The Cutting Edge of 1995

For as often as we complain about the video games that are out now (and that’s very often, if you spend any time on the internet), sometimes we need to look back on how far we’ve come.

This gaming magazine (from back when Game Informer didn’t own the entire market) shows what the “cutting edge” looked like in 1995. If we saw her today, we’d laugh her all the way back to the virtual goth-punk hole she crawled out of, but at the time? It really was quite revolutionary.

1995 saw the release of Dark Forces, Command and Conquer, Warcraft II and Mortal Kombat 3. Search your memory and the internet and you’ll find those graphics to be about six notches behind our friend here. In fact, if she had shown up in a game, she probably would have been worshiped by young male players. Keep in mind that Tomb Raider didn’t even come out until 1996, and even in out-of-game promotional art, Lara Croft looked like this.

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10 Comments

  1. @Dan.

    They’ll probably laugh at us for playing on TV screens. With our finger-using controllers. Then get back to their virtual reality holodecks. Hopefully.

  2. I’m an old fart. I started college at 26. When I tried to buy a diskette from the school store, I didn’t even realize A-drives weren’t used anymore and that there are these amazing things called thumb drives.

    I grew up with an Atari 2600 and families having maybe 1 TV. Now you go to the dentist and there is a TV in the waiting room, bathroom, and everywhere else.

    I never had access to a computer until I got into high school as they were so expensive. Today…shit not getting your kid early access to a computer is like not teaching your kid how to read.

    Its frightening to imagine just how fast things are going to change as I continue to get older.

  3. Not 1995, but Christmas morning 1996 in Sandusky, OH, saw my little brother, my mom, my dad, and I (age 7) being completely mind-blown by Super Mario 64 and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on the Nintendo 64 (I notice it was still known as the Ultra 64 on that magazine cover). Occasionally, I still play the starting bob-omb level on Mario and the best (imho) recreation of the Hoth snowspeeder battle in Shadows.

  4. A little detective work indicates that the lady on the cover is one Sarah Smith from “Fade to Black,” the sequel to “Flashback.” Unfortunately, all I’ve been able to find of her, image wise, were two grainy glimpses in Youtube footage of the game’s cutscenes—and I wasn’t feeling up to slogging through the rest of the footage to find a better picture. Forgive me.

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