So you were fine with things like Metroid prime running at 60fps @ 480p but not alright when going back further to stuff like Goldeneye on the N64 dropping down to 15-20fps.

Ya see... when I think back over my gaming through the decades I think there was rarely something I played where I thought "this is just unplayable" it was always just a case for me of suck it up and play the game, I mean there was things like the Isometric Sonic game on the Megadrive... that was unplayble because of graphic choices, but it was just that Sonic did not work in isometric 3d from the get go, but I still loved the amazing fmv intro to the game....

The future had arrived....

Man Sonic really fucked up his intro to 3d in comparison to his Plumbling rival huh?

Edit - Dear lord see the draw distance around Sonic in that intro, it must be about 3 feet infront of him that the data is loading in and out of view, would have been amazing to try to play a game with that view distance.

I think that games should be playable at a playable resolution depending on the hardware. 420p on a hd tv is unplayable. 420p on a handheld is playable. I think that if your game runs at 30fps or 60fps, and the game is running at a higher resolution than it should then as a developer you should put performance first and say "well, at 1080p this is running at 22-30 fps, I should lower the resolution to have a game with good performance"

But, since we are in the resolution war, developers don't give a damn about performance and that's why we have so many games like that. If I have to play a game with stable framerate at 720p or 900p, I'm fine with that because stable framerate is more important for the gameplay experience. And that's why I prefer to play third party games on pc, yeah they look better but also I can customize the experience for my needs.

I might be high and a little drunk but isn't it only 480p on TVs.  Perhaps there is a 420p handheld.

yeah my mistake

I have to.... say it..... 420p all day every day? I'm sorry.

Yep, your mistake because there are still some 480p games on GC that look good to this day.  I wouldn't mind firing up Burnout 2 or any other top notch GC game on my TV.

I said on a hdtv or monitor, if i try to play the witcher 3 at 480p on a hd monitor is unplayable.

I care about power just to a small extent.  For example, I never truly cared that the GC was more powerful than the PS2 and almost on par with the OG Xbox.

To what end though? Did you not care about the power difference between the systems but still enjoyed the Gamecube games... or do you mean that you just stuck to the PS2 and didn't care that the GC could offer more polygons being thrown around in games where its hardware was used well?

Well, I was both a GameCube and a PS2 owner back then. I knew the original Xbox was the most powerful, but didn't bother with it since I didn't particulary care for its library.