Posted March 04, 2017
Ah, puberty. That time when you aren't quite sure what you are anymore and the opposite sex makes you feel weird. Or the same, perhaps!
But this isn't a discussion of hormonal chemicals working upon the animal kingdom to prepare bodies for gestation and reproduction. No, this is about eras in computing that were just...a little awkward, and we'd like to forget about it, if we can.
Now I should note, I'm younger than the kickoff point for home and console computing; I was born shortly before the USSR fell. As such, much of my understanding of both computing and video game history up to a point is from an outsider's perspective. I wasn't there for the birth of the home computer, the microcomputer revolution, or the birth of the PC. By the time I was aware of computing, such famous brands as Tandy and Commodore were jokes or dead.
To start things off, I've chosen two eras which I feel really highlight when the industry didn't know any better, or did, and simply chose to ignore common sense.
1: The 'Multimedia Revolution'/32 broken bits. Remember when CDs were the new hotness? 3DO, Atari, and Commodore, certainly don't. They were all dead before the millennium was upon us. Everyone wanted the plastic coated with reflective aluminium pie! At a whopping hypothetical 700 (650 was your typical amount) Megabytes, it was larger than most home storage mediums of the time! It also was slower than the humble floppy disk when it first launched and was prone to things going more wrong because there wasn't a protective shell.
The problem is...if I lost several fingers and toes in an accident, I'd still be able to count all the good Sega CD games that just weren't ports with FMVs/Redbook Audio shoved in.
That number decreases exponentially with other CD systems; save the TurboCD, which has one of the precursors to Symphony of the Night.
But maybe 299 USD to 699.99 in 1993 dollars was too much of a price to ask for most people. But hey, there was the Sega 32x and the Atari Jaguar, right? Except no. their library of games is just as small, if not even smaller.
Then in 1995 some unknown company by the name of Sony came along and kicked everyone's ass with the Playstation and showed everyone how both 32-bit and CD systems are done.
Unfortunately, Sony's victory indirectly leads into what I consider the second dork age of Video gaming.
The Brood Wars:
1997/31/01. Final Fantasy VII takes the world by storm and video games are sent into an age of brooding dark angsty edginess right up until 2005 when Shadow the Hedgehog ruined the entire concept of edginess by having an anthropomorphic hedgehog work for the president of the United States (Yes, really). Between those years it was angst, darkness, and broody! Remember Prince of Persia: Warrior Within ? Of course not. Nobody wants to remember smoldering with generic rage!
Doom 3? Nope. Couldn't see a bloody thing. The game was literally too dark.
But maybe I've missed some eras in both the hard and soft arenas of ware. Go ahead, name what you think is the puberty or comment further long what I've already listed here. Have fun!
But this isn't a discussion of hormonal chemicals working upon the animal kingdom to prepare bodies for gestation and reproduction. No, this is about eras in computing that were just...a little awkward, and we'd like to forget about it, if we can.
Now I should note, I'm younger than the kickoff point for home and console computing; I was born shortly before the USSR fell. As such, much of my understanding of both computing and video game history up to a point is from an outsider's perspective. I wasn't there for the birth of the home computer, the microcomputer revolution, or the birth of the PC. By the time I was aware of computing, such famous brands as Tandy and Commodore were jokes or dead.
To start things off, I've chosen two eras which I feel really highlight when the industry didn't know any better, or did, and simply chose to ignore common sense.
1: The 'Multimedia Revolution'/32 broken bits. Remember when CDs were the new hotness? 3DO, Atari, and Commodore, certainly don't. They were all dead before the millennium was upon us. Everyone wanted the plastic coated with reflective aluminium pie! At a whopping hypothetical 700 (650 was your typical amount) Megabytes, it was larger than most home storage mediums of the time! It also was slower than the humble floppy disk when it first launched and was prone to things going more wrong because there wasn't a protective shell.
The problem is...if I lost several fingers and toes in an accident, I'd still be able to count all the good Sega CD games that just weren't ports with FMVs/Redbook Audio shoved in.
That number decreases exponentially with other CD systems; save the TurboCD, which has one of the precursors to Symphony of the Night.
But maybe 299 USD to 699.99 in 1993 dollars was too much of a price to ask for most people. But hey, there was the Sega 32x and the Atari Jaguar, right? Except no. their library of games is just as small, if not even smaller.
Then in 1995 some unknown company by the name of Sony came along and kicked everyone's ass with the Playstation and showed everyone how both 32-bit and CD systems are done.
Unfortunately, Sony's victory indirectly leads into what I consider the second dork age of Video gaming.
The Brood Wars:
1997/31/01. Final Fantasy VII takes the world by storm and video games are sent into an age of brooding dark angsty edginess right up until 2005 when Shadow the Hedgehog ruined the entire concept of edginess by having an anthropomorphic hedgehog work for the president of the United States (Yes, really). Between those years it was angst, darkness, and broody! Remember Prince of Persia: Warrior Within ? Of course not. Nobody wants to remember smoldering with generic rage!
Doom 3? Nope. Couldn't see a bloody thing. The game was literally too dark.
But maybe I've missed some eras in both the hard and soft arenas of ware. Go ahead, name what you think is the puberty or comment further long what I've already listed here. Have fun!
