Now or Then: In terms of quality

[AdamInPlaidum]

Do you think the current Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft rivalry is making for better games, or the Sega/Nintendo rivalry of years past? I personally think, while Nintendo put out some absolutely stellar games back then, a good portion of my favorites off the top of my head, I think current gaming trends are making for some of the best quality games ever.

[punqsux]

no question, snes/genesis were the epitome of quality gameplay.im not saying everything sucks today, but quality had dropped alot. i think its safe to say more people here bought megaman:ac than driv3r

[AdamInPlaidum]

A good point. Overall percentage in quality has taken a hit, but with the sheer amount of games being pumped out from the big 3, I feel there are more quality titles.

[Tromack]

Yeah. I want to say the SNES/Genesis era, but I know that I am being irrational and that games are better for the most part now. People always forget how much crap was made back in the old days.

[PsyClerk]

Yeah. I want to say the SNES/Genesis era, but I know that I am being irrational and that games are better for the most part now. People always forget how much crap was made back in the old days.

Exactamundo. When you look back, it's easy to forget the games like Home Improvement, Skuljager, and the piles of shitty sports titles that were barfed up on the SNES-Genesis.

[Rodimus]

I think more crap is made now then back then. Also we gamers have become jaded. We've seen and played everything, nothing seems new and fresh anymore.

I voted for the SNES and Genisis era, I had more fun back then.

[SneakyPenguin]

Maybe I'm just blinded by my generation, but the Genny is my favorite system. I remember the sheer joy of playing my first 16-bit game on Christmas. Games and times will never get better than then.

[BigHow]

I'm gonna go against the grain and vote for today's games. I think that today's games generally have characters that are more responsive and have a wider range of actions that they can perform. Ratchet and Clank, for example, plays the way that I always wanted Bionic Commando to play. Prince of Persia simply blew me away, mainly because it featured possible actions that seemed very intuitive in a 3D world, but had previously been unrealized.

Maybe some RPGs have gotten too convoluted and lost sight of what made them great, but I think the platforming genre is better today than it was during the SNES/Genesis heyday.

[magilacudy]

Games were a bit more expensive back then too, and there was no CAG... so you made damn sure you didn't buy a crappy game with your hard earned allowance/ lawn-mowing/etc. money. The lack of income and hype weeded out all the substandard games.

I think the percentage of quality is about the same all things considered.

[KingDox]

I'm also going to say that today's games are better. Sure I had a blast back in the snes days but good lord were there alot of Mario Platformer clones. And 99% of them blew, I hated that about the snes. I'm willing to bet there are more platformers for the snes then there are fps games on xbox. Also I love race games, music games and online games. The old race games are not as good as today's and music games were extramly rare pre-psx.

[Tromack]

I think more crap is made now then back then. Also we gamers have become jaded. We've seen and played everything, nothing seems new and fresh anymore.

I voted for the SNES and Genisis era, I had more fun back then.

I would say that without a doubt more crap is made now. But I believe that far more good is made now. During the SNES/GEN era it was a good year when 4 A-list games were released. Now there are about 4 A-list games released each month. At least on a good month.

[kaji7p56]

This generation brought us HALO. Enough said.

[Sheik Rattle Enroll]

I think it's about the same. It seems like only 5% of games are any good at any point in history. Granted in the Sega/Nintendo days there was more experimentation, but that's mostly because budgets were alot lower and development cycles alot shorter.

[pukemon]

whoopty do. halo. super mario world was more fun than halo. hell lots of games were better than halo. who's with me?

i'm just ragging on halo, but smw is better imo. halo's not as polished.

[YoshiFan1]

Sega/Nintendo era, now it seems like all that counts is graphics and not gameplay.

[elprincipe]

NES is the best system ever followed by SNES and Genesis, so you can see how I voted. Not even a contest IMO.

[Rodimus]

Sega/Nintendo era, now it seems like all that counts is graphics and not gameplay.

Right you are.

But of course I can't speak for everyone but, I'm getting pretty sick of all this crap that's coming out now. You might say it's good (Halo, GTA, Splinter Cell, whatever) but I'd much rather play my Mega Man AC than that stuff any day. I guess that's why I like SNK so much.

[Squirms]

I like the newer generation because of the storylines many of them have. They just seem much deeper, at least RPG wise. Pure pick up and play fun goes to the older gen, but overall polish, visual, voicework, control have to go to the new gen.

[Sheik Rattle Enroll]

I'm a diehard SNK fan, but I'd argue that they've been putting out crap the last 4 years. The KOF series has gotten bogged down with idiotic characters and stupid plots. It was supposed to be a battle between SNK characters not a couple dozen guys made up for the occassion. Also there's been basically no gameplay innovation from SNK in 4 years, they just put out the same games with the same gameplay and the same graphics engine. Hopefully this'll change now that they're going to Atomiswave. The roster for KOF Neowave looks like an enormous improvement. Now all we need is for updated gameplay and graphics. Don't take this as SNK bashing because I'm a huge LB and FF fan, they just need to get their crap together.

[Rodimus]

Of course games are better now, they have to be or companies are doing something wrong. But I had a ton of more fun back in the mid 90's playing games than I do now. And with the technology that was availible to them at that time, they did a hell of a job.

Yes their were alot of bad games, but some times the bad was fun. I'm asuming everyone here at least rented or played Shaq Fu, but has anyone played or rented Stake for X-Box. Does anyone know what it is? We've all played games we now consider crappy, but some times we enjoyed it cause we didn't know any better. I played and liked (at the time) Home Improvment, Caveman Games, and probably a ton more. The crap made now is worse than the crap made back then..... I think

[Rodimus]

I'm a diehard SNK fan, but I'd argue that they've been putting out crap the last 4 years. The KOF series has gotten bogged down with idiotic characters and stupid plots. It was supposed to be a battle between SNK characters not a couple dozen guys made up for the occassion. Also there's been basically no gameplay innovation from SNK in 4 years, they just put out the same games with the same gameplay and the same graphics engine. Hopefully this'll change now that they're going to Atomiswave. The roster for KOF Neowave looks like an enormous improvement. Now all we need is for updated gameplay and graphics. Don't take this as SNK bashing because I'm a huge LB and FF fan, they just need to get their crap together.

That's why I love SNK, they don't change like everyone else. Look at Capcom, you don't see them getting in touch with their 2-D fighting fans.

[punqsux]

Sega/Nintendo era, now it seems like all that counts is graphics and not gameplay.

not to mention games that are 75% identical to one another

malice/sphinx/haven/every other crappy platformer
gta/truecrime/driver

i mean yeah there were a ton of rip offs of street fighter and final fight back on snes, but for some reason, it wasnt so annoying

[pukemon]

xbox doesn't help the graphics over gameplay moniker either.

[javeryh]

As a somewhat older gamer (29), I can definitely remember the NES (and atari) days with fondness but I can also, without hesitation, say that this generation is far superior to those past. Games are just better today, IMO. I think that nostalgia clouds judgment because we typically only remember the good games we played back then even though there was a ton of crap out there... As far as innovation goes, Metroid Prime and Prince of Persia are two of the best games I've ever played and they are each less than a year old... have faith!

[Rodimus]

I think this topic is getting exhausting for me so my final words are:

I generally don't play new games, infact most look a feel boring to me. When will people get enough of 3-D platformers? Were are the next gen 2-D games? That's what I want and until I see that this PS2, Gamecube and especially X-Box generation will be boring.

[epobirs]

I think my age gives me a different perspective. My gaming roots are in the 6502 8-bit systems from Atari, Apple , and Commodore. The NES was a 6502 system at a time when people like me were moving to the Amiga and Atari ST. Nintendo and Sega's 8-bit systems were a big step backwards except for those few designs that would stand out anywhere on the basis of gameplay regardless of graphic quality. I just preferred to play the more attractive games they inspired on more capable hardware.

That said, there was a flood of utter garbage in the SNES/Genesis era. That was more readily noticed when you were scanning the shelves at TRU trying to identify that one new title worth buying. It's easy to look back on that era now with fondness because it's the high point that form the memory.

Ten years from now we'll have no trouble looking back and regarding this era the same way. Xbox 4 owners will bitch about how too many titles emphasize graphics over gameplay because when the remember the Xbox they'll recall Halo and Morrowind whlle forgetting Kabuki Warriors.

In terms of quality today has a hands down advantage. If the same amount of effort were invested inmodern games as sufficed for a two megabyte cartridge in 1993 today's production costs would be low but there would be no reason to own the current machines. The amount of labor expended today is immense. The work invested in one main character model in FF X exceeds that for any of the SNES FF games in their entirety.

[Lootr2Core]

I think my age gives me a different perspective. My gaming roots are in the 6502 8-bit systems from Atari, Apple , and Commodore. The NES was a 6502 system at a time when people like me were moving to the Amiga and Atari ST. Nintendo and Sega's 8-bit systems were a big step backwards except for those few designs that would stand out anywhere on the basis of gameplay regardless of graphic quality. I just preferred to play the more attractive games they inspired on more capable hardware.
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My progression was Pong-Intelevision-Vic20-Commodore 64, Atari St (some great games on that) pc progression-Sony ps1 and on.. in the midst I played SNES and NES and it just didn't hold a candle to the games on the ST or Amiga. So I would vote that the games today are better as more lessons seems to have been learned from the ST/Amiga games. Also I don't remember as many review magazines and there certainly was no internet to investigate games, I know i bought more crappy games back then then now because I now know before I buy what not to buy. (Ah..that last sentence was strange)