All Your History

All Your History: Street Fighter Part 2 – Greatest of All Time

In Nineteen Eighty-Seven, rising Japanese developer Capcom released Street Fighter into arcades.  The game innovated the fighting genre in several ways, adding in six attack buttons and special supermoves.  It became a decent hit both at home in Japan... Continue »

All Your History: Street Fighter Part 1 – Raised on the Streets

The roots of the fighting game genre go back to the mid-Eighties, when titles like Technos’ Karate Champ and Beam Software’s Way of the Exploding Fist burst onto the scene.  However, compared to other genres like the ever-popular platformer,... Continue »

All Your History: DotA Part 3 – Pro League

By the end of the Two Thousands, the fan-made Dota mod was becoming an industry buzzword.  After slowly growing in popularity for years, it reached a millions-strong playerbase by the time commercial studios even started experimenting with it.  But... Continue »

All Your History: DOTA Part 2 – Top Players

Defense of the Ancients Allstars was the culmination of a long line of mods, going all the way back to the Starcraft mod Aeon of Strife.  It mixed the perspective and controls of a Real-Time Strategy game with the... Continue »

All Your History: Crytek Part 2 – Crytical Stage

With only one game, Crytek had leapt from a gleam in the eyes of its founders, the Yerli brothers, into one of the hottest development houses in the industry.  Far Cry, and its proprietary CryEngine, had blown critics and... Continue »

All Your History: MMOs Part 2 — Expansions

Throughout the Nineteen Eighties, the technology behind networking became more sophisticated.  Slowly, the ability of one computer to communicate with another shifted away from closed-off, proprietary networks, and towards the modern, open internet.  Of course, the introduction of the... Continue »

All Your History: MMO Part 1 – Crawling Through the MUD

Throughout the Nineteen Seventies, many new technologies were emerging out of research into what computers could accomplish.  One was computer gaming, using the simple graphics and low memory of the time to make an interactive entertainment experience.  Another was... Continue »

All Your History: Rare Part 5 – Unique

The games of Rareware are some of the most beloved in Nintendo’s legendary library.  Donkey Kong Country brought 3D models into the video game world forever, well before anyone else in the industry was thinking about it.  GoldenEye stands... Continue »

All Your History: Rare Part 4 – Invaluable

As the nineties came to a close, British developer Rareware was one of the most high-profile studios in the world.  For years they’d been generating hits for their part-owners, Nintendo.  Then out of left field, they produced the movie... Continue »

All Your History: Rare Part 3 – One of a Kind

By the late nineties, British developer Rareware was one of Nintendo’s most treasured assets.  After creating a slew of games for the original NES, their output on the Super Nintendo had been fewer in number but better in nature. ... Continue »

All Your History: Rare Part 2 – In Demand

During the nineteen eighties, the Stamper brothers created a successful studio in their native England.  Focusing on the popular Sinclair ZedEx Spectrum platform, Chris and Tim made a number of great games that made their Ultimate label healthy profits. ... Continue »

All Your History: Bethesda Part 5 – Maxed Stats

embedded by Embedded Video By the mid-2000s, Bethesda Game Studios had grown into one of the biggest RPG developers in the world.  Their Elder Scrolls franchise had become famous for featuring the biggest open worlds in gaming, offering hundreds... Continue »

All Your History: Bethesda Part 4 – The Next Level

embedded by Embedded Video Despite a promising beginning, the ambitious publisher and developer Bethesda Softworks soon found itself overextended.  They had made a cult hit with the first game of their Elder Scrolls franchise, Arena.  Understandably, they wanted to... Continue »

All Your History: Bethesda Part 2 – Overload

embedded by Embedded Video When Christopher Weaver founded his own video game company in Bethesda, MD, he started off by making a number of sports games.  Bethesda Softworks’ Gridiron was the first football game to ever simulate real-world physics,... Continue »

All Your History: Bethesda Part 1 – The Open World

embedded by Embedded Video By 1986, nobody accused Christopher Weaver of being an underachiever.  After working on high-end technologies in the labs of MIT, he went on to both NBC and ABC, before becoming the chief engineer to the... Continue »

All Your History: Metroid Part 4 – The Cursed Franchise

embedded by Embedded Video The Metroid series had always been the victim of a terrible paradox: while its games were routinely considered stellar, their sales were terrestrial at best.  The original Metroid had released on the Famicom Disk System,... Continue »

All Your History: Metroid Part 3 – Comeback Kid

embedded by Embedded Video By the mid-1990s, it seemed like the Metroid franchise had run its course.  Despite its non-linear gameplay, fantastic art direction, and relatively mature tone compared to other Nintendo franchises, the games in the series all... Continue »