/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.11162969]

Are there any console generations that ended too soon? Everyone seemed fine with the 6-7 years or so we get with each generation of hardware but I’m wondering if anyone thought this was too fast for whatever reason

[Anonymous No.11162980]

If only we kept getting PS2/Xbox games to present day... I'd easily trade higher graphical fidelity to more varied and exciting visuals

[Anonymous No.11162993]

Not "too soon", but I think there was a deadborn 3.5 gen. It was like a hypothetical missing link between SNES and N64/PS—offering great, polished 2D enhanced by CD capabilities, or early untextured 3D like Virtua Racing. Too bad all of these consoles were legendary flops—32X, 3DO, Jaguar,—or never got that big like Turbo CD/Sega CD, or never came out to begin with like "Nintendo PlayStation".
Otherwise, I think they squeezed enough from SNES and PS1/N64.

[Anonymous No.11163001]

It didn't feel TOO fast at the time because it's library runs so deep, but the GBA was released in the west in June of 2001 and then the DS released a mere three and a half years later in November of 2004.
And while there was still a good amount of GBA support shortly after the DS launched, it still kind of felt like the party was over.

Which is a shame, because the GBA is great!

[Anonymous No.11163029]

>>11162980
>varied and exciting visuals

[Anonymous No.11163049]

>>11162969
6
Only because 7th was so atrocious

[Anonymous No.11163051]

>>11163029
>proves there was a lack of variety by posting...exactly one game
Wow, what a stupid cunt lol.

[Anonymous No.11163065]

>>11163001
Nintendo killed both the GBC and GBA way too soon for how successful they were. I think they should've faced more repercussions for that. If somebody told you that a console lasted only three years until its replacement, you'd think he was talking about some failed Sega project or something.

[Anonymous No.11163069]

>>11163029
>Posts a game developed mainly for the PS1 that was shoddily ported to the PS2 at late development stage due to exec meddling.

[Anonymous No.11163095]

>>11162969
>Are there any console generations that ended too soon?
I want to say 4 but in reality I would have preferred if Gen 5 kept up with 2D games. Like when you look at arcade games from like 85 onward, you got a good look at what was coming for Gen 4. Unfortunately despite gorgeous arcade graphics through to the mid 90's, when Gen 5 came, we got very little of that at home. A more 50/50 split between 2D and 3D on the Playstation / Saturn would have been amazing, both original 2D games and more perfect arcade > home conversions.

[Anonymous No.11163097]

>>11163065
The GBA was still seeing revisions of hardware after the DS was launched. Software was still being produced. Not to mention the fact that the DS was backwards compatible with GBA software.
GBC on the other hand was probably discontinued to develop GBA in response to the NGPC and Wonderswan crystal.

[32343234 No.11163104]

Why don't you get the developer software/hardware and make your own games for it?

[Anonymous No.11163107]

The late 90s PC era ended too soon.
1994-00. It got overtaken by military shooters and WoW subscriptions. Something about the hardware and software seemed worse too.

[Anonymous No.11163126]

>>11163107
>Something about the hardware and software seemed worse too
no more cute anime girls on cards

[Anonymous No.11163128]

ColecoVision was percieved at the time as the next generation system compared to Atari 2600/5200 and Intellivision. The console had a solid two year run before being stopped dead in its tracks due to Coleco losing all of their earned money on Coleco Adam computer failure. The company had to halt all video game related production, killing a successful gaming console prematurely. ColecoVision could theoretically last into 1985-86, taking a challenge from the newly introduced NES for some time.

[Anonymous No.11163135]

>>11163128
honestly the intellivision (and to a lesser extent the colecovision) were both insanely powerful and underrated for their time.

[Anonymous No.11163347]

>>11162969
Fifth gen was a bit weird. We got not one but two SEGA consoles (which despite Dreamcast being categorized as a sixth gen console was more inline with the Game Boy Color) and a single Nintendo console only that lasted about half as long as the SNES and the Game Boy. The GBC itself is also somewhat of an anomaly being only active for about three or so years.

It was kind of like a weird stop-gap between the original Game Boy and the GBA which was a lot more powerful and could actually handle some of those SNES ports they were starting to try and push on the GBC, like Donkey Kong Country.

>>11162993
I agree with this a lot. SEGA CD and TurboGrafx-CD had a lot of phenomenal games despite being so short-lived, same with the 3DO. And the Nintendo PlayStation/SNES CD would've been cool too imo.

[Anonymous No.11163482]

>>11163049
7th Gen isn’t retro but it is the one generation most people agree went on for way too long. To the point where sales started to dip in 2012 and 2013 because everyone wanted to see 8th gen

[Anonymous No.11163483]

>>11163029
this looks cool and interesting, thank you

[Anonymous No.11163573]

>>11162969
The massive success of the Wii and the numerous problems with the 360 and PS3 proves that the sixth gen ended too soon.

[Anonymous No.11163868]

>>11163097
>The GBA was still seeing revisions of hardware after the DS was launched.
Everyone knew that was just so they could keep the GBA as a back-up plan though.

Like how Nintendo kept saying the DS "wasn't a GBA successor" in the first year or so after release. They were just covering their ass so that if it turned out to be a flop, they could go back to the GBA and then release a new Game Boy as the "true successor".

[Anonymous No.11163885]

>>11163573
Not really. Wii success only really lasted until 2009ish. The latter half of the Wii, sales really declined hard and 3rd party support vanished entirely. This had ramifications into the Wii U era as they had no momentum going into that console gen, had lost the casual market, and suffered extreme growing pains as they struggled to adapt to HD game development. The Wii was a mistake and Nintendo should have made a real 7th gen console instead.

[Anonymous No.11163981]

>>11163885
Yes but there was no need to start the 7th gen in 2005/2006 other than Sony's greed to get people to buy Blu-rays. A 360 and PS3 released in 2008 would have solved a lot of problems in that gen.

[Anonymous No.11164146]

>>11163885
Wii was not a mistake. They lost all their market share on the GameCube. Their only choice was going all in with waggleshit.
They tried to make the Wii U a “le ebin sirius gaymur” console and it fuckin flopped.

[Anonymous No.11164216]

>>11164146
That was not what they tried with the wii u lol. They did not give a shit with that thing. Peak iwata nintendo.

[Anonymous No.11164220]

>>11163981
Except ms launched the 360 first.

[Anonymous No.11164228]

>>11163885
>one of the most popular and best selling consoles in existence
>a mistake
I'll never get 4channers

[Anonymous No.11164240]

>>11162993
Yeah, this. A 32-bit cartridge based console that had some real love behind it would have produced some amazing games. Stuff like Sonic Mania back in 1995.

[Anonymous No.11164301]

>>11164220
Because microsoft is retarded. They thought the PS3 was going to launch in 2005 so they rushed out the 360 and caused the massive failure rate of the console.

[Anonymous No.11164449]

>>11163885
>The latter half of the Wii, sales really declined hard
The majority of Wii sales came from 2010-2013

[Anonymous No.11165035]

>>11163573
Dude, "massive success" of Wii was mainly due to the casual titles. Wii Sports, Play and Fit heavily outsold Brawl and TP. This was also the era when Nintendo dumbed down Smash, 3D Mario, and made shit like NSMB Wii. Casual appeal was what carried it.
In fact, TP sold about same numbers on Wii as OoT did on 64. Except Wii sold 3 times more consoles in total.

[Anonymous No.11165040]

>>11164449
Why lie?

[Anonymous No.11165063]

>>11163885
Wii sold well, I don't know what you're talking about. But it sold well due to casual appeal. Wii U was just an abomination, a weird wtf console that was an utter marketing failure. Switch did a similar concept of tablet+console, but 10x better.
The real issue with Wii was that it was carried by the casual games—see >>11165035 . On the one hand, this helped Nintendo, because they needed a new strategy. They made 2 great consoles in a row before, but they were still heavily outsold by Sony. It got clear that "hardcore" gamers leaned to Sony, so they bet on the casual market. But on the other hand, they risked becoming casual shit and alienating average gamers. And they soon found lots of competition from other cancerous casual games on mobile and web, as well as stuff like Kinect.
I think that at least they learned to stop trying to "outSony the Sony" and went their own way. Also maybe they realized that they already had good games, they just needed more mass appeal and being accessible to the masses. Really this laid a lot of the foundation for Switch's success. They needed a break from just racing Sony, and to figure out what they wanted to be. When Switch came out, it was a welcome return to form, they had figured out how to have mass appeal without turning into Zynga, and found their niche in the market with Sony.
With all that said, Wii was uneasy to like, and all the casual shit predictably aged like milk.

[Anonymous No.11165064]

>>11163029
Evergrace has cool aesthetics and music, it's the janky control scheme and rushed production that ruined it

[Anonymous No.11165085]

>>11163573
I think 6th gen had something left in the tank—look how late FFXII/KH2/DQVIII came out, same with RE4 and SotC. Though really, PS2 graphics mostly aged terribly. If it isn't Burnout, Okami or SotC, they generally look like ass.

[Anonymous No.11165090]

Yes I know the SNES lasted a long time and got games well into the late 90's, but the revisionist past I want is a sheer and utter domination that nobody wanted to release another console and so much so that not even Nintendo wants to make the N64.

The limitations and strengths of the SNES forced devs to try to be far more creative like pic related, even if the game ultimately still sucked.

[Anonymous No.11166618]

>>11163029
Come on now, you're really going to use a ps2 game that was ported late from the ps1 in a very short period to meet the launch of the console as your proof?
All things considered I'm impressed they were able to make do so.

[Anonymous No.11167546]

>>11162969
I would've liked the N64 to last a few more years. Some good games were released at the end of the system's life in 2000/01.

[Anonymous No.11168031]

>>11164301
I'm not sure rushing it caused the premature failures. It was also a common issue at the time with GPUs in desktops and laptops and of course the PS3.

[Anonymous No.11168042]

>>11165040
He might be wrong but those numbers for 2010-13 are surprising given the Wii was 3-4 years old by 2010. You'd think that the Wii hype would've long been over by that time, but it seems that with the casual gameplay Nintendo tapped into a market of people who don't normally buy video games or something.

[Anonymous No.11168050]

>>11168031
I read one factor was Peter Moore trying to top Sony for killing the Dreamcast.

[Anonymous No.11168072]

>>11162969
There used to be more overlap between generations.
SNES came out in late '91 in the west, and only two years later the 3DO was released in late '93. It'd then take two more years till the international release of the PlayStation in late '95. A year later the N64 came out in '96. Two years after that the Dreamcast saw its japanese release in '98 with the western launch following it in '99.
All of these consoles lasted a good half decade after the next wildly more powerful hot new thing came out.

[Anonymous No.11168141]

>>11164146
>Their only choice was going all in with waggleshit.
No it wasn't. All they needed to do was correct the mistakes of the GameCube (shitty minidisc format with low storage space, no GTA, and no online multiplayer).

>They tried to make the Wii U a “le ebin sirius gaymur” console and it fuckin flopped.
LMAO it was the exact opposite. Wii U was Nintendo doubling-down on the Wii strategy of pursuing children and casuals. It was also severely underpowered just like the Wii was. It failed because there's no long-term future for console gaming companies that target casuals, they all moved on to Mobile and Facebook gaming by 2012.

Contrast the Wii U with the Switch, which (considering its a handheld) has decent hardware, a 1st party library which targets core gamers with titles like BOTW and Odyssey and Metroid, and a huge range of 3rd party multiplats including mature titles. Switch is Nintendo returning to the SNES, N64 and GameCube era strategy, and its become their hugest success in history.

[Anonymous No.11168174]

>>11163001
DS felt more like a quirky side experiment that Nintendo didn’t have much confidence in until 2006 or so.

[Anonymous No.11168217]

>>11163029
Now post MGS2 especially the rain sequence and compare it to CoD right now. Drop in a warzone match and tell me that 300 gig game looks better than the opening of mgs2… u crazy if u say cod it looks like shit like progressively it’s become bright and cartoony and just dog shit graphically.

[Anonymous No.11168229]

Given how expensive hardware is to both the company selling it (often making a loss) and the consumer, it makes sense to get the most out of it and only replace if necessary. However competition from other companies is often what pushes things forward more quickly. Look how long the original Game Boy lasted. Yeah it had to compete with the Game Gear and Lynx, but it was the clear winner early on, and went basically unrivaled in the west through the rest of the '90s being supported in its later years by Pokemon. And there was really nothing wrong with it lasting that long, because the quality of the games is what matters, and the Game Boy had some great ones.

[Anonymous No.11168706]

>>11168050
Those early 360 years with moore were probably the only time that Sony was ever genuinely threatened in the console market

[Anonymous No.11168748]

>>11168141
Just the SNES era. Their strategy with the N64 and GameCube nearly killed them were it not for Pokemon, and the DS.

[Anonymous No.11168757]

>>11168229
I've heard that Nintendo is the only company out of the big three that profits off hardware, not loses on hardware and profits off games.

[Anonymous No.11168782]

To be honest, I think some consoles should just have never died. There's enough fundamental appeal to a Super Nintendo or a Megadrive or CPS arcade games, that they could still be producing those. They went away because they were taken away, not because the market demanded it.
I mean, they still produce vinyl and record players. It's a smaller market, but it still is a market.

[Anonymous No.11168791]

>>11168757
Sony profits from hardware too it just takes em a few years usually. PS5 hardware sales turned profitable in like a year and a half.
You didn't really think Sony manufactured and sold the PS2 at a loss for 13 years, did you? In fact most of their consoles have stayed on sale for roughly a decade.
The only current company that sells at a loss is Microsoft. MS has never sold a single piece of Xbox branded hardware at a profit, and that's because they manufacturer none of it.
Nintendo cuts corners with lower end hardware and makes absurdly long supply contracts in order to ensure a profit. Sony owns the vast majority of the factories involved in producing a PS5 so it's a lot cheaper for them to make it all.
Microsoft has no choice but to directly contract third parties who take their own cut in the middle, and since they're competing with Sony they can't really sell lower end hardware either (even the Series S is sold at a loss). A couple of bucks on every component adds up real fast when literally everyone else involved in manufacturing an Xbox is making a profit except Microsoft.

[Anonymous No.11168807]

>>11168791
Microsoft has added nothing to the industry that has been a benefit for anyone. All that money down the tubes just to make things worse.

[Anonymous No.11168820]

>>11168807
They bruteforced the first xbox onto the market
Good indication of things to come

[Anonymous No.11169326]

>>11165035
TP outsold OoT by 1.2 Million but still knowing the installbase the Wii had you'd expect more. Still it was the sales the Zelda franchise needed after Minish Cap and FSA tanked so hard, lest it became selved like Star Fox and F-Zero.

[Anonymous No.11169347]

>>11165040
this looks standard for a gaming console

[Anonymous No.11169391]

>>11162969
Maybe not gens but Saturn was not able to reach its full potential in its short life

[Anonymous No.11169847]

>>11163347
>I agree with this a lot. SEGA CD and TurboGrafx-CD had a lot of phenomenal games despite being so short-lived, same with the 3DO. And the Nintendo PlayStation/SNES CD would've been cool too imo.
If only they focused more on making classic 2D titles instead of the experimental movie video games they went for... the best SEGA CD stuff was the "upgraded" Genesis titles like Spider-Man and Terminator.

[Anonymous No.11169854]

>>11162969
Yes.
https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/03/26/crash-bandicoot-teaching-an-old-dog-new-bits/
This series is a really good read btw.

[Anonymous No.11170134]

>>11162969
Sega genesis, felt like they dropped everything as soon as Saturn was out. Not that many games got to use 32mbit carts.

>>11167546
Felt like they figured out how to get good frame rates and nice textures but people just weren't willing to pay $60 for a new N64 game anymore, I wonder if they released it earlier and just released Mario 64 later if it would have helped.

>>11168782
I think back then you want to make a 2D platformer, you put it on ps1 where discs are $3 to make or on SNES or GENESIS where its around $10 to make. It would have been good to kept them around though.

[Anonymous No.11171815]

>>11170134
>Sega genesis, felt like they dropped everything as soon as Saturn was out. Not that many games got to use 32mbit carts.
This, the last few years of the SNES felt a lot more rich than what the Genesis got, SEGA just kept dropping the ball at around that time.

[Anonymous No.11171886]

>>11169391
Haha, what!? The Saturn reached it's full potential with Powerslave, Virtua Fighter 2 and Panzer Dragoon Saga. The machine was never going to do better than that.

[Anonymous No.11171892]

>>11170134
>I wonder if they released it earlier and just released Mario 64 later if it would have helped.
How would that have worked? N64 only had 2 games on release. SM64 and Pilot Wings. Nothing else was ready

[Anonymous No.11171902]

>>11171815
TBF Genesis was also two years older so you can cope with the offset

[Anonymous No.11172713]

>>11171902
Fair enough, though I feel like the focus on the addons really hurt the end of life of the Genesis still, a shame SEGA didn't focus more on their hardware's potential, which was plenty.

[Anonymous No.11172787]

>>11162969
6th gen felt a bit short. Gamecube and Xbox 360 were both becoming irrelevant by 2005 only four years into their lifecycle. All Xbox would get past that point are typical multiplats and shovelware and Gamecube had nothing but Harvest Moon MM, Zelda Twilight Princess, Odama, and a bunch of licensed shovelware after 2005. PS2 meanwhile persisted well into 2008 but a couple of Atlus RPG's were basically the swansong of the console.

>>11163001
GBA was supposed to come out circa late-1998 but the GBC released in its place instead.
>concerns about battery life and compact form factor in ARM hardware they wanted to use at that time
>normal GameBoy line still selling fuckloads because of Pokemon and they're really cheap to make

So it was shelved for a few years until 2001 after Gold & Silver came out in the West.

[Anonymous No.11172827]

>>11163482
>7th gen lasted for 8 years (2005-2013), only like 1 year more than the average console gen. idk why people make a fuss about it