The gaming time capsule.

[Vindekarr]

Ok, so, theoreticaly you're making a time capsule and you can pick.... 3-10 games or bits of tech, or even gaming/computing concepts/ideas from 1990-95, 1995-2000 2000-2005 and 2005-2010, minimum three games/innovations from each era which you think are the best. Not neccessarily what you've played or experienced, but in your eyes, the grand Concorde moments of the previous two golden ages of gaming. Stinkers-your version of the biggest stuffups/scandals.worst games, also welcome as "warnings from history"

 

Alright, anything goes, you're each entitled to your opinions though so please stay civil. Here's mine.

 

I didn't play games regularly until the late 1990s, and as a child of the ninties I actualy can't fill out this space from personal experience, since I was very very young still by 1995.

 

1995-2000: Another hazy period for my, I began my gaming career in '98 so I can't really add much, except for a few '90s games I played many years post release.

 

Xbox(2000, games console) Love it or hate it the Microsoft Xbox was a big thing when it arrived in 2000. It brought in a new major player in the console market, making for more high-level competition and as a result more innovation. Despite many ugly rumors about longevity and reliability issues, the Xbox did two things vitaly right: first, it's harddrive was immense compared to it's rivals, raising the bar for console storage to new heights and allowing some more sophisticated games to be ported over. Secondly, it introduced online play on consoles to the masses, bringing paid DLC, live Arcade, matchmaking and friends lists along with it. Online multiplayer had existed on console before this ofcourse, but the Xbox, love it or hate it, refined the idea down quite nicely, and introduced some major new features, such as dedicated friends lists and matchmaking, which console players hadn't frequently had before.

 

Halo(2000, FPS) For me one of the most memorable games of all time. Again for many it's a case of love or hate-Halo cops a lot of abuse, but for me, the original, with it's vast vistas, then-stunning graphics, terrific orchestral score, memorable characters and well-roundedness as a game really sticks out in my memory for shear excellence. Though bastardised somewhat by later sequals, Halo Combat Evolved was undeniably a game of note.

 

WarCraft III/Starcraft(RTS, 199_) Undeniably worth note, these two games deserve a mention for simply still being around. i still play warcraft 3 a bit and still make maps for SC. With a vast and evil following(you know who you are :turned: ) pretty sprites and vast longevity, you can't say they aren't standouts.

 

Stinker: CRT's. I'd throw in a CRT as a warning from history, these vile things were the bane of many a gamer's sensitive eyes, seemingly built specificaly to enduce shortsightedness and minimise graphical beauty.

 

2000-2005

 

(EVE Online(MMOST, 2005) Perhaps one of the most recklessly ambitious games of it's generation, EVE Online was an MMO space trader by official genre, and an MMO-TEARS(MMO tear extraction and reclaimation simulator) by it's fans. With no NPC imput in it's economy, passive leveling, PVP everywhere with only light restrictions, some truly immense flyable ships, and the ability to literaly command and form empires made up of players and claim sovereignty/war with other empires, EVE Online was a reckless, slightly mad idea that somehow just worked. With a legendarily brutal learning curve, almost no handholding, the ability to trade the loss of a ship and standings to PVP anywhere, and the shear size of the damn thing, EVE was a game for the few, not the masses. It still lives all these years on too, somehow, kept alive in part by byannual expeansions and the shear determination by the DRF not to relinquish their grip on supremacy.

 

Early multi-core multi GPU monsters(concept) Powerful PCs were nothing new but in the 2000s their power began to skyrocket, backed by increasingly sophisticated CPU, GPU, and cooling technology. With water cooling become a practical reality, the beginings of motor-oil cooling conversions for the above water cooling, and multi CPU/GPU builds, the noughties introduced us to the idea that one day you could buy a proper gaming rig for the price of a console and expect to run nigh anything.

 

Triple-A(concept) They were also the dawn of the triple A title. .Mutli million dollar multi hundred person projects went from extreme rarity to relative standard issue as the calender approached 2005, with general standards for quality, content and graphics becoming far higher. Indy games for a time declined.

 

Stinker: early generation digital DRM. Piracy has always been a major issue, with crime being an issue even in cyberspace. Naturaly developers wanted to safeguard their games from theives but early attempts at mandatory digital registry DRM were a hit and miss disaster in my book. I vividly remmember buying Battlefield 2142 from EB games on release day, getting home, and the game never running because it couldn't verify my country existed. Other issues inclued unrecoverable account details, accidental lockouts, and other major problems,

 

2005-2010.

 

The PC reimagined:(circa 2007) In the noughties the PC was becoming an increasingly powerful thing. Long gone were the days when upgrades no longer garunteed success, but designs became increasingly ambitious up to and after the GFC. With ideas such as removing the CPU or GPU, octocore CPUs, masses of small "hivemind CPUs" that could be activated put to use as needed, and immersion in fluid for cooling, and other stranger ideas it seems possible that like the car, the PC may soon change revolutionarily, rather than evolutionarily.

 

Crysis Warhead(2008) A game built specificaly as a technical excercise, Crysis was a bonkers idea and it drove some people bonkers. With it's stunning graphics, pretty island settings, online and pretty graphics, it polarised some and stunned others. Love it or hate it, Crysis was a truly itneresting idea.

 

The third console world war(2005-on) With the launch of next-gen console did we see a new war for console supremacy from which in some respects the consumer won. With prices slashed on subscriptions and companies striving madly to be the one with the product we wanted, it spurred some thought and effort if nothing else.

 

Post-polygon graphics(2011) whether you thionk it's a hoax or not, this is undeniably an exciting idea. A new... concept for graphics in which real items are transferred into cyberspace along with computer code, with engines able to render individual grains of sand. Yet to be put into practice or even proven to exist, but a fascinating idea.

 

Stinker: DMM(2005-2008) A lucasarts idea described as the next revolution in gaming, the DMM was slated as being able to destroy anything in any way, with objects literaly reacting as they would in real life and made up of tiny-sub objects.

But this is lucasarts, and the project bummed. Delivered the game two years late, the game that resulted was actualy only 3 hours long, hideously badly made, buggy as hell and told a story that made Episode 3 look like a shining example of the cinematographer's art. The DMM was also absent except in glass windowpanes. Windows could break in a DMM-like way, but in truth there were very very few windows, and only a handful of other objects werte destructible.

Edited January 3, 2012 by Vindekarr