I clearly need to become a more prolific blogger. I can't believe it's been over a year since my last post. However, I try to wait until I have something well thought out and theoretically compelling to share. That seems more important than quantity.
Ongoing debate across the countless gaming forums out there exists regarding which console generation was the best. My personal feeling has traditionally been that the 16-bit generation (including the 8-bit PC Engine) has had a stranglehold on that title for two decades now. However, I've come at the question from a different perspective recently, and that thought process has yielded a different answer.
Perhaps the most recently (almost) completed generation actually staked its claim. Though there are compelling arguments regarding the PlayStation 3's feature set and exclusives, the Xbox 360's re-introduction of classic arcade and console games, and/or the Wii's incredible market penetration, those aren't the path I took to get there.
Over the many generations of consoles, reaching back over three decades, another type of hardware has almost always set the standard for horsepower. For about the last six or seven years, consoles have played second fiddle to PCs, and the increasing number of multi-platform games has made this even more one-sided. This power differential has led to the coining of the term "PC Master Race," describing a subset of gamers that is willing to pay a little extra when necessary to get the optimal experience.
At the other end of spectrum, console ports tried and largely failed to live up to their arcade counterparts for decades. Despite frequent claims of "arcade perfect," that was very rarely the case. Whether it was a reduced color palette, shrunken sprites, or even blue shadows, there was typically a "yeah but." Even among the plethora of sister arcade/home hardware platforms, such as Sega's ST-V and Saturn, Microsoft's Chihiro and Xbox, and Nintendo's Tri-Force and GameCube, they weren't identical twins. The obvious exception is SNK's Neo Geo, albeit with a relatively limited yet underrated genre diversity.
For a brief time, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 managed to avoid both of the hardware bullies, Many arcade games were still running on platforms based on the previous generation of consoles, such as the PlayStation 2-like System 246 from Namco. Intel, Nvidia, and AMD hadn't yet blown away the proprietary PowerPC and Cell architectures found in the consoles either. Thus, as many of us fired up early games from this generation, such as Dead Rising, we were truly riding the cutting edge of horsepower from our couches for perhaps the first and last time.
This rare occurrence enabled two branching conclusions for me to draw. First, from a certain objective perspective the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 represent the best (half) console generation we've seen from an optimization standpoint. Second, while the "Master Race" appears primed to rule this argument indefinitely going forward, gamers with a respect for both optimization and history really must add the arcade boards of the past with the GPUs of the present and future. The word "boards" is critical, because MAME simply doesn't cut it. Optimization and emulation rarely mix.
You may be running the "Master Race" with just your PC, but you're not going to win it without reaching back into gaming's past, grabbing hold of joysticks, and flipping from dip switches.
