I really do think that gaming is going into a decline.

My view on it all, from the third generation upwards.

3rd gen / 8-Bit era - 'Going uphill' - Consoles such as the NES / Famicom and the Sega Master System. Overall, good. Not incredible just yet, but still fun to play. Games like Super Mario Bros are entertaining, and games like Mother / Earthbound Zero are already providing brilliant and absorbing adventures. There is a lot of potential waiting to be unlocked, and it's still early days. Nintendo is the overall leader of the era, with Sega as an underdog.

4th gen / 16-Bit era - 'The peak' - The NES / Famicom and the Master System have evolved into the SNES / Super Famicom and the Megadrive / Genesis. In my opinion, this is the peak of the gaming eras. The SNES giving us brilliant games such as Zelda: A Link To The Past, Earthbound, Super Mario World, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat II and Super Metroid (all of these, in my opinion, the best in their respective franchises to this very day). Sega still the underdogs, but still rather strong this time around with classics such as Sonic The Hedgehog and Streets of Rage.

5th gen / 32-Bit era / 3D era - 'The plateau' - Nintendo give us the N64, with quite a few brilliant games, most notably Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. In my opinion, not as good as A Link To the past, but in the opinion of a majority of Zelda fans, Ocarina is the best in the franchise to this day. Sony enter the scene with the Playstation, giving us games / franchises such as Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Gran Turismo, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid and Tekken, as well as adopting the Final Fantasy franchise, notably Final Fantasy 7 (in my opinion the best FF game and one of the best games ever made).

6th gen / 128-Bit era - 'Going downhill' - In my opinion, this is where the decline starts. The Gamecube scuffs up Nintendo's, until now, perfect record with a weak range of games and blatant milking of franchises that used to be brilliant. The PS2 manages to do slightly better, releasing a few decent games, but the most famous Playstation franchises (Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid) pretty much all get horribly butchered up and disgraced. Microsoft enter the scene with the Xbox, which has a few good games but nothing special to offer either. The Dreamcast is also around from Sega, but it never amounted to anything. It was a good console and the games were also good, but it got no publicity at all. Think of it as 'Sega's tombstone'.

7th gen / Current era - 'Nearing the bottom' - Now things are getting even worse. The PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. We have all of these consoles that people are claiming are 'revolutionary' because they can do all of these things like surf the web, download movies, connect to MSN etc. Has anyone stopped to say 'hey, wait a second, what's any of that got to do with gaming?' In terms of games, stuff is seriously going down the pan. I mean, look at the current situation. Sonic and Mario, once crusaders of gaming, are now viewed as a novelty among most people who call themselves 'gamers'. Their franchises have been tarnished by terrible games such as Sonic Unleashed, what the hell is up with that? Then we have other games that people think are amazing because they simply have a lot of hollywood appeal with easy gameplay, good graphics and generic storylines.

Overall, I simply think that the next generation of gamers is being brought into the wrong environment of games. These people now, kids playing Call of Duty (euurch) non stop and screaming down their mics at eachother, the ones that we all laugh at. Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that one day, that same generation will be the one developing games? We need to go back to the time when gaming was actually fun.

/rant

With a few exceptions, 2-D forever. Most games significantly more complicated than Space Invaders get old after a while.

^ Someone needs to play Earthbound.

Haha, Ness Owns all that oppose though a game you should all play was the PSone Original Legend of Dragoon

its all about the money, Red. i have a wii, ds, and laptop. the ds probly gets more wear but there are like 5 good games on it. Puzzle Quest Galactrix, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, The Legendary Starfy(who needs Kirby anymore?), Drawn To Life, and maybe Mariokart or nintendogs. wow. whole ds library right there. in a nutshell.

i completely agree. i have noticed that as geek numbers rise, gamers decline. unless the game is WoW or Halo

as long as ps3 keeps pumping out great exculsives like uncharted 2 and demons souls, im fine.

Please do.



The newest game I personally remember getting a decent atmosphere from was System Shock 2, and that game is OLD (1999). Nowadays we just get generic explosions or stuff trying to make you jump.

Besides, what about the old Metroid games, like the one on SNES? They had atmosphere.