 |
Jan 7, 2008 - 12:55 PM |
|
 |
Crazy Eights |
|
|
2008 is a special year, and not just because it's the International Year of the Potato, it also commemorates the tenth anniversary of 1998! Ten years, and it only feels like six or seven to me. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'm going to take a look at what gaming was like 10 years ago, to a time when a three-party console market was ludicrous, when 3D was the only D worth being, and franchises were overcoming their awkward teenage years and joining the party.
<personal section, only read if you want>
1998 wasn't a particularly important year for me personally. I was fourteen, starting my freshman year of high school, and about as socially derelict as one could be. Most of my friends from middle school were in different classes or a different lunch shift, so the majority of my time was spent trying to make new friends or trying not to disturb the delicate social structure already in place by the older crowd. It was rough, but the hurdle was leap over dauntily and when I landed in sophmore year, things improved dramatically. Once I was able to re-unite with a lot of my former classmates, I made sure I wasn't going to be stranded without them again. I guess the moral here is that you don't have to settle for your lot in life. Hope for the future, hold on to what's important, and keep your friends close. 1998, a learning year, if nothing else.
That's all I'm going to preach, I promise. I'm starting to sound like a Mary Jane novel.  Now, on to the games!
Nintendo was just getting its bearing in the new generation, boasting 32 more bits than anyone else could offer, even on their best day. While the majority of their releases were first-party, the Big N played to their biggest strength to insure consumer support: franchises. We had Mario and Star Fox in '97, but '98 gave us Link and his magic ocarina, which somehow met everyone's lofty expectations of the series. The fanboy worship of this game alone rivals most smaller religions, and probably out-ranks voodoo in sheer practitioners. We also got F-Zero X, which basically took the original's gameplay and superimposed it on a 3D world. Slap four-player support on it, and its done. Banjo Kazooie was Rare's big showing this year, and even though their frienship with Nintendo wasn't as unbreakable as we thought, they still made good stuff while it lasted. 1080 Snowboarding was one of the first serious sports titles for the system, and conjured up a snowstorm of board games for several other systems in the coming months.
Sony had probably its strongest foothold on the market this year. With the Saturn slowly fading away and the N64 just entering the playing field, the PlayStation rode a high wave comprised of dozens and dozens of titles. While many of them weren't exactly stellar, the high volume of games did lead to some real gems. In an age where everyone who could roughly render a box was making 3D action games, Spyro the Dragon proved to be one of the most successful. Brave Fencer Musashi was an early attempt by Square to make a next-gen action RPG, and Klonoa proved you didn't necessarily have to use all the dimensions available to you to make an awesome platformer. Final Fantasy Tactics came out in the west this year, and while it initially slipped under everyone's collective game-radars, it soon won a place in the hearts of anyone who dreamed of commanding an army of noseless, engrish-speaking mercenaries across medieval Europe-but-not-quite. And while some people will tell you that Capcom couldn't make a good 3D fighter if their life depended on it, Rival Schools is certainly the exception that proves the rule.
Oh, and Metal Gear Solid.
"Arcades" were what people in 1998 called what we now know as Dancemania Hubs. Back then, you fed dollars to a thin stand-up machines with small monitors and a sticky carpet floor and played with your hands. Crazy! But believe it or not, there were plenty of popular games that didn't involve dancing. King of Fighters '98 is still considered to be the best of the series, and is still regularly featured at several high-profile fighting tournaments. Soul Calibur, though not as celebrated as its Dreamcast variation a year later, was still regarded as the pivotal 3D fighter of the time, and improved on the original in just about every way. Marvel vs. Capcom took the Versus series to the next frantic level, and proved that 2D fighters still had lots of gusto packed into every grainy pixel. The public was still riding FFVII fever, and the only prescription was Ehrgeiz, a fighting game with as many characters from the game shoehorned in as possible.
1998 was one of the most pivotal years in PC gaming. It wasn't even about pushing hardware, but about making games that blew everything else so far out of the water only the more amphibious denizens of the depths could survive in their new harsh, air-ridden environment. StarCraft and Broodwar were responsible for more LAN parties than Doom and Duke Nukem combined, and made us all like RTSs, even if we never played them before or since. Fallout not only showed us what a computer RPG could do, but what a western RPG could do. Half-Life took first-person shooters to their next logical advancement, and a suave pile of bones named Manny gave us hope for love in the afterlife courtesy of Tim Schaeffer. Games of the Year accolades all around, but most importantly, even if you didn't have a top-notch PC for the time, you could still enjoy any of them.
Game Boy
 
If Japan gave the world anything besides singing toilets and robotic secretaries, it was this. When Tokugawa united the wayward clans of the Edo period, when Takakage invaded Korea, when Hirohito signed the military might of Japan to the west, they laid into motion a series of events that would ultimately shape Japan's genealogical history to produce a man named Satoshi Tajiri, who would give us all Pokemon. While the series actually launched in late 1996 in Japan, we got our chance to battle with captive slave-monsters in '98. As of 2008, the series has sold over 150 million units and grossed more than 15 billion dollars. That's nuts, but then again, I guess most of us contributed to that money pot at some point or another.
So that's 1998! Ten years gone but still in our hearts. Not a bad year at all. Personally I think it makes 1997 look like 1996, but I'll let you be the judge.
|
|
|
|
|
