Lately, I've been mostly interested in 5th gen stuff, a very interesting time to have been a gamer. Although, back then without Internet and without magazines, my knowledge of what was available then was very limited. In 1995, the only video game consoles which I knew existed was NES, SNES, Genesis, and "Atari" (meaning 2600). Even when I went to video rental stores at the time, I don't recall seeing any other types of games. All of my friends had SNES, or Genesis.
For my brother and I, our first next-gen (fifth gen) game experience was getting the N64, which became my favorite console of all time over the following years. It wouldn't be until the later 90s and 2000s that I'd learn about the many game systems that existed both before and during that point, and it kinda blew my mind.
Today, I'm more of a retro player. I prefer the simplicity of an era when games were straightforward, and the wow factor was just more in the fact that the games simulated their target concept what-so-ever. Today, it's like modern game devs bend over backwards trying to come up with a bunch of obtuse concepts to throw into their new games in order to keep the gameplay fresh and unique, and it just needlessly over-complicates the games. A typical side-scroller today needs to have a skill tree, crafting, it must be rouge-like, random generation of levels, random re-spawing of characters, etc, etc. It's like, why does there need to be so many layers to a damn side-scroller these days?
Guess I'm a boomer. I prefer old-school, straight forward, difficult gameplay that requires you GIT GUD, or else. No bells of whistles necessary.
