Genre trends have changed quite a bit since the inception of gaming. I thought it would be fun to look back through the decades at the trend setters, games that defined genres, and those that reigned in their era. For those that don’t know, a genre king is a game that more than just dominates its genre, it defines it. These are the few games that become the blue print for other games to follow in its genre. For example: Street Fighter for 2D Fighting, or Halo for its FPS shooter control scheme.
In the 70′s it was all about space games battling aliens in Space Invaders, or shooting down large asteroids in, you guessed it, Asteroids. Pong rip offs were also on the menu. Pong was the obvious trend setter for competitive gaming. It was simple, two big lines (paddles) and one bouncing ball. The object: try to get it past the other guys goal. That paved the way to branch out into other games like Breakout, and a wealth of other copy cats. Eventually, gaming branched out into another genre that grabbed gamers: The platformer. Enter Pitfall. This was probably the first Atari game I played that had you move through multiple screens that were (gasp) different! Little did we know this would start a marvelous trend that would last for more than the decade.
In the mid-80′s Nintendo capitalized on this. Platform gaming was the staple, and the genre king: Super Mario Bros. The gameplay was simple, run left to right to the end of the stage, defeating enemies by jumping on them. This is a formula used by countless other games that lives on even to this day. In Japan, another genre was stirring up a craze: RPGs. Games like Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior here) and Final Fantasy were the games to play, and if you were making an RPG, these were the games to benchmark.
The early 90′s was the arcade’s hay day. There were two games to really thank for that. The most important being a game that every gamer should know: Street Fighter II. This was and still is the definition of fighting games. The basics are used for just about every fighting game out there, be it 2D o 3D. Two fighters head to head, a time limit, and a round win by depleting the others life meter. Play versus a friend or against the computer. This game lead to countless clones, but it all came back to Street Fighter. SNK gave a nod to this with its games like Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting, and a wealth of others. There was only one other game to truly compete against it and keep the arcades alive, though. Mortal Kombat. Although not popular in Japan, this series kept us pumping in quarters and had the great debate of Street Fighter Vs. Mortal Kombat go on for years. We can thank these two genre kings for keeping arcades alive and really molding a genre that dominated for years, 2D fighting.
There are many more trends within these decades, of course, but in the interest of keeping this shorter I omited some like side scrolling shooter kings R-Type and Gradius. Stay tuned for the second part of this post for the mid-late 90′s to today!
