1999.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series

1999.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series - Welcome to the end of the millennium, to the end of a century, to the year long celebration of people not understanding how centuries and millenniums are numbered and why. An age when video games were bigger and bolder than ever, and were set to be blamed again for the evils of the world.

There was something in the air that year. Y2K was making some people panic. A general feeling of change, of finality lingered everywhere. And fears of the upcoming year 2000 were high, idiots heralding the end of the millennium as the end of the world. Of course, the millennium wouldn’t start until the year 2001, not that it mattered. People were seeing omens everywhere, in the solar eclipse that summer, in the earthquake that killed 13 thousand in turkey. In the bombings that were taking place in the balkans. In the horribleness of the new Star Wars movie and in the shooting that took place in Colorado, at the Columbine High School. The largest school shooting in the United States since 1966. It is important that I remind you of these things, because games don’t exist in a vacuum. And in this case, they were blamed for inspiring this atrocity, Doom especially, because it was the one the press still remembered and quickly latched on to.

1999 signaled a change in how media was distributed, initially by scaring the crap out of the music industry, with Napster. A service made by some guy that let you download songs over the internet. It would cause a lot of strife for a few years, a lot of legal issues, but it paved the way for the future. For the digital age that we’ll get to in a few weeks. The one prophesied by The Matrix and My Space. An age where the internet reigned supreme. It’s at the door, it’s clawing at the windows, growling through the walls, but we weren’t there yet. Where we were, however, was when Tony Hawk made the first 900 in history, and I got to see it live on Eurosport, and it was fantastic. No wonder he got his own game series, that began that year, with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater for the Playstation. It was a hit, it made Neversoft a worthwhile investment for Activision, that had slowly been building itself back since the near bankruptcy of just a few years ago.

And since I mentioned the Playstation, by this point in time it had outsold its competition on a massive scale. Every other console on the market was selling worse than the one before it. The N64 was doing worse than the SNES, the Saturn had been a disaster compared to the Mega Drive, and the Dreamcast wasn’t doing much better. And on top of that, Sony had just announced the Playstation 2. And it announced the console with a plethora of games already being displayed, with the likes of Gran Turismo 2000, the new Ninja Gaiden and many, many more. It came with a DVD drive, and Sony believed it would become the de facto entertainment system. Maybe even pushing the PC out. This scared Microsoft to hell and back, making it start development on its own video games console, one that would run Windows, and would tout the power of DirectX. It would be called the DirectX Box, and would save the PC from oblivion… or doom it, it depends on who was in charge of the company. We’ll get to that next week. Nintendo also started development of its new Dolphin console, and Team Fortress 2, a sequel to a game based on a mod, was just announced by Valve. It would not be released for another 8 years. But you what was released back then?

Counter-Strike. The definitive competitive FPS, one that has outlasted competitors and redefined how games were made. It was developed by two people and a bunch of enthusiastic contributors through the internet, it was created through the roots of the upcoming digital age. It was the sign at the door that read: Behold, for I am the future. And it was popular like you would never believe as a mod and eventually as a full game. Why? Because it gave people something they didn’t have. A team based multi-player game based in authenticity, in contemporary warfare, with contemporary weapons, the main conflict being terrorists and anti-terrorist forces. It’s understandable why, what with all the terrorist attacks around the world, some having ended that very year, with Northern Ireland having the right to self rule again.

But, back to video games. There were a lot released this year. And a great many of them were among the best I have ever played. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is a turn based 4X strategy game meant to continue the Civilization series after we’ve already left our world behind. It is a game that managed to weave a story of the future organically into a strategy game, with scarily accurate predictions in how it described the troubles that would plague humanity in Earth’s final century. It is one of the most quotable games ever made, all its dialogue being mostly quotes to begin with, and at the same time it was an earnest attempt to teach people the perspectives of different ideologies, without judging them. It was a landmark of story design for a strategy game that hasn’t really been outdone, or maybe even matched.

Soul Reaver continued the legacy of Kain with a beautiful shakesperian tale of vampires and restless spirits fighting over the fate of a dead world. It gave you the chance to go beyond Blood Omen and see what became of the hero you were ages ago. Tomb Raider The Last Revelation made the bold choice of killing its main character, Lara Croft, because she was killing Core Design, many being unhappy that they had to make a Tomb Raider every year. In the end, she would get the last laugh.

Age of Empires 2 continued on the path set by its predecessor, becoming a great real time strategy game, even though the scene was starting mold itself more towards the style of Starcraft. A few other notable exceptions being Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun, Total Annihilation Kingdoms, Seven Kingdoms 2, and the first true 3D RTS, in the form of Relic’s Homeworld. Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament battled for second place on the competitive FPS scene, each bringing their own traits that would forever distinguish them one from another, and bring years of enjoyment to many fans of the genre. Those that still wanted a more singleplayer oriented experience had access to a magnificently asymmetrical Alien vs Predator, with three characters of wildly different abilities generating very different experiences. And if you thought you didn’t have the hardware to run any of these 3D games, then in 1999 you’d get the Pentium 3, the Athlon, and Nvidia brought forth what is considered to be the first true modern video card, the GeForce.

Medal of Honor blended the FPS genre and Hollywood under the supervision of Steven Spielberg, fresh off the acclaimed movie Saving Private Ryan, and planting the seeds of what would soon be the biggest names in the industry.

System Shock 2 came out in 1999, not made by Looking Glass, but by a bunch of fans of the original, called Irrational Games. It melded the ideas of the original with a slicker mode of play, with RPG elements and truly fantastic design at every step.

I should probably mention a few other very important sequels that came around this time. We had the excellent Dungeon Keeper 2, we had Pharaoh, that brought Caesar 3’s gameplay to ancient Egypt, the transition of the old Police Quest series into a first person tactical police procedural shooter. We had the ever enjoyable and awe inspiring Heroes of Might and Magic 3, a Jagged Alliance 2 that took all the best parts from the original, a few inspirations from X-Com, plus a whole lot of new layers and levels of complexity that make it still to this day a super game to play, and we also got Ultima 9. The game that killed the series, and Origin with it. But there was also Final Fantasy 8, a game that many enjoyed in spite of its… issues. And, of course Street Fighter 3, the… probably ninth game in the series by that point.

Fighting games were still very popular, even if their home, the arcades, were fading from existence. They had a new home on consoles, and even Nintendo’s own characters were getting in on the fun of pummeling each-other, with the classic Super Smash Bros. But if what you really wanted was to see who would win in a fight between Bruce Lee, van Damme and Son Goku, well, the MUGEN fighting game engine came out in 1999, giving people the chance to make their own fighting game, with as many copyright infringing characters as possible.

And since I mentioned the arcades, one of the last great hurrahs they had that year was Crazy Taxi, a game about driving recklessly for fun and profit. But if you wanted something harder, where the tutorial expected you to already be a really good driver, then you had Driver. A game where you play an undercover cop acting as a wheelman for the criminal underground, and complete with a replay mode that let you relive your smooth moves, that is, if you had any.

The MMO Genre came into its own completely this year. Ultima Online opened the floodgates and Everquest poured right through. Being easier to play and having a structure that was more forgiving with players, compared to the sandbox approach of Ultima Online, it shattered every record for an on-line game and created very dedicated fans. Some would call it EverCrack, gathering nearly half a million subscribers at its peak, creating controversy for how in game assets were being sold by players for a lot of tangible money, and providing the template for what would one day be the biggest game in the genre. Asheron’s Call also came out around this time. It’s a name a lot of people don’t remember, but in its time it was the third largest MMO. And it had a huge persistent world with no loading times, where if you could see something in the distance, you could go to it, and it had a really kickass magic system that was mostly about you trying to figure out what actually worked.

Age of Wonders tried to recapture the majesty of the old Master of Magic, that wasn’t really that old in 1999. Konami gave the Playstation another absolute monster hit, in the form of the magnificent Silent Hill, a horror game that went beyond Resident Evil, and tried to toy as much with your head as it did with your reaction to seeing scary things suddenly jump at you.

And, lastly, there was The Longest Journey. An adventure game that proved the genre was far from being dead, with a story of wonder, whimsy, tragedy and pain and some of the most memorable characters you’ll ever find in a point and click.

As for what was the game of 1999? I think you know how it goes, don’t you. It’s the one I haven’t mentioned. Planescape Torment may not have had the best combat ever, it may not have had multiplayer, but it has hands down one of the best and most creative stories ever put forth in any medium. The work of Black Isle and the storytelling talent of Chris Avellone didn’t just make Planescape Torment a great roleplaying game, it was an attempt to tear down the genre and turn it on its head. You played an amnesiac immortal, striving to recover what he had lost, and in the process find an answer to a question: What can change the nature of a man? It is a game that you owe yourself to play, being loaded with more philosophy than you can shake a stick at, without being boring or preachy, and let you explore a fantastic and creative world, describing it so well, that no one else has dared come back to it. Planescape Torment is one of the best games you’ll ever play, and understanding it may make you a better human being.

As 1999 ended, people celebrated, all over the world there were displays of fireworks and cheer, ushering in the new century, the new millennium… which wouldn’t come for another year, but people really couldn’t count.

See you next time.

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