Gaming Eras
- Thread starter Jay
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I choose the Nintendo 64/PlayStation/Dreamcast era (the 90's-Early 00's)...I think it was at it's best because to me, games should be based off of characters, and it had the most character based games...Sonic, Mario, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and the list goes on...Even RE, though not quite a character game, far out matched the generic shooters and such...It was still very character DRIVEN...The 90's era had the best gaming...
I can honestly say that I haven't been disappointed by any era. I loved my Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bro's, P.O.W., Little League World Series, etc. The original Nintendo was awesome! I then got my Sega Genesis and fell in love with Sonic, Earthworm Jim, Streets of Rage, and Chameleon Kid. Next came the N64 and what I consider to be my favorite gaming system. SO many golden titles came out, along with my favorite of all time: LOZ-Ocarina of Time. The cartridge era was AMAZING and created some of the most memorable series that we still enjoy to this day.
Well I think that the sega megadrive, n64, ps1 & ps2 all had some of the best games ever released. Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, RE, Tomb Raider, FFVII, Mario 64 and Ratchet & Clank - even though all those game series have sequels on the current consoles you just can't beat the originals.
To be honest I love most era's. Megadrive/nes/n64/ps1/ps2/360... Love it all
I wish I still had my Megadrive, just so I could play the original bomberman, it doesn't feel the same playing it on emulator
For me I'd say definitely the 90s through early 2000s. I do like some of what we're getting this generation. Its just seems games are getting less creative. In the 90s platformers and horror were a big genre. Though now you barely see any. Games that have made their mark as a series will mostly make it. Nowadays companies have overflooded the market with shooters. And going by todays standards, if a game doesn't have guns and isn't a FPS, it won't sell.
My memory goes back to late 80s, anything before that is not first-hand experience, it is knowledge from reading and education.
The worst era was around 1983-84, the market got saturated with low quality games. Some games were good but they were few. It resulted in a collapse in the game market (I think it was 1984) and a huge number of computer platforms disappeared (it was common for large electronics companies to make computers as well as other products, and usually their computers was its own platform incompatible with anything else). At the time the IBM (International Business Machines) platform (what we call "PC" today) was not a gaming platform, most computers on the IBM platform did not have a graphics card or a sound card.
As most computer brands/platforms disappeared around 1984, Commodore and Atari totally dominated the home-computer market. They were called PCs too, everything for the home market was PC (Personal Computer), and the IBM platform was primarily a business platform. But for the sake of avoiding confusion I'll not call any of them PC now.
Game quality got better from 1985 and onwards, and I believe it has gotten gradually better year by year until now. There has been some downs along the way. In my opinion, 1992-96 was a big down because the IBM platform totally took over the home-market and it was not ready for games. I can''t say for sure if it was due to hardware limitations or bad coding, but my guess is both. In many cases porting was the issue.
As gaming platform MS-DOS (the OS) sucked, and I believe the early Windows versions was not much better. You could spend 18 hours installing a game before you kicked the computer out the door. Or with some luck you could have it installed after 30 minutes.
Late 90s: I have some few games for the Windows platform from this era, they are technically (graphics and sound) much better than the early 90s DOS games and somewhat better than early 90s Amiga games.
My favorite era is 1987-95 and that is limited to the Amiga platform, especially the 32-bit Amigas from 1992. Forget about the rubbish released on DOS/early Windows.
Nothing beats modern PC games, but today is not my favorite era. I do not admire and respect modern games as much, because it's so easy to make good games on modern hardware resources. But I guess I can say that games from the Windows XP era and later is my second favorite era.
@Meg:
I know I should mention Macintosh, but I simply know too little about it. But I believe it was a far better system for games than IBM-PC was, in the 80s and 90s.
The worst era was around 1983-84, the market got saturated with low quality games. Some games were good but they were few. It resulted in a collapse in the game market (I think it was 1984) and a huge number of computer platforms disappeared (it was common for large electronics companies to make computers as well as other products, and usually their computers was its own platform incompatible with anything else). At the time the IBM (International Business Machines) platform (what we call "PC" today) was not a gaming platform, most computers on the IBM platform did not have a graphics card or a sound card.
As most computer brands/platforms disappeared around 1984, Commodore and Atari totally dominated the home-computer market. They were called PCs too, everything for the home market was PC (Personal Computer), and the IBM platform was primarily a business platform. But for the sake of avoiding confusion I'll not call any of them PC now.
Game quality got better from 1985 and onwards, and I believe it has gotten gradually better year by year until now. There has been some downs along the way. In my opinion, 1992-96 was a big down because the IBM platform totally took over the home-market and it was not ready for games. I can''t say for sure if it was due to hardware limitations or bad coding, but my guess is both. In many cases porting was the issue.
As gaming platform MS-DOS (the OS) sucked, and I believe the early Windows versions was not much better. You could spend 18 hours installing a game before you kicked the computer out the door. Or with some luck you could have it installed after 30 minutes.
Late 90s: I have some few games for the Windows platform from this era, they are technically (graphics and sound) much better than the early 90s DOS games and somewhat better than early 90s Amiga games.
My favorite era is 1987-95 and that is limited to the Amiga platform, especially the 32-bit Amigas from 1992. Forget about the rubbish released on DOS/early Windows.
Nothing beats modern PC games, but today is not my favorite era. I do not admire and respect modern games as much, because it's so easy to make good games on modern hardware resources. But I guess I can say that games from the Windows XP era and later is my second favorite era.
@Meg:
I know I should mention Macintosh, but I simply know too little about it. But I believe it was a far better system for games than IBM-PC was, in the 80s and 90s.That was interesting to read. I remember hearing about some of IBM/PC history. Though not this much because I wasn't into PC gaming.My memory goes back to late 80s, anything before that is not first-hand experience, it is knowledge from reading and education.
The worst era was around 1983-84, the market got saturated with low quality games. Some games were good but they were few. It resulted in a collapse in the game market (I think it was 1984) and a huge number of computer platforms disappeared (it was common for large electronics companies to make computers as well as other products, and usually their computers was its own platform incompatible with anything else). At the time the IBM (International Business Machines) platform (what we call "PC" today) was not a gaming platform, most computers on the IBM platform did not have a graphics card or a sound card.
As most computer brands/platforms disappeared around 1984, Commodore and Atari totally dominated the home-computer market. They were called PCs too, everything for the home market was PC (Personal Computer), and the IBM platform was primarily a business platform. But for the sake of avoiding confusion I'll not call any of them PC now.
Game quality got better from 1985 and onwards, and I believe it has gotten gradually better year by year until now. There has been some downs along the way. In my opinion, 1992-96 was a big down because the IBM platform totally took over the home-market and it was not ready for games. I can''t say for sure if it was due to hardware limitations or bad coding, but my guess is both. In many cases porting was the issue.
As gaming platform MS-DOS (the OS) sucked, and I believe the early Windows versions was not much better. You could spend 18 hours installing a game before you kicked the computer out the door. Or with some luck you could have it installed after 30 minutes.
Late 90s: I have some few games for the Windows platform from this era, they are technically (graphics and sound) much better than the early 90s DOS games and somewhat better than early 90s Amiga games.
My favorite era is 1987-95 and that is limited to the Amiga platform, especially the 32-bit Amigas from 1992. Forget about the rubbish released on DOS/early Windows.
Nothing beats modern PC games, but today is not my favorite era. I do not admire and respect modern games as much, because it's so easy to make good games on modern hardware resources. But I guess I can say that games from the Windows XP era and later is my second favorite era.
@Meg:
Thanks.
I think that one of the reasons (perhaps the biggest) why the IBM platform prevailed, is that IBM let other companies manufacture and further develop their technology. Technological development goes faster when many companies work on the same thing.
But the drawback was that it was more difficult to make software (games) work perfectly on all computers because the number of possible hardware configurations are almost endless. This was much simpler on platforms like Amiga or Atari where one manufacturer made sure all computers were identical.
I omitted consoles because I got my first console (PS2) only a few years ago, so I can't say much about it.
I think that one of the reasons (perhaps the biggest) why the IBM platform prevailed, is that IBM let other companies manufacture and further develop their technology. Technological development goes faster when many companies work on the same thing.
But the drawback was that it was more difficult to make software (games) work perfectly on all computers because the number of possible hardware configurations are almost endless. This was much simpler on platforms like Amiga or Atari where one manufacturer made sure all computers were identical.
I omitted consoles because I got my first console (PS2) only a few years ago, so I can't say much about it.
Romero you super oldschool!
For me personally it would be the last gen, xbox, ps2 and gamecube. I had aloootttta fun in those days, gaming with friends and the like. My splitscreen days are over it seems!
For me personally it would be the last gen, xbox, ps2 and gamecube. I had aloootttta fun in those days, gaming with friends and the like. My splitscreen days are over it seems!
Not to mention maintaining PC's can be very expensive to keep updated for gaming. That's great you got a PS2. You have one of the best consoles ever made.
My favorite Gen would have been the mid 90s with the PS1 and PC (I had a Sega Mega drive then but it was really old and didnt last long) To me that was the greatest era ever when games were made by gamers and gaming was nothing more than a fun hobby. We had epic FPS's like Doom, Quake and Duke 3D, The incredible Survival Horror Resident Evil, the iconic Tomb Raider franchise and such 
My most hated Gaming era is today, games are made by businessmen for profit, not fun, also once great game series are being destroyed in favor of "wider audiences", Gaming is no longer a hobby, its a full out business venture (It's turned into Hollywood), Fully finished games are cut in half and sold at full price while the rest of the game is sold as DLC, Company's release "Me Too" games every year in the pathetic hopes of grabbing CoD's audience and more reasons I cant be bothered listing......but yeah.....this generation of gaming is one me and my girlfriend have vowed to protect our future children from.
My most hated Gaming era is today, games are made by businessmen for profit, not fun, also once great game series are being destroyed in favor of "wider audiences", Gaming is no longer a hobby, its a full out business venture (It's turned into Hollywood), Fully finished games are cut in half and sold at full price while the rest of the game is sold as DLC, Company's release "Me Too" games every year in the pathetic hopes of grabbing CoD's audience and more reasons I cant be bothered listing......but yeah.....this generation of gaming is one me and my girlfriend have vowed to protect our future children from.
The business and "quick profit" is nothing new, that was what caused the crash around 1983-84.
I don't think we will see another crash like that, because even if games today are very commercial and perhaps crappy, they are often well made crap. And when they do have serious bugs, patches are offered for free download. In the 80s you could not download a fix from the Internet.Maybe people will grow tired and the gaming industry will have to change some things they do, but it'll probably happen gradually and not with a big crash.
Today's gaming era is not what's bad...It's the "gamers"...The ones that sit around ONLY playing CoD and it's rip-offs and call themselves "gamers"...When the higher ups see that's what's selling to the larger crowd of wannabe gamers, that's what they want to make more of...Something that will sell...My favorite Gen would have been the mid 90s with the PS1 and PC (I had a Sega Mega drive then but it was really old and didnt last long) To me that was the greatest era ever when games were made by gamers and gaming was nothing more than a fun hobby. We had epic FPS's like Doom, Quake and Duke 3D, The incredible Survival Horror Resident Evil, the iconic Tomb Raider franchise and such
My most hated Gaming era is today, games are made by businessmen for profit, not fun, also once great game series are being destroyed in favor of "wider audiences", Gaming is no longer a hobby, its a full out business venture (It's turned into Hollywood), Fully finished games are cut in half and sold at full price while the rest of the game is sold as DLC, Company's release "Me Too" games every year in the pathetic hopes of grabbing CoD's audience and more reasons I cant be bothered listing......but yeah.....this generation of gaming is one me and my girlfriend have vowed to protect our future children from.
If people could appreciate the value of games that aren't aren't straight action all the time blowing people's heads off, then we wouldn't be in this fix...Look at Nintendo...They haven't jumped on the whole FPS/CoD bandwagon...They're still making games for FUN that they KNOW will sell...That's why we have games like Mario and Zelda honestly able to compete sales wise with CoD...But those titles only compete because they have an already established reputation...Unless you're a real gamer, you don't appreciate the quality of games like Heavenly Sword, Conan the Barbarian, and Rayman Raving Rabbits...These were all spectacularly made games in their own way, but since they weren't massive shooters with little thinking, nobody remembers them...
PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation was my favorite. I play my 360 quite a bit, but I can't say I put more than 50 (fun) hours on a game. Right now on Persona 4 I'm on hour 55, with a lot more to go. I can't say much for the original Xbox, but the gamecube was alright. It had Master Quest and the original Twilight Princess.
We speak of eras, what is a gaming era? I used it for the 1983-84 period but I guess that wasn't an era, it was merely a time period. Maybe what define a game era is the period in which games are made for a particular hardware generation.
Like the Downloadable Content issue..people complain about it but its only because people buy it that the price is higher, quality way crapper and an excuse for companies to rush games or lock dlc. COD is the prime example.. average expansion dlc like maps is 800 MS points, COD jacks it too 1200 MS points. Bet your ass that will probably become the standard.
Games like COD aren't bad at all, its just as you said, people willing to buy a new game every year with a few tweaks. They are gamers, better term would be 'highly restricted gamers'.
Yeah what you said at the end is pretty much correct. I have never met anyone who owns a game console from one of those days..rare enough seeing a super nintendo around.
Highly restricted is a good way to put it...And I hope people here see these comments and think long and hard about their past complaints lol...
P.S...I own a Super Nintendo...And I STILL play it...
kennedy killer, youtube alphaomegasin,he appreciates all games and still plays games from way back when, and understands what a true gamer is.
you guys are right about the cod fanbase, they are still gamers,but they are, as you say restricted.
one thing i get sick of hearing today is, people who trash a game just because it doesn't have todays graphics, i mean i still play ps1 games on emulator along with dreamcast games and i can see past the shoddy graphics and appreciate a game for what it is, and if i still had my n64 i would totally play it (ocarina of time FTW)
todays generation of gamers, only really class a game as good, if it's an FPS, has explosive graphics and doesn't really have any sense of a story line. and that makes me sick.
because of this growing fan base, more game companys are throwing out games to copy cod because that's what sells at the moment...but what about a decent rpg (and don't for the love of god anyone say, "well we do have final fantasy 13..NO, that game just about passes as a final fantasy game, after they ruined the battle system and slapped a linear progression path on it)
you guys are right about the cod fanbase, they are still gamers,but they are, as you say restricted.
one thing i get sick of hearing today is, people who trash a game just because it doesn't have todays graphics, i mean i still play ps1 games on emulator along with dreamcast games and i can see past the shoddy graphics and appreciate a game for what it is, and if i still had my n64 i would totally play it (ocarina of time FTW)
todays generation of gamers, only really class a game as good, if it's an FPS, has explosive graphics and doesn't really have any sense of a story line. and that makes me sick.
because of this growing fan base, more game companys are throwing out games to copy cod because that's what sells at the moment...but what about a decent rpg (and don't for the love of god anyone say, "well we do have final fantasy 13..NO, that game just about passes as a final fantasy game, after they ruined the battle system and slapped a linear progression path on it)