1990.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series

1990.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series - Welcome to the 90’s, a decade that meant freedom to some, strife to others, and pushed gaming into a new dimension. So let’s kick off with 1990 and see what games popped up this year.

In the cold dead void of space, an electronic eye looks back to a speck of dust, shining dimly blue in an indifferent infinity. Everyone you’ve ever know, everyone that’s ever lived and died, all the history of mankind, barely a flicker in the dark. This humbling picture was taken by the Voyager 1 space probe, on the 14th of February 1990, over 6 billion kilometers away from Earth. An Earth that now seemed to be at peace. An Earth no longer on the verge of nuclear Armageddon. An Earth filled with hope. Nelson Mandella is released from prison, leading to the beginning of an age of healing for South Africa. The Ivory trade was formally banned, and Germany became a single country again. Yet, that very same year, Iraq invaded Kuweit, and the Manjil-Rudbar earthquake in Iran claimed the lives of nearly 50 thousand people, and left almost half a million homeless. It is important to remember these things, no matter what you believe about pro or anti-earthquake politics.

1990 brought the release of one of the most beloved consoles of all time, with some of the greatest games of all time. The Super Famicom came to the market with two games, a 16 bit sequel to the Super Mario series, called Super Mario World, that introduced new ways to play, and the trusty character of Yoshi, who’s sacrifice allowed Mario to win time and again, and F Zero, that really set a new standard for console game racers. And even last year’s Final Fight got a port for the Super Famicom, normalizing the idea that whole cooked chicken can be found in trashcans. Most of all, this was a sign that Sega’s foray into the fourth generation would not go unchallenged. The cold war may have vanished, but the console war had begun. Not just in the home, but handhelds as well, Sega releasing the Game Gear, to compete with the Gameboy, bringing colors and even a backlight. Some great games would come to these consoles in the next few years. But this year was heavily marked by computer games. Be they Amiga, DOS, Mac, MSX2, FM-Towns, or even belayed Apple 2 and Commodore 64 releases, this was the year of the PC.

The year that brought us Metal Gear 2. An actual, proper sequel to the classic sneaker, enhancing the possibilities that you as Solid Snake had to prowl around and hide, but also increased the challenge, putting a heavier focus on authenticity. And you still got to fight a giant robot somewhere around there, all of it being drenched in the veneer of a classic spy film.

A small game developer named Ideas from the Deep came up with a side scrolling adventure game for MS-DOS, after failing to secure a license to port Super Mario Bros 3. That game was named Commander Keen, and although it’s not really all that popular today, it put this small studio in connection with Apogee Software, it proved to them that the shareware model, of releasing a part of the game for free, was working, and it then let that studio go on to greater things. 3D things. But things that weren’t really all that revolutionary, since 3D games were already a thing. They had been a thing for some time, in various forms. Even in 1990 there was a first person shooter called Corporation, that featured the ability to smoothly move on 360 degrees in a 2D plane, exploring a 3D graphically represented maze. That game was made by another small studio called Dimension Creative Designs, for a company call Core Design. Keep that name in mind for a few more weeks.

3D was also becoming big for racing games as well. Even though they may have still looked rough, lacking the beauty and style of 2D games, we had titles like STUNS, which was technically a copy of last year’s arcade game Hard Driving’, but it came with a comprehensive level editor, a bunch of cars, a kickass soundtrack and very loopy races. Distinctive Software’s Stunts inspired a few games that will become quite popular in later years. And it wasn’t the only 3D Racer on PC of its day. The Test Drive series, formally made by Distinctive as well and now in the care of Accolade, moved to 3D too, With Test Drive 3: The Passion. And it did it in a deeper way than by just changing graphics. You could jump, you could free yourself from the confines of the road and just drive all over the place, until the police came around or you were hit by a train.

Fans of immersion would get a great treat in 1990. A game that really took its world seriously, that put a heavy emphasis on characters, and yet wasn’t an RPG, like the recent Ultima 6 and Wizardry 6, instead, it was an action game. A space action game. It was Wing Commander. Origin’s foray into the cinematic, immersive action game, one of Chris Roberts’ biggest successes. A title that let you pilot a ship in missions through space, in a war against alien cats. If you ever want to blame a series for establishing the need to constantly upgrade your PC to play them, and overblown development budgets, Wing Commander would be that series. Though we’ll get to the details of why next month.

But if you still wanted an RPG, one based on a classic book of fiction, Interplay followed up 1989’s Wasteland, that I forgot to mention, with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I. A game that followed the story of the Fellowship of the Rings, allowing you to control a party of characters, starting all the way from Bag End in the Shire. The series would never be completed, ending two years later with Volume 2.

Strategy fans would get a host of new titles this year. From a really unexpected offshoot of the Might and Magic series, called King’s Bounty, that would prove to be very popular in Russia, even receiving several fan made sequels over there, and eventually re-birthing the series entirely… and we’ll probably talk about that in October. People that wanted something more down to earth had Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon. One of the first games to bear the Tycoon title. One that let you live the dream of controlling your own railway empire, but a lot cheaper than owning an actual model train set. Powermonger took the strategy aspect of Populous, added a 3D map to it, let you, change its weather patterns by destroying forests, and even engage in diplomacy when not setting out to murder everyone that wasn’t part of your medieval Kingdom. If that wasn’t enough for you, Sim Earth gave you the Earth itself. An evolution of the idea of SimCity, the game allowed you to decide the fate of the earth, from its earliest form, to the rise of civilizations, though somehow the continents would never actually change. If the world was not enough, than Imperium gave you the stars themselves. A precursor to more popular and better known 4X space strategy games, Imperium allowed you reach out towards the stars and conquer, placate or simply outlast other empires.

While a lot of companies were putting out adventure games at this time, two truly stood out. One was Brian Moriarity’s Loom. An adventure game were puzzles were songs, where the Lucasfilm Games Scumm engine was used like never before, and never like this after it. Loom wasn’t a comedy, it wasn’t a spoof, it was a game that aimed to guide you through a world of fantasy and through a deep story. It is a game that doesn’t get much recognition these days, and that is a crying shame. But, without a doubt, that year’s greatest creation from Lucasfilm Games was The Secret of Monkey Island. A deconstruction of the genre, a parody of it, and yet still a fantastic tale of adventure, action, strangeness and with more memorable quotes than most other adventure games put together. I could sit here and talk about it for a half an hour, which is why I already did last week in the video dedicate to it.

As for what was the game of 1990, well, I don’t think there is much of a surprise here. It is The Secret of Monkey Island. One of the most beautiful adventure games ever made. A classic that’s defined many people’s interpretation of what the genre means, and at the same time went against the grain. There was no death, there was no chance of getting to the end of the game and finding out you couldn’t finish because you didn’t find an item in the first level. It was easier to play, more cohesive than a lot of other adventure games of the previous years, but it was not a cakewalk. It wasn’t frivolous. It was witty, it was smart, and it was one of the funniest games ever made.

So closes 1990. Next week we’re going to take another turn of the page. And then another. And another. And another. And always another turn.

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