Gaming in 1997
1997 marked the final year of the SNES proper, the system finally discontinuing as Nintendo went full steam ahead with the Ultra NES. The final major releases for the console would be
Kirby'
s Dreamland Collection (remakes of the first two KDL games) on the vanilla SNES and on the CD, they would get
Kirby's Dream Land 3 and the first
Harvest Moon game. Many within Nintendo had seen the SNES as having run its course and had given them a lot of strong ground as the top dog in the gaming industry, but with the Saturn and PlayStation making waves, it was time for them to bring the fight with the their newest hardware.
Notable releases in 1997 for the Ultra NES included
Final Fantasy VII, the first Final Fantasy game on the Ultra and the spin-off
Final Fantasy Tactics. VII was seen as a major step forward for JRPGs and was a major seller in the console's second year, joined by
Mother 3 in Japan, with plans for a western release next year. Along with that was the debut of the Turok franchise with
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and the return of Castlevania with
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
Another game that saw massive success was
Ultra Star Fox, the third game in the
Star Fox franchise (if you've been reading eldandy's Star Fox 3 posts, it's that.) with Nintendo looking to the crew of the Star Fox for future franchise potential. Hmm...
Meanwhile, the classic Megaman line had come to an end with
Megaman 8 as plans for a ninth game were shelved so Capcom could focus on the other two lines. On Nintendo's end, they had the X line, with
Megaman X4 arriving on the Ultra NES.
Other major releases for the year include
Street Fighter Collection,
Ultra Bomberman,
Dream: Land of Giants,
WCW vs. nWo: World Tour and
GoldenEye 007.
Over at SEGA, they were giving their favorite blue hedgehog the royal treatment after last year's box office success. Released for the Saturn were
Sonic Jam,
Sonic R and
Sonic X-Treme. Other notable releases include
Fighters Megamix and
The King of Fighters '97. Not much in terms of exclusives as SEGA tended to share games with Sony at this time.
Speaking of Sony, they were hitting hard with a number of new releases. On the racing game market, they had
Need for Speed II and
Gran Turismo. For platformers, they had
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and
Tomb Raider II. They also brought in
PaRappa the Rapper, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (with MK4 coming next year) and
Megaman Legends (an exclusive 3D Megaman line to challenge Nintendo's X line.)
Gaming continued its hot streak of the 90s, with the three major companies now fully entrenched in the CD market. However, along with them came the rise of PC gaming in the 90s. While it had always been there, new arrivals to the scene such as
Diablo,
Blood,
Ultima Online,
Fallout, and more added to the growing PC market, creating a party independent of a major gaming company.