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great thread idea After 30+ years of gaming I've grown pretty fond of both having my cake and eating it, so for my own posting pleasure I will compare the year 1998 and the year 2022. I'll write a blurb about both of them that tries to appreciate the broad context of their moment, and then a bunch of bullet points of notable moments or games. A winner will emerge from dust cloud, or will it??? _ _ _ _ _ 1998   Glimpses of Dreamcast, peak PSX year, death of the Saturn, the golden waning of the N64, and my introduction to battle.net Back then most kids I knew didn't have all the consoles. Maybe someone had an N64 and everyone else went to his house to play Goldeneye. Another kid had a Saturn with Guardian Heroes and wherever they traveled a party emerged via 6 controllers and a multi-tap. People were lanning consoles, lanning pcs, playing Diablo over dial-up across town. And there was always a PSX in the room, so many people had a PSX. The Gameboy color started to appear at school, and people were listening to CDs portably. Nobody owned a mobile phone, but a few popular kids had pagers. And some also still had Tamagotchi in their bags.  I bought issue 100 of Electronic Gaming Monthly during xmas of 1997 and was exposed to my first top 100 games list. Everyone I knew had issue 100. We each read it cover to cover dozens of times. Nobody read much online at the time, we all still had subscriptions, sometimes with demo discs which we also traded around. The industry felt innocent, incoherent, fringe. Throughout the course of 1998 much of that would change, we would glimpse the new millennium of gaming's horizon in the abstract, through midnight releases, through dying arcades, through news of new consoles incoming, through massive sequels and print/tv ad campaigns and the booming tradeshows. Over the course of 1998 I would purchase a record number of games for PSX, many at 50 bux a pop, but also a few Greatest Hits, and I was still caught up in playing SOTN (my favorite game to this day) and FFVII, "quite possibly the greatest game ever made" as the quote went. Videogames were poised to enter mainstream culture in a big way, but it was almost unimaginable while you were living it.  - The first quarter alone was notable for quality releases, in true Capcom form Resident Evil 2 blew the doors off of January, then Marvel V Capcom in arcades - Panzer Dragoon Saga released and only 2 people ever played it though every magazine wrote about it. Many of the Saturn's best gems dropped at this time - FEB/MARCH: 1080º, Tenchu, Starcraft, Tekken 3, Parasite Eve, NFS 3, and XENOGEARS! (EA+Square western localization deal in action) - In June I bought Vigilante 8 and finally got more Car Combat after several years of Twisted Metal 2. I also bought my first DualShock. My friend got F-Zero X. - these were still the days when almost every single game came out in sept-dec, so to have a bunch of releases across the year felt incredibly odd. Still, in Sept people I knew started freaking out because: - Metal Gear Solid, Rainbow 6, Rogue Trip, and NFL Blitz were fun as gently caress, DDR hit arcades. MGS was a watershed moment all on its own for me, a feeling I've tried to recapture the moment of with Route BP posts. - OCT/NOV/DEC: Turok 2, Grim Fandango, Fallout 2, Age of Empires, Oddworld Exoddus, Final Fantasy Tactics, Half-Life, Zelda OOT, Thief, Rogue Squadron, Suikoden 2, Mario Party, Starcraft Brood War, Baldur's Gate, South Park, Einhander, Breath of Fire 3, Bushido Blade(s), Saga Frontier, Brave Fencer Musashi, and Starsiege: Tribes.  That's just the surface layer of the year, with many more AA gems waiting in the rafters before the AAA era began, in '98 the rapid market expansion was in lock-step with bleeding edge experimentation in a way we may not see again. Many games we'd only get our hands on later and throughout 1999 (truly '96-'99 changed the lives of an entire generation), but many more we ponied up for on the spot and 1998 year saw the initial release of so many series or games which have been iterated upon to this day or remain in the all-timers list. Truth be told, it was kind of a whirlwind. I would turn 15 later that year and while videogames were a huge part of my life at the time I was also making new friends, exploring social life outside of school, finishing middle school and going into freshman year high, talking on the phone with other people my age, reading great books, riding the city bus a lot, walking even more, using the internet for the first time, discovering the first truly autonomous traces of my love for film (The Thin Red Line in theaters). Videogames, for the first time in my life, started to intertwine with all of this. They had become destination activities, not just an afterschool activity.  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2022   The year of Mo Games, postpandemic restructuring, integration of platforms, and what we get out of solitude. They said consoles would be dead. The significance of 2022 is as much about how the industry/landscape has changed as it is about how I've changed. 25 years later, 22 of them shitposting. Many of the gaming objects that defined the 90s have been consolidated into all-in-one devices or services (RIP 20 years of iPod), in fact mass consolidation is becoming the name of the game to an intimidating degree. This is at once significant and I suppose...just another day in videogaming. Some of the biggest gaming mergers and acquisitions of all time occurred in just the first part of this year. And in a sense it seems that people are more freaked out than ever about the state of the world and just as often use gaming as a therapeutic social tool as opposed to pure escapism. Many are emerging from the Great Indoors of the last few years (or decades!) with a new love of nature and social or political purpose, and videogames seem to be both a better deal than ever and more predatory than ever in their attempts to sucker you out of a few more bucks. Throughout the months of 'new normal' and waves of omicron I readjust my own social expectations. Gaming is often solitary, intense, emotional, requiring of effort. Occasionally it is airy and weightless as friends I've known for decades work through their interpersonal poo poo via avatars in a Deep Rock Galactic hub, neither of us really playing per se, a virtual replacement for the long phone calls we used to share. When we see each other in person it is always significant these days, important and welcome.  Games no longer feel like destination events, except for maybe EVO and the convention scenes. It doesn't seem that going out to play at other people's houses is as much a thing since the advent of mobile telephony, the death of arcades, rise of matchmaking, etc, but that's also my age talking. The last midnight release I witnessed was years ago. I don't make friends like I did when I was in school, and I have a different level of free time and purchasing power compared to back then. I've been working 'at the movies' for a while now after many years wandering and many different jobs. Film, the dominant art form of the 20th Century has been firmly supplanted by the Interactive Game, the dominant art form of the 21st Century. The average notable game release in a year is better than the average notable film release, but still, apples and oranges. People seem more jaded and cynical about the state of gaming than ever, but also more involved, more discerning, more open-minded, dedicated. Social movements pop up and are reflected through the culture of gaming like an elevator with mirrors on all sides. The immensity and fragility of it all becomes ever more apparent. Within this contradictory landscape I experience what may very well be the single best gaming year of my life.  - JAN 1st, I finish up another playthrough of Disco Elysium, this time with full voice acting. The game contains writing so detailed and identifiable it would make personified art objects in other mediums blush. - Deep Rock Galactic is released on PS+ , a chill game where all my friends hang out and wipe digital beer from their digital beards, an example of how indie development and the live service model can go so so right. - FEB sees the release of Indie AAA parkour game Dying Light 2, back from the dead of development hell. Devs bound to support it for the next decade. - OlliOlli World, Sifu, and Horizon Forbidden West, more crowd pleasers of various sizes in a packed first quarter. Everyone seems wary of stepping too close to the shadow of.... - ....Elden Ring, which shatters every possible record a smaller studio could ever hope or imagine to, a megaton capstone to a 13 year run of gaming supersignificance for the plucky auteurs who turned the industry on its head in 2009. The game seems to defy every known ruleset of contemporary game design, and in some ways it's even too ambitious for its own good... vast, conflicted, cynical, gorgeous. All eyes on FROM, Miyazaki and crew immediately confirm that they've gone back to work on more games, blooddrunk and maidenless devs mad with ambition. Elden Ring outsells the Military Industrial Complex's best annual attempts, 13+ million copies in 2 weeks, probably the first time a fantasy game has accomplished the feat in the 20 years since FPS became a shorthand term for gaming itself. - Gran Turismo 7 rides Elden Ring's coattails but not too close, a remarkable return to significance for the trailblazing series that debuted 25+ years ago. - Death Stranding, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Cyberpunk 2077, REsident Evil 2, 3, & 7 all jump onto modern hardware trying to reignite their own conversations. Ghostwire Tokyo embraces the weird and doesn't quite land, but it feels like experimentation in gaming is alive and well again. - Nintendo Switch passes the lifetime sales of the PSX, no mean feat, and is the recipient of so many pieces of custom ported software per month that it may even climb higher. The Steam Deck also weighs in on the scene, mobile gaming ever more significant since 'the rona'. - Bugsnax comes to Xbox. People are overheard talkin bout it. - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge continues the 8/16 bit brawler renaissance that Streets of Rage 4 (also new DLC) started. Gaming preservation and remake culture, once upon a time a complete afterthought of the industry, are now significant drivers of gaming sales and cross pollination. People WANT to play old games, people WANT to play old games made new, and people WANT to play new games made old. Intergenerational gaming dialogue has reached new heights of significance. Klonoa 2, Tactics Ogre, Live A Live, and Moon get contemporary versions for the first time in decades. Sonic Origins faceplants. - Cuphead, Returnal, and Monster Hunter Rise each receive incredible DLC - Stray reinvents cat-gaming to rapturous internet applause. AND ONWARD - 2022 will round out with Soul Hackers 2, Rollerdrome, more TMNT, unnecessary remakes, necessary remakes, more Plague Tale, more COD, the hilarious sinking of Skull and Bones, God of War Ragnarok, and the seemingly fantastic Callisto Protocol. I will also play Outer Wilds and Inscryption both for the first time on god's own thiccstation five in 2 weeks.  The games released these days are so much larger and more intricate, invested with so many moving parts, and sometimes take years to devour like Monster Hunter World, or benefit greatly from multiple long playthroughs, like Elden Ring. Some are so ahead of their time that they experience repeat cultural significance years after release, like Alien: Isolation. It becomes almost impossible to play all of the notable releases in a single year, no matter what kind of critical hype or streamer presence is egging you on. As with 1998 the industry is reforming before our very eyes, mammoth buyouts, long overdue labor actions, crossplatform play, console exclusives coming to pc, companies doubling down to secure talent in the face of creative burnout, other companies once thought invincible only a few years before now collapsing inward from the rigidity of their huge, exploitative, worldwide development structures...unable to adapt or respond flexibly to a changing market. The paradigm shift from print ads to tv ads has a new angle, the paradigm shift from web ads to streaming promotions. The tense psychology of public outreach from development house to audience reflects the rapid escalation of new forms of digital gaming commodities. The gaming public, long used to weathering consumer exploitation, becomes one of the first consumer affiliations to call bullshit on NFT money laundering. They've seen it all before. I love video games.  ------ 1st place :  It's 1998 2nd place:  It's 2022 3rd place: n/a BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Sep 2, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 17:00
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 19:33 |
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fridge corn posted:Let me be the first to vote for eventual winner: The Year of 1998. 
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Aug 8, 2022 17:00
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goons are old and therefore '98 will sweep (prolly deservedly), but 2022 is pr much the best gaming year of my life
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Aug 8, 2022 17:04
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sirtommygunn posted:Is that just because of Elden Ring or did other games come out this year? Other games came out, and also games are longer these days and time is limited so I don't always get to play a year's games in the year of release. '98 is a year that forever changed gaming, but those games were all 7 hours long lol and way less bang for the buck on average. still, it was the year where everyone was on the same page that gaming was getting insanely good...better than we could've imagined
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Aug 8, 2022 17:14
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Jay Rust posted:It's hard to gauge the Impact more recent games will have, imo it is only fair to completely remove Impact as a marker of year quality yo this isnt science homes, this is about yelling loud
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Aug 9, 2022 18:39
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drat skippy 
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Aug 9, 2022 18:41
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more recent years tend to have more Ps, and are thewrefore scientifically better
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Aug 9, 2022 19:31
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Rarity posted:Realtalk: I am considering putting together a mathematical matrix to divulge my legitimate YotG as long as crucial resources typically allotted for GotY (goat-ee) are not impacted by development of YotG (yoh-tig) infrastructure i'm beanpolepeckerwood and i approve this message
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Aug 9, 2022 19:34
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it was the least i could do with the allotted funding and patronage apparatus at my disposal and despite acknowledged voting and posting graft that might historically be attributed to my videogaming character nonetheless side effects may include:
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Aug 9, 2022 19:51
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Jay Rust posted:Realtalk how did you guys even get started with your lists, did you pick a game you liked and then looked up other games that came out that year? If you don't know what other events or releases happened in a year that's otherwise significant to you type "[year] in video games" into wikipedia and you'll usually at least get a breakdown of released titles
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Aug 9, 2022 20:02
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Rarity posted:The previous Labour government had diverted lots of funds to GotY development but I reallocated those funds to YotG areas where they belong as you are extremely gamerous i trust in your pristine judgement may yohtig bless this posting crop with her many fruiting video baubles amen
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Aug 9, 2022 20:20
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I didn't play Suikoden until '98 but it hit the states in '96 and had really limited distribution
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Aug 9, 2022 20:28
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Jay Rust posted:I wish I had you guys' confidence and ability to say "19XX year is THE YEAR 100%", every year I look at has bangers, or otherwise important games to me and the world of gaming. Asking myself "ok but has the MOST bangers, or the BEST bangers" but I can't answer that either To me the question is deeper and more personal, like, when did you first become aware of huge social paradigm shifts in the industry compared to just another year with a list of great games. A lot of games from 98 don't get played as much these days but they landed like hurricanes in their moment and influenced things for decades to come rather than just being excellent sequels or whathaveyou.
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Aug 9, 2022 21:32
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my pick
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Aug 10, 2022 04:35
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Since the term Golden Age is usually applied retroactively it follows that the mid to late 90s would be considered the Golden Age of 3D gaming.
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Aug 10, 2022 08:30
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Rarity posted:My post is coming along nicely. I hope people like charts Your charts are my freakin sunshine, ya hear?
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Aug 21, 2022 11:34
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None of my favorite songs are from that age, and very few of my favorite games, but that was around the age where I felt I was experiencing significant and memorable changes within the game industry. Every other week it felt like something monumental was happening, so you might be on to something.
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Aug 23, 2022 07:43
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My first gaming experiences were in the 80s and they were amazing, but my best gaming experiences began when I was old enough to start buying my own games at release, so around 1995, age 12.
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Aug 23, 2022 23:06
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lol, holy poo poo Rarity
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Aug 25, 2022 21:38
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The Legend of Zelda is a jrpg
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Aug 25, 2022 23:05
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Rarity posted:All in all the 2nd generation of gaming had hit its prime, gaming was the best it could ever possibly be. Or was it? '88 is firmly 8-bit, so 3rd Gen I'd say edit; amazing post tho, if I didn't already properly say
BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Aug 25, 2022 |
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Aug 25, 2022 23:57
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yeah, this is an understatement. i can't wait to see which games are selected to represent each year
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Aug 26, 2022 22:41
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wow that was fast 
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Aug 26, 2022 23:45
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the N64 was effectively a 32 bit console, it had a 32 bit front side bus that bottlenecked everything. nintendo made a genius PR move tho calling it the N64 because number go up equals mo'betta and this image induces pure unfiltered sense memory within me  half-life is a 10 tho BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Aug 27, 2022 |
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Aug 27, 2022 00:17
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Harrow posted:I really shoulda got my post in earlier, I can’t follow Rarity! I mean I’m honor bound to, and yet… If you get it in now you'll be smack dab in the middle of Rarity's posts, which ticks all the boxes of honor, deference, hype, nostalgia, and shitposting compulsion And I don't think Rar has even played the games of the 2010s yet so you can always hope that the results will be deadlocked interminably 
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Aug 27, 2022 00:47
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Ms Adequate posted:I told y'all that 97-2003 was The Golden Age and Rarity's scientific methodology is proving me right 1995-2003 is popularly considered the golden age of 3D gaming, it's pretty uncontroversial considering 'golden age' is fundamentally a retrospective term.
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Aug 27, 2022 08:56
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Feldegast42 posted:Using Rarity's system can we figure out the shittiest gaming year now? my gut tells me it has to be one of the later years in gen 7 where they were pushing both motion gaming and 3D tvs on us or 2021
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Aug 27, 2022 17:14
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Rarity posted:Is the worst year the one with the worst worst games or the worst best games? perhaps the one with the fewest 10s/releases (lowest average) in general, though i know a lot of people who had a good time revisiting old games in 2021 even though not much was released. i could def see a case being made for 2010, 2011, 2012 just because that generation was so dire by the midpoint and just produced so many bad feels, but there were good games released in all those years.
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Aug 27, 2022 17:24
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2012 it is.
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Aug 27, 2022 18:21
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Uncharted 2 came out that year as well.
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Aug 27, 2022 22:14
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Yeah, because good games come out every year I think the worst year would def have to be a combination of a lesser game release catalogue, bad industry news and trends, and real world events that backgrounded gaming somewhat...or simple exhaustion with that gen.
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Aug 27, 2022 22:16
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Deformed Church posted:Yeah I'm looking through 2014 and it's a very B tier year, at least on the non-indie end. There's a lot of good games but nothing really great. Like, Dark Souls 2, Destiny, Dragon Age Inquisition, Far Cry 4, Titanfall, Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein TNO, COD; AW from the big names. Alien Isolation and SoM are honestly the only two games which stand out as being more than good. Yeah, 2014 and 2012 were mid. I do not agree with 2009 being bad, gen 7 sucked hard but that was a bangin year.
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Aug 28, 2022 20:14
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man, this yohtig poo poo is going down real soon 
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Aug 29, 2022 12:52
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the stats! they are being juked!
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Aug 29, 2022 20:54
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the goalposts! they are being moved!
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Aug 29, 2022 20:55
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the princess! they are in another castle!
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Aug 29, 2022 20:55
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really enjoying all the posts. in addition to all rar's excellent scientific analysis i hope we also get more autobiographical posts
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Aug 29, 2022 21:09
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HOLY poo poo we're twins! what a post, 1998 & 2022, alpha and omega, beginning and end, first and last
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Aug 30, 2022 05:17
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Vigilante 8 was so good, too, and Rogue Trip!
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Aug 30, 2022 06:42
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 19:33 |
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Rarity!  
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Sep 6, 2022 20:30
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