The explosion in fantasy paperback publishing is generally observed to have occurred from around the early 1960s through the early 1980s. Works by pulp writers such as Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and A. Merritt were reprinted while new works by Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner, and Charles Saunders, among many others, debuted. Lord of the Rings and certain other epic fantasy works were also published in paperback, but a great deal of the popular fantasy at the time was in the sword-and-sorcery/heroic fantasy/low fantasy mold, often in books with covers by Frazetta, Jeff Jones, or Jim Steranko.
Video games went commercial in the early 70s and hit critical mass somewhere between 1978 (the debut of Space Invaders in arcades) and 1980 (the debut of Space Invaders on the Atari 2600), and have generally kept growing ever since.
Although there are many fantasy-based games (and no lack of fodder for this blog), there's little overlap between the sword-and-sorcery boom period and the growth of video gaming. In 1977 Terry Brooks's Tolkien-influenced The Sword of Shannara was published, and in 1978 the Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner decision contributed to the demise of midlist book publishing. There occurred a shift away from spinner racks full of slender books about lone adventurers fighting for more personal stakes toward world-shaking, Tolkien-esque epics initially spread over thick trilogies, and then expanding even further into enormous series in which single volumes could exceed the entire LOTR in page count.
By the time video games started making serious technological advances in the early/mid-80s, particularly at home, the sword-and-sorcery genre was receding and the genre as it evolved through the filter of table top role playing games was taking over. There's a bit of Conan persisting in video games like Golden Axe and Rastan, but the majority was party-based action descended from Wizardry and Ultima, and video games started incorporating bigger, continent-smashing fantasy stories about chosen ones and their friends battling dark lords to match the fiction that was becoming more and more popular.
One sub-genre that was relatively prominent in the boom years that got virtually no representation in games was the sword-and-planet genre. No games based on ERB's Mars or Venus books (not even to tie in with the Disney John Carter movie), nor anything particularly similar to them. Aside from a Flash Gordon game published on 8-bit computers, there's virtually nothing. Most likely a major factor was another late 70s development: the 1977 release of Star Wars. The gaming industry went crazy for Star Wars and the late 70s through mid-80s featured numerous games, most unauthorized, recreating TIE fighter battles in space or the Death Star trench run, plus licensed adaptations of movies that followed in the wake of the Star Wars trilogy. And just as Star Wars's influence waned slightly, the release of Aliens in 1986 opened a still-ongoing deluge of games featuring space marines mowing down hordes of Giger-esque creatures.
Much as how sword-and-sorcery eventually regrouped through small press and independent publishing, traditional representations of the genre in modern video games have mostly been found in the indie scene, although the major success and influence of the Witcher and Dark Souls series might be making the mainstream more accepting of the genre. But there's always the threat that the pressures of AAA game development could derail things as quickly as they catch on. CD Projekt Red was on top of the world after the release of The Witcher 3, but the difficult release of Cyberpunk 2077 caused the announcement of The Witcher 4 to be greeted with as much skepticism as anticipation. And it remains to be seen if the Elric game in development will even be released or get cancelled as previous attempts at Elric games have. There still isn't a definitive Conan game, and seemingly no reason to expect games inspired by Howard's other stories, Wagner or Saunders's fiction, or David Gemmell's Druss, to name a few classics. The gaming industry's impulse to revert to elves and space marines is deeply ingrained.
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