nkarafo
Member
First, a question. Were you gaming in 1994-97 period? More specifically, did you care about arcade games back then?
See, i remember in that time period, modern arcade hardware was still the state of the art. Kinda like how an expensive PC is now, with dual titan cards or something. But more. No Pentium/3DFX combo, no PS1/Saturn/N64 could even come close to the likes of Model 2, System 22 and let alone Model 3. Heck, Model 3 was like a league of its own. I mean Sega struggled with inferior Model 2 ports on Saturn, so Model 3 was completely out of reach.
I remember the first time i saw Daytona. My eyes popped. The texture mapping. The 3D models. The smooth motion. Since then, arcades was like dream machines for me. With Sega Rally 2 being the ultimate game, one that was leagues ahead anything you could play at home, graphically.
I also remember the console ports. PS1/Saturn received plenty of arcade ports. But all of them were inferior. There were always sacrifices. But the most obvious one was always the frame rate. Arcades were 60, consoles were 30 or 25. I remember the buzz around Virtua Fighter 2 on Saturn actually being 60fps like the arcade. It received a huge hype from magazines of the time just for that reason alone. See, people back then cared about this thing. Because going from the smooth/realistic motion of 3D graphics to a stuttering/slower frame rate was jarring. It still is.
After the Dreamcast was released and Sega stopped making state of the art arcade machines, the huge gap between arcades and consoles almost closed. Suddenly, we could have awesome 3D graphics at 60fps in our homes, which was extremely rare on the previous consoles. Then the PS2/GC/XBOX came and 60fps games were almost as common as 30fps ones. Most importantly, the majority of racing games were 60fps (now its the minority).
And then the 360/PS3 generation came and made this huge step backwards by making 30fps the standard again. Just like those PS1 days. Why? Was it the higher resolution? PS1/GC/XBOX also had higher resolution than PS1/SAT/N64, it didn't stop them making 60fps a more common thing. And what about PS4/One. Just how powerful a system has to be so we can experience something we already experienced 10 years ago?
So, obviously its not a hardware/power thing. Its a "design choice". Supposedly. But why? Why people stopped caring about smooth motion? Heck, even on 8bit/16bit consoles 99% of games were 60fps (synced with the 60hz of TVs). Why isn't this a thing anymore? Is it that games became so mainstream and all the casual gamers don't care for anything except flashy effects and pretty pictures? Is it that gamers are too young to remember the days when 3D arcade games used to make or jaws drop? What the hell happened?
Thankfully Nintendo/Retro Studios gets it. Thankfully.
See, i remember in that time period, modern arcade hardware was still the state of the art. Kinda like how an expensive PC is now, with dual titan cards or something. But more. No Pentium/3DFX combo, no PS1/Saturn/N64 could even come close to the likes of Model 2, System 22 and let alone Model 3. Heck, Model 3 was like a league of its own. I mean Sega struggled with inferior Model 2 ports on Saturn, so Model 3 was completely out of reach.
I remember the first time i saw Daytona. My eyes popped. The texture mapping. The 3D models. The smooth motion. Since then, arcades was like dream machines for me. With Sega Rally 2 being the ultimate game, one that was leagues ahead anything you could play at home, graphically.
I also remember the console ports. PS1/Saturn received plenty of arcade ports. But all of them were inferior. There were always sacrifices. But the most obvious one was always the frame rate. Arcades were 60, consoles were 30 or 25. I remember the buzz around Virtua Fighter 2 on Saturn actually being 60fps like the arcade. It received a huge hype from magazines of the time just for that reason alone. See, people back then cared about this thing. Because going from the smooth/realistic motion of 3D graphics to a stuttering/slower frame rate was jarring. It still is.
After the Dreamcast was released and Sega stopped making state of the art arcade machines, the huge gap between arcades and consoles almost closed. Suddenly, we could have awesome 3D graphics at 60fps in our homes, which was extremely rare on the previous consoles. Then the PS2/GC/XBOX came and 60fps games were almost as common as 30fps ones. Most importantly, the majority of racing games were 60fps (now its the minority).
And then the 360/PS3 generation came and made this huge step backwards by making 30fps the standard again. Just like those PS1 days. Why? Was it the higher resolution? PS1/GC/XBOX also had higher resolution than PS1/SAT/N64, it didn't stop them making 60fps a more common thing. And what about PS4/One. Just how powerful a system has to be so we can experience something we already experienced 10 years ago?
So, obviously its not a hardware/power thing. Its a "design choice". Supposedly. But why? Why people stopped caring about smooth motion? Heck, even on 8bit/16bit consoles 99% of games were 60fps (synced with the 60hz of TVs). Why isn't this a thing anymore? Is it that games became so mainstream and all the casual gamers don't care for anything except flashy effects and pretty pictures? Is it that gamers are too young to remember the days when 3D arcade games used to make or jaws drop? What the hell happened?
Thankfully Nintendo/Retro Studios gets it. Thankfully.
