The History of Gaming - 1990's to 2000's

Gaming unquestionably got more and more interesting every single year throughout the 90's, starting with very basic platformers such as James Pond for the Sega Mega Drive to A Link to the Past in 91, the first Mario Kart in 92, DOOM in 93 and then the start of the one of the worlds leading franchise's in 94 when Blizzard released Warcraft, grabbing the attention of millions of players with each new title. Obviously not being a physical being on the planet until this point you could say that I'd already missed quite a lot but being born in 1994 I was able to experience this chapter of gaming history unfold right before my eyes.

I was about 4-5 when I remember buying my first Pokemon cards, pulling a metapod and thinking i'd won the lottery or something, shortly after the official game boy games had been released, everyone in all schools everywhere had either Pokemon Red or Blue sticking out of their Game Boy and at around 20,680,000 copies sold it's still today one of the worlds best selling RPG's.

It took me a bit longer to discover the Nintendo 64 and all the glory it brought to almost every 90's kid although I was the only one of all my friends to have ever heard of Banjo Kazooie, in my opinion it was another god tier video game with plenty to do and new areas becoming unlocked very regularly like Mario 64. I wasn't really into games that had 1 theme and 1 colour pallet, it was probably the reason I didn't get that into games like Castlevania or GoldenEye 007(However, I did get really into the multiplayer with my friends on 007), I was much happier in an environment that was always changing, desserts to mountains, oceans to caves, fields to the skies.

Theme park world hitting the selves in 1999 made me a little bit crazy, I spent god only knows how many hours on the same levels making each ride better and better, always trying to make the most money possible. Dungeon keeper is another prime example of the aerial construction/micro-manage simulator and despite it being released the year before I didn't come across it til much later in my childhood. It was always a great bit of fun killing off minions and building bigger and better bases. I was thinking about mentioning how games such as this can heavily effect a kids mind when it comes to mortality and being a part of a god complex especially if you're playing as God, but hey, I turned out fine. At least I wasn't outside burning ants.



Referencing:
http://video-games.findthebest.com/q/407/2744/How-many-copies-of-Pok-mon-Red-and-Blue-the-video-game-were-sold
http://www.giantbomb.com/warcraft/3025-4/
http://www.colorhunter.com/tag/castlevania/1
http://www.therwp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40979