History MediaNotes / TheFifthGenerationOfConsoleVideoGames

The big word of this era was 3D. The [[UsefulNotes/The16bitEraOfConsoleVideoGames 16-bit era]] had a few scattered experiments to bring polygons to primarily sprite-based consoles (most notably ''[[VideoGame/StarFox1 Star Fox]]''), but when the revolutionary ''VideoGame/VirtuaFighter'' hit the arcades, polygons finally took off. Suddenly, the addition of a third dimension seemed to make the sprites of the past look outdated, and polygons were said to be the future of video gaming. Both Creator/{{Nintendo}} and their newly emergent rival [[Creator/SonyInteractiveEntertainment Sony Computer Entertainment]] caught onto the excitement towards polygons, and so they designed their respective consoles, the UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 and the UsefulNotes/PlayStation, around polygonal rendering from the very start. Creator/{{Sega}}, depending on who you ask, didn't catch on until their own console was too far in development, panicked and "stuffed" another CPU inside the Saturn, while others will contend that the multi-CPU design was little different from what their arcade boards had been sporting. Thus, the UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn became notorious among developers for its difficulty to develop 3D games in the same fashion as the other two consoles. While it certainly was ''possible'' to squeeze 3D graphics out of the Saturn, it was an extremely cumbersome task to pull off making them look and run decently, even for experienced code-wizards. Ironic, considering that ''Virtua Fighter'', the game that caused the 3D boom, was Sega's own product.

Things certainly didn't get better for the Saturn when Sega's next planned entry in their flagship franchise, ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'', which would unquestionably have helped the console's lacking sales, failed to materialize. Work on the game, ''VideoGame/SonicXTreme'', which would also have been the franchise's leap into 3D, started in 1994, but got caught up in quite a messy bit of DevelopmentHell (and even some in-fighting between Sega's Japanese and American divisions). This led to the game's unceremonious cancellation in 1997, just a year before the Saturn was officially discontinued on the Western market. The Saturn was, in hindsight, ultimately a CreatorKiller for Sega as a console manufacturer, but this would not become apparent until the next generation.

The kingmakers of the generation would be the third party developers. Especially many Japanese developers had for a long time been disgruntled with Nintendo's rather restrictive licensing policies and their insistence on taking a relatively large cut of the sales, which had in many cases made turning a decent profit on their games a difficult task, and this generation would see the blowback from these policies starting to kick in. With Sony emerging on the console scene as a serious competitor, many developers found that the company was willing to offer them far more lucrative deals and a greater degree of freedom. As a result quite a few developers, who up until this point had been synonymous with quality games on Nintendo's consoles, most prominently Creator/{{Capcom}}, Creator/{{Squaresoft}}, and Creator/{{Konami}}, decided to jump ship and make their next big projects or main installments in their running franchises exclusives for the [=PlayStation=]. Another major feather in Sony's cap in this area became managing to win over the fighting game developer Creator/{{Namco}}, whose output up until that point had been pretty much synonymous with Sega's consoles.

With the advent of 3D graphics came new leaps and bounds in game design. Gamers who grew up on 8-bit and 16-bit games were wowed by the explorable 3D worlds with far more depth than the 2D backgrounds of the past. Some developers went the extra mile in designing their worlds, using the full potential of these systems to make their worlds as [[SceneryPorn beautiful and detailed]] as possible. ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' kickstarted the popularity of the 3D PlatformGame, and many previously 2D franchises followed its example in attempting their own [[VideoGame3DLeap leaps to 3D]], though some would stumble along the way. Overall, this shake-up meant that it took the industry some time to find its feet again, both in regards to graphic design and gameplay, and, as a result, many of these early 3D games have not aged very gracefully, especially in the eyes of those who came into gaming after all the teething troubles with 3D had been more or less sorted out.

Meanwhile on the portable scene, the UsefulNotes/GameBoy continued to go almost entirely unchallenged. [=SNK's=] UsefulNotes/NeoGeoPocket and Bandai's UsefulNotes/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 UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor, which finally gave players on the go a colour screen system with decent battery life.

* [[UsefulNotes/Sega32X 32X]] (an add-on for the Genesis/Mega Drive but still considered part of this generation)
* UsefulNotes/ThreeDOInteractiveMultiplayer
* UsefulNotes/AmigaCD32
* UsefulNotes/AtariJaguar
* UsefulNotes/Nintendo64
* UsefulNotes/{{PlayStation}}
* UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn

* UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor
* UsefulNotes/GameDotCom
* UsefulNotes/NeoGeoPocket
* UsefulNotes/VirtualBoy
* UsefulNotes/WonderSwan

** ''Medal of Honor: Underground''

The big word of this era was 3D. The [[UsefulNotes/The16bitEraOfConsoleVideoGames 16-bit era]] had a few scattered experiments to bring polygons to primarily sprite-based consoles (most notably ''[[VideoGame/StarFox1 Star Fox]]''), but when the revolutionary ''VideoGame/VirtuaFighter'' hit the arcades, polygons finally took off. 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. Both Creator/{{Nintendo}} and their newly emergent rival [[Creator/SonyInteractiveEntertainment Sony Computer Entertainment]] caught onto the excitement towards polygons, and so they designed their respective consoles, the UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 and the UsefulNotes/PlayStation, around polygonal rendering from the very start. Creator/{{Sega}}, depending on who you ask, didn't catch on until their own console was too far in development, panicked and "stuffed another CPU inside the Saturn, while others will contend that the multi-CPU design was little different from what their arcade boards had been sporting. Thus, the UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn became notorious among developers for its difficulty to develop 3D games in the same fashion as the other two consoles. While it certainly was ''possible'' to squeeze 3D graphics out of the Saturn, it was an extremely cumbersome task to pull off making them look and run decently, even for experienced code-wizards. Ironic, considering that ''Virtua Fighter'', the game that caused the 3D boom, was Sega's own product.

The big word of this era was 3D. The [[UsefulNotes/The16bitEraOfConsoleVideoGames 16-bit era]] had a few scattered experiments to bring polygons to primarily sprite-based consoles (most notably ''[[VideoGame/StarFox1 Star Fox]]''), but when the revolutionary ''VideoGame/VirtuaFighter'' hit the arcades, polygons finally took off. 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. Both Creator/{{Nintendo}} and their newly emergent rival [[Creator/SonyInteractiveEntertainment Sony Computer Entertainment]] caught onto the excitement towards polygons, and so they designed their respective consoles, the UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 and the UsefulNotes/PlayStation, around polygonal rendering from the very start. Creator/{{Sega}}, depending on who you ask[[note]]Most people will say that Sega [[/note]], didn't catch on until their own console was too far in development, panicked and "stuffed another CPU inside the Saturn, while others will contend that the multi-CPU design was little different from what their arcade boards had been sporting. Thus, the UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn became notorious among developers for its difficulty to develop 3D games in the same fashion as the other two consoles. While it certainly was ''possible'' to squeeze 3D graphics out of the Saturn, it was an extremely cumbersome task to pull off making them look and run decently, even for experienced code-wizards. Ironic, considering that ''Virtua Fighter'', the game that caused the 3D boom, was Sega's own product.

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, as it was relatively cheap and fast to produce and had a higher capacity than cartridges of previous eras. The only real drawback to the format was the potential of piracy, which, in reality, was a small price to pay for most third-party studios. The UsefulNotes/PlayStation and the UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn both used [=CD-ROMs=] as their format because of their benefits, with the N64 being the only console to reject this trend. Nintendo's early experiment with discs, the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem Famicom]] Disk System, was lacking in sufficient antipiracy measures, and the massive losses for the add-on as a result of this rendered Nintendo massively cautious about piracy going forward. The N64 suffered from a lack of third-party support because of its use of cartridges, which were expensive and time-consuming to produce, hard to program on, and had low capacity compared to the CD-ROM. The use of cartridges also hampered what could have been the N64's greatest advantage, namely that it was, at least on paper, the console with the most powerful graphical capabilities, but this technical edge over Sony's UsefulNotes/PlayStation only ever rarely managed to shine through in practice due to the relatively high difficulty in squeezing such graphics out of cartridges. The only real exception to this was in the multiplayer department; with the [=PlayStation=] being the weaker console and requiring an add-on for four-player parties, many developers couldn't justify the heavy amount of extra work that was needed to give a game 4-player support[[note]]It was often more than simply splitting the screen four ways, since you now had to draw polygons from four different perspectives, and the games were already generally pushing the system's power as it stood, so the multiplayer would often have to sacrifice a lot of visual fidelity to keep the performance up[[/note]], where the Nintendo 64's extra horsepower made it significantly less of a hassle and players were far more likely to experience it at some point. In fact, one of the console's greatest hits, the Franchise/JamesBond tie-in ''VideoGame/{{GoldenEye|1997}}'' managed to become one of the most iconic games of the generation due to its multiplayer mode, which allowed four players to duke it out in action-packed split-screen FPS combat against each other.

* ''[[/index]]''Franchise/PowerRangers''[[index]]

** ''Armored Core: Master of Arena''

** ''Armored Core: Project Phantasma''

The big word of this era was 3D. The [[UsefulNotes/The16bitEraOfConsoleVideoGames 16-bit era]] had a few scattered experiments to bring polygons to primarily sprite-based consoles (most notably ''[[VideoGame/StarFox1 Star Fox]]''), but when the revolutionary ''VideoGame/VirtuaFighter'' hit the arcades, polygons finally took off. 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. Both Creator/{{Nintendo}} and their newly emergent rival [[Creator/SonyInteractiveEntertainment Sony Computer Entertainment]] caught onto the excitement towards polygons, and so they designed their respective consoles, the UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 and the UsefulNotes/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 UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn became notorious among developers for its difficulty to develop 3D games for, as the console's hardware architecture wasn't really put together to render 3D. While it certainly was ''possible'' to squeeze 3D graphics out of the Saturn, it was an extremely cumbersome task to pull off making them look and run decently, even for experienced code-wizards. Ironic, considering that ''Virtua Fighter'', the game that caused the 3D boom, was Sega's own product.

** ''VideoGame/TombRaider''

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, as it was relatively cheap and fast to produce and had a higher capacity than cartridges of previous eras. The only real drawback to the format was the potential of piracy, which, in reality, was a small price to pay for most third-party studios. The UsefulNotes/PlayStation and the UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn both used [=CD-ROMs=] as their format because of their benefits, with the N64 being the only console to reject this trend. Nintendo's early experiment with discs, the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem Famicom]] Disk System, was lacking in sufficient antipiracy measures, and the massive losses for the add-on as a result of this rendered Nintendo massively cautious about piracy going forward. The N64 suffered from a lack of third-party support because of its use of cartridges, which were expensive to produce, hard to program on, and had low capacity compared to the CD-ROM. The use of cartridges also hampered what could have been the N64's greatest advantage, namely that it was, at least on paper, the console with the most powerful graphical capabilities, but this technical edge over Sony's UsefulNotes/PlayStation only ever rarely managed to shine through in practice due to the relatively high difficulty in squeezing such graphics out of cartridges. The only real exception to this was in the multiplayer department; with the [=PlayStation=] being the weaker console and requiring an add-on for four-player parties, many developers couldn't justify the heavy amount of extra work that was needed to give a game 4-player support[[note]]It was often more than simply splitting the screen four ways, since you now had to draw polygons from four different perspectives, and the games were already generally pushing the system's power as it stood, so the multiplayer would often have to sacrifice a lot of visual fidelity to keep the performance up[[/note]], where the Nintendo 64's extra horsepower made it significantly less of a hassle and players were far more likely to experience it at some point. In fact, one of the console's greatest hits, the Franchise/JamesBond tie-in ''VideoGame/{{GoldenEye|1997}}'' managed to become one of the most iconic games of the generation due to its multiplayer mode, which allowed four players to duke it out in action-packed split-screen FPS combat against each other.

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, as it was relatively cheap to produce and had a higher capacity than cartridges of previous eras. The only real drawback to the format was the potential of piracy, which, in reality, was a small price to pay for most third-party studios. The UsefulNotes/PlayStation and the UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn both used [=CD-ROMs=] as their format because of their benefits, with the N64 being the only console to reject this trend. Nintendo's early experiment with discs, the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem Famicom]] Disk System, was lacking in sufficient antipiracy measures, and the massive losses for the add-on as a result of this rendered Nintendo massively cautious about piracy going forward. The N64 suffered from a lack of third-party support because of its use of cartridges, which were expensive to produce, hard to program on, and had low capacity compared to the CD-ROM. The use of cartridges also hampered what could have been the N64's greatest advantage, namely that it was, at least on paper, the console with the most powerful graphical capabilities, but this technical edge over Sony's UsefulNotes/PlayStation only ever rarely managed to shine through in practice due to the relatively high difficulty in squeezing such graphics out of cartridges. The only real exception to this was in the multiplayer department; with the [=PlayStation=] being the weaker console and requiring an add-on for four-player parties, many developers couldn't justify the heavy amount of extra work that was needed to give a game 4-player support[[note]]It was often more than simply splitting the screen four ways, since you now had to draw polygons from four different perspectives, and the games were already generally pushing the system's power as it stood, so the multiplayer would often have to sacrifice a lot of visual fidelity to keep the performance up[[/note]], where the Nintendo 64's extra horsepower made it significantly less of a hassle and players were far more likely to experience it at some point. In fact, one of the console's greatest hits, the Franchise/JamesBond tie-in ''VideoGame/{{GoldenEye|1997}}'' managed to become one of the most iconic games of the generation due to its multiplayer mode, which allowed four players to duke it out in action-packed split-screen FPS combat against each other.

With the advent of 3D graphics came new leaps and bounds in game design. Gamers who grew up on 8-bit and 16-bit games were wowed by the explorable 3D worlds with far more depth than the 2D backgrounds of the past. Some developers went the extra mile in designing their worlds, using the full potential of these systems to make their worlds as [[SceneryPorn beautiful and detailed]] as possible. ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' kickstarted the popularity of the 3D PlatformGame, and many previously 2D franchises followed its example in attempting their own [[VideoGame3DLeap leaps to 3D]], though some would [[PolygonCeiling stumble]] along the way. Overall, this shake-up meant that it took the industry some time to find its feet again, both in regards to graphic design and gameplay, and, as a result, many of these early 3D games have not aged very gracefully, especially in the eyes of those who came into gaming after all the teething troubles with 3D had been more or less sorted out.

** ''Klonoa: Door to Phantomile''

* ''[[VideoGame/ShadowHearts Koudelka]]''

The era marked many developments in terms of how games were controlled. The UsefulNotes/Nintendo64's controller was rather awkwardly designed compared to the more practical format codified by the UsefulNotes/{{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 fuller range of control over the player character that couldn't be achieved with a D-pad. The UsefulNotes/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: one primarily for controlling the player's movement, and one primarily for the camera. Unlike the [=N64's=] C-pad, a second analog stick gave the camera more freedom in movement -- and Sony didn't [[ExecutiveMeddling patent using the right stick for this purpose]] like Nintendo did with their C-pad -- 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 N64 (originally packaged with ''VideoGame/StarFox64''), 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. With very few exceptions, every console from that point on has incorporated rumble into the controller.[[note]]The later UsefulNotes/PlayStation3's original "Sixaxis" controller omitted rumble, due to fears it would interfere with the controller's motion control, though it would come back with the later [=DualShock 3=].[[/note]]

** ''VideoGame/MarioParty 1-3'' (series debut)