Most Exciting 5-Years of Gaming

[Zap!]

I'm probably going to be alone here, but for me the best five years were 2002 - 2007. In those years we got:

-The tail end of the Dreamcast
-The tail end of the GameBoy Color (Shantae!)
-The raise and fall of the GameBoy Advance, the spiritual successor to the Super NES
-The raise and fall of the original Xbox
-The raise and fall of the GameCube
-The best years of the PS2
-The raise of the DS
-The raise of the PSP
-The raise of the Xbox 360
-The very beginnings of the PS3 and Wii

and also other things like
-The fall of memory cards, slowly replaced by harddrives
-The raise of HD gaming, 480i at first, then 480p, then up from there
-The raise of online gaming in the console space
-Region free console based gaming becoming a thing, even if it was only Sony who was doing it with the PS3.

Plus, its just staggering to think about how many completely fantastic games we saw in those years. Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, Resident Evil 4, Halo, Phoenix Wright, the list goes on and on.

As much as I love classic gaming of the 80s and 90s, Those years were just magic.

Rise?

[ggallegos1]

definitely 96-2001. I got my n64, played FFVII and Zelda, and saw the Dreamcast come in and was blown away. Great times indeed.

[PreZZ]

96 - 2001 for me too. We went from the final days of the Snes, the birth of the playstation, the n64 and saturn, gameboy color and advance, the greatest launch ever to this day: the dreamcast (and the birth of console online gaming) and witnessed the launch of the ps2. Dreamcast is my all time favorite console, if you had one during its 2 and half years of existence, you witnessed a truly unique console focused on hardcore gamers with so many quality games.

[Pikkon]

I would say 88 to 98 for me.

[Leo_A]

The first half of the 1980's is by far the most interesting in the history of videogaming as far as I'm concerned.

[GhostDog]

I would say 88 to 98 for me.

That's ten years. What are your favorite five consecutive years?

[GhostDog]

The first half of the 1980's is by far the most interesting in the history of videogaming as far as I'm concerned.

I can see many having some great memories from the early to mid 80s as there is video footage that I've seen when arcades were a real fun place to be full of kids. However, I can't help but feel myself that late 80s is when the arcades really took off as far as offering the quality of graphics and gameplay. Then again I was born in 1986 and it was before my time. Early to late 90s is when I was into the arcade scene so I missed out on how that was in the 80s.

[WCP]

For me, I think it's more of a 7 year stretch of time, but I'll try to pick the 5 best consecutive years of this period....

I'd say 1991 thru 1996.



But.... I hate the fact that I'm leaving 1989 and 1990 out of the party. I could also give a bit of love to 1997. For me 1989 thru 1997 was the glory years, but if I had to trim it to 5 years in a row, 91 to 96. The key years of 16-bit began in earnest in 1991, and you pretty much see 16 bit retired by 1996, so you pretty much get the entire generation of 16-bit. But you also get a lot of other interesting things going on during this time. The Sega CD Launched in 1992. The 3DO and Jaguar launched late 1993. You had the 32X in late 1994. You had the arrival of Saturn and Playstation in 1995, and you had the N64 in 1996. Yeah, you don't get a long time with the 32/64 bit era, but you get a good early taste of it. I put a greater priority on the 16-bit era, and I love years like 1993 and 1994 which had a million different systems trying to compete. Stuff like CD-I and Neo-Geo and TurboDuo, etc, etc. So many different systems trying to battle it out during the early 90's.

[Tanooki]

Satoshi, on your list, just putting this out there, but I wouldn't put 'harddrives replacing memory cards' as a positive of that period. Hard drives have been almost entirely a curse to the gamer while a boon to the developer. Before hard drives or flash storage(nintendo wii U) were common place when you made a game you had to get it right out of the box or you had to issue a recall if it was bad enough. Now we end up paying $60 for games that almost always are NEVER complete, true BETA by any pre-HDD era standard and they use paying sucker day one customers as free test lab guinea pigs for the shit they shovel. Patches and endless bugs are something that drove a lot of people off of PC games and off gaming or off to console and handhelds since that garbage didn't happen. I had they've added personal storage because it's hard to buy a game these days and not expect to have to wait awhile to play it. First you get stuck with an install that take a few minutes to whatever long, and then patches after that and down the line later too which just sucks.

[GhostDog]

I would have to say '92-'97. That period covered the height of the Genny/SNES war as well as the great paradigm shift from 2D to 3D gaming.

I just changed my choice to the same years as you. Looking through old EGM issues from 1992-1997 made me realize just how great games really were on both consoles and arcades. I lost a lot of interest in console gaming from 1998-2000 because I yearned for other things in life and mostly only arcades got me excited at that time. 1992-1997 were the wonder years where video games on both consoles and arcades provided euphoric experiences like nothing else. Great years indeed.

[Aussie2B]

Considering there was a chunk of time in which there were sadly no video games in my house, it'd have to be a post-SNES period for me, if going by what I played in my chosen years as opposed to purely release dates, since I didn't have 5 consecutive years of gaming prior to that period of no games. So I'm gonna go with '94-'99. I got my SNES in '93, but I think the selection of games for SNES in '92 and '93 was kind of so-so (no big surprise that Genesis took the lead). '94 is where I perceive a grand resurgence for the SNES, when the developers really stepped it up and started using the hardware to its fullest. The vast majority of my SNES favorites come from this tail end of the system's life. Then came the magic and excitement of the 3D transition, specifically the N64 for me. Super Mario 64 blew my mind. By the time we got to '99, I was really expanding my gaming horizons. I got a PlayStation, my first non-Nintendo system, I played Star Ocean 2, which would become my favorite game and favorite series, and I started my retro gaming and collecting, by tracking down my childhood NES favorites and making them my own. These are just a few of the highlights of these 5 years for me.

[HardcoreOtaku]

1988-1993 ftw

[GhostDog]

1988-1993 ftw

Not bad, not bad. Late 80s is when arcade and console games really started getting good in my opinion.

[gunswordfist]

Hmmm, probably '91-'96.

[Gandhara]

1980 to 1985

my favorite 80's Computer the Apple IIe had all my favorite games on it (apart from the Arcades), and the golden age for games on it was '81 to '84. Some of the great classics of all time first appeared on the old Apple II like Lode Runner and Choplifter.

These years were also the golden age of Arcade games, i have more fun playing early 80's games than i ever do next-gen stuff, and i play games from all eras

[WCP]

Hmmm, probably '91-'96.

yep, I feel bad for 1989 and 1990, but if you put a gun to my head it's 91 to 96.


Gotta give props to Super Mario 64 at the end of 1996

[kikenovic]

From 89-94. Solid NES and Genesis releases.

[GREEN00]

I'll serve as an example how influential first hand experience is on our perceptions.

I pick 2000-2005. The swan song of the PS1 to the inevitable but triumphant end to the PS2, not to mention the Gamecube & GBA therin as well. These were my formative years, and I think they were good ones (barring the Xbox, yuck)

I wish I could have fit 1998 in there somehow, but 2005 was just too tempting. And there are a ton of great games on the fringes of 2000 & 2005, namely the Dreamcast launch on 9/9/99

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

For me personally? 2006 - 2010. I got my 360 on 1/26/06 (was supposed to get it 12/25/05, but there were supply shortages), my PS3 AND Wii 12/25/06, and many awesome games such as Dead Rising, TDU, Oblivion, and GTA 4. Plus the beginning of my classic gaming collection was on 1/7/06 when I found my old Genesis in a desk in my grandma's house. By the end of '06, I had a 2600, NES, Master System, Genesis, SNES, TG16, 3DO, Virtual Boy, PS1, N64, and Dreamcast on top of my PS2, GameCube, GBA SP, and PSP I had going into '06. I got at least 14 consoles in '06, and possibly as many as 20 (I don't remember the exact years I got some of my consoles). By the end of '07, I was in the 20 systems club, and by the end of '10, high 30s. Countless games - by 2009, I had over 500 different video games spanning all of my consoles. I got 63 games for $17 on 3/2/08. 12/31/10 saw the dream I had that led to me getting an SG-1000 the next Christmas.

Tragically, my favorite game store closed on 7/14/09 though.

[Mayhem]

Probably either 79-84 (birth and death of the first arcade era, launch of the Commodore 64) or 90-95 (launch of the SNES, Sonic, PS1 launch).