My first dedicated gaming system was the PS1, and in general I have no trouble going back to the sprites and chunky polygons of the mid-to-late 90s, whether on consoles or computers
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as long as I can upscale them to 1080P
Beyond that it gets a bit hit and miss- SNES and Mega Drive games look and sound fine to me and I’ve played plenty of 16 bit console games as an adult. On PC, I can enjoy 2D stuff like Sam & Max Hit the Road or the original X-Com but most early 3D, like the original System Shock, looks a bit too much like visual vomit.
Going to 8-bit, while the vast majority of NES games are too primitive to my eyes and ears, I have no problems with Game Boy/Game Boy Color games.
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(Well, at least the good ones, mostly made by Nintendo)
Is it just nostalgia because I had a GBC as a kid or is it because Game Boy games came later and had more developed visual aesthetics?
My limit is probably the very late 80s
I’ve played some older DOS games that were simple polygon/vector graphics and text boxes and with the exception of some QoL things that have become standard in the … holy crap…30+ years since the 80’s ( soooo ooolllddd) I could get into them for a while and find them enjoyable.
I keep thinking I’m going to dig into the old Atari consol roms (had a few of the Atari consoles for a while as a kid long before the NES) but it seems a bit daunting to relearn how to play a game with a “joystick” and “one button”.
I also keep thinking I’m going to try playing the ancient text adventure/interactive story games but every time I try… my brain just can’t figure out how to deal with things as a more casual enjoyer of video games. I wind up giving up after about 30 minutes to an hour of “playing”.
Though I still have a blast playing Rogue with ASCII graphics every now and then.
While I’m not hugely into NES games I can see their appeal aesthetically and they mostly still read as “video games” to me. Anything Atari starts to look a bit too rudimentary to my 90s eyes
Its kinda the reason why I want to sit down and give some honest effort to play through some of the Atari XX00 console games someday. Kinda like going to a “hands on” history museum.