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Games Entertainment

The Maturation of Video Games 82

Posted by Zonk from the going-places dept.
1up.com is running a piece examining how video games have matured since the early days. The article explores what the social context of gaming has been, from Hunt the Wumpus to 'Hot Coffee'. From the article: "The maturation of games might be viewed more accurately as a climb into a unified grace. By the time console gamers were wowed by Sonic The Hedgehog's 64-colour world, computer gamers were already familiar with zooming across galaxies, building cities and landing virtual planes. The 486 ran at 66 mHz and had the capability to create 3D texture maps. 16-bit consoles, which ran at 7 mHz, could not replicate a game as impressive-looking, innovative and as huge as Doom."
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The Maturation of Video Games More

The Maturation of Video Games

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  • Power (Score:1)

    by WTBF ( 893340 )
    For a long time, PCs were far more powerful than consoles

    They still are, just not with such huge differences. This might change however when the 360/PS3 comes out, but PC's will catch up. Besides PC's have keyboards and mice.
    • Very insightful indeed! Somebody give this man a free ipod!
    • There are two genres that will always have the undivided attention of gamers pointing at PCs: FPS and RTS. The standard input devices that come with a PC (keyboard and mouse) are essential to these genres. Until that changes, consoles won't really be able to approach them. (Yes, I know that there are FPSs in the console market and that the first RTS was there too, but the mouse is an essential to these games. Ever tried playing an FPS against someone that only uses the keyboard or a console controller?)
    • While I hate to thwart speculation with more speculation, it seems like an outrageous call to expect any console to outperform a PC when on an equal field. Personal computers are capable of the very best technology available on the consumer market consumer market. On the other hand, the current up-and-coming consoles have already set (somewhat) hardware configurations, which grow more and more dated as the launch date nears. Besides, do you really expect the 360 to be able to pull off what is being shown

      • Re:Power (Score:2, Interesting)

        by phxbadash ( 883828 )
        Considering that the ATi GPU in the 360 is more advanced than the r520 that we are still waiting for them to relase...I'd say yes...and easily. Graphics-wise it shouldn't be a problem, but I don't know how cpu-dependent the engine is so who knows how the rest of it would run.
        • I vaguely remember this being said about Microsoft's last console :allnighte:
          • Really, M$ said that the original XBOX was going to be DirectX9 compatible, have a unified shader system and be based on an ATI card that wouldn't be out for 3 years...have a link?
    • The PC might have been more powerful at the time Sonic came out but that doesn't really mean that Doom looked any better than Sonic, the styles are so different that I don't see a clear comparison. You can't even compare the main characters because one of the games don't have a graphical represenation of one.
      • Actually, DOOM does have two representations of its main character. His face at the bottom of the screen, looking around, in pain when hurt, etc. Also, during multiplayer games, you can see the other players.

        Anyways, I agree, they're two very different styles of games.. Hard to make comparisons, both look good in their own way and style.
    • For a long time, PCs were far more powerful than consoles


      What, a $4000 PC was more powerful than a cheap console? You must be kidding!
    • The following consoles have had keyboards and/or mice available for them:

      SNES
      Genesis
      Saturn
      Dreamcast
      3DO
      Playstation
      Playstation 2
      Gamecube
      Xbox

      So it's not that the input devices don't exist, it's just that traditional PC dev houses don't port their sims/RTS's or whatnot to the consoles.

    • if you check out the specs and do a reasonable analysis , you would see that pc's already surpass the next gen systems.

      multiprocessor systems with 1 gf7800 (sli available) with 2 GB of ram and a very large, fast Hard drives and extremely high resolution output are available now.

      consoles are already stillborn. by this time in 2006, the current high end system described above, will be a mid range pc and the next high end system will far surpass it.

      face it, you're paying a ton of money for computing technology

  • Maybe... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Deltaspectre ( 796409 )
    Maybe it's just me but...

    The 486 ran at 66 mHz and had the capability to create 3D texture maps. 16-bit consoles, which ran at 7 mHz, could not replicate a game as impressive-looking, innovative and as huge as Doom."

    Think that could be why they couldn't do it? Just an off guess...
  • As everyone knows, science fiction from long ago fuelled many scientists desire to enter the field. Science continues to break new frontiers. I was in fourth grade when NES came out but 7 years old when I got my TRS-80 and wrote my own games. The kids who played games back then undoubtably made their way into the business and continue to push the envelope today.

  • Games have matured ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2005 @04:40PM (#13383456) Homepage
    ... but some people [stopkill.com] haven't.
  • I really doubt the advantage of the 486's and 386's over the gaming consoles. When i was 18 i worked at a computerstore where we sold both consoles likes the SNES, Megadrive and PC's like 386 SX/DX's and early 486's (the SX-20 and DX-something). Of course i neglected customers to play games on both platformtypes. We used to drool over the multilayered parallax scrolling of SNES and Megadrive games whereas the PC's of those days were hardly capable of doing a smooth scroller with only one layer.
    Okay, there w

  • Time for a change? Start with "game journalists" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rahga ( 13479 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2005 @04:44PM (#13383502) Journal
    I can understand and appreciate what the author is trying to do here, but to be completely honest, I don't see that much development and maturity, or at least nothing noteworthy. Sure, the consoles of today are more mathematically powerful than they were, but it's not that big of a deal... Tekken loads up 3d models and texture maps which then get pushed down a pipe and into a drawable, playable characters. The NES wasn't exactly a tin can and string by comparison: Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu [rahga.com] did animation of fighting moves for up to four completely different characters at once by switching several different pages of ROM directly off the cart, into and out of the video address space.

    The sad part about the article is that it doesn't quite realize how bad and stale the game industry is these days. Dominated by publishers that are so addicted to the big money that comes from a market of $50-a-pop games that they believe games are all about finding the right market and developing a genre game geared to it, preferably with a promotional movie tie-in.

    If that's industry maturity, you can have it back.

    • "Game journalists" tend not to know game history. If a game wasn't popular and wasn't released 5 years ago, then it didn't exist. Admittedly, this isn't entirely their fault: game history tends to be a self-taught, self-researched field and many (game and non-game) journalists seem to have the critical thinking and research skills of a rock.

      Game designers/programmers are, admittedly, not much more informed. Again, the same problem exists -- game history is a self-taught, self-researched field and if

    • hmmm (Score:1)

      by khazad ( 900803 )
      Am I the only one who thought the subject said "The Masturbation of Video Games"?

      But what does it mean??

  • Well, what do you want for a lousy $200?
    • And yet those lousy $200 often kept me entertained better and longer than the many thousand I've dumped into keeping my PC bleeding edge. My current graphics card alone, it's a 7800 GTX, would pay for two consoles.

      Yet on consoles I've not only found at least as many games worth playing, but also:

      1. Games are actually tested and work. I don't have to wait for a month to download a patch, I don't get game bugs blamed on my hardware or drivers, etc. (True story: Victoria 2, German version, threw a script _synt
      • Heh, I'm going to have to agree there. Haven't upgraded my PC since 1999 (still using a Voodoo2) because, aside from some games that don't take too much juice (like Civ), there really haven't been any PC games out there that have attracted me as much as a console game. And I wouldn't mind adding two more to your list, so I will -

        4. You can play the game while decked out on the recliner or spread out on the sofa.

        5. Playing with friends involves having friends over, rather than playing over the 'net in isol

  • Oh, bloody please (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2005 @05:02PM (#13383702) Journal
    Well, gee, yet another thread along the lines of "but gaming platform X is better than platform Y, because its hardware is better".

    Hello? Aren't we missing something? Like, you know, the _games_? Because it seems to me like that's the only reason to own a gaming rig in the first place: to play the games.

    Until you can tell me that you're playing directly with the shader pipelines, instead of with a game that uses those... sorry, I'll concentrate on what games I can play on it, instead of the bogus "mine has more MHz than yours" willy-waving.

    Want to know why I bought a console, "my PC has more MHz" willy-waving be damned? Well, for the games. Games such as:

    - Gran Turismo, which was a better racing game than any racing game that ran on a PC

    - Fighting games, which pretty much _disappeared_ on the PC after Mortal Kombat

    - Jade Empire and Fable alone were worth the price of an XBox, and more

    - Japanese RPGs, including not just Square ones, but also some very original ones like Valkyrie Profile and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. Those two alone would make the price of a Playstation worth every cent I've paid for it

    - Lightgun games. Yeah, the PC has keyboard and mouse. Wake me up when I can plug a lighgun in and play a House Of The Dead or Time Crisis game the way it was meant to be played.

    Etc.

    In a nutshell, it's all about the games. If a platform has games I want to play, I'll go buy that platform and play those games. It's that simple.

    I don't care which has the higher MHz or bogus benchmark scores. I don't play 3DMark, I play _games_.

    I have a top end Athlon 64 4000+, 2 GB RAM, a 7800 GTX, and a WD Raptor in my current PC, but trust me, looking at 3DMark still gets old after one 10 minute run. I'll play a game instead to keep myself entertained.
    • Lightgun games. Yeah, the PC has keyboard and mouse. Wake me up when I can plug a lighgun in and play a House Of The Dead or Time Crisis game the way it was meant to be played.

      There are USB light guns out there to be had. I've never tried any of them myself, but this comparison [retroblast.com] might be interesting to you. It seems that these light guns are made primarily (completely?) with MAME in mind, so I have no idea how useful they are outside of emulators.. but once House of the Dead and Time Crisis are playable in M
    • I don't care which has the higher MHz or bogus benchmark scores. I don't play 3DMark, I play _games_.

      I have a top end Athlon 64 4000+, 2 GB RAM, a 7800 GTX, and a WD Raptor in my current PC

      hahah. Yeah, someone with that system doesn't care about what has the higher Mhz.

      Okay. I definitely 100% believe you.
      • The point was more like that someone with that kind of a system still occasionally plays Playstation and Dreamcast games, and occasionally even emulated SNES games. A game can be good even if it was written for a 7 MHz console, that's all.

        I do however also play PC games, hence keeping that PC upgraded.

    • Wake me up when I can plug a lighgun in and play a House Of The Dead or Time Crisis game the way it was meant to be played.

      Try playing one of those on an LCD TV or even a CRT that upsamples everything to progressive (480i to 480p), and see what breaks.

      A problem with consoles is that because of the licensing system, you tend to get more "sure bets" from established developers and fewer quirky experimental titles (Katamari Damacy notwithstanding).

      • Heh. That brings such memories...

        I've actually had the honour. I had to sell my brand new up-sampling 100 Hz TV and buy a regular 50 Hz interlaced one (I'm in Europe) to be able to play lightgun games. Well, I got a Dreamcast VGA addapter first, but then I went and sold the TV too.
    • ironic that you waved your willy at the end of your post.

      i hear it's all the rage with kids nowadays. :)
      • Well, you have a point, and I knew that kind of answer was coming. But here's why that willy-waving was necessary: because otherwise invariably someone comes and says one of

        1. "yeah, you only prefer consoles because you probably have a shit PC. On my 9800 LE, PC games are much better than on a shitty GF2MX in an XBox."

        2. "yeah, but PCs are so powerful, they can emulate consoles"

        As I've said (and as you undoubtedly noticed yourself) "my PC is better than your console" flames aren't something new. It's litera
  • The 486 ran at 66 mHz and had the capability to create 3D texture maps. 16-bit consoles, which ran at 7 mHz, could not replicate a game as impressive-looking, innovative and as huge as Doom.

    Except that's not true. Doom was ported to at least one 16-bit console, the SNES. It had its quirks, but it was undeniably Doom, and it was certainly a 16-bit console.
    • I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed. Admittedly the SNES needed a SuperFX chip to do it, but it did do it (and it was considered by many to be a better port than the 32X and Jaguar conversions too).

      Also the article says the 16-bit consoles ran at 7Mhz the SNES actually only ran at 3.58Mhz! It was the MD that ran at 7Mhz. That said the GBA has a 16.7Mhz CPU and it could do Doom too...
      • Yup, it needed a SuperFX chip to do it, and it still didn't have floor or ceiling textures, and all monster sprites only featured one angle instead of 8. But it did do it!

        The GBA has, IIRC, a 32-bit ARM processor, but for whatever reason (No help like SuperFX? Bad programming) the GBA port of doom ran extremely slowly and pixel-doubled everything in addition to the GBA's low resolution screen. Not to mention the textures were lower resolution to begin with.

        Of course, the GBA version wasn't actually a port.

        • but for whatever reason (No help like SuperFX? Bad programming) the GBA port of doom ran extremely slowly and pixel-doubled everything in addition to the GBA's low resolution screen.

          True, Doom for GBA ran in only 120x120 pixels, but it was a pure ARM7 software engine (no coprocessor on cartridge), and it ran at a better frame rate than the version for Super NES with Super FX.

          • Any idea if they improved on that with Doom 2 for the GBA? I know they gave it to a different development team and I thought Doom 2 looked more high-res (maybe higher res textures?) but it seemed to have a lower frame rate than the first GBA one.
            • Doom 2 looks okay on a GBA, but it's really not that playable, given the GBAs input keys. Doom 2 on PSP is a far better deal, as you can play with the same files as on the PC original, and you got analog input (admittedly not the best analog input in the world, but it's there never the less).
            • While I have no direct experience with doom 2 on the GBA, it is indeed a totally different engine. It was done by the same team as the one that did Duke Nukem 3D for the GBA, and they use that engine. Judging by screenshots it is indeed higher resolution and looks a lot better, but I have no idea how fast it runs.
          • Really? I recall the SNES version running at a decent framerate. Guess it's just the intervening years.

  • The meaning of the word (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gogo0 ( 877020 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2005 @05:40PM (#13384057)
    People throw around the word "mature" in console gaming more than they do "hardcore gamer" now. I dont think people understand what either mean.

    Just because GTA has explicit sex scenes, graphic violence, and copious swearing doesnt make it at all "mature". Hell, most of the crap out there is just plain juvenile. For some reason, people equate GTA and other games of the same nature to equal mature, while games such as Mario are kiddy.

    I think the real "mature gamer" is the one that doesnt give a shit about the "image" of the game theyre playing, so long as they have fun, be they a 13-year old or a 50-year old.
    • People throw around the word "mature" in console gaming more than they do "hardcore gamer" now. I dont think people understand what either mean.

      You can obviously discern their intended meaning or you wouldn't be griping. You are not the font of gaming definitions.

      Just because GTA has explicit sex scenes, graphic violence, and copious swearing doesnt make it at all "mature".

      In fact, it does.

      Mature: [reference.com]

      "Suitable or intended for adults: mature subject matter."

      Is it possible that you don't know what mature means? Y
      • Think: [reference.com]

        "To believe; suppose"

        It's called an opinion, and there are still some people out there that have them. Learn to deal with it.
        • Aw, that's cute.

          Unfortunately your entire thought, if that's what we're calling it, was based on an erroneous supposition. You didn't know what the definition of mature was. This was unfortunate because your entire post was about how everyone else didn't know what mature meant.

          In conclusion, blow me.

          No, seriously. I'm lonely and nude.
      • How about definition 1, assclown:

        1) a) Having reached full natural growth or development: a mature cell.
        b) Having reached a desired or final condition; ripe: a mature cheese.

        Games haven't reached full growth yet. And Rockstar keeps making more sequels, so it is obviously not satisfied with the current condition. Buzzt! Not mature.

        or definition 2:

        2) Of, relating to, or characteristic of full development, either mental or physical: mature for her age.

        Certainly GTA: SA has not reached ful
        • b) Having reached a desired or final condition; ripe: a mature cheese.

          There was more, but you had me at "a mature cheese."

        • The rating title isn't indicative of the content. It is indicitive of the appropriate age level of players.
          Games aren't 'Everyone' or 'Teen', They are suitable to be played by 'Everyone' or 'Teen's.

          As such the first definition suffices.
          Of, relating to, or characteristic of full development, either mental or physical:

          The intended audience is for those who have reached full development, of (in this case) mental attributes.
    • However, games like ICO, Deus Ex, and Silent Hill 2 definitely transcend into mature by any stretch of the imagination.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Whoa. I read the article and saw Zonk and something about the history of videogames and assumed it was a dupe [slashdot.org].
  • ... By the time console gamers were wowed by Sonic The Hedgehog's 64-colour world, computer gamers were already familiar with zooming across galaxies, building cities and landing virtual planes. The 486 ran at 66 mHz and had the capability to create 3D texture maps. 16-bit consoles, which ran at 7 mHz, could not replicate a game as impressive-looking, innovative and as huge as Doom.

    The other side of the coin is that computers weren't able to replicate a great platformer like Sonic for a long time after Doom
  • You can now play Hunt The Wumpus, the famous UNIX game on Google Talk! Just follow my instructions here [blogspot.com].
  • Sorry people who think Hot Coffee is "new" It's not.

    Anyone who played old games and had access to decent source can name a little game called Softcore... It's a Porn Text Adventure. Those who REALLY know, know that it later became a little game called Leisure Suit Larry. Those who know what LSL was about, will enjoy that fact.

    There was much more sexually orriented then anything in the mainstream in the last 5 years, the latest LSL game actually is so freaking lame compared to the originals.

    There was many m

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