This Week in Video-Game History: September 19-25

This week in video-game history is full of Nintendo and adventure. From classic novels that inspire developers to this day to the launch of Myst, we've got a full century of history to cover.

September 19

1985: Ghosts 'N Goblins launches in arcades. Children across the country then hate themselves for wasting their quarters.

1997: Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is released. I never made it past the second level in this game. If you've beaten it, you are a formidable techno-wizard or something....

2007: Nintendo ends their 19-year run as the publishers of Nintendo Power when they hand the rights over to Future Publishing.

September 20

1984: Elite is released. It was one of the first home PC games to use wireframe graphics.

2005: Indigo Prophecy goes on sale and makes it cool to feature needlessly wonky control schemes in games.

September 21

1937: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published. Without it, Dungeons and Dragons, and a good portion of all fantasy video games, likely wouldn't exist.

September 22

1975: Enix is founded by Yasyhiro Fukushima. They didn't get into the video game business until 1983.

September 23

1889: Nintendo is founded and produced playing cards called hanafuda cards. They still make them, and you can get a special Mario-themed deck from Club Nintendo.

September 24

1993: Myst launches and becomes the best-selling PC game of all time until The Sims dethroned it in 2002.

2001: Originally planned as a PS1 game, Ico is released on the PS2. The game's director, Fumito Ueda, wanted to design a minimalist game around the concept of "boy meets girl." Ico is the result.

September 25

1983: Marian McQuiddy infamously reports on the mass-dumping of Atari cartridges in a landfill. This is one of the most iconic stories that came out of the '80s video-game crash.

2007: Halo 3 is released. And, this is the same day I bought my replacement iPod classic, so that means it is also three years old. Halo 3 is more important, but at least my iPod has an awesome origin story filled with me working a midnight launch and guzzling Gamer Fuel.

Tags: ico, the sims, Halo 3, Ghosts 'N Goblins, myst, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Elite, This Week in Video-Game History

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Suriel Vazquez

September 26, 2010

I didn't much care for Gamer Fuel. Tasted like liquidated Tootsie Pops. And no, that's not a good thing.

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Tim Latshaw

The Club Nintendo hanafuda deck is smaller than I expected, but still awesome. I wish they introduced more "legacy"-type stuff in the North American club.

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Bryan Harper

Abe's Odyssey was awesome. Dad broke a keyboard trying to play it. I beat it a couple weeks later. :D

Kelvin Corley

I loved ghosts n' goblins, just sucked at it. Cant get freaking hit, felt like a cracked out version of zelda

Randy Snow

September 29, 2010

I use to have a Ghost n' Goblins arcade machine. I use to buy, and trade machines off a guy who was a arcade owner. Typically for $50 I could get a machine, then when I was done with it I would sell it back to him, and get a new one.

Not really buying, and selling, more kind of a odd rental thing. Damn I wish I could contact him again though...

Jonathan Oyama

Ghost n' Goblins--I'm glad that I didn't see much of that arcade game. I saved myself a lot of money.

Abe's Odyssey? I loved that game. Sometimes the keys on the keyboard wouldn't work very well, but that game was fun.

And come to think of it, some of those levels were incredibly tough. I hate all the parts where I had to throw a rock at the right angle to blow up those mines.

And Myst. Urrgh. I had a headache trying to beat the first and the second game. I gave up on all the other sequels.

Lol. I gave up on Nintendo Power, because it was part of the Nintendo propaganda machine. Damn them for recommending the awful Yoshi's Story for N64.