The Eras of gaming.

• 1972-1977 = The Pong Age of Gaming
• 1977-1983 = The "Beepy" Age of Gaming
• 1983-1985 = The Dark Age of Gaming (Due to the great video game crash)
• 1985-1996 = The Golden Age of Gaming ( NES / SNES/ Turbo Grafx / Genesis)
• 1996-2001 = The Polygon Age of Gaming
• 2001-2006 = The Perfected Polygon Age of Gaming (I have hard time thinking of a name for this one. I just called it that because its one of the first times in gaming that 3D models looked fluent. I like the Polygon Age though.)
• 2006-Present = The Renaissance Age of Gaming (I call it that because a lot of franchises from the Golden age have either been revived, remade, or have had a new game added to the franchise. Also the 2D platforming genre being reborn.)

edited 11th Jun '11 4:41:07 PM by HappyComputerist

... I... think I agree with Golden Age, but I'm certain not everyone will. Golden Age is entirely subjective.

I'm curious why you describe 1977-83 as the "silent age." Was it because video games during that era had little to no background music? Also, you could call it the arcade age. But since I didn't experience the arcade scene at the time, I can't personally state how relevant it was.

1984-85 was of course the time right after Atari's foolishness brought down most of the North American market. But computers which could also play games survived, such as the Commodore 64, Apple II, and IBM PC. And the crash was barely noticed in Europe or Japan.

Between 1986 and about 1994, there were a lot of game systems that tried to push the market with new technology. The Sega CD kind of succeeded, but most of the non-cartridge systems prior to the Playstation had very little success. You can read about them in the fourth-to-fifth generations of the Console Wars article.

The "Renaissance" age of gaming?

"Renaissance" means "rebirth," and in artistic terms usually means that an older form is coming back into style. While I've seen a little of that in gaming, its mostly in indie products and isn't very widespread.

I mainly call it that because I've noticed a lot of games from the Golden Age have either had a new game added to the franchise or have been remade.

I think of 2006 on the "dumbed-down" age myself. Note that most of the golden age games "revived" are horribly "dumbed down".

edited 11th Jun '11 10:39:47 AM by deuxhero

I think you'd need a separate timeline for computers. As to how to form it, I'm not quite sure.

Also, the gaming scene followed different timelines in Japan and Europe, up until at least the late 32-bit era (after the Dreamcast died)