Topic: The Sixth Generation General

[Evan_B]

I have been craving some discussion of the sixth generation of video games as of late. I know I could put this topic in the console forum but I figured I'd open up the discussion to a wider audience.


To me, the sixth generation was a time when developers were finally getting the hang of 3D graphics, which was also bolstered by the addition of a second camera stick. We experimented with online, received more polished and better looking products, and skateboarding games were still cool.


If you would like to share, please discuss some of your favorite sixth generation games here. There's a massive catalog and I think many people had the chance to play some underrated or unknown titles, as well as some classics that changed the way they thought about gaming.


If nobody steps up to the plate, I'll go first.

[NWR_insanolord]

I'm not going to lie, I had to use Google to remember which generation that was. I've never been a fan of that dumb naming system. But now that I know which it is, I'm going to have to say Pikmin, particularly the second one. It's just a great fusion of different ideas, something that'd never been seen before, and beyond just loving the game itself, I love when Nintendo comes out swinging like that.

[TOPHATANT123]

I love the 3d Rayman games, from what I remember it was a big silly adventure which had a sense of place that which a 2d game could never achieve. It's a shame 3d platformers have fallen by the way side since then.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

3D platformers, wayside, I guess you don't own a Wii U as that is just about all it has for games.


If we are talking about Dreamcast to Xbox era I would say there is just too much to talk about, that "generation" and the SNES to PS1 era were the two most interesting, and most talked about, periods in gaming as far as I am aware. Game Cube is one of my all time favorite gaming consoles and I still keep my Slim PS2 close by so I think for me that period was one of the better periods in gaming.

[Triforce Hermit]

It was before gaming became mainstream. Those were the days.


It brought Final Fantasy 12 into existence and that is probably my most played game out of that generation. Close to a thousand hours, if not more, invested in it and I still go back every once in a while a sink in a 100-200 hour playthrough.

[azeke]

I wasn't aware of console gaming during that time, but now that i have played many games from that generation through backwards compatibility and various HD collections it seems like it was a golden age for japanese studios.

Сonsole action games -- my now favorite genre has received the most important and seminal works from 2001 to 2005. Within these short four years various creators across different studios were almost like talking to each other exchanging ideas and approaches on how to create satisfying gameplay collectively producing the most creatively charged and important lineup that this genre has ever received: Devil May Cry 1, Viewtiful Joe, God Hand, Devil May Cry 3, Ninja Gaiden/Black. Even God of War -- a pale impersonation but still historically important game nevertheless was also released during that time.

Other series have also reached their creative peak during that generation: Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, original Ace Attorney trilogy, Prince of Persia, WarioWare, Total War, Serious Sam (i know these are on PC but they were released during that time and that's what i actually played).

Racing games haven't yet been afflicted by open-world and always-online diseases: Need For Speed Underground 1/2 were fantastic, i remember how me and my sister took turns to play it. Burnout 3 that i am playing only now is a much focused and overall fun game than it's Paradise sequel.

Unfortunately, Nintendo has kinda sat this one out. I can only name three standout Nintendo titles from that time that i played and loved: WarioWare Twisted, Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat and Wind Waker (and that's only because of art direction).

PS if my list has obvious omissions like Resident Evil, Silent Hill or Metroid Prime, it's because i didn't played them or i did play them but didn't care enough to mention.

[Evan_B]

I mean, Nintendo made some of their best titles during the sixth gen so I find the idea of them sitting out a bit laughable. There was some great stuff going on, especially with Japanese developers, and gaming had not reached the mainstream just yet (though PS2 was a massive success).

Like many others have stated, the highs of this generation are some of the best in gaming's history, and there's quite a few solid experiences that aren't talked about as much. The 007 games released during this time were stellar and a great amount of Star Wars stuff was, too. Still, Japan was doing work here, and the potential of the hardware allowed us gems like REmake and 4, Silent Hill 2, and MGS3. DMC, Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Metroid featured iconic installments, and even lesser appreciated franchises got stellar entries.

Also, the Wii U is not over saturated with 3D platformers, Mike.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

I totally agree it was the golden age of gaming. Not in the traditional or literal sense like some say the arcade days of the 80's were but a true golden age when gaming was real, raw, and completely unrestricted. I think that the Dreamcast kicked things off nicely. I think the main reason why I lost interest in gaming is because the last gen was mostly Wii crap, too much retro they over did it in some cases, and a whole bunch of "epic" adventure games that were just choose your own adventure movies that had very little gameplay.

[Ian Sane]

I always get tripped up on the generations naming convention because the first is like home Pong units and such.  That makes sense that that's the first generation but there isn't much of a collecting scene for that era.  I tend to think of the Atari/Intellivision era as the first one since if you go to a used gaming store, that's the oldest stuff you're going to see.  It's the earliest generation that resembles modern consoles where multiple games are released for a platform.  I guess I think of pre-Atari as more of a prehistory of videogames.  The arcade scene is pretty weak before 1977 as well and there were essentially no personal computers before then either, restricting "computer games" to stuff on mainframes at college campuses.

The sixth generation is the last generation of what I see as the golden age of Japanese videogames.  The golden age started with the Famicon/NES and then for the next four generations the Japanese dominated the console industry.  Most of big console franchises in that span were made by Japanese companies like Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, Konami, Square, Namco, etc.  The better Western stuff was more on PCs.  I tend to prefer Japanese games so this is really the last gen where things are really cooking for me.

In gen 7 Japan pretty much decided consoles aren't cool anymore, casual gaming became a thing, microtransactions became a thing, and the higher cost of development has made publishers take less risks resulting in safer product.  Gen 6 was the last gen where gaming was this wild west of crazy ****.  Now it's corporate.  Mainstream acceptance was the worst thing for videogames as an art form.  If it was restricted to geeks and kids like before there wouldn't be free-to-play scams for example as there wouldn't be enough of an audience for such a thing.  Mainstream acceptance brings in more corporate greed looking to exploit and I feel gaming as a whole is threatened by anti-consumer practices.  We've got free-to-play and microtransactions today and we came very close locking out used games and always-online.  MS chickened out this time but played their hand so we know what they want to do.  You can't do that with a more niche hobby.  The more niche something is the more savvy the customerbase and if it's smaller there isn't as much money to attract the attention of corporation greed.  But the sad thing is videogames are awesome and really the only reason my parents generation doesn't play them is because they didn't grow up with them.  Mainstream acceptance was inevitable as those that grew up with them became adults, I just wish it took longer to get here.

The sixth generation is the last to be purely physical media.  I think there were a few unlocks and such on Xbox Live and an online game like Final Fantasy XI won't work now but for the most part you can grab any used games from the era and experience them today like you could have then.  I really don't know what retro gaming will be like for the seventh generation onwards when the absence of patches, DLC and games that were just outright unavailable in physical media will affect the experience.  Rather than rare game cartridges the real value might be in consoles with specific content installed.

[Mop it up]

From what I can gather from responses, we're talking about the DreamCast/PS2/Xbox/GCN era, right? If so, this was not a fun generation for me.

I felt going into this generation, it held promise. Nintendo ditched cartridges and went with discs, so it seemed like they were learning from their mistakes... but of course, they had to design it like a purple lunchbox, which seemed to give some people the impression that it was not even as powerful as a PS2 (seriously, I had to explain this to several people). I also didn't realise that the mini-discs and lack of DVD would be a problem either (didn't care about DVDs myself). The capabilities of the system looked like a good step above the N64, not just in graphics but also in the scope of games.

Then, the system ends up launching without a Mario game, which was the first sign of trouble. I actually like Luigi's Mansion, but it is not good enough to carry a launch. When this Mario game finally comes out... it's got this weird water pack gimmick. It's got less worlds than Super Mario 64. Mario has lost some of his moves, even if he gained a few others with the water pack. This is not what I imagined at all for a SM64 sequel, and it didn't feel like it took any steps forward from that game. I ended up not buying it until years later as a Player's Choice game, and I actually did end up having some fun with the water pack, but I also discovered how unpolished this game was, which was unexpected. Nintendo is better than this.

Zelda is a similar story. We all know the whole deal that felt like a bait-and-switch, but it actually didn't take long for me to get over the goofy style. What ended up bothering me was the ocean thing, as it made this game once again not feel like an increase in scope over the N64 games, even if such a large ocean technically was. I also waited until the Player's Choice before buying this game, and I liked it better than Mario Sunshine, but it's still not a great Zelda and the world actually felt smaller than the N64 games because of so few land masses.

Mario and Zelda are two major games for me, so any system with weak entries in those series is low on my list. I enjoyed Twilight Princess a lot more than Wind Waker, albeit I played it on Wii. I wonder how my perception might have changed had the releases of the two been switched around...

To add to this, the loss of Rare left a noticeable hole in the GCN lineup. Perfect Dark is my fave N64 game and I was eagerly awaiting some sort of sequel. The system still wasn't getting some of the cool games released on PS2, such as its RPGs, though it still saw better support than N64. Some of Nintendo's other games also saw delays, or other such changes I did not agree with. Even though games looked better, most did not feel like a step up from the N64 and PS1 in terms of gameplay, and in some cases felt worse. I felt a lot of waiting around for games to come out that I actually wanted. So much so, I spent most of this generation buying all the N64 games, a system I consistently enjoyed more than GameCube then, and to this day.

That said, the GCN saw Super Smash Brothers Melee very close to launch, a game which was my fave for a long time, and still is one of them. Metroid Prime was also amazing. If not for these two games, I'd likely have sold off the system. However, I've come to appreciate the system more in retrospect, as there are games that I missed for one reason or another that are also good stuff, such as not being able to afford all that many games (another reason I went with N64 stuff, prices were dropping fast). Pikmin is an example, although I played it on Wii so it's sort of a Wii game for me. This is not the kind of game my 15-year-old self would be into, but my adult self thinks it's great.

Though, I think one reason why I appreciate the generation more now is because of how much worse things got after that, and just keep getting worse. I got a PlayStation 2 back at the end of 2011, and collected a nice library so far. It's got some fun games on it, though I still do not regret the fact I didn't own one during its time.

As for the Xbox, I used to own one way back then, but it was stolen. I don't care very much, as I didn't like much on it: my fave game is Fuzion Frenzy, but the Wii serves my party game needs now. Halo was... okay. Serviceable. But most other shooters are better. That's about it.

I rented a DreamCast and knew someone who had one. There wasn't really anything that interested me on the system aside from Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure... both later came to GameCube and I now own them there.

Wow. Yeah, did not mean to write that much, but there is the story of Mop it up and Gen VI. And to think this is the short version...

[Wah]

Pokémon VR!

[Mop it up]

Also, the Wii U is not over saturated with 3D platformers, Mike.

Yeah really, there is like, one I can think of which is Super Mario 3D World. And it feels more like a 2D game at times.

an online game like Final Fantasy XI won't work now

Actually, the servers for this game are still up and running, so you could play now... but they will be finally shutting down in March. So this statement won't be true until about a month from now.

I see your point though, and ironically the Wii will probably hold up best as a retro system since it offers lots of local multiplayer and few games have updates or patches.

[ShyGuy]

Off the top of my head:

Resident Evil 4 (A influential and excellently made game)
Windwaker (An art style and mood that stands the test of time)
Jak and Daxter (Best 3D platformer of the generation?)
Beyond Good and Evil (The best Ubisoft game ever)
Black (An underrated console FPS, that did a lot in area of production quality)
Soul Calibur 1 and 2 (My favorite 3D fighters)
Monkey Ball games (Oh man, these were great. and hard! and great.)

[Evan_B]

Hm. It's sad to see so much talk of a "last great generation".

[Ian Sane]

The sixth gen was also the last one with a really noticeable difference in the graphics quality between generations.  The first time I saw Dreamcast launch games I was blown away.  You would never confuse a fifth and sixth gen game.  You could instantly identify the generation by a screenshot.  I can tell the difference between a sixth and seventh gen game and it is pretty damn obvious when you go back and play sixth gen consoles, but when those first Xbox 360 screenshots came out it was like "uh, that is better, isn't it?"  There is improvement and it became more obvious as the generation went on but it wasn't this obvious jump up like we had had in prior generations.  This was going to happen at some point.  Graphics can only get so good.  Still it was really fun in the old days when you would observe a huge jump each time.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

I was playing Mortal Kombat X last night and my first impression was, this is the PS4 versions right I didn't accidentally get it on PS3 did? I was not blown away by the graphics at all like I was Deadly Alliance on GameCube. I remember the first time I saw Sonic Adventure in action I knew my PS1 and N64 days were numbered. I ended up getting a Game Cube once Sega made their announcement but if they had kept going I would have gotten a Dreamcast.

[Evan_B]

This is very true. In some ways, when the sixth generation came around, I thought things could never get better. Some of the animation loops characters did, the detail in the models and environments... it all seemed perfect.

Of course, things have come a long way since then.

One of my favorite games during this time was Gauntlet: Dark Legacy. It just had a great, arcade feeling to it, but also a lot of the graphics were polished and the presentation was nice. Anyone else play this?

[NWR_insanolord]

With recent generations it seems like it just takes longer for developers to get the hang of using the extra power. Early Xbox 360 games barely looked better than the previous gen, but over the course of that system's life they improved dramatically. I think we're seeing the same thing happen this time around, though I think it's happening somewhat more quickly this time.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

The early days of any generation are like that, normally, but these last two it's been less obvious up front. There are Turbo Graphix and Genesis games you could almost swear belong on the NES, and there are early Playstation, Saturn, and even Jaguar games, that look like they belong on SNES or Sega CD.