Many technically innovative and
genre-defining games were developed during the 1990s, largely due to the impact of
3D graphics allowing three-dimensional environments as well as
optical discs which allowed much greater storage capacity.
Fighting games The release of
Street Fighter II in 1991 is often considered a revolutionary moment in the fighting game genre.
Yoshiki Okamoto's team developed the most accurate joystick and button scanning
routine in the genre thus far. This allowed players to reliably execute multi-button special moves, which had previously required an element of luck. The game was also highly successful because its graphics took advantage of Capcom's
CPS arcade chipset, with highly detailed characters and
stages. Whereas previous games allowed players to combat a variety of computer-controlled fighters,
Street Fighter II allowed players to play against each other. The popularity of
Street Fighter II surprised the gaming industry, as arcade owners bought more machines to keep up with demand.
SNK released
Fatal Fury: King of Fighters a few months later, adding a two-plane system where characters could step into the foreground or background. Meanwhile,
Sega experimented with
Dark Edge, an early attempt at a 3D fighting game where characters could move in all directions. Sega however, never released the game outside Japan because it felt that unrestrained 3D fighting games were unenjoyable. Several fighting games achieved greater commercial success, including SNK's
Art of Fighting and
Samurai Shodown as well as Sega's
Eternal Champions. Nevertheless,
Street Fighter II remained the most popular, spawning a special
Champion Edition that improved game balance and allowed players to use additional characters. A follow-up to
Street Fighter II,
Street Fighter Alpha, was released in 1995 but was unable to match the popularity of its predecessor. The fighting game genre continued to evolve as several strong 3D fighting games emerged in the late 1990s.
Namco's
Tekken (released in arcades in 1994 and on the PlayStation in 1995) proved critical to the
PlayStation's early success, with
its sequels also becoming some of the console's most important titles. In 1992,
Mortal Kombat became a popular fighting game due to its sprites being real people digitalized into the game with graphic and controversial depictions of violence, most notably, the fatalities. The
Soul series of weapon-based fighting games also achieved considerable critical success, beginning with 1996's
Soul Edge.
Tecmo's
Dead or Alive (released in 1996 in arcades, 1997 on the Sega Saturn and 1998 on the PlayStation) spawned a
long-running franchise, known for its fast-paced control system, innovative counterattacks, and interactive environments. The series again included titles important to the success of their respective consoles.
First-person shooters The
first-person shooter (FPS) typically features the player as the
protagonist. Most often the player does not see the face of who they are playing, but will always see the
weapon of choice located in the players hand in the lower left or right hand corner. FPSs are usually violent and feature
blood and
gore, which has sparked controversy from
parent groups. With the introduction of the fifth generation of games,
3-D graphics become the standard by end of decade. Although FPSs had been some of the first games to become 3-D. In 1992
Wolfenstein 3d is released, creating interest in what FPS games could become.
Doom (1993) bursts onto the world scene and instantly popularizes the FPS genre, and even how games are played, as Doom is among the first games to feature multiplayer capabilities. It was
Goldeneye 007 (1997), that introduced an engine that made development of first-person shooters for home consoles a practical idea. It is not until
Quake (1996), however, that game developers begin to take multiplayer features into serious consideration when making games.
Quake II (1997),
Unreal (1998) and
Half-Life (1998) feature the next evolutionary step in the genre with continual progression of the game (no levels in the traditional sense) and an entirely in-person view, and become one of the most popular video games in history.
Interactive movies In the early-to-mid-1990s, several video game developers experimented with
plot twists and providing alternative storylines and endings into their games. They even went as far as to film
live action scenes and scripted popular actors to play the parts.
Night Trap, released in 1992, was highly acclaimed for implementing live action scenes into video games and later the
Wing Commander series dove into live action as well.
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom was given an unheard of budget of US$12 million and starred
Mark Hamill of
Star Wars fame. The
Wing Commander series was known for providing several
alternate endings depending on how the player followed the story and interacted with the characters.
Platform games The platform game genre evolved through several distinct phases throughout the 1990s. The first was an evolutionary step during the fifth generation in the early 1990s, followed by a complete transformation of the genre during the sixth generation in the late 1990s. ;Second-generation side-scrollers The advent of 16-bit home consoles in the early 1990s marked an evolutionary step for the genre. By the time the
Mega Drive and
Super Nintendo Entertainment System launched, platform games were the most popular genre in home console gaming and were seen as vital for winning the console war. There was a particular emphasis on having a flagship platform title exclusive to a format, featuring a "
mascot" character.
Sega's
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (1989) was only modestly successful, and Sega realized would need a stronger mascot to move Genesis units. In 1990,
Hudson Soft released ''
Bonk's Adventure'' featuring a character that would be positioned as
NEC's mascot. 1990 marked the release of the Super NES, along with the much awaited
Super Mario World. In order to fend off the new competition, Sega released
Sonic the Hedgehog. Whereas Nintendo's offering featured a conservative design, true to the
Mario tradition,
Sonic showcased a new style of design made possible by a new generation of hardware.
Sonic featured large fields that scrolled effortlessly in all directions, as well as all manner of uneven terrain, curved hills, and a complex
physics system that allowed players to rush through its levels with well-placed jumps and rolls. It proved to be a massive hit, was a successful pack-in with new systems, and cemented the view that platform games would make or break a console. The
Sonic character was also seen as a new model for mascots in the early 1990s, particularly for his perceived "attitude", which characterized him as a rebel from the status quo. This "attitude" would soon become the status quo, as companies attempted to duplicate Sonic's success with their own brightly colored
anthropomorphisms. Very frequently these were characterized by impatience, sarcasm, and frequent quipping to give them personality. These mascots, which included the likes of
Gex,
Bug!, and
Bubsy, have mostly faded from relevance. ;3D platformers In 1996, Nintendo released
Super Mario 64. Until this time there had been no established archetype for bringing platform games into 3D.
Mario 64 set a new standard and would be imitated by many 3D platformers to follow. Its gameplay allowed players to explore open 3D environments with greater freedom than any previous attempt at a 3D platform game. To aid this, Nintendo incorporated an
analog control stick to their standard Nintendo 64 controller, something which had not been included in a standard console controller since the
Vectrex (and since incorporated into the
DualShock among other controllers). This allowed for the finer precision needed for a free perspective. Players no longer followed a linear path to the ends of levels, either, with most levels providing objective-based goals. There were, however, a handful of "boss" levels that offered more traditional platforming, and showed what a more direct conversion to 3D might have been like. Some argue that many modern 3D platformers, especially those influenced heavily by
Super Mario 64, are not platformers at all, or at least are not really an extension of 2D platformers.
Super Mario 64 brought a change in the goals of some platformers. In most 2D platformers, the player only had to reach a single goal to complete a level, but in many 3D platformers, each level had to be combed for collectible items such as puzzle pieces (
Banjo-Kazooie) or stars (
Super Mario 64). This allowed for more efficient use of large 3D areas and rewarded the player for thorough exploration, but they also often involved more elements of action-adventure games, and less jumping on platforms.
Racing games In 1992,
Sega produced
Virtua Racing, one of the first games with full 3D graphics. It was able to combine the best features of games at the time, along with multiplayer machine linking and clean 3D graphics to produce a game that was above and beyond the arcade market standard of its time. Also,
Nintendo broke new ground by introducing the
Mario Kart series on the SNES with
Super Mario Kart. Using the familiar characters from the
Mario franchise, the game not only departed from the realism paradigm by using small karts for the players to drive, but also featured bright, colorful environments and allowed the players to pick up power-ups to improve performance or hamper other racers. This franchise also spawned multiple sequels such as
Mario Kart 64 which would release on the
N64 making the first
Mario Kart game to feature
3D computer graphics while still using pre-rendered sprites for the characters and items. In 1993, Namco struck back with
Ridge Racer, and thus began the polygonal war of driving games. Sega struck back in 1994 with
Daytona USA, while Midway introduced ''
Cruis'n USA. Atari did not join the 3D craze until 1997, when it introduced San Francisco Rush. In 1996, Konami introduced GTI Club which allowed free roaming of the environment – something of a revolution that had only been done in 3D before in Hard Drivin'''. In 1997,
Gran Turismo was released for the
PlayStation. It was considered the most realistic racing simulation game in its time, combined with playability, enabling players of all skill levels to play. The
Gran Turismo series has since become one of the most popular racing franchises ever, with the series selling more than 50 million copies worldwide.
Colin McRae Rally was introduced in 1998 to the PC world, and was a successful semi-simulation of the world of rally driving (previously only available in Sega's less serious
Sega Rally Championship).
Motorhead, a PC game, was later adapted back to arcade. 1999 marked a change of games into more "free form" worlds.
Midtown Madness allows the player to explore a simplified version of the city of Chicago using a variety of vehicles and any path that they desire. In the arcade world, Sega introduced
Crazy Taxi, where players assume the role of a taxi driver that needs to get clients to their destination in the shortest amount of time. A similar game also from Sega is
Emergency Call Ambulance, with almost the same gameplay (pick up patient, drop off at hospital, as fast as possible).
Role-playing games The 1990s saw the emergence of several distinct subgenres of the
role-playing video game genre. ;Action role-playing games
1990 would see the release of
Crystalis for the
Nintendo Entertainment System and also
Golden Axe Warrior for the
Master System. Both games featured
Zelda-like gameplay blended with genuine RPG elements, such as experience points, statistics-based equipment, and a
magic-casting system. In
1991,
Square released
Seiken Densetsu for the
Game Boy, also known as
Final Fantasy Adventure in the West. Like
Crystalis, the action in
Seiken Densetsu bore a strong resemblance to that of
Zelda, but added more RPG elements.
Seiken Densetsu 2, also known as
Secret of Mana, implemented an innovative multiplayer function, and further developed its combat with more diverse weaponry and
spell-casting. Unique among video games are
Capcom's
Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (1993) and
Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara (1996). These games were released for the
arcades, and featured a blending of
beat 'em up and RPG characteristics. The games were later released for the
Sega Saturn together as the
Dungeons & Dragons Collection (1999). Several later beat 'em ups followed this same formula, including
Guardian Heroes,
Castle Crashers and
Dungeon & Fighter. In Japan on
Super Famicom,
Tales of Phantasia was released in Japan in 1995, featuring real-time side-scrolling combat mode and an exploration mode similar to classic console RPGs. In 1996,
Star Ocean was released that also has real-time combat and classic exploration but features bird's eye view. Namco and Enix did not publish these two revolutionary titles in America, even though sequels in the two series would become wildly popular on future generations of consoles in the US.
Fifth generation era saw several popular action RPGs, such as
Tales of Eternia,
Brave Fencer Musashi and
Legend of Oasis. In 1996 Nintendo released
Super Mario RPG, for the
SNES . Super Mario RPG was the first role playing game in the series and it launched to critical acclaim. It spawned two spiritual successors,
Paper Mario and
Mario & Luigi On
personal computers, the long-standing
Ultima series of action RPGs continued to see releases, while the 3D action RPG franchise
The Elder Scrolls, which would provide several major entries to the genre in the 2000s, saw its first releases. The
rogue-like genre lost much of its relevance, with only
Diablo, which implemented the idea in a simplified and more forgiving way, achieving mainstream success. Japanese video game company
From Software released several entries to the
King's Field series, which received mixed reviews and little attention both in the 90's and later, but whose elements would later be recycled in the genre-defining
Dark Souls games. ;Role-playing video games It was in the early 1990s that the console
role-playing video game genre distinguished itself greatly from computer RPGs, with the
Final Fantasy series playing an instrumental role.
Final Fantasy III introduced the "job system", a character progression engine allowing the player to change a character's class, as well as acquire new and advanced classes.
Final Fantasy IV (1991) was one of the first role-playing games to feature a complex, involving plot, placing a much greater emphasis on character development and pioneering "the whole concept of dramatic storytelling in an RPG." It also introduced a new battle system: the "
Active Time Battle" system, developed by
Hiroyuki Ito, where the
time-keeping system does not stop. The fact that enemies can attack or be attacked at any time is credited with injecting urgency and excitement into the combat system. Both the "job system" and the ATB system were fully developed in
Final Fantasy V (1992) and continued to be used in later
Final Fantasy games as well as other Square games such as
Chrono Trigger (1995).
Final Fantasy VI (1994) and the
Megami Tensei series were some of the first RPGs to move away from the typical
medieval setting, with
Final Fantasy VI instead being set in a
steampunk environment and the
Megami Tensei games set in modern-day Japan. The next major revolution came in the late 1990s, which saw the rise of
optical disks in
fifth generation consoles. The implications for RPGs were enormous—longer, more involved quests, better audio, and
full-motion video. This was first clearly demonstrated by
Final Fantasy VII (1997). The explosion of
Final Fantasy VII sales and the ascendance of the
PlayStation were proof of this and represented the dawning of a new era of RPGs. Backed by a clever marketing campaign,
Final Fantasy VII brought the first taste of CRPGs to many of the new gamers brought in by the PlayStation gaming console. Subsequently, CRPGs, previously a niche genre, skyrocketed in popularity. In 1997, a new Internet
fad began, influenced by the popularization of console RPGs. A large group of young
programmers and aficionados began creating and sharing independent CRPG games, emulating the
gameplay and style of the older
Super NES and
Genesis games. The majority of such games owe their achievement to simplistic
software development kits such as the Japanese
RPG Maker series. In the final years of the 90's, US companies
Interplay (through developer
Black Isle Studios) and
Bioware published several roleplaying games with similar gameplay, which are considered milestone classics of the genre.
Planescape: Torment and
Baldur's Gate were games with a
Dungeons & Dragons license, while Interplay's
Fallout was an unofficial successor to
Wasteland from the 80's, and would be rebooted 10 years later to new critical acclaim. ;MUDs and MMORPGs 1989 and the early 1990s saw the release and spread of the
MUD codebases
DikuMUD and
LPMud, leading to a tremendous increase in the proliferation and popularity of MUDs. Before the end of the decade, the evolution of the genre continued through "
graphical MUDs" into the first
massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), a term coined by
Richard Garriott in 1997. That genre, as currently defined, began with
Meridian 59 in 1995, but first truly came into its own with
Ultima Online in 1997, a game that provided a core idea of what later MMORPGs would become, featuring a massive
continent on which players could interact with others from around the world, fight
mythical creatures, and
cast spells. After earlier games broke ground, widespread popularity for MMORPGs arrived with the debut of
EverQuest and ''
Asheron's Call'' in 1999. MMORPGs would become a common form of
social interaction in the
2000s. ;Tactical role-playing games In 1990,
Nintendo released and published the first tactical RPG,
Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Tsurugi for the
Family Computer (or Famicom) in Japan, co-developed with
Intelligent Systems. Released in Japan in 1990,
Fire Emblem was an archetype for the whole genre, establishing gameplay elements that are still used in tactical CRPGs today (although some of these elements were influenced by
Ultima III). Combining the basic console RPG concepts from games like
Dragon Quest and simple turn-based strategy elements, Nintendo created a hit, which spawned many sequels and imitators. Among the first imitators was
Langrisser by NCS/Masaya, first released for the
Mega Drive in 1991. It was localized for North American release under the title
Warsong, with a few graphical alterations. The
Langrisser series differed from
Fire Emblem in that it used a general-soldier structure instead of controlling main characters.
Master of Monsters was a unique title by
SystemSoft. Where
Langrisser and
Fire Emblem used a square-based grid,
Master of Monsters used a hexagonal grid. Players could choose one of four different Lords to defend their Towers and areas on the grid by building an army of creatures to destroy the opposing armies. The first game in the long-running
Super Robot Wars series is another early example of the genre, released for the Game Boy in 1991. Another influential early tactical RPG was
Sega's
Shining Force for the Genesis, which was released in 1992.
Shining Force used even more console RPG elements than earlier games, allowing the player to walk around towns and talk to people and buy weapons. One game released solely in Japan for the
Super Famicom (SFC),
Bahamut Lagoon, began
Square's (now
Square Enix) famous line of tactical RPGs.
Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen was released for the Super NES and is more of a real-time strategy game in which the player forms
role-playing video game-like character parties that are moved around a
map in real-time. When two parties meet, the combat plays out with minimal user interaction. A later release,
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, was originally a SNES game that was later ported to the
PlayStation.
Tactics Ogre is a much more direct influence on the sort of tactical RPGs that gamers recognize today such as
Final Fantasy Tactics and
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. It was also the first to bear the name "Tactics" in the title, a term gamers would come to associate with the genre. Not only are characters moved individually on a grid, but the view is isometric, and the order of combat is calculated for each character individually. The game defined the genre in many ways.
Stealth games While stealth elements have been present in video games as far back as
005, a 1981
video game by
Sega, it was in the 1990s that the stealth game genre was established.
Hideo Kojima's
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was released in 1990 for the MSX2 and was a major improvement over its predecessor,
Metal Gear (1987).
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake improved on the first game in many ways, including improved graphics, more player abilities (such as crouching, crawling into hiding spots, disguising in enemy uniforms and cardboard boxes, and distracting guards by knocking on surfaces), improved enemy
AI (such as a greater field of vision, the ability to detect various noises, and a three-level security alert), and additions such as a radar, as well as a complex storyline. The game was only released for the MSX2 in Japan, however, which limited its accessibility to consumers in the US. An alternative
Metal Gear sequel named ''
Snake's Revenge'' was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America and Europe instead, also in 1990. Kojima was not involved in the game's development, which was instead conducted by another
Konami team. The ninja-themed game
Tenchu: Stealth Assassins was released several months before
Metal Gear Solid, making it the first 3D stealth based-game. The highly anticipated
Metal Gear Solid transformed its modestly successful franchise into a large mainstream success. The increased power of the PlayStation console over previous platforms allowed for greater immersion in terms of both story and game environment. The core elements of these games, such as avoiding confrontation, minimizing noise, and attacking antagonists from "the shadows", influenced many future stealth game series.
Survival horror While elements of the survival horror genre can be traced back to the 1989
Capcom game
Sweet Home, which served as a major influence on the genre, it was in the 1990s that survival horror was established as a genre. Another precursor appeared in 1992 when
Infogrames released
Alone in the Dark, which is also considered a forefather of the genre. The game featured a lone protagonist against hordes of monsters, and made use of traditional
adventure game challenges such as puzzle-solving and finding hidden keys to new areas. Graphically,
Alone in the Dark utilized static
prerendered camera views that were cinematic in nature. Although players had the ability to fight monsters as in
action games, players also had the option to evade or block them. The game was influenced by Capcom's
Sweet Home, released seven years earlier. The control scheme in
Resident Evil also became a staple of the genre, and future titles would imitate its challenge of rationing highly limited resources and items. The game's commercial success is credited with helping the
PlayStation become the dominant
game console, Many games have tried to replicate the successful formula seen in
Resident Evil, and every subsequent survival horror game has arguably taken a stance in relation to it. The game was praised for moving away from
B movie horror elements to the
psychological style seen in
art house or
Japanese horror films, The original
Silent Hill is considered one of the scariest games of all time. ==Notable video-game franchises established in the 1990s==