PS2 was definitely a huge jump to me, too
The biggest detail for me being that characters blinked outside of cut scenes in higher resolution (for the time) games like The Bouncer.
It stopped feeling like leaps after that. And even that, for me, felt more like polish.
But I love the discussion and I like seeing where and how people draw the lines!
I have friends my age who won’t play games in anything below 1440p, 120Hz and I’m like… You are denying yourself a whole world of awesome games and experiences…
It’s hard to really describe to younger generations just what it was like.
I’m an elder millennial (1984) and the changes to games within my lifetime has been breath taking and staggering.
The first game I remember playing is River Raid on my brother’s Atari. I was a vaguely plane shaped black block.
A couple years later, I find myself playing Super Mario Bros. A few more and it’s SMB3 and I’m holding a gameboy in my hands on the road trips to Florida to see my grandparents.
Then the jump to SNES and Genesis. Seeing that depth and life seep into the characters… The music gaining in complexity…
I even had a Sega CD and I remember how mind blowing it was when Sonic turned and ran towards the back to go through a loop instead of just side to side.
Then for it was PS1 with Final Fantasy 7… Graphical cut scenes like moving works of art.
After this point, yes there was still obvious and sometimes bigger jumps… But this is where it all was SO different each generation. Not just seeing extra small details and polishes. Large, discrete jumps forward
I wish I could give my wonder to anyone who never got to experience it. It was an amazing time to live.
I’ve become the same. I’m now that person seeking out more obscure and underrated gems from anywhere in the 30s through the 90s. I hate the thought of all this cultural collateral damage disappearing forever.
I always find it interesting how they largely just seem to have switched dogmatic stances from some religion to atheism.
The real logical stance is “I do not know if this is true or not because it is unprovable”.
They look down on true believers while being true believers in atheism themselves.
I never said nor implied anything about any other system. I spoke about capitalism.
They haven’t overthrown shit.
This is what capitalism is and what it always leads to: siphoning all power to the top small % of people.
The one I remember playing the most was Virtua Cop with the light gun. Loved that one!
This is a larger problem in our society at large: the financial class basically strangling creativity in search of ever increasing secure profit.
It sucks because the talent is all there to make these games and be creative but big money doesn’t want to take a chance.
So they shit out games that just reprise other things, remake old games, etc. for that more certain dollar. It’s no longer about making the best game of Z genre. It’s about ticking the most boxes to please the most people so the game will sell everywhere enough to fill greedy men’s pockets with money.