Least Favorite Era in Videogaming?

[Lady Jaye]

Heh, I apparently voted on that thread but don't remember (and there's no indication telling me which was my vote), but my current opinion on the question is the PSX/Saturn/N64 era. I almost skipped that generation (got a PSOne after the release of the PS2 and never had a Saturn or N64). When I look at certain Playstation games, the blockiness of the graphics and the bad cameras make me not want to play them. Even though I'm not one to usually reject a game based on its graphics (or else I would have hated the Atari 2600 era), I can't get past the polygonal look. It's also the reason why I never got into Starfox...

[vivaeljason]

The PSX/Saturn/N64 era was my least favorite, if only because it was a transitional period.

The storytelling aspect of games was not as advanced as it could be yet, and the switch from 2D sprites to 3D polygons just took a period of adjustment; I think the games suffered a little bit as a result.

[PentiumMMX]

I'd have to go with the 16-bit era...or at least, the later years of it; where there was less of a focus on good games and more of a focus on interactive movies (Watching a movie with the occasional button press to keep the action going, like Dragon's Lair). "Games" like that made me glad I grew up with the N64 (I love me some Diddy Kong Racing...)

[Lady Jaye]

Except that Dragon's Lair is actually older than the 16-bit generation...

[Doc Recca]

I picked "PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era (early 00s)".

That's when games started to be less... special, and just more commonplace. Gaming changed.


I would lie if I said I didn't enjoy today's games, though. But yeah, least favorite era.

[Famidrive-16]

Except that Dragon's Lair is actually older than the 16-bit generation...

I think he meant that in example, as in games that were similar to Dragon's Lair.

[Baloo]

The '93-'99 Era was just awful.

You had all that proto-3D garbage that really had no redeeming values:

3D0
CD-i
Sega 32x
Saturn
Playstation
Jaguar
Sega CD

There was so much trash, it felt like the only redeeming systems there were Saturn and maybe the 32x (I thought it was a good idea and had some solid arcade ports), and they DEFINITELY did not live up to their potential. Everything else was, and still is garbage. There's some great 2D (and a little 3D) on the Sega systems, but the rest, forget it. All 3D garbage.

[Aussie2B]

I don't dislike any era of gaming, but I voted for the Atari era, which I've yet to dabble in that extensively. I definitely intend to increase my experience with the pre-crash era, but it's not something I have a strong urge for or anticipate with great excitement. I started gaming, more or less, with the NES, and that laid down my foundation and what I personally value in games. To this day, I'd say 95%, if not more, of my playing is with games that originate in Japan; my favorite genres are platformers and RPGs, which I won't exactly find much of prior to NES; and I prefer games that have a distinct beginning and end, meaning I'd rather beat a game than simply aim for progressively higher scores.

If I had to pick a runner-up, I'd go with either the current generation of Wii/360/PS3 or the previous generation. I don't think I've beaten a single game from the current generation just yet, and if I look at what I beat from the previous generation, I could count them on my fingers and toes. I'm still content completely ignoring the original Xbox as it has barely any Japanese-developed games and I don't really play FPS or sports games at all. Most PS2 games feel like bogged down PS1 games, while the creative minds at Nintendo were running on empty by the time they got to the GameCube, when they weren't farming out their franchises to other companies that shouldn't have been working on them in the first place.

I don't know how anyone can pick the 8/16/32/64 bit eras, as I think the decade roughly from '87 to '97 was the greatest period in gaming, but different strokes for different folks. This was a time period of sheer 2D bliss, and so many genres were born in this period. And that's to say nothing of the groundbreaking transition to 3D (although the key factor is that 2D wasn't almost completely abandoned then as it is now). The N64 is still the only system I have bought at launch, and that month leading up to it I truly felt like I was sitting on the cusp of a historical moment in the history of video games. Well over a decade later, I can still look at Super Mario 64 and feel that way. Between the magnificent first and second party games on N64 and the massive assortment of quality third party games on PlayStation, I don't know how anyone could not find a mountain of games to play. I'd say the same about the 8 and 16 bit generations, but the 32/64 bit generation seems like a much bigger target in this topic. :P