This is the kind of thing I do when I don't have work, apparently.

After last night's spur-of-the-moment critique of D&D 5th edition, I realized that I own pretty much all of the earlier editions.  Except 4th edition, because that's shit.  Instead I have Hackmaster, which billed itself as a "4th edition" of a D&D style game that began as fiction, but then was able (by magic, as far as anyone could tell) to get Wizards of the Coast to license them the original 1st/2nd edition system.  It came out around the same time as 3rd edition D&D, but used that 1st/2nd system to present an "old school" feel game.

In any case, not only do I have the physical copies of all of these books, the internet has supplied PDF versions I can screenshot to do comparisons.  Since individual rules would be tedious, I decided to do a comparison of two "hey, go fuck yourself" spells: the classic Fireball, and the oddly 9th level Meteor Swarm.

Fireball: It's basically the first spell in the game where the mage can damage a bunch of enemies instead of just one.  Up until this time, the mage basically sits around poking enemies while the fighters kill everyone.  Fireball (and the less likely to TPK everyone Lightning Bolt) dramatically increase the PC's offense, and in turn, forces the DM to plan encounters far more than just "a pile of baddies live in this room."

1st edition.  This presents a fireball I know and love.  d6 per level of caster, save for half.  There's some discussion of device cast fireballs that doesn't show up later.  One other thing that doesn't appear here is a maximum.  A 20th level mage could presumably launch a 20d6 hellstorm that would pretty much kill anything in a 1st edition game.

2nd edition.  Since 2nd is basically just 1st edition with Gary's name removed and a decade of errata added, this is almost identical to the 1st edition version, even down to the words and descriptions.  The level limit is here now, because by the time 2nd edition came out, it was clear that a 20th level mage (with 5 3rd level spells a day) dropping 20d6 damage on the enemies was kind of unfair.  "Hold on guys, I'm just going to case fireball for the next five rounds, so stay back."

3rd edition.  Pretty much the same, but they at least decided to change the words a bit.  "Ranged touch attacks" didn't exist before, so casting a fireball through a narrow passage was handled either as "nope, fuck you, kaboom!" or "sure, make a DEX-3 roll" in previous editions.

Hackmaster.  This took a different tack on balancing the first edition "no-max" version.  The level limit is gone again, but the damage is cut down to a d4/level.  This makes it a third less over powered at high level, but also makes it slightly less useful at low level.  Then again, d4/level means you're also less likely to kill your entire party.

And in case you're concerned about Hackmaster and fireballs, they've made sure to include at least one fireball spell per spell level of varying damage, range, and targeting.

4th edition.  Spells are reduced to this in 4th edition.  See how it reads like an in-game video game description?  I have now summarized the main complaint about 4th edition.  Also: I have no clue how the damage system worked in 4e, but that looks like really shitty damage.  No scaling with level?  That's even more video game-y, where you learn FIRE, and then replace it with FIR2, and dump that when FIR3 comes around, because you have to get a new spell to get a more damaging attack.

5th edition.  Interesting strategy here.  Since 5e has this "use a spell of level X at level X+n" mechanic, they can have a fixed damage grade, and then let you increase that by pushing more "power" into it.  There's a kind of logic in this.  Basically, no matter who you are, if you open up a third level hole to shoot fire at someone, you're going to do 8d6.  If you want 9d6, you better open up a fourth level hole.  This contrasts with the implied 1-3e logic where with increased skill, you can pull more fire from the same size hole (up to a limit in 2 and 3).

Meteor Swarm:  I have never used this, nor have I ever seen it used as a PC.  I've launched it as a DM, and found it kind of underwhelming.  It's always seemed like a ninth level spell should do more damage to more people than a fireball would.

1st ed.  Reading this is impossible if you don't realize that Gary is using two different distance scales.  The sphere diameter is given in feet, which is to be understood to be "feet for the characters in game."  The distances are in inches, which are wargaming inches, equal to ten yards or ten feet, depending on if you're inside or not.  However, spells are always in "indoor" mode, unless you're talking range, and then it can expand to "outdoor."  Wargame inches were abandoned in later editions.  Anyway, four spheres of 10d4 (unclear, but taking this from 2e), with an area of effect that's...um:

This thing.  I've added the fireball area of effect in grey.  So meteor strike has the benefit of spreading the "fuck you" around a bit, and the core is doing more damage than the fireball would (18d6 for the fireball, average 63; 4*10d4 for the meteors, average 100).  Still, unless you're fighting a group spread out over quite a large area, you're probably going to do better throwing out fireballs, as you're going to have many more third level spells than ninth.

2nd edition.  See?  Inches have been replaced with in-game feet.  Beyond that, it's again an identical spell to 1e.  

3rd edition.  Same basic idea, but the implementation is different.  Instead of the four meteors forming a pattern at the target, the mage can throw them individually, so you can focus them on a specific target.  If you target them all at one target, this spell is doing 4*6d6 at the target, with another possible 4*2d6 if you can hit them.  The maximum is then 32d6, averaging 112, assuming you can hit all the ranged touch attacks (but you're a mage, so you probably won't be).  Again, this is more than the fireball, but it's costing a ninth level spell to do the work of two third level fireballs.  There's an area increase here as well, with 40' diameter explosions (compared to 30' for 1 and 2e, and 25.2' for the hemispherical fireball).

Hackmaster.  I can see no difference between this and 2e.

4th edition, dialing it in again.  8d6 is nearly three times the 3d6 its shitty fireball did (28, 10.5 averages).  Is a "wizard attack 29" really like six times harder than a "wizard attack 5"?  Who knows.  Who cares.  Fuck you, fourth edition.

5th edition.  Free targeting and 40' from third edition.  Average damage of 140 for this version (40d6), and with the "no-overlaps" rule at the end of paragraph one, this version really wants you to spread your four meteors out.  I guess this rule makes sense, as once you're covered in fire, more fire isn't really going to cover you any more.  The bludgeoning damage probably should stack, though.  Comparing to the appropriate fireball (which does 8d6/28 average damage), this meteor swarm is dropping five fireballs on each target, spreading out over two and a half times the area for each target, and doing that four times across the battle.  This is a satisfactory ninth level spell compared to the third level fireball.