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• 10 Years Ago This Week: Super Smash Bros

  A vital addition to the Nintendo 64 catalog, Super Smash Bros (released April 27, 1999) was a phenomenal critical and commercial success. It helped cement the console’s legacy of innovative four-player game design, while at the same time creating a new flagship franchise for Nintendo and starting the game’s creators, Masahiro Sakurai and particularly Satoru Iwata, on a trajectory that would eventually see them leading the industry. As such, it’s one of 1999’s most historically important titles. Read More... Posted Apr 21 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: super smash bros, super smash bros brawl, satoru iwata, nintendo 64, joe keiser, 10 years ago, super smash bros melee, masahiro sakurai

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Requiem: Avenging Angel

  A rare effort from 3DO to create a first-person shooter franchise, Requiem: Avenging Angel (released April 4, 1999) had a fascinating premise but nevertheless was a critical and commercial dud. It was also the last game to come out of Cyclone Studios, a short-lived development house that never managed to find its footing despite having a string of interesting game concepts. So it's an interesting footnote in the history of the genre, with interesting lessons to be learned from some of its specific shortcomings. Read More... Posted Mar 30 2009, 11:15 AM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: 3do, pc games, joe keiser, 10 years ago, Requiem: Avenging Angel, Cyclone Studios, first person shooters

• 10 Years Ago This Week: X-Wing Alliance

  X-Wing Alliance (released March 24, 1999) was the last entry in Totally Games’ X-Wing series of space sims, and one of the last games in the genre to experience significant retail success. It thus represents a significant marker in the collapse of the space simulator as a market force, even if it’s not a particularly notable game on its own. Read More... Posted Mar 23 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: star wars, joe keiser, 10 years ago, x-wing alliance, space sim, x-wing, tie fighter

• 10 Years Ago This Week: EverQuest

  10 Years Ago is a recurring feature that looks at whatever the new hotness was around this time 3,652 days ago. Ostensibly it will look at the game’s impact both in past and present terms, but mostly it will just make you feel really old. While not the first successful MMORPG (Ultima Online is frequently cited for this accolade), EverQuest (released March 16, 1999) was undoubtedly the first truly culturally relevant MMORPG, and the first one to achieve critical mass in its player base. The things EverQuest did in its five years at the top of the genre defined not only the way MMORPGs are designed. It also codified how the MMO business is structured, cemented a great many aspects of massive game player culture, and began the controversies that continue to haunt the genre to this day. It’s hard to overstate how much EverQuest has contributed to the medium, and you could certainly make an argument for it being the most important game of the last ten years (though you only have the rest of the day to do so). Read More... Posted Mar 16 2009, 10:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: world of warcraft, sony online, mmorpgs, pc games, everquest, joe keiser, 10 years ago, the realm, mythic, meridian 59, stormfront, ultima online, mac games

• 30 Years Ago This Week: The CD

  We’re taking a break from our regular 10 Years Ago column this week, but only because nothing happened ten years ago this week—unless you are some kind of terrible extreme sports game aficionado, in which case you can talk about EA’s Rush Down by yourself. Fortunately for the rest of us, something great did happen this week. It’s just something we have to go back a little bit further to discuss. The Compact Disc (released, sort of, on March 8th, 1979) was first publicly demoed thirty years ago this previous Sunday. It went on to become one of the major driving technologies of the digital media revolution. It also broadened the horizons of videogames as a medium, and to an extent democratized the industry as well. Read More... Posted Mar 09 2009, 03:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: sega cd, fmv hell, sony playstation, joe keiser, 10 years ago, cd-i, amiga cdtv, 30 years ago, cd-rom

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Army Men 3D

  10 Years Ago is a recurring feature that looks at whatever the new hotness was around this time 3,652 days ago. Ostensibly it will look at the game’s impact both in past and present terms, but mostly it will just make you feel really old. It’s hard to imagine a time when the world wasn’t glutted with terrible Army Men games. And yet, that’s exactly the world that Army Men 3D (released March 2, 1999) was born into. Army Men 3D was the game that made the series’ descent into crushing awfulness visible to all. Army Men has been the poster boy of franchise overexertion and laziness since its 1998 debut, but that wasn’t always immediately apparent. While only the most generous of reviewers considered the first Army Men title to be even mediocre, there was no denying that the concept of little plastic green men fighting little plastic tan men was an interesting game space to explore. But Army Men 3D didn’t explore it. Instead, it was a 3D remake of the 2D original—an incredibly brazen move, since that first game was less than a year old and generally disliked. This was the first real sign that 3DO didn’t actually have a plan for the Army Men series beyond driving revenue—and the product matched the intention. Read More... Posted Mar 02 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: 3do, joe keiser, Playstation 1, 10 years ago, army men, army men 3d

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Silent Hill

  Silent Hill (released February 24th, 1999) did not mark a pivotal moment in the original Playstation’s lifecycle. Technologically speaking, Silent Hill was a solid effort, but nothing unusual for the time. Foregoing the pre-rendered backgrounds that were horror games’ stock-in-trade, Silent Hill’s full-3D environments weren’t as pristinely rendered as Konami’s own, year-old Metal Gear Solid. The CGI cutscenes, another requisite of the era, were competent but by no means up to the Squaresoft gold standard. Its control was wonky, its camera unwieldy, and the voice-acting was stiff even for a Playstation game. Of course, none of that matters. Silent Hill was a pivotal moment in game’s maturation as an affecting, expressive medium. Forget technology; its technical failings made it a stronger work. Forget genre; Silent Hill is not survival horror. It’s just horror. Read More... Posted Feb 23 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, capcom, metal gear solid, silent hill, konami, sony, rule of rose, Playstation, tecmo, fatal frame, team silent, silent hill 2, sunsoft, 10 years ago, akira yamioka, shuji ishikawa, punchline, david lynch, jacob’s ladder, Adrian lyne, siren, clock tower

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Syphon Filter

  10 Years Ago is a recurring feature that looks at whatever the new hotness was around this time 3,650 days ago. Ostensibly it will look at the game’s impact both in past and present terms, but mostly it will just make you feel really old. Syphon Filter (released February 17, 1999) was the moment of redemption for Eidetic, the studio that had previously sullied its name with the execrable Bubsy 3D. Whereas that game represented a spectacular low for the 3D mascot platformer, Syphon Filter was a dizzying high for the 32-bit third-person action game. It was the culmination of many of the console design methodologies in place at the time and stands as one of the PlayStation’s iconic titles, even if it’s not particularly enjoyable by modern standards. Read More... Posted Feb 16 2009, 12:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: psone, joe keiser, syphon filter, 10 years ago

• 10 Years Ago This Week: Alpha Centauri

  10 Years Ago is a recurring feature that looks at whatever the new hotness was around this time 3,650 days ago. Ostensibly it will look at the game’s impact both in past and present terms, but mostly it will just make you feel really old. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (released February 12, 1999) represents a curious interregnum at developer Firaxis. It was the only turn-based strategy game to come out of the developer before the company regained its Civilization franchise, for one. It’s only the only game that was designed for Firaxis by co-founder and master strategy craftsman Brian Reynolds. Billed as a “spiritual sequel” to Civilization II—the idea being the story came as a direct result of a Civ technological victory—it doesn’t step an extraordinary distance from the original Sid Meier design. Yet it feels hugely different. Alpha Centauri differs most primarily from Civilization in one particularly interesting way: while Civ presents its power struggle as a battle to dominance by nations, Alpha Centauri is about the struggle between ideologies to best survive as, and transcend, humanity. This makes each game of Alpha Centauri a much more emotional, and unnerving, conflict. Read More... Posted Feb 09 2009, 09:00 AM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: joe keiser, sid meier, alpha centauri, 10 years ago, turn based strategy