History of video games/1990-1999

A PC Gaming scene featuring competitive esports player Thresh at Comdex 1997.

Trends

Network Gaming

The Internet was a sensation in the 1990's,^[1] leading to more incorporation in games. LAN parties became common among computer gamers.^[2] Many legacy dial up gaming services from the 1980's shut down in the mid 1990's and many were founded in the 1990's.^[3]

- The noise of a dial up connection being made, a common way 1990's gamers got on the internet.

3D Gaming

While 3D games predate the 1990's, this decade saw a huge leap and refinement in 3D video games in terms of graphical fidelity.^[4]^[5] More importantly, this decade also saw refinements in 3D gameplay especially in level design and control.^[5]^[6]^[7] The 1990's also saw improvements to storytelling in games, allowing for richer tales and better plots.^[8]^[9]

Expanding Audience

The demographics for video game consoles shifted older, to include more young adults.^[10]^[11]

Some families suffered strain due to generational conflict.^[12]

Big Box Era

Following a number of packaging styles in the 1980's, computer game packaging from the early 1990's on through the late 2000's would adopt an informal "Big Box" standard.^[13]^[14]

Realism & Controversy

In the 1990s more game developers would strive to achieve realism in their games. This was often in the form of graphical realism, taking advantage of increased graphical fidelity to push the limits of hardware. Other developers sought to leverage improving technologies by crafting ever greater and vaster worlds. Others still sought to push storytelling in a more serious direction, focusing on real world issues.

The main controversial games of the era include:

Mortal Kombat
Doom
Duke Nukem
Tomb Raider^[15]

Controversy was not limited to major commercial titles. A 1992 successor game to The Oregon Trail depicting American slavery prior to the Civil War, Freedom!, attracted controversy due to several misstepes which were insensitive, despite good intentions by the developers.^[16]

Popular or Iconic Genres

Some terms in this section will link to Wikipedia for more information.

Platformers

Gaming in the early 1990s is often exemplified by the 2D platformer. As better game hardware enabled new experiences, developers took risks with new and novel takes on the platformer genre, such as the fast-paced Sonic the Hedgehog. Other titles, such as Super Mario World, were iterative improvements that improved on tried and true gameplay.

The later half of the decade saw the industry pivot to 3D platformers. 3D platformers were dominated by the collectathon genre, notably by the landmark title Super Mario 64, which helped pioneer easy to use 3D control schemes. Other notable collectathons include Spyro the Dragon, Donkey Kong 64, and Banjo Kazooie. Other 3D platformers tried to differentiate themselves through other means, such as the use of lush and well crafted linear levels in Crash Bandicoot, or humor in Gex: Enter the Gecko.

Action-Adventure

Notable general Action-Adventure games of the decade include The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Tomb Raider.

Survival Horror Action-Adventure games of the decade included Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2 and Silent Hill.

3D Racing games

This genre was influenced by important games such as the 3DO and DOS game The Need for Speed (1994-1995) and the PlayStation game Gran Turismo (1997) which aimed for realistic 3D graphics and driving mechanics for a much more immersive driving experience then prior 2D racing games could provide. Both generated successful franchises for the PC and console platforms (although the latter never left the PlayStation line).

Less realism focused arcade style and karting games were also released, including the original 2.5d titles F-Zero and Super Mario Kart, as well as their fully 3D followups F-Zero X and Mario Kart 64. Other notable 3D racing games not focused on realism included titles such as Wipeout, Cruis'n USA, Sega Rally Championship, and Daytona USA. Ridge Racer was an interesting example of a game that mixed very realistic graphics, with arcade style gameplay.

Shooters

After id Software's first-person interface experiments with Hovertank 3-D (1990) and Catacomb 3-D (1992), a number of Shooter sub genres, especially third person shooters and fast-paced first person shooters, were pioneered in this decade with groundbreaking hit titles. id's Wolfenstein 3D (1992) was a landmark title in the genre, a remake of the earlier 2D video games Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein and one of the first popular first-person shooters ever and pioneer in 2.5D graphics, although it allowed 2D-only gameplay action, thus making it impossible to jump, go up or down stairs, or even aiming up or down. More complex shooters such as id's highly controversial Doom (1993) and the tongue-in-cheek Duke Nukem 3D (1996) developed by the emerging Apogee Software and published by 3D Realms, would follow.

All three games also spawned notable modding communities, altering and modifying game files at one's own pleasure. Also, Doom pioneered the technology of online multiplayer games, already experimented by games such as the 1970s Maze War (which is also one of the very earliest FPS).

Other notable first person shooters would include Quake, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, MDK, Perfect Dark, and the 1997 Nintendo 64 shooter GoldenEye 007, based on the 1995 James Bond film. Later games with FPS mechanics such as Half-Life and Deus Ex would use this medium to tell detailed and immersive stories.

Point and Click Adventure

The 1990's are often seen as the critical apex of the Point and click adventure genre, where the culmination of a developers with a decade of experience during the 1980's still retained significant financial backing from publishers.

Fighting Games

Games such as Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat would forever shape the genre with their technical and artistic decisions which skyrocketed the appeal and popularity of the genre.

Role Playing Games

Notable JRPGs (Japanese role-playing (video) games) from the decade include games III-VIII in the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana.

Notable western computer role playing games from this decade include System Shock, Fallout 1 & 2, and the first Baldur's Gate from American studios. CRPGs were popular with European PC gamers during this time.^[17]

Other RPGs sought to subvert traditional expectations of the RPG formula, including Earthbound/Mother 2, Super Mario RPG, and Moon: Remix RPG Adventure.

FMV Games

A number of games attempted to leverage the high capacity of CD-ROM to make movies interactive using full-motion video (FMV). This was a selling point of consoles such as the original PlayStation (1994) by Sony Computer Entertainment and the failed CD-i (1990) by Philips.

Sports

At the very end of the decade, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater would spark an interest in the skating subgenre.

Strategy & Tactics

This decade saw increased interest in real time strategy games, notably with the release of Starcraft, Age of Empires, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.

Turn based strategy and tactics games would also see landmark titles, such as Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, Front Mission, and Final Fantasy Tactics.

The original XCOM trilogy, including X-COM: Enemy Unknown, X-COM: Terror from the Deep, and X-COM: Apocalypse, offered a unique take on the genre with a theme of planetary defense, and offered a hybrid approach of real time strategy on a macro scale, with turn based tactics on a micro scale.

Simulation

Notable games from the decade include SimCity 2000 (Despite the name, it was released mid decade).

Timeline

1992

The Golden Age of Spanish Software ends

Many companies in the Spanish gaming industry fold, ending an era in home computer gaming.^[18]

1993

Tetris in Space

Like all cosmonauts, I love sport. My particular favorites are football and swimming. During flight, in rare minutes of leisure, I enjoyed playing Game Boy.
—Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Serebrov, Soviet and later Russian Cosmonaut and Engineer who also helped design Salyut 6, Salyut 7, Mir, and a space motorcycle.^[19], Provenance note Retrothing^[20]

Cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov flies on the Soyuz TM-17 mission to the Russian space station Mir, bringing a MIR postmarked Game Boy and a copy of the famous Russian game Tetris to play in space during limited free time, thus becoming among the first, if not the first person, to play video games in space.^[20]^[19]

While this may seem like a trivial fact, it represents a small though significant milestone in space exploration. Following the revolt of the crew of the space station Skylab in 1974, the welfare of spacefaring people has been of particular importance.^[21] Today entertainment during extended time in space is considered a critical part of daily life.^[22] This event marked a point where video games became part of that strategy.

1994

Industry Organization

In 1994 the Computer Game Developers Association is founded, later becoming the International Game Developers Association.^[23]

1995

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The 1995 release of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion would go on to influence a number of Japanese game developers.^[24]

1996

Dawn of the MMORPG

The game Meridian 59 launches on PC, letting over 10,000 players play simultaneously in a 3D environment, making it among the earliest modern MMORPGs.^[25] Players engage in social activities that the developers did not anticipate such as marriage and mass player killing.^[26] Emergent behavior caused by the social systems massively multiplayer games would often prove an interesting field of study in the following years.

Video games banned in Afghanistan

Following the Afghanistan Civil War from 1992 to 1996 the nation of Afghanistan came under the control of the 1996-2001 Islamic Emirate. As a result Video Games are banned along with many other forms of cultural expression deemed inappropriate by the government.^[27]

1997

Sega Bandai Shakeup

A merger between Bandai and Sega nearly occurred, before being called off.^[28]

1998

.beat

Swatch .beat internet time is announced, and sees some use by players of MMORPGs for coordinating across time zones.^[29]^[30]

Other Gaming Tech of the 1990's

The 1990's saw the first mobile phone games, as well as a number of novel small LCD games.

A 1997 Tamagotchi, a popular virtual pet game.
A 1994 Aura Interactor Force Feedback Vest.

Game Gallery

Vroom, a racing game from 1991.
Video explaining the technology behind the 2.5d graphics of Wolfenstein 3D.
Flight of the Amazon Queen, an adventure game from 1995.
Warzone 2100, a 3D real time strategy game released in 1999.
The 1999 adventure game Amerzone, showing pre-rendered 3D graphics.
A number of first person shooters and engines would be descended from the Quake engine, including some still in use in 2023.