64gigabyteram
Reverse groomer.
3rd gen, 2d sidescrollers became dominant and we saw bigger game experiences thanks to games having more powerful hardware to work with than basic atari stuff. Games like Super Mario Bros and Megaman pioneered the sidescroller genre and gave us games with actual starts and ends that weren't just arcade repetitive do it over for the high score mindless stuff.
4th gen, Games became larger story focused experiences thanks to home consoles getting more popular, RPGs becoming a bigger genre, and saves becoming more common. the existing 2d platformers that we had became even more complex, as 16 bit games of the time gave us flashier, faster, and more complex gameplay, like with Sonic the Hedgehog, Contra 4, Super Mario World and more. Games were starting to become more like art.
5th gen, I really shouldn't have to explain. 3D came up on the scene, giving us a whole new axis to work with and visuals unlike anything we'd seen before. Popular games of the time that mastered the craft of 3d gameplay included Super Mario 64, DOOM, Quake, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and Metal Gear Solid. Not just that, but stories in games became even better and more focused, with writing that hadn't been seen before that gen. This gen was also the birth of the FPS genre, which would become EXTREMELY popular in the coming years.
6th gen, game physics and AI became more advanced as the newer CPUs on the 6th gen consoles gave more headroom to make better games. Ragdolls became common in games and overall consoles could produce insane simulations and visuals, leading to games like Grand Theft Auto 3, Red Faction, and half life 2 with open worlds with an attention to detail and physics like you'd never seen before
7th gen gave all 3 major consoles full online gaming, allowing for multiplayer games like Call of Duty and Halo to truly reach their stride and become extremely popular. Games became more social interactions, with games such as Gmod and Team Fortress 2 coming out in this gen and showing people how absolutely fun online gaming and social spaces can be. Not only that, but Open world games became more popular thanks to the GPUs being able to render more than ever with HD, resulting in games like Skyrim, Dragon's Dogma, GTAIV, Far Cry 2, Crysis, Minecraft, and more
With all of these past gens i can see there was a clear trend of newer hardware encouraging new gameplay innovations and creating new genres. I haven't seen that since the 8th gen consoles launched though. Even the beloved games that people treat as absolute masterpieces like Elden Ring, BOTW, and God of War are all just different takes on existing gameplay concepts.
Elden Ring is just a Soulsborne open world.
BOTW is a ubisoft open world with a focus on more physics/sandbox based gameplay.
God of War is simply dark souls but with more of a focus on combos and less on hard, difficult gameplay/bosses.
All 3 of these games could have been done on 7th gen hardware, excluding the visuals. That's the thing i'm talking about here, if a game could be made on a previous platform, not just because of graphics but because of gameplay and physics as well. I'm not just talking about better graphics from a new gen, because that's been a constant in every generation we've had since forever. You don't JUST buy new generation games to see better visuals, you should buy them to see the new gameplay possibilities created by the new hardware
San Andreas could never have been done on the PS1 not just because it was 3d, but because there was so much more going on with the NPCs, varied environments, car physics, etc it would all never work. It's too much data to be stored on a CD or processed by a PS1
Spyro could never have been done on a Sega Genesis for very, VERY obvious reasons. Same for Quake, Metal Gear Solid, Crash, etc
Minecraft would never properly run on a PS2 due to the PS2 not being able to handle the sheer scale of the worlds that Minecraft produced. Minecraft's landscapes take very complex AI to generate for the PS2, if a PS2 tried that it'd chug
But games like Ratchet Rift Apart, Returnal, Demon's Souls... There's nothing about the gameplay that makes me think "yeah, this could never have been done on an older console." or "this is so innovative, you know this would never work on a PS4"
it's the same stuff from the PS4 and even PS3 gameplay wise, but better looking, and it loads faster i guess. Even the rifts in rift apart are just secret loading zones that happen to load really fast, and gameplay wise it's not much different from Tools of Destruction, which came out in 2007.
It honestly brings up the question of what the point of newer console gens even is anymore. graphically we've reached near perfection, all we need is 4k@120fps for every game and we're there, and then where would we go after that? 8k for every game? raytracing everywhere? we've got good graphics but the thing that kept us playing were the new possibilities we had with games, the more immersive worlds, the new genres, the better stories, social interactions, etc and we're at the point where we've reached a standstill for all of that consistent innovation. We're just sitting there, trying our best to perfect 13+ year old game design while having almost nothing to show for it.
this is probably the longest post i've made, but i have to get it off my chest... besides, i've seen longer cough cough
01011001
cough cough
4th gen, Games became larger story focused experiences thanks to home consoles getting more popular, RPGs becoming a bigger genre, and saves becoming more common. the existing 2d platformers that we had became even more complex, as 16 bit games of the time gave us flashier, faster, and more complex gameplay, like with Sonic the Hedgehog, Contra 4, Super Mario World and more. Games were starting to become more like art.
5th gen, I really shouldn't have to explain. 3D came up on the scene, giving us a whole new axis to work with and visuals unlike anything we'd seen before. Popular games of the time that mastered the craft of 3d gameplay included Super Mario 64, DOOM, Quake, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and Metal Gear Solid. Not just that, but stories in games became even better and more focused, with writing that hadn't been seen before that gen. This gen was also the birth of the FPS genre, which would become EXTREMELY popular in the coming years.
6th gen, game physics and AI became more advanced as the newer CPUs on the 6th gen consoles gave more headroom to make better games. Ragdolls became common in games and overall consoles could produce insane simulations and visuals, leading to games like Grand Theft Auto 3, Red Faction, and half life 2 with open worlds with an attention to detail and physics like you'd never seen before
7th gen gave all 3 major consoles full online gaming, allowing for multiplayer games like Call of Duty and Halo to truly reach their stride and become extremely popular. Games became more social interactions, with games such as Gmod and Team Fortress 2 coming out in this gen and showing people how absolutely fun online gaming and social spaces can be. Not only that, but Open world games became more popular thanks to the GPUs being able to render more than ever with HD, resulting in games like Skyrim, Dragon's Dogma, GTAIV, Far Cry 2, Crysis, Minecraft, and more
With all of these past gens i can see there was a clear trend of newer hardware encouraging new gameplay innovations and creating new genres. I haven't seen that since the 8th gen consoles launched though. Even the beloved games that people treat as absolute masterpieces like Elden Ring, BOTW, and God of War are all just different takes on existing gameplay concepts.
Elden Ring is just a Soulsborne open world.
BOTW is a ubisoft open world with a focus on more physics/sandbox based gameplay.
God of War is simply dark souls but with more of a focus on combos and less on hard, difficult gameplay/bosses.
All 3 of these games could have been done on 7th gen hardware, excluding the visuals. That's the thing i'm talking about here, if a game could be made on a previous platform, not just because of graphics but because of gameplay and physics as well. I'm not just talking about better graphics from a new gen, because that's been a constant in every generation we've had since forever. You don't JUST buy new generation games to see better visuals, you should buy them to see the new gameplay possibilities created by the new hardware
San Andreas could never have been done on the PS1 not just because it was 3d, but because there was so much more going on with the NPCs, varied environments, car physics, etc it would all never work. It's too much data to be stored on a CD or processed by a PS1
Spyro could never have been done on a Sega Genesis for very, VERY obvious reasons. Same for Quake, Metal Gear Solid, Crash, etc
Minecraft would never properly run on a PS2 due to the PS2 not being able to handle the sheer scale of the worlds that Minecraft produced. Minecraft's landscapes take very complex AI to generate for the PS2, if a PS2 tried that it'd chug
But games like Ratchet Rift Apart, Returnal, Demon's Souls... There's nothing about the gameplay that makes me think "yeah, this could never have been done on an older console." or "this is so innovative, you know this would never work on a PS4"
it's the same stuff from the PS4 and even PS3 gameplay wise, but better looking, and it loads faster i guess. Even the rifts in rift apart are just secret loading zones that happen to load really fast, and gameplay wise it's not much different from Tools of Destruction, which came out in 2007.
It honestly brings up the question of what the point of newer console gens even is anymore. graphically we've reached near perfection, all we need is 4k@120fps for every game and we're there, and then where would we go after that? 8k for every game? raytracing everywhere? we've got good graphics but the thing that kept us playing were the new possibilities we had with games, the more immersive worlds, the new genres, the better stories, social interactions, etc and we're at the point where we've reached a standstill for all of that consistent innovation. We're just sitting there, trying our best to perfect 13+ year old game design while having almost nothing to show for it.
this is probably the longest post i've made, but i have to get it off my chest... besides, i've seen longer cough cough
01011001
cough cough
Last edited:
