Cultural Impact: It's so tough to choose! So many legit revolutionary games here! When I think of "gaming in 1991", the first thing that comes to mind is that it was the year that cemented Sega as a household name here in the United States. ToeJam & Earl, Streets of Rage, and above all Sonic the Hedgehog deserve immense credit here. Sonic in particular became Sega's most iconic franchise and led the Genesis to consistent victories over the Super NES in holiday sales throughout the first half of the decade here in this country. Among other things, the Sonic franchise soon expanded into a comic book series, two concurrent cartoon shows, and much more mass merch. Sonic was so popular here in the U.S. during the early '90s that in 1993 he became the first video game character to be represented in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. He even had a cameo in one our school plays ("The Nutcracker 2"). For a time, Sonic was bigger than Mario. Something about the vibrant color palette, the hipper soundtrack, the character's edgier vibe, and the speed factor just won over Americans instantly. The first game in the franchise took a good deal of inspiration from the slow-paced platforming in the Super Mario games in the bulk of its zones (one sees the Mario influence especially heavily in the Marble Zone), but Sonic would establish a clearly distinct franchise identity the following year and soon come to influence many if not most platforming games throughout the 1990s and even some beyond, ranging from the likes of Bubsy and Aero the Acro-Bat to Bug!, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and even Nintendo's biggest Super NES hit, Donkey Kong Country, all of which you'll notice used "edgy" talking animals/creatures as their main protagonists. Platforming games were now aimed at teens as much as younger kids.
That said, it's also tough to argue against the monumental impact of Street Fighter II both at the arcades and in homes. Tournament fighters were one of the big new genres popularized in the early 1990s and Street Fighter II led that trend. And frankly was also the best and most addictive of them. I can't even tell you how much time I spent with this game back in the day. Every kid played it.
Then there is Final Fantasy IV (which contemporaneously was known as FF II here because it was only the second game in the franchise to see a Stateside release), which is the game that, to me, gave JRPGs a distinct cultural identity. RPGs before this were mostly inspired directly or indirectly by Dungeons & Dragons. While FF IV still bears some of those hallmarks, it began a march toward emphasizing storytelling over player freedom that, for a generation, wound up cementing Japanese RPGs as more popular and respected than their American counterparts. Without FF IV I'm not sure we'd have the term "JRPG". I didn't get it initially, but when I finally discovered it a couple years later, it became the game that got me into the genre.
None of those three developments seems to retain much influence over the gaming world of today, but they each contributed a lot to defining an era in gaming and I don't think I can decide which it was that did the most in that regard. I guess maybe Sonic? Maybe? I mean Street Fighter II was my favorite of the options here, but I'm trying to be as objective as possible. Hmm...in a way perhaps we could actually say that Super Castlevania IV has had the longest-lasting cultural impact on gaming though, to apply a different metric of resonance? Hmm...this is a toughie!
My Favorite Game: That said, the '91 game that had the most impact on me was the emotional narrative of Out of This World, as it was known Stateside. (It was called Another World elsewhere.) It's the relationship between the protagonists that cements this cinematic sci-fi action-platforming adventure about escaping an otherworldly prison camp as the most powerful game of the year in my book and the game that, more than any other, changed the course of what I sought in video games. More than any other title, Out of This World made me realize the storytelling potential of this medium and come to highly value it. Before this point, gaming was just about fun to me. After this point, I came to see it as an art form. It evolved me as a gamer.
To put it a certain way, the first time I ever played a video game on the NES several years earlier, I wound up being disappointed by the limits of what seemed possible therein. I had expected it to be like a movie or a TV show that I could interact with. Out of This World was the first game I played that I felt like kind of fulfilled that long-dormant yearning I'd had. Whereas The Secret of Monkey Island to me had felt more or less like interacting with a really funny book or comic, Out of This World felt like interacting with a really moving film.
And how can I let this thread go without adding a mention that Turtles in Time was my favorite of the TMNT classics? Just have to say it!
