Which era of videogaming do you prefer?

[Avanze]

Era 1 without a doubt.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Yeah, seeing old hardware being pushed. I find the C64 too primitive for my liking, in both audio and video, and the Windows demos are so ridiculously overpowered that they can achieve literally anything, yet I can't run most of them directly on my PC for various reasons.

My first experience with the Demoscene was on Amiga, and in my opinion, it has just the right capabilities to show off scene effects, and there's such a range, too: low-end A500 demos for the classic scene effects and for low-end innovation in modern days, and the high-end systems for demos that "feel" MS-DOS, yet I can run on emulation "live".

And in case you're wondering, I don't watch them on YouTube at all if I can avoid it - so much artifacting and so many poor quality videos, you don't see the intended effects a lot of the time. This is especially true for Amiga demo YouTube videos, so I use WinUAE for all of them instead.

EDIT: For Amiga demos, I'm particularly fond of the audio: I just love hearing what a 36-year-old sound chip can do that sounds so realistic, yet was developed only a few years after the launch of the IBM PC with its bleepy speaker

I have no interest in making music electronically as I play an actual instrument in a band and style wise electronic programming and sampling isn't right for what I play BUT I do program drums for music demos of new tracks before I bring them to the rest of the band which just sound like real drums now days

however............................

I do really love how the music on these machines can be put together. I often wonder how it was done and some of the textures and sounds they get in and layers is awesome and that's me as a metaller saying this.

I get ya on the C64, but some of the music on that impresses me to. Same on the ST and Spectrum. Does the ST have a SID as well? Sometimes I think the ST music in games sounds very C64.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

I get ya on the C64, but some of the music on that impresses me to. Same on the ST and Spectrum. Does the ST have a SID as well? Sometimes I think the ST music in games sounds very C64.

The SID and ST sound chips are completely different:

SID was specifically designed for music, has three voices, different waveforms, and is extremely versatile for what it is, and talented musicians have been pushing it forward for decades.

The original ST's sound chip is quite basic, off-the-shelf and a simple tone generator, and in many people's opinions, sounds more simplistic and worse than SID. I don't think I've ever heard anyone laud it over SID. HOWEVER, the STE has an additional PCM chip that plays samples like the Amiga, except even then it is more limited than the Amiga.

[gimbal]

Its also more of a design choice I think, there are also some games on the Amiga that have music very reminiscent of 8-bit machines. Chip's Challenge for example. It may not play towards the platform but I still like it a lot, somehow I never tire of listening to those tunes on a loop while playing.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Its also more of a design choice I think, there are also some games on the Amiga that have music very reminiscent of 8-bit machines. Chip's Challenge for example. It may not play towards the platform but I still like it a lot, somehow I never tire of listening to those tunes on a loop while playing.

That is probably what I hear as similar. Like when I hear ST stuff and I think that's like C64 stuff. I think that's right. Like I always thought the game Fire and Ice sounded more like something I'd hear of an ST or something. I'm not expert in this field at all but you get what I mean right? Buggy Boy is another even though the version side by side sound different and Nebulus is another.

[BeamCoder]

Era 3 if you include other games besides FPS/TPS story narrative ones. They might be the top selling games, but they're not the only genres around... There are even upcoming Amiga games like Metro Siege which I consider era 3. There are also era 3 games that are derived from era 1/2 games.

To me, era 3 comprises all past eras in a way with better game design due to learnings from past eras.

[gimbal]

A fair point. It's not like the era 1/2 spirit is completely gone, in fact it has made a sort of a comeback in the last decade.

[acidbottle]

Definitely era 1 for me, with a fair few decent PS1 and 2 games on era 2.

Visually era 3 is great but thin gameplay and micro transactions/loot crates are ruining the industry.