Sept. 29, 1983, was a dark day for the video game industry.

That was the day the New York Times reported Atari Inc., the leading home video game manufacturer in the United States, had dumped tons of unsold game cartridges in a New Mexico landfill and sealed them under 2,500 pounds of cement.

Hot Fall Games | Games Without Carnage

Rumored to be among the discarded waste were millions of unsold copies of E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, which today is at the top of many "Worst Video Games Ever" lists by gaming critics like PC World.

After a boom in the late 1970s and early '80s, Atari laid off thousands of workers and posted over $500 million in losses in what industry insiders refer to as the Video Game Crash of 1983. The crash is perhaps best summed up in that image of millions of game cartridges being forever sealed in a concrete grave. Dead along with E.T. and Atari, many believed, was the video game industry itself.

E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial - Atari image

24 years later, the video game industry is celebrating its biggest year ever.

Anita Frazier, a video game analyst for NDP, a market research company, predicts 2007 will bring in $18 billion. That is up substantially from 2005 and 2006, which were also record-breaking years.

"2005 was $10.5 (billion) and 2006 was $12.5 (billion), so you can see that this would be a major increase and break all records by a substantial margin," said Frazier via an e-mail.

So with the gaming industry celebrating its biggest year ever, now seems like a good time to look back and find out what brought gaming from the dark days of 1983 to the golden era of today. And there is perhaps no better expert to ask than Andy McNamara, editor-in-chief of Game Informer, the largest video game magazine in the country.

1. THE LEGEND OF ZELDA - NES

There may never be a game as great as The Legend of Zelda. Released in 1986 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, it is the “Citizen Kane” of video games. With a vast, open-ended world to explore, scrolling, great music, and an epic storyline, Zelda was the first game that came with an internal battery to save progress because it was nearly impossible to complete in one sitting.

The Legend of Zelda - Nintendo image

“(Zelda) showed what video games could be,” said McNamara. “It’s got all the elements that make games what they are today and forever - a fun control mechanism, a story about a princess that you’ve got to go save. It really didn’t get any better.”

Zelda also was the first game that seemed to constantly evolve. It wasn’t about simply killing the monster at the end of the level. A player had to acquire artifacts and discover hidden secrets that sometimes took months to figure out.

“There were games before, like Asteroids, where you shot asteroids and then on level 5 you shot more asteroids,” said McNamara. “In this game, you uncovered items that you could use to move the quest forward. Your character was constantly changing. All those things that define adventure were in this game. It had all the elements from every other video game wrapped up into one.”

2. SUPER MARIO BROS. – NES

From the ashes of the gaming crash of 1983 rose an Italian plumber named Mario who - along with his parent company, Nintendo - almost single-handedly saved the industry when the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1985. Super Mario Bros. went on to sell over 40 million copies and become the best-selling game of all time. The secret to the game’s success was the secrets it contained.

Super Mario Bros. - Nintendo image

“I think people were enamored by what were the hidden secrets in this game, and how could they beat it,” said McNamara. “It’s a hallmark game in the history of video games. Especially for us, where we had the video game crash of 1983, where people were like, ‘Video games are never coming back.’ And in 1985, Super Mario appeared out of nowhere, and people were like, ‘Video games are great.’ It revived video games in the United States.”

3. TETRIS – Gameboy

For many children in the '80s who had a Nintendo or Gameboy, Tetris was the first game that their parents wanted to play, too.

“It’s a simplistic game that’s just incredibly addicting,” said McNamara. “It’s like Monopoly, it’s going to be around forever. There’s always going to be a Tetris that you can buy somewhere, because it’s that good.”

4. GRAND THEFT AUTO III – PlayStation 2

When the first Grand Theft Auto premiered in 1998, it brought gaming into a whole new realm when it created the open-world format, which was a whole city that was created for players to wander through and get in adventures.

Grand Theft Auto III - Rockstar Games image

“Grand Theft Auto introduced sandbox gaming to the world, and video games have not been the same since,” said McNamara. “They put a world out there, and you can go deal with the world any way you want. It’s a sandbox. They make the sandbox, you go play in it.”

5. DOOM – PC

Before Doom, parents and politicians were complaining that children were playing too many video games. But after Doom came out in 1993, they were complaining that the games were too violent. Doom didn’t invent the first-person shooter, but it was the first of its kind to be massively popular.

“Doom was just the first amazingly well-executed first-person shooter,” said McNamara. “I kind of consider it the granddaddy of it all, even though it wasn’t the first, and (id Software) really put the time and effort into it and they got the true experience through.”

6. RESIDENT EVIL 4 – Gamecube

The Resident Evil series introduced the survival horror genre to gaming, and then Resident Evil 4 brought things to another level with an over-the-shoulder camera angle.

Resident Eveil 4 - Capcom image

“In the other Resident Evils they kind of moved the camera angles around, but in Resident Evil 4 it was the first time they moved the camera angle to this over-the-shoulder, third-person view, which now people are pretty familiar with from Gears of War," said McNamara. "That brought the action and the fear to a never-before experienced level.”

7. FINAL FANTASY III – Super NES

When asked about Final Fantasy III, McNamara first let out a nostalgic sigh. It’s a game endearing to the hearts of gamers worldwide because of the massive combination of graphics, story, moves and depth that it brought to the gaming world.

“(Final Fantasy III) had a story that went on forever. I mean, the game takes about 70 or 80 hours to complete,” said McNamara. “It’s got so many twists and turns. Obviously, by today’s standard of graphics it’s not gorgeous, but at the time it was a mind-blowing experience.”

8. HALO – Xbox

Halo didn’t invent the first-person shooter genre when it was released in 2001, but it took it to a new level when Xbox introduced an online multiplayer format with Halo 2 in 2004.

Halo - Bungie Studios image

“(Halo 2) was the first game to introduce online multiplayer to the console,” said McNamara. “While PC players had been doing it for a while, tons of console players had not experienced it, and I think this was their introduction to it. Because this is where they learned about it, it became endearing to them. Halo stands as one of the great multiplayer first-person shooter games of all time.”

9. MS. PAC MAN – Arcade

Pac Man, which was released in 1980, and its more popular follow up, Ms. Pac Man, released in ’82, were perhaps the first video games that became household words. Anybody hanging out at a bar or waiting to get a table at a restaurant in the early 80s probably played Ms. Pac Man or watched others playing it. And the game hasn’t gone away. Every new console that comes out has a version of Pac Man or Ms. Pac Man.

Ms. Pac Man - Midway image

“Ms. Pac Man’s one of those things that was easy. It was just a single joystick, and you could walk up and play it,” said McNamara. “I think everyone is pretty familiar with the concept of eating, so it was something that was very easy to grasp. It’s a fun and exciting game and continues to be fun and exciting to this day…Pac Man will live forever."

10. WORLD OF WARCRAFT – PC

World of Warcraft, part of the Warcraft series, is what the gaming world calls a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game.) Released in 2004, World of Warcraft was the first time the series went from a regular game to the MMORPG world.

“It’s the massive player effect," said McNamara when asked what made the game so popular. "You join guilds, you make friends, you have to work together to do things. There’s plenty of quests to do. You’re in there playing out this fantasy.”

• Bring Video Game Passion To Work
• Early Adopters Miss Out On Deals
• New, Hot Toys Make Use Of Technology
• Video Game Sales Soar