20 years since the Pinnacle of gaming.

2004

Half-Life 2
Spider Man 2
Def Jam Fight for NY
Metal Gear Solid 3
Fight Night 2004
Halo 2
Burnout 3 Takedown
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Star Wars Battlefront
Knights of The Old Republic 2
Far Cry
Jak 3

Strong year for FPS games. I’d add Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament 2004 to your lists.
 
Seems like the video game industry started taking off around that time. Back in '95ish there weren't nearly as many games being released, nor to any kind of fanfare, nor with any kind of budget. And it certainly wasn't common for people above the age of 25 to be playing video games.

Post 2000 and onward video games have an entirely different cultural impact.

On topic I mostly remember the years from circa 1997-2005 as being filled with copious amounts of trash games. But the sheer amount of games being released means there are quite a few memorable ones from that era, I guess.

Still doesn't change my personal feeling that the gaming industry took a nosedive right around 1997-1998, ending the golden era of 1990-1995.

In hindsight, maybe it's best to look at the millenial period as a time of nascency. A lot of new concepts were experimented with during this time, which have then been perfected over the last decade.
 
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whatever 90s year it was, it is the GOAT decade.
 
But the golden age was back in the days of turn bases strategy. Warcraft was great, but then everyone copied it and you couldn't find a good turn based strategy game for like the next decade.
 
starcraft wasn't out in 1997. and no one really cared about gta or gta2 (ie: the old birds-eye view ones)...

The original GTA was a big deal at the time, I remember there was a lot of hype about it and I had to save up my paper boy money for a couple of weeks for it, I was 11 at the time.

It sold over a million copies which was a lot in the the 90s.
 
Weird. I remember my friends and I all getting it for free.

It was around the time when you used to be able to copy games pretty easy with a CD burner maybe that's how you got it.

They weren't making it to give it away.
 
It was around the time when you used to be able to copy games pretty easy with a CD burner maybe that's how you got it.

They weren't making it to give it away.

I think someone at my school found a warez site to d/l it from.
 
1980:

Pac Man

/thread

There are people that genuinely believe that arcade game (and others around that era) was the pinnacle of gaming. I, of course, disagree wholeheartedly and agree with the OP that the apex was around 1996-1998. But I am sure that most of the younger generations disagree since they've probably never played most of those games.

I wonder if they did though would they agree with us? Could we change anyone of those minds? I am thinking no because some of those games did not age well...
 
Meh... You noobs.

I got into my storage locker and dug out all my big box PC games... My poor kid doesn't have a play kitchen anymore.

But the real golden eras of gaming were from 1985-1995.

PC Gamer.jpg
 
Meh... You noobs.

I got into my storage locker and dug out all my big box PC games... My poor kid doesn't have a play kitchen anymore.

But the real golden eras of gaming were from 1985-1995.

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No Jane's flight sim games?
Seeing D! Zone takes me back. I wanted to play that so bad but it never worked on my old Packard Bell 486 with Windows 3.1.
 
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