Best Video Game Genres They Don’t Make Much Anymore

Once niche playthings bound to the domain of arcades and college computer science wings, video games are now an industry greater than movies and music combined. As ever-changing beasts, games have evolved at a staggering rate from decade to decade thanks to an explosion of technological progress and shifting cultural tastes in design trends.

Related

6 Early PS1 Horror Games Almost No One Remembers

These horror games launched early on the PlayStation 1 console, and have gone into obscurity.

However, with fads coming in and out at such a rapid pace, many genres have been left behind. Although indie developers have heroically carried some of the slack, and perhaps one or two retro-style passion projects get the green light from major publishers once in a blue moon, they (“AAA” video game studios) clearly don’t make ’em as frequently as they used to.

Prime Examples: Metal Slug, Contra, Robocop

• Glory Days: the 80s and 90s
• Extinction Event: 3D graphics

Running across blocks and pipes is one thing, but what if the player’s character could blow away incoming enemies with a machine gun? The side-scrolling shooter, also known as the “run-and-gun” was huge in the 16-bit era on third-generation consoles and in the darkly-lit arcades of the 80s and 90s.

Games like Contra, Robocop, and Metal Slug allowed players to experience multi-directional aiming and battling massive bosses and a screen full of enemy waves. Besides a few retro throwback indies like Blazing Chrome and Cuphead, the part of the genre that reveled in taking down swarms of enemies on a 2D plane evolved into bullet hell somewhere down the line.

5

Big-Budget Stealth Games

Prime Examples: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Tenchu: Stealth Assassins

• Glory Days: 1998-2016
• Extinction Event: the advent of open-world games and the subsequent expectation of stealth as optional

Hide and seek is one of the primal games that humans from any time or culture will intrinsically comprehend. Stealth games take this simple childhood classic and raise the stakes with organized, well armed sentries, cool gadgets, and compelling storylines. There are still plenty of open-world games with stealth mechanics, and some recent titles that involve social stealth, such as Hitman: World of Assassination, but long-running stealth series, such as Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, and Tenchu seem to have had had their day in the sun (or the shadows).

Related

5 Forgotten Features Of Stealth Games That Need To Make A Comeback

The AAA stealth genre has gone dark in recent years, but forgotten features in older games like Thief and Splinter Cell show how stealth is done.

However, the thrill of going completely unseen seems less and less compelling to big publishers, perhaps because slow-burn, systematic stealth, as thrilling as it is to play, is hard to market compared to bombastic action games (a problem considering the enormous budgets for games like The Phantom Pain). Although the realism and technology seen in MGS5 may not make another appearance (for now) in an original stealth game entry, a few lower-profile indie stealth games are quietly finding success using the decades of lessons those big-budget stealth games afforded them.

4

Rail Shooters

Prime Examples: Time Crisis, Star Fox, Pokemon Snap

• Glory Days: the 80s and 90s
• Extinction Event: 3D graphics

Rail shooters are (arguably) come with all the thrills of sprinting through a level or flying but with a curated level design that guarantees relentless, high-octane action and remove the frustrations of getting lost along the level. These kinds of games are best played with light guns, such as Time Crisis or with joysticks, as with Star Fox. Pokemon Snap reimagined the player’s POV as a camera instead of a weapon, leading to a slew of on-the-rail photography games.

However, perhaps because gamers began to expect more freedom in 3D spaces, this genre died off. The genre saw a return with motion-controllers in the late 2000s on consoles like the Wii, but this was short-lived. There are still a few indie developers out there making games like Ex-Zodiac willing to fill the gap, triple-A publishers have had their hands off this genre for a long time.

3

Point-And-Click Adventures

Prime Examples: Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, The Walking Dead

• Glory Days: 1987-2000 (Golden Age), 2012-2015 (Telltale Revival)
• Extinction Event: Rise of 3D action-adventures, declining patience for puzzle-heavy design

Before the so-called “walking simulator” genre took its first step, point-and-click adventures ruled PC gaming with their verb-based puzzles and witty dialogue. Classics like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango used brain-busting puzzles as their central gameplay loops and dry humor to raise the bar in terms of interactive storytelling, video game dialogue, and lateral-thinking gameplay, and their legacy as games that went beyond knee-jerk action, leaning on story, is hard to overestimate.

The genre saw a brief resurgence via Telltale’s The Walking Dead, but its emphasis on quick-time events and binary choices was a tell-tale sign that the adventure genre still, unfortunately, had one foot in the grave. Modern successors like Thimbleweed Park, Broken Age, and Return to Monkey Island prove the audience remains, just not at a “AAA” level.

2

Plastic Instument Rhythm Games

Prime Examples: Rock Band 4, Guitar Hero 3: Legends Of Rock, DJ Hero

• Glory Days: 2005-2010
• Extinction Event: License costs, market oversaturation, and a plastic novelty wearing thin

The plastic instrument boom, brought about by rhythm game series like Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and DJ Hero transformed dorms and living rooms across the world into stages. With fake guitars, drums, and even DJ sets, players could simulate the experience of playing to massive crowds with friends and pulling off sick riffs, tasty beats, and nasty track transitions.

Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock was the first video game to push the one billion dollar sale barrier, and the future looked bright. Unfortunately, in the short span between 2005 and 2010, rhythm games had completely saturated the market. The studios were being forced to fork over larger amounts of cash for song licenses, and thanks to the Great Recession hitting in 2007-2008, nobody had the spare change to buy all the new plastic controllers.

1

3D Mascot Platformers / Collectathons

Prime Examples: Banjo-Kazooie, Spyro The Dragon, Super Mario 64

• Glory Days: The 90s
• Extinction Event: Grand Theft Auto 3

Accessable, appealing, and instantly fun, platformer that involved gathering hundres of collectables across a diverse array of worlds were in-demand in the 90s in a big way. The transition from 2D to 3D worlds was a tremendous success, creating platformer classics like Banjo-Kazooie, Spyro the Dragon, and Super Mario 64. Without the legacy of these games, 3D worlds as they are known today would never have been possible.

As graphical fidelity improved and worlds sizes grew, so did gamers, and besides level designers and environmental designers clashing in rendering worlds that were not too big but not too basic, gamers and critics began demanding deeper and more mature stories, or so it is believed. When the open-world crime sandbox Grand Theft Auto 3 arrived in 2001, collectathons were considered childish toys and relegated to the past. The success and popularity of Astro Bot, a platforming collectathon on the hyper-powerful PS5, may be a hint that the genre was abaonded too soon.

More

5 Dormant Game Series That Made Unexpected Comebacks

A game series may lay dormant, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone for good. Here are some noteworthy franchises that made a comeback.