4 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 4 hours ago by A Black Falcon.)
I was inspired last month, after not writing that much gaming-related for too long, and spent most of October working on this. I have been very busy indeed, writing, researching online, watching video, and playing games for this two-part article on one of gaming's greatest moments. This will be a two-part series. This is part one, and the second part is almost complete. I could have posted both now, but it's probably better broken up. I have put a lot of work into this all month long and before, but there is always more I could add so expect edits as I think of things that should be added. Because of how long I have been working on this for, I know I repeat myself sometimes, when I write similar things and then want to keep all of them. Sorry about that.
For sources, other than the many facts I just know by now, I mostly used Wikipedia lists and GameFAQs for release date and factual reference, with Youtube for gameplay videos. I will add a references section to the second article for some potentially useful or interesting links.
This will be an article about videogames, but to start with a historical analogy I saw mentioned online, Alexander the Great isn't great just because he was a prince who inherited a nation with the strongest army in the world. He was great because he did the greatest of things with that opportunity. Almost all people would fail in that place, or at best be average, but he wasn't and became a legend for it. I am mediocre at best at most things, but I am decent at writing (I should do it more often, huh?) and historical knowledge, as well as a few other things (building Lego sets by following the instructions, for instance). But anyway, we really see Alexander's greatness if we contrast him with other people who inherited great empires. How many of them managed things in an acceptably average way? Plenty, but generally not the memorable ones. How many squandered it, losing empires with their incompetence or evil? Some, such as Caligula or the English King John. How many were brilliant successes, leading their nation to glory? Very, very few. Anyone can inherit the building blocks of great things, but the greatest do amazing things with those blocks that others don't even think of.
But unfortunately, the good times never last for as long as we would like. Alexander died young and his empire rapidly crumbled. The 'empire' of videogames is not a perfect analogy for this, but I am sure many looked back later and said, we did great things. Why did we let it go? Between getting older and looking at the seeming decline of the videogame industry, it has led me to look back at better times and say, what were the things that made that time special? And what happened after?
I must note, I'm not a financial analyst. Most of what I say I do think is backed up by facts, but don't expect charts and numbers here. I have looked at some articles that do have them, though, and I think they are saying the same basic message I am.
But to return to analogies, how about we look at a more recent example, the state of American democracy today. I would like to think that now that our democracy is under such severe threat from Trump and his fascist allies that some people may look back and recognize just how amazing the existence of American democracy has been, that at its best moments America is the shining city on the hill, the first nation in the world governed by its people. Unfortunately, we are far from that hilltop today.
At the time, the way The Matrix treated the year 2000 as the peak of humanity seemed silly, something just chosen because that was the current day then. Of course, I'm sure that was exactly why it was chosen, but... it kind of was true, wasn't it. We actually kind of were at a peak that we now have fallen off of. A lot of the problems the world has now, including escalating global warming, rising fascism, microplastics and related health crises, and more, had started well before 2000, but at that point the system was working in a way that it now really isn't. (As an aside, I'm no big The Matrix fan. I saw the original movie once and reasonably enjoyed it, and saw and The Animatrix also, but wasn't interested enough to watch any of the other sequels and still haven't seen them. It just does seem that it happened to be right about our civilization's peak, or so it seems today.)
When you are on the peak of the mountain, everything seems great... but if you move, the only way to go from there on foot is down. To that point everything was uphill, but unless you are on a high ridgeline, a descent is in your near future. That is happening to our world this milennium, and it happened to gaming at around that same time as well, though to less disastrous consequences overall.
But I should get to the point: Why is 1998 nearly universally acclaimed as gaming's best year? I think that the core of it is because multiple incredibly important events happened at the same time, and they all stand out because of major changes in the industry that happened during and after 1998 which radically changed gaming. In the same year, 3d console games fully found their way with the new technology of polygons; the arcade business was still in good shape, before its collapse a few years later; and the PC business saw its best games ever before starting to fail the next year. It was near the end of the period that lasted from the '70s to the end of the '90s where those three platforms, PC, console, and arcade, dominated electronic gaming, and all three saw all-timers release... only for two to collapse within years. Once arcade and PC games had started falling off that mountain the slide just picked up speed year after year.
So, all of these things happened at the same time, and then things changed. Naturally, later on this led people of all kinds to look back at 1998 and think, wow, that year had the best library ever! Without all of those things happening at once, you probably would not see the year reach the heights of popularity that it has. With only the great PC games but not the console ones, for instance, the year definitely wouldn't have the mythological status that it has; a lot of people today sadly do not play old computer games as they do old console games. But, all of those things did happen in the same year, and so 1998 stuck in peoples' memories as no other year before or since has. One of the major eras of gaming was ending, and 1998 showed its games at their peak, just before everything changed.
The basic breakdown in gaming from the '70s to late '90s was this: there were several different types of games. These types still exist today, with some changes.
- Arcade Games - Arcade games focus on fast action. During this period arcade games had significantly better graphics than anything on a home platform, but the games need to be something fast and fun, and that will get the player to keep spending money at a steady rate into the machine. In this way good arcade game design has some similarities with modern mobile design -- if the player isn't spending money, isn't being coerced into it somehow by the game, then the publisher won't be making money. [Today arcade games no longer have graphics better than home games.]
- Computer Games - Computers cost more than consoles and have faster processors, but until the later '90s did not have dedicated graphics hardware to make console-style graphics possible. As a result of this computers dominated in strategy games, simulations, flight games, and other kinds of games which benefit from having a mouse and keyboard and fast processor, but struggled at platformers, shmups, and other fast action games like that compared to consoles. Computer games were dominant among post-1984 crash Western game developers. There were a few console game publishers and developers in the West, but the vast majority of studios, and most of the best talent, worked on computer games. Only a very few of those computer games ever released on consoles. Meanwhile, in Japan computer games were a small market mostly dominated by a few genres like computer RPGs and visual novels. [Today the PC is in the best place it's been in a long time, but computer-focused games generally have smaller budgets than console ones.]
- Console Games - Console games during this period focused on faster action than computer games. Slower-paced games existed on consoles as well, of course, but they did not have instant advantages over computer games like the more action-focused games did. Faster-paced action and shooting games are far better on consoles, though, and it isn't close. The pre-crash console industry was huge both in the US and Japan, but after the crash the American console publisher and developer market mostly dissolved, leaving Japan dominant in the field. There were a few great Western console developers and publishers during this era, but it was a distinct few compared to the many on computers. [Today the console market has stalled in size of console install base, while development times and costs increase. Things look bad for the future.]
- Handheld Games - The handhelds of the '70s to '90s were often single-game electronic platforms, not actual full platforms. The first successful full platform handhelds released in 1989. After that, handhelds were basically the same as consoles, except portable. This market was a subset of the console market mostly dominated by easier or shorter-form games that work well in a portable setting. As with console games it was heavily dominated by Japanese studios. However, starting in the '00s this market would shrink, and that shrinkage would destroy it in the '10s. There are no actual dedicated handhelds, anymore, only dual-purpose machines such as the Switch or Steam Deck and the massive, but gameplay-vapid, world of cellphone games and their omnipresent gatcha mechanics and absence of gameplay worth caring about. Very sad stuff.
Something important to remember about the categories above is that before the 21st century, a lot of games stayed exclusive to their format. Computer games rarely were ported to consoles. It happened once in a while, but it was uncommon, only for the most popular games. Arcade games sometimes got home ports on computers or consoles, these ports were more common than PC to console ports or vice versa, but it was never a guarantee. Console games occasionally got computer ports, but it was quite infrequent, again mostly only for the most successful games. Now, up until the early to mid '90s many computer games got released on multiple different computer formats, it is true. Also, sometimes a successful console game would get ported to other consoles or would release on several systems at the same time. As an aside, this was much more common for Western console games than Japanese ones; if a Japanese game was multiplatform it was more likely to be a late port of a successful games to other formats, instead of releasing simultaneously for multiple systems as Western studios were more likely to do. But there are of course exceptions to this in both directions.
Today the console, arcade, and computer markets all still exist, though as I said dedicated handhelds are dead now in favor of the cellphone and dual-purpose console or PC machine markets instead. Cellphone games are a race to the bottom dominated by "games" that are effectively digital gambling. The arcade market is very small now, with arcade games being mostly smaller budget affairs this century, a far cry from the high-priced affairs of the '80s or '90s. The computer market has significantly recovered, but a lot of that is because of small indie developers who mostly make little to no money off of their games; most major studios remain focused on console games, or on games releasing on both PCs and consoles. And consoles, consoles are slipping now due to cost and time increases. The strains in the industry are showing.
Video game consoles can be broken up into generations. There are some controversies over the boundaries, but regardless of that, there have been nine console generations since the industry's founding in 1972. Ten, if you call the new Switch 2 a next-generation platform, but I don't think anyone would; it's just a late 9th generation one, I would say. Anyway, thinking about it, I think we can break gaming up into three or four eras, each separated by a transition.
The first era is the platforms of the 1960s to the early '80s, up to the crash of the American market in 1983 -- the 'Atari' era. This era set the four kinds of electronic gaming in stone, and we have seen variations on these four ever since; more on those soon. Following this was a transition, with the crash. The second era goes from 1985 to 1998, and covers the peak of the industry for people my age and a little younger -- the 'Nintendo' or 'PC golden age' era. These first two eras are different, but similar. Despite the shifts in platforms, I think that there is a clear continuity between them of game design styles. The real major break came around the turn of the millennium. Again there was continuity between the eras, but most of the industry today is much more like the industry of the early '00s than it is the industry of the late '90s; the differences are stark.
Anyway, following this was another transition, which I would say lasted from 1998 until the later '00s. It was probably long enough to call it an era of its own, the third era. This is the 'early modern' period, perhaps, of rising console dominance at the expense of other platforms. Following this, at some point in the mid or later '00s, the fourth, modern era began. This new way would dominate through the '10s. However, this decade, that era has begun to break down, as the same cost and time problems which ended the second era now are affecting the whole industry. And so, we probably are in a third transition now, but what the next era will be we do not know yet. Perhaps it is the resurgence of the PC as the dominant platform? Things may be trending that way, but it remains to be seen.
For the first two of those eras, in the last year before things started to turn, many of the best, most defining games of their era and style released. I do not think that has happened for the third era; perhaps development times are just too long now for one year to hold that many relevant releases.
The story of electronic gaming is one of constant change. Technology evolves rapidly, the number of transistors on a chip doubled every year for many decades as per 'Moore's Law', the guideline Intel tried to stick to, and electronic games react to that change by always having more power available than older platforms did. More power leads to more opportunities to do more with your game, but it also leads to more challenges, as game development takes longer over time and the number of people required to make a game increases steadily as well. Development of a 'AAA' game in the '70s took one or two people a few months. Today, a 'AAA' game costs hundreds of millions of dollars, as hundreds or thousands of people work for years, sometimes as long as a decade, on their game before it finally releases. Are these costs sustainable? Sometimes, sometimes not. Sometimes, adaptations happen and the industry continues to grow. Other times, costs go above revenues, and major change happens as a result.
Yes, sometimes storms brew in the game development mountains. We live in a capitalist society, and that is fine; I am no Communist, those kinds of societal controls do not work. Stifling human ingenuity and not rewarding greatness hurts society. However, our capitalist system does require something, and that is money. In order to fund the production of a game, a studio or their publisher need to put down a lot of money up front, hoping to make that money back on sales of the game later. Movie studios have similarly front-laden costs, which is why we ended up with so few major studios; companies need to be large in order to withstand the costs of a big project failing to make back the money spent on it.
In game development, during each era things seemed great for a while, only for the eventual correction to send some out of the industry. That happened in the first era up until the crash, as a huge number of American studios entered the industry in '81 and '82 only for most to shut down or move to computers just a few years later. After that, the second era, defined by Western computer games and Japanese console games, lasted up until 1998. Up to the late '90s, sales were always enough to keep this system working for all branches of gaming. But how long could the 'numbers always go up' system keep working? At what point would costs go above revenues, and something would need to drastically change in order for studios to survive, if they could at all?
Well, for computer gaming in North America, its first home region as this is where almost all platforms of the first era were created, that crossover point was reached in 1998. That year is when computer games started to descend off of that mountain, forever altering the industry. The decline would take five to ten years to bottom out, but once the decline began it would not be reversed for many years. As a result 1998 is the key year, the last days of PC gaming's golden age. Sure 1997 and 1999 also had fantastic libraries, but '97's best look up at '98, while in '99 you could start to see the changes in the industry as console games gained a larger place in Western game studios' libraries. PC Gamer (US) Magazine saw its thickest issues ever in late 1997, with only slight declines each of the next few years before it became very visibly thinner by 2001. This fits with '98 being the peak for releases, but not profits. PC-focused game development would be sustained much longer in Europe than the US, as fewer people there had consoles. Still, even there over time many studios would branch out into more console games.
And for arcade games, that descent off the mountain came just a year or two later. In America the peak of arcades was the early '80s, but the early '90s had a second peak. After that things slowly went downhill until in '99 or '00 all major players abandoned arcade game development. In Japan arcades lasted much longer due to the dense population, and indeed they still have a place there, but even there, over the course of the "early modern" period, arcades lost their place of dominance in the industry. By the mid '00s arcades were no longer a place for highly expensive experiences that would get ported to home platforms; instead those games started on consoles. After this arcades became something more familiar to what they are today, a place for crane games, arcade-only experiences like racing games with fancy seat setups, and the like.
Meanwhile, console games benefited from the decline of their competitors. Developers in other fields saw the higher sales of console games and said, we want in on that! And for a good fifteen years, despite some troubles, things for the industry overall were good... until the 2020s, when rising development times and costs led to new troubles for the industry. Today console install bases have flatlined, while costs continue going nowhere but up. This is clearly not a good trend line, and developers are coping by branching out and ending "buy my platform to play my games" exclusivity in favor of releasing PC versions of most games, Nintendo excepted. And this is why the PC is, as I said, today in the best place it's been in decades: it's an omnipresent platform that anyone either watching other people play games on the internet on platforms like Youtube or Twitch knows about. I think that there is still a place for consoles and I hope that they continue existing, but there is no denying the way things are going.
Now, you might be thinking, this has been a long article, but you've only infrequently been discussing your theoretical main subject, 1998! Well, I think that the full history of gaming is key to understanding why 1998 is so beloved. Without understanding the eras, that 1998 saw perhaps the most important dividing line in the industry's' history, I don't think people will properly understand why 1998 is remembered as it is.
I know I have said most of this already in this article, but I want to repeat myself because it is important. I mentioned capitalism earlier, and that games cost money to develop. This requires enough money coming in to keep making the games as they had been up to that point. Sales of each game needed to either be better than the sales of the last game, or prices had to go up. As Moore's Law progressed over time and chips got denser and denser in transistors development team sizes needed to increase steadily, and the length of time to make a game slowly went up from weeks to months to years. Thanks to this, every year games got more expensive to make than they were the previous year. This process has continued steadily from electronic gaming's founding to today.
Change happens steadily over time, with formats and eras overlapping; it is not like a prince like Alexander inheriting the throne and suddenly changing policies, but like a steady flow of change, like a river... but along that flow certain points stick out. In the late '90s, as I said, an era began to end. A very strong set of rapids hit the industry as costs got too high for game companies, and particularly Western computer game companies, to continue affording to make games as they had before. The solution was to go multiplatform, to stop making most games for computers only or console only but instead to make games for all formats. This new reality slowly phased in over about a decade, from the late '90s to late '00s, it was not immediate, and again it happened in the US first, and Europe later.
Once the transition was done, however, the PC market as we had known it was gone. I wrote a long forum thread in about 2010 mourning the death of PC gaming. I never posted it on my site, but I probably should for historical reasons. It's partially right and partially wrong but I think it is a look at an important moment in time. Fortunately, things would not stay down forever; PC gaming would be resurrected digitally some years later on a smaller, more boutique lower-budget scale, and that is fantastic, but a modern equivalent of the old heights may never be reached again.
List wars are somewhat tricky because you can make a list of games from any year after the later '70s that contains many all-time greats. Even so, reminding people of the games that were released has at least some relevance, I think.
As I have said, I think electronic gaming can be separated into two to four major eras: 1960s to 1983, 1984 to 1998, 1998 to uh like 2009 or so, and 2010 to sometime in the 2020s. That fourth era is likely ending now but as it is current we don't know where the dividing line will fall. I would like to discuss each of the first two mountain-peak years here and look at which games made that year stand out so much and showed developers mastering the art of development for their era of gaming. For the two newer eras I am having a much harder time seeing one particular standout peak year, most of those kinds of games just aren't ones I know as much about outside of Nintendo and some PC games. I would like to have clear years here for each era but I just don't know, sorry.
As I said, 1982 was the peak year because just after that the industry started to crash, but that year many all-time classics released. I am not going to get into the causes of the American market crash, that is beyond the scope of this article. In the US, arcades were the number one place for gaming. At home, the Atari 2600 was by far the lead gaming platform. That year two new consoles released, the Atari 5200 (a North America-exclusive machine) and Colecovision. The Colecovision would be particularly significant due to it inspiring Nintendo to enter the video game industry. Meanwhile, the rise of home computers was noticed by most everyone, and every console maker had plans to branch out into computer-console hybrids. One very noteworthy computer released as well, the Commodore 64, which was to sell many millions in the US and especially Europe.
In Japan, few people had a home console or computer yet, but arcades were very popular and they had a booming arcade game development industry. The next year would be when the first popular home consoles released in Japan, from Nintendo and Sega. Meanwhile in Europe consoles never were especially popular until the PlayStation 1, and Europe never had much of an arcade game development business based there though arcades with American and Japanese games did exist, but in '82 the rise of home computers in Europe started with the release of the ZX Spectrum. Cheaply made games for home microcomputers would dominate the European game development industry into the early '90s.
When I think of the top games of the pre-crash and crash era -- that is, 1972-1984, primarily -- for American games I think of, for arcade and console games, Pong, Combat, Breakout, Asteroids, Missile Command, Defender, Joust, Robotron 2084, Centipede, Pitfall, Ms. Pac-Man, and perhaps Tempest and Yar's Revenge. On the computer side, Zork I, Wizardry, Ultima, The Oregon Trail, Lode Runner, Rogue, Miner 2049er, and Adventure (Colossal Cave) are probably the key titles. For Japanese games, and these are all arcade games because Japan's console market didn't get started until after America's and few had a computer at home there then, Space Invaders, Space Panic, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong / Donkey Kong Jr., Galaxian / Galaga, and Xevious are probably the key titles.
As for Europe, its gaming market was slower to develop. By the late '70s there were a few European games, but Europe never really got much of an arcade game development scene, just home computer games. but I am not too well versed in older European games, almost none of them released here other than the one developer I need to mention, Jeff Minter. He released one of his most popular early titles in '82, Gridrunner (for A8, VIC-20, and Spectrum), and it did release in the US. His '83 game Hovver Bovver is also noteworthy. Otherwise, as I said, the ZX Spectrum and C64 both released in '82. One of the most popular early Spectrum games was '83's Manic Miner, a title inspired by Miner 2049er. I don't think any games for either one were nearly as noteworthy as the arcade and American computer games I've mentioned above, but a British person's input would be needed to get a better answer to that question.
Of those, which released in 1982? Combining regions, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong Jr., Yar's Revenge, Xevious, Wizardry II, Ultima II, Zork III, Pitfall, Millipede, Joust, Robotron 2084, Gridrunner, Miner 2049er, and more. Yeah, it's a very good lineup, a bunch of games that built on and improved on pre-existing formulas, before everything began to change -- you see this with the Pac-Man, Wizardry, Donkey Kong, Zork, and Ultima sequels. Meanwhile, Pitfall, Robotron 2084, and Xevious are games which would prove to be very important and influential, bringing new ideas that would be copied many times over the decades. Personally I don't like Xevious all that much but cannot deny its influence, all three are among their respective genres' most important early titles. Miner 2049er is somewhat forgotten today, but at the time had a massive impact. Pitfall is more famous today, but it's Miner 2049er that most of the major Western platformers of '83 would be inspired by -- Manic Miner, Jumpman, Lode Runner, and more all clearly are based off of this game. And last but not least, Yar's Revenge is one of the most popular games on that era's most successful gaming platform. 1982 is no match for 1998 but it is worth mentioning here for sure as the peak year of its era.
However, in the US in particular, that massive explosion of game releases was a problem. Yes, many interesting games were releasing, but so were many uninteresting ones. 1982 is the year when the total number of games releasing absolutely exploded into an unsustainable bubble. At this point there was no way for a hardware maker to make money off of third party game sales, and all games had to be released physically in a box, so the ensuing glut of forgettable, very low-budget shovelware games was not just slop you can ignore on the Steam storefront page, but an increasingly large number of boxes sitting on store shelves and not selling. Within a year this would help take down the industry here.
As I said previously, Japanese console games and American (and sometimes European) computer games would fill in the void. But let us skip to the next peak year before an era ended, 1998.
Obviously, the most important thing for the future is, what games released in a year? The events that happened that year also matter, but when looking back it is the lasting products that matter the most. But regardless, I probably should discuss the events of the year first, for any who do not know them.
In 1998, arcades, consoles, computers, and handhelds were all popular. Cellphone games were not a thing yet, thankfully. Some people still played on older consoles, but many were switching over to the current generation by this point. The lead console was the Sony PlayStation. It had released in 1994 in Japan and '95 in the West, and despite low expectations from a lot of people used to big electronics companies flopping in gaming, the system took off and would end up dominating the industry. Decisions previous leaders Sega and Nintendo made helped make Sony's victory easier, but Sony also made some good choices, most notably in the PS1 (also known as the PSX)'s easy development compared to its peers and powerful and yet affordable to manufacture hardware. Sony also focused on the European market in a way nobody had done before, exploding that market's sales from maybe 8 or 9 million combined SNES and Genesis systems to over 40 million PS1s.
The second place console was the powerful Nintendo 64, the fastest console of its generation, which did well in the US, selling a similar number of consoles to the SNES in North America, over 20 million. The N64 was one of several consoles released over the years which sold about two thirds of their worldwide sales total in North America. The Sega Genesis the previous generation is another. By '98 it was clear that the N64 wasn't going to match the Playstation in sales, but it was selling well enough in the US to get strong software support from developers wanting to make games for the most powerful console hardware.
And in third place, Sega's Saturn was in its death throes. Sega of America CEO Bernie Stolar had essentially killed his own console back in early to mid '97, and while the Saturn had some of its best games release in 1998 as the system faded out, the games either didn't release in the US or released in minimal quantities. It's very sad stuff. Remember, there was no digital distribution back then on consoles. Games could only sell what was produced. At the end of the year, in Japan Sega released their new console, the Dreamcast. However, the company was running low on money and produced very few systems early on. It wasn't until September 1999 that they had enough produced to release it in the West. The Dreamcast is impressive, but would end up having as short a lifespan as the Saturn due to Sega running low on money.
In the handheld side, Nintendo was absolutely dominant. The massive hit game Pokemon had revitalized the handheld market, first in Japan then in '98 in the US as well, and Europe was soon to see the same. Nintendo didn't have much competition, either. Sega had given up on handhelds back in '97, and while Bandai and SNK were developing new handhelds -- SNK's first would release in Japan in late '98, and Bandai's in early '99 -- neither one was much of a threat to Nintendo's dominance. Nintendo released a new handheld in '98, finally, the Game Boy Color. More on that later.
On the PC side, the PC, with Windows as its operating system and Intel or Intel-compatible x86 processors as its CPUs, had finally become the primary computer platform worldwide in the mid '90s. In the US the PC became the lead platform back in the mid '80s, but it wasn't until the mid '90s that Japan and Europe finally went to Wintel instead of their previous preferred platforms like the Amiga (it's actually American, I know), NEC PC-98, or ZX Spectrum. PCs had fast CPUs which could be measured in hundreds of megahertz, hard drives large enough to install plenty of games to, and more. And with the explosion of the 3d accelerator card market in 1996 and later, PCs had graphics better than any console, if you had the cash to buy a good new 3d graphics card for your PC. Yes, computers were expensive, but prices had come down significantly over the course of the decade and many people who could not have afforded a computer back at the beginning of the '90s now found machines available for low enough prices that people in lower income brackets were getting modern PCs in the later '90s. However, game sales weren't increasing by as much as development costs were and most PC games sold much less than console games did, so despite the massive increase in hardware sales, the PC game industry was in trouble.
As for Apple, the company had been in bad shape through most of the '90s. The problems had gotten worse and worse, but 1998 began their turnaround with the release of the iMac computer. These cute-looking computers proved very popular, and Apple was saved to go on to release the iPhone and be the incredibly wealthy corporation they are now. However, while very popular, the iMac isn't much of a gaming machine. There were some games on Mac, but not many. I won't be mentioning here which games of '98 have Mac versions, sorry classic Mac fans. I'll just say that Starcraft did get a Mac release later in '98, so at least there's that! Blizzard supported the Mac better than most.
In the arcades, arcades were still reasonably popular across all regions. The industry had signs of trouble, particularly in the US, but for the moment arcade games were still releasing regularly. So, those games. What were some of the key games that make this year stand out over any others?
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) - The most popular 'best game ever' on most lists, Nintendo's all-time action-adventure classic is my favorite console game ever as well. It is an incomparable masterpiece which defined 3d game combat with its lock-on mechanic and has some of the best dungeon and puzzle design of any game, and defined how to do combat targeting in a 3d game, also. The story is decent, too. This game deservedly has its place as the game with the highest review average ever. If you look up the list Game of the Year award winners from '98, almost every console award that wasn't for a Sony-only publication went to Ocarina of Time.
- Starcraft: Brood War (PC) - My favorite game ever, Blizzard's real-time strategy game Starcraft is an exceptionally brilliant game that I still play regularly online. Am I any good? No. But I play anyway because it is amazing. Starcraft is one of the most challenging competitive games ever designed, but it is that near-infinite skill ceiling that is part of what makes it so brilliant. The very well done balance that keeps the game vaguely fair despite no balance patches since 2001 is also genius. Starcraft is still without question the greatest thing ever produced in the history of gaming, and it isn't close. In gameplay, control, design, story, visuals, music, and everything else, Starcraft is the greatest. If we were sending something out into space to show other civilizations our greatest achievements, the one I would pick for electronic gaming is Starcraft.
- Half-Life (PC) - Valve's first game was the first title PC Gamer US ever gave a 98% score to. Its success would set its developer up for success, as Valve would later set up what became PC gaming's primary digital marketplace, Steam. The game itself is a pretty fantastic FPS loaded with interesting set-pieces and in-game scripted sequences. The only real thing holding Half-Life back is that its sequel often gets mentioned in 'best games ever' lists instead of the first one. After all many lists like to only list one game per series, at least per era, and the second Half-Life ususally gets the edge over the first, even though they scored equally high and the first probably won more awards -- almost all major PC publications gave Half-Life their Game of the Year awards. I can only think of one major exception to that. The first Half-Life is still a very noteworthy and well made game. Half-Life isn't a game I personally have as much of an attachment to as the two games above, but I certainly recognize its impact and like the game.
- The First US Releases of These Incredibly Important Titles Released in Japan or Europe in 1996 or 1997 Happened in 1998 Here: Pokemon Red & Blue (GB), Grand Theft Auto (PC/PS1), Gran Turismo (PS1). Pokemon's influence particularly is incredibly massive and ongoing. It is 1998 when Pokemania hit the world, dramatically changing gaming forever. Gran Turismo and GTA are also, obviously, extremely significant releases which would have major industry impact. GTA and its single open world would eventually change gaming once it went fully 3d, and Gran Turismo is Sony's longest-lasting and most successful franchise and by far the most successful realistic racing franchise ever.
- Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn) - This Japanese RPG from Sega is short, but in its length it is so interesting and unique that those who have played it still regard it as one of gaming's greatest masterpieces. It is a highly cinematic work with a tragic but compelling story and interesting gameplay. The soundtrack is, typically for a Panzer Dragoon game, one of gaming's best, and the art design is exceptional. The story of the games' creation is also tragic, as the developer Team Andromeda overworked themselves for years to complete the game. At least one person died before it released. What they made, though, is an all-timer for the few who can afford to play it.
- Radiant Silvergun (Arcade/Saturn) (Japan-only release) - This shmup (shoot 'em up) is many peoples' pick for the best game ever in its genre. I prefer its Dreamcast sequel Ikaruga, myself, but RS's influence cannot be denied. The graphics, gameplay, music, and controls are all masterfully done and brilliant; this game is legendary for good reasons. The game has a somewhat high learning curve due to having 6 weapons each mapped to a different button, but it's probably worth learning. The game centers around bossfights; it is not entirely a boss rush, but they are a lot of the game. Every one is unique and interesting.
- Falcon 4.0 (PC) - This flight combat simulation from Microprose is an uncompromising game which tries to be a realistic depiction of the F-16, and succeeds at that about as closely as a computer game could. The game came in a binder full of 700 pages of information about how to operate the plane. There is no HUD other than what there would be in the real plane, and everything works as close to real as is possible. No game since has matched its vision and uncompromising attention to realistic detail. Flight simulators after this would not be made with this kind of budget. There are modern updates from the community for this game. The latest version is Falcon 4.38 BMS. BMS is almost certainly the most realistic flight simulation on the market, certainly for the F-16 but probably generally. Genre leader DCS is also complex but not quite as much as Falcon BMS. The graphics are pretty nice too, though of course they don't compare to a modern game like DCS or Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
- Grand Prix Legends (PC) - The racing game counterpart to the above game, sort of, Sierra and Papyrus's masterpiece GP Legends is an extremely realistic take on the 1966 Formula One season, with physics and design as accurate to the real thing as is possible. There is no HUD here, and no voice over a radio. It's just you and the car, and a little board held out as you go through each lap telling you how many laps remain and how far ahead and behind the closest racers are. No game since matches its ambition and scope compared to the budgets of the time; generally even racing simulators want people to actually be able to easily enjoy the game. Papyrus wasn't trying to do that here, they were trying for realism. They succeeded. Can you drive in a straight line and not crash? This game also has modern updates which make it look amazing.
- Banjo-Kazooie (N64) - Rare's first 3d platformer was a very important one for the genre. This game would help define what 3d platformers would become: not just platforming-focused games where you do one objective at a time as you do in Mario 64, but collectathons about finding a whole lot of different things in large open spaces. BK is a fantastic game, though it's not my personal favorite Rare 3d platformer, and its influence and quality cannot be denied.
- Grim Fandango (PC) - This adventure game is widely regarded, including by me, as being the greatest adventure game ever made. The Mexican Day of the Dead theme is really interesting and unique, and the story and puzzles are second to none. If it seemed like adventure games couldn't get better after this... well, they couldn't. The genre faded in popularity significantly almost immediately afterwards.
- Baldur's Gate (PC) - BioWare's RPG classic would define the PC RPG to me and many other people. This depiction of 2nd edition AD&D rules, adapted into a pausable real-time engine, was done so brilliantly that I'd argue that it still is the best RPG game engine ever designed. The story is fine enough, but it's the gameplay and strategic combat that really carry this game to the top. Fortunately I care more about gameplay than story.
- Thief: The Dark Project (PC) - The first true stealth simulator, this first-person masterpiece essentially invented the stealth game as we know it. 1998 is the key year in the stealth genre's evolution, thanks to Thief, MGS, and Tenchu, but of the three Thief is the most important by far thanks to its highly interesting design. You will need to watch guard patterns and your sound as you try to get your prizes.
- Metal Gear Solid (PS1, later PC) - Hideo Kojima's ultra-popular cinematic action game would become one of gaming's most popular series for a while. I don't like this game at all but have to admit its massive success and popularity.
Selected Other Noteworthy Console Games: Spyro the Dragon (PS1), Crash Bandicoot: Warped (PS1), Wario Land 2 (GB), Super Tempo (SAT) (J), Stellar Assault SS (SAT), Colony Wars: Vengeance (PS1), R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (PS1), Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (PC/N64), Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA (N64), R-Type Delta (PS1), Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (PS1), Resident Evil 2 (PS1), Sonic Adventure (DC) (JP release), Burning Rangers (SAT), The Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (PC/PS1), Moto Racer 2 (PC/PS1), Rockman & Forte (SNES) (JP release), Turok 2 (N64/PC), etc, etc
Selected PC Games: Unreal, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Worms 2, Quest for Glory V, The Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (PC/PS1), Moto Racer 2 (PC/PS1), Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (PC/N64), Motocross Madness, Vangers, Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Expansion Pack), Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, Starsiege: Tribes, Descent: FreeSpace, etc, etc
Key Arcade Games from 1998: Radiant Silvergun, The Last Blade 2, Metal Slug 2, The King of Fighters '98, Daytona USA 2: Battle on the Edge, Sega Rally 2, ESP.Ra-De, Blazing Star, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Marvel vs. Capcom, Armed Police Batrider, The House of the Dead 2, Gauntlet Legends, Dance Dance Revolution, etc.
Here's a fun challenge: make a top 5 in some genre. Make it all games from 1998. How many games into the list can you get before someone reading the list, without the years mentioned, would realize what you are doing? I think it's often quite far. I will have genre lists, with thoughts about many of the games, in the next article. There will be some overlap from this article but that's okay, I'm sure some people will read only one or the other.
(Why do I have both this section and the above hardware and current platforms section? I don't know. First I wrote this one a few days ago, then I wrote that one above later, then I kept both. I think the current platforms section was a good addition, and this has some things that one does not, so both have a function, but I know they overlap. Sorry about that.)
In hardware, 1998 was a pretty great, and significant, year. I mentioned most of these earlier, but here are going to focus on the gaming hardware only. On the PC side, while the consumer had many options for 3d graphics cards, most of them at least partially incompatible, 3dfx was the best one by far, and they had an amazing new card this year. The 3dfx Voodoo2 graphics card released in '98. While the original Voodoo from several years earlier is probably the most important graphics card release ever, the Voodoo2 was a hugely big deal. In retrospect, it was all downhill for 3dfx after this, as NVidia's 6-month graphics card cycle would bury 3dfx and their one year or more per card cycle. '99's Voodoo3 was a good card, but later that same year NVidia released the GeForce 256 and just kept going from there, and combined with other 3dfx mistakes they were done. It's such a shame, because 3dfx cards were special! The Voodoo2, particularly, was an unbelievable thing. It was a massive upgrade over any consumer 3d graphics card available before and was significantly more powerful than any console of the day. I got a Voodoo2 in late '98 and absolutely loved it. I will never love an NVidia card like I did that Voodoo.
Also, this is technically software, but Windows 98 released this year. This evolution of Windows 95 significantly improved a lot of things and made development easier. Most probably would still pick it as their favorite of the three Win9x releases. This is relevant for gaming because a great many games eventually moved to supporting not Win9x in general, but Win98 or above only.
On the console side, three new platforms released and one accessory, though two only released in Japan at this point. First, the addon. The Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak released late in 1998, supported by a handful of games such as Star Wars Rogue Squadron and Turok 2. This 4MB RAMBUS RAM upgrade doubles the system memory in the console, allowing games to store a lot more data than they could before. It allowed for higher resolutions or areas denser with things going on. Only a few games require the Expansion Pak, but a good number support it.
The next few platforms are handhelds. In the fall, the Game Boy Color released nationwide. This release, shortly following on Pokemon's North American release a few months earlier, absolutely exploded in sales due to the phenomenon that was Pokemon. Sure, Pokemon was not a color game and ran just fine on an original Game Boy, but the GBC was cheap and millions of kids wanted Pokemon, and many of them got a GBC to play it on. I had little interest in Pokemon myself, but did get a GBC for Christmas along with one game, Pocket Bomberman. The GBC is underpowered, being basically an original Game Boy with twice the clock speed, but it's got a very high quality game library. The GBC would have a short 2 1/2 year primary life, but still it got a lot of impressive games while it lasted.
The other two systems only released in Japan, both late in the year: the Sega Dreamcast and SNK Neo-Geo Pocket. The latter never released outside of Japan, as less than six months later SNK upgraded it to the Neo-Geo Pocket Color; that colorized model is the one released internationally. The NGPC is in many ways the best handheld of its era, with the best-feeling buttons and best action and fighting games of any handheld of that time or before. The original NGP is similar to the color model, but doesn't have, well, color, or compatibility with a lot of the later titles. I don't have a NGP because there is little reason to get one for anyone who has a NGPC, but still, SNK's entry into the handheld market may have been doomed but it was fun while it lasted. The few B&W-only games play just as well as the color ones, and many games are also B&W compatible along with Color.
And last but definitely not least, Sega released their last console, the Dreamcast, in November. There is a lot in common between the NGP/C and DC, as both were released by struggling companies on their last legs, had amazing games release for them, then died tragically young, leaving fans remembering them and wishing for more ever since. The Dreamcast didn't release internationally until September 1999, and the initial Japanese launch was of far too few systems to meet demand, but for those few people who got one, they saw the future: one of the most beautiful hardware designs ever; 480p progressive scan video output, the first time a console could output a signal above the resolution that a standard definition television can display; online connectivity, later on, once the modem (it was not packed in in Japan at first, unlike the West) and online games released; top tier graphics close to on par with what the Voodoo2 could do though at lower maximum resolutions than it could output; and, available in late 1998, Sonic the Hedgehog's noteworthy return in his classic Sonic Adventure. Sonic Adventure's level design would set the tone for the rest of the Sonic series going forward and is a pretty important moment in 3d platforming. The Dreamcast is fascinating because it both the beginning and the end. It is the very last console designed with accurate ports of arcade games being central to its design ethos. It is the last console where those arcade ports were significantly important. But at the same time, as I said above, it was the first console of a new generation, and brought new advances in graphical output and online connectivity. I don't know if there is any other console that so perfectly captures the ethoses of two different eras of gaming at the same time.
However, no year is perfect. 1998 saw the beginning of the end for the golden era of PC gaming, as budgets got too high for sales, and it also didn't see games in some quite major genres. Here's a list:
RPG (MMORPG) - All this genre really had was the first Unreal Online expansion pack. UO was '97 and Everquest '99. Online RPGs would be the top PC genre of the next decade, but in '98 with only UO and Meridian59 out there for graphical MMORPGs, the genre was still waiting for its big breakout moment. I would probably put that moment in '99 with EverQuest, so during the later part of the PC's peak, '99-'00, people could see what the new thing was and began moving over to a focus on it if they wanted to continue working on the PC. But in '98, text-based MUDs were mostly outdated, but the 3d, third-person MMO was still largely a thing of the future, with only Meridian59 representing the field.
Simulation (Mech) - There wasn't a mech sim game this year, surprisingly. Not any at all that I can find. There were some pretty good real-world tank sims such as M1 Tank Platoon II and iM1A2 Abrams, and some good mech games in other genres, though, such as the strategy games MechCommander and Cyberstorm 2 and the action game Future Cop L.A.P.D.. Oddly there were no mech sims releasing in '98 in Japan either; Armored Core is another one of those series that bookended '98, with releases in '97 and '00, and there weren't any others either.
Open World Games - For what we know as open-world games, there isn't much for this genre other than that US release of late '97's European game Grand Theft Auto. However there were some games with large worlds. The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (N64) and Might & Magic VI Mandate of Heaven (PC) particularly stand out, along with The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard (PC), which has a small world for a Elder Scrolls game but still there's a sizable area to explore in a single large map. Also, Jurassic Park: Trespasser (PC) does not have an open world, just large levels, but its exploration of physics-based gameplay would be incredibly important for the genre's development. The driving-combat games Vangers and Body Harvest similarly have large open maps for you to explore and fight things in, but not one single world, it's broken up into separate maps. It's the same with the racing game Motocross Madness. So yeah, open-world RPG, yes, but open-world action or driving game, not quite yet.
4X Grand Strategy - Perhaps this genre shouldn't be on this list, because there were two somewhat noteworthy 4X games released in 1998. However, both are somewhat niche titles that general audiences, even general audiences of people who like 4X games, mostly rejected. Those games are Deadlock II: Shrine Wars and Star Wars: Rebellion. The only other 4X game was a niche little Europe-only title called Galax Empires. Deadlock and Rebellion are both very dense, menu-heavy titles. The main focus of both titles is on managing numerous systems, mostly controlled with menus. 4X games can be dense, but these aren't economics-systems-heavy Eurogames, or approachable Civilization-style games, they are more for people who want that kind of menu-heavy game. For the people who like that, '98 is a decent year for 4X. But for people wanting the greatest of 4X games, they'd have to wait a few months until early '99's Alpha Centauri, or continue playing older classics like Master of Orion II or Civilization II. The rise of dense, systems and menu-heavy strategy games that managed to succeed at interesting the kind of audience that Rebellion mostly failed to get to really happened in 2000, when the European studio Paradox released its first game, Europa Universalis. Paradox still dominates that subgenre today. If you look online though you will find a few Rebellion fans out there.
4th Generation TV Console Games - I say TV because the Game Boy had a good year, but in North America, Super Nintendo (SNES) and Sega Genesis were on their last legs and the TurboGrafx CD was long dead. Both SNES and Genesis saw their last American release in 1998... Frogger. A straight port of the then over 15 year old arcade game. And that's it for the year. Uh, yeah. It is fine but not exactly a thrilling end to either one of those amazing consoles. In Japan the Genesis (Megadrive) was long dead and the PC Engine CD (TurboGrafx CD) nearly gone, but the SNES (Super Famicom) was still alive, and with some quality game releases too -- Super Famicom Wars, Rockman & Forte, Wrecking Crew '98, and a few more. Also, Kirby Star Stacker's SNES version released this year, albeit as a download service-only release; the physical cartridge version released in '99. But even there, looking at those games, while it is fun, Rockman & Forte is probably the weakest of the five SNES Mega Man platformers. Wrecking Crew '98 might actually be the best 4th-gen game of the year, it's a decent puzzle-platformer. If it's not that it'd be Kirby Star Stacker, a nice SNES edition of the Game Boy puzzler. It's a really fun but easy game, a good intro to block-dropping puzzle games. However, most would rather have the 1999 cart release than a Nintendo Power (JP download service) flash-cart version. Super Famicom Wars is fine but nowhere near Advance Wars' greatness, and the other games of '98 were few and far between. The thin libraries here make sense given that it's at the very end of the lives of all systems of the generation, but 1998 has a weaker 4th gen TV console lineup than any year since the generation started.
For the next two years after '98, things were still pretty good for American PC game releases. A lot of amazing PC games released in '99 and '00. After that, however, the number per year dropped off significantly, as the market cooled and increasing numbers of developers moved over to focusing on console games each year. '98 is the consensus greatest year, but '99 and '00 were also pretty great. Personally I would probably put them below '96 and '97, and maybe also '95, but that whole period was the peak of the American PC game business. All of those years are great, and the '00s still had the occasional great game releasing, particularly if you liked FPSes or MMOs. On the arcade side, the decline was more rapid; after '00 American arcades crashed hard. In other regions arcades lasted longer, of course, but even in Japan by '02 you see fewer significant arcade games.
However, in 1999 there were some important signs of the coming changes. First, Sierra, one of the largest and most important PC studios of the '80s and '90s, collapsed, and most staff were fired in February '99. Sierra had been in decline for several years, due to external and internal reasons, but for their staff the end came that February. At the corporate level, a major cause of this was their new owner (as of 1996), CUC/Cendant. First, divisions in the merged company led to both Davidson and Sierra's founders leaving. When comparing the two studios, though, Blizzard was lean, together, with it, making games people wanted to buy, and organized, while Sierra was large, disorganized, and struggling to come up with software the market still wanted. Then, worse, it was revealed that Cendant was involved with a major financial scam, and invented hundreds of millions of dollars of "revenues". This scandal broke in mid '98, significantly damaging the company and eventually leading to several people serving over a decade in prison. As a side effect of the financial scam being revealed, Centant sold off its gaming division in November '98 to French company Havas (Vivendi) for a billion dollars, half that what it had paid for the two companies just a few years earlier. Havas took the axe to Sierra just months later, while Blizzard was unaffected as they continued to work on their still years-away Warcraft projects. Why? Blizzard was more profitable and organized, Sierra wasn't. In 2000, Sierra and fellow adventure game company Lucasarts both released their last adventure games ever. After that both abandoned that genre. PC adventure games mostly stopped being made in the US after that, moving over to Europe as I said previously. Sources: For more on the tragic collapse of Sierra, see https://www.vice.com/en/article/inside-s...ant-fraud/ and https://www.filfre.net/2025/04/the-end-o...e-scandal/.
Second, later in '99, Williams Electronics left the arcade business by shutting down their pinball division. Chicago-based Williams had been the number one name in pinball for decades, so this was a significant move showing the rapid decline of the American arcade business. Williams would switch over to a focus entirely on casino gambling machines, a business where their successor company is still successful. In June 2001, Midway Games, the largest American arcade game publisher and a company closely tied to Williams for a long time, followed Williams out of the arcade business. After that, all that was left for American arcade companies were some smaller ones such as Stern for pinball and Raw Thrills for arcade games, a company set up in the early '00s by former Midway staff. Midway would last another decade, but eventually it would go bankrupt in 2010, the company declining from being a top five third party to bankrupt over that time due to being unable to manage the transition from arcade-focused studio to home console studio well enough. Midway's remains would be bought by Warner Bros., and its only surviving studio is the one that makes the Mortal Kombat games, now home console exclusives.
And third, in 2001, Microsoft, the company that makes the operating systems PCs run on and a significant publisher of PC games between 1995 and 2000, released their first videogame console, the Xbox, and shifted over their primary development focus over to console games. You might think that they would have released everything also on PC, but for a long time they did not. Instead they only focused strongly on Xbox, with PC as an afterthought for a long time. And they pushed other developers to follow them and release their games on Xbox, and other consoles, as well. American developers responded both to Microsoft and to the market forces pushing consoles over PCs, that despite the PC's huge install base console games sold better than PC games did due to everyone who bought a console being a gamer, and American games became much more console-focused. The genre that remaining PC developers focused on were primarily massively-multiplayer online RPGs. MMOs remained a key genre for developers, the genre was almost entirely focused on the PC, and many American studios worked on them. The genre would fade as all do, but it remains a significant genre today.
First-person shooters of course were also hugely popular, but unlike MMOs they would not stay PC-dominant. Some shooters released on both PC and console and others consoles only, with only a few staying focused on the PC, such as ARMA. Over the course of the '00s,the change in platform led to changes in game design as well. Compare the first Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six to Rainbow Six: Vegas for a good example of this; the first was PC-first with the console ports as an afterthought, the other the other way around, and it showed both times. FPSes went towards more streamlined, linear designs with a lot of cinematic moments, less exploration, fewer key or switch hunts, and only letting the player hold a very limited numbers of weapons at a time. Level design-wise this was perhaps happening anyway -- Half-Life, the FPS genre's biggest hit of '98 by far, shows a move towards this direction, as opposed to the huge, exploration-based levels of many earlier shooters -- but the change accelerated on consoles. The change in weapons was caused by the success of 2001's Xbox hit Halo and its two weapons at a time limit. I have never liked that system myself, but it was the way the genre went.
Meanwhile, in Japan, Sega left the console market in 2002 thanks to the failure of every platform they had released since their hit system the Genesis and their own poor financial management. Sony and Nintendo continued on, with Sony in a dominant position due to convincing many developers to move over to its platform in the mid '90s away from Nintendo, either because of lower development and game production charges, because studios wanted the larger space of a CD while Nintendo went with smaller cartridges, or because of Sony paying certain developers to not release Sega versions of some games. Sega was a smaller company than its competitors, though, so the end result was probably sadly inevitable all along regardless of the details along the way. Sega leaving home consoles was another change that happened during the early modern era.
As for Sony, they did one important thing for the industry. Sony won the home console race particularly thanks to their success at finally figuring out how to succeed in the previously smallish European console market. The Sony PlayStation probably sold more than all consoles had in that region in the previous few generations all combined. Europe would remain Sony-dominant to this day on the console front. As far as game development goes Europe finally entering the console market in a big way would have a delayed impact, as European studios continued being more focused on PC games than console ones through the '00s and to some extent still are today, but it is a very important event.
As for Nintendo, they would go up and down over the years, down in the early '00s, then up significantly, then down, then up again. Currently, they are doing quite well. Nintendo and Sony are both profitable companies today, somewhat at the expense of Microsoft's fading console hopes, but Sony is doing that while making more of their games also on PC and in a few cases even Xbox in order to boost revenues, while Nintendo is sticking to true exclusivity to only their own consoles. For the two main console makers the main problem with the console business today isn't revenues, it is that the install base has stalled and is not increasing, while development costs go up every year and development time continues to increase. For third place Microsoft it is revenues, as the Xbox business has never been profitable.
The higher sales of console games allowed the industry to succeed with a console focus for the '00s and '10s, but as mentioned, now, in the 2020s, we are seeing costs get too high for console game development as well. On consoles I would say that it is this current decade where the late '90s to late '00s PC game crisis is now hitting all of gaming: costs are too high. Development times are too long. The size of the console market is no longer expanding, it is static. With a static userbase and ever-increasing costs, the problems for publishers are escalating, and probably will eventually become impossible. I don't know what the end result of this will be, but I think most will agree that it is happening. Here is an example of a recent article about the gaming industry's troubles: https://www.wired.com/story/2024-was-the...-industry/
Is there a modern peak year, the analog of 1998 or for the pre-crash era probably 1982, a year where we see the conclusion of a process of refinement lead to a year loaded with all-time-great hits that show both why their era was so amazing and what knowledgeable developers could do with that technology? If there is I'm not sure what it is, offhand; games take so long to develop now that I'm not sure that one single year could possibly hold so many key titles as it used to. Regardless of that, the cost inflection point either has already been passed again, or will be soon. We cannot simultaneously have a situation where hardware sales are flat and costs are increasing, that is not tenable. And yet, that is the industry today. Who knows, maybe Playstation/Nintendo/PC will be enough to keep the AAA(A) industry going, even if Xbox declines. We will see.
I would like to try to answer the question on if there is a modern peak year before decline set in, but I'm just not sure. Have we seen this peak yet, or is it still to come? I think someone who likes the early modern and modern eras more than me would need to say; I checked out on modern gaming for about a dozen years between 2005 and 2017 thanks to how little interest I had in most modern games over that era, before being brought back in by mostly endless online games like Starcraft Remastered, Overwatch, and Super Mario Maker. Anyway, it probably is more likely that we are now in the decline and that the peak has already been passed, in terms of business. In terms of game release quality, though... for that I just don't know. My favorite modern games are all from different years, there isn't one clear dominant one -- GeoGuessr, Super Mario Maker 1, and Splatoon are from 2015, Starcraft Remastered and Overwatch from 2017, Super Mario Maker 2 and Dead or Alive 6 from 2019, Diablo IV from 2023, Mario Kart World from 2025... and as for gaming outside of my prime interests, I haven't done the research yet to say. I think the answer would be that finding a single year with as many top tier hits as '82 or '98 in the modern day would be impossible because given how long game development cycles are and with how successful games often run endlessly with new content additions being released for the same base game, finding a single year with a clear best library is not likely. Huge numbers of games release every year, but the most significant ones don't all release in the same year.
But regardless of that, the sheer number of articles you can easily find about the industry's decline, such as the one I linked earlier -- on how the industry as a whole shrank in '24 for the first time in a very long time, on how the number of developers being fired -- over 10,000 a year in each of the last few years -- or studios shut down is increasing, on how exploitative monetization practices are only increasing ever more year on year, and more -- are all over the place for a reason: things are not healthy in video game land.
Memory is a tricky thing; what things are remembered, and which are not, is hard to predict. Some things are rapidly forgotten. Some last while the people involved are alive, but fade afterwards. And some, particularly ones important to a nation or religious group, endure in memory for centuries or millennia. Right now, 1998 is remembered the strongest by those of us old enough to have been playing games then. It is somewhat remembered by younger people, but not nearly as much, and mostly only for its top most popular games like Ocarina of Time.
For example, to focus on the thing that has been lost that is closest to me from my younger years, PC gaming as it was before the early '00s collapse, look at this, PC Gamer's latest, 2025 list of their current staff's 100 favorite PC games: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-top-10...ames-2025/ I will post the full list of all the games by the year they were created in the second article; it just doesn't fit well in this one. I recommend skimming through their article regardless, it's interesting to look at. Only one game on the list is from before 1998, 1993's Doom. PC Gamer US did choose Doom as the best game ever in their very first list back in 1994. I believe that TIE Fighter CD won the 1997 list, though, if I remember right. I know Doom finished second that year. Somehow TIE Fighter doesn't make this list at all, and almost no older PC games do; only one flight game does, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997 somehow all have zero games on this list each despite being the peak of PC gaming's golden era.
Instead, next is 1998's Thief: The Dark Project. It's an interesting and understandable inclusion, as the game is the origin of the stealth genre as a serious enterprise. Multiple newer stealth games make the list and Thief is where realistic stealth games started. None of 1998's other top hits make the list though, shamefully. This is a significant mistake. From 1999 appear three games, Planescape: Torment, Alpha Centauri, and listed as its 2025 remaster System Shock 2. I entirely agree with all three of these, they are all-time greats. 2000 gets three games also: Deus Ex, Diablo II (Remastered), and Baldur's Gate II (Remastered). All have modern updates, but the originals are pretty similar. Again all three of these are richly deserved. I don't like this list much, but I do agree that including Diablo II is the right representative of its genre. I like and play Diablo IV, but II is better. And with 2000 you reach the end of the time of the PC being on the mountain; it had started falling down the cliff at increasing speed after that, with only MMOs and European studios surviving.
And you see this decline reflected on the list. Somehow they still have games listed for almost every year after '00, unlike the better years of the '90s, probably exclusively because of recency bias, but you can see the decline of PC gaming in the '00s on that list. The list goes from 3 games a year in both '99 and '00 to just one or zero every year from '01 to '10, other than '04, when three games make the list (one of those a console port), and '06, when it's two freeware titles/mods representing the year. After that things slowly start getting back to a better state thanks to the growth and development of Steam, as much as anything, along with slowly increasing levels of developer interest as console audience sizes stall out, and the number of titles increases.
There are several notable things about PCG's article. First, it is very heavily modern game-centric, far beyond any sense in my opinion. I strongly disagree with the overall 'the last ten years are where most of the best PC games released' take of those who made that list. I also strongly disagree with the genre variety, which is very heavy on console games and RPGs and very light on the other genres traditionally strong on the PC -- simulators, turn-based, realtime, or wargame strategy games, first person shooters, graphic adventure games, and such. A PC gaming top 100 list which contains Final Fantasy X but not even one single real-time strategy game or even MOBA is kind of a joke of a list, I'm sorry. Yes, other kinds of strategy games are on the list, but still, it's inexcusable. Genres like those mostly appear on the list very sparsely, and wargames are entirely excluded. Most of the classic hits in those genres are left off entirely. I think that proves this point: things change. Tastes change. The memory of 1998 will last, but it will fade over time to being 'that year of the peak games of its time, a style of game the average gamer today is mostly not interested in revisiting'.
It's sad to say this but, don't we already see this happening with things like that PC Gamer list? Yes, some games of 1998 have dedicated fanbases, and not entirely of people old enough to remember the original releases; plenty of people playing Falcon 4.38 BMS or Starcraft Remastered, to name a few, weren't born yet in 1998. But a dedicated small fanbase is a different from general market recognition. You see this perhaps the most strongly in the wargame genre. Wargames are usually turn-based military strategy simulations. They vary in complexity from approachable to very complicated. The genre faded in importance around the turn of the century, but unlike flight or racing simulators, because they can be easily done with simple graphics, wargames did not retreat to just a couple of titles. The wargame genre has been active all along, releasing new games every year. If you look up a modern 'best wargames' list, most of the games are modern titles that nobody outside of that niche have heard of. The genre just gets much less attention than it used to since it is no longer one of the major genres as it was until the end of the '90s, not in electronic games and not in board games either.
For example, PC Gamer had a wargaming-specific column that ran for at least a decade from the mid '90s into the mid or later '00s, The Desktop General. They did not have columns for every genre! That showed wargaming's importance. And now the same publication can't be bothered to put even one game in that genre on their top 100? And no, I don't think FTL, Dwarf Fortress, Crusader Kings 3, or Total War Warhammer 3 count. Those are complex strategy or simulation games, yes, but not wargames. Of those Total War's battles are the closest to a wargame, but on the simple end of the genre. How the mighty have fallen.
So, while the PC is on the upswing today as consoles stall out, it is a new PC that is resurgent. The old top genres are mostly still as niche as they have been for most of the past 25 years. Instead, the new PC is a mixture of some classically PC games with a lot of console-first titles. Most people probably do mostly play newer games, as you see reflected in that list, and a lot of people playing on PCs now are indeed playing games designed for consoles first but also released on PC to help sell more copies. That is probably a reasonable list for what a lot of mainstream PC gamers are playing today. It's more RPG-heavy than somes' lists would be, but reasonable. It is, however, a bad list for representing the best PC games ever overall.
So, the resurgence of the PC won't, I think, help bring the memory of 1998's PC games back, any more than the resurgence of specialty arcades like Dave & Buster's or Round 1 haven't really helped make big budget, top of the graphics heap arcade games a thing again either. The platforms still exist but in a new form for the new world. The new world of the PC is a mixture of the old PC and a console. The world of gaming is less separated and more merged together. Even popular mobile games often have PC versions. That doesn't make their content any different.
1998's greatness is widely recognized. Most lists of how great the games of each year are put 1998 in first place, or at worst second to the author's favorite year if it isn't 1998. But why is that? Well, as I said above, I think that the industry changed so dramatically immediately afterwards is a huge part of the answer. The kinds of games we saw in 1998, particularly on the PC and arcade sides, did not continue to be made for much longer, and never were again at the budget and general market attention levels that they were after sometime between 1998 and 2000, depending on platform. The world was changing and budgets were no longer large enough to fund PC-only game development or big-budget arcade games, so the kinds of games studios made changed to focus almost entirely on console games instead of splitting between all three pillars of the old system.
That coincidence is, again, the key, I think, of why 1998 is gaming's greatest year. In the same year, console developers finally figured out 3d to a greater extent than before and some of the best console games ever released; the PC market peaked in the US and, after releasing some of the greatest games ever, began its decade-long slide into near irrelevance (before recovering somewhat after that); and arcades only had a year or two of life left in them, leading to some great titles in that field as well. There would never be another year where all three pillars of the 1970s to '90s gaming industry would all be in as good shape as they were in '98.
But again, I know I focus on it because I was a PC-focused gamer in the '90s, but 1998 isn't only great because of it being the mountaintop of PC gaming after which decline would be rapid. It is also great because at the same time, console gaming also had some of its greatest and most important games release. Developers finally started to understand how to make 3d game control work better, and many genres had new best ever releases. The collective knowledge of 15+ years combined to make 1998 the perfect storm across all formats electronic games released on, a time when budgets allowed for anything possible with the day's technology and developers with enough knowledge to actually start executing on that. '97, '99, and '00 also saw some of that peak, but all three years have more drawbacks to their release list libraries than '98 does.
To repeat my main point here, all of these factors had to occur at the same time for 1998 to be remembered as the greatest. This coincidence, or alignment, is central to why the year is so universally beloved. If it was only the best year in classic PC gaming but just an average console year, I have no doubt that 1998 would rank much, much lower on 'best of' lists; a lot of people only play console games, not PC ones. The same is true if it was only a peak arcade game year. But all three things did both happen at the same time, and so gaming's greatest year entered the history books.
In the next article, list wars! The second part of this 1998 retrospective will be a long list of many of the major games of 1998, broken down in multiple ways -- by platform, genre, and more. I like lists. I hope some of you do as well. The list is basically done and will post soon.
UNDEAD: NEC PC Engine CD (TurboGrafx-16 CD) - This aging system had died in the US back in '94, but in Japan it was still kind of clinging to its last moments of life. There were no games released for the PCECD in '98, but there was one last release in '99 so technically it wasn't dead yet.
DIED: NEC PC-FX - This thing, though, did die in 1998. NEC's last console, which was only ever released in Japan, focused on anime FMV and visual novels, to the expense of anything else. It has near-zero 3d capabilities and lacking sprite manipulation power compared to the other consoles of its generation (it can't scale sprites, only do Mode 7 style effects!), but can do nice video. It bombed hard, but got over 3 1/2 years of support anyway, ending in mid '98. So yeah, the PC-FX died this year, little-mourned. If you look at the release list you will see that '98 brought the system four visual novels, a nongame compilation, an RPG, and a 2d platformer action-adventure game. That last one is probably the most interesting, Ruruli ra Rura. Its graphics are very simplistic and the combat is extremely basic, but the animated cutscenes are nice. Despite the very dated visuals I'd like to get a copy, though it's pretty expensive.
DIED: Atari Jaguar - The Jaguar had been discontinued back in early 1996, when Atari sold itself to a hard drive manufacturer. However, some games continued to release from Telegames, companies dedicated to releasing finished but unpublished Jaguar games. Most of the bigger-name ones of those released in '96 and '97, but the last officially licensed title was in 1998, Worms, a port of the first Worms computer game, releasing the same year as Worms 2, a game which dramatically improved Worms graphics. Yeah. Still, it's something. The next year, Atari would change ownership, being sold to Hasbro. Hasbro made the platform open source in 1999, setting the Jag off for its very successful life as one of the most popular homebrew platforms. The first homebrew game released that year.
UNDEAD: Sega Game Gear - As I said, the Game Gear was effectively dead at this point, and had no game releases. Sega had released their last games for it in '97 and dropped it. However, it would be resussitated for a short revival from Majesco in 2000, and one new game was released then, so perhaps I should mention it.
DIED (US) / DYING (JP) - Sega Saturn - The Saturn saw its final US releases in 1998. In Japan, Sega ended first-party support at the end of 1998, as well. In Japan the system did have a full year of support, but that would not continue into '99. Third parties did release a small number of games in 1999 and early 2000 in Japan only, so the system wasn't quite dead, but with no first party support or international releases the writing was on the wall.
DYING (EU): Philips CD-i - The CD-i, a system with some similarities to the PC-FX in that it is very good at video playback but struggles at traditional videogames, but released in 1991, years before the PC-FX, so it is more impressive from a tech front than that system, had died out in the US in 1994-1995. In Europe, or rather in Philips' home country of the Netherlands, however, the CD-i lasted several more years. A couple of titles released for the CD-i in 1998, one of them a game. It would see one final release in '99, which is also a game, when the system finally died, so in '98 it was on its last legs in the Netherlands. Of those two last games, though, the one from '99 also released on PC, while the game from '98, the FMV rollercoaster shooter The Lost Ride, is a CD-i exclusive, so 1998 was the last year with an exclusive release on CD-i.
Video game consoles sure do have short lives, don't they. They are born with so much hope and promise, only for them to be old and dying somewhere around, on average, five years later. Console lifespans vary between one and about twelve years on the lower and upper ends. You barely get to know them and they are already on the way out! Fortunately, homebrew developers have brought many of these systems back to life, so they can get the fuller lifespans that they deserve. How much homebrew support a system gets varies depending on several factors, including how easy it is to release unlicensed games on the system and how large the fan community is for the platform, but it is always fantastic to see when it happens.
DIED: NEC PC-98 - That's right, NEC didn't have one platform with its last game releases in 1998, it actually had two. The NEC PC-98 line of computers had been the most dominant computer format in Japan in the '80s and up to the mid '90s, but the release of Windows 95 basically ended NEC's hold on the Japanese market. In 1997 NEC admitted defeat and switched from making its own proprietary computers to making PC clones with Windows 95. The early ones also supported a classic PC-98 mode, but Win95 was the main feature, and the few Japanese computer game developers mostly switched over to Windows eventually. However, some homebrew developers continued releasing games for the PC-98 into 1998. Checking Mobygames and Wikipedia, both list that the last year any games released for the PC-98 was 1998, so if that is accurate it was the end of the line for the format. After that Japanese PC games were on Windows 95. The most famous by far of the small handful of PC-98 games from '98 are the fourth and fifth Touhou games, Lotus Land Story and Mystic Square. The series had started the previous year, when Zun released the first three. Both are really good-looking bullet-hell shmups. It's easy to see why the series would become so legendary. After them the developer, Zun, would take four years off before moving the series over to Windows 9x.
The death of the PC-98 is quite significant since it was the last non-Windows/Intel gaming computer format, following the deaths of the Amiga, Atari ST, FM Towns, Spectrum, IBM OS/2, and other minor ones in the years previously. With its departure, only Windows, its never-gaming-focused rival of sorts Apple Macintosh, and the alternate PC operating system Linux were left. And of those three, even today, only one is a serious gaming platform: Windows. I'm sorry for Linux fans, but anyone with Steam can see how few games have Linux versions available.
DYING: Microsoft MS-DOS - After the release of Windows 95 in fall of 1995, MS-DOS, the previous primary gaming platform for PC games for the previous 14 years, was doomed. MS-DOS had survived during the Windows 3.1 and earlier era because Win3 and earlier have much higher overhead and limited advantages over DOS, so a game that wanted to get the most out of its hardware had to be a DOS game. Windows 3 just used up too much system resources. Windows 95 was a revolution because it finally made Windows a great gaming platform, and it eventually made running games a lot easier, too. The number of games releasing for DOS steadily decreased in each year after 1995, from almost all major titles in '95, to most games in '96, to a small number of titles in '97, to very few in '98. But after 1998, DOS largely disappeared as a platform for retail computer games. Small homebrew indie developers continued making mostly freeware DOS games here and there after that, so the platform never entirely disappeared in that sense, and collections or re-releases or expansions of or for DOS games released after 1998, but if you want retail PC games, for DOS, '98 was almost the end of the line. In '98, of the games I have mentioned in this article series, The Elder Scrolls: Redguard and Descent to Undermountain are actually DOS games. There are five or six other more minor DOS games from '98 as well, some of them European-exclusive titles. There would be two final retail PC games running on DOS in '99, one of which got a US release -- WWII GI. The other is a European exclusive called Horde: The Northern Wind, an RTS from Russia. Thanks to this thread on VOGONS for doing the research: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=100191 though I went through the list on MobyGames myself as well and agree with that thread's conclusions, those are the last retail DOS games. So, DOS as a retail gaming platform wasn't quite dead yet in 1998, but it was very close, and the end would come the next year.
How does this number of dead or dying platforms compare to the previous peak year of 1982? Well, 1982 was not a big year for anyone getting out of the industry. That time, the pile of dead platforms would be in '83 and '84. Those years did have a lot of platforms going away, though, surely more in total than '98 considering just how many little-selling console and computer platforms existed at that time. But there, the peak year for game releases was before this contraction, not at the same time as it. Also, of course every time a new generation starts eventually the platforms from the previous generation end support, and that is some of what you see here, but a year where not only several of the consoles of that year's most recent generation were dying out but also most of the platforms of the generation before that and also multiple computer formats, all fading out at the same time? 1998 was, indeed, a major transition point, a time when things were changing significantly in the game industry. Change can be good or bad. The changes ongoing in 1998 were both, depending on what platform you favor or what kinds of gaming you prefer.
For sources, other than the many facts I just know by now, I mostly used Wikipedia lists and GameFAQs for release date and factual reference, with Youtube for gameplay videos. I will add a references section to the second article for some potentially useful or interesting links.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Categories: The Types of Electronic Gaming Platforms
- The Eras of Gaming
- Change Happens, but What is Lost?
- The Peak Years
- 1982
- The Gaming World of 1998 - Platforms and Hardware
- 1998's Best Games
- Other Peak Games
- Gaming Hardware of 1998
- Genre Weak Points for 1998
- What Happened Next?
- Is There a Modern 1982 or 1998?
- How Will 1998's Memory Last?
- Conclusion: On why 1998 is the Greatest Year in Gaming
- Addendum: The Dead and Dying Platforms of 1998
Introduction
What is greatness? Thinking about it, I think that I would agree with those who say that the core of it is contrast. This idea is not my invention, but I fully agree with the concept. Greatness stands out because of the difference between the best times, or the most successful people, and the average or bad. When times are good and everything is fine, greatness can be harder to discern. It is easy to take how good things are for granted and not realize just what a special time it is. But when times get harder, discerning the great from the mediocre or awful becomes more clear.This will be an article about videogames, but to start with a historical analogy I saw mentioned online, Alexander the Great isn't great just because he was a prince who inherited a nation with the strongest army in the world. He was great because he did the greatest of things with that opportunity. Almost all people would fail in that place, or at best be average, but he wasn't and became a legend for it. I am mediocre at best at most things, but I am decent at writing (I should do it more often, huh?) and historical knowledge, as well as a few other things (building Lego sets by following the instructions, for instance). But anyway, we really see Alexander's greatness if we contrast him with other people who inherited great empires. How many of them managed things in an acceptably average way? Plenty, but generally not the memorable ones. How many squandered it, losing empires with their incompetence or evil? Some, such as Caligula or the English King John. How many were brilliant successes, leading their nation to glory? Very, very few. Anyone can inherit the building blocks of great things, but the greatest do amazing things with those blocks that others don't even think of.
But unfortunately, the good times never last for as long as we would like. Alexander died young and his empire rapidly crumbled. The 'empire' of videogames is not a perfect analogy for this, but I am sure many looked back later and said, we did great things. Why did we let it go? Between getting older and looking at the seeming decline of the videogame industry, it has led me to look back at better times and say, what were the things that made that time special? And what happened after?
I must note, I'm not a financial analyst. Most of what I say I do think is backed up by facts, but don't expect charts and numbers here. I have looked at some articles that do have them, though, and I think they are saying the same basic message I am.
But to return to analogies, how about we look at a more recent example, the state of American democracy today. I would like to think that now that our democracy is under such severe threat from Trump and his fascist allies that some people may look back and recognize just how amazing the existence of American democracy has been, that at its best moments America is the shining city on the hill, the first nation in the world governed by its people. Unfortunately, we are far from that hilltop today.
At the time, the way The Matrix treated the year 2000 as the peak of humanity seemed silly, something just chosen because that was the current day then. Of course, I'm sure that was exactly why it was chosen, but... it kind of was true, wasn't it. We actually kind of were at a peak that we now have fallen off of. A lot of the problems the world has now, including escalating global warming, rising fascism, microplastics and related health crises, and more, had started well before 2000, but at that point the system was working in a way that it now really isn't. (As an aside, I'm no big The Matrix fan. I saw the original movie once and reasonably enjoyed it, and saw and The Animatrix also, but wasn't interested enough to watch any of the other sequels and still haven't seen them. It just does seem that it happened to be right about our civilization's peak, or so it seems today.)
When you are on the peak of the mountain, everything seems great... but if you move, the only way to go from there on foot is down. To that point everything was uphill, but unless you are on a high ridgeline, a descent is in your near future. That is happening to our world this milennium, and it happened to gaming at around that same time as well, though to less disastrous consequences overall.
But I should get to the point: Why is 1998 nearly universally acclaimed as gaming's best year? I think that the core of it is because multiple incredibly important events happened at the same time, and they all stand out because of major changes in the industry that happened during and after 1998 which radically changed gaming. In the same year, 3d console games fully found their way with the new technology of polygons; the arcade business was still in good shape, before its collapse a few years later; and the PC business saw its best games ever before starting to fail the next year. It was near the end of the period that lasted from the '70s to the end of the '90s where those three platforms, PC, console, and arcade, dominated electronic gaming, and all three saw all-timers release... only for two to collapse within years. Once arcade and PC games had started falling off that mountain the slide just picked up speed year after year.
So, all of these things happened at the same time, and then things changed. Naturally, later on this led people of all kinds to look back at 1998 and think, wow, that year had the best library ever! Without all of those things happening at once, you probably would not see the year reach the heights of popularity that it has. With only the great PC games but not the console ones, for instance, the year definitely wouldn't have the mythological status that it has; a lot of people today sadly do not play old computer games as they do old console games. But, all of those things did happen in the same year, and so 1998 stuck in peoples' memories as no other year before or since has. One of the major eras of gaming was ending, and 1998 showed its games at their peak, just before everything changed.
Categories: The Types of Electronic Gaming Platforms
The basic breakdown in gaming from the '70s to late '90s was this: there were several different types of games. These types still exist today, with some changes.
- Arcade Games - Arcade games focus on fast action. During this period arcade games had significantly better graphics than anything on a home platform, but the games need to be something fast and fun, and that will get the player to keep spending money at a steady rate into the machine. In this way good arcade game design has some similarities with modern mobile design -- if the player isn't spending money, isn't being coerced into it somehow by the game, then the publisher won't be making money. [Today arcade games no longer have graphics better than home games.]
- Computer Games - Computers cost more than consoles and have faster processors, but until the later '90s did not have dedicated graphics hardware to make console-style graphics possible. As a result of this computers dominated in strategy games, simulations, flight games, and other kinds of games which benefit from having a mouse and keyboard and fast processor, but struggled at platformers, shmups, and other fast action games like that compared to consoles. Computer games were dominant among post-1984 crash Western game developers. There were a few console game publishers and developers in the West, but the vast majority of studios, and most of the best talent, worked on computer games. Only a very few of those computer games ever released on consoles. Meanwhile, in Japan computer games were a small market mostly dominated by a few genres like computer RPGs and visual novels. [Today the PC is in the best place it's been in a long time, but computer-focused games generally have smaller budgets than console ones.]
- Console Games - Console games during this period focused on faster action than computer games. Slower-paced games existed on consoles as well, of course, but they did not have instant advantages over computer games like the more action-focused games did. Faster-paced action and shooting games are far better on consoles, though, and it isn't close. The pre-crash console industry was huge both in the US and Japan, but after the crash the American console publisher and developer market mostly dissolved, leaving Japan dominant in the field. There were a few great Western console developers and publishers during this era, but it was a distinct few compared to the many on computers. [Today the console market has stalled in size of console install base, while development times and costs increase. Things look bad for the future.]
- Handheld Games - The handhelds of the '70s to '90s were often single-game electronic platforms, not actual full platforms. The first successful full platform handhelds released in 1989. After that, handhelds were basically the same as consoles, except portable. This market was a subset of the console market mostly dominated by easier or shorter-form games that work well in a portable setting. As with console games it was heavily dominated by Japanese studios. However, starting in the '00s this market would shrink, and that shrinkage would destroy it in the '10s. There are no actual dedicated handhelds, anymore, only dual-purpose machines such as the Switch or Steam Deck and the massive, but gameplay-vapid, world of cellphone games and their omnipresent gatcha mechanics and absence of gameplay worth caring about. Very sad stuff.
Something important to remember about the categories above is that before the 21st century, a lot of games stayed exclusive to their format. Computer games rarely were ported to consoles. It happened once in a while, but it was uncommon, only for the most popular games. Arcade games sometimes got home ports on computers or consoles, these ports were more common than PC to console ports or vice versa, but it was never a guarantee. Console games occasionally got computer ports, but it was quite infrequent, again mostly only for the most successful games. Now, up until the early to mid '90s many computer games got released on multiple different computer formats, it is true. Also, sometimes a successful console game would get ported to other consoles or would release on several systems at the same time. As an aside, this was much more common for Western console games than Japanese ones; if a Japanese game was multiplatform it was more likely to be a late port of a successful games to other formats, instead of releasing simultaneously for multiple systems as Western studios were more likely to do. But there are of course exceptions to this in both directions.
Today the console, arcade, and computer markets all still exist, though as I said dedicated handhelds are dead now in favor of the cellphone and dual-purpose console or PC machine markets instead. Cellphone games are a race to the bottom dominated by "games" that are effectively digital gambling. The arcade market is very small now, with arcade games being mostly smaller budget affairs this century, a far cry from the high-priced affairs of the '80s or '90s. The computer market has significantly recovered, but a lot of that is because of small indie developers who mostly make little to no money off of their games; most major studios remain focused on console games, or on games releasing on both PCs and consoles. And consoles, consoles are slipping now due to cost and time increases. The strains in the industry are showing.
The Eras of Gaming
Video game consoles can be broken up into generations. There are some controversies over the boundaries, but regardless of that, there have been nine console generations since the industry's founding in 1972. Ten, if you call the new Switch 2 a next-generation platform, but I don't think anyone would; it's just a late 9th generation one, I would say. Anyway, thinking about it, I think we can break gaming up into three or four eras, each separated by a transition.
The first era is the platforms of the 1960s to the early '80s, up to the crash of the American market in 1983 -- the 'Atari' era. This era set the four kinds of electronic gaming in stone, and we have seen variations on these four ever since; more on those soon. Following this was a transition, with the crash. The second era goes from 1985 to 1998, and covers the peak of the industry for people my age and a little younger -- the 'Nintendo' or 'PC golden age' era. These first two eras are different, but similar. Despite the shifts in platforms, I think that there is a clear continuity between them of game design styles. The real major break came around the turn of the millennium. Again there was continuity between the eras, but most of the industry today is much more like the industry of the early '00s than it is the industry of the late '90s; the differences are stark.
Anyway, following this was another transition, which I would say lasted from 1998 until the later '00s. It was probably long enough to call it an era of its own, the third era. This is the 'early modern' period, perhaps, of rising console dominance at the expense of other platforms. Following this, at some point in the mid or later '00s, the fourth, modern era began. This new way would dominate through the '10s. However, this decade, that era has begun to break down, as the same cost and time problems which ended the second era now are affecting the whole industry. And so, we probably are in a third transition now, but what the next era will be we do not know yet. Perhaps it is the resurgence of the PC as the dominant platform? Things may be trending that way, but it remains to be seen.
For the first two of those eras, in the last year before things started to turn, many of the best, most defining games of their era and style released. I do not think that has happened for the third era; perhaps development times are just too long now for one year to hold that many relevant releases.
The story of electronic gaming is one of constant change. Technology evolves rapidly, the number of transistors on a chip doubled every year for many decades as per 'Moore's Law', the guideline Intel tried to stick to, and electronic games react to that change by always having more power available than older platforms did. More power leads to more opportunities to do more with your game, but it also leads to more challenges, as game development takes longer over time and the number of people required to make a game increases steadily as well. Development of a 'AAA' game in the '70s took one or two people a few months. Today, a 'AAA' game costs hundreds of millions of dollars, as hundreds or thousands of people work for years, sometimes as long as a decade, on their game before it finally releases. Are these costs sustainable? Sometimes, sometimes not. Sometimes, adaptations happen and the industry continues to grow. Other times, costs go above revenues, and major change happens as a result.
Yes, sometimes storms brew in the game development mountains. We live in a capitalist society, and that is fine; I am no Communist, those kinds of societal controls do not work. Stifling human ingenuity and not rewarding greatness hurts society. However, our capitalist system does require something, and that is money. In order to fund the production of a game, a studio or their publisher need to put down a lot of money up front, hoping to make that money back on sales of the game later. Movie studios have similarly front-laden costs, which is why we ended up with so few major studios; companies need to be large in order to withstand the costs of a big project failing to make back the money spent on it.
In game development, during each era things seemed great for a while, only for the eventual correction to send some out of the industry. That happened in the first era up until the crash, as a huge number of American studios entered the industry in '81 and '82 only for most to shut down or move to computers just a few years later. After that, the second era, defined by Western computer games and Japanese console games, lasted up until 1998. Up to the late '90s, sales were always enough to keep this system working for all branches of gaming. But how long could the 'numbers always go up' system keep working? At what point would costs go above revenues, and something would need to drastically change in order for studios to survive, if they could at all?
Well, for computer gaming in North America, its first home region as this is where almost all platforms of the first era were created, that crossover point was reached in 1998. That year is when computer games started to descend off of that mountain, forever altering the industry. The decline would take five to ten years to bottom out, but once the decline began it would not be reversed for many years. As a result 1998 is the key year, the last days of PC gaming's golden age. Sure 1997 and 1999 also had fantastic libraries, but '97's best look up at '98, while in '99 you could start to see the changes in the industry as console games gained a larger place in Western game studios' libraries. PC Gamer (US) Magazine saw its thickest issues ever in late 1997, with only slight declines each of the next few years before it became very visibly thinner by 2001. This fits with '98 being the peak for releases, but not profits. PC-focused game development would be sustained much longer in Europe than the US, as fewer people there had consoles. Still, even there over time many studios would branch out into more console games.
And for arcade games, that descent off the mountain came just a year or two later. In America the peak of arcades was the early '80s, but the early '90s had a second peak. After that things slowly went downhill until in '99 or '00 all major players abandoned arcade game development. In Japan arcades lasted much longer due to the dense population, and indeed they still have a place there, but even there, over the course of the "early modern" period, arcades lost their place of dominance in the industry. By the mid '00s arcades were no longer a place for highly expensive experiences that would get ported to home platforms; instead those games started on consoles. After this arcades became something more familiar to what they are today, a place for crane games, arcade-only experiences like racing games with fancy seat setups, and the like.
Meanwhile, console games benefited from the decline of their competitors. Developers in other fields saw the higher sales of console games and said, we want in on that! And for a good fifteen years, despite some troubles, things for the industry overall were good... until the 2020s, when rising development times and costs led to new troubles for the industry. Today console install bases have flatlined, while costs continue going nowhere but up. This is clearly not a good trend line, and developers are coping by branching out and ending "buy my platform to play my games" exclusivity in favor of releasing PC versions of most games, Nintendo excepted. And this is why the PC is, as I said, today in the best place it's been in decades: it's an omnipresent platform that anyone either watching other people play games on the internet on platforms like Youtube or Twitch knows about. I think that there is still a place for consoles and I hope that they continue existing, but there is no denying the way things are going.
Change Happens, but What is Lost?
Now, you might be thinking, this has been a long article, but you've only infrequently been discussing your theoretical main subject, 1998! Well, I think that the full history of gaming is key to understanding why 1998 is so beloved. Without understanding the eras, that 1998 saw perhaps the most important dividing line in the industry's' history, I don't think people will properly understand why 1998 is remembered as it is.
I know I have said most of this already in this article, but I want to repeat myself because it is important. I mentioned capitalism earlier, and that games cost money to develop. This requires enough money coming in to keep making the games as they had been up to that point. Sales of each game needed to either be better than the sales of the last game, or prices had to go up. As Moore's Law progressed over time and chips got denser and denser in transistors development team sizes needed to increase steadily, and the length of time to make a game slowly went up from weeks to months to years. Thanks to this, every year games got more expensive to make than they were the previous year. This process has continued steadily from electronic gaming's founding to today.
Change happens steadily over time, with formats and eras overlapping; it is not like a prince like Alexander inheriting the throne and suddenly changing policies, but like a steady flow of change, like a river... but along that flow certain points stick out. In the late '90s, as I said, an era began to end. A very strong set of rapids hit the industry as costs got too high for game companies, and particularly Western computer game companies, to continue affording to make games as they had before. The solution was to go multiplatform, to stop making most games for computers only or console only but instead to make games for all formats. This new reality slowly phased in over about a decade, from the late '90s to late '00s, it was not immediate, and again it happened in the US first, and Europe later.
Once the transition was done, however, the PC market as we had known it was gone. I wrote a long forum thread in about 2010 mourning the death of PC gaming. I never posted it on my site, but I probably should for historical reasons. It's partially right and partially wrong but I think it is a look at an important moment in time. Fortunately, things would not stay down forever; PC gaming would be resurrected digitally some years later on a smaller, more boutique lower-budget scale, and that is fantastic, but a modern equivalent of the old heights may never be reached again.
The Peak Years
List wars are somewhat tricky because you can make a list of games from any year after the later '70s that contains many all-time greats. Even so, reminding people of the games that were released has at least some relevance, I think.
As I have said, I think electronic gaming can be separated into two to four major eras: 1960s to 1983, 1984 to 1998, 1998 to uh like 2009 or so, and 2010 to sometime in the 2020s. That fourth era is likely ending now but as it is current we don't know where the dividing line will fall. I would like to discuss each of the first two mountain-peak years here and look at which games made that year stand out so much and showed developers mastering the art of development for their era of gaming. For the two newer eras I am having a much harder time seeing one particular standout peak year, most of those kinds of games just aren't ones I know as much about outside of Nintendo and some PC games. I would like to have clear years here for each era but I just don't know, sorry.
1982
As I said, 1982 was the peak year because just after that the industry started to crash, but that year many all-time classics released. I am not going to get into the causes of the American market crash, that is beyond the scope of this article. In the US, arcades were the number one place for gaming. At home, the Atari 2600 was by far the lead gaming platform. That year two new consoles released, the Atari 5200 (a North America-exclusive machine) and Colecovision. The Colecovision would be particularly significant due to it inspiring Nintendo to enter the video game industry. Meanwhile, the rise of home computers was noticed by most everyone, and every console maker had plans to branch out into computer-console hybrids. One very noteworthy computer released as well, the Commodore 64, which was to sell many millions in the US and especially Europe.
In Japan, few people had a home console or computer yet, but arcades were very popular and they had a booming arcade game development industry. The next year would be when the first popular home consoles released in Japan, from Nintendo and Sega. Meanwhile in Europe consoles never were especially popular until the PlayStation 1, and Europe never had much of an arcade game development business based there though arcades with American and Japanese games did exist, but in '82 the rise of home computers in Europe started with the release of the ZX Spectrum. Cheaply made games for home microcomputers would dominate the European game development industry into the early '90s.
When I think of the top games of the pre-crash and crash era -- that is, 1972-1984, primarily -- for American games I think of, for arcade and console games, Pong, Combat, Breakout, Asteroids, Missile Command, Defender, Joust, Robotron 2084, Centipede, Pitfall, Ms. Pac-Man, and perhaps Tempest and Yar's Revenge. On the computer side, Zork I, Wizardry, Ultima, The Oregon Trail, Lode Runner, Rogue, Miner 2049er, and Adventure (Colossal Cave) are probably the key titles. For Japanese games, and these are all arcade games because Japan's console market didn't get started until after America's and few had a computer at home there then, Space Invaders, Space Panic, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong / Donkey Kong Jr., Galaxian / Galaga, and Xevious are probably the key titles.
As for Europe, its gaming market was slower to develop. By the late '70s there were a few European games, but Europe never really got much of an arcade game development scene, just home computer games. but I am not too well versed in older European games, almost none of them released here other than the one developer I need to mention, Jeff Minter. He released one of his most popular early titles in '82, Gridrunner (for A8, VIC-20, and Spectrum), and it did release in the US. His '83 game Hovver Bovver is also noteworthy. Otherwise, as I said, the ZX Spectrum and C64 both released in '82. One of the most popular early Spectrum games was '83's Manic Miner, a title inspired by Miner 2049er. I don't think any games for either one were nearly as noteworthy as the arcade and American computer games I've mentioned above, but a British person's input would be needed to get a better answer to that question.
Of those, which released in 1982? Combining regions, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong Jr., Yar's Revenge, Xevious, Wizardry II, Ultima II, Zork III, Pitfall, Millipede, Joust, Robotron 2084, Gridrunner, Miner 2049er, and more. Yeah, it's a very good lineup, a bunch of games that built on and improved on pre-existing formulas, before everything began to change -- you see this with the Pac-Man, Wizardry, Donkey Kong, Zork, and Ultima sequels. Meanwhile, Pitfall, Robotron 2084, and Xevious are games which would prove to be very important and influential, bringing new ideas that would be copied many times over the decades. Personally I don't like Xevious all that much but cannot deny its influence, all three are among their respective genres' most important early titles. Miner 2049er is somewhat forgotten today, but at the time had a massive impact. Pitfall is more famous today, but it's Miner 2049er that most of the major Western platformers of '83 would be inspired by -- Manic Miner, Jumpman, Lode Runner, and more all clearly are based off of this game. And last but not least, Yar's Revenge is one of the most popular games on that era's most successful gaming platform. 1982 is no match for 1998 but it is worth mentioning here for sure as the peak year of its era.
However, in the US in particular, that massive explosion of game releases was a problem. Yes, many interesting games were releasing, but so were many uninteresting ones. 1982 is the year when the total number of games releasing absolutely exploded into an unsustainable bubble. At this point there was no way for a hardware maker to make money off of third party game sales, and all games had to be released physically in a box, so the ensuing glut of forgettable, very low-budget shovelware games was not just slop you can ignore on the Steam storefront page, but an increasingly large number of boxes sitting on store shelves and not selling. Within a year this would help take down the industry here.
As I said previously, Japanese console games and American (and sometimes European) computer games would fill in the void. But let us skip to the next peak year before an era ended, 1998.
The Gaming World of 1998 - Platforms and Hardware
Obviously, the most important thing for the future is, what games released in a year? The events that happened that year also matter, but when looking back it is the lasting products that matter the most. But regardless, I probably should discuss the events of the year first, for any who do not know them.
In 1998, arcades, consoles, computers, and handhelds were all popular. Cellphone games were not a thing yet, thankfully. Some people still played on older consoles, but many were switching over to the current generation by this point. The lead console was the Sony PlayStation. It had released in 1994 in Japan and '95 in the West, and despite low expectations from a lot of people used to big electronics companies flopping in gaming, the system took off and would end up dominating the industry. Decisions previous leaders Sega and Nintendo made helped make Sony's victory easier, but Sony also made some good choices, most notably in the PS1 (also known as the PSX)'s easy development compared to its peers and powerful and yet affordable to manufacture hardware. Sony also focused on the European market in a way nobody had done before, exploding that market's sales from maybe 8 or 9 million combined SNES and Genesis systems to over 40 million PS1s.
The second place console was the powerful Nintendo 64, the fastest console of its generation, which did well in the US, selling a similar number of consoles to the SNES in North America, over 20 million. The N64 was one of several consoles released over the years which sold about two thirds of their worldwide sales total in North America. The Sega Genesis the previous generation is another. By '98 it was clear that the N64 wasn't going to match the Playstation in sales, but it was selling well enough in the US to get strong software support from developers wanting to make games for the most powerful console hardware.
And in third place, Sega's Saturn was in its death throes. Sega of America CEO Bernie Stolar had essentially killed his own console back in early to mid '97, and while the Saturn had some of its best games release in 1998 as the system faded out, the games either didn't release in the US or released in minimal quantities. It's very sad stuff. Remember, there was no digital distribution back then on consoles. Games could only sell what was produced. At the end of the year, in Japan Sega released their new console, the Dreamcast. However, the company was running low on money and produced very few systems early on. It wasn't until September 1999 that they had enough produced to release it in the West. The Dreamcast is impressive, but would end up having as short a lifespan as the Saturn due to Sega running low on money.
In the handheld side, Nintendo was absolutely dominant. The massive hit game Pokemon had revitalized the handheld market, first in Japan then in '98 in the US as well, and Europe was soon to see the same. Nintendo didn't have much competition, either. Sega had given up on handhelds back in '97, and while Bandai and SNK were developing new handhelds -- SNK's first would release in Japan in late '98, and Bandai's in early '99 -- neither one was much of a threat to Nintendo's dominance. Nintendo released a new handheld in '98, finally, the Game Boy Color. More on that later.
On the PC side, the PC, with Windows as its operating system and Intel or Intel-compatible x86 processors as its CPUs, had finally become the primary computer platform worldwide in the mid '90s. In the US the PC became the lead platform back in the mid '80s, but it wasn't until the mid '90s that Japan and Europe finally went to Wintel instead of their previous preferred platforms like the Amiga (it's actually American, I know), NEC PC-98, or ZX Spectrum. PCs had fast CPUs which could be measured in hundreds of megahertz, hard drives large enough to install plenty of games to, and more. And with the explosion of the 3d accelerator card market in 1996 and later, PCs had graphics better than any console, if you had the cash to buy a good new 3d graphics card for your PC. Yes, computers were expensive, but prices had come down significantly over the course of the decade and many people who could not have afforded a computer back at the beginning of the '90s now found machines available for low enough prices that people in lower income brackets were getting modern PCs in the later '90s. However, game sales weren't increasing by as much as development costs were and most PC games sold much less than console games did, so despite the massive increase in hardware sales, the PC game industry was in trouble.
As for Apple, the company had been in bad shape through most of the '90s. The problems had gotten worse and worse, but 1998 began their turnaround with the release of the iMac computer. These cute-looking computers proved very popular, and Apple was saved to go on to release the iPhone and be the incredibly wealthy corporation they are now. However, while very popular, the iMac isn't much of a gaming machine. There were some games on Mac, but not many. I won't be mentioning here which games of '98 have Mac versions, sorry classic Mac fans. I'll just say that Starcraft did get a Mac release later in '98, so at least there's that! Blizzard supported the Mac better than most.
In the arcades, arcades were still reasonably popular across all regions. The industry had signs of trouble, particularly in the US, but for the moment arcade games were still releasing regularly. So, those games. What were some of the key games that make this year stand out over any others?
1998's Best Games
It is hard to even know where to begin for 1998. I have a long list of games written, but that won't fit here; the list will have its own article, coming soon. The best place to start, though, is at the top. Here are the top highlights of 1998's game library:- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) - The most popular 'best game ever' on most lists, Nintendo's all-time action-adventure classic is my favorite console game ever as well. It is an incomparable masterpiece which defined 3d game combat with its lock-on mechanic and has some of the best dungeon and puzzle design of any game, and defined how to do combat targeting in a 3d game, also. The story is decent, too. This game deservedly has its place as the game with the highest review average ever. If you look up the list Game of the Year award winners from '98, almost every console award that wasn't for a Sony-only publication went to Ocarina of Time.
- Starcraft: Brood War (PC) - My favorite game ever, Blizzard's real-time strategy game Starcraft is an exceptionally brilliant game that I still play regularly online. Am I any good? No. But I play anyway because it is amazing. Starcraft is one of the most challenging competitive games ever designed, but it is that near-infinite skill ceiling that is part of what makes it so brilliant. The very well done balance that keeps the game vaguely fair despite no balance patches since 2001 is also genius. Starcraft is still without question the greatest thing ever produced in the history of gaming, and it isn't close. In gameplay, control, design, story, visuals, music, and everything else, Starcraft is the greatest. If we were sending something out into space to show other civilizations our greatest achievements, the one I would pick for electronic gaming is Starcraft.
- Half-Life (PC) - Valve's first game was the first title PC Gamer US ever gave a 98% score to. Its success would set its developer up for success, as Valve would later set up what became PC gaming's primary digital marketplace, Steam. The game itself is a pretty fantastic FPS loaded with interesting set-pieces and in-game scripted sequences. The only real thing holding Half-Life back is that its sequel often gets mentioned in 'best games ever' lists instead of the first one. After all many lists like to only list one game per series, at least per era, and the second Half-Life ususally gets the edge over the first, even though they scored equally high and the first probably won more awards -- almost all major PC publications gave Half-Life their Game of the Year awards. I can only think of one major exception to that. The first Half-Life is still a very noteworthy and well made game. Half-Life isn't a game I personally have as much of an attachment to as the two games above, but I certainly recognize its impact and like the game.
- The First US Releases of These Incredibly Important Titles Released in Japan or Europe in 1996 or 1997 Happened in 1998 Here: Pokemon Red & Blue (GB), Grand Theft Auto (PC/PS1), Gran Turismo (PS1). Pokemon's influence particularly is incredibly massive and ongoing. It is 1998 when Pokemania hit the world, dramatically changing gaming forever. Gran Turismo and GTA are also, obviously, extremely significant releases which would have major industry impact. GTA and its single open world would eventually change gaming once it went fully 3d, and Gran Turismo is Sony's longest-lasting and most successful franchise and by far the most successful realistic racing franchise ever.
Other Peak Games
- Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn) - This Japanese RPG from Sega is short, but in its length it is so interesting and unique that those who have played it still regard it as one of gaming's greatest masterpieces. It is a highly cinematic work with a tragic but compelling story and interesting gameplay. The soundtrack is, typically for a Panzer Dragoon game, one of gaming's best, and the art design is exceptional. The story of the games' creation is also tragic, as the developer Team Andromeda overworked themselves for years to complete the game. At least one person died before it released. What they made, though, is an all-timer for the few who can afford to play it.
- Radiant Silvergun (Arcade/Saturn) (Japan-only release) - This shmup (shoot 'em up) is many peoples' pick for the best game ever in its genre. I prefer its Dreamcast sequel Ikaruga, myself, but RS's influence cannot be denied. The graphics, gameplay, music, and controls are all masterfully done and brilliant; this game is legendary for good reasons. The game has a somewhat high learning curve due to having 6 weapons each mapped to a different button, but it's probably worth learning. The game centers around bossfights; it is not entirely a boss rush, but they are a lot of the game. Every one is unique and interesting.
- Falcon 4.0 (PC) - This flight combat simulation from Microprose is an uncompromising game which tries to be a realistic depiction of the F-16, and succeeds at that about as closely as a computer game could. The game came in a binder full of 700 pages of information about how to operate the plane. There is no HUD other than what there would be in the real plane, and everything works as close to real as is possible. No game since has matched its vision and uncompromising attention to realistic detail. Flight simulators after this would not be made with this kind of budget. There are modern updates from the community for this game. The latest version is Falcon 4.38 BMS. BMS is almost certainly the most realistic flight simulation on the market, certainly for the F-16 but probably generally. Genre leader DCS is also complex but not quite as much as Falcon BMS. The graphics are pretty nice too, though of course they don't compare to a modern game like DCS or Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
- Grand Prix Legends (PC) - The racing game counterpart to the above game, sort of, Sierra and Papyrus's masterpiece GP Legends is an extremely realistic take on the 1966 Formula One season, with physics and design as accurate to the real thing as is possible. There is no HUD here, and no voice over a radio. It's just you and the car, and a little board held out as you go through each lap telling you how many laps remain and how far ahead and behind the closest racers are. No game since matches its ambition and scope compared to the budgets of the time; generally even racing simulators want people to actually be able to easily enjoy the game. Papyrus wasn't trying to do that here, they were trying for realism. They succeeded. Can you drive in a straight line and not crash? This game also has modern updates which make it look amazing.
- Banjo-Kazooie (N64) - Rare's first 3d platformer was a very important one for the genre. This game would help define what 3d platformers would become: not just platforming-focused games where you do one objective at a time as you do in Mario 64, but collectathons about finding a whole lot of different things in large open spaces. BK is a fantastic game, though it's not my personal favorite Rare 3d platformer, and its influence and quality cannot be denied.
- Grim Fandango (PC) - This adventure game is widely regarded, including by me, as being the greatest adventure game ever made. The Mexican Day of the Dead theme is really interesting and unique, and the story and puzzles are second to none. If it seemed like adventure games couldn't get better after this... well, they couldn't. The genre faded in popularity significantly almost immediately afterwards.
- Baldur's Gate (PC) - BioWare's RPG classic would define the PC RPG to me and many other people. This depiction of 2nd edition AD&D rules, adapted into a pausable real-time engine, was done so brilliantly that I'd argue that it still is the best RPG game engine ever designed. The story is fine enough, but it's the gameplay and strategic combat that really carry this game to the top. Fortunately I care more about gameplay than story.
- Thief: The Dark Project (PC) - The first true stealth simulator, this first-person masterpiece essentially invented the stealth game as we know it. 1998 is the key year in the stealth genre's evolution, thanks to Thief, MGS, and Tenchu, but of the three Thief is the most important by far thanks to its highly interesting design. You will need to watch guard patterns and your sound as you try to get your prizes.
- Metal Gear Solid (PS1, later PC) - Hideo Kojima's ultra-popular cinematic action game would become one of gaming's most popular series for a while. I don't like this game at all but have to admit its massive success and popularity.
Selected Other Noteworthy Console Games: Spyro the Dragon (PS1), Crash Bandicoot: Warped (PS1), Wario Land 2 (GB), Super Tempo (SAT) (J), Stellar Assault SS (SAT), Colony Wars: Vengeance (PS1), R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (PS1), Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (PC/N64), Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA (N64), R-Type Delta (PS1), Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (PS1), Resident Evil 2 (PS1), Sonic Adventure (DC) (JP release), Burning Rangers (SAT), The Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (PC/PS1), Moto Racer 2 (PC/PS1), Rockman & Forte (SNES) (JP release), Turok 2 (N64/PC), etc, etc
Selected PC Games: Unreal, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Worms 2, Quest for Glory V, The Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (PC/PS1), Moto Racer 2 (PC/PS1), Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (PC/N64), Motocross Madness, Vangers, Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Expansion Pack), Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, Starsiege: Tribes, Descent: FreeSpace, etc, etc
Key Arcade Games from 1998: Radiant Silvergun, The Last Blade 2, Metal Slug 2, The King of Fighters '98, Daytona USA 2: Battle on the Edge, Sega Rally 2, ESP.Ra-De, Blazing Star, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Marvel vs. Capcom, Armed Police Batrider, The House of the Dead 2, Gauntlet Legends, Dance Dance Revolution, etc.
Here's a fun challenge: make a top 5 in some genre. Make it all games from 1998. How many games into the list can you get before someone reading the list, without the years mentioned, would realize what you are doing? I think it's often quite far. I will have genre lists, with thoughts about many of the games, in the next article. There will be some overlap from this article but that's okay, I'm sure some people will read only one or the other.
Gaming Hardware of 1998
(Why do I have both this section and the above hardware and current platforms section? I don't know. First I wrote this one a few days ago, then I wrote that one above later, then I kept both. I think the current platforms section was a good addition, and this has some things that one does not, so both have a function, but I know they overlap. Sorry about that.)
In hardware, 1998 was a pretty great, and significant, year. I mentioned most of these earlier, but here are going to focus on the gaming hardware only. On the PC side, while the consumer had many options for 3d graphics cards, most of them at least partially incompatible, 3dfx was the best one by far, and they had an amazing new card this year. The 3dfx Voodoo2 graphics card released in '98. While the original Voodoo from several years earlier is probably the most important graphics card release ever, the Voodoo2 was a hugely big deal. In retrospect, it was all downhill for 3dfx after this, as NVidia's 6-month graphics card cycle would bury 3dfx and their one year or more per card cycle. '99's Voodoo3 was a good card, but later that same year NVidia released the GeForce 256 and just kept going from there, and combined with other 3dfx mistakes they were done. It's such a shame, because 3dfx cards were special! The Voodoo2, particularly, was an unbelievable thing. It was a massive upgrade over any consumer 3d graphics card available before and was significantly more powerful than any console of the day. I got a Voodoo2 in late '98 and absolutely loved it. I will never love an NVidia card like I did that Voodoo.
Also, this is technically software, but Windows 98 released this year. This evolution of Windows 95 significantly improved a lot of things and made development easier. Most probably would still pick it as their favorite of the three Win9x releases. This is relevant for gaming because a great many games eventually moved to supporting not Win9x in general, but Win98 or above only.
On the console side, three new platforms released and one accessory, though two only released in Japan at this point. First, the addon. The Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak released late in 1998, supported by a handful of games such as Star Wars Rogue Squadron and Turok 2. This 4MB RAMBUS RAM upgrade doubles the system memory in the console, allowing games to store a lot more data than they could before. It allowed for higher resolutions or areas denser with things going on. Only a few games require the Expansion Pak, but a good number support it.
The next few platforms are handhelds. In the fall, the Game Boy Color released nationwide. This release, shortly following on Pokemon's North American release a few months earlier, absolutely exploded in sales due to the phenomenon that was Pokemon. Sure, Pokemon was not a color game and ran just fine on an original Game Boy, but the GBC was cheap and millions of kids wanted Pokemon, and many of them got a GBC to play it on. I had little interest in Pokemon myself, but did get a GBC for Christmas along with one game, Pocket Bomberman. The GBC is underpowered, being basically an original Game Boy with twice the clock speed, but it's got a very high quality game library. The GBC would have a short 2 1/2 year primary life, but still it got a lot of impressive games while it lasted.
The other two systems only released in Japan, both late in the year: the Sega Dreamcast and SNK Neo-Geo Pocket. The latter never released outside of Japan, as less than six months later SNK upgraded it to the Neo-Geo Pocket Color; that colorized model is the one released internationally. The NGPC is in many ways the best handheld of its era, with the best-feeling buttons and best action and fighting games of any handheld of that time or before. The original NGP is similar to the color model, but doesn't have, well, color, or compatibility with a lot of the later titles. I don't have a NGP because there is little reason to get one for anyone who has a NGPC, but still, SNK's entry into the handheld market may have been doomed but it was fun while it lasted. The few B&W-only games play just as well as the color ones, and many games are also B&W compatible along with Color.
And last but definitely not least, Sega released their last console, the Dreamcast, in November. There is a lot in common between the NGP/C and DC, as both were released by struggling companies on their last legs, had amazing games release for them, then died tragically young, leaving fans remembering them and wishing for more ever since. The Dreamcast didn't release internationally until September 1999, and the initial Japanese launch was of far too few systems to meet demand, but for those few people who got one, they saw the future: one of the most beautiful hardware designs ever; 480p progressive scan video output, the first time a console could output a signal above the resolution that a standard definition television can display; online connectivity, later on, once the modem (it was not packed in in Japan at first, unlike the West) and online games released; top tier graphics close to on par with what the Voodoo2 could do though at lower maximum resolutions than it could output; and, available in late 1998, Sonic the Hedgehog's noteworthy return in his classic Sonic Adventure. Sonic Adventure's level design would set the tone for the rest of the Sonic series going forward and is a pretty important moment in 3d platforming. The Dreamcast is fascinating because it both the beginning and the end. It is the very last console designed with accurate ports of arcade games being central to its design ethos. It is the last console where those arcade ports were significantly important. But at the same time, as I said above, it was the first console of a new generation, and brought new advances in graphical output and online connectivity. I don't know if there is any other console that so perfectly captures the ethoses of two different eras of gaming at the same time.
Gaming Weak Points for 1998
However, no year is perfect. 1998 saw the beginning of the end for the golden era of PC gaming, as budgets got too high for sales, and it also didn't see games in some quite major genres. Here's a list:
RPG (MMORPG) - All this genre really had was the first Unreal Online expansion pack. UO was '97 and Everquest '99. Online RPGs would be the top PC genre of the next decade, but in '98 with only UO and Meridian59 out there for graphical MMORPGs, the genre was still waiting for its big breakout moment. I would probably put that moment in '99 with EverQuest, so during the later part of the PC's peak, '99-'00, people could see what the new thing was and began moving over to a focus on it if they wanted to continue working on the PC. But in '98, text-based MUDs were mostly outdated, but the 3d, third-person MMO was still largely a thing of the future, with only Meridian59 representing the field.
Simulation (Mech) - There wasn't a mech sim game this year, surprisingly. Not any at all that I can find. There were some pretty good real-world tank sims such as M1 Tank Platoon II and iM1A2 Abrams, and some good mech games in other genres, though, such as the strategy games MechCommander and Cyberstorm 2 and the action game Future Cop L.A.P.D.. Oddly there were no mech sims releasing in '98 in Japan either; Armored Core is another one of those series that bookended '98, with releases in '97 and '00, and there weren't any others either.
Open World Games - For what we know as open-world games, there isn't much for this genre other than that US release of late '97's European game Grand Theft Auto. However there were some games with large worlds. The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (N64) and Might & Magic VI Mandate of Heaven (PC) particularly stand out, along with The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard (PC), which has a small world for a Elder Scrolls game but still there's a sizable area to explore in a single large map. Also, Jurassic Park: Trespasser (PC) does not have an open world, just large levels, but its exploration of physics-based gameplay would be incredibly important for the genre's development. The driving-combat games Vangers and Body Harvest similarly have large open maps for you to explore and fight things in, but not one single world, it's broken up into separate maps. It's the same with the racing game Motocross Madness. So yeah, open-world RPG, yes, but open-world action or driving game, not quite yet.
4X Grand Strategy - Perhaps this genre shouldn't be on this list, because there were two somewhat noteworthy 4X games released in 1998. However, both are somewhat niche titles that general audiences, even general audiences of people who like 4X games, mostly rejected. Those games are Deadlock II: Shrine Wars and Star Wars: Rebellion. The only other 4X game was a niche little Europe-only title called Galax Empires. Deadlock and Rebellion are both very dense, menu-heavy titles. The main focus of both titles is on managing numerous systems, mostly controlled with menus. 4X games can be dense, but these aren't economics-systems-heavy Eurogames, or approachable Civilization-style games, they are more for people who want that kind of menu-heavy game. For the people who like that, '98 is a decent year for 4X. But for people wanting the greatest of 4X games, they'd have to wait a few months until early '99's Alpha Centauri, or continue playing older classics like Master of Orion II or Civilization II. The rise of dense, systems and menu-heavy strategy games that managed to succeed at interesting the kind of audience that Rebellion mostly failed to get to really happened in 2000, when the European studio Paradox released its first game, Europa Universalis. Paradox still dominates that subgenre today. If you look online though you will find a few Rebellion fans out there.
4th Generation TV Console Games - I say TV because the Game Boy had a good year, but in North America, Super Nintendo (SNES) and Sega Genesis were on their last legs and the TurboGrafx CD was long dead. Both SNES and Genesis saw their last American release in 1998... Frogger. A straight port of the then over 15 year old arcade game. And that's it for the year. Uh, yeah. It is fine but not exactly a thrilling end to either one of those amazing consoles. In Japan the Genesis (Megadrive) was long dead and the PC Engine CD (TurboGrafx CD) nearly gone, but the SNES (Super Famicom) was still alive, and with some quality game releases too -- Super Famicom Wars, Rockman & Forte, Wrecking Crew '98, and a few more. Also, Kirby Star Stacker's SNES version released this year, albeit as a download service-only release; the physical cartridge version released in '99. But even there, looking at those games, while it is fun, Rockman & Forte is probably the weakest of the five SNES Mega Man platformers. Wrecking Crew '98 might actually be the best 4th-gen game of the year, it's a decent puzzle-platformer. If it's not that it'd be Kirby Star Stacker, a nice SNES edition of the Game Boy puzzler. It's a really fun but easy game, a good intro to block-dropping puzzle games. However, most would rather have the 1999 cart release than a Nintendo Power (JP download service) flash-cart version. Super Famicom Wars is fine but nowhere near Advance Wars' greatness, and the other games of '98 were few and far between. The thin libraries here make sense given that it's at the very end of the lives of all systems of the generation, but 1998 has a weaker 4th gen TV console lineup than any year since the generation started.
What Happened Next?
For the next two years after '98, things were still pretty good for American PC game releases. A lot of amazing PC games released in '99 and '00. After that, however, the number per year dropped off significantly, as the market cooled and increasing numbers of developers moved over to focusing on console games each year. '98 is the consensus greatest year, but '99 and '00 were also pretty great. Personally I would probably put them below '96 and '97, and maybe also '95, but that whole period was the peak of the American PC game business. All of those years are great, and the '00s still had the occasional great game releasing, particularly if you liked FPSes or MMOs. On the arcade side, the decline was more rapid; after '00 American arcades crashed hard. In other regions arcades lasted longer, of course, but even in Japan by '02 you see fewer significant arcade games.
However, in 1999 there were some important signs of the coming changes. First, Sierra, one of the largest and most important PC studios of the '80s and '90s, collapsed, and most staff were fired in February '99. Sierra had been in decline for several years, due to external and internal reasons, but for their staff the end came that February. At the corporate level, a major cause of this was their new owner (as of 1996), CUC/Cendant. First, divisions in the merged company led to both Davidson and Sierra's founders leaving. When comparing the two studios, though, Blizzard was lean, together, with it, making games people wanted to buy, and organized, while Sierra was large, disorganized, and struggling to come up with software the market still wanted. Then, worse, it was revealed that Cendant was involved with a major financial scam, and invented hundreds of millions of dollars of "revenues". This scandal broke in mid '98, significantly damaging the company and eventually leading to several people serving over a decade in prison. As a side effect of the financial scam being revealed, Centant sold off its gaming division in November '98 to French company Havas (Vivendi) for a billion dollars, half that what it had paid for the two companies just a few years earlier. Havas took the axe to Sierra just months later, while Blizzard was unaffected as they continued to work on their still years-away Warcraft projects. Why? Blizzard was more profitable and organized, Sierra wasn't. In 2000, Sierra and fellow adventure game company Lucasarts both released their last adventure games ever. After that both abandoned that genre. PC adventure games mostly stopped being made in the US after that, moving over to Europe as I said previously. Sources: For more on the tragic collapse of Sierra, see https://www.vice.com/en/article/inside-s...ant-fraud/ and https://www.filfre.net/2025/04/the-end-o...e-scandal/.
Second, later in '99, Williams Electronics left the arcade business by shutting down their pinball division. Chicago-based Williams had been the number one name in pinball for decades, so this was a significant move showing the rapid decline of the American arcade business. Williams would switch over to a focus entirely on casino gambling machines, a business where their successor company is still successful. In June 2001, Midway Games, the largest American arcade game publisher and a company closely tied to Williams for a long time, followed Williams out of the arcade business. After that, all that was left for American arcade companies were some smaller ones such as Stern for pinball and Raw Thrills for arcade games, a company set up in the early '00s by former Midway staff. Midway would last another decade, but eventually it would go bankrupt in 2010, the company declining from being a top five third party to bankrupt over that time due to being unable to manage the transition from arcade-focused studio to home console studio well enough. Midway's remains would be bought by Warner Bros., and its only surviving studio is the one that makes the Mortal Kombat games, now home console exclusives.
And third, in 2001, Microsoft, the company that makes the operating systems PCs run on and a significant publisher of PC games between 1995 and 2000, released their first videogame console, the Xbox, and shifted over their primary development focus over to console games. You might think that they would have released everything also on PC, but for a long time they did not. Instead they only focused strongly on Xbox, with PC as an afterthought for a long time. And they pushed other developers to follow them and release their games on Xbox, and other consoles, as well. American developers responded both to Microsoft and to the market forces pushing consoles over PCs, that despite the PC's huge install base console games sold better than PC games did due to everyone who bought a console being a gamer, and American games became much more console-focused. The genre that remaining PC developers focused on were primarily massively-multiplayer online RPGs. MMOs remained a key genre for developers, the genre was almost entirely focused on the PC, and many American studios worked on them. The genre would fade as all do, but it remains a significant genre today.
First-person shooters of course were also hugely popular, but unlike MMOs they would not stay PC-dominant. Some shooters released on both PC and console and others consoles only, with only a few staying focused on the PC, such as ARMA. Over the course of the '00s,the change in platform led to changes in game design as well. Compare the first Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six to Rainbow Six: Vegas for a good example of this; the first was PC-first with the console ports as an afterthought, the other the other way around, and it showed both times. FPSes went towards more streamlined, linear designs with a lot of cinematic moments, less exploration, fewer key or switch hunts, and only letting the player hold a very limited numbers of weapons at a time. Level design-wise this was perhaps happening anyway -- Half-Life, the FPS genre's biggest hit of '98 by far, shows a move towards this direction, as opposed to the huge, exploration-based levels of many earlier shooters -- but the change accelerated on consoles. The change in weapons was caused by the success of 2001's Xbox hit Halo and its two weapons at a time limit. I have never liked that system myself, but it was the way the genre went.
Meanwhile, in Japan, Sega left the console market in 2002 thanks to the failure of every platform they had released since their hit system the Genesis and their own poor financial management. Sony and Nintendo continued on, with Sony in a dominant position due to convincing many developers to move over to its platform in the mid '90s away from Nintendo, either because of lower development and game production charges, because studios wanted the larger space of a CD while Nintendo went with smaller cartridges, or because of Sony paying certain developers to not release Sega versions of some games. Sega was a smaller company than its competitors, though, so the end result was probably sadly inevitable all along regardless of the details along the way. Sega leaving home consoles was another change that happened during the early modern era.
As for Sony, they did one important thing for the industry. Sony won the home console race particularly thanks to their success at finally figuring out how to succeed in the previously smallish European console market. The Sony PlayStation probably sold more than all consoles had in that region in the previous few generations all combined. Europe would remain Sony-dominant to this day on the console front. As far as game development goes Europe finally entering the console market in a big way would have a delayed impact, as European studios continued being more focused on PC games than console ones through the '00s and to some extent still are today, but it is a very important event.
As for Nintendo, they would go up and down over the years, down in the early '00s, then up significantly, then down, then up again. Currently, they are doing quite well. Nintendo and Sony are both profitable companies today, somewhat at the expense of Microsoft's fading console hopes, but Sony is doing that while making more of their games also on PC and in a few cases even Xbox in order to boost revenues, while Nintendo is sticking to true exclusivity to only their own consoles. For the two main console makers the main problem with the console business today isn't revenues, it is that the install base has stalled and is not increasing, while development costs go up every year and development time continues to increase. For third place Microsoft it is revenues, as the Xbox business has never been profitable.
The Industry Today: Is There a Modern 1982 or 1998?
The higher sales of console games allowed the industry to succeed with a console focus for the '00s and '10s, but as mentioned, now, in the 2020s, we are seeing costs get too high for console game development as well. On consoles I would say that it is this current decade where the late '90s to late '00s PC game crisis is now hitting all of gaming: costs are too high. Development times are too long. The size of the console market is no longer expanding, it is static. With a static userbase and ever-increasing costs, the problems for publishers are escalating, and probably will eventually become impossible. I don't know what the end result of this will be, but I think most will agree that it is happening. Here is an example of a recent article about the gaming industry's troubles: https://www.wired.com/story/2024-was-the...-industry/
Is there a modern peak year, the analog of 1998 or for the pre-crash era probably 1982, a year where we see the conclusion of a process of refinement lead to a year loaded with all-time-great hits that show both why their era was so amazing and what knowledgeable developers could do with that technology? If there is I'm not sure what it is, offhand; games take so long to develop now that I'm not sure that one single year could possibly hold so many key titles as it used to. Regardless of that, the cost inflection point either has already been passed again, or will be soon. We cannot simultaneously have a situation where hardware sales are flat and costs are increasing, that is not tenable. And yet, that is the industry today. Who knows, maybe Playstation/Nintendo/PC will be enough to keep the AAA(A) industry going, even if Xbox declines. We will see.
I would like to try to answer the question on if there is a modern peak year before decline set in, but I'm just not sure. Have we seen this peak yet, or is it still to come? I think someone who likes the early modern and modern eras more than me would need to say; I checked out on modern gaming for about a dozen years between 2005 and 2017 thanks to how little interest I had in most modern games over that era, before being brought back in by mostly endless online games like Starcraft Remastered, Overwatch, and Super Mario Maker. Anyway, it probably is more likely that we are now in the decline and that the peak has already been passed, in terms of business. In terms of game release quality, though... for that I just don't know. My favorite modern games are all from different years, there isn't one clear dominant one -- GeoGuessr, Super Mario Maker 1, and Splatoon are from 2015, Starcraft Remastered and Overwatch from 2017, Super Mario Maker 2 and Dead or Alive 6 from 2019, Diablo IV from 2023, Mario Kart World from 2025... and as for gaming outside of my prime interests, I haven't done the research yet to say. I think the answer would be that finding a single year with as many top tier hits as '82 or '98 in the modern day would be impossible because given how long game development cycles are and with how successful games often run endlessly with new content additions being released for the same base game, finding a single year with a clear best library is not likely. Huge numbers of games release every year, but the most significant ones don't all release in the same year.
But regardless of that, the sheer number of articles you can easily find about the industry's decline, such as the one I linked earlier -- on how the industry as a whole shrank in '24 for the first time in a very long time, on how the number of developers being fired -- over 10,000 a year in each of the last few years -- or studios shut down is increasing, on how exploitative monetization practices are only increasing ever more year on year, and more -- are all over the place for a reason: things are not healthy in video game land.
How Will 1998's Memory Last?
Memory is a tricky thing; what things are remembered, and which are not, is hard to predict. Some things are rapidly forgotten. Some last while the people involved are alive, but fade afterwards. And some, particularly ones important to a nation or religious group, endure in memory for centuries or millennia. Right now, 1998 is remembered the strongest by those of us old enough to have been playing games then. It is somewhat remembered by younger people, but not nearly as much, and mostly only for its top most popular games like Ocarina of Time.
For example, to focus on the thing that has been lost that is closest to me from my younger years, PC gaming as it was before the early '00s collapse, look at this, PC Gamer's latest, 2025 list of their current staff's 100 favorite PC games: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-top-10...ames-2025/ I will post the full list of all the games by the year they were created in the second article; it just doesn't fit well in this one. I recommend skimming through their article regardless, it's interesting to look at. Only one game on the list is from before 1998, 1993's Doom. PC Gamer US did choose Doom as the best game ever in their very first list back in 1994. I believe that TIE Fighter CD won the 1997 list, though, if I remember right. I know Doom finished second that year. Somehow TIE Fighter doesn't make this list at all, and almost no older PC games do; only one flight game does, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997 somehow all have zero games on this list each despite being the peak of PC gaming's golden era.
Instead, next is 1998's Thief: The Dark Project. It's an interesting and understandable inclusion, as the game is the origin of the stealth genre as a serious enterprise. Multiple newer stealth games make the list and Thief is where realistic stealth games started. None of 1998's other top hits make the list though, shamefully. This is a significant mistake. From 1999 appear three games, Planescape: Torment, Alpha Centauri, and listed as its 2025 remaster System Shock 2. I entirely agree with all three of these, they are all-time greats. 2000 gets three games also: Deus Ex, Diablo II (Remastered), and Baldur's Gate II (Remastered). All have modern updates, but the originals are pretty similar. Again all three of these are richly deserved. I don't like this list much, but I do agree that including Diablo II is the right representative of its genre. I like and play Diablo IV, but II is better. And with 2000 you reach the end of the time of the PC being on the mountain; it had started falling down the cliff at increasing speed after that, with only MMOs and European studios surviving.
And you see this decline reflected on the list. Somehow they still have games listed for almost every year after '00, unlike the better years of the '90s, probably exclusively because of recency bias, but you can see the decline of PC gaming in the '00s on that list. The list goes from 3 games a year in both '99 and '00 to just one or zero every year from '01 to '10, other than '04, when three games make the list (one of those a console port), and '06, when it's two freeware titles/mods representing the year. After that things slowly start getting back to a better state thanks to the growth and development of Steam, as much as anything, along with slowly increasing levels of developer interest as console audience sizes stall out, and the number of titles increases.
There are several notable things about PCG's article. First, it is very heavily modern game-centric, far beyond any sense in my opinion. I strongly disagree with the overall 'the last ten years are where most of the best PC games released' take of those who made that list. I also strongly disagree with the genre variety, which is very heavy on console games and RPGs and very light on the other genres traditionally strong on the PC -- simulators, turn-based, realtime, or wargame strategy games, first person shooters, graphic adventure games, and such. A PC gaming top 100 list which contains Final Fantasy X but not even one single real-time strategy game or even MOBA is kind of a joke of a list, I'm sorry. Yes, other kinds of strategy games are on the list, but still, it's inexcusable. Genres like those mostly appear on the list very sparsely, and wargames are entirely excluded. Most of the classic hits in those genres are left off entirely. I think that proves this point: things change. Tastes change. The memory of 1998 will last, but it will fade over time to being 'that year of the peak games of its time, a style of game the average gamer today is mostly not interested in revisiting'.
It's sad to say this but, don't we already see this happening with things like that PC Gamer list? Yes, some games of 1998 have dedicated fanbases, and not entirely of people old enough to remember the original releases; plenty of people playing Falcon 4.38 BMS or Starcraft Remastered, to name a few, weren't born yet in 1998. But a dedicated small fanbase is a different from general market recognition. You see this perhaps the most strongly in the wargame genre. Wargames are usually turn-based military strategy simulations. They vary in complexity from approachable to very complicated. The genre faded in importance around the turn of the century, but unlike flight or racing simulators, because they can be easily done with simple graphics, wargames did not retreat to just a couple of titles. The wargame genre has been active all along, releasing new games every year. If you look up a modern 'best wargames' list, most of the games are modern titles that nobody outside of that niche have heard of. The genre just gets much less attention than it used to since it is no longer one of the major genres as it was until the end of the '90s, not in electronic games and not in board games either.
For example, PC Gamer had a wargaming-specific column that ran for at least a decade from the mid '90s into the mid or later '00s, The Desktop General. They did not have columns for every genre! That showed wargaming's importance. And now the same publication can't be bothered to put even one game in that genre on their top 100? And no, I don't think FTL, Dwarf Fortress, Crusader Kings 3, or Total War Warhammer 3 count. Those are complex strategy or simulation games, yes, but not wargames. Of those Total War's battles are the closest to a wargame, but on the simple end of the genre. How the mighty have fallen.
So, while the PC is on the upswing today as consoles stall out, it is a new PC that is resurgent. The old top genres are mostly still as niche as they have been for most of the past 25 years. Instead, the new PC is a mixture of some classically PC games with a lot of console-first titles. Most people probably do mostly play newer games, as you see reflected in that list, and a lot of people playing on PCs now are indeed playing games designed for consoles first but also released on PC to help sell more copies. That is probably a reasonable list for what a lot of mainstream PC gamers are playing today. It's more RPG-heavy than somes' lists would be, but reasonable. It is, however, a bad list for representing the best PC games ever overall.
So, the resurgence of the PC won't, I think, help bring the memory of 1998's PC games back, any more than the resurgence of specialty arcades like Dave & Buster's or Round 1 haven't really helped make big budget, top of the graphics heap arcade games a thing again either. The platforms still exist but in a new form for the new world. The new world of the PC is a mixture of the old PC and a console. The world of gaming is less separated and more merged together. Even popular mobile games often have PC versions. That doesn't make their content any different.
Conclusion: On why 1998 is the Greatest Year in Gaming
1998's greatness is widely recognized. Most lists of how great the games of each year are put 1998 in first place, or at worst second to the author's favorite year if it isn't 1998. But why is that? Well, as I said above, I think that the industry changed so dramatically immediately afterwards is a huge part of the answer. The kinds of games we saw in 1998, particularly on the PC and arcade sides, did not continue to be made for much longer, and never were again at the budget and general market attention levels that they were after sometime between 1998 and 2000, depending on platform. The world was changing and budgets were no longer large enough to fund PC-only game development or big-budget arcade games, so the kinds of games studios made changed to focus almost entirely on console games instead of splitting between all three pillars of the old system.
That coincidence is, again, the key, I think, of why 1998 is gaming's greatest year. In the same year, console developers finally figured out 3d to a greater extent than before and some of the best console games ever released; the PC market peaked in the US and, after releasing some of the greatest games ever, began its decade-long slide into near irrelevance (before recovering somewhat after that); and arcades only had a year or two of life left in them, leading to some great titles in that field as well. There would never be another year where all three pillars of the 1970s to '90s gaming industry would all be in as good shape as they were in '98.
But again, I know I focus on it because I was a PC-focused gamer in the '90s, but 1998 isn't only great because of it being the mountaintop of PC gaming after which decline would be rapid. It is also great because at the same time, console gaming also had some of its greatest and most important games release. Developers finally started to understand how to make 3d game control work better, and many genres had new best ever releases. The collective knowledge of 15+ years combined to make 1998 the perfect storm across all formats electronic games released on, a time when budgets allowed for anything possible with the day's technology and developers with enough knowledge to actually start executing on that. '97, '99, and '00 also saw some of that peak, but all three years have more drawbacks to their release list libraries than '98 does.
To repeat my main point here, all of these factors had to occur at the same time for 1998 to be remembered as the greatest. This coincidence, or alignment, is central to why the year is so universally beloved. If it was only the best year in classic PC gaming but just an average console year, I have no doubt that 1998 would rank much, much lower on 'best of' lists; a lot of people only play console games, not PC ones. The same is true if it was only a peak arcade game year. But all three things did both happen at the same time, and so gaming's greatest year entered the history books.
In the next article, list wars! The second part of this 1998 retrospective will be a long list of many of the major games of 1998, broken down in multiple ways -- by platform, genre, and more. I like lists. I hope some of you do as well. The list is basically done and will post soon.
Addendum: The Dead and Dying Platforms of 1998
I wasn't sure what to do with this section, as it doesn't quite fit in the article above but I want to include it, so I tacked it on at the end as an addendum. In 1998, the Windows 9x PC, Macintosh, Game Boy (Color), Sony PlayStation, and Nintendo 64 markets were ongoing and doing fine. But what about the other systems still on the market in 1998, the ones nearing their ends? It was the end of an era for both NEC and Atari, among others, as both had consoles see their last official releases this year. Computer platforms were not spared either.Consoles
DIED (US) / DYING (WORLD): Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. First, as I said elsewhere, in the US the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis both had their last game release in 1998. Both did have game releases in other regions after this year, though, with the SNES in Japan and the Genesis in Brazil, so they were not dead worldwide quite yet. However, they did both die in North America this year. Worth mentioning. The SNES would last until 2000 in Japan, and the Genesis until 2002 in Brazil, with new games.UNDEAD: NEC PC Engine CD (TurboGrafx-16 CD) - This aging system had died in the US back in '94, but in Japan it was still kind of clinging to its last moments of life. There were no games released for the PCECD in '98, but there was one last release in '99 so technically it wasn't dead yet.
DIED: NEC PC-FX - This thing, though, did die in 1998. NEC's last console, which was only ever released in Japan, focused on anime FMV and visual novels, to the expense of anything else. It has near-zero 3d capabilities and lacking sprite manipulation power compared to the other consoles of its generation (it can't scale sprites, only do Mode 7 style effects!), but can do nice video. It bombed hard, but got over 3 1/2 years of support anyway, ending in mid '98. So yeah, the PC-FX died this year, little-mourned. If you look at the release list you will see that '98 brought the system four visual novels, a nongame compilation, an RPG, and a 2d platformer action-adventure game. That last one is probably the most interesting, Ruruli ra Rura. Its graphics are very simplistic and the combat is extremely basic, but the animated cutscenes are nice. Despite the very dated visuals I'd like to get a copy, though it's pretty expensive.
DIED: Atari Jaguar - The Jaguar had been discontinued back in early 1996, when Atari sold itself to a hard drive manufacturer. However, some games continued to release from Telegames, companies dedicated to releasing finished but unpublished Jaguar games. Most of the bigger-name ones of those released in '96 and '97, but the last officially licensed title was in 1998, Worms, a port of the first Worms computer game, releasing the same year as Worms 2, a game which dramatically improved Worms graphics. Yeah. Still, it's something. The next year, Atari would change ownership, being sold to Hasbro. Hasbro made the platform open source in 1999, setting the Jag off for its very successful life as one of the most popular homebrew platforms. The first homebrew game released that year.
UNDEAD: Sega Game Gear - As I said, the Game Gear was effectively dead at this point, and had no game releases. Sega had released their last games for it in '97 and dropped it. However, it would be resussitated for a short revival from Majesco in 2000, and one new game was released then, so perhaps I should mention it.
DIED (US) / DYING (JP) - Sega Saturn - The Saturn saw its final US releases in 1998. In Japan, Sega ended first-party support at the end of 1998, as well. In Japan the system did have a full year of support, but that would not continue into '99. Third parties did release a small number of games in 1999 and early 2000 in Japan only, so the system wasn't quite dead, but with no first party support or international releases the writing was on the wall.
DYING (EU): Philips CD-i - The CD-i, a system with some similarities to the PC-FX in that it is very good at video playback but struggles at traditional videogames, but released in 1991, years before the PC-FX, so it is more impressive from a tech front than that system, had died out in the US in 1994-1995. In Europe, or rather in Philips' home country of the Netherlands, however, the CD-i lasted several more years. A couple of titles released for the CD-i in 1998, one of them a game. It would see one final release in '99, which is also a game, when the system finally died, so in '98 it was on its last legs in the Netherlands. Of those two last games, though, the one from '99 also released on PC, while the game from '98, the FMV rollercoaster shooter The Lost Ride, is a CD-i exclusive, so 1998 was the last year with an exclusive release on CD-i.
Video game consoles sure do have short lives, don't they. They are born with so much hope and promise, only for them to be old and dying somewhere around, on average, five years later. Console lifespans vary between one and about twelve years on the lower and upper ends. You barely get to know them and they are already on the way out! Fortunately, homebrew developers have brought many of these systems back to life, so they can get the fuller lifespans that they deserve. How much homebrew support a system gets varies depending on several factors, including how easy it is to release unlicensed games on the system and how large the fan community is for the platform, but it is always fantastic to see when it happens.
Computers
DIED: NEC PC-98 - That's right, NEC didn't have one platform with its last game releases in 1998, it actually had two. The NEC PC-98 line of computers had been the most dominant computer format in Japan in the '80s and up to the mid '90s, but the release of Windows 95 basically ended NEC's hold on the Japanese market. In 1997 NEC admitted defeat and switched from making its own proprietary computers to making PC clones with Windows 95. The early ones also supported a classic PC-98 mode, but Win95 was the main feature, and the few Japanese computer game developers mostly switched over to Windows eventually. However, some homebrew developers continued releasing games for the PC-98 into 1998. Checking Mobygames and Wikipedia, both list that the last year any games released for the PC-98 was 1998, so if that is accurate it was the end of the line for the format. After that Japanese PC games were on Windows 95. The most famous by far of the small handful of PC-98 games from '98 are the fourth and fifth Touhou games, Lotus Land Story and Mystic Square. The series had started the previous year, when Zun released the first three. Both are really good-looking bullet-hell shmups. It's easy to see why the series would become so legendary. After them the developer, Zun, would take four years off before moving the series over to Windows 9x.
The death of the PC-98 is quite significant since it was the last non-Windows/Intel gaming computer format, following the deaths of the Amiga, Atari ST, FM Towns, Spectrum, IBM OS/2, and other minor ones in the years previously. With its departure, only Windows, its never-gaming-focused rival of sorts Apple Macintosh, and the alternate PC operating system Linux were left. And of those three, even today, only one is a serious gaming platform: Windows. I'm sorry for Linux fans, but anyone with Steam can see how few games have Linux versions available.
DYING: Microsoft MS-DOS - After the release of Windows 95 in fall of 1995, MS-DOS, the previous primary gaming platform for PC games for the previous 14 years, was doomed. MS-DOS had survived during the Windows 3.1 and earlier era because Win3 and earlier have much higher overhead and limited advantages over DOS, so a game that wanted to get the most out of its hardware had to be a DOS game. Windows 3 just used up too much system resources. Windows 95 was a revolution because it finally made Windows a great gaming platform, and it eventually made running games a lot easier, too. The number of games releasing for DOS steadily decreased in each year after 1995, from almost all major titles in '95, to most games in '96, to a small number of titles in '97, to very few in '98. But after 1998, DOS largely disappeared as a platform for retail computer games. Small homebrew indie developers continued making mostly freeware DOS games here and there after that, so the platform never entirely disappeared in that sense, and collections or re-releases or expansions of or for DOS games released after 1998, but if you want retail PC games, for DOS, '98 was almost the end of the line. In '98, of the games I have mentioned in this article series, The Elder Scrolls: Redguard and Descent to Undermountain are actually DOS games. There are five or six other more minor DOS games from '98 as well, some of them European-exclusive titles. There would be two final retail PC games running on DOS in '99, one of which got a US release -- WWII GI. The other is a European exclusive called Horde: The Northern Wind, an RTS from Russia. Thanks to this thread on VOGONS for doing the research: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=100191 though I went through the list on MobyGames myself as well and agree with that thread's conclusions, those are the last retail DOS games. So, DOS as a retail gaming platform wasn't quite dead yet in 1998, but it was very close, and the end would come the next year.
How does this number of dead or dying platforms compare to the previous peak year of 1982? Well, 1982 was not a big year for anyone getting out of the industry. That time, the pile of dead platforms would be in '83 and '84. Those years did have a lot of platforms going away, though, surely more in total than '98 considering just how many little-selling console and computer platforms existed at that time. But there, the peak year for game releases was before this contraction, not at the same time as it. Also, of course every time a new generation starts eventually the platforms from the previous generation end support, and that is some of what you see here, but a year where not only several of the consoles of that year's most recent generation were dying out but also most of the platforms of the generation before that and also multiple computer formats, all fading out at the same time? 1998 was, indeed, a major transition point, a time when things were changing significantly in the game industry. Change can be good or bad. The changes ongoing in 1998 were both, depending on what platform you favor or what kinds of gaming you prefer.
![[Image: logo_bos_79x76.jpg]](https://www.tendocity.net/logo_bos_79x76.jpg){kind=logo}