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What I enjoyed about growing up during the Console Boom was each iteration, up to and including the PS3, bringing noticable advancements and improvements.
Some stuff was bold experiments which didn’t quite work out. Other stuff was more impactful.
I think the biggest one was the N64 era, and the move to 3d games on console. And the last, for me, would be the Wii and its superb motion controls.
Since then, it’s just been refinements rather than outright advancements. And the Kinect will always frustrate me as a wasted bit of tech. Groundbreaking, but horribly underutilised.
But those days, NES - SNES - N64 - GameCube - Wii were a massively exciting time, when a new console genuinely felt must have, as each promised a whole new gaming experience.
I’ll let others weigh in on other manufacturers, as up until the PS2 I was solidly a Nintendo Kid.
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My first console was the NES. Absolutely defined my childhood and when it came time to upgrade, I got a random opportunity to play Sonic 1, Mario World, and Bonk all in a sitting and pretty happily picked the SNES which might still be my favorite set of games I own. I would eventually pick up a Genesis but outside of Sonic 3&K, I didn't find many of its greatest games until the mid 2000's.
I had a friend who got all of the odd stuff. Sega CD/32X, CDI, Jaguar, etc, but nothing there impressed me. I'd gotten very into Street Fighter, so I saved up money bussing tables to buy a Playstation for Toshinden and thankfully later the far superior Tekken. It's probably got one of my largest collection of games, but most Sony's debut stuff hasn't aged very well. I didn't really NEED another console, but playing Mario 64 made the N64 a must buy and quickly wound up as the party console.
I initially skipped the Dreamcast but eventually picked it up... mostly for Marvel vs Capcom 2 but also for things like Code Veronica, Arcadia, Shenmue and Sonic's jump to 3D. It didn't last very long and the PS2 launched shortly after I left for college and is still probably the best all around system out there. I'd actually come to prefer games on the Gamecube with the Wavebird and Halo 1 LAN parties were the perfect college experience through my early career.
The next era happens to align well with moving in with my now wife finding a 360 while checking out apartments. Definitely an Xbox era with the Wii getting some absolute classics and the PS3 starting very slow but eventually having a decent selection of must haves. This is also when I started to fall out of console gaming though, with work, MMOs, Table Top, mobile games and kids all eating up a lot of my time.
The PS4 ends up being a fantastic console overall but between remasters and sequels gets hard to separate from its predecessory. I did get an XBOne, but it's probably my single most wasted purchase, even worse than the ill conceived Wii U. The Switch would pull me back in, particularly when it picked up the indie gaming torch from XBLArcade and I've been putting more time into the PS5, whose improved load times are one of the best upgrades in decades and gotten me to go back and clear some things I just didn't have time for.
Of course, it would be a disservice to forget handheld systems. I had the original Game Boy and Gear but battery usage limited how much I used them. The Color really changed that and the GBA and DS kept the spirit of the SNES alive and well. The 3DS faltered a bit in the face of phone games, but that along with so much of the industry has consumed itself in microtransaction nonsense that I cannot overstate how much the Switch has come out as the winner of it all in my book. I'm very glad miniatures have helped fill the void created by this era of miserable free to play nonsense.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think I started feeling old when my pop culture references started going over colleague’s heads. Or when I’m asked what my Berk and Boni tattoos are.
Sigur wrote: Our first pc ran windows 3.11. It was a pentium, 90Mhz, CD-Rom, 16MB sound card, 8MB Ram (IIRC). Played everything up to Commandos/Starcraft. There it started to struggle. My first PC game was Silent Thunder: A10 Tank Killer II, my second PC game was C&C2:Red Alert the christmas thereafter.
The most magical thing was when we first connected that to the later, newer PC (200MHz) and my brother and I played C&C2 over LAN across the house. Mind-blowing stuff.
Serial cable - playing mechwarrior 2 against each other.
I remember making my own RJ45 cable so we could hook up two laptops for multiplayer Red Alert 2. That was a fun weekend.
Also, I guess now is as good a time as any for the frankly inevitable “video stores, offy, pizz, night in” reminiscing.
Whilst in almost every way Streaming is superior? I did enjoy wandering around Blockbuster or Local Equivalent, and I turned up many oddities that way. And it felt like a ritual, something done for comfort with preparation.
It’s also where my stubbornness to watch any film, no matter how dodgy, to the end comes from. Once you’d picked and paid? That was it. Those were the films you watched that night. And I do enjoy getting even the most meagre monies worth.
Was also understandably good for finding shonky Straight To Video offerings, which were often dire, but occasionally really good, sequels to better known films.
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Usually I'd say our Spectrum 48K+ was my first real exposure to technology, but I have to give it to this wonderful cassette-magazine series from 1984, that transported me to another world altogether with the miracle of headphones and a cassette recorder...
I feel cliched in saying this, but it was quite an experience at the age of four to hear that tune and Miriam Margolye's voice for the first time.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I remember making my own RJ45 cable so we could hook up two laptops for multiplayer Red Alert 2. That was a fun weekend.
Also, I guess now is as good a time as any for the frankly inevitable “video stores, offy, pizz, night in” reminiscing.
Whilst in almost every way Streaming is superior? I did enjoy wandering around Blockbuster or Local Equivalent, and I turned up many oddities that way. And it felt like a ritual, something done for comfort with preparation.
It’s also where my stubbornness to watch any film, no matter how dodgy, to the end comes from. Once you’d picked and paid? That was it. Those were the films you watched that night. And I do enjoy getting even the most meagre monies worth.
Was also understandably good for finding shonky Straight To Video offerings, which were often dire, but occasionally really good, sequels to better known films.
I kinda prefer DVD's over streaming. It's the only way to see special features and deletes/expanded scenes. There are certain movies that are just great to watch with the Director's Commentary turned on. The 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead had the director's commentary recorded in 2001 in George Romero's living room while they watched the movie. There was a part where George says something like "Yeah, I still have that gun, it's hanging on the wall over there." There's also a part where they are running over zombies with big-rig trucks and they're bouncing off the front of the trucks. George points out a slight editing error that briefly shows how they got that effect. A zombie actor bouncing on a mini trampoline and flying backwards as the truck passes close.
IIRC there were crossover cables and straight though. One of which was needed for wall to computer use, the other for patch cables fo servers/wireing closets.
It’s been a long time, but something I used to know.
I kinda prefer DVD's over streaming. It's the only way to see special features and deletes/expanded scenes. There are certain movies that are just great to watch with the Director's Commentary turned on. The 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead had the director's commentary recorded in 2001 in George Romero's living room while they watched the movie. There was a part where George says something like "Yeah, I still have that gun, it's hanging on the wall over there." There's also a part where they are running over zombies with big-rig trucks and they're bouncing off the front of the trucks. George points out a slight editing error that briefly shows how they got that effect. A zombie actor bouncing on a mini trampoline and flying backwards as the truck passes close.
Physical media are 100% preferrable over fickle websites. Also, once DVDs disappear there'll be a LOT of films and tv shows which also disappear for good. What's currently happening is loads and loads and loads of late 20th century films, music, data, websites, knowledge, texts disappear. We thought that the digital age leads to EVERYTHING being available and we can all archive it and with high speed internet we can all access it all at any time. The sad truth is that with what we let the internet become this just isn't true.
We nourn these lost films like when in the 30s that film studio went up in flames and most of their films got lost. This is nothing compared to what we'll see in the near future. That may sound rather bombastically doommongerish, but I think that this will happen.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/03/13 12:56:56
Nevelon wrote: IIRC there were crossover cables and straight though. One of which was needed for wall to computer use, the other for patch cables fo servers/wireing closets.
It’s been a long time, but something I used to know.
Yup. I made a Crossover cable, allowing two laptops to directly communicate, for Red Alert 2, and lots of patch cables to hook the school’s PCs up.
We were just experimenting with Wireless when I left in 2003.
Was part of a massive upgrade, which had been enabled by a pair of arson attacks on the buildings. Gave the funding and opportunity for a Tupenny All-Out of the existing network, which had been cobbled together over the preceding what, 15 years or so?
Man I loved a well ordered cabinet. And that’s what we got, in the end!
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Robert Pattinson gave a couple of interviews about the new Batman
production...
When asked, “Are you going to do Batman again soon?” the actor responded, “I f–king hope so. I started out as young Batman and I’m going to be f–king old Batman by the sequel.”
He followed his response up by saying, “I’m 38, I’m old.”
So, 38 = old.
BorderCountess wrote: Just because you're doing something right doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're doing...
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m 45 in a few weeks, and whilst I’ve certainly lived a life, and my back begs to differ some mornings? I still don’t feel old.
Perhaps I never will.
A few weeks? Like the beginning of April? It's that soon? I don't want to be 45.
I'll have to be mature... er... ish?
BorderCountess wrote: Just because you're doing something right doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're doing...
I kinda prefer DVD's over streaming. It's the only way to see special features and deletes/expanded scenes. There are certain movies that are just great to watch with the Director's Commentary turned on. The 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead had the director's commentary recorded in 2001 in George Romero's living room while they watched the movie. There was a part where George says something like "Yeah, I still have that gun, it's hanging on the wall over there." There's also a part where they are running over zombies with big-rig trucks and they're bouncing off the front of the trucks. George points out a slight editing error that briefly shows how they got that effect. A zombie actor bouncing on a mini trampoline and flying backwards as the truck passes close.
Physical media are 100% preferrable over fickle websites. Also, once DVDs disappear there'll be a LOT of films and tv shows which also disappear for good. What's currently happening is loads and loads and loads of late 20th century films, music, data, websites, knowledge, texts disappear. We thought that the digital age leads to EVERYTHING being available and we can all archive it and with high speed internet we can all access it all at any time. The sad truth is that with what we let the internet become this just isn't true.
We nourn these lost films like when in the 30s that film studio went up in flames and most of their films got lost. This is nothing compared to what we'll see in the near future. That may sound rather bombastically doommongerish, but I think that this will happen.
While a lot of the DVDs I got back in the early 200s were pretty much just more expensive VHS recordings, lacking a lot of the cool special features DVDs could support, there are a lot of really cool gems in the special features that will be lost with the move to streaming. Commentaries, when well done, are really good, being either insightful looks at the art of making movies/TV or genuinely funny anecdotes from the filming and an insight into the atmosphere on set. That'll all go. Then there's the move to "improve" on the originals that often leaves us with only the newer versions available on streaming. Even before streaming and HD upscaling there was the endless tinkering Lucas did on the original trilogy. My old Buffy DVDs are now pretty precious after the hack job they did making the first few seasons widescreen, complete with camera crew obviously standing in the shot and various other errors because it was never designed to be seen in widescreen. Those new versions are the only ones on streaming right now, AFAIK.
There's also just weird fragmentation of media across platforms now. Even if the whole thing is available online it can often have a few seasons on one platform, then one or two elsewhere so getting access to the whole thing all at once can be tricky. My wife and I got about 80% through a couple of shows before they disappeared from one platform and weren't available to us any more. In a few cases they seemed to not actually migrate anywhere else at all. As production and distribution companies go out of business, the lack of physical media means a lot of their content will just disappear. At least prior to this millennium there was always the possibility of finding a random VHS tape of some obscure TV show. Several episodes of various shows that were previously thought lost have actually resurfaced this way, recorded directly from TV. That's another thing the move to streaming has ended.
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