Best Generation of Gaming.

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Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by retrolinkx »

I know most of us are pretty young, and overall we've only experienced 6th gen and up, but we can at least have some discussion about why the generation you grew up in is the best gen the generations of Gaming and which one is your personal best, with some reasoning behind it of course.

I'll always stand by the 6th gen being the best even if it was building the groundwork for the gaming industry today.

If you had a Gamecube you had tons of exclusive Nintendo IP's, along with new interesting ideas, and actual mulitplats for your console that weren't dumbed down due to being a weaker console.

If you had an Xbox you had Microsoft actually trying with their exclusives. Halo 2's multiplayer as well as Xbox Live in general, the best version of multiplats and a hard drive to boot, so you could save all your games in one place.

If you had PS2. Well, I'll say no more.

Hell, even if you had a Dreamcast you weren't out of the fight yet. You had Sega still releasing stuff into 2002 (and 6th gen lasted till 2005/6 really), you had more games than the Gamecube to play. You had all of Sega's hard work on one console, along with a ton of exclusive and interesting IP's. You even got the best version of 5th gen games.

Pretty much every console had great games and more. It didn't matter if you owned one of them since you had a lot going for it. Everyone had something and whatever that something was, it was great.

How about you guys?
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by chaoadventures »

Yeah, 6th was the best. I even have a PS2 with like, 4 games, and I still know it's good. And the GBA was also there with a bunch of great games and a few ports.
Also I think the Dreamcast got a bunch of Arcade game ports from around the same time Arcades started dying out too.

The worst thing I can think of is that the Xbox's controller being junk from what I remember. As a 5 year old. Playing Halo. With no idea what the controls were.
And, uh I think I flipped a car/tank on my brother and killed him. Good times?

4th is probably also a contender for the best, but I don't know much about the games that weren't considered the best of the best.
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

For Consoles, It's hard to pick between Gens 4, 5, and 6.
Gen 4 was the Golden age for 2-D Graphics before things got dominated by polygons and both Sega and Nintendo were at the top of their game.
Gen 5 had Rare at the top of their game churning out classics for the n64 while Nintendo successfully transitioned multiple franchises to 3-D. Meanwhile, many of the Franchises that help put Sony on the Gaming map were experiencing their Heyday, and while Sonic kind of languished during the Saturn Era, the Saturn is home to some of Sonic Team's most critically acclaimed non-Sonic titles. Real Shame Sega's Console Hardware division was so incompetent at the time.
Others have already sung Gen 6's praises, so I won't bother.

For Handheld gaming, however, Gen 7 wins hands down. The GBA saw several games that didn't just feel like cheap knock-offs of console games, but the DS really shined and unlike on Consoles, 2-D games could really thrive on handhelds, and the PSP gave full console experiences even in 3-D and saw several ports of great fifth and sixth gen games.

As for PC gaming, I'd have to go with Gens 1-2. Twas the golden age of text-adventures, a genre that pretty much died out once graphics got fancier than doodling with extended ASCII or drawing 2-D primitives with vector graphics. The one genre I prefer a keyboard to a gamepad and one genre I can still fully enjoy.
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by Ivogoji »

Gen 4 is when video games achieved their true potential as a medium.
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by Roaxes »

My favorite older consoles I still play are the N64, Nintendo Gamecube and Playstation 2. A time before having top notched graphics and online was the only reason people played video games. Now people demand them for making a game playable which usually kills gameplay for 'pretty graphics' or kills it for people who don't want to play online with others.

Dreamcast I never owned but have played at one of my uncles houses is also another top favorite I feel that was too underrated.
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by Lamby »

there was never a time graphics didn't matter, though, and i seriously doubt any adult is spending $60 purely on how something looks, i know i'm not, because i'd hope they intend to play it, so even the prettiest game must have some kinda draw

like even during nintendo vs. sega graphics were still one of the selling points also

anyway, probably 5 or 7 for me, i'm enjoying 8

edit: itt: insert altruistic nostalgia and industry myths from the elderly posters who're at the ripe age of under 21
Last edited by Lamby on Fri Sep 30, 2016 3:41 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by Tsui »

the time of PS1 faceless polygon people was good

I don't know which generation is which in how they're numbered but I initially had a Dreamcast, PS1, and various Genesis PC ports. In the Nintendo vs. Sega war, my parents were Sega people, and I didn't own a Nintendo console until GBA and Gamecube. and even then I still played mostly Sonic games. but that doesn't mean I don't think a lot of Nintendo games are great, of course.

and while I'm not typically going to play a game for the graphics alone unless it's Super Mario Sunshine, I've always really enjoyed Sonic 3's graphics a lot. the colors in Hydrocity Zone especially deserve a mention.

in conclusion I'm biased towards Sega games and consoles and the startup sound for the PS1 still creeps me the heck out to this day. also if you play SoulCalibur on the Dreamcast you get to watch a tiny version of your character fight on the VMU. it's distracting but adorable
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by JamminNekoSoaper »

I loved using action replay & pelican disc's so when the PS3 came out & I couldnt use the hacks I deserved after beating games I payed a high schooler to jail break my PS3 like he did my ipod to get free DLC. The Dreamcast has gotta be my favorite console, it had better graphics than the PS2 even though it was older & although it couldnt play DVD's like PS2 it still had online play before the PS3 came out so it was ahead of it's time in those 2 aspects. Nowadays I'd prolly stick to gaming on PC if I had one, emulators are getting a whole lot better from what ive seen on youtube so I'd definitely stick to retro games with mods along with a couple new ones. (づᗒᗜᗕ)づ
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by Nano »

On the subject of graphics: Graphics were, of course, scaling up more and more during the early generations of gaming. People found appeal in that.

However, those early generations in gaming also, like Roaxes said, invoked a lot of innovation from companies in order to draw in fans and get people playing games. You could totally argue that SEGA marketed graphics above all else (Look where that got them in the end, looking at you 32x), but they also focused on hardware to make the console run faster. Running the console faster meant that games could focus on faster gameplay and bring out games we'd never seen before such as Sonic.

I won't say early consoles never cared about graphics, in fact that's all they advertised about, but the games being released were creating innovations with those consoles left and right on top of utilizing the graphics they were now able to have.

Nowadays, late generation games have a huge focus on looking pretty and playing average to garbage. They're still fun, but it's super clear that AAA companies are refusing to put in more effort than necessary when it comes to releasing titles. Day 1 patches, performance issues, game breaking bugs, $50 season passes to get the content locked on your disc. It's all signs that not enough time and effort was put into their game, but we all accept it as a totally normal thing to happen at this point.

Battlefront is a perfect example of having the most beautiful game in the world, but having shallow gameplay and minimum content. EA knew for a fact that it would look great and that that would draw people in, but didn't make a fun game to play.

No Man's Sky is another example. You could say its failure was due to broken promises and screenshots that showed beautiful robust worlds filled with amazing things to discover. On release the game was buggy, shallow, and pretty.

It's just a huge trend to have beautiful games with the worst gameplay in the world. Some games break the mold, but a lot of players are comfortable playing mediocre games so the machine keeps on churning these dumb games nobody will remember in 6 months.

I think that's why it's so beautiful how even though early generation games don't age well, they're still remembered due to bringing incredible innovations to games during their time. You don't remember Mario 64 for the clunky controls, you remember it for the exciting adventure style gameplay that Mario games had never seen before.

So the best generation of gaming for me will always be the early ones. Not due to them being better, but for being more pure and wanting to actually contribute to gaming in meaningful ways.
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by Ivogoji »

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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

A brief history lesson for anyone unfamiliar with the numbering:
G1: Sometimes known as the 4-bit Generation, most people don't remember the consoles from this time as most had a single, hard-coded game and Arcades were boasting games that were far prettier and that you'd have to play a **** ton of times to equal the price of a home game. Probably the most famous of these single game machines was the original Pong. The Magnavox Odyssey is also worth note, as it is usually credited as being the first multi-game home console.
G2: Sometimes called the pre-crash 8-bit generation. It was at this time that home consoles first saw any real attention compared to their arcade competition. This is the generation of the Atari 2600, and ended with the US Home Gaming Market Crash of 1983.
G3: Sometimes known as the Post-Crash 8-bit Generation and nearly universally known as just the 8-bit generation prior to the mid-00s. Nintendo single-handedly revives the US home market with the NES, Atari attempts to regain their former glory, Sega exports the Master System accross the Pacific.
G4: Often called the 16-bit Generation. The SNES and Genesis blow everything that isn't Arcades away and we get the First Console War.
G5: Sometimes known as the 32/64-bit Generation. Nintendo creates their worse enemy when they back out of their deal with Sony and what might've become the SNES CD is rebuilt into the Playstation, the first major console to use Optical media over then much more expensive and lower capacity solid state media without need of an Add-on. Nintendo sticks to Carts for their faster load times, but the higher cost and lower capacity would hurt them some. Sega makes the right call on making the Saturn CD-based, but the Saturn's hard to work with Dual-CPU architecture, being a 2-D Powerhouse when the competition was banking everything on 3-D, and general mismanagement of Sega's console division, coupled with the fact many diehard Sega loyalists had already been burned by the 32X lead them to a solid third place finish sales wise. Also, the Atari Jaguar was Atari's last hooray before finally giving up on the Console market.
G6: Sometimes called the 128-bit Generation, though bit-age no longer really mattered at this point and the terms where becoming more and more inaccurate, leading to this numbering becoming the de facto standard. Sega learns from their Mistakes and releases the Dreamcast, but too much damage has already been done to their reputation and they throw in the towel around the time Sony and Nintendo launch the PS2 and Gamecube. PS2 shatters sales records and arguably goes a long way towards turning gaming from a Geeky past time to a mainstream past time while Nintendo cements a reputation as the "kiddie" console. Microsoft jumps in with the "basically a locked down pentium PC X-box.
American Arcades give up the ghost.
G6: Rarely called the 256-bit Generation as most people old enough to remember the days when bits mattered know that pretty much everything since the PS1 has been running on a 32-bit processor. THe PS360 Duo cement gaming as a mainstream past time even as they start many of the trends that plague modern AAA gaming. Meanwhile, Nintendo doesn't try to compete and strikes it hot with what people who like where AAA gaming is going will derisively call casuals. Also, while all G6 consoles had net capabilities and there was even some limited networking possible with some G4-5 consoles, G7 is when online becomes standard.
G8: The current Generation. PS4 and Xbone are basically locked down PCs and struggle to distinguish themselves from each other and actual PCs. Nintendo was the odd one out sticking to PowerPC instead of switching to x86, further alienating their third party support and seem confused by the fact that most of the people that made the Wii a roaring success in sales figures have moved on to mobile gaming, leaving the WiiU with little going for it that will attract people who aren't Diehard Nintendo fans aside from a lower price point. VR is starting to take off, but game consoles are already struggling to push enough polygons at full-HD to look better in stills than last gen while only achieving half of the framerate that has been the standard since at least G4 and VR having a higher framerate requirement for the vast majority to avoid VR-sickness.
G9: The Next Generation: Most estimate that Sony and Microsoft won't enter this Generation until around 2020, while Nintendo is already gearing up to release the NX. Only time will tell if the NX gets treated as an Early start to G9 like the Dreamcast was for G6 or if Nintendo will go down in gaming history as having two 8th Gen consoles.
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Re: Best Generation of Gaming.

Post by Crazo3077 »

I genuinely had a hard time coming up with an answer. I'm going to say early to mid 7th Generation was best. I say this because we still had the spirit of the 6th Generation, but everyone was getting online play figured out. I think online play itself was the best thing gaming could see, and this is when it first started becoming wide spread on consoles. But I'll say that the 7th Generation did feel like a drag toward the end, and the 8th feels more confusing. But I'm also not sure if the 24 hour news cycle has made it impossible for games to be as mysterious and interesting as before.

I'm not sure how strong my opinion is, since I've been falling out of gaming ever so gradually.
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