What Do You Consider the Golden Age of Gaming?

[DarkestLink]

In your opinion, what was the golden age of gaming?

For me, it's the N64 era. 3D had just been introduced. M$ wasn't in the gaming market. We had no real disappointing games either. SM64 is the best Mario Game to exist. Paper Mario is 2nd best of its kind next to TTYD. Mario Kart was the 2nd best of ITS kind next to DD. We got TWO good Zelda games on the same console. Mario Party was still good back then and its best game (MP 2) was released at this time. Pokemon was still in its golden era at the Kanto/Johto areas. Kirby put out a 3D title for this system and Rare was at its peak.

The GC was nice, but one of the Zelda titles was a major disappointment, Rare went downhill and was lost to M$, Pokemon started to go downhill, SMS was a disappointment to many of us, and MP was starting to go downhill too.

The Wii failed us with Mario Kart Wii and didn't give us the Paper Mario experience we were after with SPM, Pokemon was still downhill, Rare's gone, MP has gotten even worse, and we only got one Zelda title. A good Zelda title, yes, but still only one title. And, to me, SMG was the 2nd biggest disappointment in Mario after Sticker Star. It took away all the exploration and freedom that the 3D Mario series excelled at.

As for the rest, I was just not a fan of 2D gaming and I'll leave it at that.

 

[Lord Carlisle]

The Nintendo 64 WAS the golden era of gaming... but you know what? SMS had more exploration than any Mario game to date, so it's strange you'd be disappointed with that. After your complaint about Super Mario Galaxy, which I loved. SPM bad the best plot of the Paper Marios and introduced us to Dimentio, so I give it a pass. Wii had SSBB, one of my favorite video games, right next to Melee... and I LOVED Skyward Sword.

...In a nutshell, I disagree with your negative outlook on modern gaming.

 

[Curmudgeon]

I would suppose it depends on what you define as a golden age. Classically speaking, it comes from the Greek tradition, talking about a time in the past that was a veritable heaven on earth. Golden in this context mean good and pure, an idyllic existence free of modern decay, greed, and corruption. The ultimate manifestation of the Good Old Days™

Based on that reading of Golden Age, I would place it between 1986 (The release of the NES and SMS) and mid-1993 (SegaCD)

Sega and Nintendo releasing successful consoles mid-decade meant the end of threat posed by the crash of '83. Games were games, simply designed. Innovations were delightful surprises instead of demanded by spoiled, entitled fans. The SNES and Genesis seemed like quantum leaps forward. The evolution of the those systems were a symbolic coming of age. By the end of that generation, video games had arrived as a successful, highly profitable media, though they weren't yet interactive movies with blockbuster-sized budgets. Legendary franchises were born from the primordial muck. Zelda. Mario. Phantasy Star. Sonic. Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest. Metal Gear. Metroid. Castlevania. Mega Man. It was a wonderful time to be a gamer.

Then Sega went a bridge too far and released its CD attachment (I intentionally ignore the TurboGrafx-CD because it didn't really have a market impact). Games exploded both in size and complexity. Cut scenes became a basic requirement, and Nintendo's stubborn insistence on cartridge media cost them real 3rd party support for generations. I feel as though that was the point where the industry really transformed from niche to mainstream, with the focus of squeezing every last dollar out of projects.

 

[DarkestLink]

The Nintendo 64 WAS the golden era of gaming... but you know what? SMS had more exploration than any Mario game to date, so it's strange you'd be disappointed with that.

I'll admit that SMS wasn't quit as restricted as SMG, but that's because the worlds were still open rather than the one-direction linear worlds that the bulk of SMG and SMG 2 are made of. However, it wasn't nearly as free as SM64. While there were some exceptions (King Bomb-Omb, Koopa races, etc) SM64 would let you explore a world and let you get any star you found. It would give you a hint, sure, but you were still very free. You didn't have to follow any path. You just went out and looked around until you saw a star you wanted to get. SMS, while still open, was not nearly as free. It gave you a Shine Sprite location and very few other options. SM64 gave us a likely path, SMG gave us only one path. SMS was in the middle. The path was obvious. Clear as crystal. And sometimes it was like this in SM64. But in SM64, you could stray from the path if something else caught your eye. SMS gave very little benefit to this.

The only exploration SMS had were the hidden Shine Sprites and the blue coins. Both of these are examples of exploration done wrong. The hidden Shine Sprites weren't a bad idea, but they gave us the issue of being very restrictive. Many of them could only be found in certain episodes, rather than the course as a whole. The blue coins were simply unfun to find, had no organization whatsoever, and offered little to no gameplay value or replayability.

 

[Ventus]

The golden age of gaming for me was quite honestly the N64 era. We got Super Mario 64 as a debut launch title which thrust us into the realm of 3D. That three dimensional push was perfected two years later by Ocarina of Time. We got fantastic shooters such as PerfectDark, GoldenEye and Turok Rage Wars. Amazing 2D platformers such as Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards still came out. But that's just the Nintendo side of things.

Sony was doing quite well with the PS1. Sure, they weren't buddy buddy with Nintendo, but tons of great games still released.

SEGA had that beastly Dreamcast which died as soon as the PS2 release. But we still got the classics like Dead or Alive, Soul Calibur, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure and Ecco the Dolphin.

Oh and what's the most golden about the N64 era? The fact that we could own a Nintendo console and play with our Sony console friends and not be ridiculed for having this or that. In fact, we SHARED OUR CONSOLES.

 

[Drahsid]

1996 - 2002, the N64 age, the era of... well, Nintendo is the only one liked. the era of... peace EPICNESS!
I loved the n65, I still have one, just like my origanal MM file- its 7 years old! (and curropt like and 5+ year old file >.>)

Sony was doing quite well with the PS1. Sure, they weren't buddy buddy with Nintendo, but tons of great games still released. .

PS1 (PSX) was the result of Nintendo & sony working together to make a system, Nintendo practilcy Literaly has the rights of Sony's PS (Playstation) Seris.

 

[Garo]

Honestly? Gaming is a medium in its infancy. To say that we've lived through the Golden Age of gaming already is ludicrous. The best games that will ever be made are not behind us, but rather ahead of us. 30 years is not a long time for an art form; gaming has a lot of growing up to do before it can start generating true, lasting classics. If you look at film, one of the earliest films that is regularly acknowledged as a candidate for the greatest of all time did not appear until nearly 50 years into the medium's life (Casablanca, 1942). The Golden Age of Hollywood? Started 40 years into film's life and lasted about 30 years in its own right.

We've not seen gaming's golden age yet. That's a ways down the road. The fact that games like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask will one day be mostly forgotten shouldn't disappoint anyone - it should be exciting. I for one am really optimistic about gaming's present and its future, and am thrilled to see where the medium goes.

 

[elliotstriforce]

believe the N64 era was the golden age just because that era revolutionized the world of gaming with newer and better graphics, let alone the 3d aspect. some of my favorite games were released then: OoT, MM, RE2, SM64, and CBFD.

 

[Spirit]

SNES and n64 eras great games, great ideas, room for revolution and it all delivered.

 

[Honorable Hero]

Honestly for me, the Golden Age started with the NES and is still going on. I have enjoyed every generation of games and consoles pretty much equally.

 

[Pokemon]

The golden age has yet to come... ^___^...