Zero Punctuation: Fifth Console Generation

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Fifth Console Generation

Yahtzee reviews the fifth generation of consoles.

Watch Video

 

[Aretheus]

My parents threw out both my super nintendo and sega genesis as a kid so now all I have is a stupid ps1. Well, at least I have CTR and spyro 2 for it.

btw, FIRST

 

[Erttheking]

Yeesh, Yahtzee's a smidgen bit salty over people who like N64 games still.

I have to say this video seemed a little light on laughs and more heavy on ranting.

 

[darkrage6]

Hey now Captain Crunch is a good cereal. Adult breakfast cereals usually suck ass.

Also Walmart is good and so is Sonic in 3-D, Sonic X-Treme really should've happened.

 

[lreinirz]

So wait

whats he gonna stream this week?

 

[Saelune]

N64 > PS1.

PS2 though, now -that- was a console.

 

[Makabriel]

What's even more funny?

Nintendo went back to cartridges..... and it friggin works

 

[Darth_Payn]

The way I remember it, Nintendo stuck to cartridges for the N64 because the games in those were harder to copy than discs. Also, in this video, Yahtzee said the "age of the Mascot" ended in the 5th generation, but did he not review the rerelease of the first 3 Crash Bandicoot games last week? And remember who's mascot he is? In some ways, the Age of the Mascot never ended, since you can count Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 (yeah, that's his full name and rank, I am THAT big of a geek) as Microsoft's since the first HALO debuted with the first X-BOX.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

I wonder if historians will ever talk about the best battle of consoles: Nintendo DS vs Playstation Portable, because in a world when it wasn't a landslide like the PS2 in the 6th or X360 and Wii at the beggining of the 7th; the portable games of that generation went all out. What I mean is PSP bringing big games such as God of War, GTA, the Sony platformers and Metal Gear to portable agaisnt DS's home for JRPGs, adventure games, and overall variety.

A console war like that will never happen again, especially not now, because handhelds are different beasts to develop games for, in which higher budgets are not the solution. Considering how great this year has been, it's sad to remember 3DS is receiving remakes and Vita ports of old stuff.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Harping on Nintendo fanboys is one of my favorite of Yahtzee's perks.

So wait

whats he gonna stream this week?

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

 

[darkrage6]

Yeesh, Yahtzee's a smidgen bit salty over people who like N64 games still.

I have to say this video seemed a little light on laughs and more heavy on ranting.

More like he's tired of people who refuse to admit that many of them have not aged well at all.

I never owned a single fifth-gen console and I honestly don't feel like I was missing out at all.

 

[darkrage6]

The way I remember it, Nintendo stuck to cartridges for the N64 because the games in those were harder to copy than discs. Also, in this video, Yahtzee said the "age of the Mascot" ended in the 5th generation, but did he not review the rerelease of the first 3 Crash Bandicoot games last week? And remember who's mascot he is? In some ways, the Age of the Mascot never ended, since you can count Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 (yeah, that's his full name and rank, I am THAT big of a geek) as Microsoft's since the first HALO debuted with the first X-BOX.

Plus Microsoft also had Blinkx and Sony had both Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter(There was also Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, Crash's Australian cousin)

 

[Erttheking]

Yeesh, Yahtzee's a smidgen bit salty over people who like N64 games still.

I have to say this video seemed a little light on laughs and more heavy on ranting.

More like he's tired of people who refuse to admit that many of them have not aged well at all.

I never owned a single fifth-gen console and I honestly don't feel like I was missing out at all.

Yeah, well, I feel like they did age well. Perfectly? No. But pretty well.

I guess I still eat Captain Crunch. This is news to me.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

What's even more funny?

Nintendo went back to cartridges..... and it friggin works

Though they ever actually stopped using carts. On the consoles they went to discs from the GC up to the Wii U, but their handhelds have always been cartridges from the GB up to the 3DS. Most of this you can probably attribute to Nintendo knowing that discs were not good for portable systems which are meant to be played on the go and quickly, so carts cut down on load times and kept things snappy. Plus it's allowed them to keep innovating with compression which is how a game as gigantic as Breath of the Wild can somehow fit on a tiny cartridge smaller than a 3DS cart. It's mind boggling.

And it's also kind of hilarious how everyone made such a big deal about the leaps to CDs, DVDs, and then Blu-ray...and now disc technology has become stagnant while flash memory continues to grow. And Nintendo is the one company taking advantage of that. Huh.

Anyway, the fifth generation is interesting to examine because it's one of the few times the landscape was heavily lopsided. Sony had most of the 3rd parties while Nintendo had to make due with what they had, and SEGA tried relying on games that were unique and some even becoming remembered as masterpieces, but just weren't popular. Nonetheless this was another continuation of the previous generation due to once again being heavily Japan-focused, with the legendary 1997 giving us revolutionary titles like FFVII and SotN and then 1998 where Nintendo changed 3D forever with Ocarina of Time. It was definitely Square's golden age with becoming Sony's cash cow 3rd party and churning out titles that would, at worst, become cult classics like Parasite Eve, Front Mission 3, Threads of Fate, Saga Frontier, Legend of Mana, Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Xenogears (though funnily enough, this is also when FF took a downward slide in quality with FF8 being utter crap and FF9 being just middling). Another thing is this is where you also saw Nintendo start to beef up their 1st party development, expanding with new teams and bolstering their portfolio with new IPs or new entries in long running franchises. Nowadays Nintendo is pretty much self-sustaining to the point of being immortal

 

[HazardousCube]

Yeesh, Yahtzee's a smidgen bit salty over people who like N64 games still.

Well he does believe that the N64 and the games ages quite poorly both graphic wise and gameplay wise(though the latter mostly applied to first person shooters)

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

So Yahtzee...

WatchMojo - Top 10 Greatest Zero Punctuation Episodes of All Time [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXPRXZhqdmQ]

Any comments on this in particular?

 

[linkblade91]

I grew up on the fifth generation of consoles...and yet it didn't help me remember which one *was* the fifth generation lol >_>

 

[Bindal]

Yeesh, Yahtzee's a smidgen bit salty over people who like N64 games still.

Well he does believe that the N64 and the games ages quite poorly both graphic wise and gameplay wise(though the latter mostly applied to first person shooters)

To be fair, the entire genre wouldn't have aged well they would have stuck with the stuff of the Fifth Generation. The reworks in the later ones in terms of controls made them work.
But the games in general? They're still pretty awesome. The 3D ones not visually, of course (that's not to say they're ugly, they just show their age a bit too well) while the few that did use 2D are still decent. And later 3D games still are okay.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Yeesh, Yahtzee's a smidgen bit salty over people who like N64 games still.

I have to say this video seemed a little light on laughs and more heavy on ranting.

More like he's tired of people who refuse to admit that many of them have not aged well at all.

I never owned a single fifth-gen console and I honestly don't feel like I was missing out at all.

So basically you have an opinion on something you never did and know nothing about. Credible source right there!

 

[Hutzpah Chicken]

I have a Sega Saturn I picked up for $30 about 10 years ago. I still don't have much of an idea of what games to get for it. The Genesis and the Dreamcast are real easy to find all sorts of fun games. Even the Master System has a decent few (like Phantasy Star and Outrun, which I think are the only games I have for it). Hell, the Sega CD has some good (but expensive) shit, like Snatcher and Shining Force CD.

But the Saturn? Unless you get Japan-only games, you have a choice of sports games, a really bad port of Duke Nukem 3D, or more sports games.