The decade began with massive
popularity of systems like Atari and
in the US alone it was a $5 billion industry and video game’s influence ranged
far beyond the console and the arcade (The number of which doubled between 1980
and 1982). This golden age of video games had a massive effect on popular
culture and games like PAC-MAN,
heraded by the Guinness World Records as the Most
successful coin operated Arcade game, got music in the top popular music
charts – the single Pac-man fever from the album of the same name got to number
nine in the top charts and sold a total of 2.5 million copies. Pac-Man and Mrs.
Pac Man were heavily merchandiced and immensely popular, making the jump to
cartoons in 1982 with a cartoon series that lasted for two years (You probably
know the Pac-Man ghosts have names, well they also have specific personalities
which dictate how they chase you and therefore how much of a threat they are
during gameplay). And the Film TRON
which depicts a hacker being sucked into a computer and forced to play games
with the programs, became a cult sensation which sparked several games and was actually
inspired by a video game itself - specifically Pong from Atari.
However we do not see universal success in the industry; the
industry took a hit when third party developers (Some of which had come from
Atari after quitting because Atari refused
to grant them royalties or Authorial credit) These third party developers
who and shoddy products began to flood the market. This lead to oversaturation
of the market in 1983 which caused drastic drops in prices which in turn
threatened the already established company’s abilities to survive. This period
saw Atari lose $536 million and though the PC market actually did well;
Microsoft released the MS-DOS in 1981 and this Operating system was popular for
playing games, which made PCs a viable alternative to console gaiming. The
bubble of console gaming in North America burst and was laid low for two years.
Eventually it was stimulus from outside the west that got
gaming back on it’s feet; Masayuki Uemura’s 8-bit cartridge console the Famicom
sold a whopping 2.5 consoles in Japan by 1984, so he decided to rename it the
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and release it in Europe and the US. It was
an immense success.
The NES brought with it a wealth of fascinating stories and
safeguards and regulations to prevent a second such crash – Nintendo placed
systems in games to prevent reverse engineering and conventions that means the
developer would face the problems if a game was a flop, rather than the
provider.
It’s now we see many iconic franchises and names in games
taking off – Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, Prince of Persia and Metal
Gear all emerged in this era of revival and we see a diverse range of genres
appear. Racing games, Action-adventure games, simulations and survival horrors
are all genres we recognise today and they all grew up around this time in
gaming.
The 1990s saw innovation
in video games; now that the foundations had been laid for the medium it was up
to the industry to build on it. This was the decade when we moved into 3D
environments, with the introductions of polygons and 3D environments game
artists really came into their own and now we see the creation of the part of
the industry I’m interested in! Games
like Ultima Underworld from Looking glass studios and Nintendo’s Super Mario 64
were the pioneers of 3D graphics where a player no longer had just the options
of left, right, up and down any more – the world was opened up to 360 degree
views and this called for more specialised labor – the artists were called in
to help the programmers develop their games.
Optical discs began to replace ROM cartridges in major home consoles
after the Nintendo 64. These CDs were more capable of storing the increasingly
large amounts of data for games where ROM cartridges would have failed. This limitation
on cartridges caused a shift; developers began to look at the Playstation
instead of the Nintendo 64 as a better, more flexible platform for their games.
The Playstation also introduced the memory card to gaming to store saved game
information.
Other innovations of this time included changing controller designs;
we’d begin to see the curvy shape we recognise as a controller today, as well
as including analogue sticks –first on the Nintendo 64, forced feedback in the
form of rumble strips first found as an optional extra in the Nintendo 64, then
as the DualShock controller for the Playstation. And pressure sensitive buttons
(Seen first on the Sega DreamCast in 1999) Late in the 1990s we see consoles
start to shift towards online gaming, a realm previously only inhabited by PC
gamers. When the DreamCast came out with it’s built in modem and internet
browsing software, others were quick to follow and almost all consoles since
have been capable of connecting to the internet.
At the end of this period we’ve seen a significant shift
from the arcade to the home as personal computers and games systems become more
affordable, as well as massive developments in content and graphics; what once
was the realm of only programmers is now opened up to more artistic avenues. Better processors and more available memory
meant a serious story and narrative were becoming increasingly attainable and
we see an explosion in the quality and diversity of genres.
As demand for better in-game graphics increased, artists
began to collonise the industry proper, rather than just being needed as
illustrators for box art or promotional material. In this era we shifted from
pixel sprites and text adventures to 3D models and textures which will only
keep developing as we progress.
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| http://www.pokemongame.co/pokemon-red-gameboy/ |
Oh, and we got POKéMON in 1996 after the first Gameboy was
released in 1989/90!
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