Quote Originally Posted by lendelin
What we observe in the videogame industry is a degree of professionalism which was hardly foreseeable 15 years ago
I think for many people it was ABSOLUTELY forseeable and expected. Maybe not as much in the classic era, but as early as the NES days there were ramblings and thoughts of the videogame industry potentially evolving and growing to a point where it was a mainstream entertainment medium surpassing even the movie industry. I mean it really didn't take that much effort to imagine just how far videogames and the videogame industry COULD go. I remember seeing the 'cinemas' in NES Ninja Gaiden and saying.. "it's only going to keep getting bigger and better" and naturally, it has. . I for one expected it to happen a lot sooner than it did (although I have yet to see the immersive holographic games I also imagined ).

No, not everything used to be better, at least when it comes to videogames.
Well naturally. I sure as heck hope that in the year 2023 people won't be making arguments as to how the Xbox/ps2/GC games from 2003 are NOT better than the "current" batch of games. Heck we BETTER have better games by then or something is friggin wrong!

That being said, all generations have their own respective timeless diamonds which is why I just can't get into this "which is better" mindset. Because to me, it's just one big stream of videogames. I think it's a mistake to compare and contrast games of today to games of yesterday too seriously because of the simple fact that they are from different times. They may not seem as entertaining today but for their time they were indeed CUTTING EDGE. And that's the light that I still see and play them... not in some colored "after the fact" lense of 2003.. but as IT WAS.

e.g. I can't see my 5200 Joust as anything but the best for it's time, and indeed in 1982 seeing those graphics on the tv screen was as good as any consumer could get. Ditto for 2600 games like Demon Attack. Or even SNES games like Starfox. It aint all about graphics either. The twitch gameplay of games like Kaboom! have yet to be truly replicated in any modern game and has pretty much been forgotten... I'd imagine that it will get revived in some form or another someday though.. who knows.

I guess I'm just rambling on at this point.. :P But my childhood Atari 2600 sits comfortably next to my Xbox and everything else in between. And I see nothing unusual about playing Madden 2k4 on the PS2 then challenging my friends to Intellivision Baseball. It's just videogames.. and it's all good baby I'm definitely always right there on the "new" as I've always been, but there's no way I'm gonna miss out on playing the gems of the past