The 1990s.
See what appeared alongside what you already know. Follow an event into the Vault, or narrow the decade to a subject.
368 events · 363 Vault · 5 world
368 events
No events match. Try another subject or clear the filters.
1990
42 events- Magazines
576 KByte
Hungary's games monthly, named for a Commodore 64 plus an Amiga
- Culture & Community
Adventure Game Deaths
Sierra, Lucasfilm and the argument over killing the player
- Languages
AMOS
Amiga game creation
- Groups
Andromeda
The Norwegian group that won The Party 1994 with Nexus 7
- Companies & Studios
Ariolasoft is renamed
The record company's software house that brought Electronic Arts and Broderbund to Britain
- Classic Games
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
Capcom's two-chipmunk NES platformer
- Companies & Studios
Climax Entertainment
The small Tokyo studio behind Landstalker's quarter view
- Classic Games
Columns
A Hewlett-Packard engineer's jewel game that Sega bought to answer Tetris
- Classic Games
Commander Keen
A pogo stick, a scrolling world and an episode to share
- Magazines
Commodore Format
Future Publishing's Commodore 64 monthly, 1990 to 1995
- Classic Games
Crystalis
SNK's action adventure after the end of the world
- Classic Games
Dr. Mario
Mario in a white coat, clearing a bottle of viruses
- Companies & Studios
Eidos Interactive
The video-compression company that bought Domark, U.S. Gold and Lara Croft
- Classic Games
Fire Emblem
Intelligent Systems' tactical role-playing series, where a fallen soldier stays fallen
- Hardware
Game Genie
Code Masters' cheat cartridge, and the lawsuit Nintendo lost
- Software
LightWave 3D
From Toaster to Hollywood
- Classic Games
Little Nemo: The Dream Master
Borrowing animal abilities to cross Slumberland
- Companies & Studios
Looking Glass Studios
The Massachusetts studio behind Ultima Underworld, System Shock and Thief
- Magazines
Mean Machines
EMAP's Sega and Nintendo magazine
- Demos
Mental Hangover
Scoopex's Easter 1990 winner, remembered as the first trackmo
- Companies & Studios
Millennium Interactive
The Cambridge publisher of James Pond, Diggers and Creatures
- Hardware
MMC5
Nintendo's biggest cartridge chip, and the MMC6 beside it
- Hardware
Mode 7
SNES rotation and scaling
- Systems
Neo Geo
The arcade board you could take home
- Software
ProTracker
The free Amiga tracker that became the standard
- Classic Games
Raiden
Seibu Kaihatsu's plain, hard vertical shooter
- Companies & Studios
Renegade
The Bitmap Brothers' own label, run like a record company
- Companies & Studios
Revolution Software
British adventure specialists, from Hull to York
- Groups
Sanity
The German Amiga group behind Arte and Roots
- Systems
Sega Game Gear
A Master System in the hand
- Groups
Skid Row
The Amiga crackers who raced Crystal for new releases, and fixed State of the Art
- Classic Games
Snake Rattle 'n' Roll
Eat enough to open the exit, then survive the journey to it
- Classic Games
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
Ice cream! Ice cream!
- Classic GamesNot yet fact-checked
Star Control
A space duel with ships worth learning
- Systems
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo's 16-bit console
- Genres
Tactical RPG
Wargame battles fought by characters the player comes to care about
- Companies & Studios
Team17
From a Wakefield PD library to Worms
- Classic Games
The Secret of Monkey Island
Lucasfilm Games' comic pirate adventure, and the series it started
- Classic Games
Turrican
Manfred Trenz's 1,300-screen shoot-'em-up for the Commodore 64
- Genres
Tycoon Games
Business games named after Railroad Tycoon, and the flood that followed RollerCoaster Tycoon
- Hardware
Video Toaster
A television studio on an Amiga card
- Classic Games
Wing Commander
Chris Roberts's space combat game that played like a film, and sold PCs
1991
55 events- Tools
3D Construction Kit
Incentive sold the engine itself
- Design
Active Time Battle
Menu combat on a running clock
- Classic Games
Alien Breed
Gauntlet in the corridors of Aliens
- Magazines
Amiga Power
Future Publishing's Amiga games monthly, 1991 to 1996
- Magazines
Amiga Shopper
Future Publishing's Amiga monthly with no games pages, 1991 to 1997
- Classic Games
Another World
Éric Chahi's polygon film you could play
- Classic Games
Battletoads
Rare's twelve-level brawler for the NES
- Companies & Studios
Blizzard Entertainment
From Silicon & Synapse's console contracts to Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft and World of Warcraft
- Groups
Booze Design
The Swedish C64 group behind Edge of Disgrace
- Companies & Studios
Bungie
From Chicago Mac games to Halo, Destiny and Sony
- Classic Games
Captain Commando
Capcom USA's old mascot gets his own beat-'em-up
- Companies & Studios
Cinemaware ends
Interactive movies on the Amiga
- Classic Games
Civilization
Six thousand years of history, one turn at a time
- Systems
Commodore CDTV
An Amiga behind a living-room CD player’s controls
- Genres
Console FPS
Shooters on the sofa
- Companies & Studios
CRL Group ends
The East London publisher that took its games to the film censors
- Companies & Studios
EA Sports
If it's in the game, it's in the game
- Companies & Studios
Edizioni Hobby is renamed
The Milan publisher that brought Newsfield's Zzap! and The Games Machine to Italy
- Demos
Enigma
Phenomena's Easter 1991 winner
- Companies & Studios
Epic Games
From a shareware smiley face to Unreal and Fortnite
- Classic Games
Fatal Fury
SNK's first one-on-one fighter, from the man who made Street Fighter
- Communities
Fighting Game Community
The FGC, from Street Fighter II arcades to Evo
- Companies & Studios
Flair Software
The Northumberland publisher whose games filled Commodore's CD32 packs
- Classic Games
Gods
The Bitmap Brothers' platform game that watched how you played
- Demos
Hardwired
Crionics and The Silents at The Party 1991
- Companies & Studios
Hewson Consultants goes into liquidation
The publisher that put the developer's name on the box
- Companies & Studios
id Software
Four Softdisk programmers who made the first-person shooter a mass hobby
- Software
Imagine
Impulse's ray tracer, rebuilt from Turbo Silver
- Classic Games
Lemmings
Let's go!
- Companies & Studios
Level 9 ends
The Austin family's adventure factory
- Companies & Studios
Mastertronic is acquired
The £1.99 budget label that sold games wherever people shopped
- Groups
Melon Dezign
The Danish demo group known for cartoons, design and melons
- Classic Games
Metroid II: Return of Samus
Samus Aran's Game Boy hunt on the Metroids' home planet
- Classic Games
Micro Machines
Toy cars on the breakfast table, made for the NES without Nintendo's blessing
- Companies & Studios
Mirrorsoft goes into liquidation
The Daily Mirror's software house, from Mr Men to Tetris
- Companies & Studios
Newsfield Publications goes into liquidation
The Ludlow publisher of CRASH, ZZAP!64 and Amtix!
- Groups
Oxyron
The German group behind the Coma Light demos
- Companies & Studios
Palace Software is acquired
From a Soho video shop to Barbarian
- Classic Games
Puyo Puyo
Compile's falling blobs, and the chain reaction
- Classic Games
Road Rash
Watching the road while fighting the rider beside you
- Demos
Signal Part 3
Mikropol's 1991 Spectrum demo from Poland
- Companies & Studios
Sonic Team
The Sega studio named after its first hit
- Classic Games
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sega's mascot, built for speed on the Mega Drive
- Classic Games
Street Fighter II
Capcom's 1991 fighting game, and the rush to squeeze it into home computers
- Classic Games
Streets of Rage
Sega's own Final Fight, with a composer's name on the title screen
- Companies & Studios
Subor
Xiaobawang, China's famiclone and learning-machine maker
- Classic Games
Sunset Riders
Bounty hunting with company
- Classic Games
Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Arthur on the Super Famicom, and the bracelet that sends him round again
- Demos
The Lyra II
A Polish Spectrum megademo on a British covertape
- Events
The Party
Denmark's demo party between Christmas and New Year
- Groups
Triton
Crystal Dream, Fasttracker and the road to Starbreeze
- Demos
Voyage
Razor 1911 at The Party 1991
- Tools
ZZT
Tim Sweeney's first game, and the editor that came with it
- TechnologyWorld context
World Wide Web goes public
Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web project goes public, laying the foundation for the internet as we know it today.
- PoliticsWorld context
Soviet Union dissolves
The Soviet Union officially dissolves after 69 years, ending the Cold War and reshaping global politics and economics.
1992
38 events- Communities
Aminet
The Amiga archive
- Classic Games
Art of Fighting
SNK's zooming fighter with a spirit gauge
- Events
Assembly
Finland's summer demo party, from a school hall to an esports business
- Systems
Atari Falcon030
A 68030 computer with a separate signal processor
- Languages
Blitz Basic 2
The Amiga BASIC that compiled to machine code
- Magazines
C= Hacking
The net-magazine that explained how the demos did it
- Demos
Crystal Dream
Triton's first PC demo, and its sequel
- Companies & Studios
Daze
The London agency that sold Ishar, Stardust and The Patrician in Britain
- Companies & Studios
DICE
From The Silents' pinball tables to Battlefield
- Classic Games
Dune II
Westwood's war for spice, and the pattern real-time strategy followed
- Design
Fatalities
Finish them
- Genres
First-Person Shooter
From Doom clones to the battle royale
- Classic Games
Flashback
Delphine's rotoscoped science-fiction chase
- People
Grace Hopper dies
From reusable routines to shared languages
- Genres
Immersive Sim
First-person worlds built from rules, not scripts
- Demos
Jesus on E's
LSD's half-hour Amiga rave demo
- Classic Games
Kirby's Dream Land
HAL Laboratory's Game Boy platformer for players who had never finished one
- Classic Games
Landstalker
Climax's isometric treasure hunt for the Mega Drive
- Classic Games
Lure of the Temptress
Revolution's first adventure, and a town that got on without you
- Companies & Studios
Magnetic Scrolls ends
The London adventure house that took on Infocom
- Classic Games
Mortal Kombat
Finish him
- Magazines
Nintendo Magazine System
EMAP's official Nintendo magazine, made from half of Mean Machines
- Companies & Studios
Rainbird ends
British Telecom's full-price label
- Genres
Real-Time Strategy
Build a base, harvest a resource, raise an army, and never wait for your turn
- Companies & Studios
Rebellion Developments
From Atari's Jaguar to the owners of 2000 AD
- Tools
RPG Maker
Japanese role-playing games without programming
- Classic Games
Sensible Soccer
The Amiga football game Sensible Software built after playing too much Kick Off
- Classic Games
Shin Megami Tensei
Atlus's role-playing games of demons, Tokyo and the end of the world
- Classic Games
Shining Force
Sega's tactical role-playing game for the Mega Drive
- Demos
Shock Megademo
ESI's eight-part tape megademo from Poland
- Demos
State of the Art
Spaceballs' dancing silhouettes
- Classic Games
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
Wario's debut
- Magazines
Super Play
A British SNES magazine that looked beyond British release dates
- Events
The Gathering
Norway's Easter computer party
- Companies & Studios
Treasure
Konami leavers who made 'original action games'
- Classic Games
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
A dungeon you can inhabit
- Classic Games
Virtua Racing
One road, four ways to see it
- Classic Games
Wolfenstein 3D
Fast corridors built from a square grid
1993
38 events- Demos
9 Fingers
Spaceballs' dancers, a year on
- Classic Games
Aladdin (Genesis)
Disney's animation, squeezed onto a Mega Drive cartridge
- Systems
Amiga CD32
An AGA Amiga built around a CD drive and a controller
- Demos
Arte
Sanity's surrealist demo from The Party 1993
- Systems
Atari Jaguar
A graphics system with several processors and several word widths
- Classic Games
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
Capcom's brawler from Mark Schultz's Xenozoic Tales
- Classic Games
Cannon Fodder
Sensible Software's war game, and the poppy that never made the box
- Culture & Community
Congressional Hearings 1993
Violence in video games
- Companies & Studios
Criterion Games
Canon's Guildford 3D company, from RenderWare to Burnout
- Classic Games
Day of the Tentacle
The sequel to Maniac Mansion, played across three centuries
- Demos
Desert Dream
Kefrens' pyramids, spaceships and watermelons
- Classic Games
Doom
The free first episode that took over the office network
- Magazines
Edge
Future's serious, expensive multi-format games magazine, published since October 1993
- Companies & Studios
Epyx ends
From Temple of Apshai to Summer Games, and the handheld that became the Lynx
- Communities
Fan Translations
Players who translated the games publishers left in Japan
- Classic Games
FIFA
EA's football series, from an isometric Mega Drive game to EA Sports FC
- Classic Games
Gunstar Heroes
Treasure's first game, built on 'anything goes'
- Tools
id Tech
The engines under Doom, Quake and their successors
- Classic Games
Lionheart
Thalion's farewell to action games
- Culture & Community
Mortal Kombat Controversy
Blood code politics
- Classic Games
Myst
Cyan's island of pictures, built in HyperCard, and the best-selling PC game of the 1990s
- Companies & Studios
NanaOn-Sha
Masaya Matsuura's music-game studio
- Classic Games
NBA Jam
Two-on-two, no fouls, and he's on fire
- Classic Games
NHL '94
The pass-and-shoot hockey game that kept its players
- Magazines
PC Player
Germany's PC games monthly, from DMV to WEKA to Future, 1993–2001
- Classic Games
Ridge Racer
A short race with room to master every corner
- Classic Games
Sam & Max Hit the Road
LucasArts' road trip with Steve Purcell's Freelance Police
- Classic Games
Samurai Shodown
SNK's sword fight, where one cut could decide a round
- Demos
Second Reality
Future Crew's winning demo at Assembly '93
- Classic Games
Secret of Mana
Square's three-player action RPG, cut down from a CD that never came
- Classic Games
Star Fox
Nintendo's polygon space shooter, drawn by a chip from England
- Hardware
Super FX Chip
A 3D processor that shipped inside the cartridge
- Classic Games
Syndicate
Bullfrog's cyborg hit squad in a corporate future
- Classic Games
The 7th Guest
Trilobyte's haunted house on two CDs
- Classic Games
The Chaos Engine
Two mercenaries against a steam-driven computer gone mad
- Classic Games
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
A Zelda adventure built around an unfamiliar island
- Emulators
VICE
The Versatile Commodore Emulator
- Classic Games
Virtua Fighter
Sega AM2's polygon fighters, from Model 1 to the Saturn
1994
43 events- Companies & Studios
3D Realms
Apogee's 3D label, the Build engine and the fourteen-year Duke
- Classic Games
Beneath a Steel Sky
Dave Gibbons' upside-down city
- Companies & Studios
Camelot Software Planning
From Sega's Shining games to Nintendo's Mario Golf and Golden Sun
- Companies & Studios
Commodore goes into liquidation
Computers for the masses, not the classes
- Classic Games
Daytona USA
Sega's stock-car racer, eight cabinets at a time
- Classic Games
Donkey Kong Country
Rare's rendered jungle on the Super Nintendo
- Events
DreamHack
From a school canteen in Malung to the largest LAN party on record
- Classic Games
EarthBound
A role-playing game set in small-town America
- Culture & Community
ESRB
The industry rates its own games
- Companies & Studios
Frontier Developments
The studio David Braben set up after Frontier, from a Cambridgeshire farmhouse to theme parks and dinosaurs
- Companies & Studios
Insomniac Games
The Burbank studio behind Spyro, Ratchet & Clank and Spider-Man
- People
Jay Miner dies
Father of the Amiga
- Classic Games
Killer Instinct
Rare's arcade fighting game, billed as Ultra 64
- Hardware
Model 2
Sega's arcade board with flight-simulator textures
- Companies & Studios
MOS Technology ends
The chip maker behind the 6502, the VIC-II and the SID
- Companies & Studios
Nazca Corporation
The former Irem team that made Metal Slug
- Companies & Studios
Neversoft
The Los Angeles studio that put Bruce Willis on a skateboard
- Demos
Nexus 7
Andromeda's landslide at The Party 1994
- Systems
PlayStation
The disc revolution
- Classic Games
Puzzle Bobble
Bub and Bob's bubble-shooting puzzle game, known in America as Bust-A-Move
- Tools
RenderWare
Cross-platform 3D middleware
- Systems
Sega Saturn
Eight processors and a surprise launch
- Classic Games
Skidmarks
The four-car Amiga racer written in Blitz Basic 2
- Communities
Speedrunning
Finishing games as fast as possible, and proving it
- Companies & Studios
Sports Interactive
The Collyer brothers' studio, makers of Championship Manager and Football Manager
- Classic Games
Super Metroid
Samus Aran's 24-megabit return to Zebes
- Classic Games
System Shock
Looking Glass's space station, run by a computer that wants you dead
- Companies & Studios
Team Andromeda
The Sega team that made the three Saturn Panzer Dragoon games
- Classic Games
Tekken
Namco's one-button-per-limb answer to Virtua Fighter
- Classic Games
Tempest 2000
Jeff Minter's techno rebuild of Atari's tube shooter
- Companies & Studios
Tengen ends
Atari Games’ home label, inside and outside Nintendo’s licence
- Companies & Studios
Thalion Software goes into liquidation
From The Exceptions to Lionheart and Ambermoon
- Classic Games
The King of Fighters
SNK's three-on-three fighting game series
- Classic Games
Theme Park
Bullfrog's business simulation, with rollercoasters and strikes
- Companies & Studios
Toaplan goes into liquidation
Ten years of shoot-'em-ups from a Tokyo studio
- Classic Games
Transport Tycoon
A hundred years of trains, lorries, ships and aircraft, from one programmer
- Classic Games
Virtua Cop
The light-gun game in polygons
- Companies & Studios
Vulcan Software
The Portsmouth publisher that stayed with the Amiga
- Classic Games
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans
Blizzard's first real-time strategy game, a Dune II for two players
- Classic Games
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
A castle paid for in pirate treasure
- Classic Games
X-COM: UFO Defense
The 1994 original, and the hyphen that separates it from the reboots
- Companies & Studios
Zeppelin Games is renamed
The Newcastle budget house that became a racing studio
- PoliticsWorld context
Nelson Mandela elected President of South Africa
Nelson Mandela becomes South Africa's first Black president after the country's first fully democratic election, ending apartheid.
1995
27 events- Culture & Community
Amiga Power versus Team17
The magazine that marked hard and the studio that stopped sending games
- Companies & Studios
BioWare
The Edmonton studio founded by doctors, from Baldur's Gate to Mass Effect
- Companies & Studios
Cavedog Entertainment
Humongous Entertainment's games for grown-ups
- Classic Games
Chrono Trigger
Square's 1995 time-travel RPG, made with Dragon Quest's designer and artist
- Classic Games
Comix Zone
A beat-'em-up fought through the panels of a comic
- Classic Games
Command & Conquer
Westwood's real-time war over Tiberium, with filmed briefings between the battles
- Companies & Studios
Creatures Inc.
The middle name in Pokémon's copyright line
- Companies & Studios
Denton Designs ends
The Liverpool team that walked out of Imagine's collapse
- Companies & Studios
Ensemble Studios
The Dallas studio behind Age of Empires
- Classic Games
Full Throttle
Tim Schafer's biker adventure
- Culture & Community
GameFAQs
Free guides, written by players
- Companies & Studios
Harmonix
The Cambridge, Massachusetts studio behind Frequency, Guitar Hero and Rock Band
- Classic Games
Panzer Dragoon
Sega's dragon-back rail shooter for the early Saturn
- Classic Games
Rayman
Michel Ancel's limbless hero, from the Atari ST to UbiArt
- Companies & Studios
Remedy Entertainment
The Future Crew members' games studio, from Death Rally to Max Payne and Alan Wake
- Companies & Studios
Renegade is absorbed
The Bitmap Brothers' own label, run like a record company
- Phenomena
RPG Golden Age
Two traditions at their peak, 1995 to 2001
- Classic Games
Sega Rally Championship
Two rally cars, four stages and a lot of mud
- Classic Games
Suikoden
Building an army, six companions at a time
- Classic Games
Tales of Phantasia
Namco's 48-megabit RPG that sang
- Companies & Studios
Team Ninja
Tecmo's studio for Dead or Alive, Ninja Gaiden and Nioh
- Classic Games
Time Crisis
Take cover!
- Classic Games
Vectorman
A robot built from spheres for the late Mega Drive
- Classic Games
WipEout
The anti-gravity racer that sold the PlayStation in Europe
- Communities
World of Spectrum
The Spectrum archive that asked permission
- Classic Games
Worms
The magazine competition entry that became Team17's biggest game
- Events
X
The Dutch party for the Commodore 64
1996
33 events- Companies & Studios
Black Isle Studios
Interplay's role-playing division
- Classic Games
Broken Sword
George Stobbart, reluctant hero
- Classic Games
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Einstein removes Hitler from history, and Stalin marches on Europe
- Classic Games
Crash Bandicoot
Naughty Dog's 3D platformer and the PlayStation's unofficial mascot
- Classic Games
Dead or Alive
Tecmo's fighting game built around the counter-attack
- Classic Games
Diablo
The turn-based dungeon game that became a real-time hit
- Companies & Studios
Domark is absorbed
Two advertising men, a £25,000 treasure hunt, and a decade of licences
- Classic Games
Duke Nukem 3D
3D Realms' shooter on Ken Silverman's Build engine
- Events
Evo
Evolution Championship Series, from Battle by the Bay to Las Vegas
- Communities
HVSC
The High Voltage SID Collection
- Communities
Internet Archive
The library that lets you run old software in a browser
- Companies & Studios
Ion Storm
John Romero's studio: a Dallas penthouse, Daikatana, and Deus Ex from Austin
- Demos
Jesus on E's (Spectrum)
LSD's Amiga rave demo, digitised for the 48K
- Companies & Studios
Kompart UK ends
The St Albans firm that brought Blue Byte, Max Design and Croteam to British Amigas
- Classic Games
Mario Kart 64
Nintendo's four-player kart racer
- Classic Games
Metal Slug
Nazca's cartoon war on the Neo Geo
- Culture & Community
Modding to Industry
From mods to studios
- Genres
Music Games
Press, step and strum in time
- Companies & Studios
Nazca Corporation is acquired
The former Irem team that made Metal Slug
- Systems
Nintendo 64
A workstation graphics pipeline with four controller ports
- Classic Games
PaRappa the Rapper
Sony's 1996 rap game about a paper-thin dog
- Classic Games
Persona
Atlus's school-day role-playing games
- Classic Games
Pokémon
Gotta catch 'em all
- Phenomena
Pokémon Phenomenon
How a Game Boy game became a worldwide craze
- Classic Games
Pokémon Red & Blue
Two cartridges, one collection
- Classic Games
Quake
id's first world built from polygons
- Events
QuakeCon
The Texas LAN party that id Software adopted
- Classic Games
Resident Evil
Biohazard: the zombie mansion that named survival horror
- Classic Games
Super Mario 64
Mario, an analogue stick and a camera on a cloud
- Genres
Survival Horror
Too few bullets, a locked mansion, and a name that began as a marketing line
- Classic Games
Tomb Raider
Core Design's 3D adventure, and the debut of Lara Croft
- Companies & Studios
U.S. Gold is acquired
The Birmingham publisher that sold American and arcade games to British players
- Companies & Studios
Valve Corporation
Half-Life, the mods it bought, and Steam
1997
30 events- Distribution
Abandonware
Preserving forgotten games
- Classic Games
Age of Empires
Warcraft's controls, Civilization's ambitions
- Classic Games
Beatmania
Konami's 1997 DJ game, and the start of Bemani
- Companies & Studios
Bemani
Konami's music-game division, named after Beatmania
- Classic Games
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Konami's 2D Castlevania that turned Dracula's castle into one map
- Techniques
Cel Shading
3D drawn to look like a cartoon
- Hardware
DualShock
Two sticks and two motors
- Classic Games
Dungeon Keeper
Bullfrog's dungeon game played from the monsters' side
- Companies & Studios
Eutechnyx
Zeppelin Games under a new name, making racing games in the North East
- Classic Games
Fallout
Interplay's post-nuclear role-playing game
- Classic Games
Final Fantasy Tactics
Square's war of the lions
- Classic Games
Final Fantasy VII
The role-playing game that left Nintendo
- Companies & Studios
Futuremark
The Finnish maker of 3DMark, once called MadOnion.com
- Classic Games
GoldenEye 007
Rare's Bond shooter for the Nintendo 64
- Classic Games
Gran Turismo
The real driving simulator
- Classic Games
Grand Theft Auto
Top-down transgression
- People
Gunpei Yokoi dies
Lateral thinking of withered technology
- Companies & Studios
Irrational Games
The Looking Glass offshoot behind System Shock 2 and BioShock
- Companies & Studios
Lionhead Studios
Peter Molyneux's studio after Bullfrog, maker of Black & White and Fable
- Emulators
MAME
The arcade emulator that became a record of the machines
- Events
Mekka & Symposium
Germany's Easter demo party in Fallingbostel
- Companies & Studios
Millennium Interactive ends
The Cambridge publisher of James Pond, Diggers and Creatures
- Companies & Studios
Relic Entertainment
The Vancouver studio behind Homeworld, Dawn of War and Company of Heroes
- Classic Games
Star Fox 64
Nintendo's talking, shaking space shooter
- Companies & Studios
Technos Japan goes into liquidation
The Japanese studio behind Renegade, Double Dragon and Kunio-kun, founded by Data East veterans
- Classic Games
The House of the Dead
Sega AM1's zombie light-gun game
- Classic Games
Total Annihilation
The real-time strategy game with 3D units, real hills and a new unit every week
- Emulators
WinUAE
The Amiga emulator for Windows, grown from UAE
- Companies & Studios
Zenobi Software ends
Text adventures by post from a house in Rochdale
- Culture & CommunityWorld context
Princess Diana dies in Paris crash
The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a Paris car crash triggers unprecedented global mourning and media coverage.
1998
35 events- Classic Games
Baldur's Gate
BioWare's Forgotten Realms role-playing game
- Classic Games
Banjo-Kazooie
Rare's 3D platform game about a bear with a bird in his backpack
- Companies & Studios
Brøderbund is acquired
The Carlston family's software house, from Lode Runner to Myst
- Classic Games
Dance Dance Revolution
Konami's arcade game played with the feet
- Hardware
Dance Mat
Playing with your feet
- People
Dani Bunten Berry dies
The designer of M.U.L.E., who spent her career getting people to play together
- Classic Games
F-Zero X
Thirty machines at sixty frames a second
- Companies & Studios
Galoob is acquired
The toy company that sold the Game Genie and beat Nintendo in court
- Companies & Studios
Graftgold ends
Steve Turner and Andrew Braybrook's development house, from Hewson to the PlayStation
- Classic Games
Grim Fandango
LucasArts' film noir adventure in the Land of the Dead
- Classic Games
Half-Life
Valve's first game, told without a cut-scene
- Companies & Studios
IO Interactive
The Copenhagen studio behind Hitman
- Classic Games
Metal Gear Solid
Tactical espionage action
- Systems
NAOMI
The Dreamcast's arcade sibling
- Systems
Neo Geo Pocket
SNK's handheld, and its clicking thumbstick
- Communities
NESdev
The community that documented the NES from the outside
- Companies & Studios
Ocean Software is renamed
The Manchester publisher that set out to plan its hits
- Companies & Studios
Polyphony Digital
Kazunori Yamauchi's Gran Turismo studio
- Companies & Studios
Retro Studios
Nintendo's studio in Austin, Texas
- Companies & Studios
Rockstar Games
Take-Two's New York label, and the publisher of Grand Theft Auto
- Systems
Sega Dreamcast
Sega's last console
- Classic Games
Snake
A growing obstacle on Nokia's numeric keypad
- Classic Games
Soul Calibur
Namco's weapon fighter, better at home than in the arcade
- Culture & Community
Speed Demos Archive
From Quake demos to every game
- Classic Games
Spyro the Dragon
Insomniac's open-world platform game for the PlayStation
- Companies & Studios
Starbreeze Studios
From Triton's demo coders to Riddick, Payday and reconstruction
- Classic Games
StarCraft
Blizzard's three-race real-time strategy game, and South Korea's first spectator sport of the computer age
- Companies & Studios
Team Andromeda ends
The Sega team that made the three Saturn Panzer Dragoon games
- Classic Games
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Zelda in three dimensions, three years in the making
- Classic Games
Thief: The Dark Project
Looking Glass's first-person game about not being seen
- Companies & Studios
Tiger Electronics is acquired
Licensed LCD games, Tigervision cartridges and the Game.com
- Companies & Studios
Troika Games
Fallout's makers on their own, 1998–2005
- Classic Games
Unreal
Waking up on Na Pali
- Tools
Unreal Engine
The engine Epic sold alongside its games
- Classic Games
Xenogears
Square's 1998 PlayStation RPG of giant robots, a war-torn world and a hero at war with his own creator
1999
27 events- Companies & Studios
Accolade is acquired
The sports and simulation publisher that went to court with Sega and won
- Companies & Studios
Acorn Computers is renamed
The Cambridge company that built the BBC Micro and designed the ARM
- Companies & Studios
Arkane Studios
The Lyon studio that set out to make Ultima Underworld 3
- Companies & Studios
Beam Software is acquired
The Melbourne studio behind Melbourne House
- Events
Chaos Constructions
St Petersburg's demo party, with the ZX Spectrum at its heart
- Classic Games
Counter-Strike
The Half-Life mod that Valve bought
- Classic Games
Crazy Taxi
Panic, punk rock and a yellow cab
- Companies & Studios
Europress is acquired
Derek Meakin's Cheshire group: Database Publications, Mandarin and AMOS, and the rescue of CRASH
- Emulators
Fuse
The Free Unix Spectrum Emulator
- Tools
GameMaker
From a Utrecht animation program to an indie engine
- Classic Games
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
The last Fatal Fury of the old SNK
- Companies & Studios
Gremlin Graphics is acquired
The Sheffield software house above a computer shop, from Monty Mole to Actua Soccer
- Tools
Havok
Physics middleware from Dublin
- Classic Games
Homeworld
Real-time strategy in three dimensions, and one fleet's journey home
- Companies & Studios
Monolith Soft
The studio Xenogears' makers founded, from Namco's Xenosaga to Nintendo's Xenoblade
- Classic Games
Planescape: Torment
Black Isle's role-playing game about an immortal who has forgotten who he is
- Classic Games
Pokémon Gold & Silver
The second generation, with a clock in the cartridge
- Classic Games
RollerCoaster Tycoon
Chris Sawyer's theme park game, built one piece of track at a time
- Companies & Studios
Sensible Software is acquired
Jon Hare and Chris Yates, from Parallax to Cannon Fodder
- Classic Games
Shenmue
Yu Suzuki's Dreamcast epic of a Japanese town in 1986
- Classic Games
Silent Hill
Konami's horror game in the fog
- Culture & Community
Sony vs Connectix
The emulator case Sony won, then lost
- Classic Games
Space Channel 5
Up, down, up, down, chu, chu, chu
- Classic Games
System Shock 2
Irrational's first game: horror on a starship, built on Thief's engine
- Classic Games
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
Two-minute runs, real skaters and a punk soundtrack
- Culture & Community
Tool-Assisted Speedrun (TAS)
Speedruns built frame by frame in an emulator
- TechnologyWorld context
Y2K preparations reach fever pitch
The world prepares for potential computer chaos as the year 2000 approaches, highlighting society's dependence on software.