So yeah, I decided to talk about 1992 after all. 1992 is a year you should familiarize yourself with when it comes to gaming. Sure, there were a lot of cool things going on in the console world, but the PC gaming market was especially interesting. I already briefly went over Terminator 2029 and Gun Buster, so let’s go over what ELSE came out this year.

Ultima Underworld

So I briefly went over this in my RPG of the Year series, but here goes. I said it before and I’ll say it again: this is a poor man’s Doom, but with worse controls and a less intuitive interface. Yes, I know it came out BEFORE Doom and yada yada, but at the end of the day, it’s not easy to pick up and play, which is a major problem. Especially for this time, the best FPSs were the ones that had simplified controls, a simplified interface, and fairly straightforward gameplay.

This is because of two reasons. One, a new genre was being established. Imagine if in the original Final Fantasy, you had to manage sleep, food, water, psychological condition, and a shitload of other random stats that could randomly kill your characters PERMANENTLY and without warning. Now sure, nowadays, we’d read the manual, look up FAQs, and look at it as a genuine challenge, but if it was one of the first console RPGs ever? Pass.

It could have adversely affected console RPGs on the whole beyond that point, which as is weren’t really popular back in the day. I’m not suggesting this game put us back X amount of years or whatever with FPSs, I’m simply saying when you compare it to the other obvious go to title this year, it’s obvious why it was overlooked by so many.

Wolfenstein 3D

FUCK YES. This is the obvious win for 1992. For those of you just now crawling out from under your rocks, Wolfenstein 3D is a game about being a prisoner in Nazi Germany, busting out, and beating the shit out of nazis, crazy experiments, and eventually MECHA HITLER. But the best part was it was simple, straightforward, and fun. If anything, it can be criticized for being overly labyrinth-like and having no real mapping system.

Sure, it’s showing its age now, but goddamn if it wasn’t fun back in the day. Plus, you know I immediately downloaded this bitch for XBLA. Good times.

Conclusion

So there really haven’t been too many FPSs up to this point, but remember that this was a new genre at the time. Some developers were wary while others were off doing RPGs or whatever. It wasn’t as if the genre was being ignored; more like it was being silently observed. Eventually it picks up and when it does, these articles should be a little more interesting.