The golden age of gaming?

[PatMan33]

Jumping back to Earthbound for a moment...

I really did enjoy the game but I felt that the combat was pretty bad. It took waaaay too long and the fights were generally boring... well, except for New Age Retro Hippie.

[Blue Protoman]

The combat was good.  But you need to grind a liiiitle too much in the entire series.  They made a patch fixing that for EB0, though.

[Drakon]

I have to agree with the people who cite the 16-bit era as the Golden Age. During previous generations, developers were struggling just to figure out what a video game was and how it should work. Even a lot of early Famicom games are pretty clumsy. It probably wasn't until games like SMB, Zelda and Megaman came out that they really had the concept of what made a good game worked out.

So, you take that knowledge and put it toward systems with greater capabilities. Graphics could now show exactly what you want, not just suggest it. Sound effects and music (especially on the SNES) sound like real sounds. Most importantly, developers were no longer so restrained by the capabilities of the hardware when designing the games and could really let their imaginations go for the first time. You didn't have to so rigidly count colors, or play tricks to display larger characters. So, existing genres like the platformer and RPG were expanded and refined, while new genres which were previously impossible were created (like FPS).

The following generation, I thought, was a disaster. With the introduction of 3D, they sort of went back to the drawing board. Nobody really knew how to apply classic game archetypes to 3D. What's a 3D platformer to be like? What about a 3D fighter? What should the storage medium even be? PSX games looked like ass, you could barely tell what anything was. If the SuperFX was the 3D equivalent of the Atari 2600, the PSX was the equivalent of early Famicom games. The N64 had better capabilities, but the cart format and its bizarre texture limitations really put the crunch on what developers could do. Granted, the whole generation wasn't a waste, as games like Ocarina of Time and GoldenEye came out of it, while the JRPG was revitalized in the US through FFVII-IX. Still, nothing compared to what came before or after.

Immediately following, I see the PS2/GCN/Xbox era as a second Renaissance. The speed bumps to figuring out 3D gaming had been overcome, and the hardware had advanced to where the games were good representations of their content again. There are so many good games from that generation that I'll never scratch them all off my list as long as I live.

What we're in right now is another transitional time I think. The industry can keep advancing the graphics, but they really aren't sure where to take gaming next. Nintendo is leading the charge, experimenting with different types of spatial controls, but it's a bit awkward yet. 3rd parties especially are having a hard time with the Wii. I think we've all had enough "waggle" to last a lifetime. However, they did eventually get the DS figured out, so here's hoping time will solve the Wii's wont of good 3rd party games.

wow awesome opinion indeed.  I think you really hit a lot of nails on the head here.  The golden age of 3d is indeed pretty darn cool.  Although the only thing I don't like about the 3d age is the genres were still things that had all been done before.  A few new things popped up, but nothing that blew me away as some of the ideas that spawned out of my favourite era.  I really don't know what the next generation will bring us.  Probably the same type of games in a more interactive manner.

[133MHz]

I'm all for decent virtual reality games. We have the processing power, the color LCD displays, the motion sensors... it's just a matter of putting it all together

[Blue Protoman]

And making it cheap and safe.

[Agent X]

Well... until we (mankind) better understand the human mind,
I don't forsee "True" V.R. becoming a reality anytime in the next
quarter century, as it would need to be a software/harware interface
working in unison with the human brain for Stimuli (FEELING) and
maybe to some degree data gloves to move things around in the
game world.  Then again, I'm picturing something that's a cross between
a William Gibson SimStim device (see the movie: *Strange Days*
called "a wire" in that film) meshed with Star Trek The Next Gen's
Holo-Dec.

I still think we're a ways off from that, though I would certainly plug into
that, in some sort of Mamoru Oshii AVALON setting.  Problem is, we'd
have guys and gals who'd log in and never log out.  Their job would be
in being professional gamers in some server.  I can imagine the porn
industry making a killing off that one.

Me... I'll still be playing Famicom, Super Famicom, Mega Drive and 7800
well into 2036 or 2050, assuming GOD wills me to live that  long, or society
doesn't blow itself up.

[manuel]

And making it cheap and safe.

That's exactly it.
If it can't be done for under 400$ (better would be under 300) in retail, it's not going to happen.


What AgentX said sounds interesting. Of course such tech would be expensive, but it would be nice for the arcades, where expensive and big hardware never was an issue.

[Blue Protoman]

And they can make it safe in arcades, too.  You can put down barricades in arcades to prevent you from accidentally hitting someone in the face while playing Virtual Reality Super Mario Bros, or whatever they do it with.  Not so at home.