Hard to believe that not too long ago something like Super Mario Run would've been a legit arcade game. Now, it's in your pocket. Just crazy.

Yep it's amazing to see how big gaming has developed over the years!

This is a great post.  Old doesn't necessarily equal good, and there was a lot of crap back then.  Modern idies do tend to lean far more often to the uninspired titles of the past than the true greats.  Much more Bubsy than Mario.  And to top if off, many try to break the fourth wall and have a humorous take on things, and end up being like the Starsky and Hutch or Baywatch reboots and not like the original series.

The defining moment for graphics tech will be the day hardware releases with the power to run full lighting simulation with caustics on all light sources in realtime, rather than using a combination of realtime volumetric and baked.

Yes, just I'm still disappointed with development time. You might say that games are more in depth than before, and while yes in a way they are (for the simpler style of games, older RPGs were still huge), at the same time you'd think with developing technology, development techniques would get easier, graphics engines would be able to bash out things in no time, it's just gameplay to 'finesse' so to speak. Tekken 7 was playable at Evo 2015. It used to take 2 years to develop a single Tekken, not go from Arcade to console.

And where is the next Dragon Age? Been 2(.5) years since the last, sequels are meant to be easier, don't think they are all working on ME:A as that's taken ages too (5 year development) and they have 2 teams right?

... I'll be playing FF16 in 2022.

Love games, love what's happening, don't like waiting.

I'm bloody old.

I am amazed at how far games and consoles have come in my lifetime though. And not just in graphics. The online interactions and downloads. The level of content. I've been playing Return to Arkham City lately and it's just ridiculous how much of Detective Comics the developers stuffed in there. Sometimes I sit there with my XBox One and marvel. I get to play a game that allows you to truly feel like Batman, with free roaming, realistic visuals, deep story, movie-like soundtrack and all his gadgets; then I get to switch apps and instantly watch my favorite hockey team play with the NHL app - all of their games, any time; and then I can pop in Forza 6 and race realistic representations of any car I've ever loved. If you told my 10 year old self this would happen one day when I played Batman on NES, his mind would be truly blown.

As I started gaming I played this a lot:

and this:

But I don't think games today are necessarily better. I still like old games. recently I got this from GOG and play (again) the hell out of it because it is fun:

Just looking at it I got the feels for playing the original UFO again. Must look if it lays around somewhere.

I'm amazed when i see great unique views like in the Xenoblade series. But it's not something that in general amazes me. Games aren't necessarely more fun to play than they used to be, probably less. The tech is nice but it's mostly not really where the focus should be.

How about this!

33 years old here and been playing videoGames since 1990 (sets megadrive/Genesis)
I agree it's unreal how far they have came since then and it's something I'd of never imagined, were really privileged to be able to play games with such high budgets that have stories and characters that you can really connect to like reading a book.
However, I hate, and I mean I really despise how serious and petty people have become over minor performance details like a game running at 30fps rather than 60 and a game running at 720p rather than 1080p or 4K. I find those details completely irrelevant to the experience of the games but nowadays people seems to act like it's the ultimate part of the game that matter.