The 1990s was a strange decade. We saw incredible media in the form of movies, music, and of course, games. New technological advancements made it possible to create much more advanced games compared to previous generations, but that technology was nowhere near what we see today. 

PCs being in a huge percentage of homes, and game consoles growing greatly in popularity saw evolution in the world of gaming, including innovations that are still part of the world we live in, and the gaming scene, to this day. 

Casino Gaming Goes Online

The mid-90s saw games that have been played in person for hundreds of years taken into an online forum, and this included card games and casino games. The first sites offering online roulette were created in the mid-90s and have continued to evolve into the sort of gaming sites we see today. 

Modern online roulette and casino sites may use cryptocurrencies and other modern technologies including live dealers via video connections, and though these are mighty different, the sites in the 90s proved the concept and laid the groundwork for the modern sites that have taken this to another level of technology. Online poker games may be built on games that are often hundreds of years old but there are also new and modern games such as slots games that are being released virtually weekly.

Casino games took the idea of gaming online to another level with things like online poker, too. Nowadays, the idea of playing games online against friends or strangers is a mainstream concept that many people are used to, but then it was a new concept, driven forward by the idea of playing poker or roulette with other real players in other locations.

The Birth of Portable Gaming

Technically speaking, the Game Boy didn’t join us in the 1990s, it actually was released way back in the 1980s (depending on where you lived). 

The Nintendo console came out in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later in 89, and in Europe the following year in 1990, so most people associate the game and some of its biggest titles with the 1990s. Games like Pokemon took full advantage of what the platform had to offer and were played for many years, with sequels still being released today and people still looking for ROM games of the originals. 

Portable gaming was perhaps born a little before this when the world’s very first cartridge-based console came out in 1979, made by Milton Bradley. Sales figures were not huge and were dwarfed by consoles like the Game Boy, which was then succeeded by consoles like the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and now modern Nintendo consoles that can be seen as a natural evolution such as the Nintendo Switch. 

Sega and other developers tried to get in on the action, and the Sega Nomad was a console that was not a success (even though it sold around a million units). It was the last of the portable consoles Sega made before they eventually stopped making hardware altogether. 

Doom and Wolfenstein Bring FPS to Consoles

Some games with the first-person perspective were made before these titles, but this doesn’t mean that the Doom and Wolfenstein games didn’t revolutionize things in the 1990s. Wolfenstein 3D was given to the world in 1992, a year before Doom was seen on the limited PCs of the time.

The games were so popular that we saw no end of clones being made, and every developer sought to make the next Doom-style game. Arguably, games like Half-Life wouldn’t have ever existed without the foundations of Doom and Wolfenstein.

Some Franchises Were Born that Still Exist

Every developer and console maker wants to bring the next franchise to the world of gaming. Having a brand like GTA or Red Dead Redemption brings the security of knowing that games will sell when they are released, as everybody waits for the next installment.

GTA’s first game ever came out in the 1990s, with a top-down game that looks nothing like the games we have today being released back in 1997. 

Final Fantasy, Pokemon, and many other game franchises can be dated all the way back to the 1990s, and the games are still being released to this day. Sure, they look different and have evolved in the way they are released, with regular updates being possible now via the internet, but all of these games have their roots back in the 90s. 

Conclusion

Few could’ve predicted what a revolutionary time this would be, and the 1990s saw loads of games released (more than any preceding decade). Some of the games and consoles fizzled to nothing but others became huge, household-name games still played to this day. On top of that, we saw existing games like poker and roulette become widespread and played on computers rather than just being an option to play in casinos.

I hope you enjoyed this one. Keep gaming 😉