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The entire history of video games, from their earliest origins all the way up to the end of the seventh generation, in
2013.
Emerging from engineering experimentation, the earliest titles such as
Tennis for Two,
Space War! and
Pong helped to establish the roots of the industry.
Early arcade classics built on this, with titles like
Breakout,
Space Invaders,
Asteroids and Pac-Man breaking into the mainstream and remaining legendary today.
Early PC titles such as
Maze War,
Zork and
Rogue helped define new genres: and while
Atari 2600 version of
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial might have been disappointing, hobbyist coders continued with aplomb - giving rise to titles like
Elite,
Exile and
Tetris.
The video game crash of
1983 dampened the home market, but arcades remained strong:
Donkey Kong, Dig-Dug, Pole-Position,
Q*Bert and
Mario Bros. all successfully sucking quarters from people's pockets.
The mid-80s saw the rise of the Nintendo home console, starting with
Super Mario Brothers and continuing with games like
The Legend of Zelda,
Castlevania,
Metroid, Mega-Man,
Metal Gear and
Final Fantasy.
Dragon's Lair use of laserdisc technology gave the arcade unit graphics like none other - but a new wave of 16-bit machines would wow home users, with games such as
Dungeon Master,
Sim City,
Shadow of
The Beast and
The Secret of Monkey Island.
The 1990s saw the 16-bit machines come into their own, with colourful sprites of a scale not seen before:
Sonic The Hedgehog,
Street Fighter 2, and
Lemmings.
Strategy games did well in this era, with the first instalment of
Sid Meier's Civilization and the
XCOM turn-based alien tactics of
UFO: Enemy Unknown.
Dune 2 saw the dawn of the
RTS genre, and
Wolfenstein 3D did something similar for first person shooters, and marks id's genre-defining path through
Doom and
Quake.
Myst was a mite more sedate,
Tekken was a 3D rival to
Street Fighter,
Marathon a Macintosh rival to Doom and
Star Fox invited barrel rolls aplenty.
The late 90s saw Nintendo go from strength to strength, with exclusives such as
Super Mario 64,
Chrono Trigger,
Pokemon,
Goldeneye, and The Legend of Zelda:
Ocarina of Time.
Sony responded in kind with the PlayStation, and a new era of titles such as
Wipeout,
Resident Evil,
Gran Turismo and
Grand Theft Auto.
Valve shook up the PC scene with
1998's
Half Life, and
Blizzard did something similar with Starcraft for the RTS genre.
The new milennium was a good time for PC gamers, with a wave of legendary
FPS games such as
Unreal Tournament,
Quake 3 Arena, and
Counter-Strike - and a host of other exclusives in
Grim Fandango,
Diablo 2,
Deus Ex,
The Sims, and
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell.
A new wave of consoles brought some new exclusives: Bungie's Xbox launch title,
Halo - the much loved
Metroid Prime and
Kingdom Hearts - and for a brief time,
Grand Theft Auto 3.
Infinity Ward embarked on a remarkably successful franchise with
Call of Duty, Blizzard single-handedly popularised
MMORPGs with
World of Warcraft, and Harmonix introduced a sudden need for plastic guitar peripherals with
Guitar Hero.
The
PS2 had a couple of good games left in it, with the critically acclaimed
Resident Evil 4 - and artful
Shadow of the Colossus.
2006 saw a new generation of consoles, and a new wave of shooters:
Gears of War,
Call of Duty 4:
Modern Warfare,
Halo 3, Bioshock,
Grand Theft Auto 4 and
Fallout 3.
It wasn't all blood and guts, however - with more family friendly titles like
Wii Sports,
The Orange Box /
Portal, and LittleBigPlanet.
Hardcore games broached the mainstream, too - with titles like
Bayonetta and
Dark Souls proving popular without pandering to all audiences.
The rise of the indie game was perhaps unexpected, but provided welcome relief from the monotony of the mainstream - gems like
Journey, Fez and
Minecraft perhaps the most notable examples.
We bid farewell to Gen 7 with impressive open world titles such as
Red Dead Redemption and
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - and the impressively detailed settings of games like
Bioshock Infinite and
The Last of Us.
- published: 16 Sep 2013
- views: 236654