"Royal" Game Characters
This golden-haired FPS hero made his M-rated 3D debut in 1996. Hail to the king, baby!
Duke Nukem
In “Age of Empires II”, this long-standing empire gets access to a unique unit with a repeating crossbow that can devastate enemy infantry.
China
Clue 1
Castlevania: The Adventure
This genre takes its name from a classic Japanese manga and features players dropped into an ever-shrinking map with the winner being the last one standing.
Battle Royale
This browser game with a still-active community, similar to Tamagotchi and Pokemon, is likely where many of us got our start in the “monster-taming” genre.
Neopets
Sigmar protects! This is the full name of the leader of Warhammer's equivalent of Prussia.
Emperor Karl Franz
In “Duck Game”, this powerful handgun fires bullets that can penetrate walls.
Clue 2
Bastion
This genre, MOBA for short, got its start from community-made custom maps for Blizzard titles such as Starcraft and Warcraft III.
Multiplayer Online Battle Arena
A formative gaming experience for many millenials, this isometric MMORPG is debatably more famous than many of its triple-A Windows contemporaries.
Runescape
This “Tekken” character, a fearsome pro wrestler, wears a tiger mask on his head to obscure his true identity.
King
This “Ultimate Chicken Horse” level takes place entirely at sea, with a ship as a moving platform, and is the largest in the game.
Iceberg
Clue 3
This genre, including games such as Carrion and Guacamelee!, takes its name from the blending of two classic NES games and encourages re-exploration of a persistent map.
Metroidvania
In some ways the “crown jewel” of Newgrounds.com, the developers of this side-scrolling shooter formed a game company in order to give it a proper console release.
Alien Hominid
This alien rapper, part of a duo with Toe Jam, came to Earth in a 1991 Sega Genesis game.
Earl
In “Sid Meier’s Civilization V”, this civilization utilizes powerful tourism bonuses and a “Carnival” golden age to win peaceful cultural victories.
Brazil
Honey B's Hive
This early genre of gaming had no graphical interface; instead, commands were typed and players had to read the game’s description of events like some kind of bookworm normie.
Text Adventures
This game series with its origin in Java and Flash, named after the sport it models, has players carefully balancing their vehicles as they navigate obstacles to beat their best time.
Trials
This “Mass Effect” character, part of a reptile-like race known as the drell, is a legendary assassin who prays for forgiveness after each kill.
Thane
In “Left 4 Dead 2”, this campaign’s finale has the players defending a Mississippi plantation.
Swamp Fever
Older fans of this classic “armchair historian” genre that pre-dates video gaming refer to themselves as “grognards”
Wargames
This innocuously-named side-scrolling racing game, derivative of the classic Line Rider, features graphic dismemberment of a variety of player characters.
Happy Wheels