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What books/decade of books inspired the Stories of 80s Sci Fi games?


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Okay, so I am a huge science fiction nut, from Asimov to Herbert to Adams. But I dont just love Science Fiction books, I love movies and television too, like Blade Runner, and Star Trek. Another big thing I love is Science Fiction in video games and i cant think of a decade of more science fiction in gaming than the Eighties. If you are digging in a pile of atari games and pick put a random cart, id say 9/10 its going to be at least something sci fi releated (most likely a Space Invaders clone but thats neither here nor there) like space or robots or aliens. Now my question is which books or rather which decade of books would you say inspired these science fiction stories found in the manuals of these old games? I just love these stories and id love to read full books like them! This doesnt have to be atari necessarily, arcades work too!

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Star Wars.

Which was influenced by pulp comics and serials from the 30s, 40s, and 50s such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

 

Book series like Princess of Mars and Lensman were important to the genre, too. That stuff is straight up space opera and helps explain some of the seemingly odd choices Lucas made in Star Wars.

 

"Hard" science fiction like Herbert, Asimov, Clarke were influential but less so in my opinion than the pulpy pop stuff.

 

Also remember in real life, we had a space race in the 50s and 60s whose research continued through the 70s and early 80s. The Space Shuttle was iconic and new (and none had exploded), Carl Sagan was on TV, we sent robots to Mars.

 

Nowadays (since 2002 at least) space games have been displaced by desert warfare games, and I think you can guess why.

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Which was influenced by pulp comics and serials from the 30s, 40s, and 50s such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

 

Book series like Princess of Mars and Lensman were important to the genre, too. That stuff is straight up space opera and helps explain some of the seemingly odd choices Lucas made in Star Wars.

 

"Hard" science fiction like Herbert, Asimov, Clarke were influential but less so in my opinion than the pulpy pop stuff.

 

Also remember in real life, we had a space race in the 50s and 60s whose research continued through the 70s and early 80s. The Space Shuttle was iconic and new (and none had exploded), Carl Sagan was on TV, we sent robots to Mars.

 

Nowadays (since 2002 at least) space games have been displaced by desert warfare games, and I think you can guess why.

I would say they've more been replaced by post-apocalyptic games. Fallout, Last of Us, Walking Dead, Day-Z, Borderlands, Horizon Zero Dawn, Mad Max, Days Gone, Countless Zombie apocalypse games, etc

 

Space games are still popular though. Destiny, Mass Effect, Eve, Elite Dangerous. Also the sheer amounts of hype generated by Star Citizen and No Man's Sky shows how popular the genre is.

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I would say they've more been replaced by post-apocalyptic games. Fallout, Last of Us, Walking Dead, Day-Z, Borderlands, Horizon Zero Dawn, Mad Max, Days Gone, Countless Zombie apocalypse games, etc

 

Space games are still popular though. Destiny, Mass Effect, Eve, Elite Dangerous. Also the sheer amounts of hype generated by Star Citizen and No Man's Sky shows how popular the genre is.

 

 

Yeah, zombie games too ... I guess someone wants those, right?

 

Mass Effect notwithstanding, space games made a bit of a comeback in the last 5 years. It was very dry for a long time ... the genre seemed played out. I should know, I got catfished into a whole lot of Kickstarters since there were so few things to buy.

 

LOL Star Citizen, what a train wreck. I expected to feel some schadenfreude when I first heard Roberts' lofty ambitions, and the ensuing cluster%ck has not disappointed.

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LOL Star Citizen, what a train wreck. I expected to feel some schadenfreude when I first heard Roberts' lofty ambitions, and the ensuing cluster%ck has not disappointed.

Lol, yeah.. but the sheer amount of crowdfunding money they keep raking in shows how much demand there is for such a thing

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This is probably a little off-topic, but it's tangentally close enough that it's worth mentioning: Xevious was the first arcade game released with a backstory beyond 'just shoot everything'.

 

From what I recall, there was a full novelization of it, but only released in Japan and difficult to come by these days.

Edited by x=usr(1536)
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