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While the current generation looks promising. It's too early to tell if it will dethrone the king. And while there were some true gems in the last generation, it was an exploratory age and did not reach the true levels of excellence. The first gen was alot of fun at the time... but little from that gen is playable anymore. The 8-bit generation was incredible... but it was just surpassed by my choice. I would say that the 16-bit gen has been the greatest generation of gaming so far.
Each has had about an equal impact on me save for pre-NES group, and assuming DC gets lumped with the latest. So it's all been golden for me, save for the few years about '95 where I stopped gaming for the most part. When it goes downhill, I'll be sure to let everyone know.
i couldn't agree moreQuote:
Originally posted by sggg
For me there are 2 Golden Ages.
The first one is option 3. I absolutely lived for Genesis. I had so many games and I rented so many more. There are so many classics that came out. Sega CD and Game Gear were great too.. and even the other systems which were out them but I didn't have were cool too. Especially the TG16 and Neo*Geo. It was wonderful times...
The second Golden Age for me is even simpler. 1999-2001. It was a short time, but it was the best of times. First came NGPC, the most underrated little system ever.... and then came Dreamcast. The best system ever! The amount of mind-bogglingly good games that came out for Dreamcast - the perrrfectly designed system - in such a short time is incredible (especially when you consider than XB, PS2, and GCN combined don't have the amount of quality software that Dreamcast does - at least in my opinion!). It's a shame it had to end, but it was great while it lasted.
I hope that a third Golden Age comes, but I don't think it will be for a generation or two. Right now things are OK. Not too bad, but far from ideal...
After the 16-bit era, we've been in an evolving metamorphosis of 3D games with developers struggling to jump into a new era of gaming. Some great gems have come from it, but not as great as the 16 bit days. I enjoyed games on both the SNES and Genesis (and even NES) more than the 32-bit generation.
IMO the Neo Geo was just as much a part of the "PS1, Saturn, N64, 3DO, Jaguar, GBC, NGPC, WS, WSC" era as the systems included. If for nothing else than the fact that Neo Geo ports made up a decent chunk of the Saturn's library. The Neo Geo was still kicking out titles pretty regularly, and they were just as fresh and interesting to play as anything on the 32+ bit systems.
So even though I voted for the 16 bit generation, most of my enjoyment of it was the Neo Geo during the 32 bit generation.
This might be hard for you to handle, but I believe the Golden Age has nothing to do with systems and is all about the age of the player and when they first really get into video games.
I have been playing since the early days and my first system was a Atari 2600 but I would have to say the Golden Age for games was the NES to SNES era for me, not that those systems where any better or worse then ones today or before it but just because home gaming was just still very new to me and the step gaming took from the Atari to the NES was incredible. But the Golden Age for alot of newer players may be the Playstation and that doesn't make them any worse then what we consider Golden Age, after all those systems where high tech when we played them and people did the very same things to people whose first system was a NES or Genesis or SNES that played the earlier systems :p
To me the Golden Age is a person's age and not the hardware, back when you really started enjoying games no matter what system it was on because everything was still so new where now it is like seeing that movie for the second time where we aren't as easily enjoyed and now are reduced to nit picking everything when in our golden age all we cared about was having fun and not how many frames per second a game ran... just having fun was good enough.
I'll never be able to get this. I still have no clue how to identify frames per second.Quote:
how many frames per second a game ran...
I think the Game Boy and Lynx should be lumped with the 16-bit machines considering when they came out.
Since we're talking strictly console gaming here and not including arcade or computer games, I will go with the 16-bit era. Although, there's a good chance the current era will be my favorite by the end of it.
You couldnt have said it better my friend...Quote:
Originally posted by SearchManX
After the 16-bit era, we've been in an evolving metamorphosis of 3D games with developers struggling to jump into a new era of gaming. Some great gems have come from it, but not as great as the 16 bit days. I enjoyed games on both the SNES and Genesis (and even NES) more than the 32-bit generation.
I would like to take a moment to stick up for the SS-PS1-N64 era even though I didn't vote for it.
Many people bash this era and label it an unimpressive stumbling block but I think it was an amazing era with just as many good games as the ones before it. There were so many awesome games like Zelda OT, Super Mario 64, NiGHTS, Resident Evil, Xenogears, Virtua Fighter, Panzer Dragoon, Sin and Punishment, etc.