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d21lewis on 17 March 2020
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The_Liquid_Laser said:
d21lewis said:

There are so many posts in this thread that I want to respond to but it's all opinions and everyone's experience with gaming and what made each gen special is "in the eye of the beholder".

I guess part of it depends on how you interpret the op. Which gen would you rather experience today, by today's standards or which gen did you enjoy the most while it was still going on? I looked at it as the former.

Going by the title of the thread and the OP, it sounded like the latter, to me at least.  There was so much innovation in generation 3 that every generation since has been somewhat disappointing, especially generation 8 (PS4/XB1/Wii U).  

On the other hand, if I were to make a recommendation to a young person interested in retro gaming today, then I might recommend either generation 4 or 6.  Generation 4 games are similar to generation 3 but with better graphics.  Generation 3 games do look dated even to me (Gen 5 is even worse), and I do not care about graphics as much as a lot of posters on this forum.  Meanwhile you can compare Generation 4 games to the 2D indie games of today and the graphics still hold up pretty well.  Generation 4 games are also easier overall, which might be better for people who aren't used to high difficulty.  Generation 4 probably holds up better by today's standards, so that would be my answer according to how you interpreting things.

But what I've really been missing since Generation 3 is a large and diverse game library, especially one filled with experimental games.  Switch is doing pretty well so far, and it gets extra points for being portable while having a big screen and playing the games of a home console.  But in generation 3 the experimental games came from the leading devs: Nintendo as well as Capcom, Konami, Squaresoft, and Enix.  Now the innovation mostly comes from indies, because the bigger companies tend to play it safe.  Nintendo, today, is better about this compared to other big companies, but they are dramatically playing it safe compared to what they were doing during Generation 3.

No argument here. There just isn't that sense of wonder we used to get every generation as developers were always making bold new breakthroughs every couple of years, if not every few months. Our collective minds were consistently blown as the creators were "figuring it out". Not to mention the glimpse into the future that was arcades.

I think that's why I instantly fell in love with VR this generation. It brought back that feeling I used to get as a child. But even that format seems to have stalled in the innovation department.

I'll admit probably my biggest obstacle in the 3rd gen was... I was broke! Couldn't play all of the games I wanted and I traded good games for a lot of turds with good box art! 😂

Last edited by d21lewis - on 17 March 2020