April Edition Live Magazine - April 2014 Issue. | Page 18

First-person-shooter (FPS) - ‘Doom’
(1993, id Software)

feature

Retro Games that Spawned Gaming Genres

Platformer - ‘Super Mario Bros’
(1985, Nintendo)
While Mario made an appearance
in Donkey Kong under the name
“Jump Man”, it wasn’t until he got
his own revolutionary title that he
became one of gamings biggest
icons, and that the platformer genre took the world by storm. Releasing on the Nintendo Entertainment
system, Super Mario Bros ushered
in the era of the side-scrolling platformer, as well as many classic elements from the sub-genre.
Created by Shigeru Miyamoto
(Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda), Super Mario Bros told the story of a brave Italian plumber on a
quest to rescue the princess of the
Mushroom Kingdom from Bowser,
a demonic “Koopa” (in Japan, he
is referred to as the “great demon
king”), which is a monster in a turtle
shell.
Gameplay in Super Mario Bros involves traversing laterally (usually
from left to right) throughout the
game’s many levels to a goal at the

end of the level. Throughout these
levels, there are numerous enemies and obstacles, as well as a
time limit, which add to the game’s
difficulty. The levels in Super Mario
Bros are divided into worlds, with
each world having levels that make
it up. At the end of each world, is
one of Bowser’s dungeons, which
are more difficult than usual levels.
They are filled with lava and traps,
and Bowser awaits at the end
should Mario successfully navigate
through the dungeon.
It’s impossible to find a gamer who
hasn’t heard of Super Mario and
his lankier little brother, Luigi. Their
adventures have seen steady releases on every Nintendo console
available including the Nintendo
Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, Gamecube,
Nintendo DS, Wii and Wii U.
The Platformer Legacy: The Sonic the Hedgehog series (1991-cur-

rent), the Crash Bandicoot series
(1996-2010), the Jax and Daxter
series (2001-current), the Kirby
series (1992-current), the Alex
Kidd series (1986-1990), Spyro the
Dragon (1998-current, if you include Skylanders)and many more.

The modern gamer owes a lot to
Doom, the game largely responsible for popularising the FPS subgenre (or genre, depending on your
personal opinion). Without it, we
might not have some of gaming’s
most popular franchises. Although
one of id Software’s previous
games (Wolfenstein 3D) helped establish the FPS genre, it was Doom
that ushered in the era of the FPS.
So much so, that many FPS games
earned the term “Doom clones”.
Doom casts players as a lone
space marine who is stationed on
Mars. The Martian space marine
base acts as security for the Union
Aerospace Corporation, a multiplanetary conglomerate, which is
performing secret experiments with
teleportation by creating gateways
between the two moons of Mars,
Phobos and Deimos. Mars is considered by space marines to be
the dullest assignment imaginable.
This all changes when the UAC experiments go horribly wrong. Computer systems on Phobos malfunction, Deimos disappears entirely,
and the armies of hell start pouring
out of the gateway, killing or possessing all UAC personnel. Doom
became an instant classic thanks
to several unique features made
possible by its revolutionary engine (which shared the same name
as the game). It featured huge exterior and interior environments.
Where Wolfenstein 3D had a handful of Nazis, Doom truly did have
the armies of Hell, as it presented
a staggering amount of enemies on
screen at once, and where other

games struggle to either have detailed textures or a smooth framerate, Doom managed to have both.
As I said earlier, the modern gamer owes a lot to id Software and
Doom, and it’s not just because it
led to the modern FPS. In the early
90s, the music industry was facing
a huge change. A large number of
Generation X grew sick of the poppy music of the 80s and early 90s,
and longed for music that reflected
their modern values and thoughts
on popular culture. Grunge was the
solution to their collective problem.
It offered the perfect escape to a
jaded generation while giving the
middle finger to the “wholesome
American values” that were forcibly
pushed onto them.
Similarly in video games, there
were a number of gamers whose
taste in games began to mature
and/or deviate from the majority. They were no longer attracted
to the bright colours and cheerful
bleeps and bloops of video game
arcades, and wanted games that
would offer a welcome retreat
from the cute graphics and simpler
gameplay of the current arcade
and console games. Doom came
along at the perfect time in that regard, as it shared the spirit and rebellious attitude of the grunge and
heavy metal at the time. If Nirvana
ushered in grunge, then id Software ushered in the new wave of
mature games.
The name “Doom” did not refer so
much to the game’s content, as
much as it referred to the impact
that id Software knew it would have
upon the entertainment industry.

Upon its release, Doom received
more than its fair share of controversy and slander from parents, religious groups and the mainstream
media, though despite the negative
impact these forces had, the game
had over 10,000,000 players after
2 years of its release.
The adult content and graphic nature of Doom helped push the idea
that video games weren’t just for
children, a stigma that is still unfortunately heard even today. When
the majority of other games had no
violent or mature content at all, id
Software took a risk that ultimately
paid off.
The FPS Legacy: The Call of Duty
series (2003-current), the Battlefield series (2002-current), Goldeneye 64 (1997), The Quake series (1996-2010), Counter-Strike
(1999), Left 4 Dead (2008), and
more.
Games With Adult Content: The
Mortal Kombat series (1992-current), Duke Nukem 3D (1996) ,The
Godfather: The Game (2006), The
Grand Theft Auto series (1997-current), Manhunt (2003), L.A. Noire
(2011), and many more.