When we talk about the biggest and best years in video game history, years like 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2007 typically steal the show. While all those years (and more) deserve to be included in that conversation, I find that 1992 rarely gets the love it deserves for the many ways that year’s biggest games changed the industry for the better.
It’s really fascinating that 1992 ended up being this incredible turning point for the industry. With due respect to the exceptional titles of 1990 and 1991, the first two years of the new decade strongly suggested that developers were still living in the ’80s to some degree and were only just starting to figure out what the future of the industry was going to look like. All of a sudden, the market was flooded by titles that felt like they were pulled from the future. While some of those games were appreciated and successful in their time, others were largely ignored or widely underrated in terms of what literal game-changers they were.
While you could argue that open-world games eventually replaced first-person shooters as the premiere blockbuster single-player experience, few games shaped the modern blockbuster gaming industry as significantly or clearly. It was an outsider project made by a team that dared to dream bigger than many major studios at the time and actually had the talent needed to pull their crazy ideas off.
I probably don’t need to tell you about the controversy that followed release. It garnered the attention of United States Senators (as well as the mainstream media) and is one of the biggest reasons why the ESRB was formed. Many words have been written about how contributed to that great moral panic over the so-called “corruption of youth.” It’s undoubtedly one of the most controversial games ever.
What doesn’t get talked about often enough, though, is how helped show that violent video games could not only be commercially viable but artistically worthwhile.
The team didn’t necessarily dream of creating the most violent game ever. The more violent content (most notably fatalities) was gradually added to the title as its development evolved. The team has even suggested that some at Midway didn’t think players would discover fatalities in the game and that they only pushed the title more in that direction when they saw how positively fans reacted to those finishing moves.
That’s really the key difference between and so many over-the-top violent titles of the ‘90s. Whereas so many other violent video games of the ‘80s and early ‘90s used over-the-top violence to sell often inferior products, violence became a natural extension of what the game. For all the talk about being the most controversial game of its era, it’s worth noting that it wasn’t even the most violent game on the market at that point; it was just the most popular. People may have stopped at a machine because they saw a fatality, but they stayed because offered something different and genuinely compelling.
Thank you
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