As we enter the final act of 1998, I wonder if lightning can strike twice. One game has already come from out of nowhere this year to rock the gaming landscape. Sure, Half-Life carried the time-worn Sierra pedigree, but these new cats called "Valve" may have just been lucky. Is it possible that yet another complete unknown -- in this case a company known as "BioWare," whose pedigree to date is the completely forgettable Shattered Steel -- can come to the rescue of the ailing CRPG genre in the same way that Half-Life seems to have breathed new life into the largely dull landscape of FPS games (see: Sin)?
The likely answer is: definitely not.
Maybe it's just the lingering memory of the X Files movie, but I Want to Believe that this week's Baldur's Gate is a harbinger of things to come. Tragically, I'm having trouble imagining that suddenly D&D and computers are going to get all chocolate and peanut butter with each other after such a long, depressing drought, particularly in the hands of this upstart BioWare. The most I can manage to hope for at this point is that Baldur's Gate is an entertaining distraction. I don't expect Gold Box quality, but it'll be nice to dabble with Magic Missiles and saving throws on my computer again.
Either way, I don't want close out what's been an amazing year with skepticism or pessimism. I could comfortably hang my hat on any year that provides games like Half-Life, Unreal, Grim Fandango and Fallout 2. I know there are a number of you who will add StarCraft to that list, and so for you it's a pretty good week with the release of the Brood War expansion pack. I don't count myself among your cult, ever the Warcraft 2 purist that I am, but I recognize that it's something of a big-deal release. Add to that an inventive shooter called Thief that also releases this week, and there's a lot of possibility hitting the shelves, if not so much certainty.
Going back to my desire to end on a positive theme, I'm going to give the nod for Game of the Week to Baldur's Gate. Hopefully years down the road we'll be talking about this moment as the year when role playing games became popular again. Hell, living in a state that just elected Jesse Ventura, I gotta believe anything is possible.
Comments
Pages
first double post ever--thanks 1998!
"With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." - Christopher Columbus
"There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." - Vonnegut
Oh no! My Jokerman edit did not work on this computer! Ger.
Left GWJ for good.
Not really. :p I even checked when I got the red underline, but Firefox doesn't like real spelling anyway.
Struggling to sleep? Try my sleep podcast! Sleepy Time Tales.
Need Podcast editing? Go to Bright Vox Audio
http://www.lazylaces.com/56Kmodem/
I better be quick, I'm paying this "Internet" thingy by the hour.
So Baldur's Gate is out soon? I'll have to call that guy from senior year and ask him to "get" it for me.
Original games are too expensive anyway.
You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work
when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything
productive for the rest of the day.
Steam - Denikker
Stan lives on, even in the past!
Backloggery
[font=Courier New]Woohoo! Go Stan![/font]
Love others, weird and wonderfully. | "Life's a trip. You've only got one shot, let her rip." - K.Flay | My Games
I feel better now.
3DS 1461-6216-3113
Xbox One - CazualAlcoholic
Steam - avatar17 ( [GWJ] Casual_Alcoholic )
PS4 - Avatar18
Uplay - AlmostNapThyme
Overflow Division 2 Clan - MmmDrop
Discord - CasualAlcoholic#1557
*sighs longingly* the late 90's. Baldur's Gate started my love affair with Bioware. And that last sentence rhymes!
Now Playing: Crimson Shroud, Blood of Bahamut, SMT IV, RDR, SBCG4AP, Octopath Traveler, The Baconing, The Legend of Dragoon.
Switch Friend Code: SW-7025-5637-0902
I'm coming very late to this thread, but I thought I would post this question, which has been nagging me. Obviously, 1998 was the banner year in 90's gaming. And I don't think anyone can argue that 2007 (with Bioshock, Halo 3, Portal, TF2, Call Of Duty 4, Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect, and Rock Band 1) would be the top of the '00s. Anybody have an opinion on the defining gaming year of the 80's?
Xbox: JFarside / Steam: JFarside / IOS GameCenter: JFarside1
Hum, the year the NES was released maybe. It was such a revolution. Videogames were dying since the crash. I remember that between the Atari and the Nintendo the drought was quite bad. Very little innovation... but to be honest it's all a bit too far away for me to do this exercise.
One thing I know though is that there were a lot fewer hits back then. The crap to hit ratio was pretty disgusting.
PSN: Interstate78 / STEAM /
Rekindling home consoles (my family was mostly computer gamers, so we didn't feel the drought as badly) doesn't strike me as a revolution. Besides, most of the good games we're 1985 launch titles.
Rather, I might look at 1987. The Mac ][ and Final Fantasy came out that year, for starters.
Some others from 1987:
Street Fighter
Skate or Die
Punch Out!!
Sid Meier's Pirates!
Metal Gear
NetHack
Operation Wolf (so boss!)
Fantasy Star
Dungeon Master
Double Dragon
Contra
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Commodore Amiga 500 launch
Words... are a big deal.
Jill Lapore wrote:Editing is one of the great inventions of civilization.
Yeah I was thinking LoZ and Metroid year. But then wondering was SMB 3 in '89? Or what about King's Quest? It spawned 8 games and countless clones. Maniac Mansion?
There were some fantastic PC games, but my memory blurs the lines between about 88-91. Got my first PC in 90 and played a ton of cool things up until X-Wing in 92, and it was that or nothing for a long time.
What Stele said ^ -mortalgroove
Switch: 6273-9936-5107
That's really hard, because there was so much going on across that decade.
How do you compare Joust, Robotron: 2084, and Time Pilot to Bard's Tale, F-15 Strike Eagle, and A Mind Forever Voyaging or Legend of Zelda and Metroid?
True I remember just going to Babbage's and browsing the PC games, amazed at all the options.
What Stele said ^ -mortalgroove
Switch: 6273-9936-5107
The thing about the 80's is that video games (especially arcade games) didn't tend to have hard nationwide release dates like now, and without the Internet, it was tough to know what was even out there at any given time. So it's harder to separate things into years. Something might've technically come out one year but not been widely available until the next.
Steam ID: hbi2k
Twitch: BenCreighton
Pages