Cultural Impact: Doom. Duh. We know this. The first-person shooter genre might just as well not have existed before Doom. Neither would the Entertainment Software Ratings board! 
It was also an outstanding game all-around. In its own time, it was my favorite game from this year too.
1993 was not a good year for me. My dad lost his job that year and things just kind of went downhill with his drinking and well let's just say that there were consequences for those of us living with him. Up to this point I think you could say that my parents just thought I was a rotten kid. After this point though, I think it's fair to say that I actually became one. I eventually found myself yelling back, sometimes hitting back even, and not just at home, and just generally stopped caring about my life. Certainly about my future. I remember having real aspirations for when I grew up before this point in life and just not so much afterward. Found I didn't really want to be anything when I grew up anymore and never really found my way back from that lack of motivation fully. I stopped caring much about school and church and just lost interest in most things in general for that matter.
It was in this context that I first heard about Doom from my cousin, who was hyped up about it when he visited us. My parents both overheard that conversation, having been in the same room. They apparently had heard about it too, or misheard about it. My mom warned me that it was a "Satanic" game about escaping hell and explicitly forbade me from ever playing it. I had to get it. Choosing means of acquisition that may or may not have been legal and a number of rotating hiding spots and strategic times late at night to play (fortunately, the computer was stupidly located less than ten feet from my room, providing lots of late-night gaming opportunities), I found playing Doom a nice outlet through which to vent. A healthy one? I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that I felt like I needed it. Think of it sort of like a painkiller to someone in chronic pain. It can help and it can also become addictive. My experience with Doom kind of straddled that line. More balanced people, most people, would've just found it fun. So mixed legacy for me, but definitely relevant. Doom was my first secret game.
Favorite Game: Day of the Tentacle. Doom today is a bit of an overly-familiar experience to me in comparison to the flat-out hilarity of Day of the Tentacle. I discovered it more than a decade later through a gaming records book of all things and it helped revive my waning interest in point-and-click adventures! It still feels fresh and funny to me even now. 
In fact, 1993 just seemed like an exceptional year for computer gaming, looking back on it now. Day of the Tentacle. Myst. Doom. I struggle to think of contemporaneous console gaming experiences that were comparable in my mind and in fact I fail to. I think those were the best games released that year. I even found myself getting into Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego? at the time, although it doesn't hold up as well.
In terms of console gaming experiences, Secret of Mana was definitely my favorite of those from '93, followed by Mega Man X (which released in 1994 in the U.S. and still ranks in as my favorite Mega Man game) and Mortal Kombat II (which looked even better than the original, standardized the blood and gore in the console versions as a defining trait of the franchise, and offered female fighters to choose who actually seemed like super-cool ninjas more than, you know, a fitness instructor...although there could've been more design variety that way...), with such titles as Ecco the Dolphin, Sonic CD, and Sonic Spinball (yes!) ranking in well too. And of course no mention of 1993 feels complete without highlighting Star Fox. That was the cool game to own that holiday season thanks to its use of the Super FX chip. 
Link's Awakening was also kind of groundbreaking for the Legend of Zelda franchise narratively in breaking away from Hyrule and I kind of liked that about it.
Those would be the highlights that I've experienced.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 05 October 2023
