Old Gamers, What was the last truly magical gaming generation for you?

The last system they really affected me was the 360. I remember driving to a GameStop miles away because they had a prerelease kiosk. Playing the Call of Duty 2 demo and seeing the detail on the gun as I aimed down the sights blew me away.
 
I dont think everything was better is true for video games except that I liked the bigger focus on jrpgs in gen 5 and 6. But I still get plenty of jrps to play.
 
I'd throw in Gamecube, Xbox and PS2 in there. Though I was just about to become a teenager back then so might have something to do with it.
 
I'd say the 360 / PS3 / Wii generation was the last magical for me.
 
Switch, first year.

Mario and Zelda did it for me, when I thought I was out of gaming, those 2 brought me back in… now I'm just as confused about why I'm gaming again ever since lol hoping for something just as magical…

GTA 6 🤞
 
In retrospect, it had more to do with my age than the generation.
I wanted to play all the games in my younger days, all the time - so 8bit days to 16bit days of my preteen/teenager days - I had more fun. No matter how shitty the game was, I was inclined to play as hard as I could.
As I became older, my taste became more acutely selective - so while I enjoyed the generational jumps and all - but all that magical feeling was gone.
So even though some generations had quite a bit of masterpieces - I fell into burn-out off and on, even though I could buy far more, far more advanced and far better games.
 
The jump from C64 to Amiga, the stero sound alone was amazing and still echoes in my head. Games like Rocket Ranger, It came from the Desert, Dragon's Lair, Shadow of the Beast and so many more. That late 80's period when the NES was showing it's age.

That's not even counitng work bench as an OS. Game changer.
 
Ps2, XBOX, and gamecube's era was the last great ones for consoles. But PC still remained great during the later years of 2000s with World of Warcraft, Counter Strike Source, Half Life 2s. And even later throughout the whole of 2010s because of modded Skyrim and Fallout 4.

The magical gaming generation seems to be coming back now with GTA VI, Space Marine 2, Stellar Blades, Tides of A, Elder Scrolls VI ETC.
 
PSWii60 gen. The introduction to HD gaming and motion control craze. I have lots of fond memories during that era. It seemed like get togethers were super fun back then from Wii Sports at family gatherings to CoD/Halo/Guitar Hero/Rockband/Gears at friend house parties, going to midnight releases at BestBuy, Circuit City, Gamestop with big crowds of people. SF4 came back and everyone was playing Street Fighter again. Felt like SF2 days. Lots of great new IP's too.
 
The jump from C64 to Amiga, the stero sound alone was amazing and still echoes in my head. Games like Rocket Ranger, It came from the Desert, Dragon's Lair, Shadow of the Beast and so many more. That late 80's period when the NES was showing it's age.

That's not even counitng work bench as an OS. Game changer.
Dude, you must be way old!

How old are you, 38?
 
Hard to say. I started with the NES but barely remember that time.

PS1 as a kid - Was my first real console and made me fall in love with gaming - RE and MGS were my favourites.

PS2 as a teenager - Would say this one was the best in terms of fun and passion I had with gaming in general. That console did so much for gaming...

360 at 20+ - The console where I had my own money and last truly great and groundbreaking generation. Also first time I went online. Have some great memories of that time.

Gaming has been going downhill ever since. There is still a few great game released every now and then but it'll never be the same again for several reasons (industry too big now, too many people play games etc.).
 
Honestly, the magic never really left.

Sure, there's a lot of shitty practises in gaming today, and lots of trash worth avoiding, but still in modern years I have fallen in love with stuff like Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Doom Eternal, Metroid Dread, Monster Hunter Rise, Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Bros Wonder, Astro Bot, Turbo Overkill, etc.

There's still plenty of good shit if you go looking for it, and I'm still often reminded of how awesome gaming can be.
 
Last edited:
I think the jumps between PS1 to PS2 and PS2 to PS3 were magical. Naturally once you've got pretty close to photorealistic there's not much further you can go which is why it feels like there hasn't really been a "leap" in the last couple of generations.

But anyway, I get that magical feeling when I remember sitting in my room playing Link to the Past on my SNES as a kid. Playing my PS1 Demo disc over and over again. Playing Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Resi Evil, and a shit load of other great games.

Booting up GTA3 for the first time. Burnout 3. Timesplitters. Splinter Cell.

Being in college and having my friends over so we could play Wii bowling, Soul Calibur on the PS3 (we had a leaderboard on my wall to track matches). Resistance Fall of Man. GTAIV.

And of course that feeling of opening that big present and it being a new console as a kid. That feeling can't be beat.
 
I can't really name a generation, but I can name a decade, the 90s. You went from the SNES/Gensis to the Dreamcast. Arcades were still amazing. More consoles to choose from. PC games were truly a different experience. The jump to 3d was wild. They were trying everything from new hardware ideas to weird software genres. Oh and gaming mags. The Internet killed that joyful era of going to the mailbox and finding your new gaming mag and reading it cover to cover. I think that is the golden era for gaming. At that time gaming was big enough to create a lot of games, but still small enough to take a lot of chances.

With that said, if I was forced to choose a generation it would ps1/n64/late 90s pc era. Yes it was clunky, but it was exciting and opened up gameplay options.
 
Sega Dreamcast. The graphics were amazing, the controller with a fucking VMU in it. I wish I could go back in time and appreciate that console even more. It introduced me to online multiplayer and allowed my brother and I to play Phantasy Star Online together, while I was in California, and he was in Colorado.
Yup. #metoo
 
For consoles it was definitly the gamecube/ps2/xbox era. Back when every console still had it's own identity and didn't just feel like a watered down PC.

For PC? The rtx 5090.
Playing Black Myth with that gpu was pretty awesome, and the raw power it provides is really cool, although not neccesary for a brilliant gaming experience.
 
Last edited:
Early 90s PC gaming.

In 1992 I went from a CGA system to a SuperVGA system with a sound card. Truly magical playing games like Wing Commander, Front Page Sports Football, etc... on that system. The next year I got a CD-ROM drive for Christmas and that was even more insane.

For consoles it was probably the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation.
 
Last gen had some "magical" moments, even.

The OG destiny and its nightfalls and raids and the zeitgeist around it, even so much as the rush to find Xur, the days of LFG and so on can't be replicated.

Only this gen has felt entirely unmagical and unwarranted. The games are lacklustre, the companies are floundering and making weird decisions, the hardware isn't being utilised in any interesting ways, just overall a disappointment.
 
Last edited:
I think PS4/PS5 had tons of magic for and I've been gaming since the NES and Atari 2600.

Persona 5 Royal - Best RPG I've played since FFX.
Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut - Everything I wanted Way of the Samurai to be on PS2.
Astro Bot - Don't remember having more fun playing a game in a long time.
Marvel's Spider-Man - Best spider-man and superhero game of all time. You felt like Spider-Man and that shit hurt sometimes.
God of War 2018/Ragnarok - Couldn't believe how far God of War had come and how amazing they translated it to modern gaming. Redefined and already legendary franchise.
Ace Combat 7 - Best arcade flight shooter I've ever played.
TLOUP2 - Gave me that Metal Gear Solid 2 like experience. Couldn't believe what I was playing.
Uncharted 4 - Not sure if I've ever played a more cinematic game in my life



I think people have rose tinted glasses when it comes to nostalgia.
 
Last edited:
PC gaming 2000-2001 was an amazing time, just the best ever:

Baldur's Gate 2
Total War: Shogun
Deus Ex
Counterstrike 1.0
Diablo II
Max Payne
American MacGee's Alice
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
No One Lives Forever


Those were my personal favorites, then we also saw huge releases like The Sims, Hitman, Gothic, Red Faction, Black & White... Just insane quality in a short amount of time, and yes the last time I guess it truly felt magical. Although I still feel like it is great.
 
MW1&2, halo 3, Gears, Forza.
Sad Vince Mcmahon GIF by namslam
 
In this hobby since the very beginning. IMO every gen has magical moments. Astrobot in VR was a Mario 64 moment to me and everyone who tried thinks pretty much the same. Games like Bloodborne or Nier Automata are among my all-time greats.

This gen is much worse (so far) but Expedition 33 is on par with old Final Fantasy VII, so I include it as "magical" too.
 
So many, my first game console was Atari 2600 (launch year!), I got it for Christmas and have owned every single console, from every hardware maker , ever.
The standouts and my top ones are Sega Genesis, PS2, Xbox 360.
 
Last edited:
Has to be the 360/PS3 generation, without a doubt, the games industry today struggles to deliver a great soccer game, much less a tennis game, you brought what you paid for no extra time waiting around for the game to get fleshed out by the developers...you had Ridge Racer/Blur/Metal Gear/Mass effect/Halo etc....now some of those franchises are struggling to stay alive- (Mass Effect and Halo) while Konami are trying to relive as if it was 2004 all over again with Metal Gear 3 reboot
 
What one never see's much of in these types of threads is that people do not accept age plays its part. Other than seeing your kids grow up, name me the things in life that are better and you enjoy more in your 40's than those in your teenage years or 20's. I have a hard time thinking of anything that is better now in my late 40's, to that of when in my 20's, I can't think of anything really...



You'll never beat the magic of a new system on Christmas day from Father Christmas or having gaming sleep overs with mates, looking past all that, I'm loving gaming now more than I have done since the 32-bit era, which was me was best and so much of that was the stage of my life I was in at the time .

I do miss the days of importing games and hardware from Japan and having Arcade game everwhere even in your local chippy or takeaway and so miss the days of going to seaside to play the lastest SEGA Arcade scaling games like Outrun, AB2, Power Drift, Space Harrier down the likes of Barry Island and Porthcawl and getting pissed in the Dirty Duck
 
I think i can still experience magic. I took a long long break from games and fired up witcher 3 and traversing that environment was breathtaking.

No doubt, my first gaming gen was the most magical though. I could feel that same sense of awe at a new area in pokemon red on my gameboy colour's tiny shadow covered screen in the back of a car.
 
Ps2 era for me. So many good memory. Also my first own console.
Also GC and Xbox were great at the time too. This whole era was magical for me

We had Megadrive as a kid but it was not on the same level.

Also PS3 era is special for me just for Dark Souls 1 and 2 alone and some others good memories on games like Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Borderlands, MGS4....
 
Last edited:
What one never see's much of in these types of threads is that people do not accept age plays its part. Other than seeing your kids grow up, name me the things in life that are better and you enjoy more in your 40's than those in your teenage years or 20's. I have a hard time thinking of anything that is better now in my late 40's, to that of when in my 20's, I can't think of anything really...



You'll never beat the magic of a new system on Christmas day from Father Christmas or having gaming sleep overs with mates, looking past all that, I'm loving gaming now more than I have done since the 32-bit era, which was me was best and so much of that was the stage of my life I was in at the time .

I do miss the days of importing games and hardware from Japan and having Arcade game everwhere even in your local chippy or takeaway and so miss the days of going to seaside to play the lastest SEGA Arcade scaling games like Outrun, AB2, Power Drift, Space Harrier down the likes of Barry Island and Porthcawl and getting pissed in the Dirty Duck

One example of stuff one might enjoy in their 40s more could be literature. You could resonate more with characters based on life experience. Many get into books later in life because of lack of time etc.
 
Xbox 360 - The jump to HD, the games that system had along with Xbox Live was peak gaming.

Playstation 4 gen and PS5 gen just havent matched the HD Era.
 
One example of stuff one might enjoy in their 40s more could be literature. You could resonate more with characters based on life experience. Many get into books later in life because of lack of time etc.
Borning shit stuff, lets face it Give me my 20's anyway day of the week.

The only thing I like doing more in my late 40's is cooking LOL
 
Windows 98 to Windows XP (when I first came into contact for real, when I was a wee lad). My first real video game was Command & Conquer, which my father brought home. It was the big box release including the expansion back and was in the bargain bin (a couple of months later, he also brought home a similar big box release for Red Alert, which also included the expansions, also from a bargain bin).

But the first contact I ever had with a video game was on a very old Compaq Laptop which my Mom had stored away in the attic. There was some clone of Boulder Dash on it. But I was too young to understand what was going on. But I remember being scared of the PC-Speaker sound the falling boulders made.
 
All of them to be honest, I've loved it all. I started in 1982 as a kid and it's been an incredible ride. Been there for every console and pc era, I'd say tho the mid to late 90s, or early 2000s was pretty insane with the likes of Ultima Online but Everquest was unlike anything to that point, then was playing dark age of camelot with their RvRvR, realm vs realm vs realm and that was incredible, then the warcraft days. But during this I was always loving the console days which were also incredible when final fantasy was killing it etc..

Of course then when halo dropped that was another amazing time as I was playing alot of pc shooters so halo was a big deal.

All of it has been an amazing ride.
 
PSX with a mod chip + shitty dial-up internet + blank cds + Nero burning rom was peak. Had no idea what I was doing as a young lad but had so much fun playing heaps of games.

Similar with a modded OG Xbox and renting games from blockbuster and copying them to HDD.

Now I'm legit. I wouldn't download a car.
 
Top Bottom