It’s been fairly constant for me. Each decade has their special memories for me. And while there have been gaps (for me, the GB/PS2/Cube was a bit of a lull between PSX and DS/Wii and to a lesser extent again during the 3DS/U era), it’s usually only a few years at most. And during those lulls I got into other types of gaming, while I was no stranger to PC gaming (SimGames, Warcraft, Sid Meier’s Civ), I drastically expanded my PC collection during the PS2 generation, got heavily into grand strategy. During the 3DS era, similarly, I got heavily into the new generation of grand strategy as well as mobile games… you might even say there weren’t any real long lulls in my electronic gaming experience, just the video game part. 

Bottom line, there’s been a lot of special times and games throughout every decade I’ve been gaming. My overall favourite game of all time was originally released for the original PlayStation (Xenogears), and I fashion myself primarily a Nintendo fan. Still awaiting an official Nintendo release of that game - it’s not as big of a leap as FF7 was given the creators of Xenogears made a studio that is a part of Nintendo - and much less of a jump now that FF7 has been released for Nintendo platforms. But some games like FF6 and Chrono Trigger, I didn’t feel I properly played an official version until the Wii - as imports, emulator, and later revisions weren’t the same.

Until the Switch remasters, IMO, the Square specific revisions have never exceeded the originals… I think a Mystic Quest remake as Adventure of Mana may have beaten the Pixel Remasters to the punch which IMO was actually a great revision (however, the first remake/revision of Mystic Quest, Sword of Mana, I did not like one bit - now this is just a personal opinion, but it was the much slower pacing and blunted drama beats and verbose dialogue that ruined it for me), I’d also say I preferred FF4 on GBA more than the original, but that felt more of a fluke, as I didn’t feel the same about any of the other FF games revised for GBA. but usually I find that they either redid the interface in a gimmicky way (like their mobile remasters), injected bloaty or tacky content (like Chrono Trigger ports on PSX and DS), or had some animation/balance issues (basically all their GBA/DS ports).

On all the new content I didn’t like, people will inevitably  say “You didn’t have to play it” which I will inevitably respond with “then how was I going to know I didn’t like it?”

But any way, I didn’t mean for my post to be such a downer on the tangent I went off on. I was writing it to be positive by contrast of the past to emphasize the improvements they have made in the last 5-10 years or so. I think Square-side remasters have been hitting it out of the park in the past generation. They’re killing it. (Yes, 2024 I’m using a lot more locally popular idioms! :D)

I do find myself enjoying the PS1/PS2 era games a lot recently. Games were more unique back then. These days a lot of mechanics and design ideas are shared among titles due to the industry being more matured and basically understanding what works and has mass appeal. Going into a game these days you generally have a lot more idea of what to expect than in prior decades.

There's something special about booting an older game that you know will only take you about 10 hours or less to finish with and may be janky, but also something with gameplay/mechanics/ideas you don't see in every other game.

For most people, that may be the case. Normally, our first gaming decades are tied to our childhood. And that's normally the time where we like to romanticize nostalgia

No. The NES and SNES were fun but that was about as deep as it went. I liked the games but I didn't love them (with a few exceptions). The PS1 is really where I jumped down the rabbit hole and more of the games clicked.

For a long time, I thought gaming in the '90s was the best. Then Steam and analogous console services came around.

I like games that are very earnest the most typically and while I find only so much of that in today's mainstream gaming landscape, I find more than all I need in today's indie market and this -- like the 2010s and '20s -- is my favorite period in the history of this medium, to that end.

Nah.

My first generation was SNES

My favorite generation is likely this generation. I also enjoyed the PS3/Xbox360/Wii/DS/PSP generation too.

I felt my bones crack entering this thread but it sounds like I’m in good company here. I was born/started playing games in the 80’s. I was so ready to play video games that my mom would tell me how I used to gnaw on the Atari 2600 controller.

While I give the 80’s credit for the framework for many games that are great today (Mario, Metroid, Zelda, etc), the NES was limited by its capabilities at the time.

The 90’s is where gaming finally hit its stride. With the SNES and Genesis, the multiplayer aspect became more fun, game saves became a necessity, pixels started to form more coherent images, and the controllers became more intuitive.

Strictly speaking, no. The one I experienced first were the 80s, but my favorite decade is the 90s. Having that said, I really got into gaming in the early 90s.

I'm waiting until later in the decade, and especially once 2030 hits to seriously judge the 2020s. There are a lot of quality games, but I don't know if it will surpass the 2000s and 2010s for me.

No. Every 10 years are my favorite 10 years since I can play all the older games AND brand new games.