What is your 'golden age'?

Yeah pretty much everything Nodima said. So much gosh darn NFL 2K5. Raised on the SNES (I can still remember opening MLPA Baseball and the console on Christmas morning in 95) but really the PS2 was my golden age. I played everything on that system, and still do to this day. I think it really marked the golden era in gaming not just for myself but for the medium as a whole.

1999: Deus Ex and System Shock 2

I'd say Mid 90's was my "Golden Age." I look back fondly on the transition from Genesis to PS1. From NBA Jam to Metal Gear Solid, Streets of Rage to Resident Evil...those were the best gaming years for me.

Last year, every year.

I'm almost certain I haven't had one, I've found gems from pretty much every point in games from the last 25ish years. I can pull something from pretty much any point from the NES through to now (well... maybe not the XBO/PS4... but there isn't anything on those machines yet worth talking about).

If a game is genuinely great it will shine through no matter how old, great games are just great games.

That's when your civ produced a ton of extra gold, production and culture. Usually lasts for like 10 turns, though if you expended a great person to do it, it can be shorter depending on how many times you have done that before. Actually wait I think they changed that in Gods and Kings.

I'm gonna say mid to late 80s arcades.

Is it okay if I say 2005 (or maybe start from 2002/03) to 2012?

I found this year shitty though

I think the last great era of gaming was the late 90s: Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Thief, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, Starcraft, etc, etc, etc, etc.

For me it's the late 80s-early 90s and just growing up in the arcades.

I'm not sure I really have one. When I think about this topic games like Super Mario, Kid Chameleon, Vagrant Story, Rogue Squadron, Onimusha, etc. all come to mind. My fondest gaming memories come from such disparate time periods that I don't think I can nail it down to a single age. For what it's worth, I also think that games are better now than they ever have been.

What year did PC games start becoming console ports? Whatever it is, every year before that was my golden age. Luckily the dark ages are starting to brighten.

I say probably '82 through 90 - especially on the Spectrum. That whole period from early, almost unfinished games, right through some of those great 128k only games.

I've been an avid gamer throughout my life but that was the period that most closely matches how Jeff and Paul discussed the idea of a golden age. Where you just played everything and everything seemed astonishing. Even the bad, in hindsight, insultingly bad games you'd throw hours at.

I do think that's worth remembering, it's not just about when you're favourite games came out and it's not saying you don't love games from other periods. It's about that time that defined you, it's where you draw your inspiration from. The difference between saying, 'ah this is like Way of the Exploding Fist' rather than Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 4.

I'm glad you get what I'm saying, it seems like half of the people in the thread aren't really understanding the question. Maybe I should have said 'what time period in games defined you', I suppose I just assumed that most people would have checked out Jeff's Dump Truck.

early - mid 90's pc games.

My golden age was mid to late 90's. The N64 and PSX era is where my gaming memories were solidified. Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Ocarina, MGS, Golden Eye, Twisted Metal, Crash Bandicoot, Wave Race, Tony Hawk, etc. were huge games for me.

VGA PC games, NES, SNES.

Goddamnit, this is a really hard question, but I find myself leaning towards the early to mid 90's, especially PC and other home computer games, when 2D art was close to reaching it's peak, and the polygonal games that were around often didn't use textures, but instead experimented a lot with gradients and various weird shading and dithering techniques, thanks to the rising popularity of the MCGA/Mode 16h 256 color mode. These weren't the first games I played, I started off in the CGA and monochrome era, but around 1990-93 was when I started realizing I really loved the medium and started becoming really fascinated by the art, music and themes in them. I'd probably say the events in the original Wing Commander affected me more than any movie or TV series has, and unlike Paul Barnett, I got really into flight simulators.

Well, since the polygonal period I described was fairly short lived (textures took off fairly early in the 90's, and by the time the PS1 came around, pretty much everything used textures), and was even pretty much exclusively available on the PC, as the Amiga had started falling behind at that point and usually had simpler 3D graphics in it's polygonal games, I'll post some screenshots of it:

Gallery

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PS1: FF 7-8-9, Parasite Eve, Resident Evil 2-3, Metal Gear Solid.

I liked a whole lot of SNES stuff before that but things really came into their own during the PS1 era.

The idea of a golden age is stupid. That's like admitting there will never be a time where games can be any better than they already have been. Might as well quit playing new stuff with that attitude.

Well I think Paul's point about Seniors having their Golden Age now with f2p games like Farmville was the most telling about his particular Golden Age concept. (whether games have had an objective Golden Age is a different question).

I think it's really about the first 10-20 games you play, more than when you play them. Everything feels so fresh and new the first time you experience it especially if it's a new sensation to the gaming world in general. But after playing the 35th iteration of the same genre it's still great, but it just ain't the same. Although if you do play them between say 8-16 ish I think there's an emotional attachment bonus.

While I probably like the games from that my era of my youth still sentimentally the best, I think now objectively is the best time in gaming in history. The reason being is that almost literally everything old and new is available today and so much incredibly more accessible thanks to digital distribution and dramatically lower costs. I can play so much more than I ever could have imagined.

Last Thursday. What a day!

Repeating myself but I miss the wide-spread experimentation that happened early in the first 3D generation, or the fourth generation, or whatever you'd like. Games were still these rough, raw packages of ideas, now they're these smooth liquigel tablets of notions.

But I've been playing Rogue Legacy and Valdis Story a lot lately and they have a real SNESness about them, especially Valdis Story. Valdis Story managed to give me that feeling of popping in a new cartridge into my SNES and thinking of all the secrets and challenges and art and gameplay that awaited me. In first person I kind of feel like the fun will arrive in front of me, whereas in sidescrollers I have to go find the fun.

@fisk0 said:

Well, since the polygonal period I described was fairly short lived (textures took off fairly early in the 90's, and by the time the PS1 came around, pretty much everything used textures), and was even pretty much exclusively available on the PC, as the Amiga had started falling behind at that point and usually had simpler 3D graphics in it's polygonal games, I'll post some screenshots of it:

YOU PLAYED TFX AS WELL!?!? EMAIL OR PM ME NOW SO WE CAN TALK ABOUT TFX.

TRACKING...LOOKS LIKE A LIZARD!

TOASTED BOGEY!

BANDITS! BANDITS! BREAK!

Around Fallout was what I remember really fondly but I really love games from all ages. I recall loving Stunts when we first got a computer in the house. Playing shareware shooters on my dads PC at work. All those Sim games and Theme Hospital especially. Also crazy games like Stratosphere: Conquest of the Skies that would work amazingly if remade with current physics.

The mid 90's to early millennium where I got to experience the NES, Sega Mega Drive, PC and most importantly the Gameboy that I enjoyed the most in my youth. Countless hours playing Pokemon Silver as well as playing Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, Wario Land 3 and Donkey Kong Country.

i would love to say the amiga or comador 64 era but i was not that old, and only have a faint memory of them games.
but i think my golden age is around the beginning of the psx/ps1 i mixed between psx and pc.
it a broad spectrum, but i remember as a child playing everything from resident evil to pandamonium and micro machines v8, i owned so many games and different controllers including guns flight sticks and racing wheels

@#I've been playing since Atari and I'd have to put my golden age at the early 2000's. I'd say 2000 through to 2004.

All my friends were gamers, I was earning decent money and was buying most new releases. I was playing so many shooters I was actually in a reasonable clan. I still had optimism about MMO's and there was enough horsepower to make proper immersive 3d worlds.

Essentially, during those 4 years my life was gaming.

There were other times that were great, the early 90's were pretty awesome, Arcades were still the shit, but it was different, I felt immersed in the culture of games but not games themselves.

The PS2 era.

I'd probably agree usually, but in this case we're using Paul Barnett's concept of Golden Age, as he described it in the recent dump truck, he doesn't use the term as some kind of era when the games were objectively the most influential or something like that (as the term is commonly used), but rather the period that you feel was formative for your taste in games, the kinds of games that you'd want to draw inspiration from if/when you make games yourself or stuff like that.

@fattony12000 said:

@fisk0 said:

Well, since the polygonal period I described was fairly short lived (textures took off fairly early in the 90's, and by the time the PS1 came around, pretty much everything used textures), and was even pretty much exclusively available on the PC, as the Amiga had started falling behind at that point and usually had simpler 3D graphics in it's polygonal games, I'll post some screenshots of it:

YOU PLAYED TFX AS WELL!?!? EMAIL OR PM ME NOW SO WE CAN TALK ABOUT TFX.

Loading Video...

TRACKING...LOOKS LIKE A LIZARD!

TOASTED BOGEY!

BANDITS! BANDITS! BREAK!

Sadly I didn't play it all that much, I did play a lot of other Digital Image Design games, and felt TFX was pretty representative of the style and era I was talking about, but TFX is probably the DID game I've played the least. F29 Retaliator, EF2000 and Inferno: The Odyssey Continues all used the same engine though (but other than EF2000, I don't think either of them had all that much radio chatter).

I'm English and about the same age as Paul Barnett, so my golden age of nostalgia is pretty similar to his. I cheered when he mentioned Paradroid, and can finally see why Mario and his ilk leave me cold.

In the UK, it was mostly about home-grown games on the Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga and the good old BBC Micro. Nothing will ever compare to playing Elite for the first time. To me, it felt like a kind of virtual reality.

I call it my golden age of nostalgia, because I recognise that in reality, the golden age is now, and it always will be.

Games just get better and better, and when they fall short, the old games are still there in some form for us to enjoy.

Mid to late 90's was pretty amazing. Between PC, consoles, arcades there was a lot of great stuff.

The 90's. The death of the Dreamcast was the end of my golden age of gaming.

PCs and consoles were entirely different platforms catering to different gamers. Everything Squaresoft put out was fantastic. The PC had titles like Doom, Quake and Unreal, fast paced twitch shooters while the N64 had Golden Eye and Perfect Dark. Same genre, totally different experiences.

The birth of the CRPG as we know it. Before Baldur's Gate, I can't think of a single gold-box game that had that level of story.

TIE Fighter, Freespace 2, X-Wing Alliance, Mechwarrior, Interstate '76. While each game was action packed and arcade-like, they were also complex games that had lots of systems you could tinker with.

The Dreamcast finally brought perfect, if not better, arcade ports to your home.

I would have to say it was a combination of 80s Arcades and the Original Nintendo Entertainment System. Though I had consoles prior to the NES, it was the first console that i was obsessed with.

You, sir or madam...I like you.

The year 2003. I was up on everything in games and film and excited about everything, even if it wasn't in the end the best.

I played games on the NES, GameBoy OG, GB Color, and N64, the memories are good and I had fun, but when I hooked up the PS2 to the internet with a dial up modem and played SOCOM with my friends and not be all at the same house. It was awesome. SOCOM 2 was my one summer vacation like 7pm to 4 am every night, Our clan was once in the the top 300 and we were super stoked. Then I moved to PC games like CS 1.6 and CS:S. Good times. Which makes me always point out. The games were probably crappy, but that didn't matter, I was having fun and my friends were there to share the fun. That's why the PS2 is my golden age. Now I read reviews and question why I thought a game that I liked was only a 2 star game or something and my computer is always outdated. Games sometimes feel demoralizing to me these days.

TL;DR PS2

I started with the 2600, but the period that most captured me was the 16-bit era. It may have to do with the Genesis being the first system I bought with my own money...

Highlights include:

• Street Fighter 2/Mortal Kombat/Samurai Showdown/Fatal Fury/World Heroes/a bunch of other fighters
• Final Fight/Streets of Rage/TMNT ports/Captain America & the Avengers/Sunset Riders/Saturday Night Slam Masters/Legend of the Mystical Ninja/Golden Axe
• The Shadowrun Games
• The Lost Vikings
• Toejam & Earl
• The Alladin games
• Secret of Mana
• Tecmo Super Bowl/Joe Montana Football/FIFA/NBA Live/NHL '9X/NBA Jam/Mutant League Football
• Mad Max/Road Rash/Bimini Run/Hard Driving/Rock n Roll Racing/Super Off-Road/F-Zero
• Moonwalker
• EA's Strike series (Jungle, Urban, and Desert Strike)
• Lethal Enforcers
• Kid Chameleon
• General Chaos
• Bomberman
• Phantasy Star/Final Fantasy/Ogre Battle
• Out of this World/Flashback
• Todd's Adventures in Slime World
• Super Metroid

Even though I was alive and kicking during the nes and genesis era. My golden age really didn't start until the original playstation, or really the first time I played Metal Gear Solid. Up until that point I really kind of just messed around with video games. I have fond memories of playing DOOM and command and conquer on the PC at a young age. MGS just blew my mind! And set me on a path of video games.

well I would have to say the mid 2000s. Those were my teens. I played many games and did many dumb things. Great times.

Kewl. How deep down the flight sim rabbit hole are ya these days?

Me and a buddy would play two player co-op TFX, one on the stick and one on the keyboard. It was too legit.

Its a hard question but two lots of generations for me i guess, the SNES/Megadrive and the Playstation/Saturn/N64 eras, i guess i was just more excited about games back then than i am now. A lot of firsts happend, the first explosion of rps and fighting games (SNES), the first lot of true arcade perfect ports on the cd based consoles, first real 3d platfromer that worked on the N64 etc. When i play games i always have the feeling of nostalgia that things are not quite as good as they used to be and are getting further away from what i loved about games back then.

Of course im sure people who grew up with the ps2 probably think the same about the current gen, but we have seen such a shift from games with deep and engrossing worlds to a more hollywood asthetic that i cant help but feel a little sad. Personally id like to see a few less COD/BFs and more traditional JRPGs (not Final Fantasy) or adventure games but thats just me and im old and cant deal with change like i used to ^_^

When I was using the amiga in my early teens, friends getting together to play classic adventuregames or just fight it out in master blaster. Good times!

Not quite deep enough to invest in a HOTAS setup, I guess (though I've considered it), and I don't play a lot of civilian flight games, the latest I bought was MS Flight Simulator 98. I tend to buy most combat flight simulators I come across (DCS, Falcon 4.0, Wings of Prey, Birds of Steel) but since my only joystick uses a game port, and I haven't had a computer with one of those in over a decade, I usually play with a 360 gamepad, or even keyboard and mouse. So, yeah, I can compromise quite a lot when it comes to those games. I've also grown quite fond of the Ace Combat series, even Assault Horizon (it's multiplayer mode is still fantastic, even though the campaign is pretty mediocre).

I'm living it, baby.

My golden age was and always will be the 1970s. That's when I first played arcade machines, before electronic gamers were even in arcades.

I remember going to the Mall in my town and hoping my mom was going shopping at Bradlees. Bradlees had six arcade machines, and I would spend my quarters playing those machines... badly...because I was only six or seven years old. Tank, Stunt Cycle, Gun Fight, and Sea Wolf were all games I played poorly, but loved playing them.

Playing video game in a time when only 0.0001% of the US population had a home computer, when Bell Telephone was still the only phone company, and when a only people with a 'pocket protector' had an electronic calculator was a different experience.

I don't even know what defines or delimits a "Golden Age".

I only see nostalgia speaking in this thread.

Zelda: a Link to the Past was awesome, and so was Mechwarrior and Donkey Kong Country (specially the 2nd). I loved those games. SuperMetroid was probably awesome as well, but too hard for me at that time.

Then Super Mario 64, Blast Corps 64, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

I had lots of fun with Age of Empires, Monkey Island 3, Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital and Grim Fandango. And I had addiction with StarCraft.

I enjoyed a FPS for the first time with Halo, I only had frustration previously with Doom 2, Turok and Half-Life. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath was really memorable to me.

Then lots of fun with Gears of War and a really interesting universe in Mass Effect. Darksiders looks like Zelda meets God of War.

I look at the past and certainly Darksiders doesn't have the epicness of Zelda. Fable tries to capture some of that feeling, but it's hard to give the feeling of the duty of a child against Ganondorf while you stress the nature of freedom and options. On the other hand, having options is great. When I look at Fable 1, 2 and 3, I see what probably Zelda 1, 2 and 3 were, and I hope there will be better Fable games in the future, that are to Fable 1, 2 and 3 what Zelda: a Link to the Past and Zelda: Ocarina of Time are to Zelda games 1, 2 and 3. Even if it's not called Fable anymore and it stands by the name of Kingdoms of Amalur, or any other name.

I miss games like Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and Broken Sword, but when comparing Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse with Titanfall, I feel more like playing the latter than the former. New games shadow those of the past, and so happens with genres.

I never played Civilization games or Sim City games, but I hope they become more serious, similarly to what Democracy and Capitalism games are trying to do. I think those games are more fun when they are more interesting/serious. I think we will keep seeing how games evolve and improve, and the games in the past may be special because they achieve an interesting artistic value, but the technological value of new games shadows those of the past.

We can only hope the future games, that will make use of better technology, will have at least the same artistic value as games in the past, wrt story and feelings. As I say, Zelda a Link to the Past is not one of the games that are usually considered as a prime example of what is art, but being a child in the dark, fighting rats with a recently found sword and nothing else is something with an important artistic value. This may be more significant in games like Dark Souls, though. But I don't think there is any place in Dark Souls that feels like a relief of a constant danger as Kakariko is in Zelda.

I really hope games do not become too market oriented and try to achieve quality and artistic value even if that means reducing the return of the investment, but I'm afraid this is only going to happen by chance or mistake. Mass Effect was great, but there were great complains about the ending in Mass Effect 3. After all, if that's the end and there is no ME4 planned, there is no reason to bother at all, or there is?