Never been a better time to be a gamer! True or false? (Poll)

[Leynos]

SvennoJ said:

Leynos said:

While we also had more options for Game Stores plus Arcades were around.  Loved Arcades. 7/11 and Pizza Hut had arcade machines. I liked a store called Media play. Sold books. Movies. Small electronics and games. New games but they also had a bin of loose SNES games all for 5-10 bucks. I had a schoolmate work there and told me about some new console coming from SEGA that was so powerful it could produce visuals from Myst in real time. (We were naive) So from there on out I followed the Dreamcast in magazines. It looked so futuristic. Had online features. the ASCII stick was futuristic and odd-looking. Then saw Shenmue and my mind was blown. Lip sync. Individual fingers. Viens on hands. Pick up any object in a room. Go into a bunch of stores. Flip light switches? The magazine had to explain the graphics were not CGI/Pre-rendered as that was some concern. DC is the first time I saw cloth physics in DOA2/SC

Aside from resolution, I can barely tell the difference between most PS5 games from a PS4 games now. People mention indies and some of it is indeed great but indies are also prone to the trap of doing a lot of the same things. The thing is in the 90s indies existed but the term did not. By modern definition original Doom/Wolfenstien was indie. PC was made by indie games in the 80s and 90s. A lot of games became big franchises that people now would never consider the term indie with them.

Yes, there was anticipation that is sorely missing now. All you hear now about the PS5 Pro is how expensive it is. And why not, it doesn't do anything new. Contrast that to the memory expansion for N64, that had hype and made new games possible.

I once bought an indie game from Australia for PC, came on a 3.5" diskette through the mail. Indies were everywhere. Plus we had the demo scene thriving. I also bought Computer Animation Festival Laserdiscs we watched together to marvel at the advances in technology. The Mind's Eye, Beyond the Mind's Eye.


The mod scene was thriving. The 90s created a whole new music genre, chip tunes.


There were TV shows using games, TV shows about games. Game Magazines sold in the supermarkets, demo discs attached.

The 90s were a great time to be a gamer.

I do like the demo's can carry data over now but PS1 Underground/PSM discs were amazing. From game demos of course to dev interviews. Tips and tricks and other things. It was a feeling of discovery.