Gaming in 1995: Nintendo and Elsewhere

Nintendo delayed their next-generation system, Nintendo 64, until 1996. In the intervening year the company saw some of its greatest successes – and its worst failure.

On the Super Nintendo scattered among the typical movie adaptions and sports games you could find some of the greatest games in the system’s history: platformer Yoshi’s Island [dev. Nintendo EAD] and RPGs Chrono Trigger [dev. Square] and Earthbound [dev. Ape, HAL Laboratory]. The latter two rank among the greatest games ever made.

Nintendo’s Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island for the SNES.

In 1995 many of the SNES’ more notable games never left Japan yet would find a dedicated American audience thanks to (unofficial) fan translations and Playstation sequels; many of these games came from famed Japanese developer Squaresoft (now Square Enix). The previous year’s Final Fantasy VI (dubbed Final Fantasy III in the United States) was a success, yet RPGs were still a relatively unimportant genre outside of Japan – at least until the runaway success of Final Fantasy VII in 1997.

Wolf Team’s Tales of Phantasia. The first game in the Tales series, it will later be remade for the Playstation using the engine of a later game, Tales of Destiny.

Among these Japan-only games: Mech strategy game Front Mission; RPG Romancing SaGa 3; action-RPG Seiken Densetsu 3. Front Mission’s sequel Front Mission 3 would make its way onto the Playstation worldwide; the SaGa series lived on as SaGa Frontier for the Playstation and Unlimited Saga for the Playstation 2; and Seiken Densetsu 3’s Mana series would see foreign shores on the Playstation. Enix’s Dragon Quest VI was the last installment in the series until 2001’s Dragon Quest VII on the Playstation; and Tales of Phantasia [dev. Wolf Team], one of the most graphically sophisticated 2D games on the SNES, would later find new life on the Playstation and Game Boy Advance. As you can see, RPG developers – once firmly in Nintendo’s corner – would soon abandon the system, thanks mainly to the storage limits and expense of Nintendo 64 cartridges.

Another RPG, but one that did make its way to the United States: Capcom’s Breath of Fire II, another SNES RPG whose sequel would make the jump to the Playstation. Quest’s Ogre Battle, a complex strategy game, also made its way abroad in 1995 – albeit in an extremely limited release. Meanwhile, Square’s Secret of Evermore recieved mixed reviews as the first, and only, Square game designed in and for the United States.

Nintendo franchises were also strong this year. 1995 was the year of Donkey Kong Country 2 [dev. Rare] and golf game Kirby’s Dream Course [dev. HAL Laboratory]. Mega Man 7 [dev. Capcom], the only “main” Mega Man game developed for a 16-bit console, failed to attract the same acclaim as the Mega Man X series – and on that note, 1995 was the year of Mega Man X2.

Meanwhile, fans of complete dreck would also find an abundance of “treasures”. Of note, notoriously ugly Olympic mascot Izzy starred in his own platformer.

Konami’s Castlevania: Dracula X for the SNES.

Adventure game Clock Tower [dev. Human] brought horror to the SNES by casting the player as a defenseless girl on the run from a maniac wielding giant scissors. And fantastic-looking action games Rendering Ranger [dev. Rainbow Arts], Super Turrican 2 [dev. Factor 5] and Konami’s Castlevania: Dracula X pushed the limits of the SNES.

Alas, the Virtual Boy merely tested the limits of the player’s patience.

Pushed out the door to cover for the prolonged development of the Nintendo 64, the Virtual Boy’s American début was in August 1995…and it was discontinued by March. A “3D” console that was in no sense portable, and which was by default a antisocial, solitary experience due to the system’s headset, the Virtual Boy was an idea that was in no way ready for primetime, pushed onto the public to focus more resources on Nintendo’s impending console.

The next year saw the début of the Nintendo 64, itself an oft-troubled system – albeit a more popular, and fondly remembered, one.

Also in 1995: the Game Boy continued its reign as one of the most popular gaming platforms of all time. However, I won’t really talk about it much as its library consisted mainly of console spin-offs and tie-ins. It wasn’t until Pokémon that the Gameboy had a franchise to call its own – and thus began the Nintendo handheld creativity renaissance that began with the Game Boy Advance and runs to this day.

ELSEWHERE

The 3DO and Jaguar, the first fifth-generation consoles, barely clung to life – with Atari releasing a new CD attachment for the latter system that only supported 11 games, mainly dated ports.

The Pippin, a justifiably forgotten console from – of all companies – Apple Computer and Bandai, debuted in Japan. Apple executives wanted to branch out into other markets; Bandai executives hoped the Japanese toy company could become as big as Disney worldwide. Both ambitions ended in disaster.

On the PC, adventure games remained big – LucasArt’s Full Throttle and The Dig were some of that company’s last high-profile adventure game releases; the founder of the genre, Roberta Williams, created the live-action FMV game Phantasmagoria, more notable for the controversy surrounding it than the game itself; the quirky, Edgar Allen Poe-influenced claymation game The Dark Eye [dev. Inscape], featuring the voice of William S Burroughs, came out; Texas company Cyberdreams released its final adventure games – the acclaimed Harlan Ellison adaption I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and the widely mocked murder mystery Dark Seed II.

Real-time strategy games Warcraft II [dev. Blizzard] and Command and Conquer [dev. Westwood Studios] brought a higher profile to that form, while 3D shooter Descent [dev. Parallax Software] and mech sim MechWarrior 2 [dev. Activision] also drew attention. 1995 just wasn’t a particularly interesting year for computer gaming, compared to developments on consoles.

And in other PC gaming history, September 1995 marked the début of Microsoft’s DirectX API – the creation was prompted by previous compatibility issues with Windows operating systems and general skepticism of Windows as a gaming platform over DOS.

Sega’s Comix Zone for the Genesis/Mega Drive.

Sega’s older consoles faded away after the Saturn’s début – the Genesis saw a handful of notable titles, however: stylish beat-em up Comix Zone [dev. Sega Technical Institute]; well-animated Zelda-like action game Beyond Oasis [dev. Ancient]; Treasure’s shooter Alien Soldier and action-RPG Light Crusader; and Sonic Team’s platformer Ristar. The Genesis attachments Sega CD and 32X – the latter released immediately before the Saturn’s launch – were basically dead in the water – though the Sega CD was, at least, home to a new Shining Force game.

Without a doubt the best game of 1995 was the time-travel RPG Chrono Trigger: if you were seeking a great game in 1995 you wouldn’t find it on the newest systems – but on obsolete software that developers had mastered.  Such is almost always true, for obvious reasons.

Yet what happens when they move on? Nintendo’s new console, the Nintendo 64, will eventually prove to be nothing like the SNES. The SNES was the system in its day: the one every developer flocked to, that featured every conceivable genre of game – and even rudimentary 3D, thanks to the Super FX chip.

The Nintendo 64 would become a system with limited third-party support, thanks to Nintendo’s stubborn decision to stick with cartridges in an era where games came on CDs with higher storage capacities; its library included a stellar collection of 3D platformers and first person shooters, yet little else; but that’s in the future. Let us now remember a time where the biggest war in gaming was Nintendo versus Sega, and where Nintendo was on the top of the world.