Age of Empires
"Age of Empires", released on October 26, 1997, was the first game in the series, as well as the first major release from Ensemble Studios. It was one of the first history-based real-time strategy games made, utilizing the Genie game engine. GameSpot described it as a mix of "Civilization" and "". The game gives players a choice of 12 civilizations to develop from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. The expansion pack, "The Rise of Rome", published by Microsoft on October 31, 1998, introduced new features and four new civilizations, including the Romans. Although the two games had contained many software bugs, patches resolved many of the problems.
Online game
The history of online games dates back to the early days of packet-based computer networking in the 1970s, An early example of online games are MUDs, including the first, "MUD1", which was created in 1978 and originally confined to an internal network before becoming connected to ARPANet in 1980. Commercial games followed in the next decade, with "Islands of Kesmai", the first commercial online role-playing game, debuting in 1984, as well as more graphical games, such as the MSX LINKS action games in 1986, the flight simulator "Air Warrior" in 1987, and the Famicom Modem's online Go game in 1987. The rapid availability of the Internet in the 1990s led to an expansion of online games, with notable titles including "" (1996), "Quakeworld" (1996), "Ultima Online" (1997), "Lineage" (1998), "Starcraft" (1998), "Counter-Strike" (1999) and "EverQuest" (1999). Video game consoles also began to receive online networking features, such as the Famicom Modem (1987), Sega Meganet (1990), Satellaview (1995), SegaNet (1996), PlayStation 2 (2000) and Xbox (2001). Following improvements in connection speeds, more recent developments include the popularization of new genres, such as social games, and new platforms, such as mobile games.