Summary
- The 90s video game successes were driven by multiplayer, accessibility, and media coverage.
- Doom made a profit in a single day and grew in popularity throughout the 90s.
- GoldenEye 007 and Mario Kart 64 were essential 90s games with massive sales success.
The 90s were a completely different time for video games. What worked back then would not necessarily work now. Video game fans had a lot of ways to interact with the medium that they loved, be it playing console games, going to the arcade, or walking about with their portable devices. Arcades were a hugely popular place to go in the 90s and led to a lot of groundbreaking gaming innovations whose effects can still be felt to this day.
The 32 Best '90s Video Games, Ranked
The best video games in the 90s were spread across a wide variety of genres, showing the greatest offerings for gaming at that point in time.
These specific 90s games, between their launch windows and beyond, found success that no other game could dream of. Multiplayer was a huge part of it, along with accessibility and media coverage. Let’s see what the gaming trendsetters of the 90s were and take into account their sales and merchandising opportunities that kept them around longer than most.
Doom
Welcome To Hell
Doom (1993)
- Released
- December 10, 1993
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language
- Genre(s)
- First-Person Shooter
Doom was released for MS-DOS systems in 1993, and it apparently made its money back in a single day of sales, which every developer or publisher wishes would happen. David Kushner wrote an informative book in 2003 called Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture wherein he interviewed the two key creators of Doom, John Carmack and John Romero, and the talk about the game's near-immediate success.
Making a profit in a single day is wild, but the game’s popularity only grew from there as it was passed around freely online and ported to other systems. It didn’t get as far as merchandising outside of the game, as even the movie adaptation didn’t happen until 2005, but that’s how popular Doom was. It didn’t need merchandise to be successful. Decades later, Doom, as a series, is still big in the gaming sphere, but it doesn't rival the fervor it generated in the 90s.
GoldenEye 007
A Slumber Party Must
GoldenEye 007
- Released
- August 25, 1997
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Animated Blood, Animated Violence
- Genre(s)
- Shooter
The only other FPS that could stand toe to toe with Doom in the 90s was GoldenEye 007, based on the James Bond movie. Released in 1997, it was a huge hit for the N64. According to a Mental Floss article from 2016, the game sold about eight million units, likely with those cartridges sold in the first few years.
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It quickly became a game that every slumber party had to have, all thanks to its revolutionary multiplayer. For console shooters, it wasn’t unmatched until Halo debuted on the Xbox in 2001, and even then, N64 fans still adored GoldenEye 007. They still do, slong with its contributions to FPS console games.
Mario Kart 64
Racing Through The Charts
Mario Kart 64
- Released
- December 14, 1996
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- e
- Genre(s)
- Racing
Mario Kart 64 was the other N64 must-have game that kids everywhere wanted for themselves and their friends. For the Mario franchise, Super Mario 64 was bigger, but ten million units is nothing to laugh at for Mario Kart 64. Plus, no one wants to pass the controller and play Super Mario 64 with friends when they can all play at once.
Gamers wanted a four-player experience with racing and battle modes that surpassed what Super Mario Kart brought to the SNES in 1992. Until the DS game, Mario Kart 64 was the most successful entry in the series, and it’s still fun to go back to.
Mortal Kombat 2
A Series Of Kontroversies
Mortal Kombat II
- Released
- November, 1993
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- m
- Genre(s)
- Fighting
Mortal Kombat was a sensation when it was released in arcades in 1992, and console ports began appearing in 1993. In that same year, the sequel was released in arcades, and it made an even bigger impact. Thanks to the first game’s success, the developers doubled down on everything that made it a sensation, from bloodier fights to more characters. This also led to violent video game court cases, but it never harmed the brand.
According to a US Gamer article that went through the best-selling arcade games, by 2002, Mortal Kombat had made $600 million, and that was just one game, and didn’t include the merchandising money. In 1995, there was a live-action film, which received a sequel in 1997. There was even a cartoon in 1996, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, which is not as fondly remembered, but it helps prove how big Mortal Kombat became as a franchise within just a few years.
NBA Jam
From Downtown
NBA Jam
- Released
- March 4, 1994
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E For Everyone
- Genre(s)
- Sports
NBA Jam bridged the gap between sports game fans and non-sports game fans thanks to its simplistic setup. As a two-on-two game, anyone could figure out how to dunk a basketball. It was released in 1993 in arcades, and the first round of console ports came in 1994.
At this time, the sports arcade market was wanting for something big, and NBA Jam delivered, accruing over a billion dollars in revenue by 1994. Players could not keep their quarters away from these cabinets, and that gave rise to an expanded edition in 1995, NBA Jam: Tournament Edition, and several attempts at revivals over the years. The original game in the 90s, especially in arcades, was the series at its peak though.
Pokemon Blue & Red
A Blitz On Parents Everywhere
Pokemon Blue
- Released
- September 28, 1998
- ESRB
- Everyone
- Genre(s)
- RPG
This is the best example of the 90s giving rise to something that is hard to quantify in terms of billions made in sales: Pokemon. In 1996, Japan was introduced to Pokemon Green and Pokemon Red, which would reappear as Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Red in 1998 in North America. To coincide with the Game Boy games, trading cards and an anime adaptation were also released, not to mention countless other things like shirts and toys.
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Kids could not go two seconds without seeing someone playing these games on the playground, bus, or just around town. The Game Boy’s portability added to the success of the Pokemon games, for sure. According to a 2016 HuffPost article, the first games in the series had sold over thirty million units at the time of publication, and that didn’t even take into consideration the sequels, of which there were many by 2016.
Street Fighter 2
No Blood, But Still Successful
Street Fighter 2
- Released
- March 7, 1991
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- m
- Genre(s)
- Fighting
Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior is the game that perhaps best represents the 90s in terms of how long it was around. The arcade version launched in 1991, with other ports appearing on consoles in 1992. Its success led Capcom to release countless updated versions with new characters, like Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. The live-action movie was released in 1994, made some more money, but was panned by the fans. Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie, also released in 1994, is now considered more faithful adaptation. There was also a cartoon in 1995, which was paired with Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm when it was released in 1996.
Adaptations and widespread popularity aside, an arcade was not an arcade without some version of Street Fighter 2 in it. A 1993 issue of Mega, a UK-based magazine, did a comprehensive breakdown of the game’s history at the time, claiming that about 60% of the coin-op market went to Street Fighter 2 by 1993. Without even knowing direct sales numbers, that is a huge percentage and makes the point clear. 90s kids could not get enough of Ryu’s Hadouken or Chun-Li’s Spinning Bird Kick.
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