I do miss couch co-op/split-screen adventure games. My sister and I grew up playing lots of those types of games and they feel like they are almost completely gone today.

There were a couple of Genres which feel "more dead" than several mentioned here: 1. Point & Click Adventures 2. Textadventures 3. MUDs 4. Dungeoncrawlers (Step based, like Dungeonmaster) 5. (German Style) Economy Sims (not "Citybuilders", but games where you do management decisions, buy and sell and easily go bankrupt, lots of them from Germany, Like "Hanse", Fugger, Mad TV, Der Planer, Capitalism...) I think the only derivate still existing is Sports Management games

I'm surprised to not see Point and Click Adventure Games on the list. This genre was one of the biggest in the 90s and early 2000s and then sort of vanished. I loved playing the Broken Sword series and Runaway, but the list of great games in that genre may go on and on. Also, I'd definitely add Tycoon games. So many of these kept popping up, the likes of Rollercoaster Tycoon, Airline Tycoon as the most notable examples. But also Transport Tycoon and games like Pizza Syndicate deserve a mention.

Giant mech games from the 90’s. Mechwarrior, Earthsiege, Heavy Gear, etc. These games were more of a hobby for me. Reason to buy a flight stick and a set of headphones with a microphone and voice command software for giving orders. This was my greatest gaming experience from the 90’s.

number 5 really hit in the feelings. car combat games were my favourite and it's a shame no one is doing them anymore

I used to dig point-and-click adventures. Maniac Mansion, Full Throttle, Longest Journey, King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Secret of Monkey Island... for a while during the 90s they were everywhere for PC and had some real gems.

Shoutout to the music video game genre, specifically Guitar Hero! After the third game released, i was inspired to learn how to play guitar for real. My dad warned me it would be very different from the game but once i started getting lessons, the songs from Guitar Hero and Rock Band really kept me motivated to never stop learning new songs. Here i am at the age of 25 and now i can play guitar, bass, drums, and some piano. I've also had more than 20 live performances. This is proof that video games can change someone's life 🎸🎶

Rhythm games have been doing very well in the VR space. Beat Saber, and Synth Riders are pretty huge and still well supported.

I wish the RTS genre would pickup again! They are incredible and have always been my favorite to play competitively... Great video Jake and the gameranx crew 💙

I'm surprised you didn't mention Road Rash for vehicular combat. We played that game for hours and hours on the Sega Genesis, that was the spiritual parent of Twisted Metal. I'm glad you mentioned Vigilante 8, I completely forgot about that game! I probably paid for that game six times just renting it from blockbuster back in the day.

That's why I love indie games, because they always rescure older genres

Another good one is "Demolition Derby" games, back in like the 90s - 2000s every western racing game developer had a demolition derby as a counterpart to their regular racing game series. They were soo popular that I feel like everyone I know had at least one growing up. Funny enough in real life the actual Demolition Derby sport isn't as popular as the games were.

I worked in the gaming department of a best buy when guitar hero 3 came out. That was about the time that everyone got burnt out on music games. We were left with 200 plastic guitars we couldn't shift. Being the biggest best buy in texas at the time, we had to get creative. We hosted guitar hero events to sell some , we stealthily shipped them off to smaller stores low on inventory. The rest we had to mark down 75%. Honestly for a solid 2 years the biggest issue in our department was shifting those damn plastic guitars.

While it wasn't a vehicular combat-only game, Mad Max had some of the best vehicular combat around. Playing it, especially in first-person, really felt like you were in the movies and it worked so well.

How could you leave our Carmageddon? Hands down one of the best car combat games ever.

The whole arcade racing genre in general is a shadow of its former self too. Today there is Forza Horizon, NFS and some indiegames and a few AA titles releasing occasionally, with the occasional AA+/AAA release in between, like Hot Wheels and Lego 2K. A lot of series have died: Burnout, Motorstorm, WipeOut, Ridge Racer, Tokyo Extreme Racer, Juiced, Midnight Club, Driver.. The rate of "one-off" arcade racers releasing has slowed down a lot too.

For car combat genre, “Blur” was one of my favorites during the xbox 360 days! got in a lot of hours and fun with friends on that one. miss it for sure.

I remember Unreal and Quake so well. I used to play tournaments and loved that experience. It didn't seem as toxic as so many of the modern multiplayer shooters. And LAN parties with friends were just the best. A living room ran with chords and multiple computers. Man I'm old. lol

03:19 the Pikmin series is the best adaptation of a RTS to consoles, IMHO. I am replaying those games in preparation for the 4th, they are awesome.

Loved how you turned any game concept into a genre to make the video, LOL sarcasm apart I really did enjoy the video and the trip to memory lane

This article was so heartbreaking. There were at least 5 of these genres that I so wish would make a comeback. Car combat and extreme sports why did you leave us? Way to make me feel old too.

kinda surprised the adventure genre was left out of this.. it was huge in the 80's and 90's and it gave us some amazing games

What about point-and-click adventure games. Those were my jam in the 90s. Although I think the genre reached its pinnacle just this year with SYBERIA: THE WORLD BEFORE, and that series as a whole is a heartfelt, stunningly beautiful piece of work. There are some great indie developers going the full 16-bit Lucasarts-inspired route and bringing these games back. They crop up on GOG quite often, as well as ports of all the old classics.

Revolt 1999 racing combat game was my fav game from childhood the thought of driving rc cars was adding enough but driving them and competing with combat in a toy story world is just mind blowing

Carmageddon was huge among my group of friends growing up. Surprised it didn't get a mention in the vehicular combat games. Did anyone else here play it?

The finished game at release genre

Had a phase where I started doing light gun game emulation on my Android tablet and phone, with games like Lethal Enforcers or Metal Combat Falcons Revenge all set to use taps instead of virtual cursors. It was a great experience tbh, surprised no one thought to make official ports because touch screens would be perfect for them.

I will never understand why time crisis hasn't made a VR return. Imagine how amazing that would be on modern gen vr headsets like psvr2 and quest 3

I miss games that weren't afraid to be experimental and just batshit crazy with gameplay and cinematics. Infected on PSP comes to mind.

I was actually shocked to see "Beat-em'-Ups" didn't make the list. Games like Double Dragon, Final Fight, TMNT, Golden Axe and the like. Unless I've missed any recent entries, I genuinley can't recall the last new one I've seen.

Loved a lot of those old school games. Twisted Metal and V8 were among my favorite games when i was a kid, up there with those old PS1 sports games like Tony Hawk, coolboarders, 3xtreme etc.

So many different feelings rushing back from one video! I miss arena shooters and vehicle combat the most. I was just telling my friend about Vigilante 8. There's a 40k take on it coming out soon called Speed Freeks

I think Splitgate is a really cool attempt on bringing back arena shooters. It's unique, fast-paced, and from what I remember, you can only choose between a sniper and assault rifle on spawn, everything else is found on the map. If you haven't tried it, you definitely should, it's basically Portal Halo

Having grown up in the RTS genre I will always believe it's the best genre

I really miss the sneak-em-ups like the Thief and Splinter Cell games. Sure, there are Dishonored games now, but the sneaking is optional, and when you get caught there are other ways to finish the level. I really miss sitting around a Thief level for 20 minutes waiting for the opportune moment to take out a guard.

I was hoping when you talked about the extreme sports that you would bring up NBA Jam, Wayne Gretzky's 3d hockey or NFL Blitz. As a non sports following person, these games were always fun just because they were so ridiculous with the different characters and the insane dunks or throws. Just a fun quick sports game where people just mess around and do crazy stuff.

I can't believe Carmageddon didn't get a mention in the vehicular combat category!! I loved that game in the late 90's! even the Reincarnation release a few years back was pretty epic

I miss the old arcade sidescroller games. Things like Contra, Double Dragon, Original 4 player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 4 player Gauntlet, and many more. Heck I just miss arcades in general. I know I spent alot of time in GTA 5 getting my characters arcade just right. My sisters kid just had a birthday at one of those fun parks and they still had some arcade machines with those weighted plastic guns with force feedback. Some were even new. They even had a 4 player Minecraft sidescroller

I was thinking about stealth games like Splinter Cell, there are still some games that incorporate some stealth in them, but not as the main focus. Also, co-op/split-scren games where you REALLY need to interact with your partner to complete a level, like Portal, Magical Quest, Bugz & Taz, or again Splinter Cell.

I was a little late to the wave growing up but still loved GH3. Went to clone hero which had a huge dedicated community before GH live, because they had made software to port in and chart any song. Theres all kinds of ways to adapt the wii or xbox controllers and now even drums so you can play anything in the GH/Rock Band formulas and its sweet.

Interesting topic as always. What genre do Pikmin, Patapon and the Overlord games qualify as? Minion management simulators? That’s where my mind went

VR also resurrecting the rhythm genre as one of the most popular VR games is a rhythm game, Beat Saber

I loved the Lego Dimensions series. It was the only Lego game I played and enjoyed. I tried a couple of the others, but it just didn't hit the same. Best part is the only waste for that game was the RF tags. Otherwise, all the pieces were Lego and have been integrated into my collection. It was also awesome to get mini-figs that haven't released elsewhere (looking at Chell from Portal as a prime example.)

I'd say the collect-a-thon games evolved into the loot shooter. You say arena combat is dead, yet Fortnight is one of the biggest games ever.

Red Dead , Far cry , Assassin Creed , Batman series , Gears of war , WWE 2K etc all lost their identity because of the "RPG Trend". I seem to be the one of few who noticed it.

The genre I miss most these days is the 3D mechanical puzzle genre. Games like Myst, Rhem, etc. There used to be a lot of Myst clones in the 90-00s

As a car combat game, I remember when I was a kid I truly *LOVED* to play to Interstate 76 🥰

I went out and bought a CRT TV last year just so I could play some light gun games again. So much fun. I would be so happy if these games made a comeback

What I miss most are RTS games. I remember playing rise and fall civilizations at war for hours and hours every night. Such a unique RTS experience where you could handle your hero in a third person mode

DJ Hero is the most criminally underrated game ever. Extremely fun and unique peripheral, really really cool original mashups and just dripping with style. An absolutely killer game that deserved to be bigger

I appreciate that he made the effort to point out that many of the genres didn't die, they evolved.

Helicopter games. I remember on PS1 and Sega Saturn and PC there seemed to be a number of them. Comanche (which they've recently rebooted), etc.. They were always fun.

Would be fun to see a video on genres that are making a resurgence or that are just becoming big, I'd say tactical rpgs are in a big resurgence, fire emblem, tactics ogre and triangle strategy all came out recently in some form and are doing quite well as an example

I think some of these genres also just folded into other games. Like vehicular combat was so big it needed its own setting. Now games like Borderlands and Battlefront, it is just part of a larger game.

Im surprised that you talked about VR and rhythm games but didnt talk about beatsaber! Super huge rhythm game right now.

I think every major game genre can be broken down further with a focus on either arcade-styled gameplay or simulation focused gameplay. I've got an idea for a arcade styled city builder that harkens back to the days of SimCity but even easier for single player, but then has multiplayer options that could be interesting. I think RTS eSports fell through because they were both a bit over complex for an average viewer, and also sportscasting has evolved into "storylines" that could have helped Starcraft remain interesting, despite the game difficulty. For the peripheral music game, I would go even further back to the late 90's with Dance Dance Revolution bundled into you thought. But I see an opportunity for a dance pad game in conjunction with the Australian kids show Bluey. Bluey as a show leans heavily into the imaginary play of kids, and I think dancing is a great expression of that idea. If you can use the show's music (which is excellent) to make stepcharts that respect young kids beginning to play games like this, as well as people who have played this style of dancing game two decades ago, you may have a real sellable game there. The 90's series Road Rash should have also been included in the vehicular combat genre.

Loved this video. Would like to see more videos on the arcade and arena shooters, all car games(burnout) and extreme sports, really brought back memories. Especially the arena shooters where you would just run around and have fun.

Hey Jake, Just wanted to say thanks to you and your team for uploading amazing videos daily that keep us gamers entertained and informed. Keep up the awesome work ♥️

I'm surprised you didn't mention combat simulator games that died off roughly before XBox 360 era - even if most of those were PC titles (some of which debuted on Amiga). Those were games in which you take control of an entire machine - a plane (IL-2 Sturmovik, F-22 Lighting), a helicopter (Apache vs Hokum, Apache Longbow), a tank (M1 Tank Platoon a submarine (699 Attack Sub, Silent Service), a battleship (Independence War, Freespace) or some other kind of spaceship (Wing Commander, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Descent) - which were the main (if not the *only*) reason to have a joystick in a post-Quake era. I miss thosegames. I'm getting old and I need a hug.

Time crisis and Area 51 were my jam. When they rolled out time crisis 3 with the pedal you stepped on to take cover it was such a revelation lol.

Honestly I still play Guitar Hero on my Wii. I haven't gotten tired of the songs. It just feels good to shred on the guitar every now and then. I really wish they'd at least make a remaster of the series. There's plenty of streamers and videos of clone hero that I see all the time.

I miss Command and Conquer so much!

I've scrolled through the comments and was stunned that no one mentioned Wizardry, Might&Magic, Wizards&Warriors and even some of the C-64 greats ... Legacy of the Ancients or Mines of Titan. Those were the fun games that were different everytime you played them because of the many characters and spells. Remember Bard's Tale ... that pretty much began the fun gaming era as far as RPG went.

I really like Warhammer 40k Dawn of War I and II and all the ad-ons on them. I started RTS gaming on Sega Megadrive with Dune II: Battle for Arrakis in early 90s.

You forgot about flight sims. Flight simulators, either civilian or combat flight simulation, have become so niche that they are not even mentioned in the video, but they were fairly popular from the early 90s to the early 2000s. And the same goes for other vehicle simulations like submarines, etc. that got even more niche. But we the elder remember a time when Microprose made quite a fortune almost exclusively with all that.

Can't believe you didn't include point and click adventures like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and Sam and Max

I miss the variety of sports games. We used to get 4-5 MLB games every year, same with the NBA and NFL. You'd have a simulation game an arcade game a few in the middle and it was up to the studios to put out a good game because they had competition.

Maaan I was really hoping to see the 6DOF (6 Degrees of Freedom) genre here. Essentially an FPS but you're in a space ship in tight, enclosed spaces instead of wide open space sims. The newest one I know of is called Overload and it's an absolute banger, Descent 3 was my childhood.

Riders Republic was the closest hope I had to getting something close to the SSX franchise. No one has tried to capture that same feeling that games like SSX 3 had as an over the top extreme sports game.

One of the genres that feel completely gone are the old quick-time only games. Dragon's Lair I, II Time Warp & III, Space Ace. There was a hologram game in the arcade in the early 90's called Time Traveler took a lot of my quarters. Now we have button QTE games, but nothing like up - down - left - right and the occasional sword button. Thank you, Don Bluth!

- Point & Click Adventures - Pinball Games - Games with pre-rendered images (Myst style)

Tinykin is a great collectathon game! I do wish there were more of them, though. I really enjoy them.

LOVE YOUR VIDEOS!! I was hoping to see point and click adventure games mentioned on your list such as monkey island, disc world, full throttle, broken sword, blade runner, hopefully some day they can get their own segment as they are awesome and not really known of anymore.

I feel like oversaturation has consistently been the killer of many genres.

The Toys to Life genre was my favourite growing up. But I say that now as an adult and not as a kid. Having family buy all the Disney Infinity figures and LEGO Dimensions packs for Christmas and birthdays made it easy, just had to wait. But as an adult, I look back on the prices and I can’t believe how much it all cost. I ended up getting the bare essentials for each game, for Dimensions it was exclusively level packs and any figures that would not exist outside the line (Gremlins, Knight Rider ect) and for Disney Infinity it was maybe 10 figures total. The pricing was definitely what got in the way given neither LEGO dimensions or Disney Infinity ended but rather they were cancelled. Tons of interesting stuff out there about what would have released for the themes around the 2016 and 2017 timeframe.

Interesting topic, to the point that I thank you to bring this even when I don't agree with some of the points 10. Cinematic Platformers are actually more popular now than 20 years ago. Thing is, there was Prince of Persia, Flashback, Another World, Heart of Darkness, Bermuda Syndrome, a couple more obscure ones and that's it. Limbo brought the genre back big time, and the indie world has got the genre back mixing it with metroidvania. 8. I can take the RTS not being everywhere as in the 00s, but 3d platformer games are still there everywhere. Like everywhere. And tying with 3, the game genres that have disappeared for me 1. Edutainment games, that kind of soft puzzle games for kids that had a lot of educational content, like Eco Quest, Carmen Sandiego, Doctor Brain. They basically vanished. And they were so fun! 2. LINEAR space games. There is the rare one from time to time, but most of them are focused on being a space Ayn Rand hero instead of saving the world. I am talking about the ones with heavily scripted missions, when suddenly after scanning an asteroid it turns out it is a giant enemy ship. 3. The very short lived genre of open space exploration/adventure/rpg game born out of Starflight and with the most well known example in Star Control 2. Yes, Mass Effect was there but all the elements that tied it to that old genre were eliminated in the sequels. 4. Puzzle games almost vanished. We were lucky the casual market recovered the genre, or well, at least we have thousand of match 3 variants. 5. More than sport games, the kind of Track and Field sport games based on minigames. There are some released from time to time (as the Mario and Sonic olympics) but it is not like the times we were having all the Epyx games mixed with the Decathlon etc. 6. Going back toi Space, Space rpgs consist on the huge exception from Bethesda and Bioware and then nothing else. 7. Hand animated games. I mean, of course. They were super expensive to make.

Can't believe you didnt mention Carmageddon for number 5. Literally the goat of that genre. Look at Carma2 (on PC) as an open world game when it came out. Way ahead of its time with the size of maps and visual fidelity.

Couldn’t help reminisce about road rash when you were talking about vehicle combat. What a great game for its time. This list was great by the way! I feel so old now 😭

With the recent Twisted Metal tv series I would LOVE to see a new game to go along with it.

Great video. Car combat is the one I miss the most. We dont see alot of 3D beat em ups either anymore. Hack N Slash is still around which is great. Really like that RPG elements have been added to those games. We dont get many beat em ups like God Hand anymore, or the Japanese humor that used to accompany them. Good soundtracks and memorable music has been pretty dead for me too, for a long time in games. Halo is one of the only modern games that had music that really stood out. Prior to that we had Metal Gear Solid series and going back much farther the 8 and 16 bit games were fuckin killin the soundtracks regularly. Its diminished much like game difficulty which has decreased on average each new console generation.

Thinking about light gun games, I loved silent scope!! Was so “high tech” with the spotter view on the main screen and then a scope view too! Loved it

This list just made me feel old. Besides the toys to life ones (except a few Amiibo), I loved at least one game from each of these at some point in my life.

I think the primary reason light gun games disappeared, is because they only work with a CRT. They'd work by illuminating a square in the hitbox of the target for one frame when you pulled the trigger, if the optic detected an increase in luminance during that 16ms window, it counted it as a hit. if there were multiple hitboxes, it would illuminate one the next frame, then another the next after that. Ever notice that square around the duck in duck hunt? With digital displays, there's processing time and lower contrast ratios, so it would require another more complex and likely less precise method to detect aim. This is why the WII gun-shooter type games sucked so bad (they used an IR sensor to detect the angle of the controller, which doesn't correspond to where it's pointed at the screen so much as how it's pointed in relation to the sensor bar, IE, not accurate, and there was the delay factor of digital processing as well)

Does anyone else remember a pc game from the late 90’s called Total Annihilation. One of my personal favourites from the real time strategy genre. Damn I miss that game 😢

This world needs more RTS games

Without even having started the video, i just wanna say one of the most memorable parts of my gaming youth was the LucasArts point-and-click adventure games, a genre that is most definitely dead. From getting my mind blown by hearing actual voices in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis to Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, and even The Dig, i ate them all up. Day of the Tentacle was the first game I ever owned on a CD.

Real-Time Tactics (RTT) Games. Games like - Commandos Series, Desperados, Chicago, Robin Hood, etc. Have everyone forgotten about them? Latest 2 entries in the Genre were Desperados 3 & Shadow Tactics - Blade of the Shogun. There were none for more than a decade!

Dj Hero was a hidden gem in the Rythem game world. Playing on expert was so much fun!

The transition from old school arena shooters to modern multiplayer shooters highlights how the genre moved away (to a certain extent) from pure skill-based gameplay. Good or bad, depends on your pov, but it is still true today that skill can be somewhat compensated with a big enough gun.

I feel so bad for kids today and the ones just behind my age group cause we were the last true arcaders… going to an arcade with your friends and $10 in your pocket to play for hours. The environment the greasy food. Gah. Then by late middle/high school they disappeared. Wish these younger gamers could experience a genuine arcade experience.

I remember back in the day when i played total annihilation. Theres actually a game called planetary annihilation which is basically total annihilation set in an entire solar system and its really freaking awesome. Total annihilation had land air and sea, and planetary has land air sea and space and you can make warp gates that can dump a crap ton of units on an enemy planet.

Jet Set Radio!!! I just downloaded it on steam, along with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk which is a spiritual successor that does a great job!

I miss the vehicular combat genre. I spent so much time playing Twisted Metal: Black back in the day.

For me personally the slow decline of RTS games r most heartbreaking. I used to play RTS all the time and now we get 1 or 2 games at the most and most of the time they just come and go like Warhammer 40k Dawn of War. But we still get awesome city builder games still like Cities Skylines and Frostpunk.

I don't know how you miss Point-and-Click Adventure games man. I grew up on the old Sierra and LucasArts point-and-click adventures, and they were a big deal. I would also suggest "Comedy Games" which commonly overlapped with those Point-and-Click adventures.

Command and Conquer and Starwars Battlegrounds was the two , the latter may if been my fave cause it was C&C but with great star wars sound effects

RTS and vehicle combat games are big one for me. RTS were a big reason I even got into PC gaming. Starcraft, Command & Conquer and Total Annihilation were my life in the late 90s and early 2000s. I still play Supreme Commander to this day. Really saddens me that we have very little to look forward to. Twisted Metal was huge for me. I still lament the loss of it. So many hours spent fighting and unlocking secrets.

I grew up on going to arcades. I actually set a high score on a fps alien shooter for my birthday in 3rd grade. Worth every quarter.

Man I miss Lawbreakers. Some of the most fun I had with a MP shooter in the last decade. And I wasnt even that big of a arena shooter player back in the day as I am kinda too young for that. But Lawbreakers was just so good. Real shame not more people saw that.

RTS did evolve, with Homeworld. The first 3D space RTS game and the third is coming out early next year unless it’s delayed again. Think I’ve been waiting 20 years for the moment of its release. It also has the longest running mod series in history with the home world complex series.