/vr/ - Retro Games

No such thing as 128 though. You know that, right?

16 bit: Ecco the Dolphin might as well have been photorealistic as far as I was concerned. It really blew my young mind.

32 bit: Came to the Playstation late but I'd seen other 3D graphics by that time. Controller was cool and getting used to sticks was something.

64 bit: Ocarina of Time. 'Nuff said. The whole scope of the game threw me for a loop.

That said, a lot of N64 games had incredibly interesting lighting schemes that I only seem to see on that system. They were always very saturated and I really liked it. I don't think modern games could pull off the aesthetic like they used to.

128 bit: WTF everything is so smooth now and there are actual effects in games.

>>418837

Sure, whatever just participate

>>418837
It's DC/PS2/GCN/XB. Just go with it.

>>418854

Ecco's a good one. That water looked real back then. And the dolphin sprite itself animated very fluidly.

>>418850
Basically, every console since the Saturn has used a 32-bit processor (even the N64). That's why we now use phrases like "5th gen console" instead of bits.

The PS4 is going to be the first console with a 64-bit processor, since it will be the first console with more than 4 gigs of memory.

>>418859
isn't the xbox powered by a pentium III running at 793 mhz or something, thereby making it a 32 bit system?

You do realize that the PS4 will be the first 64 bit console right?
Everything else prior was 32 bit

>>418880
Yes, but Nintendo first pulled a bullshit marketing speak move with the N64, and I think they called the GC 128-bit in the early days of development, before they realized the bit race was over.

>grew up with SNES, Game Gear, and crappy old Tandy computer that couldn't even play Doom
>mfw seeing Super Mario 64 for the first time

What's the least number of bits possible? 2?

>>418923
I think the lowest is 4-bit

>>418923
Punchcard computers in the 70s were 4 bit. The bit basically tells you how much data the machine can handle at the same time.

Fun fact: The Intellivision was a 16 bit system.

16 bit: "Santa" got me a SNES for Christmas, Donkey Kong Country was the first game I played and it blew my mind

32 bit: Saw Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2, got a Playstation immediately and played that with Star Wars Demolition and it was glorious

64 bit: Saw a neighbor play Super Mario 64 and Star Fox, jaw dropped

128 bit: Saw the commercial for the first SSX, i'll never forget it. My mind exploded

My parents did this shitty thing with me, where because I saw commercials for NES and cried and threw tantrums until they bought one, they got rid of the TV.

They did buy me an NES and we rented games for that every week, but the NES was hooked up to a monitor. Couldn't watch TV period. I was young enough when they did this it became the new normal for me. As I was a bit of a loner I didn't go to any sleepovers or hang out at friends houses, although some hung out at mine.

Many years passed. Eventually in junior high, a friend asked why I had such an old piece of shit video game system. I was like, what the fuck do you mean. Next time he came over he brought his PS1 with Ridge Racer Type 4.

I was like Neo seeing for the first time.

>>418923
I'm almost certain you could build a computer with 1-bit registers. You'd need to use many of them for any useful operation (hell, a single-bit half adder would need at least 3 to function, if it's acting like an accumulator).

>>418879
>The PS4 is going to be the first console with a 64-bit processor, since it will be the first console with more than 4 gigs of memory.
No.

The 360 and PS3 (and IIRC, the Wii as well) both have 64-bit PPC cores.

>>418956
>Santa

When I have kids, I'm not letting them believe in Santa Claus. Kids needs to realize how hard people work to make Christmas happen.

>>418987
Well, that's fairly surprising. Any sources for that? Doesn't the 360 use an x86 processor?

>>419000
No idea where I'd find the info online (seems neither company likes to publish detailed tech specs) but both my 360 and PS3 boot PPC64 Linux kernel just fine (360 via Xell Reloaded, PS3 out of the box).

Xbox 1 used a 32-bit x86 (P3/Celeron-derived) processor.

My family had one computer and dad dragged his feet on upgrading it until it was unbearable. At Incredible Universe I saw this running on an iMac and my head fucking exploded. I thought it was a pixar movie at first.

>>418998
Heh. I think it's best to treat the situation like Santa is to Christmas as Mario is to Nintendo, or the colorful characters on cereal boxes are to their respective cereals.

Then maybe give them the impression the other kids are stupid, and for some unknown reason believe Santa to be real. That may save a lot of trouble preventing them from following fads.

>>418998

Well that's no fun. No need to depress your kids and make them feel guilty at such a young age. I remember my dad dressed up as Santa and recorded himself then pretended to "notice" the camera before turning it off haha

I had an NES for the first six years of my life. You can only imagine the shock I felt at good ol' 7 years of age when Paper Mario, OoT, and Bomberman 64 were a thing in my life

I still remember getting a GeForce card and seeing 32-bit alpha blending for the first time in Quake 3.

Glorious.

I remember the first 3D game I saw was Wolfenstein 3D. That was after having only NES.

I literally couldn't comprehend what it was supposed to be. I was so locked into the mental paradigm of side scrollers that my brain could not make heads or tails of the jumbled mess of chunky textures onscreen. It didn't help that it was such a primitive 3D engine or that I was so young but jesus christ I've never been so confused as I was that day.

I like to think it would be the same for an average person suddenly witnessing the 4th dimension.

>>419192

My first 3D card was a Voodoo Banshee. It came with a submarine Elite-like game called Sub Culture that I dearly love to this day.

>>419204
>own a Mach64-based 3D RAGE II card
>fucking nothing supports it, except MechWarrior 2
damn you and your glide

Perfectly honest?

Even as a kid I don't remember being impressed with the graphics. I took them for granted really and focused on playing the game. If a game sucked I dropped it like a bad habit (read: Spyro).

It's funny, only NOW am I starting to be impressed by graphics. Soon to be 21, and having recently seen shit like what the PS4 does, and then a step up from that with all the high-end PC stuff.

>128 bit
Guys stop it. That's not how processor word size works.

>>419210
But it's how SIMD registers work

I grew addicted to those "Next Gen moments" when Sega started blasting out addon turds every six months. So long as you didn't concern yourself with the quality of the games, if you were a Next Gen fanatic it was an amazing time to be alive. Like three "Next Generations" in a single generational timeframe.

First saw Sega CD at Toys R Us, it was running some Batman game. I could tell at least it was beyond what the Genesis could normally do. Soul Star would turn out to be my favorite CD game.

Then I saw the 32X at Incredible Universe playing Knuckles Chaotix. It just looked really vibrant and the huge scaling sprites impressed me. Picked one up for $30 from the bargan bin when it failed, still enjoy Shadow Squadron and Tempo.

3rd: huge megaman 2 dragon
4th:F-Zero
5th: Tomb raider 2 running on a glorious 3Dfx card
6th: PS2 TTT

>>419220
>so much stupid crap, you need a dedicated power strip to plug it all in

>>419213
I prefer to call SIMD registers by their separate members like 2x32 or 4x64 because it's easier to understand what the fuck they're doing.
Also the N64 8x16 is just insane.
(Yes, the N64 Coprocessor was indeed 128 bit).

>>419213
That's irrelevant. We don't call modern x86_64 processors 512-bit. That's multiple data fields for the registers, and the cap on the individual data element size is still related to the word size.

The only two times I remember being truly amazed by graphics were the first time I saw Dreamcast games, and then seeing Dead or Alive 3 on Xbox in a game store.

>>419235
SSE can do 512 bit SIMD?

In retrospect some of the Game Gear games look substantially better than anything you'd see on NES. Tails Adventure for instance looks easily good enough to be a Turbo GrafX 16 title.

>>419258
The color palette of GG is better than the sega genesis one, but it can uses less colors per screen.

>>419246
Yes, since last year I believe. SSE is ridiculous though. I don't program anything that breaks platform-independence, and I don't know any language standard that supports SIMD without extensions.

>>418880
Yes. The GC was 32-bit as well. PS2 and Dreamcast were both 128-bit.

>>418883
PS2/DC were 128. N64 was 64-bit.

>>419272
I'm fairly sure that the Intel C compiler can automatically vectorize certain code if you arrange your data correctly.

>>419283

>>419292
>no actual retort
>pic becomes rather ironic

>>419286
And then add a nice hidden "GENUINEINTEL" detector that turns off the whole SSE when using a processor without this CPUID.

>>419283
>>419280
The DC video chip was 128 bit, as in 128 bit memory access.
The CPU was 32x2 SIMD, being the first game console with SIMD on the CPU.

>>419286
Oh yeah, I didn't even think about the ICC. I'm not big on proprietary compilers of any type.
Now that I think about it, GCC does some SIMD optimization depending on your specified architecture. I don't believe it's done on the default configuration, but with the proper march it probably would. Mine is -march=corei7-avx, which I assume would do SSE optimization.
It's a weird area though.

>>419283
The PS2's Emotion Engine was 128-bit.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/ps22.htm

N64 used a VR4300 64-bit CPU
http://nintendo64.wikia.com/wiki/NEC_VR4300_CPU

>>418883
The PS2's Emotion Engine was 128-bit.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/ps22.htm

N64 used a VR4300 64-bit CPU
http://nintendo64.wikia.com/wiki/NEC_VR4300_CPU

>>419347
PS2 was 64-bit, with 128-bit SIMD.
SIMD is not the same thing as word size.

>>419360
Back to the original argument...how does this make the PS4 the first 64-bit system?

>>419369
It doesn't. I'm not that guy.
The N64 was 64-bit through and through, but most games operated with 32-bit precision data in the interest of space and speed.

>>419380
The funny thing is the fact that newer-gen consoles have completely destroyed the "bit" debate as far as using it as a basis for showing system power.

Before I had one, I'd spend all my time in Walmart(s) in front of the SNES playing Super Mario World. I was so hyped, loved the graphics, the controls, the sound.

I remember being unable to make it up the bridge at the very beginning of Bob-omb Battlefield in Mario 64. Playing a game in 3 dimensions with a joystick was so completely new and mind-blowing that I couldn't handle it. Spent weeks trying to adjust.

every generation after 5 has been a resounding disappointment in this regard

>>419396

I remember thinking SMW looked 8 bit except for the parallax scrolling backgrounds. SMW could've been done on the Turbo without any loss in quality.

>>419386
This guy could potentially destroy it much sooner if was successful.

It's a 8 bit system, CPU Wise, but due its very high IPC, it could run neo geo ports without lagging, unlike the genesis and snes.

>>419386
It did mean something back in the day. 8-bit integers can only express 256 unique values, which is horribly limiting. Larger numbers can be computed, but they take multiple operations, and for the older systems, they also required clever programming. Similarly, floating point numbers are heavily restricted in precision, which is a painful problem when you get to 3D graphics and physics.
Above 32-bit datatypes are next to worthless for video games, though, and above 64-bit values are totally worthless. Smaller data still takes a full instruction to compute, so you only benefit if you need insanely large or insanely precise numbers, ie. only for scientific applications really.
When you break that barrier, all that matters is clock speed, cpu architecture, software optimization, and hardware optimization.
This is harder to market directly, and the only company that tried was Sony with the Cell Processor.

Seeing (and playing) Super Mario 64 for the first time at Toys'R'Us blew my balls off

>>419408
Not necessarily, considering the Atari 2600 and the PC Engine were both 8-bit. That "8-bit" term was meaningless as a buzzword .

I grew up playing on mostly an NES, an SNES and some PC games as a kid but none of those really gave me one of those awe inspiring experiences. It wasn't until my first experience with a 32-bit console that I ever got that feeling.

My uncle took me and my cousins over to one of his friend's house to play with his friend's kids. When it got dark when went inside and the friend asked us if we liked video games. Of course we did so he told us to wait in his living room and he'd be back with something for us. In the living room he had a TV with at least a 50 inch screen and a full surround sound system with big bass speakers. After a couple minutes he comes down the stairs with a gray console we had never seen before. He hooked it up to the TV, cranked up the surround sound, flipped on the TV and turned on the console.

And when it booted up it gave me chills as I felt the vibration from the bass
http://youtu.be/jVkj6azygyQ

He then started up FF7, handed my older cousin the controller and walked out. From the opening cutscene on we were completely hooked, even the kids who were just watching. I realize now that it wouldn't have been nearly as impressive without the giant TV and especially the sound system, but everytime I hear the PS bootup sound or the music from FF7 it takes me back to some good memories.

>>419420
I'm not saying that every system of the same word size is equivalent, but the jump from 8-bit to 16-bit was enormous, and from 16 to 32 was similarly monumental.
64-bit computing hasn't shaken things the same way, given that not many people need to express more than 4 billion unique integers in most applications. When they do, it's rarely enough that it can be done in multiple instructions without concern. 32-bit floating point precision is good enough for most applications as well, as long as you can avoid some pitfalls with error from precision.

>>418880
All of the consoles, N64, DC, XBox, PS2, GC... they were all 32bit, but what they did have were the ability to do 64/128bit vector operations which the previous gen 32bit couldn't. This was just an excuse to say 64/128bit, Intel never claimed they had a 64bit CPU when they added MMX or SIMD.

>>419453
That's because SIMD doesn't change processor word size. SIMD is for parallel computations.
Dreamcast, Xbox, and Gamecube were 32-bit
PS2 and N64 were 64-bit.
You can't really argue this.

>4th gen
Duke 3D and Doom II on my uncle's PC. Though I hardly gave a fuck about graphics back then, these looked pretty cool.
>5th
Seeing Tekken 3 on someone's PS1 was quite a shock for my Famicom-conditioned mind, but playing Spyro on my own console half a year later was the real kick in the nuts.
>6th
Quake 3 on PC. Blew me the fuck away and I still play it whenever I feel like dealing with the lack of servers/having to use QL.

>>418837
I just checked my Dreamcast box, and it actually mentions a "128 bit 3D engine". So, regardless whether that's the late 90s version of Blast Processing, it just stuck I guess.

I started playing games in the early NES era, seeing Star Fox for the first time blew my fucking mind

Using "bit" to describe the power of the console after 5th gen is just retarded.

a friend got a n64 with mario 64 at launch, when i got to try it nothing was ever the same

all i had at that point was a mega drive

>>419462
There isn't a single game for either PS2 and N64 that uses 64 bit instructions, you can't really argue this. It's a completely pointless feature.

>>419407
jesus christ, you'd think they used gold plated wires in the controller cable
>30cm

The jump from my C64 to an Amiga500. It blew my tiny little mind. How the fuck could graphics get any better?

>>419551
This is like saying that, since the only games I own on 360 are old retro 8/16-bit titles, the system is only capable of that.

>>419609
Not really, because modern 360 games actually exist.

>>419617
>not understanding the analogy

All I remember is that getting PlayStation was best day of my life. Tomba 2 grafix blown my mind.

>you will never play Super Mario 64 for the first time again

>>419462
So let's ignore SIMD.

I know for a fact the Xbox can perform 80-bit floating point operations, as it's an off-the-shelf Intel processor. Is it an 80-bit console?

>tfw renting this game and N64 for my birthday one year

>>420032
Goddamnit, it was Star Fox 64.

>Glimpse of next gen
>Genesis ad
>BLAST PROCESSING

this.

My brother always tells me how he shat his pants when he saw that Spider-man vs Kingpin game on the Mega Drive.

"oh my god those graphics are just like real life"

>>418916
motherfucking this.
first time I saw mario 64 at a sears kiosk or whatever I nearly pissed my pants. it was revolutionary.

I was with my mom, a jehovas witness, visiting some other people who got together to read shit in the bible. Afterwards, some of the younger ones were in another room and I went to check it out. Some guy was playing legend of zelda on a computer, the others were playing some basketball game on a ps2. I think it was NBA street or something. The graphics were amazing. I think it was the first time I ever saw a ps2 game being played in real life.

Since I define generations by systems I'll skip the bit shit.

SNES: Donkey Kong Country. I thought the SNES was really gonna push graphics after that.

PS1: Tomb Raider 2. It amazed me how much depth and how large and complex 3-D levels can be.

PS2: Final Fantasy XII. Made me feel like that gen wasn't completely tapped out yet in terms of graphics capability.

Current: None. Everything on console was seen already on PC.

>16 Bit:

Ages and ages ago, was with mom and dad at a rich friend's house. They had a Super Nintendo and were playing Super Mario World. I was amazed. I had to sit patiently for around an hour while these spoiled, selfish kids played the game until they offered me a chance to play. I played some level (the one with the diagonal, numbered platforms that move), died twice, and my parents had to leave. That's all it took though: my next life quest was to get a SNES.

>32 bit:
My great aunt and uncle used to babysit me every other week. They had a guy who rented a back room in their house (where later I myself lived for a couple'a years). Name was Andy. Guy worked offshore as a PVT contractor for the Navy. Electronics and stuff. Had TONS of money. Anyway, he'd come home every 2 months or so, out of the blue. I'd get there in the early morning and ask "Is Andy here?" and he'd be back in his room blasting some Genesis game! He had a NES, SNES, GEN, SegaCD, and a Playstation. tons of games. He'd always let me play anything, anytime. Just an awesome older dude who loved games and who shared them. Anyway, he hooked up his PSX one day and let me play Battle Arena Toshinden. I had never even HEARD of Playstation, so this thing blew me away. Of course, he just had to show me the 'fart' move with Fo-Fei. That was one of the loudest times (and side-hurting) I had ever laughed in my childhood life. Ever.

>64 bit:
Nintendo Power ran several teaser stories about the N64 before release. So I at least knew about it. However, one day they randomly sent me a VHS tape that demo'd and promo'd the N64 and some games. I watched this tape Lord knows how many times. In the 7th grade we had this class called Tech Prep. We had to do a report and presentation on some technology of our choosing. I did mine on the N64. 7 pages of presentation and, at the end, I actually showed the video to the class. Everyone loved it.

>>420136
>legend of zelda
>on a computer

>Gen 5
MGS, particular in how great Shadow Moses was portrayed as an environment. The whole Jagged polygon look of PSX games went really well with it.

>Gen 6
MGS2. I know, I know, MGS has always been one of the innovators when it comes to showing what a console can do though. Everything was so fluid and the graphics are still pretty impressive today. Recently going back and playing games I missed, FFX really impressed me graphics wise for a PS2 game; same with JSR.

>Gen 7
Maybe due to my cynicycm or all the brown n' bloom this gen, I haven't really been impressed with the graphical style. I'm not complaining, loads of games like Uncharted or Crysis have amazing technical graphics but not as much in the way of style. Honestly, one of the most impressive games this gen was MH Tri for me, partially because of the style it had.

>8-bit
A neighborhood kid has Super Mario.

>16-bit
A school friend had Quackshot and Sonic.

>32-bit
NiGHTS at a Toys-R-Us or something. I recall it playing really clunky, like the hardware could barely run the thing.

>64-bit
A Hills kiosk.

Honestly, I was never impressed with graphics as a kid. I barely noticed the difference between 8 and 16-bit until much later. Thought all the N64 games looked like SNES Starfox only a little better (but not much), and shittier than Super Mario World. I was way more impressed, as a kid, with things like the game mechanics being fun or the story being cool or the characters being likeable. I was also blown away when I realized you could edit PC games.

>8-bit/16-bit
My dad and grandad are both big gamers so my house was full of PC's, consoles and games. They kind of always fascinated me, they were those "cartoons that you can control"

>32-bit
Get a PS1 for Christmas and a copy of Coolboarders and it blew my mind, convinced it was the most amazing looking thing I'll ever see

>64-bit
Gamesmaster shows a preview of Mario 64, I don't entirely believe it's real

Gen 4: DKC really impressed me when I got it and played it. Though I realized this as the limit of the SNES and told my mom not to get me anymore games until the next consoles came out.

Gen 5: The games I remember being amazed by were Body Harvest, Perfect Dark and Turok. At the time for consoles these were pretty amazing.

Gen 6 (Trigger warning: mention of something made after 99): I got my first taste of the PS2 in a store kiosk playing Dynasty Warriors 2 Was like the games mentioned above but way more polished. What blew me away graphically was a kiosk at fucking gamestop that had an Xbox running some football game. The players just looked so damn smooth, and the animation. Even the weather looked great.

I got into PC gaming primarily in 2001 and as such was not impressed by the 7th gen consoles as much. I do recognize the graphical progress that's been made though. I also feel that with consoles becoming so accepted and utilized that it seems a lot of consumer tech advancement has slowed to a crawl. With the surge of new people playing games companies realize they don't have to advance anything much and just keep reselling the same game each year.

Ooh! I love this topic!!!

16 Bit: Seeing Super Mario World in a department store. I didn't even understand it was a new Nintendo, I was just completely enamored by how different it looked.

32 Bit: Doom on my friends' computer.

64 Bit: A Best Buy we went in to back when I lived hours from the nearest such store. Right when the N64 came out, they had a big spread of televisions (about 9x9) showing the image of people demoing the console below. That, right there, is one of the top 10 or so defining moments of my life as a gamer. It was so jaw dropping, I couldn't stop obsessing about the point games had come to.

128: I'm not even sure with this one. What stands out is watching demos for Halo, but it was probably before that.

>>419758
This legit makes me sad.

I will also never battle Ganondorf in front of a crowd of friends for the first time again.

I will never find out what happened to Revan for the first time again.

I will never step on to the Frigate Orpheon for the first time again.

I will never have two Barons of Hell suddenly step out of their little rooms and come after me for the first time again.

I remember thinking how graphics would never look as good as they did in PS1 FMVs.

Now, most games have graphics that make those FMVs laughable

>>418824
>The enormous explorable area of Little USA as Birdman used to be my favorite way to relax after school.
Me too.

8-bit: Saw my uncle playing Super Mario Bros at his place. I had either seen commercials or pictures of the SMB in a magazine, but he was on one of the snow levels and since there were turtles with wings I thought he was playing in heaven or something. I was blown away at that misconception.

16-bit: Saw Super Mario World being demo'd at a Wal-Mart. The one thing that stuck out was the mechanic where you could hit the gate and be on the backside of those grates. I was amazed.

64-bit: That demo VHS tape for the N64 that Nintendo Power sent out. I probably watched that thing 10 times.

That 'shaky cam' technology in Dreamcast games. And in Gran Turismo. That shaky cam made the game look live and real.

Also, seeing characters blink. Not sure why, but this excited the heck out of me whenever I'd see a character blink in a video game. Not many games did this at the time.

>>419206
>Spyro sucked
What?

When I looked at some 8-bit games and then look to 16-bit back in 2005, I was dually impressed at how much you could do on a SNES/Genesis. Even some late NES games did great with the graphics department. But when I saw Tempo Jr. on the Game Gear, I was stunned. Literally. Tempo was so well animated that even most SNES games couldn't match up to it. Look at those sprites. On the fucking Game Gear.

Another example was Knuckles' Chaotix. As obscure as it is, it felt like a next-gen Sonic title. Moreso than Sonic Adventure.

My jaw dropped twice at graphical next-gen moments.

The first is when the Sega CD came out. I was young then, and the fact that the graphics were "real" was completely amazing to me, even if I didn't know what the hell was going on in Sewer Shark. A similar thing happened when I went to a friend's house and played graphic adventures like Sam & Max for the first time (consolefag youth here) and they looked "just like cartoons."

The second is similar to everybody else's, when I saw Mario 64 at a Sears kiosk. I had played 3D games like StarFox before, but this was a 3D that just blew my mind. I've never had a FEEL like that for a game again.

Sonic 1, the rotating special stages were mind-blowing as a kid.

I think the only truly mind-blowing moment for me in video games was in Megaman II, after selecting my first robot master.

I'd never seen multi-plane scrolling before, so the 3D effect blew me away. Suddenly I didn't give a fuck about the rest of the game, I had to see that again.

After the second time I figured how it worked and it wasn't as effective anymore, but damn did that shock me the first time.

>>421607
how about the orb-collecting stages in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, was it?

or even the bonus stages in sonic 2

I do remember those being really, truly "special" cause nothing else I was playing had that kind of depth

This is highly off topic but am I the only one that looked for controller cord length back when having a cord to the system was an issue?

I mean, I'd go out of my way to get the longest controller cable so I could sit comfortably on the living room couch instead of having to hunch over like some sort of Quasimodo just to play good vidya.

Anyway:

16 bit: Sonic 2, I think that's pretty much all that needs to be said
32 bit: I forget if it was the Dreamcast or the PS1 that I saw first. Sonic Adventure and Crash Bandicoot set the bar for me back then
64 bit: Mario Kart 64. The realization now is that the characters are all sprites with feigned 3-D models. Blows my mind they hid something that well.
128 bit: Dark Cloud and Metroid Prime. I'm still convinced they worked their limitations well enough to provide the best experience possible.

>>418824
Call me ordinary, but by far the biggest jolt in my gaming life was seeing the opening FMV to Final Fantasy 7 and playing through the opening scenario. I had been playing RPGs since I was 5 or so and I had never even imagined one in 3D. Never seen a prerendered cutscene either. It really knocked my socks off. So did the design of Midgar all through the beginning of the game. And when I got out of Midgar, the sense that I had been playing all this time in just one city on this huge world map was breathtaking.

16 bit: can't remember anything in particular. DKC2 maybe (I found the first one kinda stiff looking).

32 bit: Silhouette Mirage, my first Treasure game. Holy shit, those sprites. Bonus points for SoTN

64 bit: nothing. Deal with it.

128 bit: God of War. Yeah, I know, but I'll be danmed if it didn't impress me. For an option with more taste, Odin Sphere (HOLY SHIT THOSE PIXELS).

Misc: I cut PC gaming for years (my last game was Warcraft 3). I came back, played Fallout 3 and my mind was blown.

>>422127
For 16 bit I was gonna say Yoshi Island but that was probably retroactive

>>422031
I would just move the console closer to where I was sitting.

>>418824
>64 bit: Mario 64/Pilot Wings 64. Rented the N64 with these two, felt convinced graphics would never get substantially better. The enormous explorable area of Little USA as Birdman used to be my favorite way to relax after school.

Mario 64 and Pilot Wings 64 were actually still 32 bit.

>8bit
Exposed to the 8bit through Contra. I wasn't expecting it. Just came home from playing with some bros in the yard... and dad was sitting in front of the TV, playing the mother fucking Contra right there; I was 7 or so.

I had Contra, Castlevania and a bootleg cart with SMB and Battle City.

>16 bit
Was shopping for some games with mom and dad and saw Ecco the fucking Dolphin on a big screen. I didn't even know what MegaDrive was. It looked absolutely mesmerizing to me. Holy shit, that was probably the biggest vidya culture shock I ever had.

>32bit
Was visiting an older friend, who was playing some game with his friends. When I came into the room, there was something flashy on the screen, and a grey PlayStation on the floor.
- Show him, right?
- Yep, reset.
>They reset the console.
>NA-M-CO...
>*badum*
>TRANSCENDING HISTORY AND THE WORLD,
>A TALE OF SOULS AND SWORDS
>ETERNALLY RETOLD

>>422127
For 16 bit I was gonna say Yoshi Island but that was probably retroactive

Another special mention in 32 bit would be Saga Frontier 2. I remember my exact thoughs at the time wew "fuck, it's like I'm inside a painting"

>>422183
Of coruse they are. Yes, starting with the fourth gen, doubling thems bits means one-upping a generation. 16 was 4th, 32 was 5th, and, because Nintendo tried their silly bullshit, 6th was termed 128. Then they dropped it, ebcause even the kids were aware of this sort of thing. Are you the 128 bit guy or something? Nobody's stupid enough to take those marketing terms seriously today, so just quit it.

>>422127
>64 bit: nothing. Deal with it.
I played Ocarina of Time, SM64 and Star Fox 64 for the first time in, like, 2005 or so, and it blew my fucking mind.

Are you sure you actually played N64 games at all?

>>421607
The dope-y music and the warping birds-fishes on the background are still mind-blowing. The whole thing was subtly insane.

No Sonic game recaptured the original's ridiculous art direction. 2 had the best music, but visually it was vanilla.

>>419551
EVERY GAME DOES. Processor word size IS the instruction size. You can't use smaller instructions without emulation.
Do you know how a CPU works?

>>422224
>>No Sonic game recaptured the original's ridiculous art direction.

But one game bettered it.

>>418824
The embedded FMVs of Myst where glorious!

Dat seagull yo.

>>422251
Well, is that CD? I still haven't played it. The only one in the series. I'm saving it for when I'm really in the mood.

I first played games on the SNES and Genesis and N64, all huddled together when I was a tot. The first system that I actually saw and witnessed a 'jump' for was the Gamecube (not retro), but Smash Bros. Melee blew my mind. The graphics were like movies to me, and I remember my brother and I both openly awed by the part in the opening sequence with Zelda and Sheik. Honestly that game just looked amazing to me, even today it still is beautiful, though the menu character icons are rough on an LCD.

Super Monkey Ball had a similar effect, I had never seen such cool transparent balls in a game before. Looking back now, I'm also amazed by how many bananas could be on screen and how real they looked.

I'm not typically impressed or awed by graphics, so it's pretty impossible to find a 'retro' example for me.

>>421191

Not him, but I remember not being too impressed with Spyro after playing a demo. Mind you the playable demo didn't have music and FF7 and stuff was out, so...

>>422210
I've always appreciated 2D more (just check my list), so 3D didn't impress me until it was good enough circa PS2 era. I remember being 12 and seeing previews for the first Quake, and I was like "this is just spotches of red and green".

This is is waaaay later, but the one N64 game that graphically made me go "whoa" was the original Sin and Punishment.

>>422264
You're in for a treat when you do. Basically it takes everything that made the first Sonic so good and bumped it up to 11.

Despite this being /vr/, I recommend you play the re-release on modern consoles over the Sega CD original though. It's got a smoother framerate and some neat extras.

>>422339
What about the Steam release? I've been eyeing it for awhile. It's emulated, right? How is it?

>>419405

Don't forget MODE 7

That largely has to do with the game being made on Japanese launch in the late 90s with limited cart space.

Gotta love those early SNES titles that exclusively used the internal soundbank

>>419405
>I remember thinking SMW looked 8 bit except for the parallax scrolling backgrounds.
Bullshit. The 16 bit colour was absolutely obvious, the additional memory was obvious, and cartridge size was obvious. By SNES standards it was technically nothing, but it was obviously next-gen.

>>422384

I seemed to have run into issues, but that's probably because my comp is old as hell and doesn't even support 3.0 shaders.

The worst time I had was that the game wouldn't play the intro and ending FMVs and would lockup and wear the CPU even though I could play the files on their own just fine.

Any way, get it on a sale for like $1.50 and make sure you don't have a clunker like mine

16 bit: Super Mario Kart on a demo kiosk in Woolies

32 bit: Virtua Fighter at a friends house

64 bit: Nintendo 64 preview reel with Super Mario 64/Pilotwings/Turok on some review show that used to come on after The Chart Show every Saturday on ITV

128 bit: The first level in Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast when the killer whale leaps over you

>>422384
The Steam version is a bit ridiculous. Basically this rerelease is coded from scratch. The guy who did it handled the iOS, Android, and WinMobile versions, and Sega handed off his source code to another company for the PS3 and 360 versions. THEN they ported the 360 version back to the PC despite the engine running natively on the PC in the first place.

Basically, the Steam version is the worst version out there right now because it suffers from a really bad case of portception. The game itself is still solid though. The guy who remade it is currently working on remasters of Sonic 1 and 2 in the same vein so keep an eye out for those soon.

>>419000
>>419020
xbox 1 was x86
xbox 360 is x86

>>422515
Look for the original 1996 PC CD and run it in a VM

>>422541
More hassle than it's worth. If getting the rerelease on a modern console is totally out of the question, just download the Sega CD version and play it in an emulator.

>>422523
I find it funny how Sony is plugging the PS4 as being superior for being x86

>>422432
>128 bit: The first level in Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast when the killer whale leaps over you
There's no such thing as a 128-bit console. Not yet anyway. The current CPUs and memory addressing are still 64-bit, and I don't think there will be any need to go to 128-bit any time soon.

>>422629
Because they know their fanbase, most of this kids don't know shit about tech, I mean I seen people saying that the PS4 will support 4K.

>>422659
Next thing you're going to say there's no blast processing, you stupid ignorant cunt.

>>422629
>plugging the PS4 as being superior for being x86

They just say they've listened to what developers want and as a result, made it easier for game developement.

>>422663
I thought HDMI 1.4 does support 4k, but still, yeah, as if the console will be powerful enough to play a game at 4k.

Also sorry we're kinda straying from the topic

Only real relevation was when I finally got my N64.

(Even my mom was psyched and played it while I was in school.)

I was like HELL YEAH!
And then I was like "wat the D-pad doesn't do anything. What is going on. MOM!!!"

I was so excited I forgot the Analog stick.

16-bit: Super Mario World. It was the first console game I ever played, and pretty much what got me into games in the first place.

8-bit: I can't remember any specific situation, but I played a few NES and Master System games at friends' houses. Little Nemo, Sonic 1 and 2 SMS, and a few others.

32-bit: Battle Arena Toshinden (PSX) I think. It didn't particularly impress me, and did little to convince me that 3D in games had any useful purpose.

64-bit: Super Mario 64 at a friend's house. I never liked it much. I still don't. The controls are clunky, and it's kinda tedious and boring compared to the previous Mario games. It was largely responsible for convincing me that all 3D platformers were shit - a belief I held until ~2005, when I played Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves.

>>422667
"Blast Processing" is just Sega's marketing term for the Genesis/MegaDrive's CPU, due to it being faster than the competitors. Not that it ultimtely helped them much, thanks to the slightly inferior graphics and sound, and lack of good third party games.

Sonic Adventure when my friend got a Dreamcast for his birthday.
>dat music
>dem graphics
>dat speed
Blew my PS1 player-mind the fuck away.

>>422754
No, Blast Processing was real. Without it, a game like Sonic is impossible. It takes a PC from 2005+ to emulate a 1991 game because of that. It really was unique technology that allowed a smll company like SEGA to completely ruin Nintendo's game so bad they fell to last place instead of utter dominance for two straight generations.

>>422659
There's no such thing as blue talking hedgehogs called Sonic that run real fast either. Doesn't mean you don't know what I mean.

>>422793
>It takes a PC from 2005+ to emulate a 1991 game because of that
Really?
How come I was playing Sonic 1 and 2 on an emulator back in 1999 or so then?

>>422594
>More hassle than it's worth
>play it in an emulator.

>>419405
You realize that the Turbo can't do parallax scrolling in hardware, right?

>>422372
SNES had an internal soundbank? How big was it?