Early to Mid 1995

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jon
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Early to Mid 1995

Postby jon » February 19th, 2018, 1:10 am

I keep thinking about this time. I haven't really kept any of my old magazines but when I look at old Gamepro magazines on the internet it gets me so excited. In fact, I always remembered SWAT Pro which also had cool stuff. I loved all the uncertainty. It was so exciting to talk about the Ultra 64 which everyone thought would be insane. We had just come off of 1994, which must be the GOAT year ever for video games. I get upset when I think about what followed (the worst generation ever). It's really hit home seeing the FF7 review. But it made me appreciate much more the time before. I look back now at that time more fondly now instead of what followed.

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pacman000
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Re: Early to Mid 1995

Postby pacman000 » February 19th, 2018, 10:00 am

Well, why don't we take a look at some of those magazines?

https://archive.org/details/gamemagazines?&sort=-date

Enjoy.

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pacman000
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Re: Early to Mid 1995

Postby pacman000 » February 19th, 2018, 1:37 pm

One of Atari's last (and more embarrassing) moves: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/90927- ... tion-1995/

I think there's already a thread here just for this one article...somewhere.

Sut
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Re: Early to Mid 1995

Postby Sut » February 19th, 2018, 3:42 pm

jon wrote:I keep thinking about this time. I haven't really kept any of my old magazines but when I look at old Gamepro magazines on the internet it gets me so excited. In fact, I always remembered SWAT Pro which also had cool stuff. I loved all the uncertainty. It was so exciting to talk about the Ultra 64 which everyone thought would be insane. We had just come off of 1994, which must be the GOAT year ever for video games. I get upset when I think about what followed (the worst generation ever). It's really hit home seeing the FF7 review. But it made me appreciate much more the time before. I look back now at that time more fondly now instead of what followed.


Interesting. I’m not sure I enjoyed this period at all. For me it was almost like the second generation all over again (without the crash) with too many players and casualties. People having to make a bewildering choice with their money with a high chance their console of choice wouldn’t receive much support and a small shelf life. So no I didn’t like the uncertainty.

We lost Atari, Commodore and NEC from the gaming landscape. It was also the start of Sega’s (and to a lesser extent Nintendo’s) decline.
This era was more of a graveyard than a utopia in my opinion.

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pacman000
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Re: Early to Mid 1995

Postby pacman000 » February 19th, 2018, 4:29 pm

I do remember the era fondly. Looking through catalogs and seeing all the different systems was (and still is) fun. I just wish the market could've supported so many systems.

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scotland
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Re: Early to Mid 1995

Postby scotland » February 19th, 2018, 5:22 pm

Systems? Sure. Mutually incompatible ones? No.

The 80s supported lots of computers, and all different but similar enough where ports were not that large a hurdle. Everyone had Frogger. Yet by the mid 90s, these new systems are just so different. When it gets like that, its going to winnow down. Look at smart phones - lots of kinds, but basicaly two operating systems dominant. So, I think a market could hace several kinds of 3DO, but only if the 3DO was one of the big players kind of thing.

newmodelarmy
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Re: Early to Mid 1995

Postby newmodelarmy » February 19th, 2018, 6:35 pm

Great, great article. What the hell were these people thinking. Of course this is Sam Tramiel (spelled?), son to Jack Tramiel the CEO of Commodore. I love the spin he puts on regarding the Jaguar CD. Of course everybody will buy it because just about everyone who owned a C-64 bought a Disk Drive. No sh$t! If you owned a C-64 back in the day (which I did) you had to get a disk drive otherwise you had practically nothing to use on the machine. As soon as the disk drive hit the market cartridges for the C-64 were dead. What a dope! My parents bought me the C-64 and then a year later bought me the disk drive. I was grateful because it was big bucks back in the day and we didn't have much extra money. It was like an eternity waiting for the disk drive. I played Chopper Command (cartridge) and Temple of Apshia (cassette) exclusively for about a year. Sadly, I never mastered either game but man did I sure appreciate that disk drive when I got one!

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Retro STrife
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Re: Early to Mid 1995

Postby Retro STrife » February 19th, 2018, 7:14 pm

jon wrote:I keep thinking about this time. I haven't really kept any of my old magazines but when I look at old Gamepro magazines on the internet it gets me so excited. In fact, I always remembered SWAT Pro which also had cool stuff. I loved all the uncertainty. It was so exciting to talk about the Ultra 64 which everyone thought would be insane. We had just come off of 1994, which must be the GOAT year ever for video games. I get upset when I think about what followed (the worst generation ever). It's really hit home seeing the FF7 review. But it made me appreciate much more the time before. I look back now at that time more fondly now instead of what followed.


I really like this time period as well, since there was so much happening at once. But I disagree about what followed being the worst generation ever. Overall, I liked the simple head-to-head of the early 90s (SNES vs. Gen) and late 90s (PS1 vs. N64), rather than the logjam of systems in the middle. Plus, that mess is how I got stuck with a Game.com as my only handheld in the 90s!!

But I like this post because, to me, thoughts like this have a lot to do with age and our development as gamers as we grow up. I'd guess you were in your mid teens at the time period you're discussing. I was around that age during the PS1/N64 era, and probably felt the same kind of positivity about that era. And, around the world right now, millions of kids in their mid-teens probably feel the same way about the direction that modern gaming is headed; and 20 years from now a very small group of them will be retro gamers; and among that small group, one of them somewhere will post a topic just like this one, talking about how great it was in early to mid 2018 and the GOAT year of 2017. And so the cycle lives on.

jon
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Re: Early to Mid 1995

Postby jon » February 19th, 2018, 8:08 pm

I was just reading through the 1995 Gamepros, and it's true that the ones before the PS1 came out are the best. You can actually read a lot of them for free online. I think the E3 that year was the first ever of its kind. Atari did fold, and the 3do failed, but the magazines talk about the next round of games (MK3 was going to happen) that we know never happened. But there was no indication that Atari and others were going to fold in the way they're talked about. So you have to go back to that time and not think about what happened. That's when it gets interesting.

newmodelarmy
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Re: Early to Mid 1995

Postby newmodelarmy » February 19th, 2018, 8:14 pm

Correction...I didn't play Chopper Command on the C-64...it was Choplifter! Which by the way was a great game for the C-64!


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