Jump to content
IGNORED

What is your favorite console generation?


Recommended Posts

 

 

the Colecovision is clearly a previous gen system because it is not capable of doing the types of smooth scrolling games that the Master System and NES would be famous for
I'm not the biggest CV fan, but games like Princess Quest show the CV is quite capable of that type of game. Not as good as when the NES & SMS were pushed, but clearly the CV can do smooth-scrolling, platformer type games. I still consider the CV & NES to be in different generations, but there is a lot of overlap. To me, defining a generation is a fuzzy combination of technology, timeline and style of games.
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not the biggest CV fan, but games like Princess Quest show the CV is quite capable of that type of game. Not as good as when the NES & SMS were pushed, but clearly the CV can do smooth-scrolling, platformer type games. I still consider the CV & NES to be in different generations, but there is a lot of overlap. To me, defining a generation is a fuzzy combination of technology, timeline and style of games.

The CV can't do scrolling smoothly. It can do scrolling with software tricks that try to emulate scrolling capabilities, but the processors simply can't do scrolling on the level of say Super Mario Bros. Plus we are comparing a homebrew CV game that takes advantage of 30 years of software development to the swan song of the first batch of Famicom titles.

Edited by empsolo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Those games kind of stepped foward 4 or 8 pixels at a time it wasn't exactly smooth.

 

On the other hand, didn't SMB2 and SMB3 require special chips on the cart to scroll the way they did? (i.e. up, down, left, right etc...)

Super Mario Bros USA and Super mario Bros 3 used the MMC-3 chip. But people misunderstand the reason why the chip was used in Super Mario Bros 3. It was mostly used to keep the score and lives counter static while having the rest of the screen scroll. And it was used for split screen scrolling for games that used two player simultaneous screens.

 

Edit; Also the MMC-3 enabled diagonal scrolling as well as animated tiles.

Edited by empsolo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've always seen the Second Generation as a subdivided thing. To me, "Gen 2.0" is Atari 2600, Odyssey2 and the like. Largely cartridge-based, pre-tile pixel-graphics systems.

 

My idea of "Gen 2.5" is ColecoVision, Intellivision, 5200, and other late-era, pre-NES consoles. Frankly, I'd likely slot the 7200 into Gen 2.5, based on its technology and the initial projected release date. Of course, all this is fairly subjective, but it seemed that the historical lineage of things made a lot more sense by breaking this explosive, formative era down to smaller bites as many new ideas hit the market. YMMV.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Like I said. Nobody is dimissing them. It's just that the older console and software manufcaturers and producers like Atari, Coleco, and Mattel thought they could ride the early arcade port gravy endlessly and that would end up burning consumers in the end.

 

I'm putting myself in the shoes of a 1983 gamer. The 2600 came out 6 years earlier and is dreadfully underpowered. There are like 6 systems on the market to choose from and systems are full of clone games to avoid copyright infringement. You've also got your arcades that you still frequent heavily. So you've bought Pac-man, Space Invaders, Breakout, etc. for the 2600, you've played the shit out of them in the arcades and now new Atari systems come out and they just released the same games. Who on earth would buy these games twice and still not have it look as good as the arcade?

 

Youtubers are always saying how Nintendo saved the world from the crash like they are the only people in the world who could have done it and how people thought video games were a fad because of the crash. Anyone in 1983 who called video games a fad must have been 90 and can't figure out why youngens these days don't still like to play kick the can. I guess I just feel a lot of Youtubers and retro gamers generalize way too much and have a hard time putting their Nintendo fanboy nature aside when trying to be historically accurate and using a fair perspective. Anyone who knows anything about video games knows Pac-man and ET didn't kill the industry. The problem is people just believe whatever the Youtube guys say. It's always Nintendo beats Sega, Nintendo saved the world from Atari's fuck ups, but the Wii U is gonna end up selling barely more than the goddamn Saturn and they won't twist the knife on that one. And then they will always mention Nintendo's strong portable side, fair enough, but they're kicking fans in the nuts just like Sega did with all its add-ons by making 10 different 3DS consoles, including the recent one that will have its own exclusive games. Then on the flipside you have this other group of "hardcore gamers" morons who hate the Wii despite it being awesome, and I wanna fuckin' strangle them too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love my Atari and all the games that came during that era, but I gotta go with the era of platforming goodness starting with the NES and ending when the 16-bit wars fizzled out. It was at that time when I started fully enjoying my Atari anyway. 2600 games were being cleared out at stores in the mall and I was buying up a shitload. I only had nine games growing up so it was blissful. The NES brought in an exciting time for gaming that just got better when the Genesis and SuperNES came out. It was an excellent time to be a gamer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Who cares about your old magazines and Facts? Everybody knows the NES is the first Videogame System out there, Everything that came before is the same and are all crap. Welcome to the new world of "Retro Gaming":

 

First platformer is Mario

First Action RPG is Zelda

The only good game Atari ever made was Pac Man

Coleco Vision is just a crappy atari clone with slightly better graphics, but no one cares, because, again, anything to come before the mighty NES is just garbage.

 

If you don't know These Facts you're just too old and can't Keep up with the Evolution of Retro gaming, where People will build up Hype for new Retro consoles on Facebook without ever bothering to try any of the dozens of actual old Videogames out there. Not to mention old magazines are crap. The only relyable Information Come from your favorite youtuber. Those you can trust. No one would be crazy to upload a Video with false information to YouTube.

 

 

Guessing you are being sarcastic? Sure hope so....

 

 

Anyway, my overall fav is 3rd generation....because I grew up with the NES. But I also have a lot of respect for the previous 2nd generation. I really like the Astrocade and ColecoVision. And to me, I see a pretty big leap between the Atari 2600 / O2 and ColecoVision / Atari 5200. The ColecoVision has the same native pixels/graphics resolution as the SMS and NES, but with fewer colors and sprites and poorer scrolling capabilities. But compared to the 2600, or O2, the CV has much higher-res graphics, more colors and sprites, and better sound. Overall, exactly half-way between the 2600 / O2 and NES / SMS. Early NES games like Duck Hunt and Excitebike are very "ColecoVision-esque". ;-) And Antarctic Adventure is nearly identical on both CV and NES.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, there is a bit of hyperbole in those sentiments but they aren't wrong though. Considering that for two straight console generations Atari released the same arcade conversions that everybody had playing since the VCS was released in 1977. And those so called next "gen" hardware offered those same games only with minor hardware updates and audio and control schemes and people ended up getting tired of them. Did Atari suck? Maybe not. But I can see where people are coming from nevertheless.

I agree with this, but I feel like we're getting at separate things. The same games getting released again and again arguably contributed to The Crash, and yeah, I can see how things like that would color peoples' perceptions of those games and consoles at the time, especially in light of the NES. But is that why 20-something retrogamers today tend to be disinterested in pre-Crash consoles?

 

I'd also point out--at the risk of splitting hairs--that "Atari released the same arcade conversions that everybody had playing since the VCS was released in 1977" is a bit of hyperbole; most of those rehashed arcade ports were from the 1980-83 timeframe :P . Nevertheless, your point is well taken, and I agree that Atari always seemed to be a little stuck in the past.

 

Except the NES was able to do a lot of things naturally that neither VCS or the Colecovision were able to do like being able to do smooth srolling right out of the box and to do that with advances in graphics at the same time. Super Mario Bros was able to show just how far the hardware was able to be pushed without the need for special mapper chips. That's not saying much considering that Miyamoto had designed Super Mario Bros with the intent on it being the Famicom's swan Song.

Fair point. The Coleco certainly isn't known for scrolling, but there are Colecovision games that do it very well (Defender and River Raid come to mind). Whether that's "out of the box," I couldn't say. But does it matter? Many consoles' best games often had some help from extra RAM or sound hardware or something to enhance their capability.

 

I don't know about that. The 7800 looks much better in terms of sprite models than what we saw previously in the 5200 and the 2600. The graphics don't look better than what we would see with the Famicom and Master System but they were noticible improvments nevertheless. The only place where it really is a step back in on audio. But that's what you get for cheapening out and forcing devs to pay for the added cost of having 5200 quality audio on a third generation console.

I mostly agree, ha. There were quite a few 7800 games that looked substantially more advanced than what the 5200 had. But, there were others that looked like only incremental improvements, but then again, those tended to be the kinds of games people were abandoning for Nintendo's and Sega's fare anyway.

 

I made the comment about the 7800 being barely a step up from the 5200 because to me, most 7800 games don't look like anything a 5200 couldn't produce reasonable approximations of if it had even a small boost in RAM or processing power or graphical muscle (like if there was a 5200 equivalent to the Super FX chip or something), or in some cases, even if it didn't. I think the XEGS library supports this notion (I mention the XEGS because it and the 5200 are essentially different forms of the same hardware); many XEGS games look pretty close to their 7800 counterparts, if not quite as colorful or as smoothly animated. Similarly there are at least two 5200 games--Gremlins and Rescue On Fractalus--and a few XEGS "exclusives" (like Airball and Thunderfox) that look like they could be 7800 games. Point being, I don't think the 5200 and 7800 were really as far apart as they sometimes looked, but that's only opinion.

 

Then again--and with apologies to the guys behind Adventure II--we have yet to see anything resembling a Bob DeCrescenzo 7800 game on the 5200, so maybe I'm wrong. :)

 

 

That's true, but this generally means nothing when we talk about 2nd and 3rd gen systems.

Why not? Wouldn't these consoles technically be 2nd and 3rd gen systems, given that's when they were designed? (I don't have a horse in the whole "generation" race so it makes no difference to me.)

 

 

Like I said. Nobody is dimissing them.

I think this is where we'll have to agree to disagree. :) I've personally met gamers who are flat-out not interested in anything that happened before the NES for one reason or another. I'm sure it's not a stretch to say others on this very forum have experienced this as well, whether it's casual indifference or something more akin to antipathy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To be honest I heard that as atari was releasing the 2600 it was already dying. MAny of the really good developers were leaving already. That's probably the reason why The pre 2600 games are their best. It's nothing to do with the Hardware, it's just how things were made. There is definitely some big difference between a colecovision and an atari 2600. You have to be blind not to see that much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm abit torn on which I prefer.

Parts of me appreciate the early 8 bit era(Atari,Intellivision,Coleco,etc)

and the other parts really was amazed by the 32 bit era.

 

Obviously the 8 bit holds allot to me,I was around 10 when those systems and their games hit.

Air Sea Battle,Asteroids,Space Invaders, they meant you had the arcade experience in your home,and the big games were there for you to play all the time after school. Amazing time to me.

 

32 bit era though,Sega,Nintendo,Capcom,wow. The move to 3D was a game changer.

I actually bought the Saturn,N64, and PlayStation on day one and it was pretty much like discovering home video games in the 8 bit era ll over again. To me 16 bit era lasted abit too long and it was stale for me, then came the 32 bit 3D era where the games played a whole new way,in true 3D. Granted it was early 3D but my God,Daytona USA,Panzer Dragoon Saga, Super Mario 64, Golden Eye, Resident Evil, so games were game changers. The Jaguar was also dear to me to at that time. Was nice to see Atari enter the fray into 3D console gaming too. Bought one in early to mid '94 for Tempest,AVP, and Doom.

 

I guess if I had to choose which era I'd go with the 8 bit. Its where it began for me,and the memories are golden. The hobby was thriving,new, and young. Had a special magic about it. Afterall you don't see kids huddling in circles anymore to play a new game on display at GameStop,but you sure did at Sears and MontGomery Ward. Wasn't taken for granted back then,gaming was simple and allot more fun to me.

 

Sometimes I think todays modern gaming has lot its direction and could use more of goign back to the beginning,the basics,starting over and not getting lost with so much entertainment media being put into these machines. I think the later eras (after 32 bit)

where gaming started shifting slowly towards web browsers, online gaming, dlc, and game patches, is where traditional single player gaming started to suffer.

Edited by PhoenixMoonPatrol
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The CV can't do scrolling smoothly. It can do scrolling with software tricks that try to emulate scrolling capabilities, but the processors simply can't do scrolling on the level of say Super Mario Bros.

So... you're saying this doesn't exist?

All (slight exaggeration) 8 bit games are built on software tricks in one form or another. NES included. ;) It's the nature of building a game on such limited hardware. I'm not arguing that the CV should be in the same gen as the NES, and I clearly stated that. I'm not saying it was as powerful as the NES & SMS, which I also clearly stated. I'm simply saying that the CV hardware could do very similar, smooth scrolling platformer types of games, and I provided the link to an example. The reason those types of games didn't come out for the CV back in the day has little to do with the hardware. They just weren't the predominant genre like they were in the NES era, and the CV's life got cut short by the crash.

 

 

Plus we are comparing a homebrew CV game that takes advantage of 30 years of software development to the swan song of the first batch of Famicom titles.

Yep, we sure are.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Too many confusing rules about what generations are what. I'll just go with NES and SMS era with C64 at the same time. I spent more times on those than any other consoles with the possible exception of 7800 but the "pre-crash" era games didn't get as much attention from me because I was still young and more interested in playing outside than playing games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't expect the mix up when referring the generations by number. I should have just said which era. Oh well. Yes the ColecoVision, 5200, etc. were more advanced than the 2600, but for me, I put those in together with the 2600. I first got into video games during that time and they all were doing their thing at the same time. The 2600 came out the gate earlier. They all pretty much went down together, which is why I can't see the NES and Master system being in the same generation/era as the ColecoVision, Atari 5200, etc. I see a generation as a specific period of time where several systems had their run of prominence at once.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've seen arguments for chronological order (1,2,3,4,5,6) and release order (4,5,6,1,2,3) and even one guy who was arguing his own order (something like 4,5,1,2,6,3).

 

I prefer release order. Especially for someone, rare as they may be, who knows nothing of the story. Chronological order ruins the surprise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...