This is an entry to Archdruid Gaming's Gaming Decades: The 90's contest. I strongly suggest checking them out if you're interested in games and joining one of the friendliest communities on Steem (which is quite a competitive field).
The 90's was a golden age of gaming; many fantastic franchises had their roots in this decade, and the modern interfaces and conventions that we still enjoy were born with them.
Other than perhaps the FPS, no genre of game enjoyed as much success and blossoming during the 90's as the roleplaying game.
Some of this is that it is in the 90's that roleplaying games began to move past technical limitations. Prior to the 90's, finding a game that told a story, had an intuitive user interface, and actually incorporated the modern pillars of game design was basically impossible. Even games like Rogue, which were impressive in the depth of their worlds, struggled to present meaningful stories to players.
Increases in computing power and storage capacity made much of this moot, and led to the creation of three different sub-genres: the Computer RPG (or just RPG), the Action RPG, and the Japanese RPG, each of which had their own defining features and conventions.
The CRPG
The CRPG owes its largest debt to Dungeons & Dragons, and also the spiritual intermediary of Rogue and the other roguelikes. The term CRPG is short for "Computer Roleplaying Game", which points out the fact that CRPGs were predominantly targeted toward the PC market, rather than the console market. There's also a hidden clue here: CRPGs are often more of a computerization of existing roleplaying games in the form of Dungeons and Dragons and its competitors than a video game designed from scratch around video game rules.
While the 90's was not the technical birthplace of the CRPG (the 80's bore the first examples of the genre), it was the decade in which the CRPG came into its own.
For a state of the CRPG prior to the revolution in the 90's, we can look at some very early titles. The Dungeons and Dragons license was used by SSI in the 80's and early 90's for many games that would go on to become influential, including Eye of the Beholder, a first-person dungeoneering game.
Eye of the Beholder screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
There were attempts to bring these games to consoles as well, though they would rarely shine as well as they would on PC systems.
Shinining in the Darkness screenshot courtesy of MobyGames
These games generally were more primitive than what would would be possible later, and were less focused on storytelling. These shortfallings were due to a combination of factors, and generally games that were around in the 80's and very early 90's were not accessible to mainstream players.
Personally, I define the most revolutionary point of the decade for the CRPG as the advent of The Elder Scrolls, with its first game, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, releasing in 1994.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Arena came out the same year as Doom, and compared to Doom it is clunky and looks dated (its successor Daggerfall also feels notably less fluid than Doom), but it offers three defining features that would mark the new and improved CRPGs from their predecessors and distinct from their siblings:
- A cinematic, visual, presentation of the world. (As opposed to a terminal-style interface, like Rogue or early Ultima titles)
- Player interaction through abstract means, rather than a menu or text-based commands.
- A focus on deep, rich, story-driven narratives.
The fundamental emphasis of a CRPG was on exploring the world while developing a single character or characters. Many games shifted toward single protagonists over the course of the 90's, while earlier RPGs of the 80's (other than Rogue and the roguelikes) would often have whole parties represented, blending the lines between a single character's narrative and multiple characters.
It's worth noting that this was a developmental shift away from the influence of Dungeons and Dragons on roleplaying, which was designed around having multiple characters as part of its storytelling methodology. With the player taking on the role of a single avatar, the action and plot could be more driven by that individual character.
Daggerfall screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The Fallout franchise also got its start in the late 90's. A technical masterpiece, and one of the deeper narrative experiences available for sci-fi and post-apocalypse fans who wanted an RPG to scratch their itch, it combined often-dry humor with roleplaying mechanics to offer graphics and gameplay that were finally ready to take full advantage of the storage space offered by CDs.
Optical storage was not new, but games like The Elder Scrolls: Arena were sometimes released on floppy disc and CD version offering only a few new features.
Fallout screenshot courtesy of Moby Games
With that said, the second great generation of Dungeons and Dragons games was born in the 90's with Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. These titles offered a richer narrative experience through a floating-camera perspective, and strong dramatic narratives based on the Dungeons and Dragons franchises than had been available in the SSI games of the 80's and early 90's.
They were also more specifically focused on the elementary unit of Dungeons and Dragons, the adventuring party, faithfully recreating the rules from which they were born, than some of SSI's early-90's games.
Baldur's Gate screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
One of the defining boons for CRPGs of this era was the advent of Windows and Mac operating systems that were more comprehensive than their predecessors. With increases in the complexity and specialization of hardware, these operating systems allowed middleware to handle most of the functions that would have had to be coded specifically in each DOS title.
This was particularly important for graphics (especially with rendering solutions between cards) and sound, which had previously been poorly standardized.
Author's note: I have generally not addressed the important contributions of Ultima here. Ultima was a long-standing classic by the time the 90's rolled around, and pioneered most of the qualities of the CRPG. Its 80's entries, like SSI's D&D titles, were less accessible to mainstream audiences. Ironically, by the end of the 90's a series of disastrous releases would spell the end of Ultima, partly because changes to the interface and play-style ostracized loyal fans.
Action RPGS
The ARPG (action RPG) took a middle ground between the more fast-paced console games and CRPGs of its day. With genes often being loosely derived from Zelda and Golden Axe, these games were generally faster-paced and more focused on playability and gameplay experiences than the CRPGs, which remained complicated.
Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom screenshot courtesy of Moby Games
A great example of this would be the arcade-cabinet Dungeons and Dragons games (Tower of Doom and Shadows over Mystara) produced by Capcom, but examples could be found everywhere. Games like Castlevania and Zelda would influence the genre. Zelda 2, for instance, was possibly the first clearly-defined action RPG, in 1987.
Zelda 2 screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The defining qualities of an ARPG are typically that:
- The game is played in real-time.
- Controls and conventions are inherited from videogames, rather than terminals.
- Unlike non-RPGs, characters are customized and developed in game mechanics.
Action RPGs would dominate consoles alongside JRPGs as CRPGs moved toward higher degrees of complexity that required keyboard and mouse interfaces. Because an ARPG could take the style of any other game on the surface, it proved to be quite flexible, and the number of games that could be defined as an action roleplaying game is quite high.
I'll use a single franchise to illustrate the diversity of console-based RPGs: Shadowrun.
Shadowrun was my first tabletop roleplaying game, but it received video game entries on the SNES and Genesis in the early 90's. The SNES version pushed the level of complexity one could hit on a console to its limits: it had a very complicated UI and pointer-based shooting combat.
While not necessarily too technically demanding for the console, this style of play was a limiting factor for ARPGs. Although gameplay unfolded in real-time, the interface was very difficult to master and would have felt more at home in a PC setup (the SNES actually supported a mouse, but Shadowrun for the SNES did not).
Shadowrun (SNES) screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The Genesis game, by comparison, was still rather complicated (featuring essentially a tabletop roleplaying game's character customization system), but featured much more in the way of action-based play. Targeting was done with a single button, but the interface was generally less advanced than that of the SNES game.
Shadowrun (Genesis) screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
One interesting element of Shadowrun for the Genesis is that it includes an entirely distinctive hacking minigame (though the character's stats from the regular game are still used), which is a hybrid of the forms that one would expect from an ARPG and CRPG. Combat takes place in real-time and is generally more qualitatively aligned with ARPG design principles.
Shadowrun (Genesis) screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Another classic early ARPG is the Ys series, which would presage the Japanese and console-based side of the genre more than some of the other alternatives would go on to do.
Ys IV screenshot courtesy of Moby Games
However, when a lot of people think of ARPGs, there is one undisputed classic: Diablo.
Diablo was a high-water mark for ARPGs in the 90's, featuring a whole cadre of desirable features. It was easy to play, and featured an isometric perspective that was becoming popular. Although it had little or no 3D graphics by our modern definition, it used the increased power available on late-90's machines much in the same way that Fallout and Baldur's Gate would do in the CRPG field: making environments and characters look much more vivid.
It also supported multiplayer online with up to four players, something which was not entirely unheard of (Doom had done similar things back in 1994), but made it immediately appealing. While many ARPGs were single-player affairs, Diablo let players get together with friends to delve gothic depths. A roguelike-inspired dungeon and loot generation system fostered replayability.
Diablo screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Japanese RPGs
I'm going to start with a quick disclaimer: the term Japanese RPG is often not useful as a foundation for approaching a game, especially in the modern era. However, the JRPG spawned from a series of highly successful Japanese game developers creating games for a particular market, and would go on to be an influential subgenre of other RPGs.
The JRPG was unique in generally moving away from the traditional tabletop roleplaying roots of the RPG, but still maintaining game mechanics and styles more fitted for turn-based or quasi-turn-based play.
Common elements include:
- Menu-based battling systems
- Progression along pre-defined paths of character development, often automatically
- Long storytelling sections where characters and items, rather than complex mechanics, dominate interactions.
- Random encounters on an overworld.
The predominant name to emerge from JRPGs was Square Enix, a company that was largely defined by its RPGs, especially Final Fantasy. As a series that would run for the entire decade with frequent releases, Final Fantasy is a good starting point, and I'll focus on two of the entries in particular.
Final Fantasy 4, which was released in the early 90's, highlights the early console-based JRPGs well.
FF4 screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
In addition to its menu based combat, overworld and in-town sections of Final Fantasy 4 (and most JRPGs) grant an opportunity to explore, and much of the appeal is in finding secrets and talking to NPCs. The inclusion of cut-scenes and images as the technology grew more complex enabled JRPGs to capitalize on technological advancements.
The harbinger of the new era of JRPGs was Final Fantasy VII in 1997.
FFVII screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Remaining true to the game design principles of other JRPGs, pre-rendered backgrounds took advantage of the same increases in visual fidelity occurring in its sister genres. Final Fantasy VII combined these with an imaginative and detailed world to create something that would go down in gaming history as an influential classic.
FFVII screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The Next Generation
At the very end of the 90's, the most significant genre to emerge in the early 21st century was already being foreshadowed.
This was the MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.
The big three MMORPGs (at least in the US) were Ultima Online, which had a 2d interface, Everquest, and Acheron's Call.
Of these, EverQuest would perhaps become the role model for most of the successors in the genre.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/Sand_Giant_-EverQuest-_1999.jpg
EverQuest screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
EverQuest offered a full three-dimensional environment, and it immediately became a hit with players.
While MMORPGs wouldn't spread to the mass market until the 2000's, the social experiences they permitted were broader and grander than almost any other game, and the long-term playability of an MMORPG meant that players would develop attachments to them and their characters in a way that prior online experiences could not fully capitalize on.