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[Romulus]

the jump from 480p to 720p was the nuttiest.

It was, and I remember the original xbox doing it natively before the ps3/xb360 generation even started. Fucking insane.

 

[JimmyRustler]

PS1 to PS2, no Question.

The graphical leap was something to behold of - and I was just at Right ago (13-14 years old). Good days.

 

[martino]

i will go with gen 6.
3d games with enough power and experience to deliver good visuals and gameplay.

 

[Beelzebubs]

Gen 6. For me it was hard going from beautiful Sprite artwork in the 16 bit era to the blocky polygons at the start of 32 bit era.

 

[Pallas]

6th gen but I’m honestly more hyped about next gen more then I had been hyped for any transition.

 

[Wolfgang Jr]

It was, and I remember the original xbox doing it natively before the ps3/xb360 generation even started. Fucking insane.

Dreamcast VGA box enabled games were also crazy.

Soul Calibur *hnnnngggg*

 

[Yoshi]

For me the jump form SNES/MD to N64/Saturn was very impressive from a technical POV.

I voted for 6th gen but it's obvious that the jump from Mario titles on SNES to Mario 64 is bigger than anything that happened from 5th to 6th gen.

That said, it's still apples and oranges for me to compare 2D to 3D games. Not fair either way.

I did not vote for 5th gen because I look at the whole catalog of availabe games and the average quality.
4th Gen has the absolute pinnacle of 2D gaming, developers had 100% mastered the hardware.
There were a shitton of great games, all time classics. Some of them, like Donkey Kong Country still hold up extremely well.
5th Gen was more like a trial and error period. For every Mario 64, Metal Gear, Ocarina of Time or Gran Turismo you got 10 shitty games where you clearly noticed that the devs had no experience with 3D and polygons.

There's a reason most indie games these days try to mimmick the 4th Gen 2D titles and ignore early PSX/N64 titles.

Well, the question is not "What is the best generation", but rather "what was the most exciting / 'hyping' start of a generation". While the fifth generation also has a special place in my heart in terms of quality, in terms of excitement, it is probably impossible to eclipse the start of proper 3D (and Super Mario 64 as a launch title).

 

[Chastten]

N64/PSX, and it's not even close.

As a kid, I liked playing videogames as much as the next kid. I enjoyed playing Super Contra on the NES, Super Mario Allstars on SNES and Sonic on Megadrive. But it was something we did besides playing Lego or playing in the woods. Not a serious hobby.

One day however, our local toystore had an N64 demo setup, running video's of Super Mario 64 and Wave Race 64 and I remember being awed by those visuals and thinking by myself 'videogames can be like this?'. Similarly, I remember seeing the TV-ads for things like Final Fantasy 7 and Ocarina of Time and being absolutely amazed by it. Not long after that, my brother got a PSX and I got an N64.

To me, it was the only time a new gen actually felt like a revolution. Obviously, it's also the gen that has aged the worst and I consider most of these games unplayable nowadays, especially since we're in PAL-land and most games run at like 17fps, but whatever, at the time this stuff was truly nextgen. No other transition ever gave me that feel again.

 

[Kerotan Frog]

Gen 6 without a doubt. The jump was huge and I was beyond hyped for the Dreamcast for Sonic Adventure and man did it deliver. My brother was hyped for PS2, so as the DC met its inevitable death, I shifted towards PS2. What I found was the greatest library in history. SO. MANY. AMAZING. GAMES.

I hoped Gen 7 would surpass it, and it fell short. I hoped Gen 8 would surpass it, and its actually coming close. Now my hopes are high for Gen 9, as we finally have the power for games to look like the prerendered trailers of the past.

 

[chixdiggit]

One day however, our local toystore had an N64 demo setup, running video's of Super Mario 64 and Wave Race 64 and I remember being awed by those visuals

Same. Something about Mario running around in a 3D space was mind blowing at the time.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

The Wii / 360 / PS3 (and PSP and DS) generation, without question. My first gaming platforms were an old IBM computer, an NES, and a Game Boy.

- 360 and PS3 in particular brought online competitive/vs gaming to the masses
- All three systems introduced a digital shop, reviving long-dormant franchises and allowing indies to sell without a retail presence
- Wii brought motion controls and IR pointing to the table, changing gaming forever
- DS twin-screens and touch controls changed gaming and helped the retro revival
- the first set of HD consoles playing in 720p and higher
- PSP was a valid challenger to Nintendo's handheld empire

All the systems had something to be excited about, imo.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

Finally seeing almost non-existent of aliasing is the holy grail for me

That is the most first world problem I have ever heard of in video games!

But yeah, the PS4 is a great machine this gen, it brought us stable--and sometimes higher--FPS targets... From a quality of life stand point this gen has been great too, we got much faster installs, often faster load times, and as you said it's the generation we finally got pretty good image quality and native 1080p pretty much all the time on the ps4 at least.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

I feel like Gen6 was when we started really seeing “holy shit” graphics regularly. I remember using the replays in NFL 2K on my DC, was blown away how everything looked and how the players moved

 

[Grinchy]

I was young enough as a kid that the 8-bit to 16-bit jump was great, but it's not like I was following so closely that I knew what was going on. By the time I had gaming magazines with preview articles for upcoming post-Genesis stuff (CD, 32X, Saturn, Jaguar, 3DO, ect) I was getting really damn hyped.

My friend got a PS1 at launch with a stack of games for his birthday. I barely knew what it was based on random articles I had come across. So I got to experience the PS1 at his house here and there. I got my own a year later. The jump into 3D games was really massive at the time. And playing media off of a CD was also amazing in a way that would be hard to explain to people today.

Then N64 with Mario 64 just blew my little brains out. That is my favorite going back. The jump to PS2 was probably my most hyped, but probably only because reading information online was so much more prevalent by then and all the paid shills had been hyping us for like a year.

 

[RPS37]

I’m so surprised so few people were impressed by the jump to HD.

the first screens of Mass Effect, Oblivion and Bioshock blew my fucking mind.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I had my share of clunkers, but going from NES to Genesis/SNES was awesome.

Back then our fam were multiplatform with consoles and PC, and my siblings and I would play all systems. At the tail end of Genesis/SNES is when PC CDrom took off which was awesome too.

Looking back, sure a lot of shit games back in the early-mid 90s, but the change in games from Apple and NES in the 80s was like night and day.

16-bit consoles for flash and speed, PC for RPGs, strategy and more complex games (one of my bros like stat sports like Earl Weaver Baseball kinds of games you only got on PC). And of course Wofl3D and Doom which ran sluggish on our 386, but worked well enough. Then when we got a 486/66 it blazed. And so did Descent.