Video gaming went through some massive changes throughout the 1990s, greater than any ten-year period before or since.
The decade began with the familiar beeps and bloops of the NES, as Nintendo launched Super Mario Bros. 3 shortly after the New Year in 1990. The first shots of the “Console War” between the Genesis and the Super NES were be fired soon after, but the late night release of id Software’s Doom (and the rise of the PC as a gaming platform) in 1993 would change everything.
Doom didn’t just cement the First Person Shooter as gaming’s dominant genre, it blew open the door to more “mature” themes that Mortal Kombat hinted at a year earlier. Different philosophies on the public’s hunger for this type of content would lead Sega and Nintendo in opposing directions, and the market would be further splintered by the arrival of the Sony PlayStation. Emerging from the ashes of the planned “Nintendo PlayStation” add-on for the Super NES, Sony’s console introduced cinematic games like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, and Tomb Raider.
Nintendo would strike back with the Nintendo 64, and a decade that began with pixelated plumbers flinging fire at a giant turtle would end with GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and a vastly changed landscape for games.
That said, it was still Super Mario 64 on top. Find out where all 337 games released between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 1999 placed in Version 2.0 of the Video Game Canon after the break.
Zoom in on specific portions of the Video Game Canon and explore alternate sorting options from the Version 2.0 Update with Listology 2.0.
This Listology article is based on an earlier Version of the Video Game Canon. Visit the Top 1000 to see the most recent changes to the full list.
Video Game Canon (Version 2.0): The Best Games From the 1990s
C-Score = Average Ranking + (100 – Appearance Frequency)