Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-1915529-20120523190003/@comment-1496755-20120711083830

What makes the 1990's special is the speed of development. There was a period when games advanced slowly and the PC was not considered a viable gaming platform at all.

Then, within just a few years, there came Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, and many others, which took the technology from the basic 4 colors to full-blown 32-bit 3D with high resolutions and tons of special effects. No other decade has seen such fast and profound advancements in technology as the 1990's :)

And it wasn't just that, of course - the gameplay and the artwork were amazing too, despite the engine limitations.

I have played a few games from the 1980's - F-19 Stealth Fighter, for example is an awesome experience. A first-person view flight simulator, it was made in 1988, yet it has four HUGE play areas (even today, I am still struck by the sheer volume of the playfields - imagine flying over an actual-size Europe!) and they are filled with thousands of objects (both friendly and hostile). All objects are 3D polygons (this is 1988, remember) - untextured yet fairly realistic-looking.

I can't even imagine how Microprose managed to do all this - but they did.

I've also played the Zork series - no graphics, just text, but it's still fun to play. Imagination can go wild here - the places and characters can look like anything you want. And the really cool thing that the authors did was to compensate for the games' simplicity by including elaborate extra materials in the game packaging - booklets (like the annual report of a fictional mega-corporation), brochures (tour guides for a fictional kingdom), magazines (an issue of the Popular Magic), documents (a certificate that you own shares from a fictional company), even coins and badges. One can only admire the effort they put into all this :)

I can't imagine any of the modern developers doing this...