In early 2026 a new contender will arise
Steam is a “giant updates” offender. Just let me keep my old version that works like i like it, damnit. Main reason i go GoG and sail the seas.
and can the gavecube be its successor?
1980s: You have to walk to the arcade, you have to stand to play, and you are charged for every minute of play time.
1990s: Computer technology has improved to the point that anyone can have the arcade in their home, you sit to play, and you are charged once for the game and can play for as long as you want.
2010s and onward: Home internet connections are now ubiquitous, enabling instant digital money transactions from anywhere, so the games industry can now nickel and dime you for everything. Video games are casinos. The coin machines are back.
There’s a golden age of gaming starting with the introduction of home consoles and ending when they started needing an internet connection.
you are charged for every minute of play time
I mean yeah, except that if you were good you could play a really long fucking time on one quarter so your per-minute rate was very low.
Bullshit, there are more high-quality games out now than ever before.
Not only are all the games from back then easy to get and emulate, you also have high quality pay-once-enjoy-forever PC games: indie up to big corporations.
Who cares that mostly indies and mid-sized studios produce non-exploitative shit? There are so many masterpieces constantly coming out.
The golden age is now.
Fortune in misfortune though, at least in this day and age it’s much easier to play those games without paying for them. Although the DRM on some of the newer games have been a a bitch and a half.
Still, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!!
edit, added pic putting my money where my mouth is
This was definitely peak hardware design. They even compromised the storage medium and system performance to achieve exactly the form they wanted.
Nowadays a console is shaped like a giant fucking water trap from Dune and sounds like a jet engine, and yet still can’t even make games look as good as they did 10-15 years ago.
The silly part is the GameCube is actually the most powerful console of that generation. The limited storage medium is actually what kneecapped it.
They even compromised the storage medium
They didn’t need to compromise. They could have used standard DVD, but they instead designed a whole new format that would be harder to copy. The inner disc tray is recessed to only fit mini-DVD sized discs when it could easily have been made wider and taken full-sized discs.
I KNEW I MISSED SOMETHING!
Opening that case and seeing the two discs was mind-blowing at the time. I remember getting stuck and scouring gamefaqs, only to ask on the forums and was told I was stuck on the “hard” path.
Thanks for reminding me, I’ll add it :)
I believe the PS3 was.
Very powerful machine, Sony was losing money on every sale.
Full of features including a web browser (which at the time was very impressive).
Full online functionality without any monthly costs
Upgradable hard drive
Full backwards compatibility (at launch).
It just didn’t sell as much as the ps2
Had linux too
I have one of the super chunky OG PS3s thats compatable with PS1/2 games as well as DVD and bluray. I don’t play it anymore but I’m never getting rid of it.
Nahhhh the 360 was better…
At the time, i was all-in onps3, because of the rrod bullshit, but looking back, virtually every single title that was released on both platforms, runs and plays better on 360.
both consoles were and are amazing today!
you can soft-exploit any ps3 in existence with only a usb stick and run all the unsigned code you want.
the 360 is significantly more complicated, there is a soft-mod out there now, but it’s a little finicky. if you are brave and handy with a soldering iron you can put an RHG chip in there and reflash the bios to allow you to run unsigned code. I dropped a 2tb hdd into mine, which is more than i need for any and every game i ever even considered playing.
the ps3 is worth owning and playing for ps3 titles, the xbox360 is better for everything else.
bottom line: seventh gen was best gen
The ps3 was superior to the 360 in raw performance. The problem was the architecture was so novel, most developers never bother porting their engines. So games ran like shit.
Agreed, that’s why PS3 exclusives were so much ch better than anything else that gen
Conditional backwards compatability and while it did have online features a lot of them required a subscription to access.
Which features needed subscription?
I remember, on the ps3, if a game had multiplayer it was free whereas you had to pay for Xbox live on the 360.
Maybe it was for premium features? I didn’t really care about that
You’re right, I looked it up and PSN for PS3 was free. I may have had it confused with PSP.
I hope the GabeCube has a handle too
I mean they’ve shown it, so we know it doesn’t.
But the community will make it happen.
I had a GameCube back in the day no one ever moved it around with the handle. Sure you could move the console but you still had all of the wires and of course the controller to move as well so the handle, and of course you would need TV at the destination so wasn’t really helpful.
I never understood who they handle was aimed at.
In theory you could take it over to your friends house but realistically all you did was just set it up where you wanted it and then never move it.
Didn’t it have local LAN multiplayer for some titles? I think that’s why the handle was on it, but it’s been a long time.
I believe there was an attachment for the bottom that had a LAN port.
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I sort of agree and sort of disagree.
People absolutely did move their consoles around then. When I’d stay at my friend’s or a family member’s house, I’d often take my Dreamcast or GameCube, because I knew they didn’t have one.
They’d do the same when they came over to my house, because I never had a PS1/PS2.
Where the handle doesn’t make sense is what you said with the cables and controllers. I’d always put the console in the same place I put my controller(s) and cables - a bag that has its own handles.
Dreamcast because you could just burn a game to CD and run it on an unmodded console.
Original Xbox because you could slap on a no solder mod chip and boot from the hard drive. Suddenly you could switch up the loader, run modded games, run emulators… Truly ground breaking for the console scene.
Or SNES if you’re the kind of weirdo who buys a console because they like games.
I will always die on the hill claiming Dreamcast as the best console. It was so far ahead of it’s time and it had so many great games. I would kill for Sega to release a new console, but I imagine many of the people who helped create the Dreamcast went on to work for Nintendo. I’ve always considered the Wii and Wii U to be the true successors to the Dreamcast and I’ve wondered if they were created with the help of people who made the Dreamcast.
Dreamcast because you could just burn a game to CD and run it on an unmodded console
My friend spent summers in Greece with his family. He said there was a shop there where you would give them like a few dollars and you would take the game home, burn it, and bring it back. Of course this is what doomed the Dreamcast. Noone wants to make a game for a system where you can just throw a disc into a consumer burner and copy.
Yeah… Then we were all sad and shocked when Sega got out of the console market.
But it was fun while it lasted.
Valve is missing out by not putting a handle on the new steam machine.
Gaben is offering us the chance to start up a handle 3d printing business!
GameCube was the first console in the house that was actually MINE and not my sibling’s, and so it will forever be the best to me, especially with games like:
- Super Mario Sunshine
- Animal Crossing
- Mario Kart: Double Dash
- Super Smash Bros Melee
- The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
And others I’m surely forgetting
I cannot believe you’re omitting Tales of Symphonia!
I’m sorry but when I hear Nintendo gamers talk about all their games it’s like “I play a lot of different games like: ‑ Mario ‑ Mario ‑ Mario with a green hat ‑ Mario with boxing gloves ‑ Mario in a car” 😁
Better than Skyrim, Skyrim, Skyrim but it’s the same as Skyrim, and Skyrim
Haha so true.
Although looking at all the game announcements last week it felt like a lot of them were the same game, so a similar situation these days I think.
I mean, they are different games with different mechanics.
Mario Tennis and Super Mario Bros are less similar to one another than Call of Duty and Battlefield, despite them being from the same publisher and having the same characters.
OK, but let’s be real, Nintendo isn’t competing on the strength of their hardware, its that they (used to) have IPs that slap. If I had a choice to play a 3rd party game on a Nintendo console or PC, I’m picking PC.
Nowadays, I am not a Nintendo fan. I don’t like their practices and either the IPs aren’t as good anymore or maybe I’ve aged out of the demographic, so I don’t really have a horse in the fight. But the point is, if you’re gaming on a Nintendo console, its probably because you’re playing a Nintendo IP.
God I miss Wind Waker. Still waiting for that HD remaster.
The Metroid Prime games were incredible. Also shout-out to Chibi Robo, I loved that game.
Metroid Prime was one of the most memorable games I played in my childhood, up there with ocarina of time and super Mario bros, imo.
Especially now with the new metroid shit show
God that’s so disappointing.
Dread was some of their finest work of all time and actually had me pretty excited for Prime 4. I haven’t played it yet, but reactions to MP4 have been… quite poor.
Is it really that bad? I know critics are prone to hyperbole, but even the regular people YouTube reviews have been pretty scathing.
Honestly haven’t played it. I guess I will stick to the GameCube era, lol.
2 > 1
and I’m not apologizing. Magmoor caverns drags P1 down for me.
I also strongly preferred 2 over 1. Way more variety and interesting areas. And those suits were SO COOL
Sunshine fucked so hard, I’m looking directly into your soul with that at the top of the list and let me tell you, I fucking see you dude.
And I love it.
My brother!
Metroid Prime, F-Zero GX, Phantasy Star Online, Sonic Adventure 2, Cubivore, Star Fox Adventures, Kirby Air Ride, Pikmin
- Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
I have been looking for this game for at least a decade and I finally got a copy over the summer.
Roms exist
I know, but it was my white whale and I wanted to play it on the original hardware.
SD cards exist (and hardware mods)
Fair enough, it is definitely nice to have the original authentic experience.
Holy shit, I totally forgot about this game. Such a mind fuck.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
One of the very few M rated GameCube games… and, as far as I know, has a unique core sanity mechanic that fairly routinely breaks the fourth wall, aimed at driving you, the player, at losing your own sanity, not merely depicting this happening to your character.
Also, IIRC, the first iteration of Pikmin, a genuienly novel kind of game. Luigi’s Mansion, also a pretty unique kind of game.
Oh, and they remade Metal Gear Solid on it, with better graphics than the PS1.
Wind Waker but no Twilight Princess? :o
I got it on Wii instead - it was basically the reason I purchased the Wii in the first place because I thought the game looked so cool.
It had such a unique atmosphere, I wish Nintendo had the balls to revisit something like that.
- Luigi’s Mansion
Sorry for forgetting your namesake! I never had this one.
Great game tbh. Very graphically forward for the time, and it is also short as well. The vibes are impeccable as well. It’s been a while since I’ve emulated it (2016), but I’m guessing it has gotten much better since then. (physical copy goes for above $60 today.)
I think I spent more time trying to get the PSO hack to work than I did playing the actual games.
that’s a lie i played animal crossing and double dash until my eyes were bleeding
no dvd or cd capability
Only three shoulder buttons. No select button. Absolute garbage D-pad and right analog sticks.
No bloat! /s
Original Xbox and the duke. Full computer, can install xbmc, basically the steam box of it’s time but sold way under cost.
mfw someone calls nintendo “based” 🤢
No n64 was
the controller though
Ahead of its time, for the future when man would be blessed by genetic technology to bestow 3 hands upon themselves
Ahead of its time
It had stick drift before it was cool
The controller was perfectly fine. The concept was slightly ridiculous and I don’t think I ever played a game that actually used the left side, but ergonomically it was fine.
I know, how are you supposed to lower yourself to anything else when you’ve already held perfection.
n64 was trash tho. literally the only 90s console i never emulate, because nothing on it is worth playing.
Yea, Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, 007, Wave Racer, Pilot Wings, Tetrisphere, Banjo Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing. All garbage.
i’m glad we can agree.
I was obviously being sarcastic, but why do you think those games were trash? They were all really quite revolutionary for their time. Compared to modern games they suck, but for that generation of games, they were unmatched in graphics and mechanics.
zero of them held my interest back then, and zero of them hold my interest today. it didn’t help that the machine was janky and the controller was a shitshow. just an all around wreck of a console. every single game was ugly as sin and many of them i literally can’t watch without getting sick.
I guess you have the attention span of a gnat to not hold the interest of a single one of those games, especially since they span a wide range of genres. I would also be curious to know what games released during that generation looked better. My first step into those 3d worlds blew my mind, and captivated me at the potential future of gaming. If there was something else during that time that looked as good, I would love to hear it.
Maybe they get motion sickness from the early 3d rendering?
Idk. I love n64, weird as it is.
No ps1 was
I’d argue PS2 is objectively better since it’s also a PS1 too
Technically, PS2 was better. But PS2 was also the beginning of the end for proper single player narrative games like the Final Fantasy Series, Chrono Trigger/Cross, Colony Wars, Wing Commander, etc…
The PS2 kept those going early on, but I feel like later into it’s life cycle it started to move down the “everything has to be multiplayer now” route.
Which is why, for me, my list of emulated games skews FAR heavier to old PS1 classics.
Just my opinion though. Don’t shoot me, please.
No PC Engine was.
Listen to this and I fucking dare you to type that again
