Video games that are surprisingly close in time or the same year

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNLdblFQqsw

This video gave me some ideas, discussing things like "The pyramids were as old to the ancient Romans as the ancient Romans are to us."

Some surprising things to me:
-The original PlayStation is 22 years old. Home PONG came only 20 years before the PlayStation. That means that the PlayStation is closer in time to dedicated PONG machines than it is to today.
-The Atari 2600 and Sega Dreamcast were both being sold new in the same decade (1990s)
-The Atari 2600 was discontinued on January 1, 1992. The SNES launched on August 23, 1991. That means the Atari 2600 and Super Nintendo were sold new together for 4 months.

[Nz17]

To me, the SNES is "new." To those I talk to in real life, the GameCube is the console they grew up with. So I kinda understand what you mean.

[Emperor Megas]

The SNES launched on August 23, 1991. That means the...

...SNES launched on my 17th birthday.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

The Bentley Compu-Vision, a PONG machine, was introduced the same year as the NES (as the Famicom in Japan).

The PS1 and PS3 were still officially supported during the same year (2006).

The Sega Genesis and Dreamcast were both being produced in 1998.

The PS2 was produced for a longer period than the entire pre-crash video game industry.

As for some "closer thans":

The PlayStation 2 is almost 17 years old. It came out in the US 6,109 days ago as of July 18, 2017. 6,109 days before the PS2 came out was February 4, 1984.
At that time, the Atari 2600 was the market-leading video game system, and ColecoVision was the most advanced.

The Atari 2600 is closer to WWII than it is today. When the Atari 2600 came out, World War II had just ended 32 years ago. Which is about how long the NES came out today.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

This thread makes me think of video game history as a whole. Technologies have a sort of slowing curve as they improve. In the initial period after they come out, improvement is rapid. As the technology matures, the improvement rate slows.

For instance, look at The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Came out March 20, 2006, almost 15 years old. You can still find it in used game bins in places that don't sell retro games, and it looks almost as detailed as what's out today - because it looks pretty close to real life. It also has a vast, highly detailed world. Go back the same nearly 15 year period and you're at October 4, 1991, near the launch of the SNES. Between 2006 and 2020 is a moderate gain, 1991 to 2006 is night and day. Since Oblivion was a relatively "high-end" game at its time, let's look at what was in the same market position in '91: stuff like Super Mario World, F-Zero, Sonic the Hedgehog 1, etc.

Home video games came out in September 1972, with the Odyssey. 48 years exactly this month. It took us as long to go from something that could literally draw three dots on the screen and used overlays to Super Mario 64 as it's taken us to go from Super Mario 64 to today.

[TonyTheTiger]

This thread makes me think of video game history as a whole. Technologies have a sort of slowing curve as they improve. In the initial period after they come out, improvement is rapid. As the technology matures, the improvement rate slows.

For instance, look at The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Came out March 20, 2006, almost 15 years old. You can still find it in used game bins in places that don't sell retro games, and it looks almost as detailed as what's out today - because it looks pretty close to real life. It also has a vast, highly detailed world. Go back the same nearly 15 year period and you're at October 4, 1991, near the launch of the SNES. Between 2006 and 2020 is a moderate gain, 1991 to 2006 is night and day. Since Oblivion was a relatively "high-end" game at its time, let's look at what was in the same market position in '91: stuff like Super Mario World, F-Zero, Sonic the Hedgehog 1, etc.

Home video games came out in September 1972, with the Odyssey. 48 years exactly this month. It took us as long to go from something that could literally draw three dots on the screen and used overlays to Super Mario 64 as it's taken us to go from Super Mario 64 to today.

Yeah I think we were actually kind of spoiled by it. My interest in modern gaming has waned because games ten years ago are really not that different from games today. Meanwhile 10 years meant the difference between Final Fantasy 1 and Final Fantasy VII. I realize I got used to the steady supply of freshness and one upmanship of the 90s and now I easily get bored because that hasn't kept up. The only comparison I can think of is maybe what it was like witnessing the early days of film and going from silent movies to talkies to The Wizard of Oz.