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[DoktorEvil]

I wasn't old enough to experience the Atari consoles or old enough to go through the NES life cycle, but was there any discussions like on GAF that led into framerate and graphics issues?

Ex. Ninja Gaiden has severe slowdown, including with music, when there are multiple enemies on screen.

Zelda 1 and 2 both had those same issues as well.

I'm curious if there was any AOL discussion forums for it.

 

[Mugatu]

I'm not sure - there really wasn't much place to complain other than with your friends and we were busy just having fun playing games.

UPDATE: There were discussions, of course. I had a 2600 and my friend had an Intellivision and I was amazed at the graphics but we played both and had fun. I don't really recall slowdowns but that could just be my memory. I do remember we all wanted a Colecovision though.

 

[onken]

No internet means probably not.

 

[King_Moc]

It was all sprite flicker, slowdown and colour clash back then. Those were the days.

 

[bananafactory]

Hard to say because before the internet there wasn't a good way of people actually having these types of discussions.

 

[StoOgE]

That was just sort of the way things worked back then.

Sonic reeeeaaallly chugged if he had a lot of rings.

I do remember by the Saturn era there was a lot of talk about 2d games running smoother vs the PlayStation.

Back then sprite size, sprites on screen, number of audio samples and simultaneous colors were the real kings of playground battles.

 

[Neff]

Videogames were riding a wave of creativity, and were a new and exciting artform at that time. People didn't care about the negatives. All attention was commanded by the positives.

Very different situation these days.

 

[McSpidey]

Hardware was certainly debated around marketing buzzwords but in general people weren't educated enough to know those slowdowns weren't intentional. Heck, I expect people to post in this very thread who still don't accept this.

 

[Vanillalite]

Yes. It was annoying as shit when certain games were slide shows at certain spots during the NES days, and I know my friends and I talked about it.

 

[lazygecko]

Graphics debates are as old as the home console industry itself, in spite of the constant "back in the good old days graphics didn't matter" revisionist history. I think discussions on slowdown and such started to pick up the pace once the 16-bit generation was establishing itself.

Google has a ton of ancient usenet discussions archived from as far back as the mid 80's so you can always check there.

 

[pixlexic]

Yes. But it was called jerky and clunky gameplay.

 

[Ragnarok]

No, and it's really weird to see people say things like "old school games were all 60FPS!!!"

It's possible that people just don't remember exactly how the games were, but most had parts with slowdown. Not to mention horrible sprite flickering.

Did not make them unplayable. Just like frame rate drops don't make newer games unplayable.

 

[Diablohead]

I don't remember any 8-16bit console game having unstable framerates unless they hit slowdown or flicker, it wasn't like now where some games rock between 25 and 30fps unless it was a pc game on an old setup.

 

[entremet]

Most of those games ran 60. Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Super Mario Brothers, Pac Man, et all are all 60FPS.

30FPS is a new thing, mostly started when polygons became common.

 

[mullet2000]

Standards were kinda different back then. The minimum recommended specs for Quake 1 (well after the NES' hayday) for example were to run it at 15 FPS, IIRC. I don't think stuff like slowdown in Ninja Gaiden was very notable.

That said NES games almost (completely?) all ran at 60 FPS as well.

 

[Pocky4Th3Win]

Frame rate and resolution didn't become a thing till DC/PS2 and even worse at the beginning of the PS3/XB360 cycle because almost everything back then was standard def or lower.

Hardware debates were always a debate since you had things like sound chips or bits to debate. I remember Lynx vs Gameboy debates.

This was all pre internet btw... oh you young-ins probably will never know that feeling. ^_-

 

[SerTapTap]

I don't remember any 8-16bit console game having unstable framerates unless they hit slowdown or flicker, it wasn't like now where some games rock between 25 and 30fps in 3D unless it was a pc game on an old setup.

That's just due to how games run on different engines; SNES games don't "drop frames", they slow down and take more time to render the same frames.

 

[Dragoon En Regalia]

Nah, it was all about dat attribute clash during the Speccy era. You probably would have discussed CRT specs more often, too, since arcade monitors traditionally stick to a 24Hz refresh rate, not the same as 15Hz for TV sets.

 

[kick51]

Videogames were riding a wave of creativity, and were a new and exciting artform at that time. People didn't care about the negatives. All attention was commanded by the positives.

Very different situation these days.

Not even a little true. We all read egm and gamepro reviews and got mad when the game we rented or picked out for xmas turned out to be shit. Fuck licensed games and overhyped previews.

Genesis vs Snes on the playground was a thing, people from all over the usa can confirm.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Yes, there was definitely talk amongst computer gamers and more hardcore console/arcade players, but not anything too up its own butt like today's 'discussions' can be where it's often more thinly veiled console wars material. Slowdown, sprite flicker, reduced update rates, color palettes, sprite numbers, playfields, line scrolling...all present in Usenet and other early BBS talk. Depending on platforms discussed, it was sometimes about resolutions and such, but there wasn't a whole lot of platform elitism and talk of marketing standards back then until Amiga/Atari ST and on, though it was kinda-sorta present with Apple ][/C64/etc.

 

[Pocky4Th3Win]

Genesis vs Snes on the playground was a thing, people from all over the usa can confirm.

Blood was spilled on those playgrounds.

 

[StoOgE]

Not even a little true. We all read egm and gamepro reviews and got mad when the game we rented or picked out for xmas turned out to be shit.

Genesis vs Snes on the playground was a thing, people from all over the usa can confirm.

Blast processing son.

 

[CambriaRising]

The more things change

 

[cakely]

There was really no place to discuss them, though I do distinctly remember reading a review of the original "Pac Man" in the Detroit Free Press for the 2600 and how disappointed the reviewer was.

 

[RoninChaos]

It's always funny to me that people act like 60 frames was the norm on the NES. Like they didn't play any of the games with massive amounts of slow down.

 

[fester]

It was all about slowdown issues, especially with shooters like Gradius. Too many items on the screen and the game would come to a crawl. Reviews would be critical of this - I recall the problem being more pronounced in the early SNES days than Atari/NES, but I was in highschool and more critical of my games by then.

 

[DoktorEvil]

Most of those games ran 60. Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Super Mario Brothers, Pac Man, et all are all 60FPS.

30FPS is a new thing, mostly started when polygons became common.

I've never run a framerate test on my carts.

I should. I'm curious if even during flickering/slowdown if 60 is consistent.

 

[Canis lupus]

Most of those games ran 60. Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Super Mario Brothers, Pac Man, et all are all 60FPS.

30FPS is a new thing, mostly started when polygons became common.

New? Polygon gaming has been around for like half of the industry's age. 30fps was also the standard in Gen 5, still remember the awful frame rate in Tomb Raider.

 

[Lupin3]

Internet wasn't a thing back then! Personally I bought everything. If a game was stuttering like crazy, I just thought that that was how it was supposed to be like. I never questioned anything. Gaming was so much easier back then!

 

[kick51]

It was all about slowdown issues, especially with shooters like Gradius. Too many items on the screen and the game would come to a crawl. Reviews would be critical of this - I recall the problem being more pronounced in the early SNES days than Atari/NES, but I was in highschool and more critical of my games by then.

Yeah, it wasn't "framerate" but whether it had slowdown or not.

 

[Hero_of_the_Day]

As others have said, flicker and slowdown were. I didn't understand what it was or what caused it. All I knew was that if more than a couple enemies got on the screen at once in Mega Man shit would crawl.

Playstation was the first time I started to learn about the "power" of a system. I remember becoming aware that arcade games were more powerful with things like the Capcom fighting games not being able to have 2vs2 matches because the PSX couldn't handle the multiple characters. And then "arcade-perfect" games coming to Dreamcast.

 

[SolidSnakex]

 

[Lupin3]

Old gaming ads are just the best! Love them to death, no matter what they say!

 

[abstract alien]

Not as much, but the SNES era had me in full framerate finger pointing mode.

 

[DoktorEvil]

Considering the framerate complaints of sonic, this is really funny.

 

[Pocky4Th3Win]

If anything companies were my aggressive and attacking each other more directly back in the day. I so miss that when companies would call out each other rather then just snide remarks.

 

[Apathy]

Does it count when I used to complain to myself about mega man/ducktales when there were more than 2 enemies on screen and everything just went into slow mo?

 

[TheSpoiler]

The more things change

This.

Every time people declare an absence of console warring, this post needs to be put up.

I can account first hand the fights of the SNES to PS1 eras being brutal. The internet wasn't as big as it was today, but it was every bit as horrible. Gamewinners forums were absolute scum, and soon after, so was Neoseekers.

 

[ipukespiders]

alt.video.games.*

 

[RedSwirl]

Graphics whore discussions definitely existed back in the day. The Genesis didn't advertise the fact that it was 16-bit for no reason.

 

[Rats Off To Ya]

The more things change

This is fascinating.

Unfortunately, most "games" are now like this. It makes sense if you
think of video games as interactive movies, something similar to
CD-I, and not a game in the traditional sense.

What game is being discussed here?

A Link to the Past.

The more things change, indeed.

 

[ReBurn]

Graphics were the main focus in my circle of friends. The average gamer back then didn't know much at all about computer hardware. Nor did anyone care about framerate.

It was pretty much a pecking order. People with Intellivision lorded it over Atari VCS, but those who couldn't afford Intellivision talked up the size of the 2600 game library. We all knew Intellivision was better. The few with Colecovision lorded it over the people with Intellivision because it was a fact that the graphics were better.

Nobody really talked about Atari 5200 aside from how much the lack of self-centering joysticks sucked. Most people hadn't even seen one.

 

[The Llama]

Until the last gen, it was more about graphics being better or worse, and less technical stuff (like resolutions or FPS). At least thats how I remember things being (I'm too young to remember the Atari/NES era in particular though).

 

[m@cross]

If I had a resource like GAF I would have called my parents out for buying me ET for my 2600 and probably known they lied when they got me Frogger twice but each time it had a shitty GIJoe game in it,......

 

[Rats Off To Ya]

Until the last gen, it was more about graphics being better or worse, and less technical stuff (like resolutions or FPS). At least thats how I remember things being (I'm too young to remember the Atari/NES era in particular though).

People talked about that stuff all the time. Only back then it was "jaggies" and "slowdown." The conversation is the same, it's just the jargon that's different.

 

[Guevara]

back then slowdown meant too much awesome stuff was happening on screen

 

[xxracerxx]

Yes....people like to think this is just a new phenomenon but it has been around since the beginning.

 

[vocab]

There are some games where slowdown was kinda cool, but some nes games that had sprite flicker constantly. For example, TMNT NES was dreadful.

 

[The Llama]

People talked about that stuff all the time. Only back then it was "jaggies" and "slowdown." The conversation is the same, it's just the jargon that's different.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with you. But at least IMO I think it was definitely less technical. I don't remember anyone pixel-counting to figure out resolution, and I don't think we really had the tools to measure FPS like Digital Foundry do now.

 

[Bl@de]

Not with the technical phrases ... But yeah even as kids we called it "broken" at ... Well below 20fps. Then again ... I played on PC in the early 90s. So thats basically a normal thing since the dawn of times.