Splashdown was the gen z equivalent. Loved those racing games.
Splashdown had like a sea monster that would throw you back if you went outside the map. Was fun
So... This is kinda where I wish graphics stayed. It's probably not the majority opinion, but I wanna feel like I'm playing a video game and not really life. Plus, I feel there was a bit more creativity in making graphics. I'm old, but I loved stuff in Doom and Duke Nukem and EverQuest. Everything now kinda just looks... Brown and dark? Or similar?
I dunno. Might just be the rantings of an old person!
Brown and dark was the Xbox 360 era. We're in a post Fortnite, Rocket League, Minecart world now. The trend now is tons of color but in a way that I'm starting to get a little tired of everything looking like the same purple.
Don’t even bother making a new game unless it supports ray-traced light speculating through the anal-fog discharged from the main character’s arse. Every single pebble too within a 50 mile radius must be able to reflect the dripping, wolf-ey arse sweat drops too at all times using some buzzword engine tech or no one will buy the game
Doom had some pretty dark levels especially in a lot of the additional episodes and I personally think they were amazing. Half-Life 1 and 2 are similar and they're both legendary games. Personally I would put the point where gaming started to go downhill at 2011 (with the release of skyrim).
(with the release of skyrim)
Oblivion. It was Oblivion with the stupid horse armor.
Oblivion was the start of the modern microtransaction issues, Skyrim was the point when game stories starting getting worse and more simplified (Quite sad that stories went downhill after Fallout New Vegas which was arguably the peak of incredible storytelling).
I don't think there's anything stopping modern games from having the same vibes, and being creative with graphics. I'd say one example of a modern game with high res graphics, realistic water, and even ray tracing, which still looks very unique and distinct is Paradise Killer. Another one that also looks quite modern in some ways while still being very distinct in its own way, is Heaven's Vault. It's a choice made by AAA studios because photorealistic visuals tend to attract more eyes and sell better, even if people get bored of the game quite quickly.
And the thing is, AC Unity - which came out in 2014 - still looks better than the majority of AAA games I see nowadays, and despite the large crowds which are a bit CPU demanding it still has much lower requirements than those games that look worse.
EDIT: And if you just want games that actually look retro and old school, there are some from indie devs doing that; examples include: Dread Delusion, The Case of the Golden Idol, Death Trash, Felvidek, Return of the Obra Dinn.
Lots of good, new stuff in the boomer shooters. If you want to try something like Duke 3D, check out Ion Fury, which was made in a fork of the original Build engine. Seleco and Hedon for modern GZDoom stuff.
Corn Kidz 64 has the best graphics of any game of the last 20 years. I will fight and die on this hill.
It's all connected
You'll be hard pressed to find any games that have better water physics than this game.
Only issue with the technology is that the waves were not dynamic; they were deterministic/the same every race.
From a speedrunners' perspective, that's a blessing, not an issue!
If you played multiplayer, that made it even more fun. Being in first place meant you'd trigger certain waves, but then that could fuck up or really help someone behind you.
It's hard to really describe to younger generations just what it was like.
I'm an elder millennial (1984) and the changes to games within my lifetime has been breath taking and staggering.
The first game I remember playing is River Raid on my brother's Atari. I was a vaguely plane shaped black block.
A couple years later, I find myself playing Super Mario Bros. A few more and it's SMB3 and I'm holding a gameboy in my hands on the road trips to Florida to see my grandparents.
Then the jump to SNES and Genesis. Seeing that depth and life seep into the characters... The music gaining in complexity...
I even had a Sega CD and I remember how mind blowing it was when Sonic turned and ran towards the back to go through a loop instead of just side to side.
Then for it was PS1 with Final Fantasy 7... Graphical cut scenes like moving works of art.
After this point, yes there was still obvious and sometimes bigger jumps... But this is where it all was SO different each generation. Not just seeing extra small details and polishes. Large, discrete jumps forward
I wish I could give my wonder to anyone who never got to experience it. It was an amazing time to live.
Its a truly unique experience that only WE experienced. Anyone much older, wasn't interested in video games, and anyone much younger, was gaming in realistic 3D before they could understand what was even happening.
I feel it's similar to the person in the early 1900s who had a horse & cart as a kid and experienced the invention of cars, highways, planes and eventually space travel.
The closest I've felt to those monumental leaps in recent history was the first time I played VR. It feels similarly mind-blowing.
My biggest "wow" effect was Gran Turismo (1). The moving reflections on the cars!
～(つˆ0ˆ)つ｡☆
Wave race was legit. I still think about that game and I'm an old gamer
The original was great.
I developed an unreasonable hatrid for the GameCube version, however, when my younger brother would wake me up every morning with the sound of "beep, beep, beep, BEEP, BEEP!
WOO HOO! beep, beep, beep, BEEP, Beep! WOO HOO!
beep, beep, beep, BEEP, Beep! WOO HOO!"
It was a solid sequel but god were the sound effects annoyingly repetitive, especially at 7am on a Saturday.
Its crazy how much graphics evolved during that time period, just two years later we got this:
Some of y'all are gunna learn today that on this same system there was StarWars Pod Racing, and you could use 2 controllers, one for each engine. You're welcome.
I'm still impressed by the way wave race feels, not going to lie.
We are old, but it was a great generation.
The 90s were also just a generally good time for gaming. It went from Doom in 1993 to Quake in 1996 and then Half-Life in 1998.
The first time I interacted with water and it did something in response instead of being static blew my mind.
Seeing my own reflection in a game hurt my brain.
I never had an N64, but my buddy across the street did. Waverace 64 was incredible for its time.
I remember going over to a kid's house that lived up the street from my cousin. He had Pilotwings on Super Nintendo like right after it released. And he had a big screen TV!
My god man, you would not believe how picture perfect those pixels the size of a finger tip were.
Oh man you just took me back. I was dirt poor as a kid and my mom always busted her ass to get us the latest Nintendo, but we usually only got a couple games. We rented and borrowed the rest.
Anyway.
I went with my step brother to his grandpa’s house one day. He said nothing to prepare me for the glory I was about to see. When we came through the door his grandpa greeted us and said, “Jason, take your brother to the game room.”
We walked down into the basement and there in the coolest, most badass, teen movie room, was this giant rear projection TV. There on the floor sat a console I had never seen before. The original PlayStation with the original controllers and Nascar Racing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I swear to god I said, “OH MY GOD IT LOOKS REAL!” We played Tomb Raider. I just kept jumping into the pool. Mortal Kombat Trilogy, man what a game.
That Christmas two of my closest friends got the N64. One showed me Doom, the other Mario 64.
I ended up with the N64, my best friend got the PlayStation.
I’d love to go back for a day just to hang out with him. I wish he’d lived to see the graphics of today. Shit, if he’d made it long enough to see The Last of Us I’d be stoked.
I still remember seeing this for the first time, absolute mind blower for sure back then.
When Sony saw Crash Bandicoot running on a PS1 for the first time, they had no idea how the PS1 actually was able to run it.
When even the developers of the system you are using have no idea of how a program is running on their new system, they you know you have some advanced stuff:
I'm 3:30 in and they're just rambling. Who makes this kind of content?
I know the story because I've seen this video where the developers actually talk about how they did it. Watch it instead.
I was thinking of this exact video too.
It's really funny to think about now, but we really were blown away by how nice this game looked.
Wow those waves are GORGEOUS for N64 graphics. Dang! I remember I loved Blue Storm on the GameCube. I spent a while just moving that little bubble around the main menu hahaha. It's still gorgeous!
Gimmie these graphics with amazing physics and gameplay over the polished turds they make today. Thanks.
It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time, it's tricky
Don't forget there were a lot of unpolished turds back then!
Vintage gaming community.
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