Poll: What was your "Golden Age" of Gaming?

[BloatedGuppy]

I was in another forum recently, and there was a fairly heated discussion ongoing about whether or not the release of Starcraft 2 was marker of an impending Golden Age for PC Gaming. A few rabid Starcraft fans and eternal optimists embraced this outlook, others immediately shouted it down, demanding that the TRUE Golden Age of gaming elapsed in such and a such a year, and that if you weren't alive and gaming back then you couldn't tell a classic game from your arsehole.

What do you think? Do you have a "Golden Age" of gaming? A period in your memory where a great cluster of classic/genre defining games all seemed to come out within a few short years of each other? Do you find yourself pontificating on forums and in general conversation about the good old days when games were better/smarter/deeper? Or do you think that this is just nostalgia, and that everyone will remember the games they played in their youth as the best games ever made?

The span I most frequently hear referred to as the Golden Age of PC Gaming is the late 90's. Certainly there was a critical mass of acclaimed single player RPGs out around that time, before the MMO reared its head and throttled the genre.

Console gamers as well...is this blather about Golden Ages just a PC phenomenon? Is the quality of console titles tied exclusively to console lifespans?

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Right now.

I've been a gamer since the eighties and the current generation is by far my favorite.

These days the medium is more accessible, has better production values and has the tech to make huge, immersive worlds to get lost in.

 

[Vhite]

+/- 2000

 

[Aenir]

Discussions about "Golden ages of gaming" are equivalent to discussions about whether PC gaming is dead or not: tons of pointless discussion, flaming, and a whole lotta swear words.

 

[imnot]

i've only really been a gamer for a few years so now, but late this year and next year looks good, halo Reach, Fallout new vegas,Deux ex,Fable 3 ect.

 

[Julianking93]

Eh, probably now.

If not, then just the general 2000's and up.

Most of my favorite games came out in the last 10 years.

 

[Eliam_Dar]

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Titus the Fox
Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle

Those are the golden days for me

 

[migo]

Whenever you started gaming was the golden age (or alternatively, gaming seriously). I only really have fond memories of games I played when I was a little kid, even though they were sometimes incredibly hard and I have no interest in playing them. Also all the games when I bought my first PC in 1998 were a ton of fun, and as time went by my enthusiasm waned. Once you get past the fun the games offer you start seeing all the flaws, and there's never any end to them.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Golden age for me was 86 to 95 and is defined by huge advances in graphics and gameplay. Silver age was 96 to 05 and is defined by 3d coming of age and production values rising. 06 to present is the bronze age and is defined by repeating old game ideas with less interesting gameplay and darker "hardcore" themes.

I think I'm broadly in line with what Moviebob said in a youtube video here but I honestly can't remember.

 

[Wordslinger]

The mid to late nineties.
I literally never played a bad game on the N64, but maybe I was just lucky.

 

[Irridium]

If you want a time frame, I'd say around 1998-2002 or so.
Why do I think this? Simple.

1998:
StarCraft, Unreal, Fallout 2, Grim Fandango, Half-Life, Thief: The Dark Project, Baldur?s Gate

1999:
System Shock 2, Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, Planescape: Torment, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Homeworld, Outcast, Kingpin: Life of Crime, Rollercoaster Tycoon

2000:
The Sims, Deus Ex, Diablo II, Escape from Monkey Island, The Operative: No One Lives Forever, The Longest Journey, Shogun: Total War, Baldur?s Gate 2

Notice the ratio of new games to sequels.
Nowadays its almost all sequels.

Those are just examples. And look at all those fucking amazing games. All coming out within a span of one two years.
The graphics back then were great as well. They were good enough to get you immersed and make everything look nice, and they were cheap to produce and we didn't have to worry about falling into the uncanny valley.

This chart I dug up from the bowels of Shamus Young's site explains it pretty nicely. I also used the same article for most of what I said here. Because that article says what I want to say and does a better job of it.

 

[Proteus214]

I don't really think there has been one in the grand scheme of things, although there is a little voice in the back of my head screaming "1995 to 2001!!!!" that I have to shut up on occasion. I think that nostalgia plays a huge factor as well. I can only imagine that 10 years from now there will be an entire generation of gamers that will unanimously agree that the current console generation was the greatest and the kids with their newfangled Playstation 5's need to get off their lawn.

I personally liked the late 90's since that was when big budget mainstream gaming was a rainbow of niche appeal, but I don't know if I'm ready to label a "golden age."

 

[Hyper-space]

The playstation 2 days maybe? either that time or now.

 

[mattaui]

I'm amused that the chart above starts in 1992. I've been a PC gamer since the mid 80s, starting on a PCjr, and yeah, there were some challenges to overcome then with the technology. Perhaps with that in my background, all PC games ever did was get easier to play, offering more and more of what I was after, and they continue to do so, still to this day. I fondly remember games like Starflight, Wasteland and the Ultima series. While the genre that Starflight comes from seems to have mostly died out with Star Control 2, Wasteland of course is continued with the excellent Fallout games (which themselves have now more history and nostalgia behind them than Wasteland did), and the torch of CRPGs has been passed along to games like Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls and, last but certainly not least, World of Warcraft.

We've been in a golden age of gaming that started pretty much when I got my first PC and it's been gathering steam ever since.

 

[Royta]

It's subjective. But personally it's a choice for me between the SNES era for it's difficulty and high-quality games. Or Gamecube-era. Since most of my favorite games come from that era such as Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime and lots of others.

 

[The Procrastinated End]

Probably somewhere near 2000 for me

 

[TerribleAssassin]

Mine was when final boss fights had phases that got progressivly harder.

That, and perverted squirrels on N64 died on BioShock and Sonic Unleashed.

And I'd say 2000 +/-, with the wall falling 2003/2004.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Lot's of love for the late nineties, which is probably deserved, but I still think that it should be called the Silver Age if you go by the comic book definition.

The Golden Age of Comic Books was a period in the history of American comic books, generally thought of as lasting from the late 1930s until the late 1940s or early 1950s. During this time, modern comic books were first published and enjoyed a surge of popularity; the archetype of the superhero was created and defined; and many of the most famous superheroes debuted, among them Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Wonder Woman.

First surge of popularity? Okay, this is from the seventies to mid nineties in my opinion.

Even ignoring the technology, gameplay or whatever most of the staple characters are from this period. Pac-Man, Mario, Link, Ryu, Snake, SHODAN, Doom Guy, Sabre-Man and so on.

The Silver Age of Comic Books was a period of artistic advancement and commercial success in mainstream American comic books, predominantly those in the superhero genre. Following the Golden Age of Comic Books and an interregnum in the early to mid-1950s, the Silver Age is considered to cover the period from 1956 to circa 1970, and was succeeded by the Bronze and Modern Ages.[1] A number of important comics writers and artists contributed to the early part of the era, including writers Stan Lee, Gardner Fox, Edmond Hamilton, John Broome, and Robert Kanigher, and artists Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Steve Ditko, Mike Sekowsky, Carmine Infantino, and Curt Swan, John Buscema, and John Romita, Sr. By the end of the Silver Age, a new generation of talent had entered the field, including writers Denny O'Neill, Mike Friedrich, Roy Thomas, and Archie Goodwin, and artists such as Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, and Barry Windsor-Smith.

Advances in art and commercial success? Sounds like Playstation and the artistic peak of PC games in the late nineties to me. New talent like Ken Levine, Fumito Ueda and plenty of others? Check.

 

[o2]

I think a lot of people will refer to a period in time that they have fond memories of when answering this question. For me, it was the 90's when I was playing Castle Wolfenstein, Commander Keen, Another World, CRPGs from SirTech and a plethora of Nintendo games. Games seemed so uncharted then, or at least fresh (I know older people have this same, even more esoteric feeling).

Also, those games seemed so much more challenging and genuinely mysterious.

The games now are so complex and of a larger scope that they are hard to compare fairly, but almost always feel less memorable than the very old games I used to play. I think I might be letting nostalgia speak loudly, but something about those archaic games was so freaking amazing when I was playing them.

From the current generation of games, the large explorable environments are by far the most exciting and memorable aspects for me, something that almost trumps the nostalgia of older games (for me).