[galahad05]

Quote:

1987: A Link to the Future

American NES sales soared on the strength of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto's other game, would push them further upon its release in 1987. Designed as a nonlinear complement to Mario's sequential levels, Zelda drew in gamers with its open world and hidden dungeons, despite Nintendo's own fears that consumers would reject its complexity. How quaint, given that each Nintendo console (with the exception of the unfortunate Virtual Boy) has hosted at least one, if not two, Zelda games. Only Mario is more important to Nintendo's bottom line.

Runner-up: While youngsters were out rescuing Zelda, Larry Laffer -- the original 40-year-old virgin -- was trying to get laid. Dressed in his leisure suit and cruising the city of Lost Wages, Larry found sex and love after a few false starts. Despite several Larry sequels, a BMX game with strippers, and a cup of hot coffee the videogame industry of the 21st century is still struggling to understand just what sex is and why it's so bad but feels so good.

1988: A 20-year Football Dynasty

The Madden NFL Football series from Electronic Arts was born on an unlikely platform: the Apple ][. The 1988 release of what would become the longest running sports franchise innovated in several key areas: full 11-man teams, play editing, and the behind-the-line view. From the Apple ][ the series moved to other home computers like the Commodore 64 and then came into its own on consoles like the Super Nintendo and Genesis where it began annual updates. As consoles with 3D graphics abilities, like the Sony PlayStation, became available, the Madden series moved to a fully 3D game, and since then has continued to add features, like online play, to exploit its host platforms. The exclusive licensing deal signed between EA, the NFL, and the NFL Players Association in 2005 evoked stiff criticism as players wondered whether the series would lessen its pace of innovation. EA perhaps feels no need to respond; the 1.8 million copies of the PlayStation 2 version of Madden NFL 06 that it sold in 2006 -- a rate of nearly 14,000 copies per day -- should make it confident that Madden fans are plenty happy.

1989: The first money-printing handheld

It is difficult to overstate the importance of Nintendo's Game Boy in videogame history. It was the first successful handheld game system, soaring where the obscure Microvision had crashed a decade earlier. Many people first enjoyed networked games on the Game Boy via its serial link port and cable. Nintendo's own NES didn't even have stereo sound yet and the Game Boy's innovative 160 x 144 LCD display wasn't as good as a TV but more than enough for a games. At $90, consumers snapped up the Game Boy to the near exclusion of all competitors. By comparison, Nintendo made ten times more Game Boy Tetris cartridges than Atari sold Lynx handhelds.

And for more than 16 years the Game Boy has reigned supreme among portables. Perhaps it is fitting that the handheld which stole the Game Boy throne was Nintendo's own creation, the Nintendo DS.

1990: Keen to make the PC shine

John Carmack discovered a programming technique that made smooth-scrolling 16-color EGA games possible and from that he and his friends created a complete clone of Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. 3 -- which Nintendo appreciated but declined to license. So Carmack and crew turned their project into Commander Keen, and true action gaming for the PC was born. Earlier CGA action games had existed, but with the advent of EGA and then MCGA and VGA the PC was finally on an equal footing with consoles of the day. Beyond 1990 the battle lines were clearly drawn, and the war rages to this day: PC or Console?

1991: Fighting in the Streets

What if Street Fighter II hadn't been made? It sounds a tad silly, but it is a serious question. The original Street Fighter wasn't a runaway success and it took Capcom four years to create a sequel. But oh, what a sequel! Modern fighting games are largely built on features that either premiered with or were popularized by Capcom's Street Fighter II: the six-button layout, special moves, canceling moves, and stringing those moves into combos. The game's competitive versus mode even engendered a code of etiquette in players. In any arcade in the country a player could stand in line at the machine and eventually put his quarter on the machine's glass to claim the next game. Losers went to the back of the line for the chance to buy into the game again later. A winner stayed as long as he won, his skills theoretically stretching a single quarter into a glorious all-day game. This brilliant "loser pays" strategy paid off, converting a player's competitive nature directly into money in Capcom's coffers.

Street Fighter II inspired a decade of fighting games which kept the arcade scene alive in the United States for almost another decade. Like a lot of things, the SF2 effect was a two-edged sword with both positive and negative effects on the industry. On the one hand the fighting game market eventually produced Virtua Fighter and Tekken, but did we really need breast physics too?

Runner-up: More than fifteen years after its introduction Civilization's blend of civics, economics, diplomacy, warfare, and history continues to addict new players. As much as any other game Civ epitomizes the "simple to grasp, difficult to master" ideal to which game developers still strive. As Civilization has spread to numerous platforms, spawned multiple revisions and sequels, and inspired dozens of copycat games one gets the distinct impression that the game's original tagline, "Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time", was actually Sid Meier's business plan all along.

1992: Capcom didn't invent modern survival horror

Stop me if you've heard this one: you're stuck in a zombie-infested mansion with only your wits and modest weapons to help you live long enough to learn the house's terrible secret and then escape. If you blurted out Resident Evil, you're probably a product of the PlayStation generation. If you said Alone in the Dark from Infogrames, then have a cookie. (If you sniveled Sweet Home, nice try.) Like Capcom's later B-movie survival horror game, Alone in the Dark used 3D characters rendered over 2D backgrounds and featured both action and puzzle sequences. It even had in-game texts that gave clues not only to the underlying history of the mansion but also hints to puzzles. With two sequels out before the first Resident Evil game and a new one due in 2008, Alone in the Dark is not only the starting point for modern survival horror but also its longest running example.

1993: Death Match Point

Just the single-player component of id Software's DOOM transformed the PC industry overnight, driving people to upgrade to computers with faster processors and sound cards. However, DOOM's multiplayer deathmatch component still influences how games are made today. Certainly earlier networked competitive games exist, but the advent of ethernet networks on university campuses and id Software's liberal shareware distribution introduced deathmatch to a huge audience of players with powerful computers and lots of time to kill. As players learned to modify DOOM and then create their own levels, deathmatch-specific levels began to appear. Since DOOM, id and games based on its engine have continued to define competitive networked gaming. As a result, nearly every first- or third-person shooter on the market today includes a deathmatch component wherein two or more players will attempt to kill each other, often repeatedly, with outrageous virtual weaponry and pungent language.

1994: I am become ESRB, destroyer of games

The gore in Mortal Kombat and the sexual undertones of Night Trap upset some very important people -- parents and congresspersons. After various hearings, the U.S. Congress gave the collective videogame industry one year to start regulating itself. So in 1994 the Interactive Digital Software Association (now the Entertainment Software Association) created the Entertainment Software Rating Board or ESRB. They established a straightforward system: a publisher submitted a video of a game to the ESRB and the board then assigned a rating (like Teen or Mature) and descriptors to elaborate on why the game received that rating. The gambit worked: the formation of the ESRB has mostly satisfied critics and kept government regulation at bay.

For years the ESRB rating process was a formality. Like any good regulating body the ESRB occasionally causes an uproar, most often by assigning controversial ratings on highly visible games. The key issues for the ESRB are still gore and sex. Rockstar, the popular developer, caused the biggest uproar in 2005 when it slipped a hidden sex game dubbed Hot Coffee past the ESRB. The game, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, was re-rated Adults Only (AO), up from Mature (M), and many stores either returned their stock of the game to the publisher, Take Two Interactive, or sold the game with the AO label until updated copies were released. The ESRB also hit Take Two and Rockstar a second time when they assigned an AO rating to Manhunt 2 not for sex but for violence. With the moral battles of last decade still being fought by and with the ESRB, one wonders if the industry is ready for the next generation of games and their promise of user-generated content.

1995: An Expo is Born

Not content with creating the ESRB the year before, the IDSA held its first Electronic Entertainment Expo, colloquially E3, in Los Angeles during May 1995. The timing could not have been better: Sega had released its Saturn, Sony showed off its PlayStation, and Nintendo revealed details of its Nintendo 64. (Nintendo also crowed about the Virtual Boy. Oof.) Console manufacturers and software producers quickly grasped the value of a centralized time and place for announcing new products and outspending competitors on lavish displays of conspicuous consumption. Publishers used E3 to premier games like Mario 64, Half-life, Metal Gear Solid 2, and Halo (the shooter, not the third-person action/adventure game shown at the July 1999 MacWorld) at press conferences more akin to pep rallies than legitimate news events.

For a little over a decade game companies and an eager gaming press converged on Los Angeles (and Atlanta, briefly) to pat each other on the back and be photographed with scandalously-clad girls holding game boxes. The show floor budgets ballooned, the expectations rocketed skyward, and eventually game companies thought of better ways to spend their money -- like making games. E3 2006 was the last traditional big trade show, replaced in July 2007 with the invite-only E3 Media & Business Summit.

1996: With SGI graphics, back when that meant something

Nintendo comes out of nowhere every 10 years and revolutionizes videogame controls. The NES popularized the D-pad in 1986 and in 1996 the Nintendo 64 would bring analog joystick controls to the masses. The Atari 5200 and Vectrex had tried over a decade earlier, but people weren't playing games that benefited from analog controls. Ever tried Pac-man with an analog stick? Dreadful. Beyond that, most analog controls were dedicated to a particular type of game: flight sticks for airplanes and steering wheels for cars.

But Nintendo's innovative 3D platformer, Super Mario 64 rendered in Silicon Graphics quality, cried out for analog controls and Nintendo's M-shaped controller with its analog joystick fit perfectly. Within months Sega had released its own 3D Analog Pad for the Saturn and in 1997 Sony released its first Dual Analog Controller, later replaced with the DualShock controller. Each new console today has some method of analog control, and even handhelds like the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable have gotten into the act.

1997: Lord British invites you to pay him promptly every month

For geeks who enjoyed D&D but wanted it to go faster and with less paperwork, Ultima Online must have seemed like a dream come true. In Lord British's online world you could create a character, specialize in various skills, go out on quests with groups of friends, and eventually buy your own virtual home. All you had to do was pay a monthly fee and then spend the requisite hundreds of hours to earn the money and experience. In a matter of six months over 100,000 people signed up and created that era's largest massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). Over a 10 years and a half-dozen expansion packs later, Ultima Online is still running with a new fully 3D client and a modest 140,000 regular subscribers.

The success of Ultima Online itself isn't so important as what it proved: that there are hundreds of thousands of people willing to pay a monthly fee and give up other activities to live an alternative existence. UO was the first hard evidence that millions of dollars could be made annually providing persistent online worlds where people scripted their own game experiences. Origin's success spurred other companies to create similar games: Everquest, Lineage, and eventually World of Warcraft.

Runner-up: In 1996 id Software's Quake was a remarkable 3D game that extended the deathmatch concepts first employed in DOOM. However, the network code was not optimized for the internet. In December 1996 John Carmack and others released QuakeWorld, a client designed to provide responsiveness even for the majority of people who connected to the internet via phone line and modem. The online first-person shooter scene coalesced in 1997 with the rise of QuakeWorld, Team Fortress (the most popular QW mod), and GameSpy (the popular third-party server browser) along with various community sites focused on clans, tournaments, and hardware optimization. From those roots sprang today's networked competitive teamplay games and communities.
Next: '98-'06

One more page to go...