/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.6338047]

What was gaming culture like circa 1995?

[Anonymous No.6338048]

[Anonymous No.6338049]

[Anonymous No.6338094]

>>6338049
>RGB screenshots

[Anonymous No.6338249]

Boo

[Anonymous No.6338396]

>>6338047
Sorry for the blogpost, but might be insightful:

I remember that around 1995 the hype was arcades (most of them by Sega) and some of SNES' biggest titles (DKC, Yoshi's Island). It's kind of obvious what I dreamed of at the time: a Sega Saturn to play all the arcade racers and fighters. Some older dudes from my neighboorhood rented 3DOs on weekends, and mags were all about tricks and guides for Gen/SNES.

As time went on arcading and playing my Genesis and other people's SNES, around 1997 I finally tried PSX (Fifa 98 and DBGT: Real Bout). After that day I started saving lunch money to get a PSX. Mags changed a lot in a few years. From a kind of kiddie approach to more detailed reviews, professional diagramation and sometimes a funny-for-teenagers tone. Arcades were still big but slowly, a new kind of post-arcade gaming started to emerge from PSX/N64.

[Anonymous No.6338397]

It was virtually the same feeling up until 2004ish, then the internet really started to take over mass culture and things got less mysterious.

[Anonymous No.6338637]

Saturn about to enter the market and dominate the SNES, people will be playing that shit for the rest of the decade non-stop, Rondo of Blood and more JRPGs than you will even know what to do with, holy shit there is no way they can fuck this up. No possible way.

[Anonymous No.6338651]

Exciting times as 3D gaming started to take form. Kiosks with a PS1 or Saturn was always full of kids trying things out.

[Anonymous No.6338671]

1995 was still 4th gen territory to me and my friends.
I mean, I got both Genesis and SNES in 1994, so I was still catching up with all the backlog, plus the new games.
Probably my best memory from 1995 was receiving Yoshi's Island on the mail like a day or two before my birthday, right at release.
3D was cool, but it still wasn't something that I'd go crazy over, yet. I had played Virtua Fighter at arcades and was amazed at it, but in 1995, the biggest arcade hype was MK3, which was kind of a let down after 2, but we all still tried to convince ourselves that MK3 was awesome, and in some ways it was, even if nowadays I don't really like MK as much other than as nostalgia.
I had also experienced some 3D on PC, in 1995 I was probably playing stuff like Doom, Doom II and other similar clones of it, and some 3D games like Magic Carpet, Alone in the Dark or Microsoft's Space Simulator. These 3D games were impressive to look at, but as far as gameplay goes, I hated them and would much rather play any good 2D game on consoles.
It wasn't until 1996 that I actually became tired of 2D and actually became more interested in 3D games, especially with the hype of Mario 64, which didn't disappoint and even surpassed expectations.

[Anonymous No.6338684]

Polygons and SGI prerendered graphics all over the god damn place. Rebellious teen game ads. Arcades were still a thing. Renting games was still a thing. The shift to 3d was a pretty exciting time in gaming.

[Anonymous No.6338709]

Depends on the region. Americans like to pretend they're the only ones with a gaming history but Europe, America and Japan had very difficult cultures. Arcades weren't as big in Europe but Sega was. Nintendo was huge in America but not in Europe. Japan has PC engine.

Similarly the PSX completely changed gaming culture when it came out, so early 1995 and late 1995 look entirely different. Sony wanted the Tony Hawk's cool skater market which previously had not been the central focus.

If you want a better picture go to archive.org and download magazines from different regions. They will be a better example than any ones specific situation.

[Anonymous No.6338745]

>>6338709
>generalizations
Nintendo was absolutely dominating in the Nordic countries. When I was growing up in Sweden everybody had either a NES or SNES. SEGA basically didn’t exist.

[Anonymous No.6338747]

>>6338047
At that time I was still playing Genesis & SNES games. Didn't really get into 5th gen consoles until Resident Evil came out. That game blew my mind.

[Anonymous No.6338751]

>>6338047
PC gaming was starting to get good, consoles were peaking.

[Anonymous No.6338785]

>>6338709
>starts posts with Americans
>extreme lack of self-awareness
Literally rent-free

[Anonymous No.6338792]

At least here in Australia it always seemed pretty evenly split between kids who had a Mega-Drive and kids who had a SNES, but then the PS1 came along here and totally rolled the N64. Never knew anyone at the time who owned a Saturn, but knew a few people who had Dreamcasts.

[Anonymous No.6338798]

>>6338792
>At least here in Australia it always seemed pretty evenly split between kids who had a Mega-Drive and kids who had a SNES
Wrong. In Australia the Mega Drive quite substantially outsold the SNES.

>the PS1 came along here and totally rolled the N64
Also wrong. The N64 did better in Australia relative to the PS1 than any other country except USA. Worldwide, the PS1 outsold the N64 3:1.

In Australia the ratio was 5:3.

[Anonymous No.6338803]

>>6338798
Based factsposting

[Anonymous No.6338815]

>>6338803
While I'm at it, I'll point out the irony that the GameCube bombed harder in Australia than just about any other country even though the N64 did especially well there.

[Anonymous No.6338834]

The only thing I really cared about in 1995 was arcade games. The only incentive for me to buy console was that it could bring the arcade home.

Sounds like a cliche, but that's how it really was. Arcade games seem unfathomably futuristic compared to anything else. Especially when Sega and Namco brought out all those polygon crunching arcade machines which were graphically half a decade ahead anything else.

[Anonymous No.6338849]

Pretty much /v/ but in person. Console war arguments but more personal for better and worse, as well as figuring out what was and wasn't gay. Biggest difference though was couch/lan multiplayer, and usually doing stuff with people afterwards instead of logging in to whatever online service and having that be it. Generally a far more shared experience with family and friends than what you'll typically see in many things now, though it's probably not a coincidence that games like Minecraft and Fortnite have been the it things for a while, Smash to a lesser extent. Prerelease info was way more limited and hard to come by but games were new enough to almost always be genuinely surprising and live up to some hype. I still remember reading a blurb in PSM saying something to the effect of "Hey keep an eye out for this Metal Gear Solid game, has a weird name but we had a hell of a time with it at E3" and eventually playing it and then watching the empire it became. Like others are saying arcades were way ahead of everything at home, and having it all spring up at once gave everyone a sense "Man imagine what things will be like in 20 years." Funny how things work out.

[Anonymous No.6338878]

>>6338834
Yeah, this. I wanted arcade perfect ports of fighting games really bad. Also the teasers in Killer Instinct and Cruisin' USA where they flat out lied saying you would basically be playing this exact game on Ultra 64 was some fucking bullshit.

[Anonymous No.6339108]

>>6338815
I don't even remember gamecube being sold in target and kmart, wii u was supported much better and saturn stayed around until they pulled the plug where it was ripped off the shelves instantly.

In 1995 windows 95 was released and pc gaming became really popular until the ps1 was reduced in price and it became rediculous to upgrade. I used to go to my weekly market sometimes and they would have the big box pc games but most of the games I played were demos from the magazines. Another thing in 1995 specifically was that since cd rom was a couple of years old, the shops would often sell massive compilations of 10 discs of older games for a pretty cheap price. There were many computer shops for a couple of years too. Later as consoles became more popular the pc section was shoved aside an eventually removed.

[Anonymous No.6339202]

I'm not sure if it counts as "90s core-gaming culture", but to me the social aspect of 90s gaming is all about schoolyard rumors, exchanging pirated games and handwritten cheat codes, reading gaming magazines, and game being in 3D was more like a special feature rather than something expected.
>>6338397
That seems about right. Internet really fucked up the culture and made it more accessible. I know it's mostly just nostalgia and it's so much easier to get actual information these days, but there's just something so mysterious and charming about the times when you couldn't just take out your smartphone and google the solutions. I remember when GTA 3 was announced and one of my classmates asked me what does it look like, and the only way I could describe it was "it's like GTA 1 & 2 but from Tomb Raider camera angle" because I had never seen a game like GTA 3 before. These days if someone asks me what Mafia 3 is like, I could just say "Oh, it's one of those open world crime games" and he would instantly know what I mean.

[Anonymous No.6339317]

>>6338047
Couldn't really say. I was young, and everything was exciting and new. Now nothing interests me anymore. I think I kinda answered your question. Hopefully...

[Anonymous No.6339330]

>>6338047
No longer retro.

[Anonymous No.6339645]

>>6338745
Sorry friend, I thought Sweden was part of Africa. But you prove my point, that even in one continent the region is really important.

>>6338785
Are you denying Amerifats have shoe horned the myth of a global gaming crash into history when it was just in their market while other markets were at their peak in terms of local development?

[Anonymous No.6341485]

Gaming journalists made fun of feminists. From the Game Players July 1995 issue.

I miss those days.

[Anonymous No.6341618]

>>6338047
It was way smaller than it is now, far less mainstream. Most people I knew were still gaming on their Genesis or SNES, even after the Saturn and PS1 came out. We also rented most of the games we played, or played games we didn't own at our friend's houses. Also, arcades were still a thing at a lot of malls and it was still fun to go there on the weekend and play some Virtua Fighter or Mortal Kombat 3.

[Anonymous No.6341809]

>>6338047
It was better. This was before sjw and faggots took over the industry and started pandering to the normies and casuals.

[Anonymous No.6341848]

>>6341485
It's like things and people were more "mature" just some years ago. I wonder if all this shit was planned at some point and we are just witnessing the success of it.

[Anonymous No.6341863]

There was no "gaming culture" in 1995. There were some people who played video games (mostly kids) either at home or in arcades and absolutely no one defined themselves by it.

[Anonymous No.6341878]

In 1995 I was already missing gaming in 1990

[Anonymous No.6341918]

>>6339202
>I'm not sure if it counts as "90s core-gaming culture", but to me the social aspect of 90s gaming is all about schoolyard rumors, exchanging pirated games and handwritten cheat codes, reading gaming magazines, and game being in 3D was more like a special feature rather than something expected.

This. Plus pre-internet BBS, CDs with thousands of shareware games, dicking around with config.sys and autoexec.bat for hours on end because that new game you bought wouldn't quite run.

[Anonymous No.6341939]

>>6341809
I-I'm a faggot.

[Father Electronics Couture No.6342112]

>>6338834
Pretty much this. In 1995 I truly believed that console gaming was dead and the only games I played in any seriousness were arcade games and MK2/SF2 on my Genesis along with lots and lots of M:TG. I was very cautiously optimistic about Playstation after having gotten an opportunity to sit down and actually get into Twisted Metal with an early adopter and Battle Arena Toshinden led me to correctly hope that good ports of the new school fighters would eventually come out on the platform.

[Anonymous No.6342136]

>>6338047
there were a lot less blue-haired trannies, I can tell you that much

[Anonymous No.6342162]

>>6341618
>that pre-rendered PSX/wipeout product placement in a movie about computer hacker culture
Hype was more important to a games success back then. You could sell people a turd and they would eat it right up and ask for seconds if you could convince them it was cutting edge. I would say about a quarter of the games you find on any "worst games" lists were considered hot shit when they were brand new simply from the power of advertising.