Sorry for the delay, Jazz and I were discussing horse things in retro.Originally Posted by Jazzmarazz
Everyone knows only casuals like Twilight Sparkle.
But I digress.
But the PS1 was far from the first system to do that, or the first system to use CDs as a basis. Barring that, FMV didn't really add anything to the "game" part of a game. It just tossed in an opportunity to fill the back cover with false advertising. Not unlike the Atari day.
Doesn't excuse the Jaguar, Turbografix, 3DO, CD-I, etc etc. CD based games were a novelty and a breeding ground for shovelware or games that could just as easily be done on non-CD hardware. Ultimately you're paying exorbitant amounts for better audio, maybe a tiny bit of VO, and a slight graphical increase. More often than not you're just playing cart based console/PC ports.You're just talking about Sega CD. Sega CD was a disaster not because "CDs were a bad thing", but because Sega was in a sort of internal war at the time which meant Sega Japan and Sega America were going their own ways. Because of this Sega's American branch couldn't get developers to invest on and program for Sega CD, which turned out as it did.
But they're hugely different industries with hugely different companies driven by hugely different factors pushing (at the time, most certainly) hugely different products. It's like comparing the tea farming industry in China to your backyard tomato garden.I don't understand why you're intent to separate consoles and PC. When I say game industry I mean both. It's not called "console industry" or "PC gaming industry". It's called game industry.
That's largely nitpicky though. Ultimately it's still binary data. But then so is everything. Just because you're using cassettes or laserdisc doesn't mean music changes.Actually, from a technological stand point floppies were really different in that they used magnetism to store data while optic discs used... well, optics.
Ultimately. Doesn't change the fact that it was a huge, stupid gimmick for almost the entirety of the 90's.I don't think CDs were just a gimmick for games, in that they were used to truly enhance a game's experience by using pre rendered videos as well as complicated audio, in both music and speech, as well as just bumping up the size limit which helped developers a lot.
Resident Evil 1 used a lot of in-game cutscenes. If anything, that horrible, horrible thing on live-action Wesker's head detracts from the overall game. But that's just me.In my own experience, I never found motion controls in wii innovative and they would most likely get in the way rather than improve the experience. But I remember FMVs in PS1 games were usually one of the highlights of the game for me (I'm thinking Resident Evil, among others). This is a personal opinion and you might feel differently, but I never considered them gimmicks that add nothing to the experience.
Cutscenes moved the medium forward in a weird way, but they didn't really enhance the game itself. SNES games had "cutscenes". All it did was make it more cinematic (which could just as easily be introduced via camera tricks in the now 3D environment, and today we see the movement back to in-engine cutscenes and the large scale abandonment of traditional FMV)
Discs were a gimmick on launch and 3D was just a way to release the same old shit but with a different angle.May I ask you, if you consider Discs a "gimmick" and 3D "just a perspective change", what DO you find good technology? The way I see it you seem to believe that all technology is pointless. ???
There's not much difference between Ocarina of Time and A Link To The Past when it comes to concept and gameplay. It's just that one has a 3D gameplay style. So it's pretty much the same shit with a perspective change. Meanwhile discs were just an excuse to release more expensive versions of old cart based games with different audio, or charge more for games that were marginally better than what came before. In essence, the game industry has always been a stagnant, slow moving beast that takes forever to go anywhere. And when it does, it's on the ability of the software rather than the hardware. And we get shit that's hugely gimmicky and stupid for quite a while before anyone actually uses it, or the tech is capable of doing something truly "new" rather than "it's exactly like your old shit, but with X!".
