It’s no surprise, after the success of my previous features on gaming highlights from the 80s and 90s, that I was eager to return to retro gaming. Rather than theme an entire week, as I did in my previous features. I decided to focus on certain years and see what the gaming industry was like at that time. In my first ‘gaming-look-back’ I decided to go back 20 years and examine the gaming scene in 1997. In the past 20 years, many consoles came and went. While there have been many games released over the years, many are making a comeback to celebrate their 20th anniversary.
1997 was an amazing year with highs and lows. The year 1997 was full of highs and lows. Mother Teresa and Princess Diana died. Woolworths shut its doors. The stock market crashed. Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield off the ear. It’s amazing we survived the year. But it wasn’t all bad news. The Kyoto Protocol was signed by 150 countries. Steve Jobs returned to Apple. We met the young Harry Potter. And Pathfinder landed on Mars.
Online casinos were born in 1997. PCs became more common, internet usage was increasing and the dot-com boom was booming. In 1997, 888.com launched their website and hello88.charity was another.
In the world of video games, 1997 marked the peak of a golden era. In 1997, some of the best games made their digital debut. I chose 12 games from 1997 that not only inspired sequels but have also been updated for the Xbox One or Playstation 4 in recent years.
Metal Slug
I was able to get a great deal of information about the latest games by growing up in an arcade. In 1997, I loved Metal Slug as well as Top Skater and Tekken. It was released in 1997 on PlayStation, and it re-energized side-scrolling shooting genres with its frantic gameplay and multiple routes. Cartoon visuals and massive boss battles kept arcade players and home gamers coming back for more.
MDK
MDK is a third-person shooting game by Shiny Entertainment. The art style resembled H.R Giger’s Alien, with its dark metallic look. The story revolves around Kurt Hectic who is a janitor and reluctantly has to try to save Earth from a massive alien invasion. The game’s technical prowess was praised, as it ran at 30fps. It also introduced the first highly capable sniper scope that is now standard in modern shooters.
GoldenEye
This game has taken so much from me. GoldenEye is a first person shooter game developed by Rare based on the James Bond movie GoldenEye from 1995. The game was released exclusively on the Nintendo 64, and it won numerous awards. GoldenEye, when viewed in retrospect, is regarded as a pivotal video game in the history. It was the game which made consoles the home of first-person shooters, and marked the transition away from the standard Doom-like style to a realistic one. GoldenEye introduced features like atmospheric single-player campaigns, stealth, and console multiplayer deathmatch modes. The game is still cited today as one of greatest video games ever.
Fallout
Fallout was introduced in 1997. It is a postapocalyptic RPG set in a future alternate that combines 60’s sensibilities with a world of the 22nd century. Fallout was awarded the “RPG of the year” award by Computer Gaming World and the “RPG of the year” by GameSpot. In the past two decades, the game has danced its way around the 10 best games of all-time.
Fallout’s gameplay was centered around visiting places and interacting with local residents. The player would choose how to resolve the dilemmas of these troubled residents in order to earn karma points and experience. The missions could be completed in many different ways, and players could work their way around the world to kill mutants, gangs, or innocent NPCs. Combat is turn-based, and uses a system known as SPECIAL, which stands for Strength, Perception Endurance Charisma Intelligence Agility Luck.
The original Fallout has one of the most satisfying video game endings ever.
This list shows how significant 1997 was to the gaming industry. Many video game franchises, which bring millions of dollars to the gaming industry, were born twenty years ago. These games inspired a whole generation to learn to code, and to continue their legacy. The first online gaming websites were launched in 1997. I doubt either site expected that they would merge together two decades later.