Emulation is better than modern gaming
- Thread starter FlyingLemons
- Start date
Thankfully I don't have to emulate anything. I still have my Game Boy, my SNES and my N64, along with all the games (and now I can afford getting the ones I couldn't get as a kid,too). And I agree. As much as I enjoy modern games and modern graphics, there is nothing better than sitting down for a round of good old fashioned Mario Kart on my SNES. (Although I honestly have NO idea how I accomplished those time trial laps when I was a kid. So FAST!)
I still have a functioning Atari 800XL and 1040ST. Disk drives and monitors are a bit dodgy but the main machines still work after 35-to-40-some years.
I just… can’t. I used to love it. I used to be good at it… but these days it’s positively epilepsy inducing and… nah. 5 minutes with it and I was back to Mario Kart 8.
It was the most widely available console at the time. You forget that it never was about the graphics back then with that generation. It was more about the ability to have games on TV screen at home, which was novel at the time. People didn't care much about how games looked like as long as they were fun. It was only with the NES-onwards that people started to care more about graphics.
It depends on the game. I'm generally not a fan of modern AAA titles (even less so if micro transactions are involved), but I do love the wide variety of creative, smaller and indie games we have today.
That being said I started gaming in the early 2000s and there's many great games from that time period, and many great games from before that. Older games often tend to be clunky, but there's still many fun ones and often these days you can get re-releases that have some QOL features added (such as more safe points, auto-saves and things like that. The re-release of FF IX, for example, has it's ridiculously high encounter rate dropped)
That being said I started gaming in the early 2000s and there's many great games from that time period, and many great games from before that. Older games often tend to be clunky, but there's still many fun ones and often these days you can get re-releases that have some QOL features added (such as more safe points, auto-saves and things like that. The re-release of FF IX, for example, has it's ridiculously high encounter rate dropped)
I guess I must have been a blip in the curve. I was of that generation and cared very much about graphics quality. I probably should have been more of a Commodore fan but I went the Atari (computer) route, both of which had better graphics and sound capabilities than the 2600.
Ok, but you're talking about computer vs console, which had very different capabilities and market segments. You're comparing apples to oranges at this point. It's not like now where the differences are minor. And I don't think it's quite fair to the consoles of the period.
I think it's actually due to the fact that now we have hardware that is capable of rendering movie-level visuals in real time, and that feeding that hardware has gotten a lot more expensive. PS2-era games had compared to now fairly low-polygon assets, and even in the "HD era" of PS3 and Xbox 360, still had assets that were fairly basic.
Now the AAA blockbusters have to have digital assets suitable for rendering in 4K, and those are expensive to produce, and game budgets shoot up rapidly - Spider-Man 2 cost a reported $300m to produce, and unless these games have multibillion dollar sales, they're regarded as not offering a return on the profit put into them.
What could have been a quirky PS3 game is now a multimillion dollar effort to make, and so the industry retrenches to things like hero shooters and generic franchises that don't require too much upkeep. They do shell out a fair amount of money on the production, but the games that result from that don't push the envelope too much and keep it safe to ensure there is as close to a guaranteed return on investment. Hence our current, and rather bland state of affairs.
Essentially, yes. Graphics were either entirely or mostly crafted from scratch; at best, a character may have been inspired by a real-world likeness, but visuals were stylized enough to get away with any uncanny resemblances. Today, with many titles blurring the line of demarcation between video games and cinema, personalities are directly modeled after actors through photorealistic graphics* (in addition to being voiced by those same actors); thanks to the high cost of snagging a Keanu Reeves or Cara Delevingne, you can bet your ass companies are looking to maximize ROI. Once upon a time, it was easy plus cheap for a character to fade into the background or express oodles of dimensionality (through pure writing), as the situation demanded; not so with big name performers, unions and grasping bigwigs in the mix.
As for why games feel as though they're pushing messages harder then before, I think the internet is partly to blame; long before a title is ever released, there are manifold peanut galleries ready to rip games/developers apart (sometimes out of boredom and sometimes because they've misplaced their passion) in addition to congenial folk talented enough to make a living out of whipping people into frenzies over assorted outrages. Consequently, companies have adjusted by working overtime to ensure their investments do not break the wrong kind of eggshells.
* One of my pet peeves with contemporary offerings: they're all trying so hard to look "realistic" to the point where I'm experiencing sensory deprivation as my eyeballs drink in titles from different studios...which are nearly indistinguishable from one another.
As for why games feel as though they're pushing messages harder then before, I think the internet is partly to blame; long before a title is ever released, there are manifold peanut galleries ready to rip games/developers apart (sometimes out of boredom and sometimes because they've misplaced their passion) in addition to congenial folk talented enough to make a living out of whipping people into frenzies over assorted outrages. Consequently, companies have adjusted by working overtime to ensure their investments do not break the wrong kind of eggshells.
* One of my pet peeves with contemporary offerings: they're all trying so hard to look "realistic" to the point where I'm experiencing sensory deprivation as my eyeballs drink in titles from different studios...which are nearly indistinguishable from one another.
The Atari 5200 console was basically an 800XL without a keyboard.
It got a remake a couple of years ago for PS4 and PC:
No VR headset neccesary BTW
I can think of only 2 recent games with lots of characters modeled after celebs: Death Stranding and Crime Boss: Rockay City
Deaths stranding is a Hidejo Kojima joint, thus weird on purpose...
Crime Boss: Rockay City is just a bad game...
Danny Trejo is in a lot of games though, including Yakuza 8...
The Atari 5200 console was basically an 800XL without a keyboard.
Ok, but still two very different market segments, both with a different focus. With the console they were aiming for the home arcade. Naturally, a computer is going to have a bit more capabilities as gaming is not the only thing it can do, and maybe it has better graphics because of it.
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The Atari 5200 console was basically an 800XL without a keyboard.
I also had a 5200, great console with some rather big shortcomings.
Indeed. It was “next level” (for Atari) at the time, but NES it wasn’t. ColecoVision was older but still arguably better in many ways, especially with the respectable catalog of official arcade games and markedly superior graphics. Even IntelliVision had some kick-ass games and marginally better graphics (and the first voice synthesizer for a console, in the form of InelliVoice).
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