Explore the history of video games and the industry that created them. This section covers individual games, developers, development studios, publishers, gaming publications, companies, technologies, and other people and organizations that shaped the growth of interactive entertainment.
Long before digital storefronts, achievement trackers, game wikis, and enormous searchable databases became ordinary parts of gaming culture, finding reliable […]
There are video game designers remembered for a single masterpiece, others for a franchise, and a much smaller group whose […]
Before Final Fantasy became one of the largest names in video game history, before Square was associated with sprawling role-playing […]
When Acclaim Entertainment entered the video game business in 1987, the American industry was still living with the memory of […]
Few companies illustrate the volatility of video game history better than Square. It began as a small software operation attached […]
Nobuo Uematsu entered the video game industry at a moment when there was barely an industry for a composer to […]
Few people have shaped the history of Japanese role-playing games as completely as Hironobu Sakaguchi. His career stretches from the […]
In 1987, months before Final Fantasy established Square as one of the most important names in role-playing games, the company […]
In 1985, an arcade player approaching Space Harrier could understand that something unusual was happening before a coin ever entered […]
On December 18, 1987, Japanese players could walk into a store, purchase a Famicom cartridge from a relatively young company […]
When Square released Final Fantasy II for the Family Computer in Japan on December 17, 1988, the company faced a […]
When Final Fantasy III appeared on the Japanese Family Computer on April 27, 1990, Square was approaching the end of […]
When 1941: Counter Attack reached arcades in 1990, Capcom was returning to one of the series that had helped define […]
A year after 1943: The Battle of Midway sent arcade players over a fantasy version of the Pacific War, Capcom […]
By the middle of the 1990s, Capcom’s long-running series of vertically scrolling aircraft shooters faced an unusual problem. The games […]
When Computer Gamer appeared in Britain in the spring of 1985, its title captured a change that was already taking […]
Yoshiki Okamoto’s career can be traced across several of the most important changes in video game history. He entered the […]
Capcom is one of those companies whose characters have become almost inseparable from video game history. Ryu throwing a Hadouken […]
Long before Konami became associated with vampires, tactical espionage, dancing arcade cabinets, military commandos, psychological horror, and a frog trying […]
Long before Japanese video games filled American arcades, dominated home consoles, and created characters recognized around the world, there was […]
When Resident Evil arrived on the original PlayStation in 1996, it opened with something closer to a low-budget horror film […]
Long before Ryu threw his first Hadoken, before Mega Man stepped onto a Nintendo Entertainment System, and before players entered […]
Long before Monster Hunter became one of Capcom’s largest franchises, its creators were trying to solve a problem that seemed […]
In 1982, an arcade player stepping up to Time Pilot was given a premise that could be understood almost immediately. […]
Before Street Fighter II filled arcades with crowds waiting to challenge strangers, before Hadoukens and Shoryukens became part of the […]
On December 17, 1987, Capcom released Rockman for Nintendo’s Family Computer in Japan. It arrived during a period when the […]
By 1983, arcade players already knew how a space shooter was supposed to work. A ship usually sat near the […]
The opening of Ghosts ’n Goblins wastes almost no time. A knight and a princess sit together in a cemetery […]
In 1985, a lone soldier dropped into enemy territory and began running north. There was little time for explanation. Soldiers […]
By the time Midway Arcade Origins appeared in November 2012, the company whose name was printed across its cover no […]