Uncategorized

There are a couple different versions of this “quiz” floating around social media. I saw the very truncated version on the left first and later a more complete version circulated on the right. However it got me thinking about consoles and the generations that they belong to. Essentially for a long time now I have heard people refer to a specific console as being part of the third, the seventh , or even now that we are entering the ninth generation. I wanted to know more about this and as a result it sent me down a rabbit hole that I am now sharing with you. Of course you can just read this handy wikipedia page I found in my travels and be done with it, but I figure if you have made it this far into the post you are probably going to continue down to the end.

Generation One – The Single Game Units

Generation one for the first part were the pong clones. The above is an image of the unit that I remember playing as a kid but unfortunately I didn’t get to play very much of it. My nephew had borrowed it and apparently left the image up on screen all night and burned it into the very expensive zenith cabinet television that my grandparents had, and from that point forward it was only used with the utmost of caution and under full supervision. Even as we entered the Nintendo era of gaming, said Grandparents refused to let me hook any game consoles up to any of their televisions. For the most part the consoles in this generation were a single game, or a number of game modes that were switchable on unit.

Generation Two – The Era of Cartridges

This is the era that was the counter effect of the arcade boom and in my memory was dominated by the Atari 2600. The defining feature of this generation was the inclusion of some way of swapping games, usually through a cartridge slot. For the most part, even though I played a pong clone… the Atari 2600 was the first video game system that I considered to be mine. I remember a few friends had the Intellivision or the ColecoVision… and a very rare few had an Atari 5200… but the vast majority were 2600 kids. I won’t lie I have a certain nostalgia for the wood grain era of gaming, and I really would have loved to have seen a Vectrex in its prime.

Generation Three – The 8-Bit Era

The second generation was exceptionally long, not necessarily because it was still booming but more that video games crashed hard in the late 70s and early 80s. This generation was largely heralded by the introduction of better 8 bit graphics into the equation. It was not until the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System that this marketplace revived, and with it was a change to start treating these things as toys rather than living room computers. For me 1987 was the “Nintendo Christmas”, and I remember it being legitimately the only thing I wanted that year and I was scared to death when nothing vaguely Nintendo shaped showed up under the Christmas tree. I remember the consoles being in extremely short supply, but ultimately I got the set I wanted with the all important Super Mario Bros. The folks left out in the cold here were the kids who ended up getting a Sega Master System, because they couldn’t quite join in the recess huddles talking about game strategy, and absolutely couldn’t participate in swapping cartridges.

Generation Four – The 16-Bit Era

This era is really my favorite and the one I am the most nostalgic for, but it was also a really odd generation. It is largely signified by the inclusion of 16 bit graphics, but as a result you have a few odd cases where technically the Sega Genesis and the Turbografx 16 were contemporaries of both the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Nintendo. Ultimately this generation will forever be marked by the competition between the SNES and the Genesis and the various advertising campaigns fomenting this. The staggered nature of the generation was a bit odd because even though the Genesis and Turbografx released in 1989, they wouldn’t really have much impact in toppling the older 8 Bit NES. This was also the first generation when I owned more than one console, as I got a used Genesis Model 1 pretty late in the cycle.

Generation Five – The CD-ROM ERA

Things get a little squirrely with this generation as well as you ended up with a mix of “32 bit” and “64 bit” graphical processing, or at least that was the advertising at the time. In the case of Nintendo it was a 32 bit CPU and a 128 bit graphical processor… and apparently they averaged these numbers to get 64? The Nintendo 64 and the Atari Jaguar clung to the more expensive to manufacturer and more limited space of the cartridge, but the vast majority of consoles in this generation made the leap to the new and exciting CD-Rom technology. This is also the era of the Modchip and rampant console piracy with many offerings in this generation having little to no protection other than the thought that at the time CD Burners were terribly expensive. The most popular consoles of this generation were the Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. The strangest consoles of this generation were likely the 3DO and the Atari Jaguar… which did some interesting things but never really caught on and looking back have very few games that would be considered as classics.

Generation Six – The DVD Era

I am calling it the DVD Era because that was the new hotness and every single console above uses some sort of DVD drive technology, with the Dreamcast and the Gamecube going to lengths to obfuscate this fact. However for me there are really two key things that happened. First it was the death of Sega, with the Dreamcast failing to gain traction and being more or less killed by piracy. This meant with it the death of the old Sega versus Nintendo Rivalry, but as that banner fell the next generation of Microsoft versus Sony stepped in to take its place. This also more or less begins the era of Nintendo not really trying to compete directly with the other consoles and doing its own thing, which is a strategy that have served them well throughout the generations. The Sony PlayStation was the clear winner of the generation, but the Dreamcast will always hold a special place in my heart. While I never owned one the Xbox was essentially a PC in a black plastic box and I remember all of my friends that had them modding and doing all sorts of nonsense to dump games to the hard drive.

Generation Seven – The Online Gaming Era

This is a weird generation, because looking back the highest selling console is also the least relevant to the direction in which gaming has moved. The Nintendo Wii sold over 100 million consoles and became a craze with folks who you absolutely did not expect to own one playing Wii Bowling. The thing is… it didn’t convert people into core gamers and I know so many people who bought a Wii and never played anything other than the sports pack in disc. I think a truer representation of this generation and how it moved things forward is that this is the era in which online gaming dominated the platforms. Sure the Dreamcast offered pretty reasonable online play, and you could get a PS2 or Saturn online with a lot of hoops to jump through… but the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 were internet native consoles and finally knew how the hell to handle this interaction with Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Nintendo still to this day doesn’t entirely know what the hell to do with the internet. This is also the generation where severe mistakes were made and Sony had the hubris to expect to dominate this generation the way they had the previous and unintendedly made a machine that was hell to develop for.

Generation Eight – The Digital Distribution Era

Sure you could download games on the Xbox 360, Wii and the PlayStation 3… but it was only specific games and often times limited to ports of older generations or independent games. It was during the Eighth generation that we figured out digital distribution in the proper way, with the ability to buy any game that was being released on day one from the comfort of your home and often times have it downloaded well ahead of time and unlocked at midnight. This is a generation that saw the biggest console flop in years in the form of the WiiU and the effective reboot of the same games to critical acclaim in the form of the exceptionally versatile Nintendo Switch. Microsoft started the generation leaning entirely too heavily on trying to go back to the era of being the “Livingroom PC” that did everything including watch television for you. However after this misstep they carved a really solid path forward with Games with Live and now Game Pass. PlayStation on the other hand rode into the generation with the exceptional value of PlayStation Plus that they used to turn around the previous generation, and more or less squandered that. PlayStation however still stands strong on its exclusives that have only recently been making their way to the PC. The PlayStation 4 has sold the most units, but I feel like Nintendo with the Switch will eventually surpass that.

Generation Nine – ???

So here we sit on the precipice of the ninth console generation, and I have no idea what the eventual hallmark of this generation will be. I think the challenge with this generation is that it doesn’t feel like it is a significant leap forward. As we have moved each generational leap has felt smaller, and largely just being indicated by slightly higher resolutions and graphical fidelity. Maybe ray tracing will be a game changer, or maybe this will be the generation finally capable of delivering virtual reality for the masses. Right now however both consoles that release in November are deeply unproven as to how exactly they are going to make their mark. They are both effectively the same PC being sold under different brands, because at the end of the day the difference between the hardware being offered is marginal.

This morning is going to be a bit of an odd post, because yesterday was a bit of an odd day. For the last few days I have felt myself getting sick. I think it is just a combination of ragweed pollen and the smoke blowing in from the fires that have combined to make my lungs feel like hell. When I start to get sick however I start to become significantly more susceptible to nostalgia, and then yesterday the Dune trailer dropped tipping the balance towards reliving segments of my childhood. First off if you have not seen the trailer then you should probably stop whatever you are doing now and watch it. Here for your benefit I will embed it right here.

First off one thing you need to understand is that Dune plays a very pivotal role in my psyche. There are a handful of pieces of fiction that have served to shape my tastes as an adult, and high on that list is the world crafted by Frank Herbert. I live in this weird place of liking pretty much all of the adaptations of Dune to date, but the David Lynch film and its iconography will always have a special place in my heart. I think that is because I saw the movie before I went down the deep rabbit hole that is reading the novels. I was captivated by the visuals I saw on the screen and completely engaged with its amazing soundtrack by Toto. Again if you have never experienced the soundtrack I will embed it here for you to listen to.

I’ve talked about this before, that I grew up without cable television. So as a result my prime motivation when I was anyplace with that magical service was to soak up as much culture as I could in as short of a period of time as possible. In 1986, my aunt was pregnant with my cousin Christopher and this involved us travelling the two hours down to their house a lot during the pregnancy and especially in the months following it as my mom helped out with various things. They had HBO and were perfectly cool with giving me total control of the television, and during one of these binges of culture I stumbled across the movie Dune.

Towards the end of the movie my Uncle Ron ended up on the sofa with me, and at the end he could see that my little ten year old mind was blown. He gave me a little wise nod and said something to the effect of if I liked that, I should really read the book because it is much better. He wandered off into the bedroom for a moment and returned with an extremely tattered copy of the novel Dune. This began a bit of an obsession of mine that honestly still continues to this day. I was completely enthralled by any book that was so arcane that it required a very thick glossary in the back in order to decode it’s magic. I poured over it until I understood every last bit of it and could effectively live within this world.

This lead me down a path of tracking down copies of all of the other novels in the series. These are not my copies, but are each as I remember them… minus the copy of Dune. My original tattered copy was a significantly older printing. The thing is Dune not only became a thing that I was obsessed by, but also a point of reference between me and my father. He had always been a fan of science fiction, and he is the one that first introduced me to Doctor Who. I however was the gateway to him experiencing the worlds of Dune, and he voraciously tore through all of the novels. He and I both sorta have this proclivity for digging in when we find something we like and consuming every bit of content that is available on the subject.

So now we arrive at the trailer reveal yesterday. As I have said before I have enjoyed all of the Dune releases to date. My ultimately blend would be the story telling of the SyFy miniseries blended with the visuals from the David Lynch film. I think my ultimate struggle with the miniseries is that it felt at times that they tried entirely too hard to look nothing like the movie. As we approach this new rendition, it is very much feeling like it is a movie that is aware of everything that has come before it, and that it is cherry picking the best elements of all of the above. I realize I could be setting myself up for supreme disappointment, but I am choosing to be hopeful.

The casting choices so far are just brilliant. I am so on board with David Bautista as Glossu Rabban. I am also completely on board with the overall style they are going for the Harkonnen aesthetic. I would not have thought of Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho but it absolutely works, as does Josh Brolin as Gurney Hallek. However that said my heart will always belong to Patrick Stewart and his nine stringed Baliset. I am I think most into Zendaya as Chani and the gender flipped Liet-Kynes. Though again I will always have a deep love and appreciation for Max von Sydow, but I am fully on board with a reinterpretation of the character. Piter De Vries was always one of my favorite characters, and I am hoping that the new rendition can hold a candle to how amazing Brad Dourif was in the Lynch film.

One interesting note that my friend Jason pointed out, is that in many of the scenes it seems like inspiration was taken for vehicle designs from the DOS games. Once again like I said this movie seems to be picking and choosing the best bits to craft together into an homage to everything. I am hoping it works, and I am hoping that the whole is better than the sum of the parts. Based on everything I have read it seems like Denis Villeneuve understands the gravity and difficulty of what he is trying to do. This arrives in the theaters in December and I already have plans with my friend Vernie to go see it at the best theater we have in the posh screening room. I feel like this is going to be a movie that deserves that sort of treatment.

This is just one of those weeks where I seem to be making exceptionally long winded posts. This morning I am in part reacting… to my reaction from Tuesday upon getting access to the New World Preview. One of the first things that I did was go through the chat settings and figure out how to effectively shut out the world. The preview had a significantly wider arrangement of people than the previous tests did, and as a result the quality of chat fell significantly. I decided for my own piece of mind that I would effectively mute everyone as a preemptive strike against toxicity.

We’ve spent a good deal of time lately talking about the toxicity of social media and the horrible things that people do to each other online. Nothing I am going to say today should discount the fact that people are often times completely awful. However this morning I had a thing happen that reminded me of what it felt like before the internet. I am not going to go into detail, largely because it is not my thing to share and didn’t directly involve me. However I very much remember the beforetimes and what it was like to live in a very small town in the middle of fly over country. I wrote about some of those experiences on Monday, from a specific point of view and I guess I am going to turn around and write about them from a different one today.

Growing up I knew I didn’t quite fit the mold that was provided before me. For starters I was significantly more sensitive than I knew I was probably supposed to be. I can’t remember explicit events, but I do remember getting my fair share of the “big boys don’t cry” nonsense. Still to this day it is awkward as fuck when I walk out of a movie theater after having been wrecked by the emotional conclusion of a movie and end up trying super hard to play it off like my eyes are watering because I have been yawning.

I also knew that my interests were not exactly drift compatible with that of many of my peers. I was lucky in that very late in my High School career I found a group of friends that I could be more myself around. I am super thankful having reconnected with my friend Jason over the last year or so, but I spent a lot of my childhood thinking something was wrong with me. My complete disinterest in sportsball and the fact that I was nowhere near as aggressive as I felt like I should be branded me as somewhat of an other. I was a fat kid (and am still a fat adult) and had way more breast tissue that I my peers making me feel a significant amount of shame any time I was pushed into a locker room situation.

Then there was the realization as things moved on that I wasn’t near as “Male” as I was expected to be. I was more or less raised by a series of strong women, and those are the people that I most identified with. I spent significantly more time with my Mom and Grandma than I did my Father and Grandfather. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my father and we get along great… I just wasn’t until scouting and realizing that he was a bit of an odd duck too that we really started to bond. Then there is the whole sexuality thing… of being MOSTLY “straight” but not quite and never really understanding exactly what that meant.

In the time before the internet, there was a lot of my life that I felt thoroughly alone. I graduated from a class of 60 students, and when you are in that situation your friendships mostly become the most compatible of what is available. I knew I wasn’t quite the way I was expected to be from a societal point of view, and because I was trying to fit in… and pushed those feels deep down to occasionally catastrophic result. I’ve struggled with “Dark Thoughts” as I call them for so many years that I am not even sure when it began, but I will say that it helped significantly to broaden my world.

As I roamed around the proto-interwebs I started to find folks that were a lot like myself. Even though at that point it was just a series of text based exchanges, it was like people were a truer version of themselves when online. When every interaction was anonymous… sure there was no reason to tell the truth, but there was also no reason not to. Growing up where I did, my world view was tragically small… and I got to meet vastly different sorts of folks in a very short period of time. I remember being introduced to two people… Semple and Dave.

Semple was sweet and outgoing and vibrant and Dave was her quiet and shy but still very sweet roommate. At that point I was into vampire roleplay on IRC, and Semple was one of my “Clan”. I’ve always been a community builder, and I built a little tribe among my Vampire “Childern”. Semple was struggling with something and I did my best to help her with whatever, but she seemed… for lack of a better word Haunted. There were times where she would not show up for days, and I would track Dave down to check on her. He would give me some excuse that she wasn’t feeling good, and that she would get back to me as soon as she could.

It wasn’t long before I started to understand the truth of the situation. Semple was the person that Dave wanted so desperately to be and was scared to death that if I ever found out the truth of the situation I would be mad. I’ve always sorta tried to take people at face value, because you find out a lot about a person by the way that they want you to see them. At this point in my life I knew nothing about Trans issues or identity, because I just didn’t have enough experience to understand it. I did however know that the person I had become friends with wasn’t a gender, and that it seemed like they were their most honest self when they were Semple.

There are a lot of people that I still wish I had contact with, from various eras of my life. Semple is one of them, because I hope she is thriving and happy. The thing with this era of the internet is that you didn’t really trade information. I guess this is why I get some cagey about the Facebook era, because in this time we were told to never share personal information because someone would come out of the internet and get you. So instead we shared our truth with our words, and rarely even traded emails. This is also likely why I seem to care way more about a persons “handle” than the real name behind it… and why it creeps me the fuck out when someone online calls me “Mark”.

Essentially, as much as I might vilify the internet and the toxicity it brings to our lives… I can’t say the beforetimes were better. Were it not for the internet and being able to find my own tribe of people and build my own support structure… I would not likely be here today. There were many times when the dark thoughts would have probably gotten the better of my will… were it not for the life long friends I have made throughout the years. Sure I am never going to sit across the table from most of them, but it doesn’t make them any less real or any less important.

This isn’t the sort of post that I am going to syndicate very widely. I go through a routine in the mornings of cross posting my blog… and when it is deeply personal like this I tend not to do that thing. This is a thing I wrote largely for myself and if you are a regular… I guess you get to follow along in that journey. I am not exactly share what this week has been about, because it seems like every day has been a significant post. Thanks for being out there even if we don’t interact much. I come to the internet to meet new people and understand points of view different than that of my own… and maybe just maybe make a good number of new friends along the way.