What generation of Videogames do you think was the best?

[C=Style]

What do you think was the greatest era for videogames, what generation of consoles do you play the most, and when did you think (if at all) gaming peaked?

For me I would have to vote for the 32bit era, I thought long and hard and it was a toss up between the 16bit (inc Snes/Amiga/Megadrive etc) and 32bit (Playstation/Saturn). I think with the Playstation's arrival was a very important landmark in videogame history, the birth of true 3D games with great gameplay became possible, and I feel some of the games from that particlar era hit the nail on the head so far as 3D gameplay was concerned. Also I think the 32bit era was the time for 2D perfection, as many 3D devs were out to impress with gfx, the 2D devs were obviously focusing on making great games with top gameplay.

So in summary my favourite era in videogames was the 32bit, what's yours and why?

ps: I know some of the machines I listed arn't 32/64bit and are in the wrong catagory but I wanted to included them for the time frame and didn't know how to group them up any another way.

[The Master]

I'm sure we've had this before, but 8-bit was the best, and the start of 16-bit was the dog's nuts, but then it all started getting a bit too clever and there were a thousand disks and too much bad video and that...

[psj3809]

Surely because of the age of most people here 80's will win ? I loved the 80's big time, 90's wasnt bad at all with the Amiga and consoles and PC's taking off. Playstation i never really got into, glad to see gaming popular again with the Wii though as people who werent normally into gaming are joining 'us' so to speak.

But for me 80's 100%

[Cornelius]

Mine!

[The Master]

Mine!

Missile!

[will2097]

It's like the 3do, atari jaguar, Pippin, Fm Towns marty and CDi never happened.

I know that would have gotten two votes.*

*So probably not worth it then

[The Master]

Is the PS2 and that actually 128-bit then?

I kind of lost track of bits after the N64.

What's an Intel Core 2 Duo?

[Scooby1970]

Been searching for the original version of this thread as I know we've done it before... Anyone, once again I'll say 16-bit, as it was to me the pinnicle of 2D gaming and the whole generation of 16-bit games was a huge step from the 8-bit games I grew up with. It was the only generation that I truly thought there was a huge jump in quality and the generation I spent and actually spend mopst of my game playing time.

Mark

[C=Style]

Yeah right, sorry it was a real crap way to group them together I'll give you that. I was gonna mention the 3DO and FM Towns actually! that would place a vote under the 32bit era anyway.

[woody.cool]

No mention of the 64-bit era?

[MC1]

16 bit for me.

I loved my speccy.

But it seemed to me, looking back on it, the biggest leap forward.

I'm sure people will disagree, but since then, every subsequent generation has not been as impressive as 8 to 16 bit.

I still remember playing Golden Axe and Strider on an import megadrive. It was arcade perfect to me then.

[woody.cool]

16 bit for me too - most of my gaming life was on the Amiga!

[C=Style]

There wasn't really a 64bit era though, and it would only consist of N64 and Jaguar.. not sure what else. I just lumped N64 into the 32bit category as that was the same time frame and the machines it was in competition with.

Note I didn't include anything before the 8-bit era, the reason was slightly presumptuous of me as I assumed no-one would vote it, as it's quite clearly not the best generation for games.

[bonerlaw]

I was torn with this one........while I have some of my fondest memories playing the classic 8 bits, I juts feel that some of the greatest games ever released came out on the 16 bit consoles!

[FatTrucker]

There's a two pronged answer to that.

In terms of the actual quality and variety of games I would say the current generation is looking to be the best so far. The games are broader, deeper, better looking and generally more involving. Couple that with online play so you're never short of some good old human AI to play against and its a winner everytime.

However what new games don't benefit from is nostalgia and fresh eyes. In those terms the generation I've enjoyed the most would probably be 16 bit. The transition from 8 to 16 was incredibly exciting and as a gamer suddenly jumping from crude pastiches of arcade titles to being able to play games at home that matched and later surpassed them was a fantastic experience that was very much unique to that particular time and likely won't come again. The transition from 16 to 32 bit was also a massively exciting time to be a young gamer, there was just so much happening in such a short space of time. However the move to 32 bit represented the shift to the modern games industry that we know and love today and it hasn't really been the same since then.

Sadly I think a lot of that excitement is lost to younger gamers nowadays. We were priviledged to follow the industry throughout its birth and every year brought exciting new innovations in hardware and game design. There were so many new genres to explore and ideas broached that it was a uniquely breathless time for gamers.
Now so much of the landscape has already been trodden, its far more difficult for developers and hardware manufacturers to create anything radically new or original. So while modern games are undoubtedly the polished, audiovisually delightful sum of gaming histories parts, they simply don't carry the same air of progress and discovery that older titles enjoyed.