Home Computer Games since 1990

In the early 1990s, shareware distribution was a popular method for smaller developers to publish games, giving consumers the chance to try a trial portion of the game before purchasing the rest of the adventure. Fledgling companies such as id Software, Epic Megagames (now Epic Games) and Apogee (now 3D Realms) distributed games on single 5 1/4" and later 3.5" floppy disks, usually charging only for the cost needed to cover the disk and minimal packaging. As the games developed and became impractical to fit on floppies, publishers and developers distributed shorter demos free over the Internet and on CDs with gaming magazines. However, as the decade progressed, the wide range of games available in the 80s and early 90s published by small companies began to give way to fewer games published by larger corporations aiming to maximise profitability with lower risk.

In 1992, a game called Alone in the Dark was released, which became the first in what was to become known as the survival horror genre, establishing the formula that would later lead to games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. In the same year, Dune II, a real-time strategy (RTS) game was developed, setting the standard game mechanics for later blockbuster RTS games such as Command and Conquer and Warcraft.

With the decreasing cost of processors such as Intel 386, 486 and Motorola 68030 and increasing computing power, the 1990s saw the rise of multimedia capabilities through CD-ROMs and sound cards in addition to rudimentary 3D graphics. This new technology helped to popularise first-person shooters (FPS) such as 1993's Doom, a game that was largely responsible for defining the genre and setting it apart from other first-person perspective games. In 1996, 3dfx released the Voodoo chipset, leading to the first affordable 3D accelerator cards for personal computers. This led to higher-resolution, more-detailed three-dimensional graphics. Again, FPS games (in particular Quake) were among the first to take advantage of this new technology.

Adventure games continued to evolve, with LucasFilms'/LucasArts' Monkey Island series and Sierra's King's Quest series bringing graphical interaction and the development of the concept of 'point-and-click' gaming. A new style of puzzle-based adventure games was introduced in 1993 with Myst, one of the first computer games to make full use of the new high-capacity CD-ROM storage format. However, despite the mainstream success of Myst and other point-and-click adventure games such as Syberia and Broken Sword, the increased popularity of real-time games and action-based games led adventure games, a mainstay of computer games in earlier decades, to fade into relative obscurity.

Other new genres developed in the 90s included virtual life games, such as SimCity, SimEarth, SimCity 2000 and the hugely popular day to day life simulator, The Sims in 2000. These games require the player to control and develop the environment in some way; for example, in SimEarth the player controlled the development of an entire planet, varying its atmosphere, temperature, landmasses and so on, then placing various forms of life on the planet and watching them evolve.

Games such as Splinter Cell, Grand Theft Auto III, Hitman and Enter The Matrix introduced the third-person shooter genre, which uses a third-person camera perspective rather than the first-person.

The 90s also saw the rise of modifications (or mods) for popular games, in which gamers could create their own custom made content, such as new characters, items, weapons, models, modes, enemies, textures, story lines, levels and game modes. The most popular and most widely played mods of all time was created for Half-Life, with a squad-based shooter entitled CounterStrike.