Gaming "eras": your opinion?

[Malakili]

1998 - http://doublebuffered.com/2009/02/26/1998-was-the-best-year-in-the-history-of-gaming/

1080 Snowboarding: The first actually good snowboarding game
Baldur’s Gate: Reinvigorated RPGs and launched BioWare
Banjo-Kazooie: Huge selling 3d platformer
Battlezone: The first First Person-RTS Hybrid I am aware of
Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped: Probably the best platformer for the playstation.
Dance Dance Revolution: The first arcade release
Descent FreeSpace: One of the last awesome space fighters (and lead to the better FreeSpace 2 the next year)
Die by the Sword: Extremely innovative swordfighting game, and launched Treyarch.
Falcon 4.0: Long awaited update to a key flight simulation series.
Fallout 2: It’s awesome.
Gran Turismo: Brought realistic car racing to consoles
Grand Prix Legends: One of the most realistic racing games ever.
Grim Fandango: Last of the LucasArts classics.
Guilty Gear: First in a very successful series of fighting games.
Half-Life: I hope I don’t have to explain this one.
Jurassic Park: Trespasser: Not exactly a GOOD game, but way ahead of it’s time technically.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Arguably the single best 3d action-adventure game.
Lineage: Launched the gaming culture of an entire COUNTRY.
Mario Party: Ah Nintendo’s live of mini game collections. I sort of wish this game didn’t exist.
Metal Gear Solid: Created the Stealth Action genre.
Panzer Dragoon Saga: The Saturn’s last great game.
Pokemon Red and Blue: US start of the monumental franchise.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Took tactical shooters to a new level, and launched the Tom Clancy gaming brand
Resident Evil 2: Best-selling game in the series
Shogo: Mobile armor Division: MECHS.
Soulcalibur: Who doesn’t love Soulcalibur?
Sonic Adventure: Considered by many to be the height of the Sonic series.
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron: Made Factor 5 the king of casual space shooters.
StarCraft: STILL the most played RTS game.
Starsiege: Tribes: The first (and still one of the best) massive FPS.
Suikoden II: One of my absolute favorite RPGs.
Tekken 3: Arguable height of the Tekken series.
Thief: The Dark Project: The OTHER game that created the Stealth Action genre.
Unreal: Made Epic the graphical force they are today.
Xenogears: The height of pretentious yet still sort of awesome Japanese RPGs.

[tgr]

Of those, I've played Baldur's Gate, Descent FreeSpace, Fallout 2, Grand Prix Legends, Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, Rainbow Six, Shogo, Thief and Unreal.

I'm glad GPL is still runnable, because it is one of 4 driving sims I can still actually stand, even amongst all the games I've tried that's been released the last 5 years.

[Velorath]

Your "interlude/rise of Console gaming" era has a time span that encompasses both Diablo games, Starcraft, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, both Baldur's Gate games, Planescape Torment, Half-Life, Team Fortress, Myth 1 and 2, Quake 1-3, Master of Orion 2, Fallout 1 and 2, Grim Fandango, the first two Thief games, Unreal and Unreal Tournament, Age of Empires 1 and 2, Alpha Centauri, Everquest, Ultima Online, the Sims, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm leaving out.

This also reminds me what I wanted to add earlier but didn't have time to.  I generally think of eras in a game-based way rather than a system based way, especially after say, the mid nineties.

I might be worth compiling a list of important games released year by year if we are serious about this.

For a decent start Wikipedia has the history of video games broken down by years, including notable PC and Console game releases for each year.  Obviously there will be some omissions and people are going to have different opinions on what's notable, but it at least gets most of the basic stuff out of the way.