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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?"
If the next generation of web hosts get slashdotted as quickly as this one, we're in trouble.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/222733443c847e741 a8f3b197b4aa059/index.html
I have no sig yet I must scream.
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.....
RTFG - Read The F#$%ing Google!
How could they leave off the early peak of 1969?
--
make install -not war
Wow, that was quick! Anyway, here's a full mirror of the one-page printable version.
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.
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from the dead link, this is probably not going to be one of Next Generation's "Ten Best days" for bandwidth
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.
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.
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.
Ignore anything I said above, I actually agree with everything you believe - mod accordingly.
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.
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...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
(By the way: You can listen to cover versions of the above at Press Play On Tape's website.)
The Secret of Monkey Island!
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.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
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.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
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......
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.
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
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
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.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Nope, they just forgot to mention him. He'll be back in the new Zelda for Wii.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
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.
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!
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.
- 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...blarg.
"The time spent anticipating Duke Nukem Forever."
how is babby formed?
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...
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".
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/