Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday’s everyone! The 2023 video game season is pretty much over at this point, with another year of notable releases & events going by and entering the history books, but what about the video games & events of year’s past? As I do every week where I highlight a notable title released 10, 20, 30, and sometimes 40, years ago, I thought it would be fun to look back at not only the biggest games of the year but also some of the most noteworthy and interesting things happening in the entire video game industry. Take a break for a few minutes from all that crass materialism the holiday’s demand of us and read about some of the big things that happened in gaming from 1983, 1993, 2003 and 2013.

1983:

After a historic, record breaking year for the video game industry in 1982, things took a disastrous turn in 1983, leading to the great video game crash that lasted nearly two years. The cause of the crash was due to multiple issues within the industry; first was an oversaturation problem. As demand for video games grew between 1980 and 1983, retailers began ordering more product, prompting Atari and other game publishers to overproduce their consoles and games. By the end of 1982 and the beginning of 1983, stores had more product than they could sell, leading to wide spread returns that quickly bankrupt many of the smaller developers and publishers.

Speaking of these developers & publishers, prior to 1979, there was no such thing as a third party developer. It took four Atari programmers to leave the company and found their own, Activision, to show the viability of being a company that ONLY makes & distributes games. With the success of Activision, particularly with their 1982 hit Pitfall!, other third party developers would enter the marketplace; too many, in fact. While Activision was primarily made up of creative types who knew the ins and outs of the Atari 2600, other companies were primarily made up of venture capitalists and opportunists with little idea on how to make a video game. The games coming from these developers would often be clones of already popular games (Space Invaders, Pac-Man), with little quality control or regard for player enjoyment. For consumers, it was becoming increasingly difficult to determine which games were worth their money.

Once consumer confidence drops it can be hard to gain it back. Video games, home video games specifically, were starting to look more and more like another children’s fad, similar to the Hula Hoop, the Yo-Yo, and the Pet Rock. Over at Atari, who had once been the champion of innovation in gaming, it was now starting to resemble a typical multi-billion dollar business, with creatives being pushed out of control in favor of guys with MBAs. These business types weren’t necessarily interested in making good games, they wanted to make games that made money. When Atari saw their biggest rival, Coleco, gain the exclusive licensing rights to Nintendo’s hit game Donkey Kong, it caused a lot of hand wringing. They, too, wanted their own lucrative licensing deal and, in 1982, went out to Japanese developer Namco to get the rights to Pac-Man, and met with Universal & Steven Spielberg to gain the rights to the hit film E.T..

Atari rushed both games into development and got them into the hands of consumers as quickly as possible. When talking about the great video game crash, it is widely believed that these games were the major cause of consumer’s lack of confidence in the industry. Video games were toys that used to offer a cheap thrill, now they were far too expensive for the enjoyment offered. What consumers really needed was a home computer, which meant that all of the money that parents were putting into consoles and arcades were now being saved to get the entire family a PC, one that let mom & dad do the taxes and let little Billy & Susie play games, often educational ones, like Chess, that were often far superior to those on consoles.

To give you a sense of just how bad the crash was, financially, in 1982 arcade games grossed roughly $4.5 billion in revenue, while home consoles & software pulled in $3.8 billion. By the end of 1983, arcade revenues had dropped to $3 billion and home gaming had dropped to $1.9 billion. That’s still a lot of money (we’re talking BILLIONS) but, with each segment losing over $1 billion in revenue, it would drastically impact their business, especially if they had short term plans that required cash up front. There is a really great New York Times article from October of 1983 that I think you should all read, explaining the mindset of most Americans at the time in regards to video games: VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY COMES DOWN TO EARTH

Meanwhile, as the video game industry was experiencing a massive boom in 1982, over at MCA Universal, president Sid Sheinberg was, like everyone else, looking for a way to tap into this market. After learning about the success of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong, Sheinberg sent one of MCA Universal’s VPs, Robert Hadl, to investigate the game. It was Hadl’s opinion that Nintendo had copied the story of King Kong, which Universal held the licensing rights to, and thus, MCA Universal was owed licensing fees by Nintendo and anyone else who put out Donkey Kong products.

Through 1982, Hadl and his team sent out letters to multiple companies, demanding that they either give a proceed of their profits to MCA Universal or stop using the Donkey Kong license. One of these companies was, of course, Nintendo. Howard Lincoln, then a lawyer for Nintendo of America, was inclined to give in to Universal and settle the dispute for $5 – $7 million. However, after putting more thought into it, Lincoln felt that this was a sign that Nintendo was starting to be seen as a potential threat to the established entertainment business, legitimizing Nintendo as a company. Refusing to settle, or give in to their licensing demands, Nintendo was initially sued by MCA Universal in June of 1982, then receiving a cease & desist letter in January of 1983 when Nintendo refused to stop making Donkey Kong. This was just the beginning of the fight between MCA Universal and Nintendo, as the trial would start in 1984, so we’ll have more to discuss in our 2024 and 2025 notable events articles. Until then, stay tuned…(or just read about it on Wikipedia).

Meanwhile, over in Japan, Nintendo and Sega both released their first home consoles, the Famicom and the SG-1000. Sega’s console would be a flop and never leave Japan, where as Nintendo’s Famicom was a big success, eventually coming to the U.S. in 1985, having its name changed to the Nintendo Entertainment System, NES for short.

Speaking of Sega, they would create a new division within the company called Amusement Developing Section 8 (later to be renamed Sega-AM2), with Sega putting one of their promising young developers in charge, Yu Suzuki. Their first game would be the 1984 arcade title Champion Boxing, later going on to make titles like Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run, After Burner, Virtua Fighter, and Shenmue (and they still make games to this day).

Some “firsts” this year included EA releasing their first games, including Archon: The Light and the Dark and M.U.L.E.; a company called Ultimate Play the Game released two titles, Jetpac and Atic Atac, eventually becoming the developer Rare; the Bomberman series is founded this year with a release in Japan for the MSX; Mattel releases the game World Series Baseball, which is the first game to use multiple camera angles and present graphics in a three dimensional perspective; in Japan, designer Yuji Horii creates the first visual novel with The Portopia Serial Murder Case; and finally, the first tactical RPG’s/RTS games are released with Ultima III in the US, and Bokusaka Wars & Nobunaga’s Ambition in Japan.

Companies founded in 1983 include:

• Infogrames (now known as Atari SA, current owners of Nightdive Studios)
• Origin Systems (co-founded by Ultima creator Richard Garriott, would go on to release the Wing Commander games. Purchased by EA in 1992, shut down in 2004)
• Interplay (started as a software porting studio, eventually gained popularity with The Bard’s Tale, Battle Chess, Another World, Alone in the Dark, Earthworm Jim, and Fallout. Still publishing and developing games today)
• Spectrum Holobyte (PC game developer, notable for being the first company to release Tetris outside the Soviet Union. Went defunct in 1999 when it was absorbed by parent company Hasbro)

With the PC market taking off, several companies put out new systems or entered the market in 1983 (including some who were abandoning the home console market), including Apple with the Apple IIe, Microsoft Japan with the MSX, Atari with the 1200XL, Mattel with the Aquarius, Coleco with the Adam, and Sega with the SC-3000 (a PC version of the SG-1000).

The top grossing arcade game of the year was 1982’s Pole Position, with other top grossing games of the year being Dragon’s Lair, Bump n’ Jump, Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man, Mr. Do!, Donkey Kong, Joust, Time Pilot, and Q*bert.

In home consoles, the Atari 2600 still held the biggest market share, with nine of the top ten best-selling games of 1983 being for the system, including the number one game of the year, Ms. Pac-Man. The only non-Atari game in the top ten was the ColecoVision port of Donkey Kong, the second best selling game of 1983. In terms of best selling consoles, Nintendo’s Game & Watch line of handheld portables continued to dominate, followed by the Atari 2600 in second, and the Commodore64 in third.

At the 4th annual Arkie awards, put together by Electronic Games magazine, celebrated the best titles of late 1982/early 1983. They gave the Best Overall Game award to the PC title Miner 2049er, with Best Arcade Game going to Pole Position, Best Console Game going to both Ms. Pac-Man and Ladybug in a tie, and Best PC Game going to Lode Runner.

While the video game industry may have been crashing, there were still a lot of really stellar titless released in 1983 and, not surprisingly, a lot of them were in arcades and on PC (sorry consoles):

• Alpha Beam with Ernie
• Archon: The Light and the Dark
• Big Bird’s Egg Catch
• Centipede (Atari 2600)
• Champion Baseball
• Cliff Hanger

• Cookie Monster Munch
• Crystal Castles
• Dig Dug (Atari 2600)
• Discs of Tron
• Donkey Kong 3
• Dragon’s Lair

• Elevator Action
• Enduro (Atari 2600)
• Gyruss
• Journey
• Jr. Pac-Man
• Krull

• Lode Runner
• M.U.L.E.
• Mappy
• Mario Bros. (Arcade)
• Mario Bros. (Atari 2600)
• Mr. Do’s Castle

• Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
• NATO Commander
• One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird
• Pigs in Space starring Miss Piggy
• Pole Position (Atari 2600)
• Pole Position II

• Professor Pac-Man
• Roc’n Rope
• Sinistar
• Snoopy and the Red Baron
• Sorcerer’s Apprentice
• Space Ace

• Spy Hunter
• Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
• Star Wars
• Swordquest: Fireworld
• Swordquest: Waterworld
• Tapper

• Time Pilot
• Track & Field
• Ultima III: Exodus
• Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn
• Xevious

1993:

1993 was a turning point for video games. Ten years after they collapsed and were on the verge of obscurity, video games were now bigger than ever, with the top grossing video game of the year, Street Fighter II, pulling in more revenue than the highest grossing film of the year, Jurassic Park. Not only that, but games were starting to be come more realistic, more innovative, more artistic, and on the verge of being seen as a legitimate entertainment industry. However, video games were about to come under intense scrutiny from not just consumers, but also the United States government.

In March of 1993, author David Sheff put out his first book, Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children (a later revision was re-titled Game Over: Press Start to Continue – The Maturing of Mario). The book, despite its provocative title, is not a tear down of Nintendo and the video game industry, more than it is a history of Nintendo, showing its humble beginnings as a manufacturer of playing cards, to a respected toy maker, to the biggest, most successful video game company in the world.

After nearly a decade of doing interviews for Playboy and other magazines, Sheff turned his tape recorder on many of the industry’s most prominent figures, including Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov, Nintendo of America Senior Vice President Howard Lincoln, legendary Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto, and a slew of other sources both named and anonymous. Game Over was a huge hit with critics who found the history of Nintendo to be fascinating and as compelling as any video game on the market. They were so enamored, that, when Sheff detoured from Nintendo’s history, critics found themselves wishing he would stop talking to these other people and get back to the main subject.

With the history of video games now a New York Times bestseller, they began to attract the interest of people outside of the fandom, however, Game Over wasn’t the only thing raising eyebrows, the industry itself was doing that with a slew of violent games that had released a year prior in 1992. Arcade titles Mortal Kombat and Lethal Enforcers, as well as the Sega CD game Night Trap, were drawing the ire of parents groups across the U.S., demanding to know why children were being allowed to play these games.

Early in 1993, Sega was made aware that the U.S. government was starting to become concerned about video game violence and they were gearing up to grill the industry about its practices and content. Wanting to get ahead of things, Sega announced a new rating system for their games in May of 1993, calling it the Videogame Rating Council (V.R.C.). There were three classifications, GA (intended for general audiences), MA-13 (intended for mature audiences 13 or older), and MA-17 (intended for mature audiences 17 or older).

The first game to receive a rating was Mortal Kombat, which received an MA-13. Sega had wanted to position itself as the more mature console for an older generation, and it was their game, Night Trap, that was at the center of this controversy, so it made sense why they would be first to adopt a rating system. Nintendo, who were in a fierce battle with Sega for market dominance, refused to add Sega’s rating system to their games, claiming that Nintendo already had strict policies in place to eliminate content deemed unfit for children. Sega called Nintendo hypocrites, however, by stating that they still had the same violent games on their system as the Genesis did, including Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat (albeit without blood).

Sega’s rating system did not stop the coming storm, however, as U.S. Senators Joseph Lieberman and Herb Kohl ended up holding hearings on video game violence in December of 1993 (side note, Herb Kohl co-founded the department store chain Kohl’s, where you can currently buy the violent video game Mortal Kombat II, on sale, for just $424.99. Don’t forget your Kohl’s cash!). To Lieberman, he felt that the violence seen in video games was detrimental to the mental health of American children.

Lieberman held a press conference, where he was joined by television personality Captain Kangaroo, in which he showed clips from Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, and several other violent games. It was his intention to force the video game industry to start self regulating itself, or else the U.S. government would. To his credit, Lieberman appeared to be well aware that the violence in Night Trap was considered a play on the Dracula motif, and was certain it was made for an older audience. He was, so he says, deeply concerned that uninformed parents would buy the game for their children and not realize that the content was for a more mature audience. With studies showing that the average age of a video game player was between 7 and 12 years old, this was a major concern.

The hearing was held on December 9th, 1993, which was, oddly, during a Senate recess. The only Senators in attendance were Lieberman (D), Kohl (D) and, a third, Byron Dorgon (R) of North Dakota. The day long hearing, which you can watch in full on the C-SPAN website, contained testimony from video game industry executives & representative, scholars & experts, and industry watchdogs. The first half of the day contained the testimony of the experts who would discuss the findings of studies they had conducted in which they claimed that violent video games desensitized children to violence and could potentially cause them to act out this same violence. University of Miami professor Eugene F. Provenzo, who had written a research paper titled Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo, stated that video games were becoming more violent, sexist, and racist, specifically pointing to Night Trap as one of the most vile the industry had ever produced (in hindsight…LOL).

In the second half of the day, the industry representatives gave their testimony. In the hearing, both Sega, represented by VP Bill White, and Nintendo, represented by VP Howard Lincoln, continued their rivalry. Each company accused the other for being the reason why these hearings were taking place, jabbing one another as the hearing went on. Lincoln stated that Nintendo removed the blood from Mortal Kombat but that Sega had not; White accused Nintendo of failing parents by not adopting Sega’s rating system (Lieberman called BS on this, stating that Nintendo had stricter internal guidelines); Nintendo found Night Trap appalling and would never let such a game appear on their systems (oh, don’t forget to buy Night Trap today on Nintendo Switch!); White showed clips of Street Fighter II on both the Genesis and the SNES, claiming the levels of violence were the same (Lieberman scoffed at this). It went back and forth like this for a while (my favorite was when White turned the hearing into a commercial for the floundering Sega CD).

In the aftermath of the hearing, industry leaders announced their intention to create a ratings board that allowed for a neutral party to review and classify games. One byproduct, of course, was that all of the talk about Night Trap caused an increase in its sales, though this did not stop both Toys R Us and Kay-Bee Toys from removing the games from their stores shortly after the hearings. Sega then recalled all existing copies of the game, promising not to re-release it until it had been rated and scrubbed of indecent content. A second hearing would take place in February of 1994, a sequel, if you will, that introduced a bill called the Video Game Rating Act of 1994, which we will get into next year (or, of course, you could just read about it now on Wikipedia).

In the months preceding the hearings, however, the video game industry continued to chug along. The fifth generation of consoles started this year with the release of the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, or just 3DO. Conceived by EA co-founder Trip Hawkins, the 3DO was not a specific console itself, but instead a set of hardware that anyone with a license could take and create their own machine out of. The most well known in the United States was the version created by Panasonic (3DO tried, in vain, to get Sony on board as well, but, they were busy elsewhere…), and released in October of 1993 with the astronomical price tag of $699.99, about $1499.99 in 2023. Despite being touted as the most powerful console on the market, and even being called Product of the Year by Time magazine, the 3DO was a massive commercial failure. While it was home to some excellent arcade & PC ports, and had some well received exclusives (Gex, The Need for Speed), the high price point and lack of third party support doomed the 3DO.

3DO wasn’t the only new console to hit the market in 1993, Atari also tried to make themselves relevant again by releasing the Jaguar, the world’s first “64” bit system. Why the quotation marks? That’s because Atari used two 32 bit processors, leading some consumers and critics to call BS on Atari’s claim. While its $249.99 price point was well below the 3DO, the Jaguar failed to perform at the market, selling only 17k units in 1993 (albeit in just two months). The system would never really catch on and, in 1998, was completely discontinued, with its specs being placed into the public domain, allowing anyone to make games for the system.

There was also a THIRD console released in 1993, though I’m guessing you probably haven’t heard of it, the Pioneer LaserActive. This machine, however, was more than just a video game console, it was an all-in-one entertainment machine; sort of. Out of the box, for a staggering price tag of $970 bucks (about $2k in 2023) the LaserActive was just a standard media player that could read laserdiscs and compact discs. However, you could purchase an add-on device that allowed you play Genesis and Sega CD games, for $600. THEN, you could also buy the adapter that allowed you to play TurboGrafx-16 game cards & CDs, for $600. THEN AGAIN you could buy the adapter that allowed you to play Karaoke laserdiscs for $350. THEN, YET AGAIN, you could buy the adapter that allowed you to use the device like a home PC and read CD-ROMs & floppy disks (no price for this, but gonna guess $600). This meant that your all-in price was probably somewhere around $3,000 dollars, which is about $6,300 in 2023. I wish I had some sales figures for the device, but I don’t. Oh, and it was region free, meaning you could play games and movies from all around the world AND it allowed for 3D capabilities…if you purchased the separate 3D goggles (also very expensive).

Moving into Nintendo news, the big N released their redesigned version of the NES, now featuring a top loading game slot, similar to the SNES. Despite the Super Nintendo selling very well in 1993, Nintendo was looking to the future. They wanted their next console to have state of the art graphics and so, partnering with computer graphics company Silicon Graphics, Nintendo announced their intention to build their next system under the codename “Project Reality”. This would later be changed to “Ultra 64”, before finally being known as the Nintendo 64, releasing in 1996.

In video game company news for 1993:

• Croteam is founded (Croation developer who would go on to create the Serious Sam franchise)
• Take-Two Interactive is founded (U.S. dev who found early success with FMV games, eventually striking gold with the Grand Theft Auto franchise)
• Shiny Entertainment is founded (Southern California dev who hit it big with their first title, Earthworm Jim, published by one of our 1983 companies, Interplay)
• Epyx closes (sold to Bridegestone Media group just five years after declaring bankruptcy. Their biggest franchise was, arguably, the California Games series)
• MicroProse is sold (Spectrum Holobyte, another company founded in 1983, purchases their rival and has MicroProse release a few licensed titles, as well as the hit strategy game Civilization 2. Sid Meier eventually leaves MicroProse and forms Firaxis)

The top grossing arcade game, as well as best selling console game, in 1993 was Street Fighter II. Other top arcade games of the year include NBA Jam, Lethal Enforcers, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Racing, and X-Men. Other top console games include Mortal Kombat, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Star Fox, X-Men, Aladdin (Genesis), Super Mario All-Stars, Madden NFL ’94, Super Mario Kart, and Secret of Mana.

Multiple outlets gave out “Game of the Year” honors to a multitude of games. EGM chose Samurai Shodown, The Chicago Tribue chose Star Fox, The Arkies chose Aladdin (Genesis), and Game Informer chose Mortal Kombat (Genesis).

1993 was a stellar year for video games and, surprisingly, not all of them were violent, racist, sexcapades:

• The 7th Guest
• The 7th Saga
• Aces Over Europe
• ActRaiser 2
• Aerobiz
• Aladdin
• Alien vs. Predator
• Alone In The Dark

• Barkley: Shut Up and Jam!
• Battletoads & Double Dragon
• Battletoads in Battlemaniacs
• Battletoads in Ragnarok’s World
• Bomberman II
• Bubble Bobble: Part 2
• Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind
• Bulls Versus Blazers and the NBA Playoffs

• Clay Fighter
• Cool Spot
• Day of the Tentacle
• Daytona USA
• Doom
• Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
• DuckTales 2
• E.V.O.: Search for Eden

• FIFA International Soccer
• Final Fantasy Legend III
• Final Fight II
• Fire ‘n Ice
• Flashback
• Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist
• Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
• Goof Troop

• Ground Zero Texas
• Jurassic Park (NES/SNES/Genesis/Sega CD)
• Kid Dracula
• Kirby’s Adventure
• The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
• Leisure Suit Larry 6
• Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar
• Link: The Faces of Evil

• The Lost Vikings
• Lufia & the Fortess of Doom
• Lunar: The Silver Star
• Mario’s Time Machine
• MechWarrior
• Mighty Final Fight
• Mortal Kombat (SNES/Genesis)
• Mortal Kombat II

• Myst
• NBA Jam
• Police Quest IV
• Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow & The Flame
• Quest For Glory: Shadows of Darkness
• Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle
• Ridge Racer
• Sam & Max Hit the Road

• Samurai Shodown
• Secret of Mana
• Shadowrun
• Shining Force
• Sonic CD
• Star Fox
• Star Wars: Rebel Assault
• Street Fighter II Turbo (SNES)

• Super Bomberman
• Super Empire Strikes Back
• Super Mario All-Stars
• Super Valis IV
• Syndicate
• Tecmo Super Bowl
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters
• Tetris 2

• Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose
• Virtua Fighter
• World Heroes 2
• X-Men
• X-Wing
• Yoshi’s Cookie
• Yoshi’s Safari
• Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
• Zombies Ate My Neighbors

2003:

Compared to 1983 and 1993, 2003 is kind of boring. There were no major scandals that rocked the industry, or mass layoffs or government oversight, just a normal, typical year. Here’s the rundown:

The biggest thing to probably happen in 2003 was the release of Valve’s Steam service. Going into beta in 2002, Steam was officially launched on September 2nd, 2003 and was, primarily, used as a place for Valve to distribute patches and updates to its existing library of games. In early 2002, Valve ran a study that found 75% of the users of their software had access to broadband internet. Seeing the potential to directly market and sell their products to consumers through digital distribution, Valve reached out to several companies to partner with them, including Yahoo! and Microsoft, but all of them declined to assist Valve.

Undeterred, Valve announced Steam at the Game Developers Conference in March of 2002, letting players know that the beta was launching that very same day. The first game to offer integration with Steam was Relic Entertainment’s Impossible Creatures, while the first mod offered was for the multiplayer game Day of Defeat. Not everyone was happy with Valve’s decision to offer their games through digital distribution, most notably their publishing partner Sierra Studios (formerly Sierra On-Line). First, Valve sued Sierra in 2002, claiming that the publisher was was placing Valve games in internet cafe’s across the world, putting them in breach of contract. Sierra would counter-sue, claiming that Valve was in breach of contract by offering their games independently, meaning that Valve MUST forfeit its rights to Half-Life and transfer full ownership to Sierra. In 2004, a judge would finally review the case and would almost immediately rule in favor of Valve.

Valve took a gamble in 2003, predicting a future where video games would be purchased digitally, over the internet. It wasn’t an overnight success and, for a time, you could only purchase Valve titles on Steam, but the service would eventually catch on, prompting every major console manufacturer to start their own digital distribution services, while rivals would come to challenge Steam over the next few years, including CD Projekt’s G.O.G. and Fortnite creator Epic’s own digital store.

Perhaps Valve had trouble attracting a partner to join their venture because the PC gaming business was far below the console gaming business. While consoles made up $5.8 billion in video game sales, PC sales were only $1.2 billion, a drop of 14% compared to 2002.

While Nintendo had initially started internal discussions about their next console just weeks after the launch of the GameCube, the company started ramping up their efforts in 2003. Newly promoted Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, tasked the team with creating a console that could appeal to a wide range of players. He wanted a console that a mother was just as excited to play as her children were. Experimenting with the motion detecting devices they had seen used by a company called Gyration, Nintendo mocked up a prototype in roughly six months, showing it off to Iwata who thought this new style of playing, motion controls, would change the video game industry. They gave the console a codename, “Revolution”, and continued to tweak it, hoping to give the world a tease in the coming year; more on that in our 2024 write up.

Nintendo were not the only company looking to the future, as Sony was hoping they could grow their market share in a segment they had not dabbled in before, handheld gaming. At their 2003 E3 press conference, Sony announced that they would be creating and releasing their own handheld device called the PlayStation Portable, or PSP. While Sony did not have any hardware to show off, it did tout the machine’s capabilities and specs, with Sony CEO Ken Kutaragi calling the device the “Walkman of the 21st century”, due to its multimedia capabilities. The PSP would hit Japan in December of 2004, before coming to the U.S. in March of 2005. Not to be left out, Microsoft also announces that they, too, are working on their next console, codenamed Project Xenon (the Xbox 360).

While Nintendo and Sony were getting ready for the future, two consoles did make it to market in 2003. The first was from Nintendo, releasing the Game Boy Advance SP, a redesigned version of the GBA that featured a flip case and backlit screen, one of the major flaws of the original GBA. Meanwhile, mobile phone company Nokia released the N-Gage, a hybrid cell phone/handheld game console. Hoping to compete with the GBA, the N-Gage was soundly rejected by the public, with the device being outsold 100 to 1 by Nintendo’s popular handheld. Poorly made games, a poor button layout, and a bizarre taco shape, doomed the device almost as soon as it launched. The N-Gage would receive upgrades over the next two years, positive upgrades, but the public had already seen enough and had no interest in what Nokia was offering.

A fun fact, Yu Suzuki, who was put in charge of Sega’s Amusement Developing Section 8 team in 1983, was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 2003 for his legendary, 30 year career.

In game company news…

• Infogrames, which was founded in 1983, announces that they were changing their name to Atari after buying the company’s name and backlog in 2001.
• Japanese developer/publisher Enix announces that they are merging with rival SquareSoft to create the company Square Enix.
• Almost ten years after the creation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) in the United States, the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) ratings board is created.
• Twelve years after it was founded, ten years after it released its first & only console, and six years after it transitioned into a software-only developer, The 3DO Company goes bankrupt and ceases operations.
• Facing mounting financial troubles, developer/publisher Interplay closes subsidiary Black Isle Studios, creators of multiple, critically acclaimed games, including Fallout and Icewind Dale.
• However, many of the devs from Black Isle form their own company in the aftermath, Obsidian Entertainment. Their first game is the 2004 sequel Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
• Data East, one of the oldest video game developers in Japan, founded in 1976, ceases operations in 2003. The majority of their game library is purchased by the mobile company G-Mode, who are now owned by the Japanese developer Marvelous.

The best selling game of 2003 was Nintendo’s Pokémon Ruby / Sapphire, likely bolstered by the release of the GBA SP. Other top selling titles include Mario Kart: Double Dash, Madden NFL 2004, GTA: Vice City, The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker, and Final Fantasy X-2.

During the awards season, a new organization throws its hat into the ring, Spike TV. Despite what you may think, this show was not started by Geoff Keighley, he wasn’t brought in until 2006. Perhaps this is why the show honored Madden NFL 2004 as the Game of the Year and, bizarrely, gave it out as the first award of the night. Hosted by comedian David Spade, the program was made in typical Spike TV fashion; scantily clad women, juvenile humor from the likes of MTV’s “Wildboyz” Steve-O and Chris Pontius, an appearance by some Crank Yankers puppets, musical performances from P.O.D. & DMX, and a tag-team wrestling match between Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, Trish Stratus, and Victoria. This awards show would run for ten years before being cancelled (more on that shortly).

While the Spike Video Game awards did their best to make you forget about the good games released in the year, other outlets did their best to remind you that video games could actually be good, great even. Here’s what everyone else picked as Game of the Year:

• The BAFTAs & the Interactive Achievement Awards (now the DICE awards): Call of Duty
• The Game Developers Choice Awards & IGN: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
• Game Informer & Gamespot: The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker
• EGM: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

Those were certainly some great games they chose (well, except Spike TV), but there were even MORE fantastic titles released in 2003; check ’em out:

• 1080° Avalanche
• Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising
• Aliens Versus Predator: Extinction
• Amplitude
• Ape Escape 2
• Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits
• Armed and Dangerous
• Armored Core: Silent Line

• Battle Engine Aquila
• Beyond Good & Evil
• Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand
• Brute Force
• Call of Duty
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
• Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
• Clock Tower 3

• Crash Nitro Kart
• Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge
• Dark Cloud 2
• Day of Defeat
• Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball
• Def Jam Vendetta
• Deus Ex: Invisible War
• Devil May Cry 2

• Dino Crisis 3
• Dot Hack//Infenction Part 1
• Dot Hack//Mutation Part 2
• Dot Hack//Outbreak Part 3
• Dynasty Warriors 4
• Enter The Matrix
• EVE Online
• F-Zero GX

• Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
• Final Fantasy X-2
• Final Fantasy XI
• Final Fantasy Origins
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
• Fire Emblem
• Futurama
• The Getaway

• Gladius
• Golden Sun: The Lost Age
• Homeworld 2
• Ikaruga
• Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb
• Jak II
• King of Fighters 2003
• Kirby Air Ride

• Legacy of Kain: Defiance
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
• Lost Kingdoms II
• Manhunt
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
• Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
• Mario Kart: Double Dash
• Mario Party 5

• Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
• Medal of Honor: Rising Sun
• Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue & White
• Mega Man Network Transmission
• Mega Man X7
• Mega Man Zero 2
• Metal Slug 5
• Midnight Club II

• Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters in Space
• Monster Rancher 4
• Need for Speed: Underground
• Otogi: Myth of Demons
• P.N.03
• Pac-Man Vs.
• Panzer Dragoon Orta
• Pokémon Ruby / Sapphire

• Postal 2
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
• Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
• Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc
• Resident Evil: Dead Aim
• SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos
• Samurai Shodown V
• Silent Hill 3

• SimCity 4
• The Simpsons: Hit & Run
• SOCOM II U.S. Navy SEALs
• Sonic Advance 2
• Soul Calibur II
• SSX 3
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old republic
• Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike

• Tak and the Power of Juju
• Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
• Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
• Tony Hawk’s Underground
• True Crime: Streets of LA
• Unlimited SaGa
• Unreal II: The Awakening

• Viewtiful Joe
• Wario World
• WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!
• X2: Wolverine’s Revenge
• Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille zur Macht
• XIII
• Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner

2013:

Ah, 2013, finally, some controversy again. 2003 was sooooo boring, right?

By 2013, video game violence had been discussed, discussed some more, self regulated, discussed some more, discussed some more and then, in January of 2013, not shortly after the start of his second term as U.S. President, Barack Obama announced that he was asking congress to appropriate funds so that the CDC could research the causes of gun violence in America. It was one of 23 executive orders he signed to help end the gun crisis in the U.S. (did it work? Well, have you watched the news at any time in the last ten years?). His targets were the usual suspects, violent images in media, including films, books, magazines and, of course, video games.

The study would take up most of 2013 and be published in July of 2014 (it’s pretty interesting, click here to read it). While there was evidence that males who consumed high amounts of violent content in their youth would later go on to commit crimes, particularly crimes involving guns, there didn’t appear to be any evidence that these CAUSED the aggression. Of particular note, there was no evidence found that linked perpetrators of school shootings to their playing of violent video games. Still, before the study came out there was the typical yelling from the video game community, both nuanced and, well, not so nuanced, particularly from the traditional straight, white, male segment. This wasn’t the only thing that would piss them off in 2013; enter Anita Sarkeesian.

Going back in time a bit, Sarkeesian started gaining notoriety in 2009 with the creation of the nonprofit organization & website Feminist Frequency. The goal of the site was to make feminist criticism of pop culture more easily and widely accessible. Sarkeesian and her team would create videos that analyzed and critiqued pop culture from a feminist point of view, with some of their more popular one being a video where they applied the Bechdel Test to the Oscar nominees for Best Picture. In 2011, Sarkeesian partnered with Bitch magazine to create a video series called Tropes vs. Women, which examined specific female tropes found in films such as the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” and the “Smurfette Principle”. After being asked to give a talk at game developer Bungie, Sarkeesian turned her attention the the video game industry, launching a Kickstarter campaign to create a Tropes vs. Women subseries on video games.

This news was met with widespread joy and positivity by the video game community…LOL, j/k. They hated it. Well, let’s fix that a bit, A LOT of people were down with it, so much so that Sarkeesian blew past her $6,000 goal and was able to raise over $150,000 in funding. The “they” in my previous statement were, more likely than not, the same straight, white, males who got all pissy that Obama was “trying to take their violent video games away‘. Sarkeesian was the victim of constant, targeted harassment for her new series, before it came out and even more after it was released.

This harassment campaign was vicious and brutal, with Sarkeesian being sent death threats, threats of sexual assault, images of her being killed and assaulted by video game characters, doxing of her home address, vandalism of her website & Wikipedia page and, of course, racial slurs due to her Iraqi and Armenian ancestry. This was only the beginning of Sarkessian’s harassment, as well as the harassment of other women in the video game industry, which would all come to a head in 2014 with the Gamergate movement.

Not only were gamers upset with the President and, sigh, women, but they were also upset with the industry itself. 2012’s Diablo III launch was considered a disaster by many gamers, all due to the fact that you could not play the game offline, requiring you to be “always online”, connected to Blizzard’s servers. With an influx of players, those servers were far overworked at launch and led to multiple problems. It was a bit devastating, then to learn that EA planned to make their new SimCity reboot an “always online” game. In fact, EA was so committed to the “always online” initiative that they were considering making it the norm for EVERY game they released in the future, with plans to include it in their next 2013 title, The Sims 4. Surely they would learn from the mistakes of Diablo III, right? Right? (cue Anakin Skywalker blank stare).

Of course EA didn’t learn anything! SimCity released on March 8th and immediately fell victim to the same issues that Diablo III had. Players were unable to login to EA’s servers, and those who did get through would eventually get kicked out and would come back to find their entire city wiped off the map. EA’s grand goal with SimCity was to turn it into a kind of MMO, where neighboring cities were real people that you could connect with, share resources with, and compete against. In theory, this is a fine idea, and could be a lot of fun. However, SimCity had a tradition of being a completely solitary game experience where players were free to create and experiment to their heart’s desire, all without having to be connected to the internet. Just like Diablo III, this new “always on” SimCity was, for the most part, still a completely solitary game, with the online requirements being seen, cynically, as a way to combat piracy and for EA to monitor your game playing habits in order to better tailor their DLC plans to the majority of players gameplay styles.

The release was a disaster for publisher EA and developer Maxis Emeryville. Maxis would have to immediately remove some of the non-critical features of the game, such as leaderboards and achievements, and also bring in several new servers to accommodate demand. Maxis claimed that players were playing the game for much longer, and in far different ways then they imagined, meaning that they were constantly at their server cap. Rock, Paper, Shotgun writer Nathan Grayson wrote a piece about “Games as a Service” titles and the annoyance that comes with them. It was clear that, in 2013, companies were just not ready to roll these things out with any kind of grace (I mean, it still happens today, so what have they really learned). Grayson was not opposed to “always online” games, but was curious why publishers & devs seemed content to force these requirements onto single player games (the simple answer, piracy).

In the aftermath, EA and Maxis would double down on the “always online” requirements of SimCity, claiming that it was incredibly important to the sustainability of the game and user experience, and that they’d never make the game an offline, single player experience. In January of 2014, SimCity was made an offline, single player experience. Plans to make The Sims 4 “always online” were scrapped (delaying its launch to 2014), as were EA’s plans to make every future game contain an “always online” requirement. Developer Colossal Order, creators of the Cities in Motion series, were hesitant to jump into the city building game genre, expecting to be handily beaten by SimCity. The poor launch and reception to the 2013 reboot was all the proof they needed to throw their hat into the ring, giving us the spectacular Cities: Skylines franchise.

While EA was doing its best to destroy itself with unnecessary “always online” requirements, it was hard to imagine anyone else doing it worse. Microsoft heard these people and said “hold my beer“. Rumors of a new Xbox and PlayStation had been making the rounds in the early part of the 2010’s and, by 2013, it was starting to come out that, like SimCity, the new Xbox would have an “always online” component built into the system. This, predictably, did not go down well with the gaming public. While Microsoft had not made any kind of public announcement about a new console in the beginning part of 2013, one Microsoft employee, Adam Orth, decided to go on Twitter and argue with a buddy about it. His now deleted tweet said “Sorry, I don’t get the drama around having an ‘always on’ console,” Orth wrote on Twitter. “Every device now is ‘always on.’ That’s the world we live in. #dealwithit”.

#dealwithit, what the fuck? In a later tweet on the same thread, Orth would then go on to disparage small towns in America. When reminded that he’s only lived in elite, coastal cities and not places like Janesville, WI or Blacksburg, VA, Orth replied flippantly, “Why on earth would I live there?“. Now, you can argue, as Orth did, that these tweets were taken slightly out of context as he was replying to a close friend in a semi-sarcastic, playful way. However, when a top Microsoft employee (Orth was a creative director with the company), disparages customers and flat out insults two cities in the U.S., that’s not a good look. Orth would leave his position at Microsoft shortly after the fiasco (going on to do lectures about online bullying, before making the game Adr1ft), the first casualty in what would be the Xbox’s very, VERY, bad year.

In February of 2013, Sony held an event called the PlayStation Meeting and revealed that they were going to release their new console, the PlayStation 4 later in the year. Having seen their dominance of the video game industry fall in North America the previous generation, Sony seemed to be committed to winning back American audiences from Microsoft and Nintendo. The last few years of the PS3’s life cycle seemed to prove this, by containing a slew of hot properties, including Uncharted, Infamous, Killzone, and the upcoming The Last of Us. Sony’s event focused heavily on games and touted the PS4’s hardware specs, all being well received by the gaming press.

Two months after the debacle with Adam Orth’s tweet, Microsoft held a event to discuss their new console, the Xbox One, a name that immediately confused people…wasn’t this the THIRD Xbox? Microsoft then proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes talking about all of the multimedia capabilities of their new, all-in-one device, including players being able to use the console as a cable box, use it to chat with their friends while they watched movies, and do literally anything else but play video games on it. Then they showed a couple trailers for these other things called…video games…I think.

Microsoft then proceeded to discuss the future they assumed we were all waiting for, a video game console that required a persistent connection to the internet. Yes, folks, in order for your Xbox One to do ANYTHING it would need to connect to the internet every 24 hours, otherwise it would not function. Not only that, but Microsoft was jazzed to reveal that you would not be able to loan out your games to friends OR sell them on the secondary market, well, unless that capability was allowed by the publisher AND if you took it to an authorized retailer. Finally, and this is the best one, all Xbox One consoles would come shipped with a Kinect and it was MANDATORY to have this microphone & camera hooked up to your console because, you know, you’ll be doing everything with voice commands and motion sensors instead of with a controller. Who needs a controller? This is the future, mother fucker, and Microsoft was the god damn king. BOW TO THE KING.

The negative reactions online were swift and merciless. It wasn’t just from players, a lot of whom presumably just had a terrible experience with SimCity and Diablo III (or at least read about it), but from the gaming press who declared Microsoft as “anti consumer”, punishing their most loyal customers with bizarre, overly strict restrictions and requirements. Many pundits seemed to agree that Microsoft was seemingly handing the next console generation to Sony on a silver platter, predicting that the Xbox would not be able to recover from this disaster of an unveiling.

Jumping forward to E3, 2013, Microsoft was still adamant that their new console features were the future of gaming and that they had no intention of backing down from them. They did, however, acknowledge that they failed to focus on the games, using E3 as a chance to finally show off all the cool stuff they had coming, like, um…Dead Rising 3, Ryse: Son of Rome, um…oh, Forza! Plus those third party games that everyone likes. But they SWEAR they have some great exclusives lined up. Oh, and don’t forget about Kinect, every Xbox One comes with it and it will only raise he price by a whole one FUCKING hundred dollars over the PS4. Meanwhile, Sony ran their conference and it wasn’t the best they’ve ever had, but they of course had that chef’s kiss video response to how easy it was to trade and load games with your friends; classic.

Later on, in an interview between Don Mattrick and Geoff Keighley, Geoff asked Don about the always online aspect of the Xbox One. Keighley brought up the fact that there were customers who did not live in areas with fast & reliable internet speeds, nor would U.S. military troops have access to internet when they’d be deployed overseas in places like Iraq. Mattrick’s response was so out of touch and condescending that he must have a whole chapter written about him in marketing text books. His response was “…we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity; it’s called Xbox 360“. I mean, you can’t really say, specifically, the moment when the Xbox One was doomed to fail, but this is probably pretty close. Instead of saying something, ANYTHING, about how they were going to work to solve those problems for people, they just instantly told them, “nah, you stay out of the clubhouse”.

Shortly after E3, Microsoft announced that they were going back on just about all of the bad decisions they had made; no more “always online” requirement, no more restriction on disc sharing & selling, and no more Kinect requirement (yet the console would still be shipped with one, that was not changing). About a month later, Don Mattrick would leave Microsoft to join casual game juggernaut Zynga as their new CEO for a, brief, two year stint that saw the company’s revenue fall to all-time low’s. Phil Spencer would then take over as the head of Xbox to try and salvage their reputation. It wouldn’t really help, though, as the Xbox One would be easily beaten by the PlayStation 4.

2013 is, from what I can tell, a year of anger and complaints. It’s growing pains, things you have to go through in order to come out bigger and stronger on the other side, so to speak. The CDC study would eventually reveal that video games are not a root cause of violence in humans (even if some still say they do), inclusivity in video games continues to grow & flourish (even if some people don’t like it), and digital video game distribution in an “always online” world does seem to be the norm (even if there’s still pushback against it). Looking back now, it’s surprising that we all didn’t see the writing on the wall for something like a Donald Trump presidency, or the intense anger over COVID-19 restrictions. Our tribalism and our fury was out of control in 2013. God help us if we make the same mistakes again (we will).

Folks, that’s not even everything that happened in 2013! Let’s quickly go over some of the biggest news in video game companies:

• Cloud9 is formed, one of the first professional eSports companies, initially created as a team competing in League of Legends.
• Developer/Publisher THQ is unable to survive bankruptcy and is forced to sell all of its assets to pay off debts. The Homefront franchise is purchased by Crytek; Relic entertainment and the Warhammer 40k license are sold to Sega; Evolve and the WWE license are acquired by Take-Two; THQ Montreal and their game South Park: The Stick of Truth are purchased by Ubisoft; Volition and the Saints Row franchise, as well as the Metro franchise, are purchased by Koch Media. All remaining assets, and the company name, are acquired by Austrian video game publisher Nordic Games.
• Disney, the new owners of Lucasfilm, announces that they are laying off all but ten employees at video game division LucasArts, cancelling at least three games in the process; Star Wars 1313, Star Wars: First Assault, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed III. They say that all future Star Wars video games will be developed by EA, with their first game being Star Wars: Battlefront, a reboot of the franchise that is, of course, always online.

We already discussed the two biggest new consoles of 2013, but this was also the year of the Android based console. 2013 gave us the Ouya, the NVidia Shield, and MadCatz’s M.O.J.O. console. The Ouya, despite having a very successful Kickstarter, turned out to be a complete piece of shit, failing to work for many of its users. They would be purchased by the tech company Razer in 2015 after Ouya was unable to pay back their debtors. In 2019, Razer announced that they were shutting down the entire Ouya service and that customer’s games would no longer work, suggesting they reach out to other Android platforms to see if they could transfer their licenses to those companies digital stores. The NVidia Shield still works, though it is nearly impossible to find and appears to no longer be manufactured. Since the M.O.J.O. was closely tied to the Ouya ecosystem, that console also became a paperweight in 2019.

Finally, moving onto the awards season, as I promised earlier, we’d talk more about the Spike TV Video Game Awards. Well, in 2013, event organizer Geoff Keighley changed the name to the Spike VGX awards. This would no longer be a huge spectacle in a massive auditorium full of celebrities, broadcast on TV. Instead, this would be a stripped down show streamed over the internet with just Geoff as host, talking to game developers, showing off trailers for new titles, and handing out a few awards. Oh, and Joel McHale would be there too because, presumably, Spike got cold feet and wanted some kind of comedian there to give color commentary. The only award show-sy thing they did was hold a live concert in a nearby parking lot that featured music from Grand Theft Auto V. I was able to attend this and I had a ton of fun; hearing the song “Minor Turbulence” live is one of the highlights of my entire life. One of the scheduled performers, A$AP Rocky was about two hours late and, like dum-dum’s, we all stood there and waited. At least Tyler, The Creator was nice enough to keep us entertained for some of it.

This was the last Spike TV Video Game Awards show, with Keighley starting his own event, The Game Awards, in 2014. Alright, so what were the best games of the year? Well, here’s what everyone picked:

• The Last of Us appeared to be the number one choice, being named Game of the Year by the BAFTAs, DICE, Game Developers Choice, Destructoid, Game Informer, Giant Bomb, IGN, and Yahoo!.
• The Spike VGX Awards and their contemporary in journalism, Time magazine, selected Grand Theft Auto V.
• EGM and Entertainment Weekly chose Bioshock Infinite.
• Ars Technica named Papers, Please their Game of the Year.
• Gamespot selected The Legend of Zelda: A Like Between Worlds.
• Polygon went with Gone Home as their choice.

The best selling game of the year was Grand Theft Auto V, with other big sellers including Call of Duty: Ghosts and Pokémon X / Y.

As always, Mega64’s Todd & Aaron video summed up the year nicely:

I loved a lot of the games that 2013 had to offer, did you? Check ’em out:

• Aliens: Colonial Marines
• Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
• Animal Crossing: New Leaf
• Armored Core: Verdict Day
• Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel
• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
• Batman: Arkham Origins
• BattleBlock Theater

• Battlefield 4
• Beyond: Two Souls
• BioShock Infinite
• Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
• Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective
• The Bureau: XCOM Declassified
• Call of Duty: Ghosts
• Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

• Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate
• The Cave
• Company of Heroes 2
• Crysis 3
• Cut the Rope 2 – Unexpected Adventure
• Dead Island: Riptide
• Dead Rising 3

• Dead Space 3
• Deadpool
• Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness
• DmC: Devil May Cry
• Don’t Starve
• Dota 2
• Dr. Luigi
• DuckTales: Remastered

• Dynasty Warriors 8
• Etrian Odyssey IV
• Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
• Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
• Fire Emblem Awakening
• Game & Wario
• Gears of War: Judgment
• God of War: Ascension

• Gone Home
• Gran Turismo 6
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Guacamelee!
• The Guided Fate Paradox
• Halo: Spartan Assault
• Injustice: Gods Among Us
• Kentucky Route Zero: Act I

• Killer Instinct
• Killer Is Dead
• Killzone: Shadow Fall
• Knack
• The Last of Us
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
• LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
• LEGO City Undercover

• Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded
• Lost Planet 3
• Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
• Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
• Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games
• Mario Party: Island Tour
• Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move
• Max: The Curse of Brotherhood

• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
• Metro: Last Light
• Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine
• Need for Speed Rivals
• New Super Luigi U
• Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
• Outlast
• Pandora’s Tower

• Papers, Please
• Payday 2
• Peggle 2
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies
• Pikmin 3
• Plants vs. Zombies 2
• Poker Night 2

• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity
• Pokémon Rumble U
• Pokémon X and Y
• Project X Zone
• Puppeteer
• Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus
• Rayman Legends
• Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land

• Remember Me
• Risk of Rain
• Rogue Legacy
• Rune Factory 4
• Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien
• Ryse: Son of Rome
• Saints Row IV
• Shadowrun Returns

• Shin Megami Tensei IV
• Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner – Soul Hackers
• SimCity
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
• Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2
• Sonic Lost World
• The Stanley Parable
• State of Decay

• SteamWorld Dig
• Tales of Xillia
• Temple Run 2
• Time and Eternity
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist
• Tomb Raider
• Total War: Rome II

• The Walking Dead: 400 Days
• The Walking Dead: Season Two
• Warframe
• Wii Fit U
• Wii Party U
• The Wolf Among Us
• The Wonderful 101
• XCOM: Enemy Within
• Ys: Memories of Celceta

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Wow! That’s going to do it folks. I hope you had as much fun reading up on video game history as I did doing research for this. As always, this particular article lets me take some trips down memory lane, good & bad. Stay safe this holiday season; don’t drink & drive, try and get some rest, and be sure to hug your loved ones. Thank you for reading, and don’t forget, next week we’re talking about the upcoming 2024 releases; I can’t wait!

Finally, please enjoy this very special, very heartfelt holiday song. It’s a New Game Releases tradition, folks, and so, without further ado, the Revenge of the Nerds talent show song: