5 Genre-Defining Games Forgotten by History

I don't know if this has been posted here yet, but I found this awesome video that takes a DEEP research into gaming history. Starting with first person shooters, goes to 3D platformers, to survival horror and then adventure games. It's a long video, but extremely satisfying to watch:

Of course, my biggest interest is FPS games and the documentary goes further than the Hovertank\Catacombs 3D point.
Do you have more information about pioneers of a specific genre or about any game like Maze Wars?

Or anyway, what do you think about gaming history in general?

No one? :-(

I found a interesting website about the Maze War game, full of statements from the authors and some links (some of them broken, unfortunately): http://www.digibarn.com/collections/games/xerox-maze-war/

It's crazy to think this is a game from 1974!

"Dan tells us that this was a "heart pounding game" when compared to the otherwise dull environment of the Xerox document/desktop metaphor. He noted that you could "shoot" your opponent if they did not see you (their eyeball character was facing away from you). He also notes that you could "hide" in parts of the maze and wait in ambush. Presumably you could only see your location in the overhead map, not that of the other players (that would be a cheat that would make the game very boring!)."

And there's another game that always caught my attention, called The Colony (1988) for DOS and Macintosh. It have nice and strange graphics and even some figurative decorations (furnitures):



Black\white version:



The box-art is AMAZING:



I will try to find this game and give a better look. I think it might work on DOSBox.

I find ancient gaming stuff very interesting, thanks for sharing!

Cool stuff :D

I probably would've never known about those games existence.

A more in-depth video of The Colony, with commentary from the creator:

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Changing the subject, I was pleased to see Continuum\Alpha Waves in that video. I played when I was a child and It's one of my favorite games, even with the clunky and weird controls. The soundtrack (by Frederic Mentzen) is fantastic too and I recorded each one of the tracks a long time ago, but unfortunately I lost the files after a HD crash.

Boxarts:


(Original release)



(American release)

As my avatar is Phantasy Star, no other RPG was a game-changer like this game. As much as I like the first two Zeldas, they ain't got shit on Phantasy Star. Game was $89.99 and the system was $79.99 back in the day. First four meg cartridge ever.

Looks like a good vid find, I'll watch it in full later.

This 1985 gem defined 3D gaming for me. You crash land on a planet and have to merc your way off it. Very rewarding and immersive at the time. First time I found X and Y coordinates to be a source of fun.

Looks way too mathmatic to me, netherless, good to know these ancient games.

When it started showing Resident Evil, I went "I hope he shows that this game is a complete ripoff of Alone in the Dark" and it duly did.


AitD is a good game. And AitD2 is good too actually.

And all this time, I thought Wolfenstein was the first BEST FPS game...

On 11/22/2015 at 4:11 PM, Soundblock said:

This 1985 gem defined 3D gaming for me. You crash land on a planet and have to merc your way off it. Very rewarding and immersive at the time. First time I found X and Y coordinates to be a source of fun.

I'm watching some videos of the third game for Atari ST and looks really great.




"Hey, bro... I look like a Out of This World character"

Edited February 3, 2023 by Noiser

Gez said:

When it started showing Resident Evil, I went "I hope he shows that this game is a complete ripoff of Alone in the Dark" and it duly did.

I'm just bummed he didn't mention Sweet Home, if even only because JRPG/Survival Horror is such a strange combination.

Jaxxoon R said:

I'm just bummed he didn't mention Sweet Home, if even only because JRPG/Survival Horror is such a strange combination.

Even Sweet Home wasn't the first to implement a lot of what makes survival horror games today. That title would actually go to The Land That Time Forgot (unless there's actually an even earlier one). Guru Larry did a pretty excellent video about it here:

I knew Super Mario 64 was going to be shown!
It really defined a "3D Platformer" to its limit.