Episode: 3709
Title: HPR3709: Relationships to games and console generations
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3709/hpr3709.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 04:27:03

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3709 for Thursday the 20th of October 2022.
Today's show is entitled Relationships to Games and Console Generations.
It is the first show by Newhost Mode 7 and is about 9 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, some ramblings about what next generation consoles used to mean to games, gamers and game developers.
Hello Hacker Public Radio. This is Mode 7. I'm a new contributor, a long-time listener.
I've tried to do episodes in the past and end up just editing them and cutting them back
and trying to re-record them and make them perfect or whatever I needed them to be.
Anyway, I've decided to just do an episode and record it and it could suck.
It might ramble a little bit, but I'm driving and I don't have, you know, I'm not going to edit anything.
I'm just going to submit it this way.
The thing I wanted to talk about today was about video games and I really liked video games and I've always really liked video games.
I got to thinking about the state of video games today versus the way it was when I was a kid back in the 90s and the new consoles that are out.
And the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox, what is it? Series X? Can't remember their naming scheme anymore.
They were coming out a couple years ago and I remember thinking, what is it about these systems that enhances the way people are playing games?
What's the big draw?
I know that they have faster processors and they have faster storage and they have better GPUs, all of this stuff.
So that's an obvious change, that's an obvious technological job.
And then of course there might be changes like Sony has done some changes to their controller and they do kind of have some cool stuff.
By and large though, what really makes these systems better than their predecessors? What's the big push? What's making the games? What what what is this giving developers to be able to make games better or more fun or more enjoyable?
The players to the end users. Quite honestly, I don't own PlayStation or Xbox systems, so I can't investigate this myself.
But just from observations of what I've been able to pick up from videos and things like that, I'm not seeing anything that really stands out is like, wow, this is going to change games in this very significant way like ABC.
And that got me to thinking how kind of that's a little bit sad because when I was a kid and I was really into game systems and getting all the newest latest and greatest for me and my friends, there was a good reason for that.
And the good reason for that was that every time there was a technological lead such as a new console coming out, that changed the way the games play.
That gave the game developers something new to work with and they could really change the way that you enjoyed the game or the way that we're supposed to enjoy the games, the games to really turn out.
But a good example would be going from the 16-bit generation to the next generation out, which would be the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64, at PlayStation.
And the example I would give would be something like Super Mario 64, which not only is it a fantastic game, it's really held up even to this day.
I still enjoy getting that game out and looking for the 120 stars and enjoy it every time.
Because it really is by today's standards, it really did kind of set the roadmap for what everything in 3D platformer would be.
And I really enjoy it.
So you couldn't play that on a super Nintendo.
You couldn't play that on a Sega Genesis.
So it was a big job and it just revolutionized everything.
So it was something to be excited about it really was.
And that's true for all of the console generation changes that we went through back in the 80s, 90s and even in the early 2000s.
We really just didn't see that kind of a thing after I would say after the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360.
I would say that the improvements being made weren't good enough to really merit like the excitement.
And maybe I'm wrong.
I don't own a PlayStation 3, 4 or 5.
I don't own an Xbox 360 or an Xbox One or Xbox Series X or whatever their name is.
So I'm kind of commenting, commenting from a position of ignorance.
That's kind of what I'm seeing here.
And if somebody wants to come up, create an episode in response to that, I think that would be great.
I'd love to hear somebody's observations that might kind of prove me differently.
And the one exception to the situation would be Nintendo because every time they've done a console generation, they've tried to do something innovative.
And obviously with the N64, they innovated with the analog stick and the rumble pack.
And with the GameCube, I would say they innovated.
I think their controller was pretty innovative.
And some of the ideas that they were trying to pull off with some of their things were pretty cool.
Most of it was, by that point, most of it was like unique game design ideas.
But I think their controller was pretty fantastic.
But once they stopped competing and trying to have the most powerful hardware like Sony and Microsoft, they actually were innovating in different ways.
Ways where hardware wasn't the main issue.
So I think that with them being the exception, there's not been a lot of exciting stuff going on with these console releases.
So reminiscing and looking back, I'm sure anybody who was into video games in the 90s.
We're growing up in that time period.
We'll remember very well what that was like the competition with Sega competition between them and Nintendo and Sony jumping in.
And you know, they would run those advertisements that would kind of dig at each other a little bit.
And some of those ads were just crazy.
If you're a younger gamer or you just weren't in the scene back then, I would recommend going back to watch those because they were nuts.
Some of those commercials were just funny.
It's some of more terrible.
But it definitely kind of set the tone for for how things were done in that market.
But it's just, you know, I just remember it being a really exciting time.
I remember there being so many things to be excited about getting a magazine in the mail and looking at screenshots.
And that actually meant something when you were looking at those screenshots.
You would look at them and you kind of be able to read what was going on in that game and what it meant for the system that was playing it because you.
You get a feel for how games look on different systems based on their capability is they all had kind of a unique set of capabilities.
So you could kind of look at a game and go, yeah, that's probably on Sega Genesis or that looks like a, you know, super NES game or whatever, because there were certain things you could pick up on.
And then when you looked at a screenshot of a next generation game, you just knew the differences.
You could see them and you, you know, so exciting to imagine how, you know, what is this new technology going to allow me to do and allow me to see an experience.
And those those jumps in technology just made a huge difference.
Like if you told the kid in 1991, who's playing Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo that come 1997, he'd be able to play Mario 64 in full 3D.
He'd never wouldn't even know what to think of it. It was just, it's too much, it's just too much of a change.
So it's pretty, pretty fantastic.
But we're not seeing that today and it's just an observation I made.
I thought it'd be something to talk about making episode about and kind of a nice little simple short introduction for me to get something posted with hacker public radio.
And then, you know, hopefully I'll get some more episodes together. I've got some ideas for episodes that would probably take a little bit more research and be a little bit more in depth.
And probably won't be super, I don't know, you can kind of find stuff about this like niche gaming stuff like on message boards.
Of course, YouTube's got tons of stuff. Everybody's creating their own.
You know, little documentaries about different things that took place and they're doing some pretty cool stuff. Some of it's very well researched. Some of it's not.
But anyway, I think there'd be a lot of cool little things I can offshoot with this and just make a few episodes.
I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for listening.
And as you know, hopefully maybe you'll do a response. Somebody can do a response to this. Maybe they, maybe they can fill me in.
Maybe I'm missing out because I haven't played some of these systems and I just don't know what they're all about.
And maybe there's something there I'd really enjoy and really get excited about that they can introduce me to.
So maybe that would be beneficial. Thank you, hacker public radio.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work.
Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself. If you ever thought of recording podcasts,
then click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the internet archive and our syncs.net.
On this advice status, today's show is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
