In a game known as Smash TV (created in 1990), a violent video game show should have existed in the year 1999. Looking back on this idea, we almost can't help but laugh. It's even difficult to picture a game show like Smash TV to ever exist today. Did the developers really think the world would morph into a barbaric place such as Smash TV nine years later? If so, our society has proven that humans are more civilized, until maybe the year 2009.

The world of Megaman takes place sometime in the year 200X. X can be any single digit between 0-9, and since we're already in 2008, that must mean 2009 is the furthest it can possibly go. Mathematically speaking, X can be a lot higher, but let's keep it simple and cap it at single digits. Megaman was created in 1987, and technology was increasing at an incredible rate at this time. In 1987, the world has already seen the nuclear bomb and we've even sent people to the moon, so it's believable that robots would roam the Earth twenty years later. Now that we're in 2008, we barely have robots with human characteristics, let alone human robots that are equipped with plasma cannons, can stick to walls, have a dog companion with a spring attached to its back, get new armors by talking to a hologram of an overweight old deceased scientist, and get boss robots' powers when it defeats them.

In a game known as 2020 Super Baseball, robots also roam the Earth alongside humans. This game was first released on the Neo Geo in Japan in the year 1991, which means that it was set twenty nine years in the future. This game follows the basic rules of baseball, with a futuristic enhancement. The most obvious enhancement is the addition of robot players. Secondly, the human players are equipped with body armor, computer sensors, and jet pack for added athletic abilities. 2020 is twelve years away. Are we able to fulfill this 1991 prediction of the future?

Earth Defense Force 2017, released for the Xbox 360 in 2007, has an invasion from an alien source. These aliens consists of giant bugs and insects, towering mechs, and galactic spaceships. The premise of the game is that you are part of the world's united defense force, and you're repelling these aliens back with firearms that ranges from rifle bullets to nuclear missiles. This idea seems insane, but we have roughly nine more years to see if this will happen.

According to Robotron: 2084, an arcade game created in 1982, robots have dominated the world and the last hope for mankind is a small humanoid mutant. This particular humanoid is trying to rescue the remaining clones of the last human family. The developers of this game are saying that 102 years later, this could potentially happen. We still have seventy eight years to see if this prediction stands.

The industry of the past seems to set a particular date for games with a futuristic setting. Since then, the industry has taken a new approach to what the future settings can be for video games. Instead of saying what things would be like in the future and setting a specific date, they rewrite history, and change the present. Today, we have games like Resistance: Fall of Man for the PS3 and Bioshock for PC and Xbox 360. Instead of asking "What does the future hold?" they ask "What would the future be like if this event never happened?" Resistance: Fall of Man takes place in a world where World War II never happened. Instead of a chaotic war between mankind, it was a chaotic war between mankind and aliens. Bioshock does something similar by asking "What would happen if 40+ years ago, the world's most intelligent scientists got together and worked in an underground city?" This gives the developers of Bioshock open ideas on what they can do with weapons and technology. Nobody can say the developers are wrong because what they're presenting never took place; it's an alternate reality. By introducing an alternate premise, they can have an alternate future. With this idea in the developers' hands, the possibilities are endless.

The future of the past comes down to one conclusion. It will be either violent, filled with robots, or a combination of both. The gaming industry in the 80's and 90's seems to agree that these catastrophic events would occur sometime in this millennium. One error that the industry made is that it gave these events a specific date. Once we catch up to these dates, we can only look back on how silly these ideas were.