Modern consoles are essentially PCs with limited capabilities. Identical hardware and the same games: console games. The consoles won a long time ago, there are hardly any exclusives for a real PC anymore.
But I want to remember the time when everything was different, when the consoles were unique and the games were different for each platform. At that time, no one really considered the number of polygons and FPS, screen resolution was not the basis for promoting (hello 4K) games and platforms, the change of console generation caused a surprise effect, each new series of video cards gave a significant increase in performance and new graphics technologies.
And the perception of these games was completely different. At the age of 7 or 8, the difference between Dendy and Sega Mega Drive seemed huge, and the zx spectrum was too complex to play after school. But after Doom 2 on a 386 computer all these decoders seemed outdated and I didn’t want to play them anymore. The Doom prints are still there. The next year was 1995, when we played Full Throttle, Need For Speed and Stonekeep on a pentium 100, back then we still had the expression “Graphics like on a computer”, we didn’t even know the existence of the Playstation at that time . The PC then seemed like a technological marvel, but there was no hatred for consoles. No one considered themselves exceptional playing on any of these platforms, we just played and loved it.
And of course 1997, when Fallout and GTA came out. So these games seemed very similar to me, because there you can do whatever you want. We cleanse the wasteland of the remains of humanity, searching for various paths and secrets. In Gta, they just opened up cities by lining up dozens of cars in a row, we didn’t even complete missions. It was downright spitting on the plot. You can also remember the computer clubs of those years. Bars in Half-Life, Quake 3, Counter Strike, and even Diablo 2.
The then emerging domestic gamer, who for some reason began to actively spread the opinion about a kind of elitism of PC games and consoles as simpler devices, as devices for children or people with a weak mind. For some reason, graphics became the main thing in video games, for some reason the plot had to be serious, the gameplay was complicated. Why strategies are “smarter” than fighting games, why western RPGs are better than Japanese, why first-person shooters are better than bitmaps, no one could really explain. Suddenly mouse and keyboard are more comfortable than console controllers, and CRT monitors are better than CRT TVs. I’d like to say “thank you” to the well-known 2-letter site and the local cow thieves for this.
At the same time, the hatred for consoles progressed due to the fact that many games were released on them much earlier and were not ported to the PC in the best possible way. Although my knowledge of Ps one games already came through the emulator, after playing FF VIII on a computer, I really wanted to familiarize myself with other games in the series.
Holivars is certainly fun, but I want to remember the Playstation 2 and PC era after 3dfx. Naturally, there was no talk of any licensed games at that time, all discs were bought at the St. Petersburg Juno fair or other outlets, and then no one was tormented by conscience. The license for ps2 was in computer stores, but buying games for 1-1.5 thousand rubles was considered more than inappropriate. On a PC, the license was much cheaper and at the same time had an official Russian localization. In the early 2000s, simply the most beautiful RPGs emerged: Arcanum, Planescape Torment, Baldur’s Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, all of them were played several times in various variations, and now it is a recognized classic. But at the same time, the incredibly beautiful FF X came out on PS2, and Dead or Alive 3 was on XBOX, which still looks great (it can be evaluated on emulators).
My computer couldn’t run Far Cry and Doom 3 back in 2004, but most of them were running on minimum settings at the time, and I was able to assess graphics on them only after 2 years on radeon x1800xt. But then on playstation 2 we played Soul Calibur 2 and Tekken 4, then SC 3 and Tekken 5. On ps2 I went through MGS 3 (the best part of the series), Resident Evil 4 (masterpiece of all time), Shadow Hearts 2, Xenosaga. Of course, Gran Turismo 4 left a special mark, my friend and I spent a 24 hour race in real time in the country (how you like that hardcore?). And the last license, where it was necessary to go around the Nürburgring without errors and with a decent time in the AMG Mersedes 190e, the emotions were exorbitant. Tourist Trophy, 2 parts of God of War, Bully, NFS: Most Wanted, GTA: San Andreas, Midnight Club 3, Fight Night series – all this was released without bugs, patches, new drivers and practically no brakes (of course there were fps drops), here, after all, really inserted a disc and played.
On PC, then it was really possible to encounter impassable games, crashes, errors, problems with video card compatibility, viruses, antivirus, DRM protection and other joys. By the way, few people saw licensed windows on home computers, they installed poor assemblies purchased from the same markets. Internet was very slow and it took several days to download any drivers or patches. For example, I got through Arcanum only with the help of a patch I found on the net. All software was burned to discs and carefully stored.
The Playstation 2 still works and even reads discs; a 32-inch widescreen kinescope television was purchased. Connected via a component cable, game images can be patched to a 16:9 format. The image is just great. Now it is already a retro console, but some games are still perfectly preserved and have not lost their relevance.
It was a time when game genres were born, graphics got better every year, and games were meant to be played, not donated. Of course, worthy projects are emerging now, but the games of the late 90s and early 2000s still have a kind of special atmosphere of their own.
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Source: IXBT
