The most important games of the last 5 decades: a complete guide

If we divide the little more than five decades of electronic entertainment in the same way as the ages of humanity, what are the most relevant and influential titles of each period? 

Have you ever stopped to think about how games have been part of different generations over the years? Whether with Atari, Nintendo, or Xbox, generations have had their entertainment through games that have evolved over the years.  

Check out what are the most important games of the last 5 decades. 

Pre-history: 1950’s to late 70’s 

Just as cave paintings were made on the texture of rocks in caves, in our prehistory of games, the action always took place on the black background of the canvas.  

The graphics—simple geometric shapes that didn’t even have more than one color until the mid-1970s—were abstract and challenged players to spot spaceships and dangerous monsters. 

There was no screen movement, and the forced dim light was an incentive to set many of the early games in space.  

Other popular topics were sports and maze navigation, but interacting with the screen was such a novelty in itself, and the graphics were so simple, that if the creators didn’t explain what the game was about, most people would never guess. 

During the 60s, games were produced for use on computers in companies or universities, since PCs were not yet widespread. Only with the first arcades, they started to be considered products with commercial appeal. 

1961 – Spacewar!  

The first man to gain gaming artist status was American engineer Steve Russell, who in 1961 developed a simple game on a limited (for today’s) computer.  

Other entertainment shows came before, but Spacewar! was the first to be commercially distributed (yet very few experienced it at the time, as computers practically only existed in universities).  

Russell took 200 hours of work to complete the project. In Spacewar!, two players control spaceships with limited ammunition and fuel resources. The game was revised until it reached the final version in 1962.  

Think of the rudimentary scribbles on cave walls and you can understand why this is the cornerstone of the games: in addition to having inspired many similar titles, Spacewar! gave rise to a new industry, which would grow in the 1970s. 

1972 – Pong 

A ball (one pixel) and two vertical lines (a few pixels in a row) were what was on the Pong screen. And I didn’t need more than that.  

The version that gained the most popularity was created by Allan Alcorn, an Atari programmer, but it was inspired by a similar Magnavox Odyssey console game from months earlier. 

The idea was to simulate table tennis that could be played in bars between drinks. Legend says that the first version suddenly stopped working because of too many coins stuck in the machine.  

Atari profited so much that it decided to launch a domestic version in 1975, which was even more successful – selling 150,000 units at Christmas of that year. 

1978 – Space Invaders 

If Pong got people used to playing in public, Space Invaders took the addiction to a whole new level. It was the product that gave a breath of life to a downcast niche market and that inspired many would-be designers to follow in the profession. 

The Atari 2600 version from 1980 was considered the first truly “essential” home console game.  

The design today seems trivial, but a lot was born there: the interactivity with the digital aliens (they shot back and advanced in their ship), the increasing difficulty level, the use of a soundtrack that accelerated with the game and the concept of the maximum score, or “ high score ”, among other resources that have become eternal. 

1980 – Pac-Man 

The general public was already more accustomed to video games at the start of the new decade, which made Pac-Man‘s success inevitable.  

For the first time, the player could relate to a protagonist – even if he was a yellow ball with bouts of appetite and chased by obsessed ghosts. 

Before the hero created by Toru Iwatani, games were starring anonymous characters. More than a cultural and media phenomenon that brought in lots of money to those involved, Pac-Man was the missing piece to definitively establish games in the popular imagination. 

1981 – Donkey Kong 

Ground zero of game storytelling is also celebrated for being the first game directed by Shigeru Miyamoto, at the time an up-and-coming Nintendo designer.  

In Donkey Kong, the villain christens the game, leaving the hero Jumpman the supporting role (renamed “Mario” years later, the plumber ended up becoming the greatest protagonist in the history of games). 

Inspired by the movie King Kong, Miyamoto set the tone for the “platform” genre – running and jumping to reach new heights – that has dominated gaming for more than a decade. Fun fact: to this day people are trying to break the game’s record.  

The dispute between the two main players was portrayed in the great documentary King of Kong. 

Antique: From the second half of the 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s 

It was the gaming era that created the industry as we know it today, as well as most game genres. In 1983, after a bubble and the decline of the US games industry (which caused the bankruptcy of several companies), the focus of creativity shifted to the East. 

The Japanese Nintendo arrived and started a new phase in the market, with a more powerful system, charismatic characters, and more elaborate and creative games, many of which continue to gain new versions to this day, 30 years later. 

The same technical advance was happening on PCs and arcades as well. The graphics advanced little by little and at first were associated with the style of comic books and cartoons, simpler to reproduce with few colors and low resolution. 

Each technological innovation – such as zooming and rotating elements, synthesized voices, or cartridges with greater capacity (the average was 4 megabits, or 512 bytes, smaller than a current cell phone photo) – was received as a great revolution. 

1985 – Super Mario Bros 

Many consider this the most important game of all time, and it’s not hard to see why. Nintendo has resurrected the console market with the Famicom (NES in the West), thanks to the gimmick of including an irresistible product in the package. 

Created by Shigeru Miyamoto, Super Mario Bros. revolutionized right away, forcing the player to keep moving forward, exploring eight worlds with an unprecedented variety of scenarios and using powers that no other title offered.  

Mario can grow, shoot fire, run and jump, as well as eliminate enemies in different ways. Never has a virtual hero been controlled so finely and precisely. Simple to learn and difficult to master (and put down), it was the inspiration for every action game. 

1984 – Tetris 

Truth be told, we played Angry Birds and Candy Crush on our smartphones because one-day Soviet scientist Alexey Pajitnov decided to create an electronic puzzle to test the capabilities of a computer at the company where he worked. It was a relative success, but the explosion took a few years to arrive. 

When Nintendo included the geometric block puzzle in the packaging of the Game Boy handheld in 1989, a crucial chapter in gaming history began to unfold. Addictive and accessible for everyone, it’s the quintessential digital-casual experience. 

1986 – The Legend of Zelda 

Once relegated to computers, adventure games became possible on Nintendo’s first console, with a game on a gold cartridge created by Shigeru Miyamoto (always him!). The Legend of Zelda adventure was so vast that it could never be completed in a single playthrough. 

Because of this, Nintendo included batteries in the cartridges for the player to save progress. With mazes, weapon upgrades, and freedom to roam in no particular order, the doors to epic fantasy in games were open.  

Realistic narratives like Call of Duty and GTA are more successful today, but the path was paved by this Zelda. 

Middle ages: Mid-90s to early 21st century 

The 1990s were a period of transition and experimentation. With the increase in the processing power of PCs, consoles, and arcades, the first games with 3D graphics appeared, still primitive, but already indicating the direction of the industry. 

Highly original games like Civilization, Doom, and The Secret of Monkey Island have established new genres or survived as a series for many years.  

The size of games exploded with the arrival of CDs, which promised unprecedented quality in audio, video, or animation scenes and virtually unlimited space to store content. 

The handmade graphics, the pixel arts, reached an extraordinary level of quality like Metal Slug, Chrono Trigger, Yoshi’s Island, but this evolution would be interrupted by the impact of polygonal graphics from the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 generations. 

The real watershed of this era was Super Mario 64, the main example of a remarkable process of “rebirth” of games. From then on, 2D graphics were gradually relegated to the background, while 3D became the preferred industry standard.  

The consequence of this is that many titles from the past era were improved and gained their definitive versions: in addition to Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear, and Final Fantasy were some of the franchises that acquired the status of absolute classics in this period. 

1996 – Super Mario 64 

Platform games were born with a title starring Mario in 1985, and it was the hero himself who starred in another paradigm shift in the genre.  

Among the many merits of the Nintendo 64 launch game, the main one was the popularization of the now traditional three-dimensional setting. 

In Super Mario 64, we experimented with moving through deep, dynamic worlds and accepted the bizarre idea of ​​a floating camera on the hero’s back.  

It could have gone wrong, but the audience loved it. It was the push that developers needed to embrace the cause of 3D, sparking a reinvention of action games. 

1996 – Pokemon 

Pokémon became popular in animation, but it was on the Game Boy that the fever started. An unprecedented multimedia phenomenon, “pocket monsters” have become ubiquitous in pop culture, as if they existed in real life. 

Creature charisma aside, it all only worked thanks to an irresistible collectible character that left players wanting more.  

Combining this premise with the mechanics of compelling RPGs and promoting sharing via portable connectivity, the result was an enduring obsession that spawned hundreds of imitations. 

1996 – Resident Evil 

Having scares has always been one of the experiences that most attract the public to the dark of cinemas. Video games didn’t lend themselves to providing the same kind of excitement until Japanese producer Capcom put the first Resident Evil title on the market.  

The experience of playing alone in a dark room has not been the same since then, enhanced by a claustrophobic atmosphere that made the player sweat in anticipation, getting scared even if he was very attentive and concentrated. 

Notably, the current gameplay remains the same as the first version. It is precisely this factor that attracts dedicated fans who often spend months exploring the same epic adventure. Really, what could be better than developing a civilization from the Stone Age? 

1998 – StarCraft 

Real-time strategy games were already popular when Blizzard released StarCraft, which transferred the typical non-stop action of medieval ages too remote planets.  

More than an excellent and complex military strategy experience, the game has secured its place in history as one of the first to be treated as a true sport, generating world championships and cash prizes. In South Korea, professional players have become millionaire celebrities. 

Modern age: First decade of the 21st century 

This era has brought unprecedented success to the video game industry, with blockbusters everywhere.  

That’s when 3D technology matured, online games, damanding good internet providers became universally viable with the popularization of broadband, and the balance between investment and financial return was still quite healthy for developers. 

Grand Theft Auto III was the revelation and the great success, creating alone the genre of open games, the so-called “sandboxes”, in which the player is not tied to a fixed sequence of stages or missions, but can walk freely through the scenery and do just about anything. 

It was also here that the big turning point in the market took place, with western producers previously dedicated to the PC invading the console space and taking the primacy of Japanese producers.  

Accessories like the Kinect, PlayStation Move, and Wiimote beckoned with interactivity never seen before in games, but the designers’ creativity, technology, or game sales didn’t live up to the promise.  

Million-dollar sales, family-friendly games, and expensive productions have made video games an increasingly important part of pop culture. 

2000 – The Sims 

If gamers like to take care of cities, why wouldn’t they want to take care of the inhabitants of those cities? Will Wright started from that premise and lent half the name of the franchise he created ( SimCity ) to this authentic human life simulator. 

The Sims captivated those who yearned to see themselves portrayed on the computer screen and offered us the chance to repeat our routines in the virtual world.  

At the same time, it also allowed us to do everything in a morally questionable way, awakening the amoral and sadistic side in each of us.  

Addictive, if at times more tedious than real life, the game kept itself active with expansion packs, spawned sequels, and hinted at how we would behave later on social media. 

2001 – Grand Theft Auto III 

In the game that put Rockstar Games at the top of the industry, the player now has an entire city at his disposal, being able to roam aimlessly and ignore goals just for the pleasure of sowing chaos or praising procrastination. 

The game, totally (or almost) open, is an invitation to life outside the law: everything is allowed.  

Each new GTA is better than the last, but it was this third chapter – the first in a three-dimensional world – that determined that the best rule is to be able to break all the rules. 

2004 – World of Warcraft 

The first game of a genre is not always the most important, and in the case of MMO games (massively multiplayer online), this maxim is valid: World of Warcraft appeared in 2004, and made the real world understand the overwhelming power of persuasion of epic multiplayer sagas in infinitely wide environments teeming with orcs, marauders, dwarves, and enchanted creatures.  

With 12 million subscribers at its peak, the magical world of Azeroth continues to be inhabited, explored, and worshiped by fans. 

2007 – Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 

Video games have played war since the beginning of time, but the conflicts represented were always too remote for the player to identify with. Until the Call of Duty franchise began to bring contemporary themes to its scripts.  

The gamble was that when it came to war games, would-be soldiers would rather imagine a hypothetical future than remember battles from ancient times. 

It worked, and year after year, the Modern Warfare series breaks sales records and creates controversy with its realistic plots, cinematic narrative plots, over-the-top violence, and a multiplayer mode perfect for compulsive gamers. 

2006 – Wii Sports 

Even without having the money to compete in cutting-edge technology with Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo could revolutionize the way we play.  

Wii Sports was democratic and intuitive, accessible to all age groups, and at the same time, it determined a new paradigm of gameplay, based on a joystick with motion sensors. 

Contemporary age: nowadays 

The game industry has long been dependent on the model of blockbuster games – the so-called “AAA” -, which require hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, and sales of millions of units to return the investment. 

The big producers, then, prefer not to take too much risk and bet on less and less expensive games, so it’s hard to know how long the Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty model will last.  

Precisely because of this moment of insecurity, some people think that we are experiencing a certain decadence in the industry, caused by the increase in production and the decrease in variety and creativity. 

But it’s the exact opposite of that. If we look at what has been happening in the indie market, we can say that today we have a new games industry, completely renewed and healthy.  

In recent years, there has been an explosion of ideas and productivity thanks to the entrance of independent producers, first on PC, then on smartphones and consoles. 

With small and agile studios (sometimes formed by a single person) and with the possibility of focusing on niches, since the investment is low and does not require millionaire returns, indies occupy an increasingly important space in the market.  

The result of this? The public has already embraced the cause, whether it’s cheering fast-paced, addictive experiences like Angry Birds, or making solitary, unambitious projects like Minecraft become larger than life.  

What is the path that the companies that reigned in the past decades intend to follow? The future is open. 

Phone and internet bundles is essential for this age 

2009 – Angry Birds 

Until the emergence of Angry Birds, the synonym for “casual handheld game” was Tetris. With the rise of the game from Finnish producer Rovio, pop culture found itself invaded by wingless birds with grumpy expressions and sleazy green pigs.  

First it was on the iPhone, it spread to other devices and went beyond the universe of games – toys, t-shirts, books, cartoons… 

2009 – Farmville 

You played – and if you swear you didn’t, you certainly know someone in your family who still plays. Farmville was the game everyone loved to hate in recent years, and the passionate reactions on both sides are easily understandable.  

With Farmville, social games have turned into a new golden goose for the industry, showing that there are many more people interested in interactive experiences than seemed evident. 

2009 – League of Legends 

The game as a sport is not new since the days of StarCraft and Counter-Strike. But League of Legends now reaches an audience size worthy of a sport and behaves like one.  

Its popularity stems from several features – it’s free, has an accessible learning curve, resembles a team sport – but it’s the exciting and competitive nature of the medieval-mystical battles that attracts millions every month to the game’s online arenas. 

2011 – Minecraft 

Swede Markus Persson created a construction simulator with geometric pieces with an interactive appeal and retro look.  

Even before being officially launched, Minecraft was already a success, conquering millions of children and teenagers of both sexes, who not only played games but wanted to consume everything about the fever (it is no coincidence that the most-watched YouTube channels today are specialized in Minecraft ). 

Conclusion 

Games have been present throughout the different generations with or without access to the internet: Baby Boomers, X, Y, Z, and the most recent.  

Thus, we see that games were, are, and will continue to be one of the best entertainment in the world, always with constant graphic evolution.