Which video game console?

[ozarkman417]

My first real video games were Mario games on the DS. The consoles I have owned are: GameBoy, DS, DSi, 3DS (XL), Wii, Wii U, and Switch, as well as a 1k dollar gaming PC. With a powerful PC, there isn't a need for me to buy a console like an XBOX or a PlayStation.

[Ned Weasel]

Video games declined after 1994? But most games were still 2d in 1994!

With a few exceptions, 2-D games are overall more enjoyable than 3-D games.  If you have a different opinion, I can't stop you.

[Roadrunner75]

Video games declined after 1994? But most games were still 2d in 1994!

With a few exceptions, 2-D games are overall more enjoyable than 3-D games.  If you have a different opinion, I can't stop you.

I prefer the 2D games too.  I grew up with the Atari 2600 and then essentially finished with consoles with the original NES.  But I spent a lot of time playing games on the Commodore VIC20 and eventually the Commodore 64 which was great.  After college I dabbled a little bit with PC gaming with the original Doom games and then that was about it.  Now my son has an Xbox One and spends a lot of time playing Minecraft and other things.  It's harder to find age appropriate games on the XBox for a preteen - I sometimes wish we waited for the new Nintendo instead which seems to have more kid games (and I always liked the Mario stuff on the original NES).  But all his friends are on XBox busily blowing stuff up and shooting monsters so it is what it is.  But for the rare time I will jump in and play something, I would prefer to navigate a frog across a road or guide an Italian plumber on his way to save a princess.

[doorknob60]

Can't really vote on this, I play on them all, plus older systems. Except I don't do much mobile gaming (occasionally I'll play Old School Runescape on my phone, but I usually just play that on my PC). And on my PC, I only use Linux, not Windows. But I have all the consoles.

[formulanone]

Video games declined after 1994? But most games were still 2d in 1994!

With a few exceptions, 2-D games are overall more enjoyable than 3-D games.  If you have a different opinion, I can't stop you.

Not to mention, faster loading times. There's so much bloat and waiting on games now. The updates for the console OS as well as the patchy nature of many games makes me unenthusiastic to settle down to a game for a 30 minutes.

I had an Atari 2600, but I haven't fired it up in about 10 years. The PSX and PS2 still runs. The kids' Wii bit the dust recently but they have their Xbox 360 games for fun.

Never got much into PC gaming - never had a good PC that could run games well, so I really haven't tried in the past 25 years.

I don't enjoy video games anymore; luckily my real life is much more interesting (the cut scenes have less drama, though).

[Max Rockatansky]

Speaking of PC games I recently got Doom working again using the Chocolate Doom source port.  I never had any interest in learning how to play with a mouse so the old school versions of Doom, Doom 2, and Final Doom were a fun distraction using keyboard settings.  I'm kind of intrigued with Brutal Doom since I could enjoy an old classic with a new twist, the learning curve with mouse play looks high though. 

[ozarkman417]

I may buy the new DOOM game (DOOM Eternal) during the Steam Summer Sale this year. I have not played a DOOM game as of yet.

[Max Rockatansky]

I may buy the new DOOM game (DOOM Eternal) during the Steam Summer Sale this year. I have not played a DOOM game as of yet.

I played Doom 2016 at a friends house, I thought it compares well to original games.  Looks like Doom Eternal is pretty much more of the same but with less monster arenas/boxes. 

[Scott5114]

This poll (and thread) demonstrates the basic problem with video games - they require a proprietary platform to use them, and games are not compatible across platforms.  Also, unlike records, cassettes, CDs, etc., to play the latest games you need to upgrade your platform, which also generally will not allow you to play the older games.

Once something stops being the cutting edge, you can usually get an emulator that mimics the system on a PC, so you can play whatever you want. The Super Nintendo has a few different emulators for it, so you can play Nintendo games from the early 1990s fairly easily, for example. And PC games that run on Windows/Linux have always been a thing.

Unless a video game is developed by a console manufacturer, they're mostly released across multiple platforms now. Console manufacturers can't offer sweetheart deals good enough anymore to make a third-party developer release on one console only–porting to all of the platforms is just too profitable.

Video games declined after 1994? But most games were still 2d in 1994!

A lot of the games of the early 90s were excellent. Lemmings and Super Mario World both came out in 1991 and are both classics still played today. Both still have an active fan community cranking out new custom levels for them, so if you take the time to get really good at them, you will have unending amounts of content.

'90s 16-bit graphics were enough to render some pretty nice-looking sprites, but there were still hardware limitations that required some kind of creativity out of the programmers. Programmers working under those sort of limitations would have to stop and evaluate whether the sort of interaction they wanted to do was worth the effort to make it happen.

Modern games can throw enough processing power at something that they often don't stop and think whether they should.

With a few exceptions, 2-D games are overall more enjoyable than 3-D games.  If you have a different opinion, I can't stop you.

3D games went through a period in the 90s and 2000s where the tech wasn't quite there yet, so everything tended to be noticeably bashed together out of an unholy mess of triangles. I can't play anything from that era because my mind has trouble parsing it so I get hopelessly lost and frustrated. I've heard Ocarina of Time is really good. But I can't get into it because my brain gets exhausted trying to interpret the damned triangles. (That, and they don't have a very good control scheme compared to modern 3D games.)

Things got better at some point in the 21st century, and I can play modern 3D games just fine. Some of them, at least. I don't have much interest in games that try to go for a super realistic style, since most of the time they're bathed in various shades of brown. I like Splatoon and Breath of the Wild, though, because they're shooting for a more cartoony aesthetic. I feel like both of them will probably hold up better over the years as a result. When you go for cutting edge, you look dated when the cutting edge moves on.

The game I'm currently playing the most, Stardew Valley, uses a pretend 16-bit art style (you can tell they really have 32-bit colors available since some of the animations are too smooth to be true 16-bit, not that it really matters much). But that's fine. It communicates what's going on in the game fairly clearly. And since it's pretending to use '90s tech and not 2010s, it'll look just the same to someone playing in 2020 as it does to those in 2040.

[hotdogPi]

Video games declined after 1994? But most games were still 2d in 1994!

A lot of the games of the early 90s were excellent. Lemmings and Super Mario World both came out in 1991 and are both classics still played today. Both still have an active fan community cranking out new custom levels for them, so if you take the time to get really good at them, you will have unending amounts of content.

'90s 16-bit graphics were enough to render some pretty nice-looking sprites, but there were still hardware limitations that required some kind of creativity out of the programmers. Programmers working under those sort of limitations would have to stop and evaluate whether the sort of interaction they wanted to do was worth the effort to make it happen.

Modern games can throw enough processing power at something that they often don't stop and think whether they should.

With a few exceptions, 2-D games are overall more enjoyable than 3-D games.  If you have a different opinion, I can't stop you.

3D games went through a period in the 90s and 2000s where the tech wasn't quite there yet, so everything tended to be noticeably bashed together out of an unholy mess of triangles. I can't play anything from that era because my mind has trouble parsing it so I get hopelessly lost and frustrated. I've heard Ocarina of Time is really good. But I can't get into it because my brain gets exhausted trying to interpret the damned triangles. (That, and they don't have a very good control scheme compared to modern 3D games.)

Things got better at some point in the 21st century, and I can play modern 3D games just fine. Some of them, at least. I don't have much interest in games that try to go for a super realistic style, since most of the time they're bathed in various shades of brown. I like Splatoon and Breath of the Wild, though, because they're shooting for a more cartoony aesthetic. I feel like both of them will probably hold up better over the years as a result. When you go for cutting edge, you look dated when the cutting edge moves on.

The game I'm currently playing the most, Stardew Valley, uses a pretend 16-bit art style (you can tell they really have 32-bit colors available since some of the animations are too smooth to be true 16-bit, not that it really matters much). But that's fine. It communicates what's going on in the game fairly clearly. And since it's pretending to use '90s tech and not 2010s, it'll look just the same to someone playing in 2020 as it does to those in 2040.

Quake was released in 1996. Half-Life 1 in 1998. Both games are fully 3D.

[Max Rockatansky]

I would still rank Doom way above Quake.  The base levels were more fun to play and far more frantic than what Quake offered, usually way more open ended.  The original Doom might have the largest Mod community of any game every made.  I even made my own custom WAD files for Doom up until the early 2000s.  The amount of creativity that Doom allowed and ease of access for anyone will probably never be replicated.  Then again before the 3D era it was pretty easy to trick out and customize PC games by experimenting with utility tools.  Post 3D it became really unapproachable, I would compare it to working on a carbureted engine versus something with EFI. 

[yakra]

I even made my own custom WAD files for Doom up until the early 2000s.

$deity that was fun.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I have a PS4 (bought), and a Switch (gift). Lately the PS4 has gotten a lot more mileage as a streaming platform while the Switch has been more of my gaming console.