History MediaNotes / TheFifthGenerationOfConsoleVideoGames

* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog''

* ''Franchise/MickeyMouse''

The Fifth Generation of Console Video Games (sometimes referred to as the 32-bit Era, but referring to consoles by their bits started to fall out of style in this gen) was a time of many of the biggest leaps forward in the industry in terms of design, graphics, and storytelling in video games, as well as the way video games were viewed and played.

** ''Main/GrandTheftAutoClassic''

* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy''

* ''Disney/MickeyMouse''

[[folder:New [=IPs=] of these consoles]]

!!New [=IPs=] of these consoles

!!Games of previous [=IPs=]

All in all, this generation stands as probably the biggest leap forward in the history in gaming, from sprites to polygons and {{Excuse Plot}}s to deep stories.

* ''Franchise/{{Suikoden}}''

* ''VideoGame/StarOcean''

* ''VideoGame/{{Suikoden}}''
** SuikodenI
** SuikodenII

* ''Franchise/MickeyMouse''

* ''Main/MickeyMouse''

* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest''

* [[ExtremeG Extreme-G]]

* ''1080º Snowboarding''

The big word of this era was 3D. When the revolutionary ''VideoGame/VirtuaFighter'' hit the arcades, its polygonal presentation stunned everyone. Suddenly, the addition of a third dimension seemed to make the sprites of the past look outdated, and polygons were said to be the future of video gaming. ''[[VideoGame/StarFox1 Star Fox]]'' on the {{SNES}} was one of the first attempts to bring polygons to consoles that achieved massive popularity, but it was in this era that developers really got serious with polygons. Both Creator/{{Nintendo}} and their newly emergent rival {{Sony}} caught onto the excitement towards polygons, and so they designed their respective consoles, the {{Nintendo 64}} and the PlayStation, around polygonal rendering from the very start. Creator/{{Sega}}, on the other hand, didn't catch on until their own console was too far in development. Thus, the SegaSaturn became notorious among developers for its difficulty to develop 3D games for.

The fifth generation was the time when optical discs became the standard for consoles. The CD-ROM was an ideal format for developers at the time. It was very cheap to produce and it had higher capacity than the cartridges of previous eras. The only real drawback to the format was the potential of piracy, which really was not that big of a deal to most third-party studios. The PlayStation and the SegaSaturn both used [=CD-ROMs=] as their format because of their benefits. The N64 was the only console to refuse this trend. Nintendo's early experiment with discs, the [[NintendoEntertainmentSystem Famicom]] Disk System, was very easy to pirate for, and the massive losses for the add-on rendered Nintendo massively cautious with piracy ever since. The N64 suffered from a lack of third-party support because of its use of cartridges, which were expensive to produce and had low capacity compared to the CD-ROM.

The era marked many developments in terms of how games were controlled. The {{Nintendo 64}}'s controller was rather awkwardly designed compared to the more practical format codified by the {{SNES}}, but the controller featured a revolutionary development: a thumb-controlled analog stick. The analog stick was key to controlling 3D games because they allowed a more full range of control over the player character that couldn't be achieved with a D-pad. The PlayStation controller didn't initially have an analog stick, but it eventually one-upped the N64 with the [=DualShock=] controller, which featured not one but ''two'' analog sticks. Two analog sticks proved to be highly beneficial because the N64 controller's design had a directional pad to control the camera. A second analog stick gave the camera more freedom in movement, making CameraScrew and thus InterfaceScrew much less common than in N64 games. The "rumble" feature standard in most controllers today also originated in this era. It originated as the Rumble Pak peripheral for the {{Nintendo 64}}, and it proved highly popular for giving games a new sense of "realism" by vibrating the controller whenever something "forceful" happened within the game. The PlayStation also adopted this feature for itself in the [=DualShock=] controller, in its case incorporating the rumble into the controller itself rather than it being an add-on. Every console from that point on has incorporated rumble into the controller.

Meanwhile on the portable scene, the GameBoy continued to go almost entirely unchallenged. [=SNK's=] NeoGeoPocket and Bandai's WonderSwan would only find small audiences in the markets they reached and do little to dent the fortunes of the monochrome machine. Indeed, the ageing brick was only just hitting a new stride when ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'', if not the first, then definitely the codifier of the social game, became the [[SleeperHit unexpected mega hit]] of the generation, spawning countless tie-ins and spinoffs to rival even the plumber himself. The console would finally get revised into the smaller Game Boy Pocket, but the big update to the line would be the self-explanatory GameBoyColor, which finally gave players on the go a colour screen system with decent battery.

* {{Nintendo 64}}
* PlayStation
* SegaSaturn

* GameBoyColor
* GameDotCom
* NeoGeoPocket
* VirtualBoy
* WonderSwan

The big word of this era was 3D. When the revolutionary ''VideoGame/VirtuaFighter'' hit the arcades, its polygonal presentation stunned everyone. ''[[VideoGame/StarFox1 Star Fox]]'' on the {{SNES}} was one of the first attempts to bring polygons to consoles that achieved massive popularity, but it was in this era that developers really got serious with polygons. Both Creator/{{Nintendo}} and their newly emergent rival {{Sony}} caught onto the excitement towards polygons, and so they designed their respective consoles, the {{Nintendo 64}} and the PlayStation, around polygonal rendering from the very start. Creator/{{Sega}}, on the other hand, didn't catch on until their own console was too far in development. Thus, the SegaSaturn became notorious among developers for its difficulty to develop 3D games for.

* ''VideoGame/MadStalkerFullMetalForce''

** ''Rival Schools: Project Justice''

** ''Extreme-G 2''

* ''GranTurismo''

* JetForceGemini
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon''

* ''VideoGame/NightsIntoDreams''

* ''VideoGame/SilentHill1''
* [[SoulCalibur Soul Edge]]

* {{Suikoden}}

* [[WinBackCovertOps WinBack: Covert Ops]]

** ''VideoGame/SoulHackers''