Have you ever become displeased with the videogame industry?

[Recycled]

 

the older one was a bit of a one-upster. If you had it he had hit first or had done it twice as well.

 

That's funny. Had a neighbor like that too. So xmas of 1980 we got the VCS, they got the Intellivision. Wasn't pretty.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

You could probably break the pre-Nintendo era into 3 chunks if you wanted, but most people won't give any of it much time anyway, so it's easier to lump it all together as 'pre-crash' and call it good. You can actually see people starting to run the 8 and 16 bit eras together nowadays too. It's all about current relevance, otherwise we could easily just do 4 generations: pre-crash, cartridge, CD & internet.

I really like that! It's much cleaner and simplier than trying to divide up system releases into a dozen different generations that give you a headache trying to remember. The only thing I'd do differently is change "pre-crash" to "pre-NES", since the Atari 7800 was a post-crash system but adhered to all the same hardware and design sensibilities of pre-crash systems.

 

As much as some folks here will probably object, every home console before the NES were all relatively identical in terms of the design ideas and cultural trends that went into their game libraries. The Atari 2600/5200/7800, ColecoVision, Intellivision, and so on were all mostly focused on bringing the arcade experience home. The NES was the first system to step away from that design philosophy, so for my own purposes I think I'm going to split up the home console generations into:

 

Pre-NES

Cartridge

Disc

Internet

 

[spacecadet]

As much as some folks here will probably object, every home console before the NES were all relatively identical in terms of the design ideas and cultural trends that went into their game libraries. The Atari 2600/5200/7800, ColecoVision, Intellivision, and so on were all mostly focused on bringing the arcade experience home.

 

The Intellivision was distinctly not that. That was in fact one of its main selling points. It was designed around more complex, original games. Most of its arcade ports didn't even really come until later, when it was trying to stay afloat in the face of the ColecoVision. But overall it was about as focused on bringing the arcade experience home as the Xbox One is.

 

This is the danger you fall into when history gets compressed down over time. Lumping all things together just because they're old, however disparate they originally were, is not helpful and is something that people who really care about history should strive against. It's kind of like saying all the wars the US fought in before WWI were pretty much the same because they were all pre-machine gun.

 

The NES was a far more arcade-based system than the Intellivision ever was. Nintendo is one of the early arcade game companies, after all. (And they still make them, which is why the Switch has more arcade games than the PS4 or Xbone.)

Edited April 4, 2018 by spacecadet

[Flojomojo]

I really like that! It's much cleaner and simplier than trying to divide up system releases into a dozen different generations that give you a headache trying to remember. The only thing I'd do differently is change "pre-crash" to "pre-NES", since the Atari 7800 was a post-crash system but adhered to all the same hardware and design sensibilities of pre-crash systems.

As much as some folks here will probably object, every home console before the NES were all relatively identical in terms of the design ideas and cultural trends that went into their game libraries. The Atari 2600/5200/7800, ColecoVision, Intellivision, and so on were all mostly focused on bringing the arcade experience home. The NES was the first system to step away from that design philosophy, so for my own purposes I think I'm going to split up the home console generations into:

Pre-NES
Cartridge
Disc
Internet

 

I think you mean P. NES?

 

[Skippy B. Coyote]

The Intellivision was... Most of its arcade ports... trying to stay afloat... the arcade experience... This is the danger... Lumping all things together... they're old... not helpful... care about history... machine gun.

 

The NES... the Intellivision

 

 

In all fairness I did say that folks around here would object. For my own purposes though that's how I'm dividing 'em up.

 

 

 

I think you mean P. NES?

 

Yes! P.NES'es are my favorite things to play with! Personally, I play with my P.NES more than anything else. I know all the kids these days prefer Xbox and Nintendo, but if you ask me there's no better way to pass 15 or 20 minutes of free time than with a big old P.NES. Just you and the joystick in your hand, working it back and forth, pulling and squeezing the knob, and shooting all over the place until it's game over. Going over to a buddy's house and playing with their P.NES is always fun too! Yep... whether it's mine or someone else's, I sure do love me a P.NES.

Edited April 4, 2018 by Jin

[Flojomojo]

The Intellivision was distinctly not that. That was in fact one of its main selling points. It was designed around more complex, original games. Most of its arcade ports didn't even really come until later, when it was trying to stay afloat in the face of the ColecoVision. But overall it was about as focused on bringing the arcade experience home as the Xbox One is.

 

This is the danger you fall into when history gets compressed down over time. Lumping all things together just because they're old, however disparate they originally were, is not helpful and is something that people who really care about history should strive against. It's kind of like saying all the wars the US fought in before WWI were pretty much the same because they were all pre-machine gun.

 

The NES was a far more arcade-based system than the Intellivision ever was. Nintendo is one of the early arcade game companies, after all. (And they still make them, which is why the Switch has more arcade games than the PS4 or Xbone.)

 

I agree with you about Intellivision. It was definitely a "sit-down" type of system, much more than any of the quick-playing arcade ports on Atari. Odyssey 2 was even quicker. One life and you're out!! Nowadays, "arcade-style" is an insult, suggesting a lack of depth.

 

Re lumping things together, that's just how it goes. To borrow your war example, here's a list of all wars involving the United States. There were a lot of them. Excepting the big ones, most of them are forgotten except by historians and those who were impacted in one way or another (fought in it, had relatives tell stories about it, or read/watched news about it as it happened). Even for the relatively recent events, there's public confusion about them. For example, many people mistakenly believe that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was directly linked to the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

 

In my humble opinion, NES is the first system which could reasonably be enjoyed by most people without nostalgia or memory of playing it as kids. As much as I loved Atari and the rest, there's a sharp feeling of "you had to be there" to those games.

[Recycled]

Wow. I'm really behind the times. "Arcade-Style" is a selling point for me.

[zzip]

As much as some folks here will probably object, every home console before the NES were all relatively identical in terms of the design ideas and cultural trends that went into their game libraries. The Atari 2600/5200/7800, ColecoVision, Intellivision, and so on were all mostly focused on bringing the arcade experience home. The NES was the first system to step away from that design philosophy, so for my own purposes I think I'm going to split up the home console generations into:

 

So Channel-F, Colecovision, Vectrex and pong-consoles are all practically the same system. Got it....

[Silverfleet]

I thought I posted earlier in the thread, but apparently not. Weird...

 

ANYWAY... Yes, I've been disappointed. Here's some examples:

 

-NES consoles that wouldn't reliably play games for a variety of reasons (failing 10NES chips, dirty games, bad 72-pin connectors) were the bane of my existence. I figured out how to fix all of this later, of course, but as a young kid in the late 80's/early 90's, I sent more time looking like Louis Armstrong with NES carts attempting to get them to fire up. The worst was when I bought the game Super C. Not even a month after buying it brand new from Child World, the cart wouldn't work anymore. Didn't work on friends' NES consoles either. I was IRATE! I even bought the NES Cleaning Kit, which wouldn't revive Bill OR Lance. Many years later, I bought a security bit, took the board out, cleaned it up the right way, and it's worked perfect ever since.

 

-The N64. I've never been a huge fan of the console. I wanted it to play Ocarina of Time and the upcoming (at the time) Final Fantasy VII. Well, you know how that went: Zelda was great, but FFVII instead made its way to the Playstation. I felt betrayed! Also, the controller sucks.

 

-The Saturn and how short-lived it was. The Sega arcade ports for it were awesome, but no true Sonic games? Barely any of the awesome Japanese titles ported over? WTF Sega...

 

-The Dreamcast and how short lived THAT was! Such a great console, such a short life span. Makes me sad.

 

-My early "Fat" PS2. I bought one as soon as I could find one (shortages made them unavailable around my area until March 2001), and it broke about a year and a half later thanks to DISC READ ERROR. I tried all the tricks: cleaning the laser, putting scotch tape on the games for added "weight" so they would spin up (this strangely worked for a while), and more. All worked for a little while, but then one day it gave up the ghost. I got so mad that I gave up on the PS2 until the Slim came out and played my GameCube and Xbox until then.

 

And here's where I get all "get off mah lawn!!!"...

 

-Newer games and their complexity. When you step back and look at it, we do live in an unbelievable time when it comes to gaming. Old consoles are being supported by homebrewers and the aftermarket, and new consoles with unbelievably immersive games are a marvel of technology. But with complexity brings issues. Major titles now take a huge team of people to make, and games are bigger and more complex than ever. They are typically broken in some way upon release for a variety of reasons, making it annoying for early adopters until patches come out. I understand the need for the updates, but it can be annoying and kills the mood. I found myself in this situation while playing some backlogged PS3 titles last weekend. I had to wait over an hour to play one of them!!! Most of the time, I wait for the "Game of the Year Edition" so it has the latest patches and extra content at a discount rate.

-Another thing about modern games: playing them. Learning how to play these games sometimes requires hours of tutorial time, which is a PITA when you don't have much time to game. When I do have time to play a game, I don't want to sit there for 2 hours and feel like I did nothing to progress the story along. I'm sure many of you know this feel.

[Flojomojo]

Wow. I'm really behind the times. "Arcade-Style" is a selling point for me.

 

You're not the only one. Also, I go running when something advertises "over 100 hours of gameplay!"

[high voltage]

I really like that! It's much cleaner and simplier than trying to divide up system releases into a dozen different generations that give you a headache trying to remember. The only thing I'd do differently is change "pre-crash" to "pre-NES", since the Atari 7800 was a post-crash system but adhered to all the same hardware and design sensibilities of pre-crash systems.

 

As much as some folks here will probably object, every home console before the NES were all relatively identical in terms of the design ideas and cultural trends that went into their game libraries. The Atari 2600/5200/7800, ColecoVision, Intellivision, and so on were all mostly focused on bringing the arcade experience home. The NES was the first system to step away from that design philosophy, so for my own purposes I think I'm going to split up the home console generations into:

 

Pre-NES

Cartridge

Disc

Internet

 

 

Wow, you didn't play many pre-nes consoles. Ever heard of the SMS, more popular in Europe than the nes ever was...

[zzip]

 

They are typically broken in some way upon release for a variety of reasons, making it annoying for early adopters until patches come out. I understand the need for the updates, but it can be annoying and kills the mood. I found myself in this situation while playing some backlogged PS3 titles last weekend. I had to wait over an hour to play one of them!!! Most of the time, I wait for the "Game of the Year Edition" so it has the latest patches and extra content at a discount rate.

This is one thing the PS4 handles well, It will let you play games while they are updating, it will download updates while you aren't using it. It means that you usually don't have to wait for updates to download.

 

But Steam on the other hand handles it poorly. It's frequently updating everything and I can't tell you how many times I couldn't play the game I wanted because it had an hour or more of updates to download.

 

-Another thing about modern games: playing them. Learning how to play these games sometimes requires hours of tutorial time, which is a PITA when you don't have much time to game. When I do have time to play a game, I don't want to sit there for 2 hours and feel like I did nothing to progress the story along. I'm sure many of you know this feel.

I do like in-game tutorials to a point. But if they go on for hours, that's excessive.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

 

Wow, you didn't play many pre-nes consoles. Ever heard of the SMS, more popular in Europe than the nes ever was...

 

 

On the contrary, I've owned and spent countless hours playing several Atari 2600s (1 light sixer, 3 Vaders, 1 four switch woodie, and 1 Sears Video Arcade II), a ColecoVision with an Atari 2600 expansion module, 3 Atari 7800's, an XEGS, and a Master System adapter for my Genesis which I think counts. I still spend about 2 or 3 hours a week on average playing my Atari 2600.