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?"

Link dead already

[Cinnamon Whirl]

Fast work guys. Nice!

Re:Link dead already

[Robmonster]

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

Re:Link dead already

[pneumatus]

Corel Cache version also available here [nyud.net]

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!!!

Re:Link dead already

[Vo0k]

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

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.

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.

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.

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"

[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"

[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"

[Stormwatch]

Sorry, but none of the previous FF had Sephiroth.

One word:

Kefka.

Enough said.

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"

[Stormwatch]

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

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: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

[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 ex

Re:1993-1994

[Stormwatch]

Not that I dislike Square, far from it, but I think everyone should play Panzer Dragoon Saga [rpgamer.com] 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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[Sepper]

What about Star Control 2 ? Did you miss it ?

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

don't forget to *enjoy the sauce*!

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

[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

[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

[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

[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 n64

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:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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 [imdb.com]).

Obligatory "The Wizard" quote

[red_dragon]

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

YAFI, YGI.

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

[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" [xyzzyb.com] (trippy, melancholy, uplifting, depressing, and wonderful).

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! [ifiction.org]) 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

[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 [rickadams.org] ;)

Odd that they think cutscenes became popular with Ninja Gaiden (maybe on consoles?), since they were popular on computers before that game e

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

[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...

Analog Wizardry

[Doc Ruby]

How could they leave off the early peak of 1969 [cocolog-nifty.com]?

Slashdotted, here's a full mirror

[bcat24]

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

Civ I and II

[Neil Watson]

The early years of the Civilization games.

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

[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 [wikipedia.org].

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

[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.

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: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.

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 new

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

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 [pressplayontape.com]'s website.)

1990

[alewar]

The Secret of Monkey Island!

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

[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

[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/ [projectxenocide.com]

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 Rain

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.

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......

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

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 [wikipedia.org] in games. Metal Gear Solid 2 was almost entirely postmodern, although it is difficult to understand or appreciate this.

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

[MrCopilot]

Here Ya Go.

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

May I also recommend:

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

Re:1987

[99luftballon]

Cheers mate, much appreciated.

"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 [cyan.com]. 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.

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 [worldofwarcraft.com] 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.

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 re

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 lay

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/ [warhammeronline.com] ^_^

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,

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 th

1984: Elite

[metamatic]

1984. Elite [clara.net] 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

[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.

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.

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.

First thing I thought when I saw the title

[Tolkien]

"The time spent anticipating Duke Nukem Forever."

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

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: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.

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: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)

Have you never heard of Counter-Strike?!

[Slithe]

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