All of these are massive names too, so just think about how many similar games made it into arcades but weren't so successful that you still remember them these days. NeoGeo is another example of a publisher releasing a library of similar arcade titles. All pretty formulaic brawlers and there were hundreds others just like them. Then there's Streets of Rage / Double Dragon / Turtles in Time / etc. Same with Space Harrier and Outrun.massive arcade titles who's formula got copied over and over (to be fair, Outrun wasn't even the first arcade racing game of its ilk to hit the arcades either). How many Street Fighter clones were released after SF2's success? The Galaxian/Space Invaders example I made previously are arcade titles. Take the Atari ST and Amiga for example, the amount of crossover games between consoles and those two computers is so big that many gamers considered those computers to be consoles in their own right (I know they're technically not correct but it does illustrate just how big the crossover library was).Īs for arcades, they were often the worst for milking genres. They weren't mutually exclusive industries. You could copy and paste most of my post and apply it to both of those contexts too quite easily. Each new generation of gamers have seen a new paradigm in gaming and that's what they'll remember fondly. But with that it does mean I also see my fair share of shelf fillers - and they do outnumber the classic titles despite what your fond memories of the era tell you.Īs for what the golden age was, well that's subjective and likely whoever you ask will say it's the era they grew up in. You could say this is a big passion of mine. In fact I'm a massive collector of the original hardware and have ~20 consoles (including some obscure ones) still hooked up in a spare room.all of which still get regularly played. There are around a dozen 8/16-bit Sonic games that are 2D platformers (ie not counting Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Pinball) and Mario has even more titles to it's name.ĭon't get me wrong, I do love that era of gaming. And don't get me started on the number of Space Harrier and Outrun clones on the Famicom.Įven copy cat games aside, most successful games saw sequals (and even many unsuccessful ones). Even popular games like Galaxian was themselves a knock off (eg Space Invaders). Not to mention all the side scrolling shooters, JRPGs that are almost identical from one another, etc. There were hundreds of Pac-Man inspired games (and Pac-Man itself wasn't the first game of that style). When Mario Bros was a hit everyone seemed to jump on the bandwagon to make a Mario clone. The 8-bit and 16-bit era had their fair share of copy cat games. > Modern games, in whatever form, most of the time are just watching yet another x-men remake. But people tend to remember the more impressive titles, in part because they have aged better, but also literally because they had that "wow" factor. Many of which didn't push the hardware or was less creative about the use of hardware resources. There was a lot of mediocre titles around too. > and we were creating stuff that were told the hardware wasn't capable of. It was Sega America who allowed any old release to be licensed. And it wasn't just publishers who were known to reject games, Sega Japan were famously strict about the titles they'd allow to be licensed on the Mega Drive. That very much depended on the publisher - just the same as it does now (some publishers will buy any old indie crap and others are more selective). > publishers were keen to take anything that came their way This was even true for the 8-bit era for some genres (like platformers, maze games, etc). > where game genres were yet to be inventedĪctually by the 16-bit era quite a number of genres were already really well defined.
It's just the rose tinted glasses one wears when looking back at the games one grew up with and loved. The golden age were the 8 and 16 bit days, where game genres were yet to be invented and publishers were keen to take anything that came their way, and we were creating stuff that were told the hardware wasn't capable of.