Most Popular Games of the Past Decades

The evolution of gaming

Games have been with us from even before civilization. Competing for something with others — physically or mentally — without the need to gain anything other than a fun time is why we love games so much. Back then, people played tag, hide and seek, and all that with friends. Then came video games, with cool graphics and music to go with it. People lost track of time staying at home, alone with heir eyes stuck to small screens. Later, they made new bonds of friendship with games that can include multiple players.

Gaming has become a ritual of cool kids as well as that shy kid who doesn't have any friends. The real craze of video games became a thing during the ’70s to ’80s when children, as well as grown-ups, started to catch the charisma of gaming. There have been so many legendary games that have made the childhood of the past generation and still in the process of making this one. These games can be classified by the decade they appeared in.

The ‘70s’: Space Invaders

Space Invaders is a 1978 arcade game created by Tomohiro Nishikado, a Japanese video game developer. In this game, pixelated alien invaders descend from the sky and a horizontally moving shooter earns points by shooting as many aliens as possible.

This game opened doors and worked as an inspiration for many game designers worldwide. It also marks the beginning of the golden age of arcade games in the 20th century where it became a part of pop culture.

It doesn’t seem much now, but back then, the Space Invaders display was an impressive monochrome raster with only 224×256 resolution! The music played a big part too. Keeping this all in mind, the game did very well not only in Japan and the US, but worldwide. The game continued to gather an average of $600 million a year until 1982.

The ’80s: Second decade of the industry

As days go on, people’s expectation grows higher. And so, at the start of 1980, the industry suffered from a huge implosion because of a lack of quality in games that almost destroyed it. But later, some of the most iconic games came up in this decade, one of them being Pac-Man.

Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco in 1980. The game originated in Japan and has quite a funny origin story: the original name of this game was Puckman which was changed because people defaced the arcade machines turning the P into an F.

This is a maze-chase game where Pac-Man has to eat small dots while avoiding four ghosts, each with their own characters. Along with Pac-Man, there were some other games too that came into being during the ’80s and extended farther with various volumes and sequels, such as:

• Super Mario
• Galaga
• Donkey Kong
• Tetris

Among all these, Pac-Man is considered to be the best-selling arcade game of all time with more than US$2.5 billion in revenue, surpassing Space Invaders in 2016.

The emergence of the ‘90s

During the 1990s, the era of arcade games came to a stop and people started in on the wonders of PlayStations and computer games. Among all, the game that really sticks out is Half-Life, a shooting-survival game made for Microsoft Windows in 1998.

In this first-person shooter (FPS) game, the player takes the avatar of a scientist who fights with both alien and human adversaries to survive. This game achieved high acclaim for good graphics, engaging gameplay, and a well-developed storyline. It is considered to be one of the most influential FPS games, surpassing Doom — a 1993 FPS game that was used as an inspiration.

Aside from this, major titles like Super Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time have been revolutionary. Released at 1998, both were meant for Nintendo 64 and follow approximately similar structure. Ocarina of Time, being a 32-megabyte game, was the largest game by Nintendo till then.

The 2000s: Something for everyone!

From 2000 to 2010, the list of games is more diverse. It seems there are all types of games for all types of personalities. For those who like blood and gore, with a good storyline and the FPS feel, the Resident Evil franchise was a good bet.

For someone who likes races, Grand Theft Auto made its grand breakthrough in early 2000. The game is filled with exciting activities with great graphics and sound effects. The creators went one step farther and included artists like Samuel L. Jackson and Ray Liotta to voice the characters.

And for people who like more subdued, fun game to pass the time, they weren’t disappointed either as The Sims series came up in the mid-2000s. Till now, the franchise is going strong with new games every year.

Finally — 2010 to 2020

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is just one of the sensational games that we’ve been obsessed over during the past decade. We have mostly been enjoying the already built-up franchises like Doom, The Legend of Zelda, GTA, and so on.

These days, our attention spans are short and divided among so many better things coming up after something good and we have chances to choose. Fortnite is one of the trends of this decade along with Nintendo’s Animal Crossing. Nowadays, being stuck at home, we’ve had more chances of checking out new as well as older things and finding out what we like.

As days go on, we get amazed just by thinking about how games evolved over the years. From arcade games to tiny screens and now using virtual reality to get the best experience out of games. My salute to the creators who make these great contents for us to enjoy and gush over. This industry is going nowhere but up as we go forward.