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I Like Big Blocks( Atari, Commodore, Intellivision, etc)

0 (0%)

8-Bit (NES and um...were there any others that really mattered?)

4 (15.4%)

16-Bit (SNES, Sega Genesis, etc..)

15 (57.7%)

32-Bit (Playstation, Saturn, N64 which is going here no matter what Nintendo calls its system.)

1 (3.8%)

Post-Bit (Playstation 2, Gamecube, Dreamcast, X-Box)

3 (11.5%)

Modern (Wii, X-Box 360, Playstation 3)

3 (11.5%)

Total Members Voted: 26

[Brentai]

We're talking about generations though.  A generation completely dominated by one console probably ought not be the greatest, which of course means the 8-bit era is pretty suspect too.

Although when you get down to it, only the 16 and PS3 generations had a really healthy competition, and in the PS3 era the competition is defined by two consoles that are nearly indistinguishable and one that won the game by not playing.

If you're judging in terms of pure innovation, loving craftsmnaship, variety, quality of choice and market forces that actually encourage all of that, then the 16-bit era really stands above the rest.

[Thad]

Hm, I dunno -- the current era is actually pretty great for that shit, too, what with the rise of online console play, experimental interfaces, and actual channels for independent game distribution (although that last is a fuck of a lot more successful on PC, which isn't what we're talking about here).

For all the cheap shovelware and low-risk big-budget titles, this really is a pretty fucking great period for innovation.

[Thad]

Adding: I'm not sure the 16-bit era was particularly innovative, come to think about it.  It was a period of refinement on the sort of games that had been defined in the 8-bit era.

I think the 32-bit/N64 era was a lot bigger on shaking shit up, largely because of the switch to 3D.  Mario 64 and OoT were certainly the biggest paradigm shifts in their respective franchises -- and does Mega Man Legends count?  I think Mega Man Legends counts, even though it's debatable how much of a Mega Man game it actually is.

On the PS1 you had Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider as the games that defined 3D platforming prior to Mario 64, and Tekken and Toshinden (and Virtua Fighter on the Saturn) brought the fighting genre into 3D.  I never got around to playing Nights, but that was apparently a pretty innovative title too.

The SNES era seems like a lot of it was refinement on what had come on the NES.  Super Mario World, Link to the Past, the 16-bit FF's and CT, Mega Man X -- I love those games but they were evolutionary, not revolutionary.  Hell, as different as the Sonic games were from Mario, I wouldn't call them a major innovation on the platforming genre.

It's tempting to say that consoles go through alternating periods of revolution and evolution -- the 8-bit era defined genres and the 16-bit era perfected them, ditto for the PS1 era and the PS2 era, with the current era shaking shit up again -- but of course that's a pretty gross oversimplification.

And it's not like there WEREN'T major innovations in the 16-bit era.  Yoshi's Island and Lost Vikings still stand as pretty unique entries in the platformer genre, the Ogre games defined two mostly-new styles of RPG, SF2 as an arcade game defined its genre and as a console port was, well, basically perfect.  And I still haven't gotten around to Gunstar Heroes but I hear it's a pretty damn unique game too.

[Classic]

For me, Gunstar Heroes and Secret of Mana justify the existence of Virtual Console.

I kind of agree that Legends is a lot less about freedom, exploration and growth than its 2D predecessors, but I think Legends 2 captured the feeling pretty well, although it feels like has a lot more in the way of linear challenge than X did.

[Rico]

I have games I absolutely love from every era, but I ended up voting 16-bit. Numerically it should probably be 32-bit, but the generation took a while to get going and the PSX for all the good games on it was such a shitty piece of hardware and the sacrifices it took to get games on it really hurt the potential of some of the games I really enjoyed (e.g. the continuum of FF7 Triangle-men with muddy backgrounds--Breath of Fire visuals but with limited camera controls--DW7 with more movement/camera freedom but awful graphics).

I do wish we could go back in time and see what the world would be like with a longer-lived Dreamcast or a PS2 with better hardware.

[Brentai]

Adding: I'm not sure the 16-bit era was particularly innovative, come to think about it.  It was a period of refinement on the sort of games that had been defined in the 8-bit era.

I think the 32-bit/N64 era was a lot bigger on shaking shit up, largely because of the switch to 3D.  Mario 64 and OoT were certainly the biggest paradigm shifts in their respective franchises -- and does Mega Man Legends count?  I think Mega Man Legends counts, even though it's debatable how much of a Mega Man game it actually is.

Okay, but I consider the groundwork for that switch to 3D to have been laid firmly in the 16-bit era.  3D gaming had always been around in various forms (SEGA was all but built on it) but the huge focus shift occurred largely because of two things:

1. Star Fox and Virtua Racing starting a huge arms race between Nintendo and SEGA that very rapidly introduced hardware technologies designed for real-time 3D graphics.
2. DOOM (which I have no problem calling a console game on a technicality).

Also the other big paradigm shift of the 32-bit era, the move to CD storage, was a direct result of everyone's responding to the original SEGA CD.  SCEI itself is actually the byproduct of Nintendo's fumbled attempt to compete with it.

(Also a minor one, the final shrugging off of American censorship, and we all know where that started.)

Basically what I'm saying is that while the major shifts and innovations occurred during the 32-bit era, they only occurred as a result of the environment fostered by the 16-bit era, one of (extremely rare) healthy market competition and a unique acceptance of independent gaming.  That's why the 32-bit era, taken as a whole, was really pretty amorphous and oftentimes kind of silly.  The PS2 era was one of settling down, taking the new paradigms and perfecting them, and just cruising along and enjoying ourselves until the next big upheaval.  The current generation has much of the same features as the 16-bit one despite its perceived lack of classics, so it's going to be pretty interesting times once the Wii U kicks off the next turn of the cycle.

[sei]

(Also a minor one, the final shrugging off of American censorship, and we all know where that started.)

Fill me in.

The only major episodes I can recall in American video game censorship involved removal of tobacco, whining about Mortal Kombat, or hot coffee.

Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton didn't really do anything other than spread awareness (read: agenda) did they?

[Rico]

Nintendo of America had been altering graphics and dialogue for years. Religious symbols, topless statues...

[Thad]

The only major episodes I can recall in American video game censorship involved removal of tobacco, whining about Mortal Kombat, or hot coffee.

Mortal Kombat would be what Brent is referring to, yes.

Night Trap kicked off something of a kerfuffle and Sega's subsequent in-house ratings system, but it was really the neutered SNES version of Mortal Kombat that cemented the Genesis's (US) reputation as the Cool Console and eventually led to an industrywide ratings system and Nintendo easing off its rather ridiculous and arbitrary censorship rules.

(MK was the flashpoint but no, Nintendo was FUCKING CRAZY in the old days.  Replay the SNES translations of FF2&3 sometime; do you see the words "kill" or "die" anywhere in them?)

At any rate, I certainly won't deny that the 32-bit era was the logical endpoint of stuff that started in the 16-bit era, but the 32-bit era is where the major innovations actually occured.  Star Fox is a fun game and was a major technical achievement, but it's kind of the equivalent of banging rocks together, and while the Genesis (and Turbo and Jaguar) had a CD add-on, it was really only used for 3 things:

1. Games that were pretty much the same as the cartridge versions but with a slight bump in power;
2. Redbook audio;
3. FMV QTE games.

#1 wasn't revolutionary, #2 was pretty much abandoned in the PS1/Saturn era (more's the pity), and #3 pretty much sucked (but yes was certainly an influence on the FMV excesses that would follow).

I'll grant that the 16-bit era's switch to optical storage was a major sea change, but nobody knew what the fuck to DO with it yet.  (And if you want to think of it in terms of "But the PS1 was a result of the aborted SNES CD add-on", that's fair enough, but why stop there?  I think it's fair to say the Sega CD is a refinement of the FDS.  ...then again, if we're talking about things that were ahead of their time and only available regionally, the 16-bit era DID have the Satellaview and the Sega Channel...)