NCSoft to develop for next-gen console(s).

[Shockeye]

The home video game console era began when video games attached themselves to the TV and you could play them at home. It's really fucking simple.

[stray]

Just in case, I was referencing the 2600 in that last post of mine. I read it over and thought it be construed to mean the NES.

[HaemishM]

I don't consider the 2600 the influence for beginning the home console market as we currently know it.

Dude, you're wrong on this one.

Without Atari and the 2600, there would be no NES. That shit would never have come over here if not for the 2600. The 2600 HAS to be considered the first gen of consoles, because it sold that system like nothing before it. 30 million consoles in the days before the Internet, the days before TV's even had fucking RGB inputs. It sold 30 million consoles with CGA level graphics, when home computers didn't even have real penetration into American homes. It had big name movie licenses like ET (shitty game, but big license) and Indiana Jones. It flooded the market and caused the real creation of the video game market, and its subsequent implosion depress the market enough that the Amiga and the PC became a viable market for video games. Its success and its failure opened the door for Nintendo to come in and own the market. It was the first real piece of computer hardware most people had in their homes.

[schild]

I don't consider the 2600 the influence for beginning the home console market as we currently know it.

Dude, you're wrong on this one.

Without Atari and the 2600, there would be no NES. That shit would never have come over here if not for the 2600. The 2600 HAS to be considered the first gen of consoles, because it sold that system like nothing before it. 30 million consoles in the days before the Internet, the days before TV's even had fucking RGB inputs. It sold 30 million consoles with CGA level graphics, when home computers didn't even have real penetration into American homes. It had big name movie licenses like ET (shitty game, but big license) and Indiana Jones. It flooded the market and caused the real creation of the video game market, and its subsequent implosion depress the market enough that the Amiga and the PC became a viable market for video games. Its success and its failure opened the door for Nintendo to come in and own the market. It was the first real piece of computer hardware most people had in their homes.

I actually agree on this. The Nintendo wouldn't exist without the 2600. Nothing inbetween the 2600 and the NES really matters though. And the NES is the only reason the current video game market exists. The market had all but died. Actually, it did die. And out of the ashes came the NES. A system that had a stranglehold on the american and japanese public in a way that no other system could ever dream of  - it was the beginning. It was year zero. It was robot jesus. Hence the reason I consider it the first modern gaming console. The 2600 was a nice prehistoric experiment. And did give way to the gaming market as we know it, but it didn't birth that market.

[Pococurante]

Sophistry: In modern usage a derogatory term for rhetoric that is designed to appeal to the listener on grounds other than the strict logical validity of the statements being made.

[schild]

Sophistry: In modern usage a derogatory term for rhetoric that is designed to appeal to the listener on grounds other than the strict logical validity of the statements being made.

O RLY? Even if I were to buckle and say that the 2600/Atari era was the first generation it would still only put us in the 6th. But if we're going to count everything inbetween the 2600 and NES as possible generational masses, we better make room for a CDi/3D0 and Jaguar generation. Also, we might as well give the Dreamcast it's own generation as there is enough "strict logical validity" to make a decent argument that the Dreamcast was, indeed, inbetween the psx and ps2. So, does that put us in the 10th generation? When do we stop drawing imaginary lines?

[Dren]

I don't know about the entire industry, but from my point of view there was a hell of a lot of system prior to the NES.  My own purchases went straight from the 2600 to the NES, but I was cheap.  I held to the 2600 because of the other systems were near 2x the cost for the system and the games.  I bought more 2600 games than probably all of the games for all the consoles I've had since combined.

I wasn't common though.  Hell I remember when nearly every one of my friends had a different system from the Calicovision to Inteliivision to Odyssey to other crappy one offs from Sears or whatever.  Only one friend of mine had a 2600 so we could swap games, etc.  

I really didn't notice a lull in consoles before the NES came out.  Of course, I was ready for a next gen console by that point and jumped on it.

I'm still in the camp that I'd rather play on the computer than the console.  I spend 90% of my gaming time there and always have.   I always had a computer while I had consoles.  In fact, the highest percentage of my free time was spent with my VC20 than anything else since then (mostly creating new games in Basic.)

[Dren]

This chart has it much like I remember it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console#Timeline

[Pococurante]

When do we stop drawing imaginary lines?

Depends - is this absolute history or Schild's Favorite Flavor of History?

As a general rule people go all the way back to proto influences.  Otherwise we wouldn't bother talking about Da Vinci or the Wright brothers when discussing the generations of aviation science.  My recollection parallels Dren's.  NES is a tipping point but hardly a birthpoint.  The story of Magnavox's struggle to introduce a console is far more compelling in every traditional story element than NES' commoditization of a later market, a struggle that worked itself through the same time as the First Moon Landing, the end of Vietnam, and Watergate.

You'll just have to accept that some of us have a longer view of history - writing off two decades of significant console history strikes me as a much more cavalier use of "imaginary lines".

I'm not going to insist you're wrong.  Just arbitrary.

[AOFanboi]

Removing the Atari VCS/2600 and the Magnavox Odyssey - the two initial commercially available game consoles - from the timeline, is like the retouching of that picture of Lenin speaking to remove Leo Tolstoy from the very history of the Russian revolution. Or perhaps ignoring any American cars made prior to the Big Japanese Wake-up Call.

Bad Schild!

[Yegolev]

Oh noes, history doesn't conform to my simple pigeonholing technique!

Why are you all arguing about something so arbitrary and stupid?  Does "generation" even mean anything?

[HaemishM]

AOFanboi, I hope you meant Leo TROTSKY, not Tolstoy.

[Margalis]

If the Atari generation wasn't a generation, what was I playing on my Atari exactly?

You can quibble about how many generations there were exactly, but saying the Atari wasn't in ANY generation is retarded. Pick your battles dude.

Pacman, Mario Brothers, Jungle Hunt, Pitfall...you're telling me those aren't console games? This is the exact equivalent argument to the FF series really started with FF7. Yes, if you are a 15 year old moron with no sense of history it did. Otherwise it didn't.

Next week let's argue that Model T wasn't in any generation of cars. The first generation of cars actually started with the Toyota Tercel!

[ahoythematey]

In a timeline I would come up with were I inclined so, I'd consider anything prior to the NES a proto-generation, or something.

[Nebu]

Anyone besides me old enough to have played all of these consoles with a reasonable degree of critical thinking when they did?

I played PONG when it hit the scene.  It was followed by a number of PONG-like consoles (Magnavox, radioshack, etc) with games like hockey etc. as PONG derivatives.  Eventually, the PONG paddles were made to look like players.  I'd consider these all the same generation.  

Then... the Atari came out.  Space invaders, basketball, football, and others.  I think Adventure was the title that really made this a separate generation and of course, the introduction of Activision games (pitfall and co) really raised the bar on what the Atari could offer.  It's hard to argue that there was a significant difference between PONG and PONG-esque games and the Atari.  I would have to conclude that the Atari is the second generation of video games.

The difficult era was that between the Atari and the Nintendo.  Intellivision and Colecovision were head and shoulders above the current technology and the controllers offered much more options than the joystick+button.  The problem is that the gameplay was a tad more sophisticated than the Atari, but not quite on par with the Nintendo.  I guess they fall into a gap.

[AOFanboi]

AOFanboi, I hope you meant Leo TROTSKY, not Tolstoy.

Yes, my bad. He fled and even lived for a while in Norway, actually, so I really have no excuse.

[AOFanboi]

In a timeline I would come up with were I inclined so, I'd consider anything prior to the NES a proto-generation, or something.

That sort of gives fuel to the kids who feel that everything before the XBox is shite, and don't consider them at all.

The Atari 2600 was popular, it had very playable (but necessarily somewhat abstract) games, and Atari the company fed the home computer wave that followed the first consoles - but also made a lot of mistakes. It was just as important for the video game industry as, say, Monkey Island was for the adventure genre. I mean, will you dismiss early LucasArts games just because they're not as pretty as Syberia?

[Righ]

In a timeline I would come up with were I inclined so, I'd consider anything prior to the NES a proto-generation, or something.

Ahhh, because the eigenvalues of the mass matrices of the Atari 2600 allow you to approximate the degeneracy of the cartridge fermions?

[stray]

Actually, Tolstoy did start a revolution of sorts before the actual "Revolution" (yes, the writer Tolstoy). It was religiously motivated, but he targeted the same thing as the Communists. At first, and for a decade or so there, his message caught on. By the turn of the century though, and with Lenin, the commies spread like a wildfire.

Tolstoy's methods and message were the very thing that directly inspired Gandhi's non violence philosophy years later....Then MLK after that.

[Jain Zar]

In a timeline I would come up with were I inclined so, I'd consider anything prior to the NES a proto-generation, or something.

So basically you are shitting over the consoles a good 40+ million people owned and more even played (given that the 2600 had 30 million owners, and its big 2 competitors had at least 3 million each, leaving 4 million of the niche systems.  Its probably closer to NES sales levels combined over all the pre NES systems.), because its either not your childhood or you are too much of a Japan worshipping schmuck to care about it?

PLEASE.

My cousin had the 2600, Colecovision, and a Mattel Aquarius Computer (a weaker computer version of the Intellivision really).  A loser friend of mine had a Coleco Adam, which was a Colecovision and a computer combo.  My second cousins in Alabama had an Atari 5200, which was effectively Atari 100 series computer hardware turned to a console with shitty controllers.  Another friend had the 2600 and Intellivision.  Almost everyone else I knew including myself had a 2600.  Shit, I got my 2600 for Christmas 84.  Many of us were still playing and loving videogames without even knowing there was a videogame crash.

Most people STILL wouldn't know there was a videogame crash in 83.  WE WERE STILL GAMING.  The NES was just the next generation and had new software available for it when the uglier graphics of the 2600 had very few new titles released for it, giving us ports of the latest arcade game.

Everyone I knew pretty much bought their NES systems because they thought mine was so cool.  ( I was less impressed, and got a Commodore 64 in Christmas 87 which supplanted the NES in my eyes that I had purchased the year before.)  The NES didn't have any genuine competiton which is why its sales were so high.  That and it was primarily for kids and kids all want what everyone else has.  So once little Billy had one, Jaime, Jeffy, and Johnny all had to have one too.  (Nintendo's evil business practices of the time didn't hurt any either.  Plus they knew how to market the thing.  I have seen more NES ads than I have of ANY other game system.)

But to say videogaming didn't effectively start till 1987-88 when the NES exploded in popularity is not only wrong, its stupidity and ignorance at its finest.

Odyssey 1 was Generation 0.  Pong machines were Generation .5  Fairchild Channel F-Atari 7800 were Generation 1 (Programmable consoles with seperate controllers and multiple game programs that could be plugged into it.).  The NES, Atari XEGS, Sega Master System, and Game Boy were Generation 2 (Improved and near standarized interfaces, heavy Japanese influence on the market and designs).  Generation 3 was Turbografx 16-3DO (Massive graphical, storytelling, and audio leap, first steps into CD Rom multimedia setups).  Generation 4 was Saturn-Nintendo 64 (First standardized analog control setups, 3d graphics made standard, Optical Disk format near total dominance of the field, flash memory devices start being used).  Generation 5 is Dreamcast-X Box 360 (Backwards compatibility becomes a major factor in gaming, computers become less important as electronic gaming alternatives, online play starts becoming popular, analog controls become nearly the default, flash memory type devices become widespread, beginnings of the "consumer owns nothing" corporate wet dream, videogaming approaches mainstream popularity).

Note the Revolution and PS3 might be part of Generation 5 as well.  If all they offer is improved graphics and nothing else, its really not a generational shift, unless one counts improved graphics as a generation.  I don't.  Its not just system power, its influence on the industry, and where it all goes from here.

Hardware wise, the NES isn't all that much more powerful than the Colecovision or Atari 7800.  Its the lasting impact on how games have been since that makes it a new generation.  Which is why the Dreamcast and 360 are in the same generation.  Outside of graphics, they really aren't THAT different.  Both with built in online play options, both have optical drives and flash memory for savestates, both with analog controls, both with high def video output options.  ( DCast with the VGA adapter, 360 with its heavy support of HD TV options.)

[Margalis]

I didn't count pong machines because the only ones I've seen or owned came with 4 games built in and that was it. They were more stand-alone toys than consoles.

[Dren]

I didn't count pong machines because the only ones I've seen or owned came with 4 games built in and that was it. They were more stand-alone toys than consoles.

Our pong only had pong.  Yeah, that was more of a curiousity at the time than anything else.  I'm still amazed my parents got it.  I never thought of them as cutting edge at the time.  I've come to change that opinion over time.

[ahoythematey]

You are being stupid to think of these in terms of hardware capabilities, and defensive over no attack of mine. (Notice how I said "were I so inclined", since I think the generations debate is ridiculously fucking stupid?)  When I would say something like "NES is generation 1", I'm talking about market penetration, lasting effects on the consumer and the industry, and how profitable the machine was.  I use these values because, to me, a console is a cheaply-produced game system designed for mass-market, made with ease-of-use in mind, and capable of generating obscene numbers in gross profit margin for the company.  If you want to continue calling me a japanophile nintendo faggot or some shit(which seems unfair since I actually lived there and am by no means like those calling themselves otaku's), perhaps you can kindly go take your odyssee II controller and try to scrape some of that sand out of your vagina.

[HaemishM]

You don't think a market penetration of 30 million machines is significant for the Atari when there really was no significant market penetration prior to that? You don't think that's worthy of being considered Gen1?

[Righ]

NES. Robot Jesus. Atari. Prehistoric. Shut up babo round-eye, keke la.

I'll save them the typing.

[Signe]

Considering I've been alive long enough, and have played most of the machines mentioned, I was going to comment.  However, after seeing the word "proto-generation", my mind simply went blank.

[Nebu]

Here's a tidbit from ClassicGaming.com.

The Atari 2600, despite its shortcomings, was the most popular pre-crash system, selling over 25 million units. It produced large numbers of enduring classics, increased the popularity of videogames, and helped establish the home videogame console market....

At the peak of 2600 popularity, "Atari" was a household name making millions and millions of dollars and employing over 10,000 people.

I'm not sure how old many of you were in 1977, but I can tell you that I remember the day I got my system.  When they started porting arcade games (~1979 or so) like Space Invaders, the system popularity exploded.  I can remember having to go to multiple stores just to find a copy of a cart I wanted.

If you don't call that a video gaming generation, then you're too young to have experienced the evolution of the video game industry.

Signe: Is that a rice cooker?  If so, I want one!

Schild: I'll send you a check if you lose that avatar!

[Signe]

Yes, it's the rice cooker schild posted somewhere on this board.  I fell in love with it.    

[tazelbain]

I ask about rice cookers in the camera thread, partly joking.
Schild responded with the iMac of rice cookers.
Mine should be here on Friday.

[Pococurante]

I'm not sure how old many of you were in 1977, but I can tell you that I remember the day I got my system.  When they started porting arcade games (~1979 or so) like Space Invaders, the system popularity exploded.

My first "multi-function" electronic gaming device was built in 1968 - at the time my dad worked part-time in the university computer lab and there is no doubt he bought the toy as much for him to play with as for me. :)   I still remember opening it under our aluminum xmas tree.  :P

It was really nothing more than a magstripe reader with a tinny speaker but looked much like the first Atari console.  It taught basic math and spelling - in seven different languages.  I played it by picking and combining plastic cards roughly the size and thickness of four credit cards stacked together - the cards had different sized notches that I used to connect them to create sentences and solutions.  By flipping a lever I toggled which language my cool combination spoke to me in, or the gender of the voice.

This game was amazingly high tech for its time.  1968 was the first year magstripe credit cards were released for public consumers.

My next high tech game was a mineralogy "computer" - again a gift from my early adopter Engineer father.  This was much later, about 1975.  It looked vaguely like a toy cash register, bristling with the small tools used to test rocks.  As I determined a value for a factor I put a simple plastic peg into the appropriate hole of that test's section.  When I ran all tests I pulled a small tray and the cards most likely identifying the mineral dropped to the bottom.  It was amazingly precise.

*Video* electronics were given their own niche because actually electronic toys in general were fairly sophisticated by the time the first consoles went mainstream.

It wasn't until I played the Adventure cart on the Atari that I really began to take video consoles seriously as entertainment.  I was holding out for the next generation of personal computers at that time.  In all this time I have yet to see a console that could outperform a contemporary PC.

[schild]

Schild: I'll send you a check if you lose that avatar!

Consider it done.

Edit: Ok, now consider it done. Took a while to pick something out.

[Sky]

When I plumbed the pipes in my bathroom, I was sure Samara was coming for me. Apparently the bitch who lived there before me had long black hair and bad sink habits, that line was clogged like a mofo. All that wet black hair snaking out....it was coming to GET ME!!

[Nija]

Where is this rice cooker?

I have seen and operated a hello kitty toaster that burned hello kittys image onto the bread, so I'm not sure if anything can be cooler than that.

I'm willing to look at other options though.

[Righ]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00007J5U8/104-9174621-1787121?v=glance&n=284507&v=glance

[Shockeye]

Not impressed with that rice cooker. I have an Oster steamer that cooks my rice just dandy.