Best decade for video games?

[dDave]

The title is pretty self explanatory. This question just popped into my head and I thought td make a great debate here at GF.

The only rule is that in your argument you can only include games that were released during the decade that you chose. Re-releases (such as super Mario 64 DS) cannot be counted either.

I consider the 90s to be the golden age of gaming. I know a lot of people will disagree with me. I also liked how it had most of the great 2D games as well as the first 3D games (some of which I consider to be the greatest games of all time.) the 90s encompasses most of the games that I love. It included the SNES, N64, PSX, and the Sega Genesis.

Donkey Kong Country Trilogy
Donkey Kong 64
Mario Kart 64
Super Mario 64
Goldeneye 007
Banjo Kazooie
Crash Bandicoot: Warped
Gran Turismo
Half Life
Zelda Ocarina of Time
Zelda Majoras Mask
Zelda A Link to the Past
Sonic The Hedgehog series (including sonic 2 an beam machine)
Total Annihilation
Pitfall The Mayan Adventure
Sim City
Sim Ant
StarCraft (and Brood War)
Super Metroid
Super Mario World
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Super Smash Bros
Mario Party
Starfox 64
Star Wars: Racer
Nights: Into Dreams
Chrono Trigger

The list goes on and on. I'd be fine playing just those games for years. A lot of newer games are great and I do like them a lot, but they're not the same. I feel as if the gaming industry today is lacking the same creative drive, it's still good but not as good.

The 90s will always be the golden age of gaming.


What about the rest of GF? What's the best decade for gaming.

 

[Merc]

I don't have an answer. To be honest, I get sick of discussions like this. When we were growing up, everything sounded like "the best" thing ever. Just like people in the 80's and now the 00's. I loved games from the 90's (when I first started gaming) and every year since. I mean, if we wanted to be critical in an honest way, a lot of 'classic' games could be called out for being repetitive and dull. I mean, I loved the Donkey Kong Country games. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who owned (or still does) an SNES and didn't love most games on it. It was a golden era of home entertainment, it was very hard to be a loser. Donkey Kong Country was a trilogy of cutting and pasting. There was very, very little innovation game to game. Okay, new lands, one or two new characters but the game itself never changed. But of course, that's because it wasn't seen as a requirement of the developers back then. People enjoyed when a game brought them more of something they loved. Quick, mass consumption makes this absolutely necessary with modern gamers.

Nowadays you don't see that. Resident Evil 4 was absolutely fantastic, easily one of the best action games ever released. Resident Evil 5 was apparently universally hated because people claimed it was just more of the same thing which is absolutely ludicrous since the series was extremely stale until RE4 came onto the scene and revitalized the series in a way Capcom could have only fantasized about.

It's also quite criminal to talk about a lack of creative drive when masterpieces like Resident Evil 4, Fallout, Red Dead Redemption and Oblivion have made recent gaming years absolutely incredible (just to name a few on a very, very tall mountain). There is a lot of creativity, more than ever I'd argue.

 

[dDave]

I don't have an answer. To be honest, I get sick of discussions like this. When we were growing up, everything sounded like "the best" thing ever. Just like people in the 80's and now the 00's. I loved games from the 90's (when I first started gaming) and every year since. I mean, if we wanted to be critical in an honest way, a lot of 'classic' games could be called out for being repetitive and dull. I mean, I loved the Donkey Kong Country games. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who owned (or still does) an SNES and didn't love most games on it. It was a golden era of home entertainment, it was very hard to be a loser. Donkey Kong Country was a trilogy of cutting and pasting. There was very, very little innovation game to game. Okay, new lands, one or two new characters but the game itself never changed. But of course, that's because it wasn't seen as a requirement of the developers back then. People enjoyed when a game brought them more of something they loved. Quick, mass consumption makes this absolutely necessary with modern gamers.

Nowadays you don't see that. Resident Evil 4 was absolutely fantastic, easily one of the best action games ever released. Resident Evil 5 was apparently universally hated because people claimed it was just more of the same thing which is absolutely ludicrous since the series was extremely stale until RE4 came onto the scene and revitalized the series in a way Capcom could have only fantasized about.

It's also quite criminal to talk about a lack of creative drive when masterpieces like Resident Evil 4, Fallout, Red Dead Redemption and Oblivion have made recent gaming years absolutely incredible (just to name a few on a very, very tall mountain). There is a lot of creativity, more than ever I'd argue.

I think you misunderstood. I wasn't talking about the amount of creativity but more or less the quality of the creativity. Meh, I don't know, I just don't see it as the same thing. We could argue about this all we want, but we're both going to be right in our own minds.

As for Donkey Kong Country, the first game is well known for pushing the SNES to the absolute end of its limits. It's not surprising that there wasn't a ton left for them to do in the two games that followed. Just to note though, the background images in Donkey Kong Country 2 looked a lot better than those in the first one. The third game introduced a fully navigable over world as well as a vast array of new move sets and level design. Another piece of the puzzle was the challenge that the game presented.

Here are a few games that I hear people saying today are the best of their genres (yes, they're all from the 90s)

RTS - StarCraft
RPG - Chrono Trigger
Adventure - Zelda Ocarina of Time
Platformer - Super Mario 64 (though you could easily make a case for DKC)
FPS - Goldeneye 007


The 90s also saw the jump from 2D to 3D, something that can not ever be topped for most significant achievement until we get realistic holograms or true virtual reality.

I know I say this a lot (and I know many of you disagree with me), but a lot of games these days have a focus on graphics. While graphical advancements are great, there's a lot more to gaming than the way it looks.

Look at a few popular franchises today, there really hasn't been much of a change (other than graphics). Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo: Reach, Halo 4; I've played a great deal of every one of these games and I can honestly tell you that they all feel the same to me. Call of Duty is guilty of the same thing. Every year in November a new game is released like clockwork and millions of people fork over $60 for a brand new game that isn't really all that different (or better) than the one they bought the year before.

The 90s games just felt a lot more bold, they ventured into territory that had never been thought about let alone explored. 3D gave developers a chance to be even more creative because they suddenly had so much more to work with, these days it's just seen as a standard (which I do agree with).

 

[Merc]

Of course it felt bold, you were 13 years younger, everything is great when you're little.

It's nearly impossible to be objective when talking about things you grew up with. Those things you mentioned about DKC are so minimal and vague and don't explain anything. DKC was bland when it came time for sequels. The only changes were character choices. The graphics were the same and the elements of gameplay were identical.

Also, you mentioned two franchises. Two. They're two of the most casual and competitive games out there. People don't play those games to hear a good story, even you know that.

 

[dDave]

Of course it felt bold, you were 13 years younger, everything is great when you're little.

It's nearly impossible to be objective when talking about things you grew up with. Those things you mentioned about DKC are so minimal and vague and don't explain anything. DKC was bland when it came time for sequels. The only changes were character choices. The graphics were the same and the elements of gameplay were identical.

Also, you mentioned two franchises. Two. They're two of the most casual and competitive games out there. People don't play those games to hear a good story, even you know that.

I think you'd be surprised. I know that they're generally accepted as casual and competitive games but I know plenty of people that think that the Halo franchise has the best story out there. I try to convince them otherwise (go play Mass Effect (which I love), or StarCraft, etc.) but they don't listen. I hear many these same people getting all excited about the campaign in the new CoD game and talking about how great the story was. I want to hit them for being retarded. :lol:

I didn't really grow up with DKC (even though that is a very fair assumption). I didn't own a copy of the game until I bought one for GBA back in 2008 and last year when I bought it for SNES. I really never got a good shot at the game until it was very dated.

 

[Konshentz]

I voted for the 2000s. Looking at my all time top ten, the majority of them were released during that decade. I loved gaming in the 90s, but for me, those games just can't compare to what we have now. The graphics, the voice acting, the writing, the gameplay... everything is just better now.

 

[Merc]

I think you'd be surprised. I know that they're generally accepted as casual and competitive games but I know plenty of people that think that the Halo franchise has the best story out there. I try to convince them otherwise (go play Mass Effect (which I love), or StarCraft, etc.) but they don't listen. I hear many these same people getting all excited about the campaign in the new CoD game and talking about how great the story was. I want to hit them for being retarded. :lol:

Just out of curiosity, when did you play all four Halos and all the Call of Duties? Because you have quite an opinion on them and I'm not too convinced you've actually played them. The first Halo was a good story and Call of Duty in my opinion has only had two good campaigns being MW1 and MW2, the rest didn't impress me. Just because there are some people out there who think those games are the best hardly accounts for anything. Halo actually does have a pretty decent story behind it. For me personally, Mass Effect put me to sleep. I'll try it again someday, but Bioware RPGs just draaaaaaaaaaaag. Dragon Age was another one that dulled my brain.

I didn't really grow up with DKC (even though that is a very fair assumption). I didn't own a copy of the game until I bought one for GBA back in 2008 and last year when I bought it for SNES. I really never got a good shot at the game until it was very dated.

Then to be honest your bias is showing :lick:

I don't know how you don't see the repetition. So does this mean you never played DKC2 and DKC3? How can you speak about the series if you haven't?

 

[dDave]

Just out of curiosity, when did you play all four Halos and all the Call of Duties? Because you have quite an opinion on them and I'm not too convinced you've actually played them. The first Halo was a good story and Call of Duty in my opinion has only had two good campaigns being MW1 and MW2, the rest didn't impress me. Just because there are some people out there who think those games are the best hardly accounts for anything. Halo actually does have a pretty decent story behind it. For me personally, Mass Effect put me to sleep. I'll try it again someday, but Bioware RPGs just draaaaaaaaaaaag. Dragon Age was another one that dulled my brain.



Then to be honest your bias is showing :lick:

I don't know how you don't see the repetition. So does this mean you never played DKC2 and DKC3? How can you speak about the series if you haven't?

I played through the entire DKC series, don't you worry about that. I definitely see the repetition. I was just stating that there is a bit of variance throughout the games. (even if it is severely limited)

You can't really expect much from a series in terms of graphical development or a new engine when the first game was considered to be one of the best games ever made at the time and it was pushing the edge of the limits of the console.

I have every Halo game ever made (except for Wars and ODST) and I still play from time to time. I'm currently working through the Halo 1 campaign with a friend and I play Halo 4 multiplayer with friends (though I do get owned). I played each and every game in the series in their prime. (Halo 1-->Reach was played almost every time I got together with friends in High School if we weren't playing CoD)

I agree that the story is decent, but it's not one of those games that has such a great story that you go out and tell people that the story is the "best", that's no an exaggeration at all. (my own brothers and friends really do say that)

As for CoD, I've played a lot of CoD 4 (MW), MW2, and Black Ops II (much more recently). The games play well enough, I just don't feel that they're different enough (I know you were talking about variety in development earlier especially concerning DKC, just remember that the entire series cost under $60 at msrp price, I do see your point though let that be noted).

And we all have biases Merc.

 

[Bliss]

I spent a heck of a lot of time gaming in the 90's. I played a lot the classics (Sonic, Streets of Rage, Columns, Crash Bandicoot, Donkey Kong, etc.) and felt a level of excitement I've never felt since. I do love the GTA games, but that is literally the only modern game I play nowadays.

 

[Ziggy]

Modern Warfare 1 had a great story and used it's visuals well to tell it.

I think Halo plays the same because the gameplay is solid, well at least I feel it is. Classic Halo with no sprint or perks is where its at.

But that is kind of off topic. I think 90s is probably the best decade for gaming when it comes to sheer volume of classics.

Especcially for RPGs.

Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7, Legend of the Dragoon and Suikkoden I and II are all such great games.