Oh no you didn't!

Funny, maybe you misread the thread title? Most innovative generation of video game consoles? And I didn't see PC listed as one of the choices either

I don't think its really that different than any other generation when it comes to the number of bad games.

Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time still are fun to play despite the graphics being poor by today's standard. So is Metal Gear Solid (despite the debate that you watch it more than you actually play it) and Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9. Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3 may have really poor voice acting, but they are still fun to play. (And many people like myself actually prefer the old RE games that were more survival horror than the modern RE games that are more action shooter oriented.)

Every generation has many more bad games made than good games. Looking at ROM sites, there were close to a thousand NES games made. Other than the Marios, Zeldas, Metroids, etc the vast majority of those games were bad. You would probably be hard pressed to come up with a list of 100 good NES games out of the nearly 1,000 that were made.

Absolutely. The stiffness of the character movements, while technically a flaw, made the game more tense in a way that was lacking in the later ones, and just the general pacing of the games made them more scary

Yeah, I still consider RE2 to be the best in the series to this day. I will never forget the first time

15 year old spoilers just in case

+1

No, actually, I don't think I can be bothered to play any of those games ever again. Where as I can easily see myself (and I do) play many SNES and Genesis games still. For example, given the time, I will play FF IV, V, VI again before I ever pop in 7, 8 or 9. The early 3D just looks like shit and the 16-bit sprites still hold up.

Gameplay matters more than graphics, man. Who cares if they look like shit by today's standards.

SNES holds up better simply because it was the third generation of 2D sprites and so had years and years and years to perfect it. A better comparison would be to compare first gen 2D to first gen 3D, so a better comparison would be comparing the Atari 2600 to the PS1/N64 since the 2600 was first gen 2D. The 2600 looks like complete shit too.

I too prefer the NES/SNES Final Fantasies, but in my case its because I prefer the medieval fantasy setting more than the cyberpunk setting of the later games. FF9 is actually my favorite FF because it was kind of a swan song to the medieval fantasy FF games. I never really cared for any FF past FF9.

Is taking concepts that have existed on the PC for years and applying it to consoles really all that innovative? Both consoles have their pros and cons regarding each point you brought up, however, Sony has been playing catch up this generation to Microsoft's online experience for this entire generation and will finally match it... in the next-generation.

That's not innovation for the consoles. Again, that's playing catch up.

I agree, and it's the things that were new innovations in the PS1 era of things that hindered gameplay, not so much the graphics.
Which backs up my original statement that the original, more innovative generation of gaming does not age well, since they haven't had the time to be refined like the more refined ones do.

I might be an old timer, but Colecovision wasn't in the same generation as Atari 2600 and Intellivision. Colecovision and Atari 5200 were the generation after those. Actually Odyssey 2 should be in there with the 2600 and Intellivision.

What about the Fairchild Channel F? Is that considered to be part of the first generation or second? Maybe we need half generations...i.e. 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, etc.

I agree. The Dreamcast, Gamecube, and PS2 were all refinements on the consoles that came before them. As far as I've been alive, the fifth generation might've been my least favorite, but it did pave the way for what was to come in the sixth.

I agree that perhaps "half generations" might be helpful for discussions like this, as I know that what defines a console generation can be a bit subjective. For this discussion, I went by the list of console generations listed on Wikipedia.

Personally, I always considered the Colecovision and Atari 2600 to be the same generation. I had an Atari when I was little, and my cousin had a Coleco, and I always made fun of him for having a Coleco instead of an Atari.