Golden Age of Gaming

[wholetruth]

Probably nostalgia speaking, but my favourite period for gaming was the mid-to-late 90's.

Full texture mapping was becoming do-able. The Dooms and Quakes of the world found themselves cloned over and over again.

With the introduction of the CD-ROM, we started seeing gloriously unnecessary cut-scenes and grainy FMV. Big-name Hollywood stars would woodenly act their way through scripts that made little sense, in an environment that confused them greatly. Finally, I could click on Christopher Walken and make him do things.

With CD technology came great sound. No need for text-to-speech synthesis, yay!

3D cards slid into view with varying levels of support. Programmers could now throw out as many colours as they like, assuming that the user's Voodoo card would cope. Lesser mortals would sigh, and pick the software rendered mode, wondering how many fps they were going to be treated to. 10? 15?

Lucas Arts and to a lesser extent Sierra were still making great point & click games, but their time was coming to an end.

Just unearthed a bunch of computer magazines from the period and it's funny how quickly I was recognising an ad for a game, and recalling the publisher's logo be it Gremlin, Psygnosis, etc.

[nzoomed]

I agree, I grew up with computers first at school and played the early 2D DOS games of that era. Secret agent, commander keen, duke nukem, etc.
I got into the first generation 3D games around that time up till we got our first family computer in 1998 and then we saw the early generation of windows 3D accelerated games, etc.
For a while in the early 2000's 3D games were at that point where graphics were a big improvement on what we had, but were at that point where things did not look very realistic.
3D games have only recently gotten to the point where its easy to forget you are actually looking at CGI imagery.
For that reason, i quite enjoyed side scrolling games for quite some time.
Would like to get into VR now that i have a decent machine too, but thats needing a long way to go in terms of higher res headsets and better ways to interact within the game.

[videomonkey]

I agree, I grew up with computers first at school and played the early 2D DOS games of that era. Secret agent, commander keen, duke nukem, etc.
I got into the first generation 3D games around that time up till we got our first family computer in 1998 and then we saw the early generation of windows 3D accelerated games, etc.
For a while in the early 2000's 3D games were at that point where graphics were a big improvement on what we had, but were at that point where things did not look very realistic.
3D games have only really gotten to the point where its easy to forget you are actually looking at CGI imagery.

Yep exactly the same here.. we must be a similar age. We got our first family computer in 1998 too.

I do miss the days of those games.. not to say modern games aren't good, we've just got to a point where games are so good, nothing is new or surprising anymore.

[wholetruth]

The Computer Gaming World Museum is well worth a visit for a trip down memory lane. All the issues from 1981 to 2006 scanned.

http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index...b=0&id=500

[Admin]

Ive got a genuine 1980s arcade cabinet from a dude on trademe based in Huntly who deals in them.
He put in a 50 in one board and I asked him to keep the CRT display in it.

[olwen]

There were no PCs when I was at school. Wasted many evenings at work when our mini computer had Colossal Cave. "You are in a maze of twisty passages".

[wholetruth]

There were no PCs when I was at school.  Wasted many evenings at work when our mini computer had Colossal Cave.  "You are in a maze of twisty passages".

Play it again!

https://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch...-adventure

[olwen]

Play it again!

https://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch...-adventure

Don't need a website if you run Linux.  It's available to install.