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This was one of my favorite protagonists as a kid. A square. It wasn’t even a consistent color. Due to technical limitations, it could only take on the color of the surrounding environment.
When the NES hit America, the graphics were mind-blowing. Atari graphics always revealed strange hardware limitations and hackery. The NES graphics felt solid and fully intentional, but even they had very specific limitations you couldn’t help but pick up on over time.
Sprites could only use 3 colors. Also, sprites were only ever about an inch tall. To make giant enemies, you had to actually make them out of background tiles. The floor in this screenshot is pure horizontal lines so the boss could move without the floor APPEARING to move.
The 16-bit systems smashed almost all limitations for 2D games. I remember drooling over games with bosses taking up half the screen, made of as many colors as the artist wanted.
The original PlayStation made 3D games the default, but the graphics were pretty visually clunky. Even so, few games ever gave me the adrenaline rush that Wipeout XL did.
The Nintendo 64 had graphics that were a huge step up from PlayStation. Super Mario 64 was a mind-blower for me. For the first time I truly felt like I was truly present in a 3D environment, but the graphics were still a little clunky.
Then the original Xbox came out. I remember being tricked into thinking a boxing game (fight night 2004?) was a television show. From this generation on, game consoles simply progressed from “like reality” to “even more like reality”.
Of course, this was inevitable, and by no means bad. But I feel sad for younger generation of gamers who never got to experience firsthand the quantum leaps of graphics advancements my generation could. They’ll never know what it’s like to ACHE for bigger sprites or more colors.
Oh, and don’t forget - back in the old days, we could get a preview of the future by visiting arcades. Arcade games featured technology we could never experience at home - until we could.
It was probably around the PlayStation 2 era that I knew arcades were doomed. You simply didn’t need to leave your house to play the most advanced games, so people didn’t. I remember that making me more sad than happy.
I have kids now, who pretty much started gaming on Xbox 360. We’ve upgraded to an Xbox One, and my son is already bugging me to get whatever the next one is called. But I don’t think even he can pinpoint why he wants it, beyond it being shiny and new.
This point of this thread isn’t “games were better when I was young”. In fact, it’s totally the opposite! Games are great now! And plenty of people are making games that feel like older games if that’s what you like!
My point is that kids will never again experience KNOWING that their current game systems have severe limitations, OR the rush of excitement that comes from upgrading and leaving those limitations behind, and that makes me feel a little bit sad, but very lucky at the same time.
