This Week in the History of Video Games
In honor of PAX Prime 2011, happening this weekend, we at GeekGirlCon are taking a gaming-specific twist on this week’s History of Geek. So, with that in mind, we’d like to present: This Week in the History of Video Games.
August 28th
2004 – Penny Arcade hosted the first Penny-Arcade Expo (PAX) at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA. Exhibitors, including Microsoft, Rooster Teeth, and Ubisoft, showcased videos and playable demos of their upcoming projects/releases— like Bungie’s Halo 2 and Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Other events included live-musical performances, panels featuring Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins (the creators of Penny-Arcade), and the Omegathon. The first expo boasted 1,337 pre-registered guests: a rather appropriate statistic to begin a very successful convention.
August 26th
2002 – Nintendo released the single-player 3-D platform game Super Mario Sunshine for GameCube in North America. It was the first traditional Mario platform game released since Super Mario 64, and like its predecessor, Sunshine was a commercial success. It sold over 5.5 million units, and was later re-released as one of Nintendo’s Player’s Choice titles in 2003.
August 23rd
2001 – Players joined Dante for the first time as Devil May Cry was released for the PlayStation 2 in Japan. Capcom originally intended Devil May Cry to be the last installment of the Resident Evil series opted out to use backgrounds from previous Resident Evil games as had been precedent. A more dynamic camera system was adopted. A team of developers traveled through Europe using gothic structures as a reference. Capcom still wanted to pursue the game, however it strayed too far from the survival horror genre. Instead of becoming an addition to Resident Evil, it became an independent game. Director Hideki Kamiya rewrote the world as one full of demons and redesigned and renamed the protagonist to create the Dante we know today. Hard to believe this occurred ten years ago, yeah? #FeelinOld
August 25th
1996 – GoldenEye 007 hit Western Markets and easily became one of the most popular first-person shooters for the Nintendo 64. It was based on the GoldenEye movie starring Pierce Brosnan which had been released the previous year. Players could take on the role of James Bond to save the world or compete as various characters from the game in a multi-player death match.
August 24th
1996 – The original Team Fortress game went on sale. An online team-and-class multiplayer video game, Team Fortress was originally a mod based on id Software’s Quake. In August 1999, after a development team was hired by Valve, Team Fortress was ported to Valve’s Half-Life engine in the form of Team Fortress Classic. An official sequel developed by Valve Corporation was finally released in October of 2007 as Team Fortress 2. Fifteen years after its original development, this game is still going strong alongside its equally successful sequel.
August 27th
1992 – Super Mario Kart was released in Japan for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Taking a new spin on the traditional racing game, Nintendo added the ability to use objects like shells and banana peels to knock the other racers off the track and get power ups to outpace your opponent. Players could race either against each other or the computer, which offered three degrees of difficulty. Selling eight million copies worldwide, the game went on to become one of the best-selling SNES games of all time.
August 22nd
1987 – “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this!” Nintendo released the ground-breaking fantasy-themed platform game The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America. Though relatively simple by today’s standards, it was quite advanced for its time. Innovations include the ability to use dozens of different items, a vast world full of secrets to explore, and the cartridge’s ability to save progress via battery-backed memory. The game also features a “Second Quest,” accessible upon completing the game, where dungeons and the placement of items are different and enemies stronger. Besides the game’s technical innovations, the gameplay (finding items and using them to solve puzzles, battling monsters in real-time, and exploring a vast environment) was a successful formula and became widely copied. The game was extremely popular in Japan and North America, and many consider it one of the most important video games ever made. Today the series includes over 20 different games, including both canon and spin-offs.
