It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Cassette Vision
nicole.express
nicole.express
In 1983 the US console market collapsed because of the many low-quality atari games and not-licenced consoles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983
The NES was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985.
It's sad that to even think of competing in the console race is now near impossible.
As the next consoles generations being AI with AI generated graphics, where's the fun in that?
Going digital has made everything cold and sterile. The same is true with mobile devices.
It was different and you felt it. As the old internet to the new internet. Something the new generations won't understand.
Consoles have always been about the games. It was the dedicated hardware for. So my gripe is not that it can't do what a PC can do. I own a PC for that.
Games were creative, imaginative and this was before "AAA" was a thing.
There is no magic to be found.
I find more enjoyment playing old DOS and Amiga games. Which luckily there are sites for that.
The playdate is a thing and true but it's a device i've not used but know I'll use once and put down. It's not in the shops where I can try before I buy.
Indie games are cute. However what I find with indie games, which I own more than a dozen on my steam list are fun for the while and then never get touched. Not my thing.
It's not about the game play, it's about the hardware.
Large expensive games need to appeal to the lowest common denominator and feel like they are designed by committee, much more so than they used to due to the huge increase in development costs. But I'm happy with the variety in the indie scene, which includes games that hearken back to older games (e.g, Ringlorn Saga, which takes old Japanese computer RPGs as its inspiration), and games that provide totally new experiences with plenty of creativity. Plus there are niche games that would have never sold back in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., ones with more serious emotional or more adult themes).
Despite that, games tend to follow design trends, so it certainly makes sense that you might just prefer games made during a particular era. I love exploring older games too (I've spent way too much time messing around with old consoles on my MiSTer), but I still find plenty of interesting new experiences as well.
I don't think it's that things are digital, or digital distribution. IMHO, it's the consolidation of design without major limitations or character. XBox and Playstation are AMD based PCs with a weird OS, and have been for at least two generations. They don't have a "look", because 3d rendering is pretty reasonable now, and everything kind of looks the same; newer generations look better, but draw rates are plenty high, so things don't have to look a certain way to be playable. They don't have a "sound", because there's so much storage and most of the sound is mixed from (high quality) pre-recorded pieces.
EDIT:
> The term cassette is a contemporary Japanese synonym for ROM cartridge, not to be confused with the magnetic cassette tape format.
Ah, well, that's not at all confusing.
In English, the word became strongly associated with cassette tapes because it wasn't widely used before those came around, but the word itself is much older and more general.
The words referred to a box where coins where stored. It s probably still used in banks, like when ATMs are refilled.
Surprisingly for "LTO tape", french mostly uses the literal translation of "LTO tape" and sometimes "LTO cartridge" too ; the use of "cassette" is uncommon.
I just discovered it's the word for a bicycle component too.
There is the word "caissette" too, which is a box, small but not necessarily extra small as the "ette" prefix usually suggests in french though. I guess it depends of the context. ("Caisse" == "box")
There is yet another word for small boxes made of wood usually used for vegetables and fruits: "cagette".
"Casse" exists too with another meaning : it s a vehicle graveyard. (It comes from the translation of "to break" wich is the verb "casser").
It only acquired that association due to the prevalence of audio and video tapes being enclosed in cassettes from the 1970s on, and will likely lose it as time goes on.
In terms of underlying meaning, "cartridge" and "cassette" are largely interchangeable, and on the other end of this, there are situations in which "tape cartridge" has been a common construction (especially with backup tape drives that were common in the '80s and '90s). 8-track tapes have also historically been called cartridges.
I always considered "Compact Disc" to be a dumb name; but I suppose it was forgivable as a reference to the much larger LaserDisc.
"The compact disc is an evolution of LaserDisc technology, where a focused laser beam is used that enables the high information density required for high-quality digital audio signals."
I think usage of these terms became a bit calcified much more recently than we think. My first computer was a TI-99/4A, and while the term "cassette" was used regularly in its literature to refer to using audio cassettes for data storage, the ROM cartridges that commercial software came on were never called "cartridges" officially, always "solid-state software" or "command modules", with this usage extending well into the '80s.