Were video games really better in the 90s, or is it all nostalgia?

Were video games really better in the 90s, or is it all nostalgia?

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>or is it all nostalgia?
yes

95-2005 was a pretty fucking magical decade for games.

i did have more fun playing games in the 90's, and still enjoy playing those games today, even games i never owned on consoles i never had.
so for me, no.

>Were video games really better in the 90s
yes

There was less money involved

Less suit influence and interest

A lot of devs were basement dwellers who decided to have their D&D dreams come true and writer rejects who Holywood never wanted because they were too wizard

Things weren't as perfect as /vr/ would tell you but the ambient was better and more positive resulting in games created with more "heart"

is this the 50's, or 1999?

Simple answer: Both

>one of the best level designers of all time now works at gas pump and designs shitty mobile games

Video games were best in the 80s.
Come at me.

>play FF13 for the first time
>drop it in half an hour

>play FF4 for the first time
>can't put it down
>complete it over a weekend

I'd say games were objectively better.

>Were video games really better in the 90s
yes

Many of you will never have that feeling of PC gaming Doom, Duke Nukem, Blood and Diablo for the first time. God damn that was something.

Objectively youre a retarded nostalgic drone

Games back then were uglyer, clunkyer, and plain outdated design

don't forget that he has to take care of his wife's son too.

John Romero? He's working on an FPS now, and he's released a couple levels for Doom 1 in the past year

It had a great mix of technical possibilities, creativity and publisher/developer relationships.
Of course there were shitty games and greedy cunts and such, but there was room for small teams to make some unique games that ended up great. There was more room for taking risks.

I'd agree with OP actually. My Top 10 games of all time are:
1. Ocarina of Time
2. Super Metroid
3. Starcraft
4. Bionic Commando
5. Tetris Attack
6. Mega Man 3
7. Mega Man 2
8. Life Force
9. Contra
10. Super Smash Bros 4

According to their biography if you were a competent programmer in the 80's/90's you would have the salary to buy multiple Ferraris early in your career.

they were the best of their time so your argument is shit

you retards are no different than the plebs that go to see every new transformers movie and think it's the best film because it has the best explosions
blackroom is dead but he did just put a new game on greenlight

People were more innocent and *gasp* HAPPY!

Not a cesspool of cynism, and the few cynics shitposting on Usenet weren't taken seriously because, as an ancient Simpsons episode stated, opinions on the internet don't matter (unlike now).

I'd give anything to go back just because I preffer to talk about exciting new releases to classmates instead of cynic shitposting and console warring.

For the record, I am not american, I didnt knew console wars were a thing at the time, so it didn't matter if you liked Sega or Nintendo, what mattered was the hobby in itself.

Yeah no shit
Even if you release one or two world famous albums, you aren't set for the rest of your life

>outdated design

So the streamlined shit we get now that needs to appeal to every casual retard is "good" design? I'll take outdated any day.

I just played X-Men 2 on the Mega Drive. Video games were better in the 90s.

you only remember the games worth remembering

in 10 years you'll think 2017 had great games in it and 2027 had mostly shit ones and so on forever

I know you are trolling, but I find 8-bit and 16-bit games to be the most aesthetically pleasing. In fact, the only games I even buy now a days are games that are designed with those style of graphics. Things like Abzan Hawkings and the 1000 Spikes, Shovel Knight, Shantae, etc.

I disagree, but the magic of the arcade was something special.
Feels bad man.

/vr/ exists for you 30-40 yo losers who think your shit mattered

I love usenet shitposting. Pure vintage autistic anger.

>in 10 years you'll think 2017 had great games in it and 2027 had mostly shit ones and so on forever
I dunno, while I think nostalgia filters out a lot of trash this generation has felt like such a flop. It's the first generation I just haven't actively bought any new releases outside of one or two indie/KS titles.

The highpoints were higher and the lowpoints were lower. People experimented more which means that there were more complete failures but also more genuine innovation. A lot of the more questionable business practices like DLC, episodic models and Early Access didn't exist because not as many people had internet back then.

Overall it was better in some respects and worse in others. I don't really miss it.

I was born after the arcades, but 80s NES is my favorite game library.

I'm not one of those weirdos that wishes they were born in a different era, but I think being around for the arcade craze could have been magical. I'm fine with when I was born though. I was born in the time right when the internet was taking off, so I had a childhood with no computers, and computers started popping up in my teenage years, which felt like a good time for them. I like that mix, which most generations will not have.

Seconding this

i'd say 2009 was about the time that games really went to shit

the first few years of the 7th gen were fine

>it didn't matter if you liked Sega or Nintendo, what mattered was the hobby in itself
So much this.

wow.

It's like the shitposts on pompeii's walls.

Every console I have best to worst (didn't count backwards compatibility obviously):
NES
GCN
SNES
N64
Xbox 360
PS2
Game Boy
DS
Wii U
Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Color
PS1
Wii
Sega Genesis

We got older and saw how things really were. The magic is gone.

I can kinda agree with that, it wasnt until the middle of the 360/PS3/Wii that things started taking a turn for the worse.

I remember when i got Lost Planet and all the DLC was released for free as a thank you to the players for supporting the new IP. Something like that would never happen again in today's enviroment (at least for consoles).

to expand on this, there are a lot of games around that era which started shitty trends and thus get a lot of flak, but on their own were actually pretty good

e.g.
cod4
halo 3
oblivion
arkham asylum
uncharted

Not really, things had always been this way. We just stopped being target audience.

Now here's question to everyone, what was the point when you understood that you were not the target audience anymore?

>but on their own were actually pretty good
No, you just lowered your standarts already.

I threw a hissy fit and moved on to more grognardy games.

>babies first twoll

How adorable.

It's nostalgia

You have great and shitty games then and now

They were better. When you play older games it feels like they actually put passion and love into their games, also companies were willing to take bigger risks instead of making Call of Halo 15: Raising My Wifes Son.

Also games didn't have DLC so that's an instant point for older games.

So were CRT TVs and cell phones the size if bricks, now those are considered shit

That depends, how old were you in the 90's?

Shouldn't you be in bed little guy? I thought it was a school night.

I had that feeling. It really was something.
I'd like to throw QUAKE and Command & Conquer into that mix too.

just nostalgia

The supposed good games of then were better than the supposed good games of now.

If a game is a GotY nowadays, it's 99% likely some game I have no interest in.

Bloodborne is better than shit like OoT

For all people saying nostalgia: which if the mayor improvements in the last 10 years that overshadows everything in the 90's?

Anyone got a tint of nostalgia, that is a given but what is better now?

pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti from Pompeii.htm

COD4, DLC, and Season Passes ruined games.

there was a lot of stuff that you took for granted like Mario 64 coming out at launch and being what it was, it's not until years later that you realize how impressive a feat something like that was

>For all people saying nostalgia: which if the mayor improvements in the last 10 years that overshadows everything in the 90's?
Controls, not looking like shit, UI that doesn't cover 80% of the screen like Ultima, multiplayer that isn't shit experience

>360
>better than ps2

wew

>you will never experience the golden age of pc games again

fuck this timeline.

indie games were a mistake

PS2 wasn't that great if you hate racing games, sports games, and RPGs like I do. Luckily, it had a ton of rhythm games and nice platformers. 360 just happened to slightly edge it out.

It's second to none if you like 3D beat em ups though, there's also a pretty good selection of shmups/run and gun games

Gaming evolved in leaps and bounds during the 90s. Every year brought massive innovation in a way that you don't see today. For that reason, clumping all the games from the decade together isn't really fair.

Speaking generally, though, games were labors of love from their developers in a way that you don't see from major developers these days. There was less of a push from publishers to make games to be accessible or conform to some general market. On the PC, at least, games were usually more complex. In the early 90s flight sims were one of the top genres, one which is pretty much dead today.

On the other hand, games were much less intuitive and usually required consulting a physical manual to even discover basic controls. There's plenty of games that I just never learned how to play. Nowadays, if you know how to play one 3D games, you know to play them all.

The question is, then, do you prefer complexity and innovation over intuitiveness and polish?

>tfw when you have over 400 games on steam and all you play is comfy msdos games

No more X-wing Vs Tie Fighter, X-wing Alliance

Feels bad man

Mainstream taste diverged from mine around 1995 when the world was going gaga for ugly 3D graphics

Yes they were. Look at how amazing 1998 was.

Nowadays it's nothing but marketing and building up hype only to deliver unfinished/unpolished products because everyone pre-orders nowadays anyway.

>now works at gas pump

Are you basing it off that photo of the retro gas pump he bought as a collector's item?

Yeah bro no developer back then ever lied or released a unfinished game :D

Not sure about "better" but there was no real big money back in game development or mega publishers. Money ruins everything i guess. Games are expensive now.

first post worst post

I feel like there was a lot of trash back then but we mostly remember the good stuff.

The business practices today are less appealing from a customer perspective, but that is to be expected, really.

back then you would get a few but nowadays it's the case for the majority of AAA games

I put 300h into PoE this season alone, so all of the above, but none of those things are mutually exclusive. You can have an intuitive and complex game that's polished to high gloss and then some. Nobody can invest that much these days. Big studios backed by publishers are pidgeonholed into wide-demographic marketing, indies don't have the manpower nor the funding to generate the number of assets nor at similar quality. What you end up with here is an over-saturated under-committed market built up from sheer bumblefuckery. What's worse is actual studios seem to have disappeared, and continue to as publishers vacuum them up, which is the real problem, the developers have lost their say in all of this. Between the community and their employers they lack any authority whatsoever in the production of their game in the end.

JRPGs were, without a doubt, superior in the 90s.

>tr4sh bros
>the 90's

Devs where willing to take more risks back then cause risk where substantially lower. Now if your game fucks up it's your ass and a lawsuit.

When people on Sup Forums talk about 90s games, they're usually thinking about the classics from 98-03, not the shovelware or games from the very early 90s.

Several of the games on that list weren't from the 90s.

I 28 and had only genesis, ps1 and pc when I was a kid. Now when I play old games I didn't play on pc or emulators I still enjoy many of them as if I was a kid. Old fallout games and baldur's gate 2 were so good I fell out of life for some time. Many good jrpgs, many good arcade games. I like new games too but most of them feel you know lifeless. A product of an industry. Good but still just a product for sale.

Indies still take risks. Like those guys who made Brigador, my favorite game of 2016. Took them five years. The game completely failed at launch, though it gotten some sales now through good word of mouth.

I will tell you the truth, user. The pure, unadulterated truth because I played videogames all through the 90s in anticipation of a zit-faced youth asking me this in 2017.

The highs were higher, but the lows were lower and the average was much much lower assuming you ignore all the greenlight garbage pushed out every day on Steam and only look at "Real games". There was more experimentation going on in all aspects of game development so you ended up with some really magical games, but by that same token almost everything was a pain in the ass to get running and was incredibly unstable by modern standards. Standardization in engines and middleware is a godsend for game stability. By any completely unknown "Real game" today and you stand a good chance of getting something that will run and be tolerable, while back in the day it was a much larger crapshoot.

They were better for me in the 90s. Games have always been about making money, but in the 90s the largest market (only market) was nerds. In 2017 the largest market is normies. Games are produced for them now instead of us.

>The highs were higher
Stopped reading there

All 'eras' of video games have been filled with trash and gems

I was born in 91, but didn't have any video games til late in the n64's lifespan. Over the years getting all the consoles i missed and games for them, i've always had the most fun playing action games like the Shinobi series, Streets of Rage, the earlier Mega Man games, and also SNES era JRPGs, than i ever have playing games from the mid 2000s til now. its not a childhood nostalgia thing either, since I never played many of them until after I was 18.

yes but not because of those hacks

Games were always for """normies""" retard, thats why average Joe loved pong, or mario, or pac man

I'll take World of Xeen any day of the week over Undertale. 1v1 irl

No. Games seem better when you're younger.

this.
I'm 42, been playing since the Colecovision/Atari.
the average playability of today's games greatly exceeds the average of the 90's. middleware and ubiquitous engines have raised the bar very high.

Looks like a clunky piece of dog turd, its probably one of those shitty games were to turn you had to move your mouse to the entire side

1998 was a pretty fucking good year. Perfect confluence of new hardware, programmers' experience with new 3D tech, and game design iteration.

yeah the silver lining is going indie or crowd funding. you dont have the pressure of giant corporations fucking you in the ass

Seriously. The 90's was a magical fucking time. Seriously magical. Technology would seemingly double in power and speed every year, not just increase by 5% like it does today. New bindblowing shit just kept coming out across every platform goddamn monthly. From Commander Keen to fucking Quake in just a couple years. Wing Commander to Freespace 2. Absolutely incredible. Dune 2 to Red Alert 2.

We're pretty much past the climax of technological evolution now. There's no more incredible leaps to behold anymore that has never been seen. Just tiny almost imperceptible gradual increases towards full realism.

You will never see that absolute paradigm shifting moment where games had more than 16 colors for the first time. When games seemed 3D for the first time. Then when games WERE 3D for the first time. When new refreshing games spawned entire genres.

Pretty much all ground has now been covered. The era of discovery is over. The boat has returned to port from its incredible adventure, and you just missed it.

no, the 80s were better

No youre just a contrarian faggot like 99% of Sup Forums.
All of those games were fucking magnificent when they came out. Put 100+hours in all of them excluding uncharted

Everything was better in the 90's. Movies, music, books, games, and even the chicks were less aids.

>Playing WoX with a mouse