1995.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series

You could say we’re at the midpoint of the ‘90s. Another decade is taking shape before us, and is close to getting the identity that we all remember it having, that stereotype we constantly cling to. This was the year 1995

During the 90’s video games made a bigger push towards being seen as something more that simple children’s toys. Developers were playing around with new ideas, with mature ones, not in the frivolous and juvenile ways of Mortal Kombat, but by tackling subjects that can still haunt people to this day. One such game was I Have No Mount Mouth and I Must Scream, created by Cybeardreams, the same people that brought us Dark Seed and its sequel, that also came out in 1995. I Have No Mount Mouth and I Must Scream was an adaptation of a story written Harlan Ellison. A man that had great influence over Science Fiction in our time, who sadly passed away quite recently. Another great example of games trying shed the veneere of toy and face the wrath of the recently formed United States games rating board, the ESRB, was Phantasmagoria. The people that once brought us King’s Quest created an FMV game famous for its gore. Though, to be fair, considering how often you died in King’s Quest, it wasn’t that much of a novelty. LucasArts was also moving in this direction with The Dig, while partly still tried to be fun and quirky with Full Throttle.

The 90’s mean different things for different people. To some people in the USA, the 90’s were a mishmash of worthless trends that didn’t amount to anything, a loss of purpose that culminated with saying that the decade sucked. To others, the 90’s were a time of unification. To some it was a time when you’d no longer be arrested and sent to die from hard labor for telling a joke. And to a few, it was hell, the culmination of years turmoil, aggression, attacks on civilians, retaliations, and growing resentment lead to a massacre in in Bosnia and Herzegovina, intervention by NATO, and a taste of things to come in the next few years. So let’s take our minds off that and remember the earthquakes that hit Japan and Russia that year. Or, as some would joke, the other great disaster of the 90’s, Windows 95.

Jokes aside, Windows 95 was the operating system that defined what most of us generally see as a proper operating system interface. With a start button, a start menu, an Internet Explorer that would soon be a very touchy subject, and not something that it really needed. DirectX. The problem with Windows was that it put an extra layer between programs and hardware. So if somebody wanted to get access to all the inner workings of a graphics adapter, or a sound card, or a mouse, well, good luck. So something was needed to fix that. Something called DirectX, a suite of components that let developers actually use the hardware again. And it wouldn’t be bundled with Windows 95 until next year. There’s even a legend associated with DirectX, one told at the beginning of the song Viva la Resolution, by George Sanger, aka The Fat Man. To paraphrase, Microsoft invited a bunch of developers to the unveiling of DirectX, they gave them gack and Frisbees, because the logo of DirectX was kinda that, and when they started the demo, it crashed. So everyone just started throwing those thing on stage. Microsoft didn’t like that song.

But DirectX did let people truly use the hardware again, or at least it was better than nothing, and it let us have marvels like MechWarrior 2. A game about driving a giant 3D robot in giant 3D levels, fighting other giant 3D robots. It was a work of beauty for the time, something that truly made people feel like technology was progressing, and that their computers weren’t enough. Speaking of 3D, this was also the year that Blender got going, for the 3D modeling enthusiasts out there.

Games with three dimensional graphics were slowly becoming the norm, consoles being quite capable in this age of handling that kind of thing, one example being Sega’s own Panzer Dragoon for the Saturn. Or SingleTrac’s duo of air based warfare, in the form of Warhawk, and land based combat, in the form of the first Twisted Metal, both being Playstation titles.
But, again, it didn’t mean that 2D was dead. It did however mean that experiments with turning 2D into VR weren’t going to be all that successful in the face of actual 3D games. So Nintendo’s attempt at creating a VR console, with the headache inducing Virtual Boy, was an outright failure. This console is often pointed out whenever VR detractors say that “they tried it in the 90’s and it didn’t work”, usually glossing over how primitive the technology in the 90’s actually was. Traditional 2D, however, was still going very strong on consoles and gave us marvels like Human Entertainment’s classic original 2D horror game Clock Tower, released for the SNES, and the PC in Japan. A game that managed to combine classic 2D adventure gameplay with a constant feeling of utter dread, as you were being chased around by a serial killer. The SNES also got the legendary Chrono Trigger, from Square. Proof that the company had a lot of creativity in it, even though it was gearing up for the 7th game in its main Final Fantasy series. Although this was also a JRPG, Chrono Trigger had a very original approach, with time travel affecting the present, past and future, and a fight to stop the end of the world that involves people from every age in history. It is a game that is beloved by many to this day.

Moving to the arcades for a bit, I have to mention two titles that came out this year from Capcom. One was a true sequel to Street Fighter 2, it wasn’t called 3, but instead Alpha. It featured new methods of play, with a plethora of new characters and a different art style. Alongside it, Capcom released another fighting game, called Marvel Superheroes, letting players see who could knock the snot out of each other best. It would be the foundation for its own entire series of superb fighting games, usually involving many, many other characters from various other Capcom titles. More about those soon.

Doom clones were everywhere these days, but they weren’t what you would call simple copies of it. They were improving on the idea, enhancing the technology and becoming their own thing. They’re own genre. The first person shooter genre. A notable one from 1995 was Star Wars Dark Forces. The actual 3D first person shooter, with sprite characters, that introduced us to the bearded wonder himself, Kyle Katarn, Jan Ors, and their mission to steal the plans for the Death Star. But we also had other types of shooters, like Eclipse Software’s excellent shoot’em-up Tyrian. One of the few video games where you shoot down all sorts of strange enemy ships while piloting a carrot. 1995 also brought us Rayman, Crusader No Remorse, and the beginning of Spiderweb Softwares twice remade series, with Exile: Escape from the pit. An indie game from an indie developer that 25 years later is still as indie as Jeff Vogel has ever been.

Stepping back a bit into the realm of a now orphaned system, the Amiga got another one of its finest games, in the form of Worms. A title that reinvigorated the artillery genre with personality, fun, and a bunch of worms blowing each-other up with bazookas. This was far from being the first game from Team 17, having already released a third game in the Alien Breed series. But it was the one that started an empire, in the coming years we would have so much worms that at one point we will say that maybe there is such a thing as too much Worms.

But you know what there wasn’t such a thing as too much of back then? Enough real time strategy games. 1995 presented to us the one, two punch that really solidified that the RTS was here to stay. The first was Westwood’s spiritual sequel to Dune 2, Command and Conquer. Combining slightly cheesy cutscenes, acted out by its own employees, alongside an evolved form of Dune 2’s gameplay, Command and Conquer set the stage for a world embroiled in war, which wasn’t really that far off from recent years, what with the conflicts in the Middle East and Europe. The Brotherhood of NOD and the GDI fought over resources in mutually exclusive campaigns that took you all over the globe, and gave you access to multiplayer as well. The other game was Warcraft 2. An improvement over its predecessor in every way! Well, mostly every way. Not the way that actually made you feel like you were controlling different factions, which is something that Command and Conquer did a slightly better job at. Both of them sold very well, the numbers I found indicating that Warcraft 2 was the more popular one in the short term. But Command and Conquer was the more long-lasting game, due it having a bit more to it in terms of strategy and tactics. Not to mention that it would have plenty of sequels and expansions, while Warcraft 2 only had the one expansion by the end of the millennium, which wasn’t even made by Blizzard.

Two other strategy game must be mentioned that came around this time as well. One was Trevor Chan's Capitalism, a game that really wasn’t a game. It was an economical simulator that aimed to teach you how business and production chains worked, but it was done in such a way that learning was fun. There was a point to it, a challenge, gameplay. And the other one is a game made by New World Computing that came in the form of a turn based strategy mixed with turned based tactics and roleplaying. That game was Heroes of Might and Magic, and it wasn’t honestly all that great in its first outing, but something really good will come of it one day. I promise.

1995 was the year that brought us the DVD, or at least the announcement of it. That brought us the first fully CGI movie, in the form of Toy Story. And it was when Bioware, Remedy and Interworld Productions were created, the last one being better known as Mythic Entertainment.

So. What was the game of 1995? I’ve got to say, this was very hard to decide. Because the games we had this year were fantastic. And I’ve shafted Westwood in 1992, so it would be kinda mean of me to do it again. But Warcraft 2 was also a great game at the time. And Chrono Trigger is a fantastic game that is so defining for the early 90’s that I believe that in the end I truly only have one choice. And that is Meridian 59.

This may see like a curve ball just to avoid a deadlock and because it was released as sort of alpha at the end of 1995, but I have very good reasons for picking it. Meridian 59 may have sold less very few copies and now lies in a forgotten corner of history, but it was the MMO that defined much of what we know to be the MMO. Though, its creators, Archetype Interactive, a team of initially two, and then four people, alongside the 3DO company that bought the studio quite quickly, called it a Massively Multi-Player Role-Playing Game. A MMMRPG. It defined a very important feature of the genre, a fixed monthly subscription, not charging by the minute, like Neverwinter Nights did. It was a game with a 3D-enough world to explore, filled with monsters to slay, loot to pick up, places to see, and most importantly, other people. A lot of other people. Meridian 59 had a heavy focus on PvP and the interaction between the players themselves. With guilds that they can set up a government where people could elect their leaders and a rudimentary political system in place, even a system of laws that let players choose the fate of others. I’ve picked it because it symbolized the experimentation of new ideas that the 90’s was known for, which would lead to greatness. Without it, without its influence, well, I wouldn’t go as far as saying there wouldn’t be MMOs today, they were inevitable, but they would probably not be as we know them now. And much like the things that were experimented with in the ‘90s, the things that were trying to be the first out the door. It would go unnoticed by the world at large, drift away into silence and be forgotten. Meridian 59 would be shut down just four years later. And with it died the dreams of what was to be a Might and Magic MMO as well, that being the main reason that New World Computing decided to go with 3DO on a journey that would end in misery. But that’s a story for another month.

So ends 1995, so ends half of the ‘90s. Next week make another important leap forward. Goodbye.

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