General gaming

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• Hollywood's Video Game Invasion of the '90s
• The Worst Things About the '90s
• 1UP Community Feature: Gaming Problems of the '90s
• The '90s Game Price Comparison Charticle
• 1998: Gaming's Greatest Year
• Gallery: The Age of Mascot Hell
• Are MMOs as Appealing as They Once Were?

Hollywood's Video Game Invasion of the '90s Posted: 30 Mar 2012 06:00 PM PDT Hollywood has always had its fingers on the pulse of popular culture, so when video games began to blossom during the '80s, Tinseltown saw an opportunity to expand. Within a few years, the gaming market was awash with titles featuring A-list actors, iconic athletes, and all manner of celebrity in-between. It's hard to imagine a time when star-power had such sway in video games, especially when you consider that the concept of celebrity has devolved over the past decade into anyone who's willing to share their messy existence of a life in front of a Bravo TV camera. The number of actors, musicians and athletes who lent their likenesses to video games throughout the '90s is absolutely staggering. There's no way we could go through all the instances where the player could interact with a celebrity, so we narrowed the list down to a select few games that represent the vast scope of this strange trend. Actors Privateer 2: The Darkening - PC '96

The Worst Things About the '90s Posted: 30 Mar 2012 05:59 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet The Worst Things About the '90s Four terrible things that happened in a decade of great video games. By: Jose Otero March 30, 2012 While it's easy to look back at the '90s with rose-tinted nostalgia, the decade still had its fair share of rough spots. Yes, the '90s gave us great Japanese role-playing games like Chrono Trigger, edgier video games for a maturing audience on Sony's PlayStation, and a slew of landmark titles in the year 1998, but these four things stood out as some of the worst events of the decade. Sega's Decline Sega ended the '80s on a high note by launching a successful 16-bit console that made the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System look old and busted by comparison. This big win helped them finally penetrate Nintendo's market dominance and, for Sega, the boisterous chest-beating wouldn't stop there. "Genesis does what Nintendon't" ads and the debut of their speedy blue mascot, Sonic, in 1991 helped the Japanese company continue to gain mindshare leading up the launch of the rival Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The head start helped Sega start the '90s as hip and cool, fast and flexible, or so everyone initially thought.

1UP Community Feature: Gaming Problems of the '90s Posted: 30 Mar 2012 05:35 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet 1UP Community Feature: '90s Gaming Problems The 1UP Community shares tales of game-saving woe. By: J. Kartje March 30, 2012 The year was 1998 and I had finally saved up enough money to get a used PlayStation and a copy of Final Fantasy VII. I got a ride to the local game store and went home with a huge smile on my face. Soon after returning home, two issues surfaced. The red, yellow, and white cords didn't plug in anywhere on the old TV in my room, and the game was prompting me for a memory card that I did not have. This meant that I couldn't save my progress and I had to take turns using the TV in the family room. It took two weeks to finally get an RF adapter, and another two weeks to finally get that first memory card. Finally, I could progress past the Train Graveyard. Here at 1UP we've spent some time recently talking about the '90s. Saving your game progress on a cartridge or external card isn't exclusive to that decade, but now it seems almost archaic -- something few gamers will miss. Nowadays our consoles have built-in storage and cloud saves, and you don't normally worry about those things called "memory cards." Let?s take a look at some of the 1UP Community's '90s Video Game Problems.

The '90s Game Price Comparison Charticle Posted: 30 Mar 2012 05:30 PM PDT Infographics may be old and busted, but charticles will live forever. Hot on the heels of yesterday's '90s Console Release Charticle comes this eye-poppingly factual sequel: A comparison of the retail cost of games in the '90s versus their equivalents today, matched with inflation-adjusted figures to show the real cost of those classics in terms of actual 2012 buying power. We've carefully selected some of the top releases of the '90s against very similar titles of the past couple of years, researched their initial suggested retail prices, and lined them up side-by-side. For maximum soul-destroying accuracy, we also plugged in their prices to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator to determine what their original asking prices equal in today's terms. For Japanese releases, we used x-rates' historical conversion calculator to see what import games cost in American dollars at the time. The short of it? Games back then cost a lot less to develop than they do now, but they cost a lot more for the consumer. Some of that can be ascribed to the higher cost of cartridge media, but even so it helps you understand why so many publishers are doubling down on AAA games or flocking to social media.

1998: Gaming's Greatest Year Posted: 30 Mar 2012 05:23 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet 1998: Gaming's Greatest Year Take a look at five monumental titles that shaped the industry for years to come. By: Bob Mackey March 30, 2012 As the nineties slowly rolled to a stop, something magical happened; in just twelve months, a handful of developers completely changed the industry with five fantastic games that redefined genres and inspired constant imitation for years to come. And, strangely enough, these bursts of innovation weren't limited to the release of some overpriced, bleeding edge piece of hardware; they happened across a variety of platforms that came into being years prior. For some developers, 1998 marked the first year gaming had finally overcome its polygonal growing pains, allowing designers to fill their worlds with interesting ideas, now that they no longer had to concentrate on preventing their works from breaking apart at the seams. For others, graphical prowess didn't change matters much; some world-changing productions amounted to a collection of time-tested concepts presented in a highly polished and appealing package. Though each of the following games took their own approach to legendary status, they all saw release in 1998, making it the most memorable year in gaming history.

Gallery: The Age of Mascot Hell Posted: 30 Mar 2012 04:38 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet Gallery: The Age of Mascot Hell The '90s gave us lots of great games, but it also created tons of annoying cutesy characters that we hate. A lot. By: Jeremy Parish March 30, 2012 In the beginning was a circle. And Toru Iwatani removed a wedge from the circle; and the solipsism of the human mind transferred upon the circle the properties of a mouth and an appetite. And Pac-Man was created; and Iwatani saw that it was good; and the people rejoiced and demanded the likeness of Pac-Man upon every conceivable form of merchandise. And so did Pac-Man become the first game character to transcend the medium in which he was conceived; and his name and face (such as it was) appeared on television and on toys and on kitchenware and on clothing. And rival game creators saw the opportunity for profit; and they crafted countless imitations, from false graven images in own Pac-Man's likeness to Ladybugs and Jumpmen. And so dawned the video game mascot. That's the Old Testament origin story; now let's jump ahead to the New Testament -- that is, the 16-bit era. Pac-Man created the world of mascots, and Mario led gamers to a promised land in which a mascot would star in a game whose creators' primary motivation was to create a great game rather than sell character goods. Many followed in Mario's footsteps, from Asmik's Boomer to Sega's Alex Kidd to Hudson's Bonk; yet none transcended Nintendo's leading man until 1991, when Sonic the Hedgehog changed everything.

Are MMOs as Appealing as They Once Were? Posted: 30 Mar 2012 10:46 AM PDT New details on the next World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, recently began making the rounds. Some former players are now eager to return to that world while others remain indifferent to the notion of forking over $15 a month to play what they feel is now a stale game. I find myself in a sort of gray area between those two: I'm always eager to see what Blizzard has come up with while also feeling less enthusiastic about MMOs in general than I used to, though I wasn't really sure why I felt this way. The return of the treasure chest in Mists of Pandaria, strangely enough, is what made me realize what one of my issues is: The sense of exploration in MMOs is not what it used to be.

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