Zero Punctuation: Fifth Console Generation

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I feel that console generation is underrated in this day and age.

IMO the PS1 had a much more diverse library of games that tackled both 2D Sprite and 3D Polygon era of gaming.

 

[bluegate]

Can't go wrong with the PS1 and its wide variety of games

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

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.

Pft, speak for yerself. I guffawed several times not counting rewinds.

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.

Other than perhaps the most important console gen in the history of gaming? I quickly defected to Microsoft due to Halo and Morrowind and haven't been back since, but the PS1 was a landmark machine and era.

I don't think any of them have aged well, but then again I don't really 'do' retro so feel the vast majority of games more or less age out within their own generation.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

The way I remember it, Nintendo stuck to cartridges for the N64 because the games in those were harder to copy than discs.

The funny thing is that this is exactly why 3rd party devs could pretty much print money by selling CD-ROM-drive peripherals for the N64 that could hook up to a PC/Amiga over serial... or was it parallel?

So, most N64 units I saw when they were fresh were fitted with a CD-ROM drive that could play the then popular video-CDs. Nintendo gained nothing. All they did was enable rogue R&D to circumvent their flavour of copy protection, which wouldn't have been such a priority had it not been for their region locks.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I'm not one to slam the PS1. It had it's place. Had a lot of great games. And in terms of sales, it may very well have won that gen. Fine.

Just don't tell me that the N64 didn't have good games. That's the biggest load of BS I've ever heard from him since his "review" of Halo 3. Sorry, Yahtzee, but you're objectively categorically wrong about the N64. Dat controller tho. I'm not even gonna try defending that weird thing.

 

[Delicious Anathema]

Even though I like Super Mario 64, Zelda and Quake on my N64, I deeply regret not getting a PlayStation at the time. So many (cheaper) games. The Saturn was a cool little machine as well and arguably had better third party support than the N64.

Atari Jaguar had a good Doom port, the best version of Wolfenstein 3D and fucking Alien vs Predator with its silent film-like framerate. 3DO had Need for Speed and a good version of Super Street Figher 2, and the Amiga CD32 could be changed to become a full Amiga A1200, so there's that.

PlayStation FTW.

 

[Broderick]

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.

I still have a saturn that I use from time to time. Back in the day I had Shining Wisdom, Rayman, Tomb Raider, Alone in the Dark 2, Night Trap and Croc(that I can remember off the top of my head). Never got Knights into Dreams, but heard good things about it.

 

[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.

Pft, speak for yerself. I guffawed several times not counting rewinds.

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.

Other than perhaps the most important console gen in the history of gaming? I quickly defected to Microsoft due to Halo and Morrowind and haven't been back since, but the PS1 was a landmark machine and era.

I don't think any of them have aged well, but then again I don't really 'do' retro so feel the vast majority of games more or less age out within their own generation.

It may have been a landmark, but I still never felt like I really needed to own one.

I actually moved over from Nintendo to Microsoft in the seventh gen, I had a Gamecube but I was very unsure about the Wii's motion controls, and hearing that Sonic06 was going to be on 360 pretty much sealed the deal for me(and no I don't regret buying that game, I actually liked it). Yeah i'm a big Sonic fan in case you couldn't tell, I think Yahtzee is dead fucking wrong when he says 3-D Sonic games are no good.

 

[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.

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

Wrong, I played fifth-gen games at other people's houses genius, and what I did play certainly did not convince me to buy one.

Credible post right there!

 

[darkrage6]

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

Disc technology has not become stagnant yet, and Nintendo's move to flash memory isn't such a smart move considering it can't store nearly as much GB of data as the other consoles can with their discs.

 

[darkrage6]

I'm not one to slam the PS1. It had it's place. Had a lot of great games. And in terms of sales, it may very well have won that gen. Fine.

Just don't tell me that the N64 didn't have good games. That's the biggest load of BS I've ever heard from him since his "review" of Halo 3. Sorry, Yahtzee, but you're objectively categorically wrong about the N64. Dat controller tho. I'm not even gonna try defending that weird thing.

He never said anything like that, just that the games everyone seems to laud really have not aged all that well.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

It may have been a landmark, but I still never felt like I really needed to own one.

Seems you edited your post as my notification PM's quite different. But to answer the above first line (as opposed to the line about the PS1 not having aged well, which I never said it had - quite the exact opposite): I'm not sure what else you were playing at the same time that trumped FFVII, MGS, the first couple of Tomb Raider's, Wipeout/2097, Tekken 2, GT, and so on.

The PS1 also tied in to the zeitgeist of the era, and it paved the way for the medium - certainly on console (which is the most important corner of the gaming 'verse in terms of the medium's overall health and broad cultural viability) - to be taken seriously and grow as a mature medium.

Yeah i'm a big Sonic fan in case you couldn't tell, I think Yahtzee is dead fucking wrong when he says 3-D Sonic games are no good.

Eh, never cared for Sonic or Mario. Only machines I've owned from either mascot's companies have been a GameGear and a Dreamcast - and both broke/died pretty quick. I did think Sonic Adventure on the DC was pretty good, certainly preferable to the 2D versions - at least to me - and the whole VMU thing was an endearing novelty.

 

[JemothSkarii]

In my house we went from Atari to Nintendo to Super Nintendo to Playstation 1. All my friends had N64s and to this day I still wonder how on Earth people used the N64 controller?
This is coming from someone who, as a child, had hangups about games forcing him to use analog sticks (Adult me looks back on this and wishes he could slap the shit out of me)
It actively lowered my enjoyment of games on that console, what the fuck was that thing man? It even gave a friend permanent thumb damage.

 

[darkrage6]

It may have been a landmark, but I still never felt like I really needed to own one.

Seems you edited your post as my notification PM's quite different. But to answer the above first line (as opposed to the line about the PS1 not having aged well, which I never said it had - quite the exact opposite): I'm not sure what else you were playing at the same time that trumped FFVII, MGS, the first couple of Tomb Raider's, Wipeout/2097, Tekken 2, GT, and so on.

The PS1 also tied in to the zeitgeist of the era, and it paved the way for the medium - certainly on console (which is the most important corner of the gaming 'verse in terms of the medium's overall health and broad cultural viability) - to be taken seriously and grow as a mature medium.

Yeah i'm a big Sonic fan in case you couldn't tell, I think Yahtzee is dead fucking wrong when he says 3-D Sonic games are no good.

Eh, never cared for Sonic or Mario. Only machines I've owned from either mascot's companies have been a GameGear and a Dreamcast - and both broke/died pretty quick. I did think Sonic Adventure on the DC was pretty good, certainly preferable to the 2D versions - at least to me - and the whole VMU thing was an endearing novelty.

I was perfectly happy to just play stuff on my Genesis until I got a Dreamcast for Sonic Adventure, I honestly just wasn't that blown away by 3-D gaming when it first happened. My age has a lot to do with it as I was born in 1990. My Dreamcast didn't last that long either, I was in the process of trying to get all 180 emblems in Sonic Adventure 2(only ones I had left were those goddamned Chao Races), then I got a Gamecube and got SA2 Battle and tried again to get all the emblems but I eventually ran out of patience trying in vain to win the damned Chao Races(never did care much for the Chao aspect of those games)

I used to like Mario, but Nintendo overexposed that franchise so much that I eventually got tired of it, got no urge to play Odyssey whatsoever.

I played the original Tomb Raider for about 5 minutes(it was on one of those pay-to-play TVs you see in hotel rooms) and I fucking hated it to be honest, and after playing the reboot series and the Crystal Dynamics games, i've got zero urge to play any of the fifth-gen TR games(I did play Angel of Darkness on PC to see if it was really that bad, and I honestly kind of liked it).

Never really got into JRPGs(let's just say I largely agree with Yahtzee's criticisms of the genre)so I never touched any of the FF games. I used to be into fighting games(I stopped playing as I got older when I realized how much I sucked at them), but Soul Calibur was always more my thing, I never touched any of the Tekken games. As far as racing games go, I played a few of them but wasn't very good(Wave Rave Blue Storm, F-Zero GX) and I never played any of the Wipeout games.

I edited my original post because I misread your post.

 

[darkrage6]

In my house we went from Atari to Nintendo to Super Nintendo to Playstation 1. All my friends had N64s and to this day I still wonder how on Earth people used the N64 controller?
This is coming from someone who, as a child, had hangups about games forcing him to use analog sticks (Adult me looks back on this and wishes he could slap the shit out of me)
It actively lowered my enjoyment of games on that console, what the fuck was that thing man? It even gave a friend permanent thumb damage.

Whenever I used that controller as a friends house as a kid I didn't mind, but i'd never even think of using that piece of crap nowadays.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

So... what exactly did the industry not learn? He kind of skipped over that part to pay lip service to the also-rans.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I know people like to say that Nintendo are doing their own thing, but they're really not. The Switch is being marketed as a console, so naturally, people are going to hold it to the same standards as the PS4 and Xbone. I guess what I'm saying is, you can bury your head in a helmet full of gummy bears as much as you want, but sooner or later, those gummy bears will all be eaten, and Nintendo will see that if they want to stay in the game, that they will have to play by the big boys rules.

 

[Bindal]

I know people like to say that Nintendo are doing their own thing, but they're really not. The Switch is being marketed as a console, so naturally, people are going to hold it to the same standards as the PS4 and Xbone. I guess what I'm saying is, you can bury your head in a helmet full of gummy bears as much as you want, but sooner or later, those gummy bears will all be eaten, and Nintendo will see that if they want to stay in the game, that they will have to play by the big boys rules.

They must have a lot of these gummybears given they don't do that since the Wii, especially in terms of online multiplayer.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Disc technology has not become stagnant yet, and Nintendo's move to flash memory isn't such a smart move considering it can't store nearly as much GB of data as the other consoles can with their discs.

No, discs have hit a serious wall. Blu-ray is struggling to beef itself up, not helped by the tech being exposed as a stopgap for streaming with its only application really being videogames. Meanwhile flash tech prices plummet every other month so it's not out of the question for Nintendo to beef their carts past their current 32GB max setting. Seriously, when you can stuff a game as gigantic as Breath of the Wild onto a Switch cart, it's clear they're not in any danger

 

[geldonyetich]

Less spot on this time, because in Yahtzee's enthusiasm to critically disassemble the facades created by nostalgia-colored glasses, I think he overshot a bit and ended up forgetting how some good things were accomplished by jumping on the not-as-necessary-as-we-thought 3D bandwagon.

For example, he talks about the Nintendo 64 like it was a terrible botched experiment, but we saw some great games on there that still do stand up to the test of time, such as Paper Mario, Super Smash Brothers, and of course Ocarina Of Time/Majora's Mask. The core gameplay of these games performed so well that they formed the pillar of major franchises that are active to this day.

His assessment of the other 5th generation consoles also seems to be disregarding how there were some great games that formed some major gaming foundations. It was actually a pretty good and exciting generation that produced progress... current generations can't say the same.

At least he's spot on that Nintendo's elitism did alienate a lot of third parties at around that time, something they still have not completely lived down.