Markup View

Author: CosmicRock

Jun 7th 2012 at 2:01:40 PM

I'm going to plug my own list here, but if you look at my breakdown I cover it all pretty thoroughly. Not every age was a huge move forward for every medium (handheld console or PC), but each of the six ages represent a major shift in some way that affected or defined the industry. I lived, played, and lost sleep through most of these incarnations of the industry.

One thing to note about the 8-bit and 16-bit era, is that it really was one steady progression. The SNES console came out a full year after the Sega Genesis and Turbo GrafX 16. The 8-bit Gameboy and gamegear handhelds were released well into the 16 bit era, and people still played their Nintendo consoles well into the early 1990s. It was a perfectly common sight to see a NES and a SNES or Genesis sitting side by side on someone's entertainment center.

Also, there just wasn't that big of a leap forward or dramatic change in how games were viewed and played. The 16-bit consoles were more like the fleshed out and refined versions of their 8-bit counterparts.

On the other hand, you couldn't find many people still playing an Atari 2600 in 1986. It was rare to see a Super Nintendo sitting next to a Playstation in 1996 and so on.