What video game generation do you think was best time to be alive?

[dreama1]

What video game generation do you think was best time to be alive? or best generation?

[burningdoom]

The answer is going to be whenever the poster was about 9-15 years old.

[rayne315]

The generation in the future that perfects virtual reality. I really enjoy my brothers proof of concept game he made for the occulous. (i consider it a walking simulator tho)

[aliensstudios]

I'd say in between 1988 and 1998 or so when most of my favorite game came out, Sega was still making consoles and video gaming magazines still flourished. (I was born in 1994, so I wasn't in between 9 and 15 years old as burning doom suggested.)

[dashv]

I say right now.

We can enjoy the past in a variety of ways.

Let's plays on YouTube, emulation, original hardware, clone systems,steam, etc.

eBay makes importing a breeze.

Forums, collection sites, etc.

We also get to enjoy evolutions in gaming tech bringing us modern gems like: Tomb Raider (reboot), Kingdom Hearts, infamous, etc.

[bikingjahuty]

In my opinion I think 1995 through 2003 were the best years of gaming and will likely never be beat.


Not only was there some of the greatest innovation in the history of gaming going on, but some of the absolute best games of all times across so many platforms came out. This 8-year period is something I'm very partial to because it was when I enjoyed gaming the most. I have such amazing memories of this time period, and even now with so many great games coming out it will never live up to how amazing this period of time was to be a gamer imo.

[gf78]

Going by generation, I would say the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era was the best.  All three companies were pumping out great games.

After the start of the PS3/Wii/360 era, things went to $hit IMO.  Microsoft helped usher in the DLC craze and now publishers are just ramming it up our collective asses by selling us a half-assed game with entire sections cut out to be sold as DLC.  Then, thanks to Activision, "Season Pass" is the name of the game where we are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to pay for said cut content, rationed out over a few months for a ridiculous price.  How generous.

The current generation-with the power the new consoles offer and the online community-should be the greatest ever.  Instead, I have to study every game coming out to see how bad the publisher is going to try to screw us over.  Then you either have to decide that you won't be getting that extra content, pony up the dough or wait a year for the GOTY version with the cut content put back in place.

[abe]

I say right now.

We can enjoy the past in a variety of ways.

Let's plays on YouTube, emulation, original hardware, clone systems,steam, etc.

eBay makes importing a breeze.

Forums, collection sites, etc.

We also get to enjoy evolutions in gaming tech bringing us modern gems like: Tomb Raider (reboot), Kingdom Hearts, infamous, etc.

I agree with this. As cool as the nostalgia factor is for the mid-90s, you can still enjoy games from the era and much more with today's technology.

As much as I like the current gen of consoles and handhelds, I'm going to have to say it would be nice to go back a few years ago before collecting became so popular and prices for "retro" stuff really started to get insane.

[Warmsignal]

Probably 4th gen... At that time you had fewer, and more importantly purely gaming oriented companies completing for best product and putting out some of their most highly regarded classics. Of course, I'm talking about Super Nintendo and Genesis. The period predating this rivalry was a mess of junky hardware and crappy games (1983), and the period that followed the 16-bit wars, brought on more junky hardware and crappy games from every electronics company that wanted to throw their hat into the ring... and in my not so humble opinion, today we have huge non-gaming oriented companies building generic boxes that really aren't much different from today's PC gaming scene, and is ever so slowly becoming Steam, rehashing content out the wazoo especially with the collecting scene in a bubble.

So my vote goes to what was probably the purest console gaming generation, the 4th.

[thewelshman]

This is one of those questions that the answer is going to be very biased per person. Most of us have a certain timeline where we got into gaming and that's normally about the time we're going to see as the best gaming generation. If you look back, every few years whenever the new gen consoles are released. I'd say the best time is when the competition started to heat up. I started really gaming with Sega Genesis/SNES/TurboGrafx-16/Neo-Geo. Right after that is when the the PlayStation, N64, and Sega Saturn were released. I think that's when competition really picked up and the console wars started.

My vote would go to the 6th gen as gf78 mentioned. The 128-bit era gave us the PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and the Sega Saturn was still a legitimate machine. That's when I really started seeing competition between the companies and them jockeying for games exclusives. Before, it was primarily developers releasing games per console as they were paid. Seems like, at this time, is when bidding wars started for developer's services.

I think any gens 4th, and on, could all be argued to be the best ones to be alive during.

[tafk]

PS1/N64/Saturn IMO.

Wish I was about 5 years older so that could have been more my childhood than the PS2/GCN era.

Currently when I have been replaying games almost all of them have been from that era. N64 ruled platformers, Saturn ruled fighting games, PS1 ruled RPGs. Can't go wrong.

[gf78]

My vote would go to the 6th gen as gf78 mentioned. The 128-bit era gave us the PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and the Sega Saturn Dreamcast was still a legitimate machine. That's when I really started seeing competition between the companies and them jockeying for games exclusives. Before, it was primarily developers releasing games per console as they were paid. Seems like, at this time, is when bidding wars started for developer's services.

To add to this and what tafk touched on (except the 128-bit systems versus the 32/64-bit), I think every genre out there was at their "height" during this gen.  RPG's, fighters, action/adventure, platform and shmups all had some terrific entries.  FPS came into their own led by Halo on the Xbox.  Nintendo actually seemed to want to compete with a small powerhouse system that could keep up graphically with the competition.  The Xbox's built-in HDD marked the death of expensive, proprietary memory cards for consoles.  Online console gaming became a reality led by Sega.Net on the Dreamcast followed by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft who had the best online service with Xbox Live.  Sega gave it their all with the games on Dreamcast that were pretty much all instant classics in my book. 

Just a great, great generation.

[thewelshman]

I completely flubbed on the Saturn Dreamcast part, lol. The Dreamcast, by far, had the worst controller setup of all the consoles I ever played.

[dreama1]

I completely flubbed on the Saturn Dreamcast part, lol. The Dreamcast, by far, had the worst controller setup of all the consoles I ever played.

It wasn't that bad. The xbox controller is a glorified dc controller anyway.

[atarileaf]

I say right now.

We can enjoy the past in a variety of ways.

Let's plays on YouTube, emulation, original hardware, clone systems,steam, etc.

eBay makes importing a breeze.

Forums, collection sites, etc.

We also get to enjoy evolutions in gaming tech bringing us modern gems like: Tomb Raider (reboot), Kingdom Hearts, infamous, etc.

This is actually a really good answer.