What is the single greatest thing that came out of this generation?

MSI Magus

MSI Magus

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With this generation coming to a rapid close what do you all feel is the single greatest addition this generation. It can be a person, a moment, a video game, a system anything as long as it/they came from this generation.

There are a number of thigns I could see people picking. Last generation it was nice seeing RPGs become more popular and common, and this generation it was nice to see companies like Atlus and Nipon Ichi expand on last generation finding their own niche. Alot of great series like Kingdom Hearts were also created and while I fucking loathe gamefly I am happy to see the creation of a company like this as well as gametap.

There were so many great things to come out of this generation....but to me without a doubt the greatest thing is the Nintendo DS. Not only is it an amazing and fun system but I think it has started Nintendo on a path that I feel is not only good for them but the industry. That is why I pick the DS, because it has given me hope that developers may realize that flashy graphics are not always needed, just good ole fun gameplay. To me the DS is by far the greatest thing that came out of this generation.
 
[quote name='Dr Mario Kart']technically Twilight Princess is cross generational.

Disgaea, RE4, Phoenix Wright[/QUOTE]

Since you named three though ill just cut out Phoenix Wright and Disgaea which is good but not Godly leaving your vote as RE4 which I was tempted to name best thing this gen ;)
 
Xbox Live - sure sega did online play on the saturn & dreamcast, the pc's been dooing it since online existed, but Xbox live was as close to perfect as possible, so much so that Sony and Nintendo had to rethink thier strategies.
 
[quote name='peteloaf']Xbox Live - sure sega did online play on the saturn & dreamcast, the pc's been dooing it since online existed, but Xbox live was as close to perfect as possible, so much so that Sony and Nintendo had to rethink thier strategies.[/QUOTE]

Sony was going online anyways and people would have been unhappy with their online even if Xbox Live hadnt existed. Nintendo pretty much had no online plan. I am gonna try and not disagree with most peoples views but this one I have to. I mean online gaming was happaning anyways, live didnt really do anything.
 
[quote name='zewone']I believe he meant rethink for the next gen (PS3, Wii).[/QUOTE]

I know. But I dont think live made that happan. I think gaming was going to go online anyways, with computers doing it for years it was only a matter of time. With even Cell phones playing online games its hard to argue it was going to happan anyways! Live was a great thing this gen and if you want to say it was the best because the fun it offered thats cool. But, I have to disagree with anyone that says it moved online gaming forward forcing Sony and Nintendo to change online plans. I think things would have progressed the exact same way.
 
Real Wreless controllers but then again

GBA minus the fact they drop support for the Infared GBC port. For the love of god you can turn the gba into a cellular phone/radio/tv/wireless game device.
I say the gba is the best thing out there. All we need is 60 gig flash kart with zip support with a OS and bamn perfect hand held.

NDS Lite is small combines diffrent forms of gaming but drops support for gbc and gb games. Still in 3d and is easy to emulate and bypass. However they yet again drop gb support.

Beyond Good And Evil has to be the smorgish board of gaming. It represents everything any adventrue game is trying to be.

RE4 represents what the GCN could acheive with the right people in the workshop. Even RE0 and RE remake is a grand faith that should be highly looked upon. In fact all Biohazard games is the pillar of 3d games being respected.

MYstical Ninja N64 is one of the very few adventure games you will never get out of your head with beautiful graphics and figures.

Perfect Dark N64 is the pillar of what a Spy game should be or in fact any FPS should be.

Conkers Bad Furday is what you get when you take hollywood madness and twist it into the game world I mean god almighty this game plays like a movie high on cartoon world.

Eternal Darkness might not be the best game but man oh man if they turn each senario into it's own game I would probably have ED1-7 already.

Killer 7 is not everybody cup of tea but man Shinji justs nails what "Kirby the Crystal Shards" missed out on. With this kinda setting you could take any 2d game and have a 3d game without any errors while being creative.

PSO Episode Two not only has more graphical Beauty but is and will be the last PSO that displays a near perfect PSO gameplay.

Kingdom Hearts Might Sucks balls but the truth is sqaure decided to sneak what we love about Secret Of Mana. So Secret Of Mana is the greatest thing out there since live RPG games like PSO.

I don't know what to pick so I jus tlist these.

Lastly I believe the GCN has to be the greatest at home system out there and could go for twenty more years.

Out of these I say my GBA SP since I could play for such a long time and never get board.
 
As previously mentioned, wireless controllers. I'd say the Logitech Wireless PS2 controller and the Wavebird were hands down the best controllers available. I plan on keeping mine for a long time to come.

Xbox Live - It singlehandedly kept the Xbox from tanking. Halo would have been "just another console FPS" without live.
 
[quote name='daphatty']
Xbox Live - It singlehandedly kept the Xbox from tanking. Halo would have been "just another console FPS" without live.[/QUOTE]
Um...no. Halo was out a full year before Xbox Live and it did just fine having no Live support.
 
[quote name='zewone']Um...no. Halo was out a full year before Xbox Live and it did just fine having no Live support.[/QUOTE]

it's funny, cuz this is like the only reason people bought the xbox to begin with, but I hear live is nice, but I would still prefer my snes and xband anyday of the week (with national support of course!) anyone for a lil mk2? :)

great things of this generation:
Final Fantasy X (not X-2)
Metal Gear continued (omg)
Wind Waker (fruck off all you haters)
Wavebird
The DS
The new super mario bros (good lord it's good)
I will finish it with metroid prime and fusion/zero mission. Although I loved the gba versions so much more for the snes day feel, I did like prime, great FPA bitches.

and with the Wii on the horizion, I can't wait for nintendo to strut it's stuff, here TP, TP, TP
 
[quote name='jennie25']
The new super mario bros (good lord it's good)
[/QUOTE]

Not even close to the best thing to come out this generation... Super Princess Peach was a far better Mario like platformer.

Hell, if you take out Mario out of New Super Mario Bros, it would have scored significantly lower in every review mag since it's the Mario name carrying a mediocre platformer.
 
Hardware:

-Wireless Controllers: I didn't think wireless controllers would be that big of a deal until I bought my Wavebird. Since then I've purchased the Logitech controllers for both the Xbox and the PS2. I also agree with daphatty, the Wavebird and PS2 controllers are two of the best on the market, bar none.

-Hard-drives: Not having to continously buy new memory cards was a huge plus for me in terms of getting an Xbox. Unfortunately Sony never fully developed their hard-drive (w/Final Fantasy) and Nintendo didn't even attempt with the Gamecube.

-Xbox Live: I guess this could go under software, but either way, Live did prove that the console gaming community would enjoy playing games online.

Software:

-GTA series: Love it or hate it, the series introduced "sandbox" style gameplay to the masses, and several franchises (i.e. Driver) despite all their attempts still cannot execute a similar style gameplay nearly as well.

-Resident Evil 4: In my opinion the game redefined not only what a "survival horror" game should be, but also what any action game should try to achieve: incredible atmosphere, excellent pacing, and intense action sequences.

-Halo/Halo 2 - Despite the hate several feel for these games, they set new watermarks for FPS on consoles (both online and off) and were two of the most enjoyable experiences I experienced during this generation of consoles.
 
I'll say the best thing this generation is how games are getting back to the mainstream and being more social. Titles like Katamari, Karaoke Revolution, and Guitar Hero are so much fun -- both for hardcore gamers and casual players. Finally, there's something better than crappy Mario Party-style games .

When people who never played a video game before can get hooked on these types of titles, it's great for all of us. I guess that's what the Wii will be all about, so you think I'd be more excited. I think it's a graphics expectation thing.
 
the 3DO had a hard drive, jeeze welcome to 10 years ago. Well actualy now that I think about it... it wasn't a hard drive, but you didn't need memory cards.


Anyways..... I liked the gba, it promoted 2d gaming which I will dearly miss :(
 
[quote name='richicano']I can't believe no one has mentioned God Of War or Shadow of the Colossus[/QUOTE]
or ico
 
Competition. N vs microsoft vs Sony. (sorry sega :( ) The war and competition was needed. It help lead and sustain whats been named. Its difference than before is that the competition of 3 has carried over expanding our playing options, styles, and content.

In the past you have seen things such as saturn vs n64 vs psx, or 3d0, cdi and jaguar. But how well did these systems do on a whole compared to the competition of today?
 
Games:

Phantasy Star Online - IMO, one of the most addictive games to come along in years. Still the only online game that I really enjoy.

Dragon Quest VIII - the game that finally broke the DQ series in the US.

Resident Evil 4 - I never really liked the RE series before 4, and now I *love* it.

Developers:

Level-5 - Easily my favorite new dev of this gen.

Square-Enix - Yea, before we had Square and Enix...but the combination of the two has made for a great dev imo. Square's polish on Enix titles has been very noticeable and welcome.

Hardware/Tech Innovations:

Custom Soundtracks - the only really great use of the hdd imo. There's just something about playing a racer using your own music.

Wireless Controllers - specifically, the Logitech Cordless Action. Making my life a little less cluttered... ;)

Backwards Compatibility - Keeping past libraries a little more active.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']I know. But I dont think live made that happan. I think gaming was going to go online anyways, with computers doing it for years it was only a matter of time. With even Cell phones playing online games its hard to argue it was going to happan anyways! Live was a great thing this gen and if you want to say it was the best because the fun it offered thats cool. But, I have to disagree with anyone that says it moved online gaming forward forcing Sony and Nintendo to change online plans. I think things would have progressed the exact same way.[/QUOTE]


Yeah, stuff was going that direction, but they still did it the best first. It's pretty hard to argue that Sony and Nintendo aren't learning valuable lessons from Live.
 
[quote name='starman9000']Yeah, stuff was going that direction, but they still did it the best first. It's pretty hard to argue that Sony and Nintendo aren't learning valuable lessons from Live.[/QUOTE]...Isn't Nintendo still neglecting a Live-like service and sticking with Gamespy though?
 
Since were only suppossed to pick one thing, Im gonna say that the greatest thing about this generation is the general proliferation and mainstream status that videogaming has acheived.

This popularity makes every other innovation possible. Because Madden sells 100 bazillion copies, and millions of systems, we can have Ico, and Katamari. The overall growth of the game industry means that publishers can take a chance with smaller niche titles, because there are soo many PS2 owners, or GBA or DS owners, that they can probably sell enough copies of their small game to make money.

Just like the film industry, one big blockbuster movie will finance 10 smaller art house films. Now thats happening in the game industry. Its also cheaper to import and localize foreign games than develop new ones, so we get lots of weird niche Japanese titles that would not have come out here 5 or 10 years ago.
 
I think Open-Ended gameplay being brought to the consoles is the best thing of this generation.

Games like GTA and GTA2 took a stab at it last generation, but it really came into it's own this generation. Games like Morrowind would have been nearly impossible in previous generations, but took hold this generation.

This is something that will definitely improve next generation, but just like 3-D games took hold last generation and improved this one, I can't wait to see some of the open ended gameplay in a few years.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']Sony was going online anyways and people would have been unhappy with their online even if Xbox Live hadnt existed. Nintendo pretty much had no online plan. I am gonna try and not disagree with most peoples views but this one I have to. I mean online gaming was happaning anyways, live didnt really do anything.[/QUOTE]

I would disagree.

It isn't a matter of being first. It's a matter of taking an idea and making it work where others had failed or came up short.

Take optical discs in consoles. Digital Research did the first CD-ROM demo in 1985 with a purely text based encyclopedia application. A couple years later I was involved in one of the first PC games to use CD-ROM. (It was really the same Defender of the Crown PC game modifed to use a Red Book soundtrack played from the CD. It didn't even require an audio card in the PC.) While CD-ROM adoption slowly grew on PCs and Macs, there were numerous attempts to make it the center of a console design. The PC Engine CD add-on was moderately successful but required a platform that was already very successful using ROM chips. A long list of other add-ons and consoles did badly. Sega CD, 3DO, Amiga CD-32, CD-i, DVI (an Intel PC-based competitor to CD-i that never shipped but much of its software tools found its way into Windows), Tandy VIS, Sega Saturn (started strong but faded fast), Bandai @World/Pippin, and a number of others.

None of those managed to establish CD-ROM and future optical formats as the dominant means of console software delivery. Until the PlayStation. sony didn't jut create yet another CD-based machine, and the clicher wasn't their 3D push. It was that Sony did a lot of thinking about the economics of CD-ROM, especially in relation to their strength in manaufacturing of same, and created an end to end business plan that won over developers and retailers in a really big way, assuring that consumers would follow.

similarly, what Xbox Live brought to consoles wasn't just online play. That had been done. What they did was establish a full featured service that created a standard for consumer expectations thereafter.
 
[quote name='SpookyD']the 3DO had a hard drive, jeeze welcome to 10 years ago. Well actualy now that I think about it... it wasn't a hard drive, but you didn't need memory cards.


Anyways..... I liked the gba, it promoted 2d gaming which I will dearly miss :([/QUOTE]

The 3DO had a small amount of battery-backed SRAM, just like the Saturn and the TurboGrafx CD and some other add-on modules for that system.

I learned pretty quickly that the Saturn's battery was not to be trusted for me than a few days at best. Having a third party flash memory cartridge was a must for that machine. I checked mine recently and game saves from 1998 are still intact.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']I know. But I dont think live made that happan. I think gaming was going to go online anyways, with computers doing it for years it was only a matter of time. With even Cell phones playing online games its hard to argue it was going to happan anyways! Live was a great thing this gen and if you want to say it was the best because the fun it offered thats cool. But, I have to disagree with anyone that says it moved online gaming forward forcing Sony and Nintendo to change online plans. I think things would have progressed the exact same way.[/quote]

Gameing wasn't going to go online anyways... it DID. Years ago.

Nintendo and Sony dropped the ball. People have been online since the X-band. Online isnt this Gen, its old tech.

Xbox made it work... not just for consoles, but Xbox Live is better than anything the PC has either.

Nintendo has gone on record saying that online wasnt worth the effort, and Sony never really tried. They both had online capabilities, so YES the Xbox did change their minds.

They were both already equipped to go online, they just shit the bed when they realized how much work was involved and decided not to.
 
The evolution of the action game. Look at Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden Black, Metal Gear Solid 2/3, Onimusha, Resident Evil 4, etc. These games wouldn't have been possible on older systems (obviously) and I think that action games really made a huge leap this generation. While most action games on the consoles last gen. didn't age well, I'm confident that action games this gen. will remain very entertaining games over time because they finally have the gameplay they need to entertain even when the graphics are no longer flashy.
 
[quote name='Chacrana']The evolution of the action game. Look at Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden Black, Metal Gear Solid 2/3, Onimusha, Resident Evil 4, etc. These games wouldn't have been possible on older systems (obviously) and I think that action games really made a huge leap this generation. While most action games on the consoles last gen. didn't age well, I'm confident that action games this gen. will remain very entertaining games over time because they finally have the gameplay they need to entertain even when the graphics are no longer flashy.[/quote]

I totally agree. Also, this generation brought forth some terrific portable devices like the GBA, DS & PSP. I think I've probably spent as much, maybe more time playing games on these systems than on the home consoles.
 
Slightly off topic, but I'd like to go on record saying that I still dont think going online is worth it, and I'm against Nintendo and Sony's decision to do so, whatever the cause.
 
[quote name='Mookyjooky']Gameing wasn't going to go online anyways... it DID. Years ago.

Nintendo and Sony dropped the ball. People have been online since the X-band. Online isnt this Gen, its old tech.

Xbox made it work... not just for consoles, but Xbox Live is better than anything the PC has either.

Nintendo has gone on record saying that online wasnt worth the effort, and Sony never really tried. They both had online capabilities, so YES the Xbox did change their minds.

They were both already equipped to go online, they just shit the bed when they realized how much work was involved and decided not to.[/QUOTE]


If you're going to credit one entity with the proliferation of online video gaming, it has to go to the people who made broadband accessible to the masses. Now, I played Diablo and Duke Nukem over dial-up just like everyone else, but if we were all still on dial-up, the amount of people playing online -- and the amount of games able to be online -- would be significantly smaller.
 
Here's a new one: The rebirth of my love of gaming. I hadn't played games seriously since the SNES days - bought an N64 and a couple games a couple years ago, but never really played them. This generation didn't really cause me to get into gaming again (that was my friend and then CAG - though the DS is a runner-up), but it's when it happened.
 
Just the plain fact that developers now have more arm space to stretch their imagination to.

Artistic titles will probably be looked back on many years from now as the foundation of gaming in the art world.
 
Last Generation: Lens Flair
This Generation: Light Bloom
Next Generation: Motion Blur

I'm being half-sarcastic.

Jeremy
 
Wow, just one thing huh? Hmm, I'd have to say the best thing is developers finally (in a way) decideing to open up and make these absolutely wonderful, artistic games. I know people like Kojima did this years ago with Metalgear 2 and Snatcher, but this gen they had the power to create real, cinematic games.

If this gen counts Dreamcast, then I say I'll always be grateful for Rez. I never played it on dreamcast, but it originated there. There's many others: Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill, Killer 7, Katamari, Metalgear...etc

As for the coming gen, graphics can take a backseat for all I care. Now that there's more power, let's see even more amazing gameplay.
 
[quote name='ViolentLee']If you're going to credit one entity with the proliferation of online video gaming, it has to go to the people who made broadband accessible to the masses. Now, I played Diablo and Duke Nukem over dial-up just like everyone else, but if we were all still on dial-up, the amount of people playing online -- and the amount of games able to be online -- would be significantly smaller.[/QUOTE]
You could say that, but then it just could get ridiculous. How about the people who harnessed electricity into our houses? Without them, we'd still be playing Go Fish instead of NESs, Xboxes, or Playstations.
 
The best thing about this generation is its ability to create a culture that didn't really exist before it. The fact this thread exists is a direct product of the power of the previous generation. Hundreds of websites, podcast and magazines all about videogames. Not 3 or 4. In addtion to that the different types of gamers that exist, do you love Halo or do you love FF, regardless of your opinion your still right and the ability to vary genres successfully is a huge feat.
 
[quote name='zewone']You could say that, but then it just could get ridiculous. How about the people who harnessed electricity into our houses? Without them, we'd still be playing Go Fish instead of NESs, Xboxes, or Playstations.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, we'd be stuck playing Uno and poker and table tennis and....er....hmmm...

I don't think giving more credit to broadband over Xbox Live is that big of a stretch. I think you're taking a piece of foil and making a Pee Wee Herman sized foil ball out of it.
 
[quote name='peteloaf']Xbox Live - sure sega did online play on the saturn & dreamcast, the pc's been dooing it since online existed, but Xbox live was as close to perfect as possible, so much so that Sony and Nintendo had to rethink thier strategies.[/QUOTE]


XBL is the best thing this gen has seen. It's pretty much the best way to play games online. While I'm playing Halo 2 little billy can send me a message asking me to play a game of Star Wars Battlefront. As far as I know there is no good way to IM people in pc games that are made from different developers. I know I can't enter another app outside of steam with out it crashing.
 
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