Games Enter the Mainstream

By Chris Taylor

It's been a bad year for video-game addicts who resolved to kick the habit. All of a sudden, their drug of choice became more engrossing than ever. Not only was 1999 the watershed year in which sales of games overtook box-office receipts for the first time, but the quality of those games improved exponentially, leading some to believe that the game industry is entering a Golden Age roughly equivalent to Hollywood's in the 1940s.

In fact, many of the titles listed here offer an experience superior to going to the movies. Lucas Arts' Star Wars game far outshines the altogether dismal film prequel offered in The Phantom Menace. Gamemakers are starting to pull in big names. James Earl Jones, for example, stars in Command & Conquer's latest outing, while David Bowie is the driving force behind the forthcoming Omikron. Indeed, game designers are starting to act like directors--guys like Sid Meier (Alpha Centauri) and Adrian Smith (Tomb Raider) who closet themselves in high-end studios for two years at a time, ceaselessly fine-tuning their grand vision, their masterwork.

The results may not be exactly Citizen Kane. But this year's bumper crop is ample evidence that designers are starting to tap the vast potential of their medium. Stay tuned in 2000. It won't take long for the Orson Welles of gaming to emerge.

--TIPS: POWER UP

NEED FOR SPEED Don't assume every PC game will run on your machine, especially if it's a few years old. Action games can be prohibitively slow on anything less than a 200-MHz chip. Always check system requirements before you buy.

SHOP AROUND Prices for games vary wildly but are usually better on the Web than in bricks-and-mortar stores. Try beyond.com gamefever.com or amazon.com

--By Chris Taylor