Have you experienced a new generation in consoles before?

[Pepe Silvia]

I'm not talking about Xbox to Xbox 360. I grew up on Sega Genesis. Sure, Nintendo was great, but it wasn't new for very long. I must have played more Sega games when I was 5 or 6... Then the Super Nintendo came out. It was pretty cool, but it wasn't THAT much different. I think the first game I REALLY played was Mortal Kombat... I'm pretty sure it was the first one. Everyone shit their pants about the blood code, it was the greatest thing EVER.

After the SNES, the next console my brother got was the Sega Saturn. Holy shit. This thing was the fucking balls. Between Worldwide Soccer, Daytona Racing/500/whatever it was called, and Virtua Cop, I'm surprised the controllers are still intact. Everything looked so crisp. Virtua Fighter was just incredible to play when it first came out. We owned two different copies of Virtua Fighter Remix, one was red, and one was blue. I never understood this.

Then, we got a fucking zapper gun. Holy shit. Yeah, Duck Hunt was pretty cool, but you could cheat, and.. It wasn't TOO exciting. Now you had to shoot off screen to reload and everything. You could adjust the difficulty... It had this feel to it that was just much more enthralling than playing it at an arcade.

Then the PS1 came out about 6 months later. With what it STILL the best controller of all time, and some incredible games (I'm quite fond of THPS) this was just an incredible experience. The first time I played Twisted Metal was something to be remembered. Not to mention, around this time, things like the Game Boy Color were coming out. The Game Boy was no longer a friggen brick. We had a battery pack for it, too, so it was even more a mammoth than it normally was. Gotta love that green. Fucking Battletoads, man. Fucking Battletoads.

Anyway, did anyone else experience such a revolutionary jump in... well, everything gaming? I kind of wished I had more time to appreciate the NES before I used an SNES.

 

[The Doctor]

For me, the leap would have to be from my Game Boy Advance to the Nintendo DS. I never imagined in a million years that I would be playing a portable Nintendo 64, only a few years after the death of the original N64. It was mind-blowing. I always thought of handhelds as places for awesome 2D games, and that the big 3D ones would go on the big consoles. It was completely crazy and hard to wrap my mind around when I first saw the tech demos.

 

[Dagger Dias]

There were 2 huge jumps that I experienced in games.

2D to 3D
I remember thinking to myself when the 64 was coming, that moving to 3D was going to "ruin" video games because the focus would be on graphics rather than on gameplay. I ended up being wrong about that because games like Mario 64, Goldeneye 007, Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, and Ocarina of Time were all so incredible for their time.... even though I am more nostalgically attached to the SNES prequals for nearly all of the above. I also prefer cartoony styles over CG in basically every type of game. I've never liked CG. The only exception to that is Zelda, where the Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess graphic styles are superior to those of Windwaker. I'll always prefer 2D games, but the jump in graphics was necessary to appeal to a larger group of fans.

Memory Cards
My first experience with memory cards was with Final Fantasy 7 on the playstation. It blew me away that I could save memory data onto a memory card, then retain my saved data even though I did not own a copy of a game, I could borrow friends' copies or rent the game, and just save it to my memory card. Sure, this is expected for basically EVERYTHING now, but 15+ years ago it was unthinkable and nothing short of groundbreaking.

 

[Lee]

Handheld wise the jump from Gameboy to GBA was phenomenal, have you replayed a Gameboy recently? The games look horrible to play but they are fun. The jump to GBA was great, look good, felt good, sounded good and had a huge range of games.

 

[Kashagi]

Why cant people talk about Xbox to 360? The advancements made in features online alone is incredible. Being able to sit down at my xbox and buy Indigos Prophecy is quite a revolution in itself that was out of the question 10 years ago.

But anyway, I recall when I was 8, we had no console for sometime, with my older brother giving away his SNES and Genesis for some reason. He started earning money and putting it all in a jar in his room, I remember stealing chocolate from his room while looking at all the money in that jar.

One day I was next door playing cricket or something with my neighbours, and my little brother came around and told me in a whiney beserk akin to the Nintendo 64 kid, "Chris got the gun game!!" I had no idea what that meant so I told him to go away and came home a few hours later.

When I walked into the lounge room I saw something glorious, Chris sitting at the couch playing the Statue level in Goldeneye. It was my first glimpse (and knowledge) of 3D gaming. I had alot of fun with that game..

I probably would say the N64 era was my childhood era, along with the PC and games like Starcraft, Heroes of might and magic 2, Diablo etc. I have lots of fond memories of the N64. Probably my favourite memory would be saving up all my pocket money to buy Pokemon Stadium (80 dollars roughly). When I finally made the money to buy it, at the last second I decided to buy Mario Kart which was half the price, and another game I had never heard of called Ocarina of Time.

And henceforth, the greatest decision made by anyone ever.

 

[Dave]

I would have to say that the PS2 being released in probably the best time when I have seen the jump illustrated best.

I am a huge Final Fantasy fan boy and the first game I ever played on my PS2 was Fuinal Fantasy X. Take into account that before this, I was playing Final Fantasy IX and you will realise just how much of a revolutionary jump I thought it was. It was incredible. Everything from top to bottom was better about the games and the console. It was faster, cleaner and just all-around better than the PS1. There was a dashboard that was very basic but still there, it had better graphics and made game play even better. The PS2 is the best illustration of the jump because of the games that were played on it. Graphics were much, much better and the game was more enjoyable, to say the least.

Final Fantasy X is still a special game for me and I doubt I would have enjoyed it as much if I had played it on the PS1. In fact, I know I wouldn't have. The PS2 inspired me to play more games and was just a huge leap forward for gaming in general.

 

[ABMorales787]

I made the jump from NES to N64. Wow thats a big jump. Back then we could only buy games in the video stores. I didn't find a cheap SNES and the Genesis was nowhere to be found here. From '95-'98 I owned an NES (I know, I was outdated by a long shot). The NES was damaged and 6 months later I got a N64 for Christmas. WOW! What A Change! From flat, 8-bit 2-D platformers to huge, revolutionary 3-D landscapes. And a very comfy controller.

 

[Kashagi]

Another generation leap actually was the N64 to the PS2... I would have been 11 this time.

My brother moved out to Melbourne (big city, few hours away) and decided to take the N64 because I had the computer... That meant no Goldeneye, no Lylat Wars, no WCW Vs NWO, hard times..

Midway through 2002 Dad went out and Mum told us he was getting something special, I remember walking thinking he was going to get a Gamecube and getting all hyped up about it, I had only played the gamecube once, and it stunned me that something could look so amazing, and it felt so fast!!!.

Dad came home with my older brother, and they basically told me they didnt get anything and Mum heard wrong when she told me that, I wanted to get upset but even back then I knew it would be stupid to get upset over nothing... So I moved on and pondered more about the day I would one day buy a Gamecube.

Chris complained about a headache and went to his room to lie down, of course I thought nothing of it, he didnt come out until dinner hours later, then went straight back to his room. Dad told me to ask him if he wanted a drink, I opened the door to find he isnt lying down.

That was the first time I ever saw my favourite fighting game, the first time I ever saw Virtua Fighter 4, and the first time I had ever even heard of the Playstation 2. Though now with my library of about 80 games I bought by myself, I certainly know it well.

I dont think I slept that night, I had never seen anything so fast, or anything that looked so good and smooth. I remember playing Kumite on VF4 for hours, before realising we had a second game.. Jedi Starfighter. I even spent hours with the demo disk playing Just Bring It over and over. Good times..

 

[Trill Co$by]

I think Xbox had the biggest impact so far... it was the first console where you could rip a CD to your Xbox and save the songs there, and continue playing.

Man, I could not tell you how awesome it was to play Jedi Academy (I and II), Star Wars Battlefront (I and II), and Halo (1 and 2) while listening to your favorite soundtracks. And then when I was playing GTA San Andreas and was able to turn the station to my custom soundtracks list, man that was HUGE! And then Raw 2 came out for the Xbox and you could put custom songs for entrances... Even better!

Xbox is the originator of such technology. And without the Xbox, I don't think such a thing would've ever been thought of.

Another revolutionary bit in gaming was online play.

Now instead of beating the whiny little brats in my neighborhood, I could go online and beat all the whiny little ***** around the world... or so I thought lol.

 

[Tastycles]

It was definitely the jump to the N64 for me. I had only briefly played on a Saturn and a PlayStation, and had a SNES for years before and a NES before that. The thing is that the step up between the latter two was reasonably negligable, but to go from that to a proper, analogue contolled 3D world was a huge step up. Games like Goldeneye were so far ahead of everything before it's untrue. Definitely my own personal biggest step up, and perhaps the biggest step up in history in terms of capability if not actual raw power.