Hey guys,

This is just a piece reflecting my personal subjective thoughts about the consoles and console games, and very much disputable. I am, a forty something male college professor, relatively successful scholar, as well as a self identified "nerd", with an innocent obsession on my youth, starting from the 80s until my college times. This has given me the desire to archive basically all the relics of youth, my happiness, the innocent times, if you will.

I was a rather hyper active but nerdy kid in the 80s and early 90s, where the (subjectively) boring and story driven RPGs never appealed to me, which is why I was never into the hype of the NES or SNES; but rather, as a geek, who had relatives in Europe, could not wait to get his hands on the action oriented world of Commodore 64, to a lesser extent, Atari ST, Amiga 500(+), and finally the Genesis / Mega Drive. My heros, back then, was Commdore and Sega.

It was early 93 or so, when I first played Doom and Wolf3d, when I started to ignore my Amiga and Genesis, in favor of the new almighty PC thingy, for which, I would either make up excuses to pretend-study in my father's office at the weekend nights (in order to play DOOM), or simply borrow-steal my father's office keys to play it on the sly. Of course, this was very risky, because, especially online play was done over the dial-up back then, phone would give a busy signal if somebody would call the office! Those were the days.

Then came the Sony, with its playstation, which made my jaw drop when I first saw Crash Bandicoot in a mall, leaving me in awe! I guess there was either the news of the new Mario 64 or it was just released, I don't quite remember, but I had never bought into the Mario hype, which looked too "kiddy" to me. But man, this Crash Bandicoot thing was something else. I was already a big fan of the 3D with the then recently released Quake, Tomb Raider, and the pc port of the Virtua Fighter (which made me curious about the fighting games for the first time), but seeing Tekken on the arcades made my head spin. Though Tekken 1 was quite rough on the edges, Tekken 2, later, was marvelous. That was it, I had to go back to the consoles! Then I bought the Playstation, played the hell out of it. My new hero was Sony (all the PS games), and a little bit of Sega (arcade games) and ID (Quake) on the side.

But then Sony broke my heart, by killing the much loved Dreamcast, which I adored due to the arcade ports, and relatively better looking early games in contrast to the interlaced jaggy games of the expensive PS2. One of my heros, Sega turned into a victim, while my major hero, Sony became the villain. Nintendo was doing its own thing, with gamecube not much to distinguish itself from the crowd (that, I thought). However, there was always something that I had adored about Nintendo's consoles. They are friendly and cute toy-like devices. N64 looked cute, which I wanted to cuddle with. Gamecube also looked like a cute box with a handle, screaming take me home. My sub-conscious was taking notes.

Well, Microsoft made its debut with the almighty Xbox, and I forgot all about gamecube or n64. I was very much disliking Sony for killing my beloved dreamcast, and I considered Xbox as the spiritual successor to it, dreamcast 2, if you will. So I went the Xbox route. In gaming machines wise, my path was basically....

Commodore 64 => Amiga 500 => Genesis => Playstation => Dreamcast => Xbox

Of course, I had owned some other consoles on the way such as Atari ST and Saturn, but I rarely played them. One of my tech-savvy and even nerdier friends modded his Xbox, installing, I believe 20 or 80 gb HDD on it, dumping discs and playing on the go, which made it even more compelling. He also had a ps2 (unlike me), and when we compared the versions of the same game, I was awed by the Xbox version, and likewise repulsed by the PS2 one. It was then I had understood the hype and the reality of what the ps2 was.

Later, I went on the grad school and became mainly a college professor, so the ps3-x360 generation was more of a theoretical background, with me not much of a chance to play them all. At some point, over the summer, I remembered the PSP I had bought way back in time, sitting in dust somewhere. My anger towards Sony prevented me to make any purchases towards it, I believe, but I had loved the little miracle machine actually. But I went the naughty route and got it modded by one of my Eastern European friends. All of a sudden, the whole world of Sony PSP was open to me. Me likey, I said. Sony wasn't that bad after all, and maybe it was the evolutionary "survival of the fittest", and Sega's demise was inevitable. So Sony wasn't the bad guy anymore, in my head.

Ok, I said, maybe what else did I miss by not tapping into the ps2 games.... Well, I ended buying 3 ps2's in a flee market in parts of Eastern Europe, the first in Krakow. Actually 4. I first bought a modded ps2 with a broken dvd drive but playing usb games. Another one with a 500 gb hdd, which died after one week. I did not give up though, and bought another one. Finally I bought a slim model with a working dvd drive. So I could play both original ps2 games, and if the game is too expensive or too difficult to find, I could just, you know... So my love for sony returned with a vengeance.

The more ps2 I played, the more psps I bought, all of the 5 models, so to speak. PSP fat, slim, bright, street, and go. Of course they are much cheaper in Eastern Europe and already modded. To be honest, I loved it. This kind of gave me a headache on the customs but still made it thru after half an hour of interrogation, since the machines were very old.

Up to that point, I had never owned a nintendo console, which was interesting, because I vividly remember many of my friends, even the nintendo-unfriendly ones, playing the Wii. I would give it a try once, with the Metroid, whichever version it was, and I was deeply unimpressed, or worse, disappointed. The interlaced  low resolution image of the TV did not help either. But after all these years, in one of my visits to Eastern Europe, I rediscovered the Wii, as they were trailing in console gaming due to how expensive it relatively was over there. When I came back, I bought 2 wii bundles from ebay, with several wii-motes, nunchuks etc. so that I would re-discover the lost part of my youth. It was then my first hurray into the Nintendo world. Of course it would play gamecube games as well, negating the reason to buy a separate a gamecube!

There are two points I skipped though. First, wii was not actually my first nintendo console, I had another one. Actually my first ever game console, which I got when I was in early elementary school, was a dual screen Donkey-Kong themed Game & Watch handheld, which my brother had brought me all the way from Germany, housing only one very repetitive game. The second point was, many of my Chinese grad-school friends had Nintendo DS's. They would play it all the time, though the kind of games they played never appealed to me. Still, though, all of these experiences were written on the back of my mind, only to be revealed in the right place at the right time.

After 5 psp's, I naturally upgraded to a vita, after it had decidedly failed in the marketplace and the modding community settled. I could now, play all of my vita, psp and ps1 games in one machine. The hunger in me prompted me to buy the slim version as well as pstv so I completed the vita family.... Well, owning all psp and vita models, why not hurray into the lovely world of nintendo handhelds? After all, wii was a lovely machine. So, I bought a regular (old) 3ds, and I loved it, more than I expected it. Then I felt the uncontrollable urge to buy the 3ds xl, and I did. But my god, then the new 3ds xl came up, I bought it too! I thought about getting the 2ds's as well, but deemed them unnecessary, instead, I bought another regular old 3ds so that I would not need to carry them back and forth.

I came to appreciate the Nintendo's "simplicity, cuteness, family-friendliness" and overall a consistent entertainment toy-like consistency. While Sony and Microsoft want to address everybody and become the whole-in entertainment centers, Nintendo keeps it simple, focused and consistent. They create franchises that appeal to a certain audience and go on in them, consistently. There are many things I don't like about Nintendo, as well as many things I do. Yet They are the only firm that still produces a true gaming console, a small, sleek, silent, simple, and elegant machine that does one thing very well; play games (with the exception of Series S). Playstation and Xbox today are no longer true consoles, they have become console-like PCs. They are great value for what they achieve but from a console perspective, they are too expensive, too bulky, too hot, and they are nothing like what a console should be. People are obsessed with progressively increasing graphical fidelity, and ever increasing demands have turned consoles into monsters. Nintendo did not go this route and I am happy with that. This is why I have bought 2 wii's as well as 3 ps2's after all those years. 

Of course, the archiving nostalgic maniacal nerd in me could not help buying 2 ps3 slims and an xbox 360, but I would still appreciate sleeker, slimmer, quieter and simpler machines. This is exactly why I never bought ps4 or xbox one since 2013, in addition to the very little time I have aside to play games, let alone ps5 or xbox series x. The only modern console that I have is, you guessed it, a Nintendo Switch! I entertained the idea of buying the Switch lite as well, but it was too expensive as a repeat purchase and I had too little time for it to be worth it. The only viable console options for me to buy, giving the time and money constraints is either a more modern upgraded Switch, or Xbox Series S, which is actually a surprisingly good little console for my tastes (sleek, compact, quite, reasonably priced, relatively powerful, and an engineering marvel), but the lack of an optical drive that mandates digital download, the online check-in system, as well as the paltry SSD, made me hesitate. If a 1 TB version of the Series S comes with a decent gamepass option, I will go for it.

Hopefully, someone will read and comment on all this. I don't like hype or click-bait content and I tend to be on the boring side, so I don't usually get much turnout, so we'll see. I only write once or twice a year or so. Best Regards :)

Good write up dude. I also seen the Xbox as the Dreamcast 2 .

It's always interesting to tell our life story's through our videogame consoles/hardware. What I think is funny is that the Sony you hates I actually liked. The Ps1/PS2 eras were some of my favorite gaming experiences. Sadly, when they moved onto the PS3 they courted the XBox crowd and left the Nintendo refugees to fend for themselves. I also loved the Dreamcast, but it was dead in the water before it launched. Nothing could possibly stop the PS2 from being a worldwide success after the Playstation, not even the fancy graphics of the Dreamcast.

I am sad that the mention of Metroid in this piece resulted in revulsion. To be honest, you slipped into jargon there which made me not understand all of the words combined, but all I got was...Metroid=the bad. And Metroid=the good, so it simply doesn't compute in my tiny brain.

Interesting history.

I kind of had hated Playstation back in the late 1990s during the PS1 era - not because of main console wars but mainly because at my church everyone had a PS1 and I had a N64, so there was a bit of a rivalry there which fueled my disinterest in Playstation - of course I was single digit age at the time so I didnt know better to get over childish stuff like that.

I bought a Playstation 2 as my first Playstation console back in 2003 - prior to that I was a Nintendo only fan starting back in 1991 with a SNES.

A decade or so later I got into PC gaming in 2012 and shortly into mobile gaming (though I had some mobile games back when I first got my first iPhone in 2011).

I finally got myself a Xbox system a decade later in the form of Xbox Series S.

So nowadays I'm pretty much everywhere.

Fun fact - I didnt even know the Dreamcast existed until probably mid 2000s - years later after its discontinue. The only SEGA platform I knew was the Genesis and that was because my cousins had a Genesis and I had played Sonic and Streets of Rage in the 1990s.

Was surprised SEGA had other consoles - only found out about them in the mid 2000s when I got into online forums lol

Anyways, here's my platform history - aside from SNES, I've only had one console for each type of console/portable.

SNES - 1991 (and again at 2001)

N64 - 1998

GBC - 1999

GBA - 2001

PS2 - 2003

PSP - 2005

DS - 2007

Wii - 2008

iPhone 5 64 GB - 2011

PS3 - 2011

First Gaming Desktop - 2012

3DS - 2013

WiiU - 2014

First Gaming Laptop - 2014

iPhone 6 Plus 128 GB - 2015

PS4 - 2015

Second Gaming Desktop - 2019

Nintendo Switch - 2020

iPhone 13 Pro Max 1 TB - 2021

Xbox Series S - 2022

I'm planning to get a PS5 in 2023 and likely my 3rd Gaming Desktop in 2024.

I dont have any plans to get a second gaming laptop because I dont really have a need to use a gaming laptop - when I travel I'm gonna have my iPhone and my Switch - plus I'll be mainly focusing on my trip and photography/videography instead of playing a game.

And I prefer using desktops due to them being more powerful than laptops and having more ports, capabilities, etc.

Here's what my gaming library looks like

Great write-up. I'll see how much I can remember of my 40 years of gaming.

My first encounter with video games was at my aunt's house. I can't remember what machine it was but it was very basic, just a couple lines. I didn't understand what was going on, I was 4, it was 1978. Other encounters I remember are pit stop and space invaders on the Atari.

At home my dad started building a primitive PC running Basic. He worked at Phillips at the time on business software. He always came home with long printouts, debugging machine code at the dinner table. I still have a 2KB memory module hanging on the wall from that time, it's bigger than the ps5! In his spare time he soldered a computer together, chip by chip with PCBs he got from work. Using leds on the front to display the active memory register, 16 little lights. After months and months of hard work, checking everything over with an oscilloscope he got it to work. I was 6 at the time and often got out of bed at night to watch him work on it.

Once it was working he made a couple basic games on it that me and my sister could play. Just black and white lines, guiding a square (the car) through a maze (the track). You could make your own 'tracks' by editing a path. Speed up, slow down, 90 degree turns. There was also a text adventure which was featured on his birthday with the whole room full of adults participating. It was like having the first television in the neighborhood.

When Phillips decided to also launch an MSX we naturally got one. First games were Konami Land and Pinball on cartridge. We also got a tape deck for it and some books. I learned to code on the MSX. First by copying little programs out of the books, then by designing my own things. I created a pac-man clone on it with a twist, eat a pill and you get 20 seconds in which you can shoot ghosts, spit the dots back out at the ghosts. Next to a bunch of shorter experiments I also made a type of space invaders game on it and later a database program to catalog everything I recorded on VHS, combined with an alarm clock function with my irregular high school start times programmed in. It interfaced with an alarm bell through the printer port. Never got woken up at the wrong time :)

Favorite games on MSX were Lazy Jones and Jet Set Willy II. My parents also got me a keyboard for the MSX to learn to play the piano. But I got more into programming the music in instead of playing it manually.

Working for Phillips at the forefront of PC tech also meant we always had the newest PC hardware at home, including the latest dial-up modem for my dad to work from home. The first one 8080 PC that ran at 0.8 mhz with 2 10MB HDDs in it. First game I played ion that was alley cat. That PC got me into Sierra adventures, starting with the original King's quest, Larry Suit Larry, Space Quest and Police Quest. The idea of age ratings didn't exist yet :)

286, 386, 386dx, 486, 486 DX2-66, they all followed one after another. CGA, EGA, VGA. My first online gaming experience was Flight Simulator 2 through dial-up direct connection with a friend who was playing at his father's docter's office which had a Tandy PC. It worked, but we couldn't talk while flying, just follow each other around. Later I got into browsing BBS and downloading games and walkthroughs from BBS.

My high school years I spend mostly on PC, learning to code in Borland C and playing many many games. All pirated :/ Favorites were Civilization, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, Dune 2 and various racing games. I made a graphical editor for Dune 2 to make your own maps and mod them into the game. Then watch my friend play the scenarios I had created. Civilization the same, altering the run-time library with a hex editor to create all kinds of new game modes.

I did play a lot on C64 and Amiga 500 as well, all at a friend's house where I spend many afternoons. He soldered a little circuit together to turn the C64 sound into stereo sound, pretty just separating the low and high tones to left and right. With a different friend we made a sound card for the PC, not sure how it worked but it converted the printer port output into pretty decent sound that mod players could output. Fun times.

After high school I departed for university and not only got busy, no more access to all that tech except at the university. So my play time shifted to after school hours in the computer room at the university. We played a lot of Frontier: Elite 2 there. I saved up for a long time to buy my first PC a Pentium 90. Great times but the Playstation also caught my eye. Wipeout looked awesome. When Tombraider 2 came out I figured to give that a try on Playstation instead of PC (Windows 95 was a pita back then).

My initial impression of TR2 on Playstation was, ouch my eyes. This looks terrible compared to what I was used to on my P90. Pixels the size of houses! I tried to return the Playstation but the store had a no return policy. So I was stuck with the thing. I did eventually finish TR2 on it (awesome game once you look past the giant pixels) and got into a lot more games. Yep it was convenient, and easy to play together on.

After university I got a job as a software programmer with great pay while I was still living in student housing. With all that disposable income I went crazy buying expensive hardware. I spend $4000 on a Pentium 266 right in time for Half-Life to come out. I had my PC hooked up to my brand new high power surround sound system, it was glorious.

Later I bought a second hand CRT projector and mounted that from the ceiling. 72" screen for gaming, PS2, DreamCast, N64 and PC. Nvidea shutter glasses worked wonderfully with it as well. Descent 2 in full 3D, room size, dodging bullets as they floated through my room and beyond the wall I projected on. Unfortunately they didn't work as well on the 17" monitor due to afterglow so once the novelty wore off of playing on the projector from my bed I was back to 2D gaming.

I got hooked on Everquest late 1999 which took over most of my gaming time. Expensive hobby since I was still on dial-up. Monthly subscription plus a huge phone bill every month for all the hours connected to the server. I could afford it so didn't care, but basically spend $150 a month on playing that game.
End 1999 I met a girl on Everquest who is now my wife. She is the one that had me move to Canada from Europe. It took 15 months to get through the application process to get permanent resident status in 2002 when I emigrated. We kept on playing Everquest together, now side by side instead of 6,000 km apart.

Meanwhile we also played on ps2. We started ICO one of the times she was over at my place, I bought it again in Canada where we finished it. Baldur's gate Dark Alliance and Everquest Champions of Norrath were excellent games to play together. The GameCube was also a lot of fun. XBox I bought late during its lifecycle, but still in time to enjoy PGR, Rallisport challenge and others. Halo wasn't doing it for me, being used to the break neck speed of Counter strike, Half-Life death match, Unreal tournament etc, I just couldn't get along with a controller in Halo. It just felt slow and clumsy.

In 2006 I bought a 52" 1080p LCD tv, first game to play on that was Gears of War on the 360. So much more detail, wonderful. That TV still works btw, I use it as a secondary now, sitting next to the 4K 65" tv in the living room. PS3 became my favorite though during that generation. More 1080p games for the graphics whore in me (native res just looks better on an LCD screen) and blu-ray! I build my own home theater when we bought a new house with 1080p LCD projector, 92" screen. The ps3 and 360 made a ton of use of that. My PC not so much, it was always a hassle to move the thing over and windows always had updates to install while shutting down and starting up. But it was still great to play ETS2 on the big screen with internet radio from the countries I was trucking through.

My play time got much less though after the kids arrived. I played Valkyria Chronicles with our firstborn on my lap, turn based no problem. Dark Souls with our second born on my lap. He couldn't sleep laying down due to acid reflux, so it was shifts with my wife, half the night on my lap, early morning hand over to the wife. It's really peaceful gaming with your baby softly snoring on your lap!

The Wii was a hit. Our toddlers were fascinated with it. Wii Sports resort, crashing the plane was the favorite pass time lol. Always a giggle when the pilot jumps out. Zack and Wiki was my favorite (non zelda/mario) game on it. Wii U was also a hit, between the 4 of us we have over 500 hours on Lego City Undercover! Super Mario Maker was a big hit as well, I spend many many hours creating devious levels.

During the 8th generation I mainly played on ps4 and never got around to getting an XBox One. The XBox One S tempted me but MS immediately announced the XBox One X next to it. That wasn't worth the price to me and I didn't want the lesser version knowing the X was around :/ Not smart MS. Instead I went full in on PSVR, including buying a ps4 pro to go with the headset. That brought me back to the innovation of the late 90s. I played PSVR almost exclusively for over a year, so many great new experiences! I ended up with a second headset and played NMS together in co-op with my oldest in VR, amazing. Switch entered the home as well of course, BotW was awesome on the projector. Super Mario Oddeysey great on tv. I'm not fond of the handheld function though and haven't played much more on the Switch. Stick drift didn't help.

On PC I got into Elite Dangerous which consumed 9 months of my life. I had backed Star Citizen before Elite Dangerous but only one delivered. I have backed 17 games total on Kickstarter, only played 4 in the end. Not doing that anymore. Not that the rest all didn't deliver, I simply lost interest in them. Not unlike my backlog sitting on my shelves lol. FS2020 was the next great time consumer helping me through the pandemic. On PS4 GT Sport kept me busy.

This generation started with looking for a PS5 :/ I got one early this year and was well worth the wait. Ratchet and Clank and Horizon Forbidden West are amazing. GT7 wasn't however, quite a disappointment and I went back to GT Sport on the ps4 pro for online racing. My oldest ended up with the PS5 playing mostly Rust on it. I recently bought another PS5 (GoW bundle, got lucky to find one) so we don't have to share. I just went to the shop to pick up God of War and came back with another PS5. Since it was a digital voucher, we could both play the game at the same time.

I got the Series X as well this year, to play Forza 7 after GT7 disappointed me. I also got Quantum break and Sunset Overdrive for it. My youngest enjoys Sunset overdrive but mostly plays Fortnight on the Switch. I got the Halo Infinite edition to play split-screen co-op with my wife (we used to play Halo 2 and other shooters together when split-screen was still a thing) but it got cancelled :( I already played the campaign on PC game pass so basically wasted my money on the special edition. (The Halo themed controller is pretty nice though)

On PC I got into Roblox. My youngest asked me to help me with Factory simulator, which turned out to be very addictive. Next season coming in 2 days lol. Atm I'm playing Syberia The world before on PS5 with my wife and still playing God of War on it while trying to get myself to enjoy GT7. (GT7 is slowly getting better, GT Sport is running out of players :/) Meanwhile waiting for Starfield and Forza 8 to come out.

44 years of gaming to be exact and looking forward to PSVR2.

My platform history:

Early-mid 80s - Atari 8-bit, NES
1989 - Game Boy
1994 - SNES
1996 - N64
1998 - PS1
1998 - Game Boy Color

Final Fantasy was my impetus to dive into PS1. That system had so many RPGs, which are my favorite genre. The N64 lacked that genre and fighting games, though Zelda and SM64 were amazing, and Goemon was a nice little gem. So I became a pretty solid PlayStation customer from 1998 until 2007

Game Boy Color was finally what I wanted from the Game Boy line. Plus, that's when Pokemon Red/Blue came out in the US. I've always had a Game Boy/DS of some kind since 1989.

2001 - GBA, PS2
2003 - Gamecube

Gamecube did a lot to rebuild my relationship with Nintendo. The Zelda games were some of the best games I'd ever played, Metroid was back, RPGs returned to Nintendo systems. The PS2 had a more rounded overall library. Dragon Quest VIII was a bonding experience with my girlfriend that led to her becoming my wife.

2004 - DS

Had a lot of great games. Ultimately became a nice go-to for Dragon Quest. Enjoyed playing Pokemon D/P with my wife in the early years of our marriage. We still play Pokemon.

2007 - Wii, Xbox 360

Wii had a lot of unique gems and was a big craze. But I felt it had a strong start (Wii Sports, Fire Emblem), followed by weak middle years and a relatively strong finish (Skyward Sword, Xenoblade, The Last Story), The 360, on the other hand, moneyhatted a lot of Japanese games, and while I feel in retrospect that Microsoft did more harm than good doing that, I liked the 360 for awhile - until the E74 error killed mine, and Microsoft wanted to charge me $150 to fix it.

2008 - PSP
Wife got me a PSP when my DS got stolen. I kind of wish a lot of PSP and DS games had been made for full-sized consoles, however, which is one of the things that makes Switch so great for me.

2009 - PS3
I didn't like the 7th console generation very much in its middle years, but Valkyria Chronicles brought me to the PS3. The PS3 had an incredibly strong finish leading up to the PS4. Ni no Kuni seemed to signal a return of Japanese RPGs that Persona 5 on PS4 cemented.

2013 - Wii U, PS4, 3DS

I will almost always buy a Nintendo system, even if it sells poorly. PS4 helped usher in the return of Japanese gaming

2017 - Switch

My favorite system of all time. I own over 60 physical games for It, which is by far the largest single console library I own. I try to support third party on Switch in hopes of keeping third party games coming.

I will probably get PS5 when FFXVI drops, but I really want to see Nintendo do a strong follow-up with the Switch 2.

I have a very similar background, my path was Commodore 64 -> Amiga -> Playstation 1,2,3,4,5.
I am appalled, Sir, that you would single out and blame Sony for the demise of the Dreamcast. I submit that Sega themselves were the architects of their own doom, by making questionable business decisions in a highly competitive market. I think they were already losing the battle against Nintendo anyways. Perhaps their time simply came to an end.
As for your other comments about consoles being PC-like, hot and bulky, I find those to be irrelevant and superficial complaints that have little to do with what actually matters; the games and the experience of playing them.
However, this is all in good fun, no offense given or taken.

Yeah, it's sad, but Sega did it all to themselves, starting with their haphazard approach to finding a successor to the Genesis. Almost every decision they made regarding the Saturn was a bad decision. They also were never truly in the same league as Nintendo or Sony in terms of resources. 

Understable. During the Atari-PS2 era, gaming saw a quantum leap in everything. From genres, to IPs that are still dominant today, to the consoles themselves and their controllers--it was a unbelievably exciting. And these things happened about every four years! haha

After PS3, the great slow-down occurred. Now, it's almost at a stand still. 

Of course, if you hadn't witnessed the aforementioned Atari-PS2 era, you probably wouldn't notice. 

That’s an interesting take. I haven’t really experienced that slow down since I moved back to the Nintendo with the Wii. Because Nintendo was behind graphically, every generation since then has felt like a leap, and I’m sure next Nintendo gen will as well. 

I honestly think because I started playing games on the Atari that I have a pretty high tolerance for bad or aged graphics. Graphical improvements almost seem baked into the software with each generation. Of course, if you’ve been playing HD consoles since the 360/PS3 I can understand how it feels like a bit of a brick wall it like moving through mud waiting for the next wow moment.