The Best of Generation IV

Im just gonna go ahead and list my favorite games of the past 5 years, genres be damned. Its increasingly getting blurrier, which is good but still makes stuff like this useless.

Fur Fighters
Jet Grind Radio
Half-Life 2
Max Payne (but NOT the 2nd)
No One Lives Forever
Project Gotham Racing 2
Rise of Nations
Rome: Total War
Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
Warcraft III
World of Warcraft

Honestly its a quite good list, I see some, most even, of my favorite games ever. I havent spent time with many of the generation's top games (God of War, Ninja Gaiden, etc.) but there's always time for that.

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Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater

Starting "Generation I" with the NES does not compute

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:lol: :lol: :lol:

As I typed that I thought to myself, "NZE is going to come in here and slap me for this." The truth for me is that the earlier stuff blurs, so I am not sure if it is one generation or two. The NES is an easy landmark to start discussions, because many TNLers are too young to remember anything prior.

Action: God of War

Adventure: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas / Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Fighting: Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves

FPS: TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

Horror: Resident Evil 4 / Resident Evil Remake

Platformer: Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal

Puzzle: Missing: Since January

Racing: Burnout: Takedown

RPG: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne / Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Shooter: Border Down

Sports: NFL 2K5

Strategy: Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

:lol: :lol: :lol:

As I typed that I thought to myself, "NZE is going to come in here and slap me for this." The truth for me is that the earlier stuff blurs, so I am not sure if it is one generation or two. The NES is an easy landmark to start discussions, because many TNLers are too young to remember anything prior.

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Heh. Yeah, there's no concrete answer as to how many generations of hardware there have been as definitions vary. It would be nice if the current console gen about to end had a good name. I'm so used to just calling it "current gen".

Just my favorites of what I've played.

Action: Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
Adventure: Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GC)
Fighting: Virtua Fighter 4: Evo (PS2)
FPS: Halo (Xbox)
Platformer: Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (PS2)
Puzzle: Lumines (PSP)
Racing: Burnout 3: Takedown (Xbox)
Sports: NFL 2K5 (Xbox)
Strategy: Warcraft III (PC)

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genres be damned. Its increasingly getting blurrier, which is good but still makes stuff like this useless.

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Yeah, so I'm gonna do the same. I'm trying not to pick games that seem excellent but aren't really something I'd play (RPGs, etc)

Quake III Arena
Half-Life 2
Street Fighter Anniversary Collection
Beatmania IIDX
Ninja Gaiden
San Andreas
Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay
Wipeout Pure
Jet Grind Radio

I think the desire to list games without the genres has more to do with just how dominant some genres have been than a true blurring. For instance, picking a winner between God of War, Ninja Gaiden, and the Devil May Cry series is hard as shit, as they are probably all in the top 10 games of the generation.

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Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater

Heh. Yeah, there's no concrete answer as to how many generations of hardware there have been as definitions vary.

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I'd say there are three before 8-bit (NES/Master System/7800):

The first is the truly prehistoric stuff like Odyssey and Fairchild; things that we'd barely recognize as videogames & had you putting transparent overlays on your tv & other assorted wackiness.

Next is the 2600/Odyssey 2 gen, where you start to see reasonable facsimiles of arcade games, spaceships that look like spaceships, even some impressive effects by the end in things like Solaris.

And following that is the Intellivision/Colecovision/5200 gen - I'd probably toss Vectrex in there too. These systems were clearly designed to be a step up on the previous stuff.

8 & 16 bit are pretty clear cut. The only real debate is where you stick PC Engine, which is 16 bit as far as I'm concerned because of the visuals it produced, CPU be damned.

Once you make the transition to 32 bit - N64 (forget what the system's called), Playstation, Saturn, 3D0, PC FX, you get a couple of 'tweeners - namely Jaguar, 32X & Neo Geo. I'll be generous & toss them in the next gen rather than calling them 16 bitters, though I'm not sure 32X really lives up to its name - it's more of a glorified Super FX style accelerator. Maybe it would've been more apparent what it could do had it lived longer.

And then the current gen - the only debate here is whether Dreamcast belongs. It's a debate which I say that nearly the system's entire library being ported to PS2/GC/Xbox usually with no graphical upgrades and nobody blinking solves. DC belongs, no question.


So aside from a few stragglers that found themselves in the gaps between the major systems, you can point out 7 pretty well defined generations up to now.

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It would be nice if the current console gen about to end had a good name. I'm so used to just calling it "current gen".

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The "finally, no more crap 3D" gen? I've seen people call it 128-bit, but that's not all that accurate.

I would agree with most of that except I would put the Intellivision in the same gen as the 2600 as they were the two major rivals. The Channel F is a hard one to place as being the first programmable it's closer in many ways to the 2600 than stuff like the first Odyssey but on the other hand it(and the Studio II) died too quickly to really be proper competitors with Atari.

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Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater

Heh. Yeah, there's no concrete answer as to how many generations of hardware there have been as definitions vary. It would be nice if the current console gen about to end had a good name. I'm so used to just calling it "current gen".

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A while back, in a thread on the Gaming Age Forum, I posted my own rundown of the generations of video game console hardware. I concluded there were seven distinct generations:

1st: Dedicated (self-contained) game consoles like Magnavox Odyssey, Atari Home Pong, Coleco Telstar, etc.
2nd: Fairchild Channel F, Atari 2600, Magnavox Odyssey 2, Bally Astrocade, Mattel Intellivision
3rd: ColecoVision, Atari 5200, GCE Vectrex
4th: NES, SMS, Atari 7800
5th: Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, Neo-Geo, SNES
6th: 3DO, Jaguar, Saturn, PlayStation, Nintendo 64
7th: Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, GameCube, X-Box

Later in that thread, I decided to factor in the portables, and tried to fit them in with the above generational definitions:

1st: none
2nd: Milton Bradley Microvision
3rd: none
4th: none
5th: Game Boy, Lynx, TurboExpress, Game Gear
6th: Virtual Boy, Nomad, Game.Com, Neo-Geo Pocket, WonderSwan, Game Boy Color
7th: Game Boy Advance, N-Gage, Zodiac
8th: Nintendo DS, Sony PSP

Yes, I also added in an eighth generation in the process, which on the home console side would comprise X-Box 360, PlayStation 3, and Revolution.

I also realize I omitted lots of other systems, but I tried to limit the list to mainly the major systems.