Re:1993-1994

[PFI_Optix]

That game lost me when I realized that there were hordes of Russian troops with indestructible helmets.

Put the game in paintball mode and fire up whatever the mission was in the graveyard. I remember it's got an endless flow of these guys. Just keep shooting their helmets...you can dump hundreds of rounds into one soldier and not kill him.

That and Goldeneye introduced me to what really sucks about FPS on consoles: split screen.

Re:1993-1994

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Where's the FFIV love? :-(

Re:1993-1994

[Mprx]

Being the least bad FPS on a failed console is not a notable achievement. Terrible frame rate, unwieldy controls, and far inferior to what was available on PCs at the time.

Re:1993-1994

[Gulthek]

Palum and Porum gave their lives, their lives dammit! Only to be forgotten and ursuped by lesser pretenders in a crappy story on a crappy system with a crappy reliance on FMV sequences (yeah, I'm looking at you FFVII).

I see FFVII as the end of the Final Fantasy series.

Re:1993-1994

[ShibaInu]

See, this is the problem game companies have. Goldeneye was a freaking fun game. But, MR PC FPS here thinks that no matter what the game play was like, if it didn't show 100+ frames per second, have 4x anti-aliasing, etc., it sucked.

Thus, creativity in gaming is now measured exclusively by how many frames you can push, how many polygons you can render and how it looks. Yes, for those that complain about the game market, just remember, we've made it that way.

Re:1993-1994

[unity100]

All of these games i played, and still have.

What about Star Control 2 ? Did you miss it ?

By far, it is the BEST game i have ever played on the face of this world. And i played a many.

Re:1993-1994

[Alexandra Erenhart]

I agree with you. After FFVII, the games never made me feel the same. So I stop counting at 7. And I'm happy with it. I loved FFVII and all the previous ones. My best gamer year? 1999, when I got my copy of Zelda OoT. It made my Zelda fanaticism awaken from its slumber.

Re:1993-1994

[MaestroSartori]

FF7 didn't revolutionize the industry. It's arguable whether it should have - I'm not a fan, and am glad other RPGs have mostly stayed away from it's style and gameplay mechanics. It did do the PlayStation a world of good though, that's true!

Re:1993-1994

[Anonymous Coward]

The release of Final Fantasy VII did mark something, but it wasn't a great milestone. It marked the end of games being created for gameplay and the start of games being made for graphics.

Prior to FF7, the emphasis was on changes to the story and improvements to the battle system. Starting with FF7, that all changed. Originally Squaresoft was considering/working on a Final Fantasy game for the N64 - it's unclear how far it got, but Squaresoft was, traditionally, a Nintendo developer. That changed with FF7, because while the N64 was graphically superior to the PlayStation, it didn't have the FMV support that the PS had.

If that last sentence doesn't sound completely ass-backwards to you, you need your head checked. Squaresoft declined to use the technically superior console in favor of the one that let them play movies. Great games are not played based on movies. They're based on gameplay.

Instead of improving gameplay, they improved the graphics aspect, creating large graphical cutscenes. They destroyed the character advancement system, making all characters essentially identical, based on skills you could move between characters.

1996-1997 has to go down as the worst year in gaming, because it marked the devolution of games from being about the gameplay to being about the graphics and sound. Prior to FF7, the Final Fantasy games were about challenging gameplay and interesting stories. Starting with FF7, they became videos with brief periods of gameplay added in. And seeing Squaresoft's success in impressing people with pretty pictures, the entire industry became infatuated with graphics.

Re:1993-1994

[SpecTheIntro]

Right here, man. FFIV for life. It's not the best Final Fantasy, but it's by far my favorite, and it always will be.

Re:1993-1994

[Stormwatch]

Not that I dislike Square, far from it, but I think everyone should play Panzer Dragoon Saga and learn a very different style. Whereas Square makes very long and detailed RPGs, Team Andromeda made a short but absurdely intense one.

Re:1993-1994

[Sepper]

What about Star Control 2 ? Did you miss it ?

I really missed it... That why i've installed it: http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

don't forget to *enjoy the sauce*!

Re:1993-1994

[Neoprofin]

I like how movable materia equiped on characters with inherent strengths and weaknesses is seen as "destroying characer developement". Can you make Barret your theif? Yes. Will he be any good at it? Not a snowballs chance in hell. It makes pretty decent sense if you think about it, anybody is free to try whatever they want as far as magic and abilities are concerned, but some are better than others. I know most people never bothered to look at the characters actual stats, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I fully agree though that the series has jumped the shark, but even as much as I hated 8 and 9 I don't think it really became obvious until 10 and 10-2 (aka FF:Wonderyears and FF:Pretty Pretty Princess)that the FF license was about cashing in for every penny it's worth and providing unessessary graphics instead of a decent storyline and likeable characters.

Re:1993-1994

[StarvingSE]

What was so different that made Goldeneye especially fun? The weapons were boring, and the level design is a throwback to wolfenstein.

On the PC, we had quake: awsome level design, fun weapons, and LAN play (splitscreen sucks).

Re:1993-1994

[unity100]

cool. i still play it through the original pc version through emus, despite uqm has options to emulate pc version in full.

Re:1993-1994

[MrMonty]

The apogee of quests games does not even get an honourable one-liner. Neither does the original Castle Wolfenstein.

You're speaking, of course, about the original, Apple ][ game, right?

"The plans for Operation Rheingold are hidden somewhere in the Castle...

They've worked me over and I'll never make it out alive, but maybe you can with this gun.

They're coming for me, good luck.
AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE"

Monty

Re:1993-1994

[Emetophobe]

How do this get modded insightful?

shoot-em-up retards and their taste

So I'm a retard for liking Wolfenstein, Doom1-2 & Quake1-3. Gee thanks.

The apogee of quests games does not even get an honourable one-liner.Neither does the original Castle Wolfenstein.

So you insult shoot em up retards, but than you whine that a first person shooter that you like doesn't make the list?

Re:1993-1994

[zerocool^]

I think you'll see if you go back today and play goldeneye on the N64 it doesn't hold up to the ideals you have in your head about what it should be like.

Things in life get distorted by time. Our memory represents idealism, when the reality is different. For me, a recent example is Fraggle Rock. I bought the 1st season of FR for my 2 year old, but also to relive the childhood expierence myself. The fact is, however, that it's not as good as I remember.

I've also gone back and played older video games - they're not as good. Try playing Street Fighter 2 on the SNES now. I can't do it, after playing Alpha 3 on playstation, 3rd strike: fight for the future on Dreamcast, and Capcom vs. SNK 2 on PS2. It's aweful. Yet, I remember wasting hours and hours of summer vacation playing it.

I really think if you go back now and play Golden eye, you'll see that; while it may have been fun at the time, it doesn't compare to current offerings, and shouldn't be held up as a paragon of excellence for future first person shooter console titles.

~WX

Re:1993-1994

[Jugalator]

I played Star Control 2 too, back then with a class mate in some furious battles. :-)

But the parent I replied to already brought it up so I just didn't bring it up.

Re:1993-1994

[dlZ]

So you insult shoot em up retards, but than you whine that a first person shooter that you like doesn't make the list?

I think the post was referring to the original Castle Wolfenstein. It's a fun game, check it out if you ever have the chance.

Re:1993-1994

[drinkypoo]

Prior to FF7, the emphasis was on changes to the story and improvements to the battle system. Starting with FF7, that all changed. Originally Squaresoft was considering/working on a Final Fantasy game for the N64 - it's unclear how far it got, but Squaresoft was, traditionally, a Nintendo developer.

It's pretty clear how far it got to me, because I read that article - where they explain that there was nothing more than a minor tech demo.

FFVII made substantial improvements to the interface and game mechanics.

That changed with FF7, because while the N64 was graphically superior to the PlayStation, it didn't have the FMV support that the PS had.

I don't think that the N64 without the memory upgrade was all that superior in the graphics department. With it, it was certainly a night and day kind of thing, but only a handful of games supported it last I checked (and it's long since the time when I gave a fuck about the N64.)

I don't blame them anyway, because their game was predicated upon the idea of laying polys over FMV. No matter how powerful the N64 was, it wasn't powerful enough to replicate that.

Instead of improving gameplay, they improved the graphics aspect, creating large graphical cutscenes. They destroyed the character advancement system, making all characters essentially identical, based on skills you could move between characters.

That's not true at all. The skills were far more effective on some characters than on others, which is why I didn't make my magic users into warriors and vice versa. You could bump these things around using materia, yes, but the characters' base stats still make a big difference.

1996-1997 has to go down as the worst year in gaming, because it marked the devolution of games from being about the gameplay to being about the graphics and sound. Prior to FF7, the Final Fantasy games were about challenging gameplay and interesting stories. Starting with FF7, they became videos with brief periods of gameplay added in.

I realize this is hyperbole but it's also pure bullshit. There was so much more gameplay in FFVII than FMV that your statement is just retarded.

Also, the gameplay has ALWAYS been, at least in part, about graphics and sound. All manufacturers seek to push the limits - at the very least, their limits. Otherwise all RPGs would be text-only.

Graphics matter because they help provide that feeling of immersion. Ditto for sound. I don't want to feel like I'm watching a movie either, but I do want to feel like I'm making one as I play.

Re:1993-1994

[Gulthek]

Oh my god. Goldeneye was a freaking boring game. I played that twice and was utterly, utterly, completely bored out of my skull. I'm moving in sloow-w-w-w moootttiiooon.

I think that game must have only been fun if it was someone's first FPS.

Now I have to put in that I love to play FPS games on the console, consoles are my gaming arena of choice. Metroid Prime, Halo, Far Cry: yeah I'm right there. But Goldeneye? After playing Doom, Duke Nukem 3d, Quake (esp. GLQuake), and Dark Forces; Goldeneye was a big letdown.

Re:1993-1994

[Gulthek]

Have you actually watched Jurassic Park recently? Those 'leet CGI effects that looked so cool in '93 look like made for tv crap now. Rather shocking actually.

Terminator 2 still holds up quite well though.

Re:1993-1994

[ShibaInu]

I don't hold Goldeneye up as some paragon of video games. In fact, I haven't played it since I gave up my N64 about 5 years ago. It was fun while I played it, I enjoyed it more than other FPSs I played at the time, and that's my point. I didn't care that it didn't have uber graphics or that it was true 3d - I enjoyed it for what it was at the time.

The point is that the post I was responding to claimed that Goldeneye sucked because the graphics sucked. To me, the graphics were good enough.

Re:1993-1994

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember I spent years fucking normal goats, and then one day I had the chance to fuck a Will Dunn goat...man now normal goats don't do nothing for me. I can't even jerk off thinking about a normal goat now without going wet-spaghetti limp. I feel you, brother-man.

Re:1993-1994

[Reapy]

I liked it. I had played wolfstien, the dooms, quake, dark forces, strife, heritic, duke nukem, whatever else the pc had at the time. It was a good game. It did what halo is doing for this generation. It brings the fps game to a bigger audience then the pc. I didnt play 007 until my first year in college, wow, that was 8 years ago, where does the time go? Anyway at the time not many people had pcs and even fewer people had games to play on them (I probably went to the wrong college). But they did have n64s and playstations. I initially hated 007 for the same reason pc people hate halo, controls and graphics just weren't up to par with the pc stuff. But 007 had one thing that my pc games didn't, 3 other people in the room yelling and screaming and having fun. So I ground my teeth and learned how to play it, and ended up having a fun time all year with it. I later got into the single player aspect of it and found it to be a lot of fun. It had its moments, and i really enjoyed how they changed the level objectives as you scaled up the difficutly. In multiplayer it also featured a mode I had not seen before, though I will admit that at the time the only mod of a game I had played was quake ctf. Anyway it had the 1 shot 1 kill mode. I racked up many hours with my friend playing pistols only with 1 shot 1 kill. It was a ton of fun. Maybe rainbow six was out at that time? I remember buying that and it didn't work due to my video card being unsupported (glad those days are gone). Anyway 007 was the precursor to halo. Halo is the holy mecca for younger gamers now just getting into it, the same way 007 was before it. We people fortunate enough to have PCs had a lot before it, but 007 was still a very signifigant game.

Re:1993-1994

[Cocoa Radix]

Yes, I'm often plagued with nightmares about Tifa's huge breasts bouncing up and down; such horrible dreams those are.

Re:1993-1994

[arivanov]

It also existed for IBM PC/XT and it was tremendous fun. You had to think, plan ahead and operate with a very limited amount of resources counting up to a single bullet in many places. It also increased in complexity as it went along instead of being evenly daft and putting a fat retarded accelerated supercretin in the last room. Most of that got lost in the 1990es rerelease which has degenerated into a doom-like shoot-em up vs retarded monsters (with german uniforms) and mandatory last-level "big ones".

As far as shoot-em ups are concerned the article also misses one of the 1990-es pinnacles of shoot-em ups - Star Wars: Dark Forces. It was the first successfull FPS shoot-em up with some resemblance of a plot, a story line and real artwork thrown in between the levels. Half life, Unreal, Duke Nuke 'M, Jedi Knights all followed on where this game trailblazed. Granted, it suffered from some of the major problems of all shoot-em-ups (compensating for poor AI by high speed and lots of HP in high level monsters). None the less it was fun to the extent Quake and many of the more visually rich games never were.

The article also completely misses the early space simulators - Wing Commander and X-Wing/B-Wing/Tie Fighter. The artice also misses another game which was nothing much as far as game play, but was definitely a turning point in 3D game design - Terminal Velocity.

As I said, it is written to appeal to the common values of the current mainstream gamer which has been brought up to enjoy shoot-em ups with Tits, shoot-em ups without Tits and shoot-em ups with Tits and Hot Coffee. Speaking of tits, the article also misses the first year of Lara which was the first successfull game with a female as the main personality.

I can continue ranting forever but the summary shall remain the same "the article is garbage".

Re:1993-1994

[dunkelfalke]

yes, and also
- privateer
- strike commander
- system shock
- cannon fodder 1&2
- pinball fantasies
- jazz the jackrabbit
- the settlers
- battle isle 2
- jagged alliance

these two years really rocked

Re:1993-1994

[Anonymous Coward]

the first year of Lara which was the first successfull game with a female as the main personality.

Umm, Metroid was released before that, and Ms. Pac-man and Ladybug of course.

Re:1993-1994

[Emetophobe]

Oh, I thought he was referring to the more recent Wolfenstein 3D, not that OOOOOOLD pre first person shooter version. Castle Wolfenstein was released in 1981 (I wasn't born until 1982). For me the original Wolfenstein was always Wolfenstein 3D released in 1992. I can see now how I could have made that mistake =) I never played the original Castle Wolfenstein, but I loved Wolfenstein 3D, well, the first one I played was the "prequel" Spear of Destiny before I played Wolf 3D. Wolfenstein pretty much got me into computer games, once Doom1 and 2 came out, I was hooked on first person shooters for good (followed by the amazing quake1, 2 & 3).

Re:1993-1994

[dlZ]

For some odd reason last time I moved I found an unopened copy of Spear of Destiny. Original packaging, 3.5 floppies. It was in a box of old cables and other misc. crap. I don't even remember ever having a boxed copy of it is the strange thing. I've never even played that version, just the originals and Wolf 3D.

Re:1993-1994

[RedWizzard]

It follows mostly console development and visual development and is severely biased towards shoot-em-up retards and their taste. The other branches of game genealogy are not followed at all.

It also completely ignored the impact of home computers like the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST. In fact I don't even remember it mentioning the Commodore 64. Those machines were critical in making PC hardware developers realise that there was a market for highly capable audio and video hardware.

Re:1993-1994

[DrCode]

Yes! Plus Ultima 7 came out then, along with King's Quests, Gabriel Knight, and Wing Commander.

Re:1993-1994

[DrCode]

I just finished playing it! And yes, it is one of the best games I've ever played.

Re:1993-1994

[EonBlueTooL]

Indeed any list of the greatest years in gaming without starcraft or ff7 have no credibility period.

Re:1993-1994

[Sean Riordan]

From TFA:

Whatever didn't end up on the Apple II was created for the brand-new, hyper-inexpensive Commodore 64 – bolstered by one of the most powerful sound chips to date and the recent innovation of MIDI-sequenced music. Many friends' doors were knocked down. With Atari out of the way, the computer age was here.

Re:1993-1994

[RedWizzard]

I missed that. Still the C64 wasn't that different hardware-wise from the PCs of the mid 80's. It was the ST and the Amiga that really pushed the limits and forced the PC industry to catch up.

Re:1993-1994

[Sean Riordan]

Never played the ST, but the Amiga was truly amazing in it's day.

Re:1993-1994

[servognome]

it follows mostly console development and visual development and is severely biased towards shoot-em-up retards and their taste. The other branches of game genealogy are not followed at all.

I think it focuses on commercial success paths rather than industry innovation. Sometimes the two intersect, but more often they do not, that is why the adventure, strategy, and RPG genres tend to be downplayed.

Re:1993-1994

[Jarlsberg]

That's certainly true. What amazes me even more about re-watching Jurassic Park (which I did recently...) is how relatively good the effects in the first one is compared to the third movie. That last one was simply horrible, both story-wise and especially effect-wise.

Re:1993-1994

[WhyCause]

The same things that make every (good) console game fun: ease of use / quick startup, one machine for multiple players, low cost, guaranteed compatibility with your hardware, and livingroom environment.

I know that most PC gamers think it anathema that you share a screen with your friends, or that there might be a stutter in the frame-rate. That's fine; blow $2000 on a PC to play games the way you like to play them. Personally, I thought GoldenEye multiplayer had a good mix of balanced weapons, decent maps, and pick-up-and-play control. All played in the livingroom, where a spilled beer only means 10 minutes of mopping up, not $1000 of fried hardware.

The only real issue I ever had with GoldenEye was the fact that we (my friends and I) eventually memorized the maps, and could quickly hunt each other down. Of course, by the time this became a problem, Perfect Dark was available, giving us a whole new set of maps to memorize.

Re:1993-1994

[Mprx]

The fact that memorizing the maps ruined the gameplay proves that it is a bad game. Every serious PC FPS player memorizes all the maps they play, which is the only way to compete because their opponents do the same. This does not harm the gameplay at all, because there is usually good map design and and weapon design, so you do not need to rely on surprise at the map layout for entertainment.

Re:1993-1994

[Grab]

Too true. From about 1988 to 1991/2, the Amiga pwned everyone. The only reason it died was the internal politicking which killed the parent company (Commodore), and it took a good 3-4 years for PCs to catch up to where the Amiga had been, graphics- and sound-wise. The Amiga could have run a Quake-like game easily; it wasn't until 1996/7 that the PC had similar capabilities, and in fact Quake was the reason it *got* those capabilities.

The Amiga is one of the rare examples of a platform which died through outside causes, rather than through obsolescence or insufficient features to compete effectively. Sad really.

Grab.

Re:1993-1994

[Gulthek]

Been there. Played the multiplayer. Played the one shot one kill. Got more and more bored. Beginning to end: bored. Went back to Smash Bros. Had fun.

Total time in Goldeneye? Maybe 5 hours.
Smash brothers? Lots.

Re:1993-1994

[WhyCause]

It wasn't necessarily the memorization of the maps that made the game less fun to play (ruined is too strong a word; we still had fun playing, just not as much).

It was a side-effect of split-screen multi-player (you could glance at one of the splits and tell where the other person was). Of course, this totally removed any ability to camp, so that's a plus. As far as blaming split-screen, it was a sacrifice we were willing to make for all of the other benefits to console-play I mentioned. And, as I said, it really didn't kill the fun; it just made us move the fun to a different game (Gauntlet or Perfect Dark, as examples). No matter how great a game is, eventually I get bored of the quirks of that game, which is why I just plain don't understand the Halo freaks. There's other stuff out there man.

1990 - The year of SMB3

[Slightly Askew]

I spent more time playing Super Mario Brothers 3 than any other game...ever. SMB1 was fun, and I can still usually beat the game losing only one or two lives, but SMB3 was the pinnacle. It was previewed in the movie "The Wizard", and I remember the talk at school the day after the movie opened. It wasn't about how good or bad the movie was, it was ALL about the new Mario game coming out.

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[voice_of_all_reason]

I disagree, and I've got systems as far back as the Atari 2600.

Mario 64 was my high point in the series. The sheer size of the world, the open-ended nature... It was really the first time I felt I was in a game instead of playing a game.

The only thing I think that would've improved it was to use the same format but on the mario RPG system, where you walk from town to town, get equipment, and level up.

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[necro81]

Lucas: I love the Power Glove - it's so bad. [with a competely serious look]
Corey: Yeah, well, uh, just keep your Power Gloves off her, pal, huh?

(no, I'm not such a geek I could quote that off the top of me head, I had help from the geeks at imdb).

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[porcupine8]

Although I'm not sure I've spent more time playing it than any other game, I do have to give SMB3 the crown for most-hyped, most-anticipated game ever. We all flocked to see The Wizard just to get a glimpse of it. The waiting list at Blockbuster to rent it was months long (I was 9 at the time - my ability to buy new games was entirely dictated by my parents). I remember being the envy of my friends when I found an arcade version in a laundromat the first week it was out and became the first one to actually play it. I've never seen that kind of thing with another game before or since.

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[steveo777]

I agree with that completely. Mario 3 was good. And I've spent long hours on that game, but I am of the opinion that the American Mario 2 was better. And Mario 64 is the pinnical of Mario. It was implemented almost perfectly. It literally felt like you were in Mario's world. I played 'Sunshine' and I understand the game, but never felt the drive to finish it. We'll see how Mario Galaxy or whatever it's called works out when we get it.

I'd love to get my hands on a platformer Mario RPG as well. It gets me excited just thinking about the possibilities.

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[zerocool^]

I couldn't disagree more. Mario 64 was nothing more than a tech demo for the N64 system. The gameplay was terrible - the control was decent, but there was a LOT of "I'm running straight, oops the camera angle swung around on its own, now i'm running sideways off the cliff, and I haven't moved my fingers". The camera made the game unplayable.

Super Mario World (and some would say Yoshi's Island) were the top Mario games. SMW was FANTASTIC - it looks wonderful, it plays wonderful, there a myriad of interesting tricks and tips to playing, and you could beat it in as little as about 12 levels, or you could spend hours beating all 96 exits. The game was vast, the levels were long, there was a good mix of fun and challenge.

Mario64 was big blocky graphics for the sake of being able to say "HEY LOOK IT'S 3D!!!!!111". The Playstation made MUCH better use of it's 3d capabilities, and for reference, the Playstation came out 18 MONTHS BEFORE the N64 (Dec 3rd 1994 vs. June 23 1996, source Wikipedia). I don't think the playstation was the best console out there - I think that title remains with the SNES - but I sure as hell think that the Playstation was making much better use of their graphics than the "amazing reality engine as powerful as a Supercomputer doing CGI" that hte N64 claimed to be.

~Wx

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[execute85]

The cute girl in that movie (that 10 year old me was in love with) is Jenny Lewis from the bands Rilo Kiley and The Postal Service.

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[demonbug]

"The Playstation made MUCH better use of it's 3d capabilities..."

I never liked the graphics on the vast majority of Playstation games. They always filled the screen with so many ugly, low-resolution textures that I couldn't tell what the hell was going on. The graphics on N64 games (particularly ones like Mario 64, Mario Kart 64) were just so much cleaner and clearer it made the games a lot more fun. On Playstation (action) games, the biggest challenge for me was always trying to figure out what that next blob of ugly textures was supposed to be. On the Nintendo, I was always able to focus much more on the gameplay (although the camera crap in Mario 64, which is STILL a huge problem in way too many console games, could be a real pain).

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[Incoherent07]

I just remember seeing people go up to the Mario 64 demo at Target and just spend hours running in circles around the courtyard. Not even accomplishing anything, just running in circles. (No, the controller wasn't stuck.) And as far as gameplay went, with the exception of the Incredible Moving Camera (which only hurt you in a few places) was an excellent demonstration of what a 3D adventure game could be (and, interestingly, still is in large part). It may have been a tech demo, but it was a damn good tech demo.

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[grumbel]

### Mario 64 was nothing more than a tech demo for the N64 system.

Mario64 was *much* more then just a tech demo, it basically invented the 3D jump'n run and also did it almost perfectly (only new thing I see in todays third person games is that objects go transparent if they obscure the player, everything else is still very much the same as in Mario64). The most important point of Mario64 isn't even just the graphics or camera control (which worked very well most of the time, far better then anything before), even so they where awesome for the time, but the gameplay. The gameplay in Mario64 is really nothing short of mindblowing, even till today I have seen very very few games, if any, that match the fun of playing Mario64 and its not only the fun of solving the levels, but the fun of simply controlling Mario, running around jumping and stuff. Very very few other games start to be fun when you just run around aimless, Mario64 however was fun, due to its great jumping mechanics and great dynamics (you have at least half a dozen different jumps at your disposal).

Mario64 looked and felt like Mario should feel and managed to be fun pretty much all the time, something which MarioSunshine miserably failed to accompilish.

### Super Mario World

Well, SMW wasn't a bad game, but I consider it one of the lower points of the series, the graphics where pretty ugly compared to SMB3 (more colorfull yes, but drawing style was quite ugly) and the levels far less imaginatife then in SMB3. Beside standing on a slope made you automatically move down in SMW which was really extremly annoying. After having seen SMB3 SMW really had little to impress, the best of SMW was probally the worldmap and Yoshi, but the rest wasn't all that great. Why a lausy cape when you can have Racoon-suit =:)

Yoshi's Island on the other side was great again, the worldmap ended up being very primitive and annoying, but graphics style and gameplay where again groundbreaking and much more then just a little update on the Mario series as SMW was.

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[MemoryDragon]

I came from the pc side and was heavily dissapointed by Mario 64, the sheer size of the world has been beaten on the pc side and even on the playstation, due to the fact that the world only was a number of smaller levels. huge gameworlds existed with daggerfall and TES and a bunch of other games on the pc side at that time, and even tomb raider had bigger levels than the huge gameworlds of Mario 64. The concept on how Nintendo brought the jump and run genre into the 3d world was interesting, they were not the first, pandemonium was way earlier but that one basically relied on pushing the characted back into a pseudo 2d. I do not know if Tomb Raider was not earlier than Mario 64 though (it definitely was the superior jump and run however, I despise the later parts, but the first one was excellent by bringing back the concepts of prince of persia into the 3d area)

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[MemoryDragon]

Sorry to jump in here, Super Mario 64 never was a 3d adventure, it just was a time when everything was labeled as an adventure, but neither mario nor tomb raider, both were marketed as 3d adventure games were those, strictly spoken, they were 3d platformers. 3d adventure games at that time existed, but not on consoles, the most prominent which comes to my mind, probably was the Tex Murphy Series on the PC side and to some extent also although they are more action games and rpgs, the underworlds and system shock, but those titles still were more on the adventure side than mario 64 ever was.

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[MemoryDragon]

Ahem... 3d jump and runs were invented in Pandemonium, also Tomb Raider was earlier to my knowledge. I am not sure if Pandemonium really was the first 3d jump and run game, you the earliest which sort of pseudo 3d graphics could have been q-bert and one of the jungle hunt sequels which were isometric jump and runs, Pandemonium was really 3d. There might be earlier examples then Pandemonium of Jump and Runs using real 3d.

Re:1990 - The year of SMB3

[grumbel]

Pandemonium was railbased from what I remember, gameplay was still 2d, only graphics where rendered in 3d, but the 3d added little or nothing to the gameplay (like Clockwork Knight and a lot of other early attemps to do something usefull with 3D). TombRaider on the other side was 3d, however it came after Mario64 (this however varried, in PAL regions TombRaider might have been earlier) and it was a lot less '3d' then Mario, since the controls where player oriented, not camera oriented as in Mario64 and controls where also digital, not analog. Now one might argue if that should be called '3d', but today almost all platform games control like Mario, while very very few go the TombRaider way, even TombRaiderLegend has switched to Mario style controls, which is why I said Mario64 basically invented 3D jump'n runs. There have been games before Mario that where jump'n run and 3D, but Mario64 as set the mark on how things should be done, while pretty much all other 3d jump'n run attemps of that age are dead now.

West of House

[Atomm]

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

It has been all downhill from there.....

Re:West of House

[bcat24]

At End Of Road
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.

Actually, I think this is where it all started.

Re:West of House

[Gulthek]

open mailbox. get it. read it. drop it. s. e. open window. w. get all. open sack. get lunch. eat it. open bottle. drink water. drop bottle. w. get all. e. turn on lamp. u. get all. d. w. move rug. d. n. (Troll!)

But it can't have all been downhill from Zork, Zork III came out after Zork. Let's not forget Enchanter, Planetfall, Deadline, Ballyhoo, and many many more (A Mind Forever Voyaging!).

Not to mention modern day classics like "Spider and Web" (best "Aha!" puzzle I've ever encountered), "Photopia" (superb, moving story), and "Blue Chairs" (trippy, melancholy, uplifting, depressing, and wonderful).

Re:West of House

[Dekortage]

You can blame Zork for my involvement with computers today. Damn you, Infocom!

Of course, Planetfall was better than Zork... and let's not forget Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or Leather Goddesses of Phobos (with the "lewd" mode, ooh!)

Re:West of House

[david.given]

Not to mention modern day classics like "Spider and Web" (best "Aha!" puzzle I've ever encountered)...

Spider and Web (which you can play online!) is, indeed superb --- and I know the moment you mean; I remember sitting there in amazement that he'd managed to pull off something so perfect and so unexpected.

It's not perfect --- the 'that's not important right now' bits really annoyed me for reasons that would be a spoiler to go into. But it's a great game. It's also very hard.

(Background: Spider and Web is a modern adventure game written to run on Infocom's Z-machine. There's a large and vibrant community based around writing and playing adventure games --- the genre's never been healthier. You can find more information than you ever believed possible off the link above.)

Re:West of House

[Grench]

Agreed; Photopia (http://www.adamcadre.ac/, then go to 'Interactive Fiction') is fantastic - without trying to give too much away, you definitely can't stop the tragedy, no matter how hard you try. Really moving, from start to finish. Adam is very good at sculpting a believable character.

The Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy is the only one of Infocom's titles that I ever completed, and it took me a decade to do, thanks to its' non-obvious puzzle design. Loved it to bits though. Don't play it unless you like bashing your head off the wall (or drinking more than three Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters; whichever hurts more).

Re:West of House

[PB_TPU_40]

Wow, I haven't seen those words in a long time. I just remember getting stuck in that damn maze and dying. I must say my favorite year was probably 1996 when my sister gave me Command and Conqure for my birthday. My parents couldn't get me out of my room for a week. I played both sides start to finish, and played many of the missions twice just to see if other ideas would have worked as well. But when all else fails... MINI GUNNER SWARM. Those were good days. A game that came out well before my time but I still play.... Collosal Cave Adventure, xyzzy, plugh, your two best friends.

Re:West of House

[Hoi Polloi]

I played HGTTG on my Apple II (it is still available for free on the web as an online java based game). I always felt so lonely when Zaphod and Trillian left me alone on the bridge of the Heart of Gold. *sniff*

Use the tea...

Re:West of House

[Creepy]

I preferred the weird humor games Infocom games like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the very strange Leather Goddesses of Phobos to the political ones like A Mind Forever Voyaging and Trinity, but that's probably more personal taste (especially since most of those came out when I was in my tweens to early teens)

Anyhow, it was really all downhill after Adventure ;)

Odd that they think cutscenes became popular with Ninja Gaiden (maybe on consoles?), since they were popular on computers before that game existed in games such as BC's Quest for Tires, Karateka, and Captain Goodnight and the Isles of Fear (which I think came out the same year as Gaiden).

It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Re:West of House

[cduffy]

Thank you! Spider and Web and Photopia are among my favorites, but I hadn't heard of Blue Chairs before. Already, though, the story's beautiful.

Re:West of House

[lgw]

The beginning of Spider and Web is the worst excercise in "there are no clues, so you'll just have to try every verb" I've seen - worse than the babelfish (at least the babelfish was *supposed* to be a pythonesque excercise in comical frustration). At least you can die in 4 moves.

What do you want to do?
>play a fun game instead

Was it Zork or Advent that would kill you just as quickly if you jumped inside the house you started next to? I remember doing that, then quitting that game and never going back, as the author had made clear what sort of person he was.

Re:West of House

[lgw]

I'm struggling to understand how anyone could like Spider and Web. All you seem to do in that game is try things at random, since there are no actual clues or anything, until the game tells you exactly what to do, whereby you advance one step and repeat. Heck, there are "puzzles" you simply have no ability to solve, and the *only* way past is to try things at random until the game tells you how to get past.

Is this someone's idea of fun, or of puzzle solving? Something tells me I should avoid Photopia as well, as the two games are often mentioned together.

Re:West of House

[cduffy]

Spider and Web (to a substantial extent) and Photopia (in its entirety) are more focused around story than puzzles. Blue Chairs (which I'm only partway through right now) gets quite far before one runs into any puzzles which even start to approach moderate difficulty -- but the story and the quality of the writing are excellent.

If puzzles are what make your day, I suppose you ought to stick with Varicella. I care more about the story than the challenge, though, so Spider and Web, Photopia and Blue Chairs are right up my alley.

Re:West of House

[cduffy]

The beginning of Spider and Web is the worst excercise in "there are no clues, so you'll just have to try every verb" I've seen - worse than the babelfish (at least the babelfish was *supposed* to be a pythonesque excercise in comical frustration). At least you can die in 4 moves.

Oh, come on. It's all soft deaths up 'till around the very end: A single UNDO and you're fine. An unforgiving game is where you can get trapped by mistake and your single UNDO won't pull you out; Spider and Web isn't one of those by any means. Getting through the door at the beginning is a bit of a trick, but if you think to look at your inventory it's not so very hard (or undiscoverable) at all.

Re:West of House

[lgw]

Bizzarre. I, too, love a good story. I have 1000 books at home, at least 100 unread, and none of them require painful trail and error to advance the story. It's good to know I didn't miss the point of S&W, though; thanks.

Re:West of House

[lgw]

**SPOILER WARNING**

You're misremembering the start of S&W (and all deaths are soft deaths when you own the filesystem). You seriously CANNOT get past the initial door and start the real game by any rational action. You have to first give up on the puzzle and leave, and then try enough things at random before you'll be given the lockpick that lets you open the door. Your inventory starts empty. If you undo when you apparently fail you actually can't ever get past the door.

Every "puzzle" as far as I was willing to play was similar. You have no information to allow you to pass the puzzle, and you can only get that information by failing. It's the definition of bad game design.

A good game is one in which ration decisions based on the information presented within the game are the best strategy for winning the game. Otherwise you're just mashing keys.

The story might be good, if you're masochist enough to find out, but I have plenty of good books to read if all I want is story.

Re:West of House

[cduffy]

Here's the thing (and all of this is per my recollection -- my memory's bad, and it's been a while): If you kill yourself, the clues are embedded in the death messages. So yes, you die -- but you do get clues, just not up-front; and it's only a limited amount of trial-and-error necessary until you've figured out how everything works.

Now, if you like to be given your clues in time to avoid dying in the first case, that's bad. If you don't mind a little bit of trial-and-error (which I wouldn't necessarily classify as painful in this case), it's not so bad.

Re:West of House

[cduffy]

You're right -- I was, indeed, misremembering.

Even so, I think the very thing you're classifying as a fault is also the reason why the game won "Best Use of the Medium".

Re:West of House

[lgw]

You remember correctly. I've a strong bias on the subject of game design: a good game is one in which rational decisions based on the information presented within the game are rewarded. S&W was like a perverse attempt to design the worst possible game, in which only bad decisions are rewarded.

Of course, that's a value judgement, and there's no point in arguing over whether chocolate ice cream tastes good, but if one's going to make a games that deliberatey screws with the player like that, one could at least be up front about it, like the HHGG game. At least in that game the *theme* was that the game would screw with you, so you actually had *that* as a clue when the game would lie to you, which I guess makes it more rational after all.

Re:West of House

[lgw]

Well, perhaps so. I can certainly say that it has turned me off to modern text adventures.

Back in the stone age, when people would physically gather in conventions to play D&D competitively, there was a real problem with people designing adventures that punished intelligent behavior. The only way to win was to attempt to recreate the exact solution the adventure designer had in mind, bein careful not to over-think it.

This is a limitation hard to overcome in a text adventure, but inexcusable in a live RPG. I joined a group of friends in designing adventures that would *reward* rational behavior and then running those adventures at conventions, and had fun doing that for many years, until the death of such events.

Recent "interactive fiction" games are like stepping back to the bad old days, before anyone had figured out what made a game good. It's one thing to be limited by the medium, but another to embrace the very thing that makes the medium suck.

Re:West of House

[cduffy]

I can certainly say that it has turned me off to modern text adventures.

That's a shame, and I can certainly see your point (though for an occasional deviation -- when that deviation does something different enough to be novel -- I still hold it to be excusable). Just to ask, though: Have you played Varicella? It has excellent, very difficult puzzles; provides clues (if you can find them) and does not that I recall reward irrational behavior. It is hard enough to win that it's expected that one will (after figuring out individual pieces) need to play through multiple times to figure out how to get everything done in time -- but you still may enjoy it.

Re:West of House

[lgw]

I'll have to give Varicella a try sometime, thanks.

Re:West of House

[Anonymous Coward]

> Recent "interactive fiction" games are like stepping back to the bad old days, before anyone had figured out what made a game good. It's one thing to be limited by the medium, but another to embrace the very thing that makes the medium suck.

  Err.. "Spider and Web" is hardly recent interactive fiction. It's quite a few years old now. It's also hardly representative of most games made lately.
  What's more, the problems you cite (the irrational nature of the opening puzzle) is actually carefully designed as a clue to something later. Just remember you're not really there solving the door puzzle, you've done that already or you wouldn't be sitting in that interrogation chair inside the building. So ask yourself, what ARE you doing?

  If Spider and Web's not your cup of tea, perhaps try 2001's "All Roads" by Jon Ingold. It's almost puzzle-less, and you're pretty well guaranteed to glide through once you get out of the cellar. The only serious puzzle is understanding what's actually going on, it's kind of a Phillip K. Dick mindfuck, which makes it one of my favorites.
  Varicella is a good suggestion, in which you play an antihero, the fastidious Minister of the Palace who's hoping to gain the Regency now that the King has passed away. By any means, fair or foul.
  For something more light-hearted, I enjoyed The Frenetic Five vs. Mr. Redundancy Man.
  For a quick run through text game experience, there's Hunter, In Darkness, in which Andrew Plotkin turned Hunt the Wumpus into an awesome short-story. (A small hint: If you start to make a map, you're barking up the wrong tree)
  Anything by Emily Short is worth a look, too. I think I like Metamorphoses best, but that might be my geekiness coming through, since it's a very magical-gadget kind of game.

Re:West of House

[Damvan]

I have to agree, I really loved Planetfall. I even remember sending a letter to Scorpia at Computer Gaming World for a hint when I was stuck.

I need to go and replay that game. Is it out there somewhere?

Re:West of House

[Dekortage]

Someone told me you could play Planetfall here but it doesn't load for me. *shrug*

Re:West of House

[Dekortage]

Duh, nevermind... a search on Google turned up this working copy of Planetfall... very cool.

Best Year?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been consistently downhill since 1989.

Analog Wizardry

[Doc Ruby]

How could they leave off the early peak of 1969?

Slashdotted, here's a full mirror

[bcat24]

Wow, that was quick! Anyway, here's a full mirror of the one-page printable version.

Civ I and II

[Neil Watson]

The early years of the Civilization games.

Re:Civ I and II

[fwwr5007]

Those were classic! I used to spend about eight hours at a time staring at Civ I on my monitor.

"We demand tribute for our patience...."

Re:Civ I and II

[letto]

Exactly! The golden years of gaming where 1991 - 2001. Those were the years that were really innovative. It ended with Black and White . That was the last game to be anything near innovative IMHO. The game industry becoming "big buisness" made it lose it's soul.

Re:Civ I and II

[Ubergrendle]

The early 1990s were clearly the best for innovation and gaming, on ALL platforms -- but particularly the PC.

SimCity. Civilization I and II. Masters of Orion. Panzer General. X-Com. Wing Commander, Ultima 6 & 7. Doom. Tie Fighter. Dune 2. Warcraft. Not only were these games are very playable, but they defined genres unto themselves. The height of creativity.

Most games today are incremental improvements upon those original gems. I am disappointed with the lack of solid turn-based games in recent years (Advance Wars on the DS notwithstanding), but most of the rest of those genres are doing well -- FPSes, RTSes, first person RPGs, etc.

Re:Civ I and II

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the real innovation was colonization

Re:Civ I and II

[Gulthek]

Good sentiment, but didn't Tie Fighter derive from Wing Commander? Or are you differentiating on the 3d modeling in which case you should have said X-Wing.

Now Wing Commander II, that's the highpoint of that series.

For solid turn based games you can't beat Interactive Fiction.

Re:Civ I and II

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to nitpick - Gems they may be, but some of them Original? Drop back a few years:

X-Com == Laser Squad
Doom == Wolfenstein
Space Flying ones == Elite

I am no expert on gaming, but I would reckon there's a few more derivatives in that list. I think Sim City, Dune2 and Civ may pass muster though.
Oh, and Civ II - that was derived from...hold on....what was that game again? ;-)

Re:Civ I and II

[jeblucas]

What about M.U.L.E.? Didn't that start the whole wander around and collect crap genre?

Re:Civ I and II

[drinkypoo]

Obviously you haven't seen the previews for Spore, played Katamari Damacy, etc etc. There is still innovation in the video game industry, it's just that the low-hanging fruit has been picked.

Re:Civ I and II

[zerocool^]

I can't speak from personal knowledge, but my wife has put more hours into Civ II and Sid's Alpha Centauri than she has into her education, and I mean elementary through grad school. I got her Civ IV for christmas or birthday or something, and she's been playing it a LOT lately. She says it's better graphics, but not so that it takes away from the fact that it's all the best strategic elements from Civ 2 and AC, possibly made even better.

Give it a try.

Re:Civ I and II

[Ubergrendle]

I suspect if we gradually extrapolated each genre farther and farther back we would end up with Pong, or maybe Nethack. Although I agree with all 3 progenitors, I think the examples I provided differ in two ways: a) widespread popularity and accessibility (e.g. the best game no one plays doesn't earn cultural noterity), and b) optimium balance of graphics and gameplay; maximising the capabilities available at the time.

Yes Wolfenstein predates Doom, but there is a significant improvement in all aspects -- plot, level design, graphics, audio, strategy, complexity, atmosphere/mood, etc, between the two.

The gameplay of X-Com was seen in Laser Squad, except X-Com leveraged the early 90s alien paranoia (X-Files anyone?) with a dark recession era fatalism that permates the game. The world view w/ base building, research, and incremental improvement of the enemy is also helps differentiate the game.

Elite was very good too for its day, but Wing Commander offered up a deeper plot w/ voice acting, a more cohesive campaign mode, and better graphics.

I still play a game of Angband (aka Rogue, aka Nethack) from time to time, but its no Diablo2.

Re:Civ I and II

[froglover]

You forgot Ultima Underword I & II. Clearly the most revolutionizing games ever -- beating all the 1st person shooter and adventure games made ever after. Ultima Underworld I got me to dream about the game so that I had dreams of walking the dungeons -- that never happened to me with any other game. Fortunately, you can still play Ultima Underworld with DOSBox.

Re:Civ I and II

[Jare]

Oh, Wing Commander and X-Wing were fantastic and genre-defining games, but I'd say Tie Fighter was absolute perfection, the ultimate space combat simulator since which only graphics have been improved. Not saying everyone has to feel that way (they are all gems), but there are many people who do, hence why it shows up frequently in "best of..." lists.

Re:Civ I and II

[Reapy]

For turn based games you might want to check out Disgaea: Hour of Darkness on ps2, or, more recently, and perhaps more what you want, Fire Emblem: Path of Radience on the gamecube. There is also a Fire Emblem on the gba, as well as numerous japanese fire emblems that were never imported.

The last turn based game that I really got into was so long ago, Panzer Generals. That one was ww2 themed turn based, it was fantastic.

You might want to even start looking back at older games if you missed any on the way along, but chances are you didnt.

I think I spend too much time looking for the next great thing, and am never finding it. Good luck in your search :)

Re:Civ I and II

[MemoryDragon]

sim city and civilization relied on the game mechanics which were invented by Dani Bunten for Mule and Seven cities of gold. Panzer General was not the first iso turn based strategy game either but one of the best ever. Wing Commander and Tie Fighters game mechanics resembled earlier space shooters, I can remember having played a storyless space shooter on my Atari XL computer in the 80s (actually 3, one the famous lucas arts one, the other one being a game half adventure partially hosted on a planet in full 3d (only lines but nevertheless 3d) Dune2 I can give credit for, I cannot remember similar earlier game mechanics, Warcraft I would not call innovative though. But the 90s were highly creative, you forget about the outstanding works of Looking Glass by delivering the Underworlds before Wolfenstein 3d, full blown 3d RPGs, with physics and full blown rpg mechanis in a real time combat system, something matched up until recently only be other looking glass games, or looking glass game derivatives. Also the Ultima 7 series was at its peak with outstanding 2d physics mechanics in a sort of real world simulation, I cannot remember something similar except maybe Ultima 6, before. After Wolfenstein 3d innovation went on a downfall on the pc side, I would call the 90s era after Wolfenstein 3d the innovation downfall era, because mostly shooters were pushed, while the innovation on the console side started to pick up at the same time it went down the drain on the pc side. The funny thing is that innovation now goes down the drain on the console side and seems to go way up on the handheld side. It always seems that platforms which are faster and cheaper to develop for with enough power to bring the concepts into life spawn innnovation while those were the production costs run sky high, bring innovation to its knees.

Re:Civ I and II

[An ominous Cow art]

> Wing Commander and Tie Fighters game mechanics resembled earlier space shooters, I can remember having played a storyless space shooter on my Atari XL computer in the 80s

Star Raiders?

Best year for gaming?

[anss123]

I'll have to say 2006 (Dreamfall was simply that good), before that 1994 with Doom II, Civ II, X-Com, *sim games, Donkey Kong Country, Chrono Trigger, etc...

1962

[Anonymous Coward]

Space War, baby!

Judging

[OSS_ilation]

from the dead link, this is probably not going to be one of Next Generation's "Ten Best days" for bandwidth

Well, the link's down, so I made my own list

[TadZimas]

Starting at 5
5: 1984, The year the apple macintosh computer was first released, thus cementing the place of PC-based video-games forever.
4: 1944. D-Day, the source of 9/10th of all game ideas ever produced.
3: 2020. Both the setting of every style of cliche 'near future cyber-tale', and the year Duke Nukem Forever will be released.
2: 1889. Namely, november 6th, 1889. Founding of a little playing card company was made in a little backwards country called japan that would later become Nintendo. The company, not the country...
1: 1992. The year E.V.O. The Search For Eden was released. Quite possibly the single greatest evolution-themed platformer for the SNES ever produced. 'nuff said.

Re:Well, the link's down, so I made my own list

[moon-monster]

1984 was also the year that Elite was released on the BBC. Why has nobody else mentioned this? I spent more hours playing that than any other game since, including Doom.

Re:Well, the link's down, so I made my own list

[Anonymous Coward]

1: 1992. The year E.V.O. The Search For Eden was released. Quite possibly the single greatest evolution-themed platformer for the SNES ever produced. 'nuff said.

Wow. That's an awful lot of extra qualifiers for the most significant moment in gaming history. I mean, I can remember a game that was likely the greatest 3-color side-scrolling Sopwith Camel simulation on the PC... was the year that came out some sort of milestone?

Re:Well, the link's down, so I made my own list

[jackbird]

I can remember a game that was likely the greatest 3-color side-scrolling Sopwith Camel simulation on the PC...

Yeah, that was awesome. Except for the total lack of a win condition.

Re:Well, the link's down, so I made my own list

[Stormwatch]

1984 was also the year that Elite was released on the BBC. Why has nobody else mentioned this?

Elite was extremely popular in Europe, but, I believe, not that much in the USA. That's why.

Re:Well, the link's down, so I made my own list

[elrous0]

Actually, it was popular here too. I remember playing the C64 version along with most of my gamer friends (expect for the one poor kid who couldn't afford a C64). Great game (in many ways a predecessor to modern economics-driven games like Eve Online).

-Eric

Re:Well, the link's down, so I made my own list

[Chris Burke]

2: 1889. Namely, november 6th, 1889. Founding of a little playing card company was made in a little backwards country called japan that would later become Nintendo. The company, not the country...

Oh, obviously. The country isn't going to become Nintendo until 2037.

Re:Well, the link's down, so I made my own list

[Sentry21]

1: 1992. The year E.V.O. The Search For Eden was released. Quite possibly the single greatest evolution-themed platformer for the SNES ever produced. 'nuff said.

I was going to suggest 1995, the release year for Kolibri, arguably the finest hummingbird-based shooter for the 32X, but that's just me.

Re:Well, the link's down, so I made my own list

[hypnotik]

Who needs winning when you can totally create your own landscapes with bombing runs.

Ahh. the countless hours spent, looping around, dropping my three bombs, then heading back to base to refuel. Those were the days.

I know I'm young

[neonprimetime]

But of what they have listed there ... 1991 was by far the best for me ... Super Mario 3, Sonic & Gameboy pretty much encompassed my childhood. So much so that just within the past year or so my wife and I went with a blast from the past, getting a Ninendo & Sega Genesis off eBay for cheap. Long live the classics (or at least what I consider the classics)!

Re:I know I'm young

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Long live the classics (or at least what I consider the classics)

Thank you for clarifying that statement. Classics of most anything are age related. For example, I still have my original Atari 2600 and Commodore VIC-20. I would not call Nintendo & Sega Genesis complete classics (yet). In fact, as I collect the "classics", I ignore the NES and newer items unless they are limited production items. I consider the Atari Lynx, TurboGrafix 16, and Atari Jaguar classic in that respect, even though they are newer, because every other household didn't already have one (like an NES or Genesis).

Hello? Hello?

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

I thought I read that "slashdotting" was no longer a concern to web sites. There's a smoking hunk of plastic and metal at next-gen.biz that would disagree.

1995 - Mechwarrior II & Kali

[Spy Handler]

Anyone remember when the MechWarrior II multiplayer patch came out? You could play multiplayer on the internet using Kali (IPX to IP utility). I think it was 1996, the year after the game itself was released.

Re:1995 - Mechwarrior II & Kali

[TheRaven64]

Mechwarrior 2, as I recall, had an interesting bug. A lot of the multiplayer maps only had a single spawn point, so if two people died at the same time they would infinite loop respawning. This was not present in MW2: Mercenaries (which also had a better multiplayer interface) and so we played it less. 5 player Mercs was a lot of fun. You would spend a good half an hour customising your Mech and then get blown apart instantly. Anyone with more than a 1:1 kill:death ratio was doing well; a common tactic was to load up your Mech with so many homing missiles that a single shot would kill anyone (but also cause your Mech to overheat and explode). I recall creating one light Mech with no armour, an ER large laser and very little else. It could outrun everything, and then sit on the edge of the map sniping at everyone. Particularly good for headshots, and all of those Mech designs that skimped on rear armour on the assumption that they would always be facing their opponents.

Re:1995 - Mechwarrior II & Kali

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually played in a Clan on Kali for a few years. Our League had rules regarding weapons loadouts so you couldn't get some cheesy configurations, but were still able to put together quite powerful mechs. It was a lot of fun, my first real foray into internet multiplayer gaming.

Re:1995 - Mechwarrior II & Kali

[n3z0rf]

Mechwarrior was okay.... But I still now agian play "Heavy Gear II" that game I just love the grpahics and sounds i thought where amazing for the time. I wish there would be a release of this somewhere some how. One of my all time favorites for sure.

Re:Best Year? A.D. 2101!

[Trigun]

In A.D. 2101, war was beginning.

        Captain: What happen ?
        Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
        Operator: We get signal.
        Captain: What !
        Operator: Main screen turn on.
        Captain: It's you !!
        CATS: How are you gentlemen !!
        CATS: All your base are belong to us.
        CATS: You are on the way to destruction.
        Captain: What you say !!
        CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.
        CATS: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
        Operator: Captain !!
        Captain: Take off every 'Zig' !!
        Captain: You know what you doing.
        Captain: Move 'Zig'.
        Captain: For great justice.

1986!

[ahoset]

On the Commodore 64, 1986 saw the release of such illustrious titles as Marble Madness, Ark Pandora, Saxion, Parallax, International Karate, Paperboy, Thrust, Green Beret, Warhawk, Gauntlet, Comic Bakery, Ghosts 'n' Goblins, Bomb Jack, etc...

(By the way: You can listen to cover versions of the above at Press Play On Tape's website.)

Re:1986!

[rjung2k]

I'd be more impressed if most of the games on your list weren't ports of arcade titles or games originating on other systems.

Re:1986!

[MemoryDragon]

Ahem almost all titles on your list were arcade ports to the commodore 64, if you really want to list original c64 games, better use impossible mission, or almost everything done by epyx.

1990

[alewar]

The Secret of Monkey Island!

I remember ~1987

[Anonymous Coward]

It was in the late eighties when a friend of a friend showed up with a platic bag full of 5,25" discs.

"Warez for yer C64" he said. "This is one great game", he looked in the bag, searching, "...here. It's name is Maniac Mansion."

I've spend a lot of time with that game... and I _DID_ fix the staircase ;-)

X-com, or UO

[Orclover]

The biggest hallmarks for me was first Ultima 7, which showed how huge a video game world could get and how detailed, it for me first definved "VIRTUAL WORLD" in which you could do anything and be as cruel and depraved as you wanted.

The next hallmark was X-Com, Mass destruction of the battlefield which to this day still hasnt been duplicated.

Finally the year UO was released, the 2nd real grand daddy of all MMO's after meridian, playing with yourself is all well and good *cough* but playing with several hundred people is priceless.

Re:X-com, or UO

[SCPRedMage]

Hate to have to correct ya, but the REAL "first grand-daddy" of MMOs was Neverwinter Nights on AOL. Ran from '91-'97 and cost $6.00 an hour, with some players having a bill of upwards of $500.

Just remember that the next time someone complains about $15 a month...

Re:X-com, or UO

[Oswald]

X-Com, Mass destruction of the battlefield which to this day still hasnt been duplicated.

Which is why it's what I'm currently playing. It's my all-time favorite game, and it's readily available on the internet, and it runs pretty well in Win98 emulation mode. The gameplay is unequaled, and the crappy graphics don't really detract from the enjoyment. If it had auto-save (since it does experience the odd crash when transitioning from the world view to tactical mode), it would be pretty much perfect.

Re:X-com, or UO

[Jedi Alec]

of all the X-Com titles I'd have to say Apocalypse was the better game, but nothing beats the sensation of playing X-Com for the first time, hunting down sectoids, only to encounter one of 'm floating thingamabob. The funny thing is, I haven't played X-com since a 486 was state of the art, and yet I can still remember the sound of armored men clanking out of an avenger. Oh, and let's not forget the Blaster Bomb...around 2 corners, up, down, left, and in the window.

BOOOM!

Re:X-com, or UO

[Fez]

There is currently an open source project trying to recreate X-Com using modern graphics and technology, etc.

It looks promising, but there is quite a ways to go yet:

http://www.projectxenocide.com/

Re:X-com, or UO

[Joseph Hayes]

I'm currently playing X-Com and TFTD also, and still find myself staying up until the whee hours of the morning hunting aliens. A couple games came out recently called UFO Aftermath and UFO Aftershock. They looked cool and got everyone's hopes up, but didn't really deliver that classic X-Com Goodness.

THERE IS A NEW HOPE! UFO EXTRATERRESTRIALS! http://ufo-extraterrestrials.com/

It looks like lots of fun, and already has me drooling. I pre-ordered it from EBGames, and it showed a August 3rd Release Date.

Re:X-com, or UO

[esper]

The next hallmark was X-Com, Mass destruction of the battlefield which to this day still hasnt been duplicated.

Have you by chance looked at Silent Storm? Granted, it's a World War 2 (with a little out-of-place sci-fi tech thrown in towards the end) setting rather than X-Com's more modern/sci-fi, but the tactical combat system and highly-destructible environments are very similar. Definitely worth checking out.

My main gripe about X-Com (and the reason why I quit playing it) was equipping my team at the start of each fight. If I've manually stripped the gear off everyone in the last 20 battles and given it to different people, then it would really be nice if they came up with the equipment I gave them each time instead of always resetting to some braindead default.

Re:X-com, or UO

[grumbel]

### The next hallmark was X-Com, Mass destruction of the battlefield which to this day still hasnt been duplicated.

Speaking about X-Com, one current game that reminded me a lot of it was Full Spectrum Warrior, while it is far simpler then X-Com (no massive battlefield destruction beside some prescripted events, only prescripted mission, little to no enemy AI, no worldmap, etc.), it managed to cover that 'move your troup around in hostile environment, run from cover to cover'-feel extremly well, it really felt a lot like good old X-Com, but with a current look and gamepad based controls. Now, I am not saying that Full Spectrum Warrior is a great game, it has quite a lot of flaws, but I think the core gameplay mechanics have a lot of potential and they managed to provide a very round-based feel in a realtime environment. Now if just somebody could take that core gameplay of Full Spectrum Warriror and add all that around that made X-Com great, that might make a hell of a game, more interesting then just another X-Com remake with prettier tiles, like Aftermath and friends.

Re:X-com, or UO

[MustardMan]

Actually, the kingdom of drakkar, which was sort of a clone of another game, preceeded NWN. It started as a text-based game in, I think, 1987, and was given a graphical interface in the 90s.

The really scary part? Drakkar is STILL BEING PLAYED TODAY. In fact, the original writer of the game bought it back a couple of years ago and there have been huge additions to the game since then.

Personally, I liked the game back before the EQ-like additions that really cheapened the accomplishments of older players who put a lot of work into their crits, only to have a newbie hit the same skill levels in a few months of play. I knew people in drakkar who spent YEARS building their crits.

Unfortunately, since it isn't a very well known name, and it shares a name with a perfume, type of ship, and a couple other things, it's hard to find a good detailed history of the game. The only reference I could find as to the game's age was this interview with the creator, done in 2002

http://www.kingdomofdrakkar.com/forums/read.php?TI D=5260

Re:X-com, or UO

[Rix]

There were *lots* of multiplayer online games before UO/Meridian 59. It is somewhat subjective as to were you can start calling massively multiplayer, but most people do agree that it was either UO or Meridian 59.

Re:X-com, or UO

[thelonestranger]

Yeah but how did you get around the fact that the screen scrolls too quickly when you reach the edge and try to look around the map? Made my replaying it a pain and in the end I gave up.

Re:X-com, or UO

[MustardMan]

I went back and asked on the game forums - there were several posts by the sysops and the game's creator. It appears it was written in 1988/89, first on a PDP-11 and then ported to UNIX. The GUI for it was developed in '92. The game that inspired its switch to a top-down style was Islands of Kesmai.

More info posted in the thread at http://www.kingdomofdrakkar.com/forums/read.php?TI D=6197

Re:X-com, or UO

[Damvan]

Actually, I think there was a similar MMORPG style game on Compuserve long before AOL. Don't have the time to look it up, and my old brain can't retrieve the information. I do remember playing it for about a month until the first bill arrived, whn the parents put a severe time restriction on my Compuserve usage.

Didn't Prodigy have a similar game as well?

Re:X-com, or UO

[Damvan]

Silent Storm is a good game, I enjoyed it to a certain extent. The inability to save during a mission ruined it for me, though and I never finished it.

Fallout Tactics was also similar, and very good. Really, there have been quite a few turn-based tactical games since X-COM, but I don't think any have risen to X-COMs level. Then again, I haven't played it in years, so YMMV, rose colored glasses, the "good ole days" etc.

Re:X-com, or UO

[Profound]

The trouble is, they use BSP trees for spatial data structures, which rules out deforming the terrain. Thus the destruction of the battle field (as mentioned by the GP poster) will not be possible in that project.

Look behind you...

[tehgimpness]

...a three-headed monkey!

1998

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.

Unreal, Starcraft, Half-life, Baldur's Gate.

It was my first year of college, and my time was practically unlimited. Although my grades showed that it was not, it sure felt unlimited.

Great year.

1998-1999

[tedgyz]

As the article mentioned, Half-Life changed single-player FPS. In the same era, Quake III solidified the multi-player FPS experience. Many would argue that Q3 was not revolutionary, but it dovetailed well with the birth of broadband access at home.

Re:1998-1999

[TheRaven64]

I would have to disagree there. I got into the multiplayer FPS scene at about the same time as Quake 1 was released. Quake 2 was not played nearly as much as Q1 when it was released, because there were so many mods for Quake 1 by that point. Quake 3 was played briefly then ignored in favour of Half Life and Counterstrike. It wasn't until Quake 3 Team Arena was released that anyone I knew started playing Q3; by then everyone had got used to team-based games like Team Fortress, Counterstrike and even Rainbow 6 (in moderation). Quake 3 had no (good) team mode, and it was too shiny, lacking the 'realism' of other games of the time.

Re:1998-1999

[tedgyz]

There was definitely a huge counter-strike player base, but that does not preclude a large Q3 FFA player base. I used to watch the Gamespy player stats in the hey-day. Sure HL:CS had more players, but Q3 and UT had a decent following too. The Q3 crowd I played with preferred the lack of realism, in contrast to the UT crowd. I'll take umbrage with your statment that Q3 was "ignored".

With respect to the article, we can agree that this era was notably absent.

Re:1998-1999

[CaptnMArk]

Realism sucks. Q3 rules.

These are games, remember.

If you want FPS shooter realism, join the f'ing army.

Re:1998-1999

[Vince Ferg]

"It's standard nowadays to pay $70 per game." What games are you playing!? Wow I still pay the normal 50 for games and even 40 for some which I never would find games at years ago. If you ask me games went down in price as the years have passed. I remember paying 70 dollars for SNES games a few times but have never once found a game come out now and cost more then 60. And even 60 is rare although it will probably be the standard for next gen games in about a year. And look what you get for your money now compared to some of the games I cant even believe I spent money on back then! They want to get rid of games now a days since theres such a huge saturation of games nobody is buying them so of course the price is driven down or at least maintaning the same price throughout the years.

Re:1998-1999

[lgw]

There has never been a time of lower innovation in the games industry than there is now.

Well, the more ideas that are made into games, the harder it is to find a new idea, but it's worth remembering that everthings new to the next generation of gamers. There have been a few good games this century, but your certainly right about the density. Yes, most games were crap "back in the day" as well, but now it seems like one a year has good, solid gameplay. Still, that's better than nothing.

Call of Duty was a blast back in 2003, and the Russian campaign was innovative if you can say that about historical accuracy. Starting with no gun and being told "run out there and draw fire" was a novel gaming experience, at any rate.

Quake 4 was hardly a new idea, but the gameplay was very well done. That was my "lost weekend" for 2005 - heck, several weekends as I played it through 3 times (once using only the peashooter, just for laughs).

Nothing so far in 2006, but it's early yet. I'm sure the totally new game ideas will continue to be farther between, but that' only to be expected. I'll be happy with a few more games with solid gameplay, especially well-written "AI" (which seems to be the biggest inexplicable failing in moder shooters - why is almost everything worse than the AI in the original Half Life?).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's a matter of perspective.....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

My vote for the best year is whatever year MAME came out. Seriously!

When I was 14 my Dad kicked my ass because I wasted about $20.00 playing Crazy Climber at the arcade. Flash forward years later to MAME. I definitely got my money back......

Re:It's a matter of perspective.....

[CrazyClimber]

Money well spent, if you ask me.

Games getting worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Message to game developers: quit worrying about graphics/eye candy and make the game fun! The only time I've ever seen anyone impressed with graphics is when opengl first came out. NO ONE CARES ANYMORE ABOUT THE GRAPHICS get that through your heads. It is amazing to me how much games suck now days. And to the game developers: please stop making FPS's. The last decent FPS was QuakeIII. There just isn't much more you can do with that genre that hasn't already been done.

Re:Games getting worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. Graphics are extremely high on my list of things I consider when purchasing a game. Games do suck these days, but games with shitty graphics suck more.

1981

[Karlund]

Surely it must by 1981. First of all it's the birth year of Donkey Kong, and secondly that nifty computer zx81 came out...

Re:1981

[Nerdfest]

I've got mine on my desk in front of me ... just in case. You never know when these things come in handy. I've still got a flight simulator and chess around for it somewhere ...

Re:1981

[Karlund]

Rock on ;-) Unfortunately I sold mine on to buy a Spectrum, which I sold on to by an Amstrad, which I sold on to buy another Amstrad, which I sold on to buy ......... You get the idea :o) But the games in those days where sweet. No graphics => pure fun!!

You've got it backwards

[Mr. Samuel]

The original Metal Gear Solid was already kind of silly - intentionally so. It did everything it could to break the fourth wall and force its audience to notice how absurd it was. The problem was, nobody noticed; the existing gaming audience simply accepted the game at face value and thought it was awesome. For his sequel, therefore, Kojima simply turned up the heat. He put the player in the role of an effete, emasculated "gamer" who yearns to meet up with Snake. He put far more polygons than necessary into Snake's buttocks. He put Snake in a questionable relationship with his scientific advisor Otacon, and turned Otacon into a complete weirdo. Fans screamed bloody murder and stormed out of the building. Kojima began to attract a completely new base of fans.

Uh, I'm sorry? The original offered great characters, (quality) Hollywood action movie story telling, and polished gameplay. The game is actually quite immersive (the only breaking of the "fourth wall" I can think of was the second controller trick for Psycho Mantis).

MGS2, on the other hand, was way over the top at times, convoluted, and wanted so badly to lack immersion. And of course, nobody liked Raiden. For those just looking for great gameplay, the game still had it.

Re:You've got it backwards

[omeg]

The breaking of the "fourth wall" is also, again, in the Psycho Mantis scene, seen when Psycho Mantis reads the contents of your memory card, tells you how you've played the game thus far, and shows "HIDEO" at the top of the screen. The former is actually one of the very few examples of postmodernism in games. Metal Gear Solid 2 was almost entirely postmodern, although it is difficult to understand or appreciate this.

Re:You've got it backwards

[Captain Fallout]

The 4th wall also is broken when you are searching for Meryl to contact her for the first time. You have to contact Campbell and he will tell you to "look for her frequency on the back of the game case." It's 141.15, in case you were wondering.

Re:You've got it backwards

[Chris Burke]

The game is actually quite immersive (the only breaking of the "fourth wall" I can think of was the second controller trick for Psycho Mantis).

The game was quite immersive, and quite ambitious in terms of story line and character development, particularly outside of RPGs. This was only a problem when Kojima got too preachy about nuclear weapons (about 40 years too late on the "nukes are bad, m'kay" bandwagon there), but in genaral was quite successfull.

However, I have never seen a video game that so frequently and deliberately breaks the fourth wall. Sure, every game does it when they tell you to push the "A" button to fire your weapon, but MGS actually worked into the story. Including ones already mentioned:
- Psycho mantis reads your memory card and comments on what games you've played.
- You have to use the 2nd controller to beat his mind control (rather clever, really, representing the "higher level" of the mind by the player's own hands).
- You read the back of the game case to get Meryl's frequency.
- You call up Mei Ling on your codec and ask her to save your game.
- In the torture scene, Revolver Ocelot warns you not to use a controller with turbo buttons, because he'll know.

I want to say there are more examples, but I've only added two to this list. Hmmm...

All that said, I don't think breaking the fourth wall constitutes an effort to make the gamer realize the game is silly and absurd. Sounds more like a way to involve the gamer more directly into the game itself. If anything, I say Kojima wanted both the game and gaming itself as an art form to be taken seriously.

Re:You've got it backwards

[Gnostic Ronin]

I don't see why those things are so great. It sounds like a bunch of random stuff -- ooh, so the game can read my saves? kewl. 'cause nothing says spygame like having a CG ninja tell me that I've been playing Samurai Warriors and Katamari Damancy. It seems like a case of people liking those elements 'cause they're weird, not because they're fun.

Re:You've got it backwards

[Chris Burke]

It seems like a case of people liking those elements 'cause they're weird, not because they're fun.

I suppose you could say that, if that's the only axis you want to look at things on.

My point is that the game broke the fourth wall deliberately in a way that simultaneously removed the player from their role as Solid Snake, Super Spy, while simultaneously drawing the player in as themselves.

How do you show that Psycho Mantis has mind reading powers? Purely in-game he could read Snake's mind quite easily, and maybe that'd say "spygame" more, but it would be contrived. "You're thinking about Albuquerque!" "Amazing!" So instead they give him the ability to read the player's mind... well, read what video games he plays, which is as close as they can get.

This and the other 4th-wall examples don't by themselves constitute "fun". However they do represent a way of involving the player in the game that few others have tried. Like breaking the 4th wall in theatre, making characters in the game aware of and respond to the player builds a connection with the player. That can make the subsequent game playing feel more involved with what is otherwise a pretty disconnected experience (mashing buttons on a game pad to make super spy aim and fire weapons).

The overall effect isn't one you're very conscious of while playing, but it works. I didn't really list them to be examples of awesome in the game (such a list wouldn't have many of these elements in it, there's much better to choose from), but examples of how the 4th wall breaking technique was used.

Re:You've got it backwards

[Gnostic Ronin]

My point is that there's useful innovation and stupid innovation. This seems (to me anyway) to be in the stupid end. What does it really add, other than a "gee whiz" factor. The script itself (just to read the memory card) is probably fairly trivial to write, just do a quick read of the files on the card, have the ninja say "you've been playing XXX". And the thing is that they didn't do much with it. You could have used that info to adjust the difficulty of the game (ooh, so you played Spliter Cell and Rainbow 6, you're obviously a well trained spy...) or to have one of the bosses be a texture mapped version of the most recent Konami game you played. That would be more fun and interesting than a list of save games.

I prefer the innovations to add to the gameplay factor -- I guess that's just me. I'd rather see someone try a new feature in a level or a new type of puzzle. The MGS 4th wall effects seem more like the bad side of modern art -- random things thrown in to make people say WTF.

1987

[99luftballon]

It was the year I finally got to play Elite unsupervised. I wince to think how long I spent on that game; whole nights spent hunched over a BBC Model B trading, pirating and cursing Thargoids who trapped me with low fuel. To my mind it's still one of the most addictive games around, after Civ 2.

There used to be a version that mimicked it on a PC floating around but I can't find it anywhere and I understand the creators had it pulled.

Re:1987

[tehgimpness]

I had Elite on the Atari 520ST. To get into the hex editor you would enter "sara" the first time then the correct password (a word from the manual) the next time. Pressing the ~ key (IIR) got you into the hex editor. I once managed to get myself to the rank of Elite, then after the next kill my rank was: Pulse Laser, it went a little screwy after that.

Re:1987

[MrCopilot]

Here Ya Go.

http://oolite.aegidian.org/
http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/miodrag/xEli te.zip?
http://www.rebelstar.cd2.com/cgi-bin/dc.cgi?file=r emakes/elite_-_the_new_kind_v1_0.zip

May I also recommend:

Privateer...
http://priv.solsector.net/
http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net/

Re:1987

[NSIM]

Agree completely about Elite, I still have the PC version which runs nicely under DOSBOX

Re:1987

[99luftballon]

Cheers mate, much appreciated.

Re:1987

[Kesch]

Privateer was one of the first games I played. (I think I still have the Win 95 CD releae around here somewhere. I lost the original floppies.) You just brought back a big succulent heap of nostalgia. I'm gonna have to play the remake.

Also, whenever someone mentions Freelancer, I have a compulsive need to mention Privateer.

"What was your best year for gaming?"

[ursabear]

When I discovered DOOM (a year after it actually came out), my gaming world changed. For me, gaming went from Atari console games to PC-Based games because of DOOM.

However, come to think of it, I really enjoyed Myst. I think it was Myst that got me to the place where I really enjoy exploring, finding hidden things, and solving puzzles - even more than I enjoyed emptying a rail gun into Imps and Mancubi (plural of Mancubus?)

So, for me, it was two different years that were the best.

Re:"What was your best year for gaming?"

[damburger]

Got to agree. At the time, I had an Amiga 1200 and thought it was the mutts nuts. Then by brother told me to go out and buy this game called 'Doom' for my dads PC. Me and my mum went to the shop and nearly picked up a copy of 'Dune' by accident.

That could've changed my entire gaming life.

Obligatory "The Wizard" quote

[red_dragon]

"I love the Power Glove. It's so bad."

YAFI, YGI.

1997 dudes....

[Anonymous Coward]

1997: The year the health of my social well being declined thanks to Final Fantasy VII, and I still love you for it.

Re:1997 dudes....

[ShibaInu]

I think Fallout came out in 1997 as well. Now there was a fun RPG.

Re:1997 dudes....

[Anonymous Coward]

The worlds #1 online 2d space game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_%25computer_ game)
still played by many URL:http://getsubspace.com
subspace came out in 1997.

1997 was a good year.

put the crack pipe down and get off my lawn

[puto]

Wow, forcing me to post from work.

Although I am an Apple fan, I am by no means a fan boy. "Cementing the place of pc games forever", is a bit strong.

Many of us were playing games on our apple 2s way before the mac was released.

Mask of the Sun
Lode Runner
Miner 49er
Wavy Navy
Everything by Infocom
Kareteka
Summer games, Winter Games

I would say the early apple 2s and the Commodore 64 were the ones that cemented the pc game world. The Commodore was cheap and great. Also do not leave out the Trs-80 and the CoCos. Not everyone had the cash for a Mac, and when it came out most Apple guys did not like it at the time.

Puto

Re:put the crack pipe down and get off my lawn

[Anthracks]

Don't forget the King's Quest series! I have fond memories of playing King's Quest IV on about 30 5.25" floppies, having to swap them out nearly every time you walked to the next screen. I was so envious of my friend's computer (Apple IIgs I think?) that actually had a hard drive. Kinda puts things in perspective when you realize that the junkiest little USB keychain on the market today could hold that game 100 times over.

Re:put the crack pipe down and get off my lawn

[Anonymous Coward]

all those games licked balls though.

Re:put the crack pipe down and get off my lawn

[snuf23]

Not too mention that the black and white Mac was a terrible game machine. No color, small screen, no joystick input that I'm aware of. When the Mac II launched it cost close to $5000 to get color, so that wasn't exactly a game machine either. Macs didn't really become OK game computers until at least the mid 90s (cheap color Macs).

Definitely 2005

[Gunfighter]

Yes... 2005 was the best year in gaming for me. It's the year Sony, in their infinite idiocy, ruined Star Wars Galaxies with their New Gay^H^H^HGame Enhancements and I found out that there was a much better game out there with far more activity and fewer bugs that I should have been playing all along. WoW > SWG. Maybe Lucas will give the SWG2 contract to Blizzard and save the day.

+/- 1990

[Draracle]

Lets see... starting in 1989 with Prince of Persia and Mech Warrior. Add the "Quest" years of Serria with Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest and Quest for Glory. Put in some Aces of the Pacific. Then bow down to Wolfenstein 3D. And then... good god, if this wasn't enough, along came Sid with Civilization (91). Finally, in 1992, the RTS comes into its own with Dune 2. It was a good thing I had a summer job.

Amen, Brother.

[syrrys]

You are right on. All of those titles were so imaginative and addictive, I still think about them from time to time. Imagine that, reminiscing of a video game? If I could find a Marble Madness cabinet, I would buy it.

1982-1984 for me..

[nolife]

Okay, Maybe I am a little older..

In the 1980-1984 range, I was just becoming a teen and video games and arcades were popping up everywhere.
Centipede, Pac-Man, Missle Command, Frogger, Tron, Defender, Joust, Burger Time, Dig Dug, Excitebike, Pole Position, Track and Field, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Spy Hunter and many many more.

For home gaming, I had an Intellivision, a C64, and an Atari 2600 in that same time frame and I probably still used some of my handheld games like the classic Mattel Football, the green rev 2 Mattel Football, Battlestar Galactica and some others.

Re:1982-1984 for me..

[Draracle]

Dig Dug and Spy Hunter where my favourites back on the old commie. I can never get that damn music from dig dug out of my head to this day.

Re:1982-1984 for me..

[An ominous Cow art]

Yes... To me, the 80's are the best years, too. Add Robotron, Final Mission, Gauntlet, Star Wars, Glory Road, Space Duel, Scramble, Gyruss, Tempest, and others I'm forgetting.

Time for another pilgrimage to NH Fun Spot. I'm lucky I'm only an hour or so away from it...

I had Atari 2600 and 800 at home. There was certainly some great stuff for the 800. I particularly enjoyed Gauntlet (no relation to the multiplayer arcade dungeon game). It was a shareware game, basically a side-scrolling shooter (except it didn't actually scroll). You flew a UFO around, destroying an enemy batlegroup dug in on a small moon. Great game, I wish I had sent in money to the author for the expanded version, but I was speding most of my money on my D&D habit in those days...

1991 Civ

[kavehmz]

Sid Meier's Civilization in 1991 was one of the best games form me ever.

The other one was Wolf3D and it followers from ID.

1994 System Shock

[Down_in_the_Park]

For those who played it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock, it is well known as the best computer game ever.

Re:1994 System Shock

[Tim C]

Personally, I prefered System Shock 2, if only for the creepiness factor. It's the only game that's consistently scared the willies out of me.

Re:1994 System Shock

[Down_in_the_Park]

Well, yes SS2 was creepy, but SS1 was the first time you could play a creepy semi-first-person-intelligent-story-game. And Diego was really, really mean. And I loved to go into "cyberspace".

Re:1994 System Shock

[QueenOfSwords]

Oh hell yes. There needs to be another game in that series... and Deus Ex for that matter. *Sigh*

Thankyou Shock, for all those '2am jumping out of my chair' moments.

Re:1994 System Shock

[Down_in_the_Park]

Deus Ex, right, again just a fantastic intelligent story and perfect gameplay. But that's something one could always expect from Warren Spector.

He worked also on Wing Commander/Privateer which would be my No. 2

2002

[syrrys]

Raven and Activision release Soldier Of Fortune 2: Double Helix. No game has EVER had a bigger following or a base of fans who still play it. I still play it...everyday, and so do about 3000 other people. Now you may laugh at 3000, but think about it. The game came out over 4 years ago and we all still play pretty much the same maps. The greatest FPS of all time, period. And dont cry to me about cheaters, every game has them, you fucking noobs. You just ban and move on.

No, it didn't.

[Vo0k]

The game was amazing. Great and revolutionary. But the industry didn't follow. FF sequels were more washed out and niche, and no other games of similar class followed. Final Fantasy was a hit that could have sparkled a revolution of great games, but it didn't. Not sure why. FF7 still stands out in that era and quite a few great games were created later, but none of them took from the greatness of FF7, and the games that did, were at best medicore.

It started for me...

[Beefslaya]

When the FPS and RTS online Multiplayer games hit it big. (mid 90's?)

The combination of broadband cable modem in my neighborhood and Unreal Tournament wasted many hours of my summers.

Notable mentions, Quake III, Ages of Empires (II was the best), Empire Earth, and Unreal Tournament 2K.

And then there's Battlefield 1942, the mother of all FPS online games. I still play the shit out of this one.

I don't like console games, for lack of control and my thumbs hurt. I grew out of them somewhere around the Nintendo 64.

Today's PC games aren't carrying the same enthusiasm as they used to. Doom 3 made me shit my pants a few times playing with the surround sound in the dark, and Half Life 2 (after too long of a wait) was done in a weekend. Far Cry and the CryEngine were pretty groundbreaking, but what happened to that?

RTS games have just gotten rediculous.

This year

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this year has been my best year for gaming so far. My StepMania habit has resulted in the removal of at least four inches of unwanted girth around my midriff. Also, I don't get tempted to play it all night, unlike certain other memorable games from times past.

my timeline

[deviceb]

the classics.. space invaders
pacman
yars revenge
ect..

Nintendo days were the most revolutionary
SMBs - SMB1 was a insane leap from the 52 or 7800
Metroids
Zelda
final fantasys

PC
Castle Wolfenstein was ok, but Doom had me scared to move out of my "safe spot" backed into a corner
Everquest was the last big jump in a different direction for gaming. Why did they have to ruin this game? now look how many MMORPGs spawned.. /ack
Im sure i could edit this timeline better.. but thoes are the ground layers
I'm still waiting for a good FPS. Red Orchestra is #1 for me right now. the modding community and UT engine make it so.

FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to like FF VII, or to even think it's the best in the entire series. That's an opinion and everyone's entitled to have them.

But revolutionary? I take issue with the concept, and since your conclusion is based on that one game, your entire statement.

Let me try to wrap my head around the point, starting with how it could be revolutionary within the realm of Final Fantasy games. I'll start with the most common "points" brought up, with games noted by "US/JAP" release titles:

-(Obviously)It wasn't the first FF game

-(The Aeris point) It wasn't the first FF game where characters, party members, and large numbers of innocents died (see FFII/IV's Tellah, FFIII/VI's Castle Doma, Breaking of the World, General Leo, and many others related to the recurring party members, and FFV's Galuf)

-(Materia) It wasn't the first FF game where you could teach your characters things (Espers in FFIII/VII, and the Job/Skill System in the Famicom's FFII, as well as FFV)

-(Story) It can be argued, as a matter of opinion, that FFII/IV and FFIII/VI had incredibly good stories, especially by those who played them before Playstation/FFVII came out.

-(Soundtrack) Granted that FFVII's music didn't have to be midi's, but by the same measure, FFIII/VI's soundtrack was available at the US's release date and was fully orchestrated (and sounded damn good)

-(Chocobos) Nope, been around since at least FFII/IV, and IIRC, FFII on the Famicom/GBA.

-(Party Switching) The ability to select who comes and who goes at will has been around since FFIII/VI. In fact, some of the best and more "revolutionary" sequences forced you to split up your party into multiple groups, causing some potentially difficult battles if you didn't know how to play each character's strengths and/or poorly developed their skills and misgrouped them.

-(Active Battle System) Not even close...see FFII/IV and beyond.

The only "revolutionary" action for FFVII in the Final Fantasy series I can think of is that it was the first one to come out on a platform that could support FMV-style animation sequences and also use polygons instead of sprites, thereby appealing to a wider audience.

Now, taken in a greater scope of all RPGs, I really can't think of *anything* that FFVII did that no RPG previous to it (on any computer system or console) hadn't done first, or better.

Now, for my "old man" disclaimer...I'm 25, and grew up on the early FF games. I played through FFVII, and enjoyed it. FFVIII didn't do it for me, but FFIX I enjoyed, and I found Final Fantasy Tactics (like Tactics Ogre) to be refreshing and extremely enjoyable. I stopped playin' them after that, but not for dislike of the series -- my interests simply changed, though I do plan to try to come back to the series in the future, when there's time in my life.

I've just heard the (relatively baseless) "OMG FFVII is teh best ev3r!!!" argument too often, and felt the need to offer rebuttle.

Thanks!

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Alexandra Erenhart]

Sorry, but none of the previous FF had Sephiroth. That owns them all. I know, I'm biased, shoot me :P *woman gamer with a thing for crazy long-white-haired-mako-eyes badass guys*

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Evanisincontrol]

*woman gamer with a thing for crazy long-white-haired-mako-eyes badass guys*

Haha, yeah right. Everyone knows that there are no girls on the internet.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Alexandra Erenhart]

Yeah. No girls. Just lusty women :P Believe it or not

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Stormwatch]

Sorry, but none of the previous FF had Sephiroth.

One word:

Kefka.

Enough said.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[DrWho520]

Now, for my "old man" disclaimer...I'm 25....

Dude, you have a seriously skewed view if you think you need an old man disclaimer at the age of 25.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Alexandra Erenhart]

Kefka!?!? KEFKA!?!?! Don't compare please... Kefka was a great meanie and everything, but he doesn't stand a chance against the sexy-ness of Sephy.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Erioll]

Ya, but Kefka was bat-shit insane. COMPLETELY gone. He re-formed the WORLD. What did Seph do? Try and destroy a city or two? BAH! He MAY have tried to destroy the world with a meteor, but Kefka actually did it!

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Alexandra Erenhart]

Yeah, I give you the credit for that. Kefka was completely nuts. Kefka did more as "the bad guy" than Seph. But Kefka still doesn't look better than Seph ;)

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Stormwatch]

Villains do not have to be sexy and charming. Villains have to be vile!

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Alexandra Erenhart]

They're usually both. I don't know why. Must be the typical "women are attracted to bad guys" dilemma. I always find most of the bad guys sexy, as well as vile, of course.

Gannon and Gannondorf are out of question though...

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[finalstrife]

Almost everything you talk about is an opinion, in of that you are comparing two things and when you say one did it better, you mean you liked that one more. If you actually wanted to know which one did it better, you would look at the source programming and see who implemented the code better. Now, since we are firmly grounded in the world of opinion contrary to facts, I will put in my .02$. Final Fantasy Seven represented several dramatic changes. One of these, the emergence of Square as a serious contender onto the playstation platform is still felt to this day. Speaking about the game itself though, ffvii is really the first time that a company like square was able to tell the story they desired to without losing any of its power. ffvii was able to reach out to audiences across the market and grab there interest and attention. Its the reason they were even able to sell *games* like ffix; it was such a strong, artfully done game that it created a foundation for all future acts of square to be judged by.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[zerocool^]

Alexandra, meet Emperor Ghestal of USFF3. Emperor, Alexandra.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[drinkypoo]

I can't believe I'm about to nerd out to this degree but...

(Obviously)It wasn't the first FF game

The first FF game wasn't revolutionary either, except for having an amazingly bad interface that was actually a step backwards from where RPGs had arrived by that point.

-(Materia) It wasn't the first FF game where you could teach your characters things

Materia seems to be a unique concept. Certainly I'd never seen a system anything like that. You could still call it only evolutionary, but it was pretty damned new.

-(Chocobos) Nope, been around since at least FFII/IV, and IIRC, FFII on the Famicom/GBA.

Chocobos aren't an amazing new idea anyway. There's been people riding birds in RPGs, games, anime (which inspires the RPG style, and vice versa - see "Making of Record of Lodoss War", it's on disc 2 in the box set) and so on. The only thing new about Chocobos is Wark!

The only "revolutionary" action for FFVII in the Final Fantasy series I can think of is that it was the first one to come out on a platform that could support FMV-style animation sequences and also use polygons instead of sprites, thereby appealing to a wider audience.

What, that doesn't count? Actually, it's not the first RPG to have FMV-style animation sequences, OR to use polygons, though it's the first final fantasy to do either. What it IS however is the first RPG that I know of, maybe the first game, to routinely lay the polygonal characters over video.

Now, taken in a greater scope of all RPGs, I really can't think of *anything* that FFVII did that no RPG previous to it (on any computer system or console) hadn't done first, or better.

Well, you just alluded to itself in your prior paragraph; it's the level of immersion. While it looks crude by today's standards, FFVII featured a level of beauty in both graphics and audio that was unparalleled. Incidentally, I have a couple pieces of the FFVII orchestral soundtrack, boy is that great.

I never got into the earlier final fantasy games until the rerelease for playstation because the interface was shit. I am not kidding, I am really that picky about such things. FFVII is the first RPG I played that had an interface that didn't piss me off - but granted, that was because I hadn't played Chrono Cross, which was actually quite excellent.

But even more than that you just have this whole huge game world that has SO MUCH STUFF in it. All the mini-games, which you either love or hate, the chocobo breeding system, etc etc. It's got so much optional content that you just have to be impressed. These days, an RPG tends to pretty much be like a movie.

Also, while I do appreciate the old games, and even plan to finish them all someday when I have a lot more time for video gaming than I do now, I cannot STAND the new final fantasy games. Anything after 7 is so fucking boring that I have to wonder what happened over there. The story lines are getting worse, not better...

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[0racle]

the first time that a company like square was able to tell the story they desired to without losing any of its power

No it wasn't. Had Square went with Sega as opposed to Nintendo, they never would have been asked to tone down their Japanese releases for the American audience. Nintendo screwed over both Sony and Square, and apparently this time was the last straw for Square. Sony offered them a good deal because having square on board would boost their image in the buying publics mind and Square felt it was time to leave Nintendos censors behind.

The revolution was gamers were growing up and Nintendo treated the North American market like they were going to be eternally 8 years old. Square could do FF7 and beyond based on what they had done with 6 and earlier, not because of 7 on it's own.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Gulthek]

Where does Leon from Resident Evil 4 fit in? My wife found him pretty appealing in a cheesy action movie kinda way.

Her latest videogame flame is either Reza or the Scottish guy from The Longest Journey. I found Zoe (also from The Longest Journey) to be easy on the eyes.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[scot4875]

Dunno, the sprite for Kefka was obviously stubby and super-deformed like all of the other characters, but in the final battle with him he's basically a lot like Sephiroth, except that he's got golden hair and looks like an angel or something from the ceiling of Sisteen Chapels... When you finally fight Sephiroth, he's angelic but pretty mutated and grotesque, IIRC. (Haven't played 7 since I beat it the first time, almost 10 years ago...)

--Jeremy

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[script_daddy]

I feel a great disturbance in the Slash-sphere. As if millions of geeks suddenly got a bulge in their pants, and were suddenly stained.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Alexandra Erenhart]

Well, you cannot expect someone that has been receiving all those Mako radiation to conserve their normal form, can you? And well, I find Kefka's crackling very unappealing anyways. Very evil, of course, but not on my sexy list.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Alexandra Erenhart]

Heh! you just made me laugh and made ppl around me look at me as if I was nuts. I'd give you a point if I could :P

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[operagost]

If your post doesn't make it onto SeenOnSlash.com, I will be highly disappointed.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Cocoa Radix]

But...but...*sniffle*...Sephiroth was BADASS!!!

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Chibi-Hikaru]

Another two words:

Dark Force.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[SoapDish]

I just wanted to point out that the GP said:

"Let me try to wrap my head around the point, starting with how it could be revolutionary within the realm of Final Fantasy games."

So half of what you said doesn't really matter. In terms of FMV, he did say that counted as revolutionary within the realm FF games, but not in the wider realm of all RPGs.

Finally you said:

"Well, you just alluded to itself in your prior paragraph; it's the level of immersion."

Since half that sentence actually makes no sense, I'll take it you meant, "Well, you just alluded to it yourself in your previous paragraph: it's the level of immersion."

First, immersion is the wrong word. The GP was talking about appeal to a larger audience, which is what you're also talking about. Immersion involves making the player more a part of the game.
Games get a wider audience by making things shinier (this is not immersion).

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[drinkypoo]

First, immersion is the wrong word. The GP was talking about appeal to a larger audience, which is what you're also talking about. Immersion involves making the player more a part of the game. Games get a wider audience by making things shinier (this is not immersion).

Look, when you figure out what I'm trying to say, then you can tell me I'm using the wrong word. You haven't actually got it figured out yet, so just spare me.

FFVII gave you a more "real" world, with more details, interactivity, et cetera, than any former RPG. That is what I meant about immersive. On the other hand, I have to admit, that's just a matter of evolution, not revolution.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[menace3society]

That "one little point" is actually a big deal. Up to that time, nerdy gamers who preferred RPGs to fighters and racing games lived by the "good graphics don't make a good game" mantra, and were actively hostile to improved graphics and systems that boasted ever-greater graphics capabilities--the idea being that game developers are a finite resource, and effort spent on graphics is effort not spent on the gameplay and story-writing.

Then the bomb, in the form of Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation, was dropped.

The gameplay was as smooth or smoother than any other RPG of the time period, the story was was acceptably decent (whether is was good or not is subject to strenuous debate). But it had killer graphics. All of a sudden, the crap people were spewing about graphics not mattering or not improving the experience was demonstrably false,[1] and in an instant, the video game industry was changed. FFVII led, in a serious way, the charge for multi-million-dollar big-budget games, by requiring development studios to have story AND gameplay AND graphics, instead of just one or two. It also introduced a huge number of people into console role-playing games, indubitably far more than any other title.

[1]: I think that this is actually the reason that so many self-proclaimed "old-school" RPGers hate Final Fantasy VII so much: it made them look like total chumps and they resent Square for "abandoning" them... in favor of more exciting, playable games that more people than ever enjoy. Just goes to show, there's no pleasing some people.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[ClamIAm]

I think that this is actually the reason that so many self-proclaimed "old-school" RPGers hate Final Fantasy VII so much: it made them look like total chumps and they resent Square for "abandoning" them... in favor of more exciting, playable games that more people than ever enjoy. Just goes to show, there's no pleasing some people.

FF 7 was not "more playable" than, say, Chrono Trigger. Both have annoying interfaces, unskippable inane dialogue, etc. I use CT as an example because I haven't played the SNES FF games.

Also, do you have any empirical data that suggests more people play RPGs now than before? Obviously, the absolute number of gamers has risen since then (but remains at about the same percentage of the population). So pointing to higher 2005 sales won't cut it; you'll need to show that a higher percentage of gamers now play RPGs. I really doubt this is true.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Anonymous Coward]

While not empirical data, I'd like to site myself as a gamer who converted to RPGs as a result of FFVII. Up until I played it, I'd been playing FPS games on PC, and Sonic on my Sega Megadrive. They say the art of a story is in the telling, and I think that's what FFVII brought to gaming for me - a fantastic story that was told in an impressive and relateable way. I personally (and I know it's not a popular opinion around here) think that FF VII, VIII, X and X-2 are the best of the series thus far, and that FFIX was a sub-par yet acceptable deviation from a formula that just seems to work. Just my opinion, and perhaps that of a few other non-Slashdotters too.

My apologies for the anonymous post - having trouble getting my verification email...

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Chibi-Hikaru]

Bah, go play any old EGA Sierra adventure game and you'll have more interaction than in FF7.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Chibi-Hikaru]

I can only speak for myself but I found FF7 to be a mediocre RPG at best. I am an "old school" RPGer. I played Dragon Warrior 1-4 and Phantasy Star 1-4 as far as big name RPGs go long before FF7. So I have something to base my opinion against. Now as for your statement about the graphics being poor, I am also a PC gamer as well. I also grew up playing Sierra On-Line adventure games and the like. They liked to push the edge as to what your sytem to hand, god I still have the boot disks to prove that!

Now, your whole arguement hinges on whether or not us old schoolers hate FF7 cause of the graphics being better than 16 bit sprites. Well, you're heading in the right direction but still way off. For myself, the first FF game I played was FFT and in comparison to that, FF7's story was a major let down. Beyond that... and this is the major problem I have with FF7 is that it changed the gaming industry into an interactive movie industry. You have to get to nearly the end of FF7 before you can finally explore and by then there's nothing much left to do but kill some weapons and farm chocobos. I hate, hate, hate being led by the hand from one cut scene to another. Good god let me figure out what I'm supposed to do next and where I'm supposed to go. If I wander off too far and a lvl 50 monster bites my level 10 head right off then I better have saved instead of being forced to the next movie!

There is way too much watching of games than actual playing of them and I blame it on FF7 and its damn FMVs. Not because they don't look great, they do, but they are used way too much. Give me that level of graphics and stop holdling my hand every two minutes to point me in the right direction and let me play the damn game like the older games used to do!

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[drinkypoo]

I've played all of the old EGA sierra games, IIRC, and most of them are fucking stupid. I mean, they were a breakthrough kind of thing for when they were developed but the way you do things to solve puzzles is typically entirely counterintuitive. Also, they're not all that interactive. There's real-world legitimate actions that cannot be carried out with in-game items, and which actions work with what are totally inconsistent. I think you're just being washed away on a wave of nostalgia.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Chibi-Hikaru]

I think you missed my point in that the world in those games were as interactive as FF7's world was, and that I am not one of these "oh my god, it's got good graphics, it must suck" people. What pisses me off is people like you who think that everything that's old that someone likes must be due to "nostalgia." It apprently has never dawned on people like you that those older things (games in this instance) might still be good. My favorite games span from the Nintendo DS all the way back to the Master System on a myriad of systems. So no my friend. It is not "nostalgia."

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[drinkypoo]

My favorite games span from the Nintendo DS all the way back to the Master System on a myriad of systems. So no my friend. It is not "nostalgia."

Please forgive me if I do not agree. It is often difficult to detect the origins of one's feelings, so I'm not berating you or anything. I, too, have favorites that stretch back across the ages; I began with pong-type machines and moved up to the atari 2600. I've played almost every console system ever created (with a couple notable exceptions like fairchild, or odyssey 1) and I've played literally hundreds of games. On some systems (like the SNES) I've played almost every game ever released that wasn't a sports title (and some of those, too.)

But I'm talking about the level of interactivity, which is largely crap. Having more items with which you can interact does not improve the level of interactivity! Being able to do more different things with the world DOES - and the old Sierra titles, as amusing as some of them were, are not that interactive. Almost every item is a "key" item, which you have to stick somewhere to move on. That's not a high level of interactivity. I think there's actually more interactivity in Zork games, barring the minigames in slightly later sierra games which, without exception, had horrible play control.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary"

[Chibi-Hikaru]

Fair enough. I found the "minigames" of FF7 to be pretty much of the same calibre as the casino minigames found in Leisure Suit Larry 5. For me, FF7 did not bring anything new to the table other than FMVs which I can live with or without.

Can't remember the year...

[Barny]

But after the addiction that was zork, logging onto a MUD and playing effectively a zork game MULTIPLAYER was a huge "omfg" moment for me, and of course my first player kill ^_^

Whats this WoW game people keep talking of? Oh, thats right, its the game that got all the noobs of the world interested enough in online play to play http://warhammeronline.com/ ^_^

And.

[Gr8Apes]

Zork, what memories you bring to us.

Let's not forget '#' and his 'd'. (Hack, Nethack, or any of the several other flavors out there).

1986

[st0rmshad0w]

The year I turned over Defender. Hoo-ah.

1998-1999

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Just as the Dreamcast arrived. The Playstation was at its zenith. The boundaries of the 32bit, CD based era were being pushed outwards by developers fully competant with the system. The 64 was producing some of its finest games. Even the PC was churing out some quality games. Not a month went by without a blockbuster title coming out to wow you into submission.

The Ocarina Of Time, Metal Gear Solid, AOE II:Age of Kings, Star Ocean 2, Starcraft, Sonic Adventure, Soul Reaver, Syphon Filter, Driver, Half-Life, Crash Bandicoot Warped. The list goes on. Innovation, innovation, innovation. Quality, quality titles. I don't think there's ever been a higher signal to noise ratio on gameshop shelves.

And in those days, unlike now, when a blockbuster title arrived, you were guaranteed it was worth your money. These days, not even Zelda can reach the heights it once soared to. And speaking of money, games were cheaper back then. By a lot. It's standard nowadays to pay $70 per game.

2000 arrived with a few gems. Vagrant Story, Devil May Cry, to name some of the finest. But the glory days were over. The fresh young studios had been bought out. Monopolies had formed, the clones had begun to arrive. Next gen costs squeezed out the small guy, ensuring less gameplay for more polygons. Innovation screeched to a halt, forever condenmed to languish in handhelds and browser games. From now on games would simply be derivatives of older titles, repackaged in extra polygons and bump mapped textures. And EA saw that it was good, and did profit.

The industry has never recovered from the Next Gen shift in 2000. Sure there've been a few good titles here and there. Games like GTA show the true potential of additional machine power. But overall, the industry has grown more and more tepid as time goes by. Six months can go by without a single game so much as catching your eye. The shelves fill up with the gaming equivalent of B-movies, tired and overused styles proliferate. Sequel is heaped upon sequel. Even the masses have begun to tire of it.

There has never been a time of lower innovation in the games industry than there is now. Back in the days of the Amiga, there was tenfold the level of innovation there is today. I'm playing less and less games. Watching what I once felt was my birthright, my private pastime, whored out to the lowest common denominator. I want to feel the same rush I did when I first rode through Hyrule on horseback, when I first snuck through Shadow Moses Island, when I first fought through Black Mesa. I want to be able to lose myself in a game from Friday evening, till Sunday night, and not regret a second of it.

But the industry today can never deliver this. All it can do is lead us up Omaha beach over and over, put neon lights on the underside of the cars, take us where we've been already and patch the betas we paid good money for. And I'm getting too old to care.

Back at Macromedia when Quake was released.

[azav]

Sometime last century, we were in QA on the Director Team at Macromedia. We'd all join up on our 486s and use the demo levels of Quake to de-stress by blowing the crap out of each other. This was back with keyboard only control too! On the release of Quake, about 6 or 7 of us came into the office on 600 Townsend St. in San Francisco. I downloaded the demo as soon as it was released and put it up on an internal server on our 10 base T network. We all went over to the SoundEdit team's desks and played the first 7 levels of Quake I cooperatively.

It was amazing.

After killing the lava boss in the seventh level, I leaned back in shock, horror, awe and exhaustion and we all looked at each other with our mouths agape. Shocked, I suddenly I bolted to the phone and we became the 400th people on Earth to have purchased Quake I.

Just awesome awesome awesome. American was in his level designing prime back then and we loved every minute of it.

Rocket jumps, poaching (sniping), the chaingun and quad damage. Rocket jumps with quad and the pent! Lightning gun in the water with the pentagram of protection. The pings as the nails bounced off the stone walls. The awesome horribly screaming gurgle in the demo when you fell into the lava.

The foom and clink of the 'nade launcher.

Running across the ceiling rocketing peasants (your buddies) down below.

The Squish and the floor that opened into the lava.

The pain (or joy) of the telefrag.

The brutal comic stylizing of the game and the speed you ran at.

Good times, good times.

DM2, DM3 and DM4 baybee!

Red Armor! Red Armor!

It is relative to your age

[happy_place]

The greatest years of gaming will always be relative to your age. (though I was a little old when Pokemon came out and I still love that. :) ) It is no surprise that this particular article is more or less written to the website's key demographic (the gamers with money). Star Control 2 forever!! --Ray

1984: Elite

[metamatic]

1984. Elite came out, and my summer holidays disappeared. At one point I went downstairs to get food and realized I had cross-hair sights burned into my retinas; I could see them when I looked at the plain white of the refrigerator.

My Personal 10 Best Years

[jeblucas]

Well, the article is crushed, and everyone loves blogs, so these are my personal 10 Best Years in Video Gaming...

• 1981--My parents divorce. My Dad needs to overcompensate, so he gets an Odyssey2. I play Pick Axe Pete and KC Munchkin until I fall asleep at the controller.
• 1983--I play Galaga at the Silver Ball Arcade in Worcester, MA, and just cannot be stopped. I was in a trance. I must have played for 45 minutes. Everyone was watching. I was 10 years old.
• 1984--My friend has a Commodore 64 and we play Archon endlessly. The Banshee cannot lose.
• 1986--I see a kid play Super Mario Bros in an arcade cabinet in Orlando, FL. I am HYPNOTIZED. $290 dollars, four months, and one still-overcompensating Dad later I can retire my Atari 5200.
• 1987--I get Metroid. This is the best game ever made. (Still).
• 1991--Street Fighter 2 is released. Only Tournament Cyberball competes for quarters for the next three years. Dhalsim cannot lose.
• 1994--The University of Redlands Physics lab has many Macs hooked up with Appletalk. These many Macs all have Marathon on them. Deathmatches ensue, and ensue hard.
• 1997--I get my first Mac, and Ambrosia Software gets half my paycheck. Maelstrom, Apeiron, Swoop, Escape Velocity.
• 2003--Some minigolf place in the SVF has a Street Fighter II: Turbo game in the "cheap corner". I play for the first time in years and thrash the shit out of a dozen young Vietnamese kids for about 30 minutes. Dhalsim still can't lose. I walk away from the game.
• 2006--I re-re-re-discover Diablo 2. MAN I love this game. Watch out, Metroid.

Some lowlights...

• I had an Atari Lynx.
• King's Quest IV--you throw a golden ball into the POND? What the fuck?
• Burgertime on the NES--worrrrrrst controllllls evaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr!
• Rush'n Attack on the NES. Did you beat this game? You're a fucking liar.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[sesshomaru]

# I had an Atari Lynx. [lowlight]

What, you didn't get Gates of Zendocon? No Chip's Challenge? Slimeworld didn't send you?

Frankly, I couldn't understand (at the time... still can't) how people were happy with an original Gameboy. A monocolor screen, versus the Lynx (16-bit full color with hardware scaling and rotation (Mode 7 in Nintendo speak)).

As to your King's Quest comment, perhaps you'll find this amusing...

"Control a short-panted 'peasant' named Rather Dashing as he stumbles through Peasantry in his 'quest' to get revenge on a dragon thing."

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[jeblucas]

I had Chip's Challenge. That was great. I played it, and played it, and played it. There weren't any other Lynx games, so I played that one. I had the California Games that came with it, Chip's Challenge, and the disappointing Cyberball port. I'm sure there were really great games on the Vectrex too. I bet both guys enjoyed them.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[sesshomaru]

Sigh... I wish I had a Vectrex....

I really do...

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[moonsammy]

My older brother had a Lynx and I played the hell out of it - California Games, Blue Lightning, Guantlet (3? 4? You could play as a nerd or a robot, whatever it was), Rampart, Slime World, Shadow of the Beast, Gates of Zendocon, Ninja Gaiden (the arcade version, which I always loved and lost many quarters to), Road Blasters, Stun Runner (another arcade quarter-hog), Viking Child... probably others, but those jump to mind. The thing drained batteries like nobody's business, but we had rechargables and an ac adapter when near an outlet, so it didn't matter too much.

I'd still happily sit and play that for hours, if it worked. I'm can't recall what finally killed it - survived the first iraq war (he was deployed there) just fine, and numerous road trips after that.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[FlynnMP3]

I'm with you on Diablo 2. I've had that game ever since it's been released and I still play it at least a couple nights a week. And I still play Single Player! One of these days I should apply to Amazon Basin so my multi player experience will be the best it can be.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[Anonymous Coward]

Like all of the other puzzles in KQ IV this was based on a fairy tale where a princess drops her golden ball into a pond by accident and a frog returns it. Then she is really mean to the frog, only to find out later by being made to kiss is that he's a prince. If you've read/heard the story this part of the game makes a lot more sense.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[fprintf]

Not me. The online game lost all its fun once they started cracking down on maphack, the only hack I ever used and really liked. The fun of that game is the "skinner box" approach of all the magic items that drop from Mephisto, not from the struggle of navigating yet another layer of twisty mazes.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[Anonymous Coward]

Best years from someone in Ireland where mostly people had no money until the mid-1990s (after which we proceed to be some of the richest folks in Europe by the early 2000s)

1986: The family gets a computer. It's an Amstrad PCW, and though the handful of text games are poor, they sure beat the one and a half monochrome TV channels with maybe 2 hours kids programming.
1990: Still no money, but Dad has a PC for work. 286 with EGA graphics allows the mind-blowing Duke Nukem. There are now two TV channels, and colour TV.
1991: I get to play Sonic and other console games at the toy store.
1992: Playing on an SNES in a friends house. I meanwhile get my first PCs, first an AT with CGA graphics on a TV, then 286 with EGA, and later VGA. Getting a sound card for the first time was a big deal.
1995: I get a 486. For the first time I get to buy some games.
1998: I get a Pentium and an 8 MB graphics card! Warcraft II is addictive.
2001: PS2 for my 21st birthday. GT3 and Monkey Island. I don't get any more new games for it for some time - as £50 seems steep.
2003: Secondhand PIII 500 upgrades me from my aged P120. Addicted to Civ II CTP, RT2, Diablo II and Morrowind.
2005: My first brand new PC, P4 3GHz with GeForce 6800 and 20" LCD. Woohoo.
2006: A serious backlog of PC games to play (Oblivion, Guild Wars, Dreamfall, Myst 5, Civ4, two NWN expansions), as I simultaneously buy new releases, and raid the back catalogues (all the games I didn't get to play; The Longest Journey, Baldurs Gate II, Myst 1-4). I also stock up on used PS2 games. Soul Calibur II provides much entertainment for a house of students.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[writermike]

Some lowlights...

        * I had an Atari Lynx.
        * King's Quest IV--you throw a golden ball into the POND? What the fuck?
        * Burgertime on the NES--worrrrrrst controllllls evaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr!
        * Rush'n Attack on the NES. Did you beat this game? You're a fucking liar.

Huh. I kinda liked the Lynx. It was interesting for its time. Yeah, I don't think it would have been a huge success whatever marketing muscle might be put behind it, but the concept was interesting and I think it helped further mobile gaming.

As for Burgertime, I don't know if you've ever tried that game on an Intellivision, but I think that game on THAT system was the "worrrrrrst controllllls evaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr!"

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years

[Damvan]

" "worrrrrrst controllllls evaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr!"

Doesn't that apply to all Intellivision games?

Not that I didn't want one back then, along with a Vectrex. Parents (smartly) realized that computers were the future, so I got an Apple IIe in early '83 instead. Of course, for the price of that Apple, they could have purchased every console available at the time...

Have you never heard of Counter-Strike?!

[Slithe]

I think that more than 3000 people still play it, and it came out in 1999!

Re:Have you never heard of Counter-Strike?!

[Anonymous Coward]

3000?! Valve is currently reporting 122,843 players with 4.723 billion player minutes per month.
http://steampowered.com/status/game_stats.html

Any year long as you can find the games you love!

[spx]

My mind wrapped around Qbert with Nintendo, I loved Pacman, and Donky Kong. I played Sonic on the Sega, and afew others. On PS1 I had the tekken, need for speed, tony hawk, all those. On PC I fell hard for Unreal, its just good to shoot stuff sometimes, right? Now Im still stuck on Counter Strike Condition Zero & Call of Duty 2. On the PS2 we already beat Champions Return to Arms (nice on a 60" tv), the tekkens and afew others. It doesnt matter the year, if you can find the games you dig the most, its all good. :)

1994 Tie-Fighter!

[Thrymm]

Tie-Fighter took X-Wing series into a wonderful direction. I still from time to time use the DOS emulator to load up my old cd of the collector's edition!

Re:Any year long as you can find the games you lov

[spx]

O! And did I mention Pong? *grin*

Why that would have to be...

[xx01dk]

...the time I spent $50 on Battlefield 1942, and then installed Desert Combat. I didn't buy another game for nearly TWO YEARS after DC .25!!! Oh man. You know how most people spent time on MMO's? My routine was this: Eat dinner, log on to Ventrillo, fire up ASE, locate my buddies, and frag the night away. Stalingrad, Bocage, Berlin, Basrah Nights, Gaz, El Al, Bulge, and then all the crazy mods that people came up with. Hyper-speed buggies, humvees with miniguns. Oh, and who could forget the Humvees made of tissue paper? You looked at the thing the wrong way and it blew up. It sucked so bad that it made it all that more special when you were actually able to drive it anywhere and come back alive.

I remember when I finally learned how to fly the Apache and the Hind, and how proud I was of that. I remember my first flyover with the awesome A10, and circling over the red base at El Al with the Gunship and 4 decent gunners, mowing down EVERYTHING. The 50 cal sniper. The SAW and mowing them down in Lost Village. Chucking C4. Swooping and grabbing the flag with a jet.

If I sound like a fan boy, that's because I was. I swear that was the best $50 I have and probably will ever spend. I made life-long friends (Death From Above!) and I still fire up a little DC when everything else just seems too boring. I'll even play it in reference over BF2 (but that's only because I can't tolerate BF2's bugs). So the best out of the last 10 years of gaming for me would have to be 2003-2005, the Desert Combat years.

Re:Why that would have to be...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought BF2 about 6 months ago and only played it a few times. I always go back to BF and the DC mods. In fact, I still play daily. I can not fly any of the copters though, I stick to the gunner position or keep my feet on the ground. I have some game ethics and do not want to be responsible for killing 2-5 passengers as I spiral out of control into the ground.

Re:Why that would have to be...

[xx01dk]

Hahaha! Dude, have you tried a joystick? My friends swear by it but I'm old-school, I use the keyboard only when I fly anything. Frag on, mate.

1983 & the ZX Spectrum

[malf-uk]

Following its launch in 1982, in 1983 the ZX Spectrum really took off with the release of classic games such as Jetpac, Atic Attac, Pssst, Cookie, Tranz Am and Lunar Jetman and Manic Miner, to name but a few.

Re:1983 & the ZX Spectrum

[Damvan]

Had a 16K version in '82. Played this maze game till I wore out the cassette. Can't remember the name, but it involved getting out of a maze with these wierd creatures chasing you. Was that Manic Miner? I seem to think it was called Maze Madness or something like that.

Two Guys from Andromeda think it's rigged.

[Civil_Disobedient]

The golden years for PC gaming were from 1984 (first King's Quest) to 1992, when Castle Wolfenstein was released.

Re:Two Guys from Andromeda think it's rigged.

[esper]

Castle Wolfenstein was released in 1981. Are you sure you're not thinking of Wolfenstein 3D?

First thing I thought when I saw the title

[Tolkien]

"The time spent anticipating Duke Nukem Forever."

"Old Man"

[Anonymous Coward]

The "old man" part was an attempt to come off as sarcasim, because I felt like my post was getting to the point where it needed an ending like...

"Get the hell off my lawn, you PlayStation brats!"

Games

[Tribbin]

Games I played the most

Mother Goose
Supaplex
Larry
Eco quest II
Monkey Island
Stunts
Need for Speed 3
Day of the Tentacle
Wolfenstein 3D
Mortal Kombat
Street Fighter
The Incredible Machine
Doom II
Rise of the Triad
Mariokart
Sim City
Tristan pinball
Flight Simulator
Transport Tycoon
Settlers II
Unreal Tournament
Gunship 2000
Falcon 3.0
Strike Commander
Golden Eye 007
Jazz Jack Rabbit
Donkey Kong Country
Double Dragon
X-wing
Tetrinet
Nascar
Destruction Derby I & II
Red Baron
Duke Nukem
Topgear
Commander Keen 6

Print Version Link

[shaneh0]

The article comes in at 10 pages.

Here's the "Print Version"

http://www.next-gen.biz/index2.php?option=com_cont ent&task=view&id=3313&Itemid=2&pop=1&page=0

Re:We are all old farts

[drinkypoo]

Allthough some comments might suck we still don't have a majority of pretentious farkers as users.

No, we have a majority of pretentious slashbots. Is that really an improvement?

MOD PARENT UP

[TheoMurpse]

It is a well-reasoned argument against the idea that FFVII was revolutionary; sure, it was a great game, but it sure as hell wasn't revolutionary.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Il128]

How does this mod this up post rate a + mod? I hate people.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Incoherent07]

Karma bonus?

Turn Based Games

[UESMark]

The most recent interesting turn based game I know is the Combat Mission: Series from battlefront. While it is showing its age I am surprised that the concept in it hasn't been adapted (or, if you prefer, copied) by other rts games types. I'd like to see it's 3-d turn based strategy engine used in say the Warcraft or C&C universe.

Re:Hunt the Wumpus

[Il128]

get a job. I hope to win the power ball lottery at which time I will dedicate 20 million to the demise of /..

Air Warrior anyone?

[buttwidget]

Geez, I can't believe that no one on /. mentioned Air Warrior. What a riot, back in the Amiga days playing online at a cost of $6/hour (yay genie!) against a bunch of people who I still call friends today... That was back in 1989.

Those days were the very best time in gaming (online or otherwise) that I have ever had, a true community game. I've played so many games that have come and gone since, and yet nothing can even come close to playing Air Warrior back in the good old days...

Hail Damned!

Hmmm...

[SomeOtherGuy]

At the risk of sounding politically uncorrect (especially considering I make a living of off selling software):

  After purchasing my Commodore 128 for more money then I had ever seen -- I spent about 6 months wondering what to do with it besides program (which of course in the long run pays the bills today) -- I was pumped to no end when I found someone who had a whole box (hundreds) of "pirated" games that I could copy and play to my hearts content for nothing more than the price of floppies. (Take that $50 Frogger copy that I had to work all summer to purchase :)

  Warcraft II (online) and building my first "retro" arcade cabinet rank up there also.

1999...a fateful day

[ScooterBill]

Everquest is released. I was having fun. Making friends, finding out that playing with others online brought a whole new dimension to gaming.
Sure the gameplay wasn't groundbreaking but there was a partylike atmosphere that just kind of sucked you in...

Fast forward to 2006: an entire generation of mindless clicking zombies are born. The infection rapidly spreads as lives are lost, families destroyed and new paradigm takes control. The overlords of the World of Warcraft smile contentedly as humanity is enslaved...

Re:1999...a fateful day

[Damvan]

I have to agree. I have not had a MMORPG experience yet that rivals those first months after EQ launched. Very much a party like atmosphere, but also a huge sense of wonder because nobody had really seen anything like that before. And this was also before websites like thottbot (I know that is WoW, but I can't remember the name of some of those early EQ websites) ruined the game by providing quest solutions, maps, dungeon walkthroughs etc.

ICO and Shadow of the Collosus...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

These are perhaps some of the finest games ever made.

ICO is certainly a masterpeice.

Re:ICO and Shadow of the Collosus...

[MonolithTMA]

I agree. Both games were amazing to me. They are both on my list of my favorite games of all time. Honestly, that team would be the only thing that would make me consider buying a PS3.

RTS Defining moment:

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it 97 when Total Annihilation came out? The was the most defining RTS game I have every played. Still in my top 3.
When is Cavedog going to be resurrected and create another good game? (TA: Kingdoms was a flop)

Of course

[Boandlgrama]

2000, the year Allegiance was created.
Unfortunately by MS Research :-)

You're all wrong!

[macdaddy]

Serious Sam 2 was the best game ever.

My college years!

[DarthVain]

I had some good years of gaming growing up, C64, Nintendo, 286 kind of fun. Lots of good games there. I however had my best years of gameing when I went to university, 1995 to 2000.

Lets start at the begining: The old games first, and many introductions to games due to sharing... Two oldies that come to mind are XCOM (maybe it was XCOM 2), and Civ. Two other brutal games my first year were the orginal Warcraft and Doom2. I played with a 2400 baud modem and a 486 back then I think. Good times.

Then came second year, not sure how I passed with all the good games... First off the two worst offenders, who could have flunked me out of University had I not been so smart. Warcraft 2 and Duke Nukem 3D. You don't even want to know how much time I spent playing these games heads up agains't others. Quite possibly the some of the best games ever. Quake also gets hornoable mention... though we could never get the multiplayer (still using modems) to function without lag. Another game that comes to mind was Zork: Nemisses (I think that is was it was called). Anyway I acutally had a friend hide it for me so I would stop playing (it was exam time and I couldn't stop)... I am pretty sure we found it anyway and beat it over exam time.... Definatly my lowest grades this year.... Warcraft 2 and Duke Nukem 3D were killer!

Third year wasn't much better scolastically (notice my shitty spelling?), as it was another great year for games! This was Blizzards year I think when they came out with Starcraft (ouch, no school work getting done now), and Diablio.

Anyway my university was pretty much a haze of video games and drinking, so trying to piece this together cronologically is becoming too hard. Some other games that were discovered and played to death are as follows:

Masters of Orion 2: ok I know its an older game, but I didn't play it till later... Damn was it a good time waster. It was one of thoes games like Civ where you sit down to play at 1pm and when you look up it is 4am.... dangerous to the extreem!

Return to Castle Wolfenstien: This was another game I played to death. Another one of my favorites of all time, played this one online all day all the time, was particulary brutal when I set up two computers running it side by side... soooo much fun!

Enemy Territory: A spin off from Wolfenstien that was again quite possible the best game ever. I played this as much as any game I have ever played before all online.... The fact that it was FREE also blew (and continues to blow) my mind. The best team based shooters of all time imho.

FF7: it also come out during that period. Damn it was good. The one and ONLY time I rented a PS2. I will admit, the ps2 rental came back a "bit" late. It was also probably the worst case of marathon gaming I have ever done. As A) I had to take rental back, B) if I turned off console I would loose progress, and C ) it was just so damn good. I think I played for about 36 hours stright without sleep before I finnly game up and passed out.

Battlenet also was developed at this point... good stuff there.... also diableo and #2.... hack and slash fun. I think the funnest part of those games where picking up a Brittle Sword of uslessness -10 to all abilities kind of thing...

Anyway long story short some amazing games came out in that 5 year span between 1995 and 2000. To this day I am surprised I didn't do worse than I did at school as a result.

IN summary: Warcraft2, Duke Nukem 3d, ET, and FF7 = best games ever.

Re:You are in a desert.

[phreakincool]

"You are standing in the desert. The sun is high. There is a giant pyramid to the west. There appears to be an oasis to the north. There is rock in front of you."
> Make sand angels
> Get up
> get rock
> Go north
"There is a pool of water surrounded by Palm trees."
> Drink water
"I don't understand that."
> Swim in pool
"Refreshing!"
>Get out of pool.
"Done. There is a pool of water surrounded by Palm trees."
>Look up.
"Kaboing!!! A piano just fell on your head!"
> quit.

1985, sorta

[Henry Melton]

My favorite gaming year was 1985, but that's because I'm a writer, not really a gamer. I published Catacomb in Dragon, and been getting nice letters from real gamers since then. Thank you guys. Of course, since it was plain fiction, my visual effects were perfect, but let's not talk about how badly I predicted on-line gaming.

My list of would be...

[MarcoAtWork]

Top 10
------
Tempest (arcade)
Gyruss (arcade)
Bomb Jack (arcade)
Dungeon Master (atari st)
Doom (PC)
Quake/Quakeworld (PC)
System Shock 1 CD (PC, version with the voices etc.)
Grand Prix Legends (PC)
Planescape: Torment (PC)
Dance Dance Revolution (arcade, ps2, PC)

Runners up:
-----------
Space Invaders (arcade)
Dig Dug (arcade)
Vampire Killer (MSX, aka Castlevania)
Archon (c64)
Guild of Thieves (atari st/amiga)
Carrier Command (atari st)
Midwinter (atari st)
Xenon 2: Megablast (atari st/amiga)
Turrican 1-2 (atari st/amiga)
Stunts (PC)
Ultima Underworld 1-2 (PC)
SSX (PS2)
Knights of the Old Republic (xbox)

They forgot 64 A.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

This was they year that gladiatior fights and feeding Christians to the lions was the rage.

Best year for gaming?

[Anonymous Coward]

What was your best year for gaming?"

The year Nethack came out.

Re:We are all old farts

[scenestar]

oh teh ironay.

I got modded down.

HIJACK

[Sage Gaspar]

Are you talking about Longest Journey 2? If so, how is it? Does it compare to the first one? I was waiting for it forever and now I'm a bit strapped for cash when it's finally out.

Re:HIJACK

[Gulthek]

Short answer: awesome.

Long answer: highly awesome.

Detailed answer: super highly awesome, but a sudden ending. :-(

Inaccurate list is U.S.-centric

[Anonymous Coward]

Famicom/NES is grouped under 1986 instead of 1984? "Resembled an inexpensive VCR" instead of "resembled a red & white toy?"

There's a place called "Japan," next-gen.biz. Read up on it. (No wonder there are never any Japanese faces in their ridiculous "I get it" ads.)

What about Tombraider?

[Cutting_Crew]

i cant read the article b/c the mirror wont even work but i assume that the article doesnt mention tombraider.. circa 1996 or so.. gosh that game was a milestone is gaming history. I know not all the titles were good.. Angel of Darkness was abysmal but the franchise was a hit and the latest release, although a bit short is nothing to be sneezed at and hopefully will revitalize the franchise.

Re:What about Tombraider?

[Dahamma]

In fact, Tomb Raider was the biggest section of the article from 1996.

Tomb Raider appeared, cross-platform, at the same time as Mario 64 - and like Mario 64, it offered an example of a third-person adventure through 3D space. Lara was to Mario as Sonic had been, five years earlier: a rung up the age ladder. She had boobs; Nintendo kids were now interested in boobs. She offered a grittier, more adult world and more highbrow game design - based more on Prince of Persia than on Donkey Kong. And, at least with the first game, you could play with her whether you owned a Saturn, a PlayStation, or a PC.

The article was way too console focused, though. I agree that 1996 (actually to be truthful 96-97) was a great gaming year, but not for consoles, for PCs! IMO it was basically THE origin of most new technology for modern PC games. 3dfx released the Voodoo card, the first truly high performance 3D accelerator (my first 3 games to use it were Quake, Interstate 76, and Mechwarrior 2 if you care :). Networked gaming finally took off beyond the (amazing but) relatively simplistic DOOM/Descent games to the RTS - Warcraft II, Command & Conquer (yeah late '95 but really got going in '96), and Diablo and Ultima Online in '97 (which is why I have to include '97, too). 3D HW acceleration, mature networking, the 3D FPS, and the RTS explosion... it's almost sad to see how little innovation has happened since...

Gha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit. How will I get any work done today when I can't figure out how to open the 2nd damned metal door? The guards are annoying me, the wrench tantalizing me, the crates don't move and the freaking metal door apparently can't be opened with the acid pack.

Gha!

The Longest Wait

[Jesapoo]

You got the title wrong...

When a game is 50% loading sequences and 50% running back where you've *JUST BEEN*, it stops being fun and becomes really, really irritating.

Where is Sierra?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone has played King's Quest, no?

consoles, consoles, consoles

[jsnipy]

Why is always about consoles. Like dweebs that drool over Halo (granted its a good game) .. "WOW! you can play ONLINE .. over the internet!". PC games (i know not as popular) leave console games in the dust ... they are always way ahead of thier time. How can you flip over something like Halo and not Battlefield2?

Re:consoles, consoles, consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. And further, there was a period of about 5 or 6 years where Amiga games were *way* far ahead of PC games *and* console games, but for some reason, it's totally ignored. There were smooth-color-gradient Amiga games with digital sound effects back when PCs had 4 color graphics and could only go "beep". At the time, all serious gamers were on Amigas, and it was bewildering to us that anyone would get a PC to run games on it.

Of course, that era came to an end before too long, due to the sheer amount of money dumped into the PC market.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years - I guess I'm a liar?

[talkingmike]

I beat Rush'n Attack. Probably about five years after I bought it when I was home from school sick one day, and about three years after I realized that the title was not, in fact, "Russian Attack".

But even now I see how clever the marketing actually was for a game with a title like this... Double entendres can lay dormant for twenty years, apparently.

Stick to the Next Generation

[Anonymous Coward]

...you don't know shit about history.

Why does every videogame retrospective have to have so many glaring errors.

The C64 did not have MIDI capability. That was the Atari ST.

The Atari ST was not Atari's first computer system. Not only was Atari one of the first companies to create a successful home computer, released several years before the C64, it has always been a major innovator in the field. Even the much lauded Commodore Amiga was designed by ex-Atari engineers.

The Famicom may have resembled a VCR (which it didn't) for marketing purposes, but I would think marketing the NES in the USA as a fucking robot, so that it resembled a toy, rather than a "risky" videogame system, is more deserving of commentary.

Fortunately, that's as far as I got into the story. Thank you Slashdotters for breaking their site, my sense of disgust and self-importance was becoming overwhelming.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years - I guess I'm a liar?

[jeblucas]

Yeah, you're a fucking liar.

I refuse to believe anyone--ANYONE--could get past that level with the dogs and the towers. Just getting through level 1 was hard enough, but the dogs? AND the towers? Come on. Konami made such great games for the NES: Blades of Steel, Contra, Double Dribble, Castlevania. But Rush'n Attack was just impossible.

Re:My Personal 10 Best Years - I guess I'm a liar?

[talkingmike]

Well, I did have help with the Advantage rapid-fire joystick. With the dogs, I had the character lay on the ground in the center of the screen and used the rapid-fire knife. And as for the towers (only on level 2, if I remember right), I just kept running. The paratroopers in Level 5 were harder because they moved as they shot you from the air.

I remember, when seeing the big missle at the end of the last level, thinking that it was part of the static background and not realizing that I had to shoot it with the bazooka until I shot one of the foot soldiers and the bullet went through the dude and actually hit the damn rocket. Stupid painted backgrounds.

Re:FFVII was *NOT* "revolutionary" SUIKODEN

[Gnostic Ronin]

If you think Materia is unique, you missed out on Suikoden. Suikoden has a similar setup, only they're called Runes.

• Runes come in several types:
• Magic Runes (Fire, Lightning, Earth, Shield (Support Magic), Water (Mostly Healing)
• Skill Runes (Thunder Sword, Viper, Great Hawk etc.)
• Status Orbs (Sealing, Drain, Magical, Fury)

The difference, the Runes were limited -- each player got 3 (Head, Right Hand and Left Hand), and the could only be changed in shops. That was really it. Since you get 108 different characters, I never really messed around with the Runes all that much -- it was usually easier to take a different character rather than change the Rune.

I give Suikoden far more "originality" credit than FF7. FF7 had FMVs, and as far as I can tell ONLY FMVs to make the game different than other FF games. It still used ATB, Aeris wasn't the first death (first death in FF actually occurs in FF2(japan) on the NES[Josef gets crushed to death by a Indiana Jones style boulder]), not the first party change system, nor the first Materia-type system (Suikoden was released first, but it's close). Suikoden is still fairly unique for its battle systems. It's the only game I know of with three BSs (Duels, Wars, and turn-based random battles). That's far more unique than "hey look purty movies". If that's what the FF7 fans think makes a great game, give 'em final fanstasy.

I still like FF games, but they're far from revolutionary. Most of them are essentially well written playable animes. I started with FF10, but I like the NES and SNES games better -- because they hadn't yet sacrificed GAMEPLAY for wannabe movies. I blame Square for that trend, where game developers now seem to think that I want a badly made movie with a little gaming on the side, or that I want purty pictures with very little story or substance. And most "games" really don't have a deep story, and too many try to shoehorn last year's "big thing" into a new game with tweaked graphics and a half assed plot.

anyway, FF7 is considered the best because it, like OoT and Mario 64, was the first in its series to go into 3D.

Exactly, the ZX SPECTRUM!

[spoco2]

This is the machine that I grew up with, a 48K monster of raw power! Rubber keys, tape drive, colours only able to be applied in blocks (of, like, 8 pixels or so).

What a machine.

I still have 2 of them, and the tapes, although I doubt they work now. (the tapes, not the machines, they'll still run, I guarantee)

Wikipedia has nice info

Not very well researched..

[Anonymous Coward]

I searched the entire article for a game which wasn't on a console or the PC. Alas, he's missed every game on the C64, Spectrum, Amstrad, BBC, Sony MSX, Atari ST, Amiga, Archimedes, etc..

A huge number of those arcade games and console games had been done before on the "home computer" format. Aah, the good old days.

Many a long ass night, and many quarters lost

[Sean Riordan]

My personal list of those that I played until my hands ached, my eyes bled, or I ran out of quarters. If not some combination.

ARCADE
Galaga
Defender
Tempest
Donkey Kong / Crazy Kong

DOS
Elite
Starglider
Hitcherhikers
Leather Goddesses

FPS
Unreal Tournament
Quake I II III
Duke Nukem 3D

RTS
Starcraft
Age of Empires II

RPG
Baldur's Gate 1 & 2
Morrorwind (Xbox)
Oblivion (Xbox360)

OTHERS
Dungeon Keeper
Decent 1 & 2
Freespace 2
Bejeweled
Civ - I II III
Diablo II
Mechwarrior 2
Zaxon (Coleco Vision)

Ignored Halo and Xbox Live

[Anonymous Coward]

This article was created and posted by a pure Sony and Nintendo fan boy. I thought that the article was pretty good until 2001. He barely mentions the Xbox and what is one of the most popular games of the last 5 years - the Halo franchise. I've got both the PS2 and the Xbox. Xbox Live and Halo is one of the most significant advances in gaming for consoles and this guy doesn't even mention it.

98' and 04' Missing

[The Agony]

1998, as said in the Shlashdot blurb, is missing. Ocarina of Time fully made Analog control perfect. Metal Gear Solid started the games-as-movies craze. Starcraft revolutionized/prefected the RTS genre. Half-Life change how games were developed, creating an easily moddable engine and gave us a game that had no cutscenes that people took notice to. GoldenEye made FPS's on home concoles possible. Gran Turismo 2 came out. 2004 saw the release of the DS and PSP, marking the first time their is an acual Handheld war. Reggie Fils-Aime became joined Nintendo's marketing cor. and started the revolution in Nintendo's image. People took notice that our industry is becoming plagued with sequals like Half Life 2, Doom 3 and GTA:SA, the last which truely showed off the power of the Playstation 2. The first of the "negt-gen graphics" came with the frist two games too. Lastly, they forgot to mention that GTA3 came out in 2001.

too busy

[Anonymous Coward]

What was your best year for gaming?

I don't know, but i can tell you my best year for getting laid.

Wow, think of all the time I've wasted!

[unsigned integer]

The solo years:

Adventure
Zork I
Archon
Arctic Fox
Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic.
Starflight. Still the best game ever.
Starflight II.
Quest for Glory I, II, II, IV. (Dammit, I still never played V).
Kings Quest I, II, III, IV
Space Quest IV (Never played the others)
Ancient Art of War (Sea)
Various early Chessmasters.
System Shock (I, and then later II. RIP Looking Glass)
All the Gold Box SSI games. (Forgotten Realms, Krynn, etc)

Pre-Internet Multiplayer:

Doom
Hexen
Duke Nukem

Welcome to the Internet (I go to college)

MUDs
MUSHes
MUSEs
Netrek (Bronco / Paradise)
Diablo
Quake (and more FPS clones than I can remember)
Quakeworld

Welcome to the Internet Crack Bar - snort and shoot up.

Ultima Online.

I skip EverCrack to save my life and sanity.

Then I log about 3 months worth of play in a year of City of Heroes.

Playing Guild Wars still. I won't touch WoW for my own sake.

Someday, I should really come up with the list of games I've played. This is just off the top of my head. I might be frightened by my shocking waste of time and life. And I'm not even counting my hours and hours in the video arcades.

So I'd say from 1986 to 1996 was a good run. That was my first computer and all my first games. Sigh.

Random Kudoes out to : Thief I, II, III. Alice. Deus Ex (Even II). Fear. FarCry. America's Army. Counterstrike. Half Life (I, II). Baldur's Gate (I and II). Neverwinter Nights + modules.

Yeah, I'm surprised I had time to date.

NO WAI!

[Kenoli]

How can "The Ten Greatest Years in Gaming" not cover 1998? Wtf is that? D:

Wtf.

Re:NO WAI!

[PhotoBoy]

Having read the whole article it's pretty clear the people writing it are biased towards the consoles they owned. Describing Tomb Raider as having a more "high brow" design than Mario 64 is just mind boggling. I certainly know which of those two has withstood the test of time perfectly.

well, why not?

[namekuseijin]

my top 11, apologies for any incorrect dates:

1980: Defender, Galaga, Zork
1987: The Legend of Zelda, R-Type
1988: Kenseiden, Phantasy Star
1989: Tetris, TMNT Arcade, Metroid II
1991: Sonic the Hedgehog, Dragon Quest IV, Street Fighter II
1993: Star Fox, Streets of Rage II, Gunstar Heroes, Equinox
1994: Super Metroid, Final Fantasy VI, DKC, Daytona Racing
1995: Chrono Trigger
1996: Super Mario 64, Goldeneye 007
1997: Castlevania: SotN, Final Fantasy VII
1998: Metal Gear Solid, Zelda: OoT, Banjo-Kazooie, Resident Evil 2

no, i truly don't dig PC games.

Re:well, why not?

[namekuseijin]

whoa! forgot Yoshi's Island, right next to Chrono Trigger. :)

Networked Games

[thanosk]

I can't believe he did not even mention the first networked games....
Going from lonely games to playing X-Pilot against half the univercity campus in 1992 was a revelation.
And at the same time the MUd revolution started. Hundreds of players online from all over the world.
Oks there were no fancy graphics back then (but who cares), they were the frontrunners of the modern WoW,Everquest etc. that are all the hype these days
AD&D met the Internet and the labor of geeks was awsome.
Bumped into http://midnight-sun.ludd.ltu.se:3328/Midnight Sun in 1994 and it was downhill for me from that moment onwards....

On second thoughts

[99luftballon]

Curse you . I was up until 04:30am playing it. Self control is not a strong point.

Re:On second thoughts

[MrCopilot]

by 99luftballon (838486) Alter Relationship on Wednesday June 28, @07:01AM
Curse you . I was up until 04:30am playing it. Self control is not a strong point.

You're Welcome.

Self-Control seems fine, Good to see you can still drag yourself back here at 7:30am

You Mean Counter-Hack?

[syrrys]

Yeah I've heard of it. Lame.

Re:We are all old farts

[Anonymous Coward]

I just meta-modded that "unfair", if it's any consolation...