Moving from a Commodore 64 with 16 colors to an Amiga with 4096 was something in 1985, when IBM couldn't do much better than the Commodore 64. Not to mention going from the 8 bit/64k to a meg of fully addressable RAM, the IBM side didn't get their RAM shit together until mid-i386 territory.
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2026
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I remember growing up with the N64, never seeing a PS2 game, then going to my friend's house who had a PS3. That was pretty fucking mind-blowing.
for me it was when PS3 first got dlc
call of duty Black ops was one of the first that made me go, "why would you pay extra for a map?"
I saw it the same as buying the expansion packs for games like the Sims or Rollercoaster tycoon. But without going to the store
agreed, but in retrospect i feel they were really testing the waters for the gacha-slop that CoD is today
Going from Gameboy advance, the most ergonomic handled device ever to the Gameboy advanced SP. A little uncomfortable box. WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST KEEP THE ADVANCED DESIGN WITH A BACKLIT SCREEN!?!?
thank you for speaking the truth, i felt the same when Nintendo started making controllers tiny as well
In December 2009, I got Xbox 360, and played BioShock.
OOOH WHOAH. WATER EFFECTS AND REFLECTIONS. HOLY SHIT.
After this, I guess all of my upgrades have been "meh, more resolution" or "meh, slightly better effects".
Hey now the first Minecraft shaders were pretty hot too
I remember getting a DS, and just being amazed that I could just close it, and my game would be paused and I could just open it back up the next day and keep playing right where I left off.
I got a DS on launch day with Super Mario 64DS and I had a moment being a bit stunned thinking “Wow I’m playing a 3D console game on a handheld”.
Took me a while to trust the close to suspend feature. I think the GBA SP could do that before but only on certain games.
I think with the GBA games, you had to do something in the menu of the game, the console didn't know when the lid was closed.
Oh easily online multiplayer with voice chat. I think I was 16 or 17 years old and Xbox came out. I hadn't had a system besides a really old family computer since Super Nintendo. I played PS1/2 games at friends houses.
Anyway, I jump in. I had a job and bought myself an Xbox and an Xbox Live Gold card. I have a little shitty headset that came with the Xbox, and I boot up Rainbow Six Black Arrow. I hear in my headset other people talking. I am blown away. That social interaction with other FPS players was intoxicating. It really messed up my high school education. I would stay up until my mom got up, sneak into bed and wait for her to go to work, then go back upstairs and play more. It was such a revelation to be able to talk through a game to me.
Savestates made gaming so much better.
As much as I can emphatize with getting old systems, and their carts/discs to play retro games, I'm just unable to tolerate the lack of save states most of the time. It saves me a lot of headaches where games with sparse save points are present.
I still don't use Save States for the most part, with exceptions. It feels like cheating when using Save states, so I end up just using the regular save files the game provides. Exceptions are games that use passwords, but even then I rather want to write down and enter the password (or screenshot it). Another reason to avoid Save states is, they can break over time when becoming incompatible and are not transferable to other emulators as well.
There is a game I am currently playing on and off on an emulator, which really badly needs some better saving mechanism, where I start considering Save states at the moment: Deception 3 on Playstation. It takes forever and multiple menu entries and clicks before ingame save file is loaded. Then saving isn't automatic and awkward in a submenu after and before each round only. Once I forgot to save (modern habits of autosave). Also each saving and loading time takes also some time. All of this would be instant solved with Save states.
This is perfectly valid of course. The technical aspect is something I didn't think about/aware of.
Yeah you're right of can feel a bit cheaty. But younger me back then also used gameshark on the PS1 so sometimes I do want to cheat lol
But them as you also said it's quite useful as a semi auto save or taking out clunky saving method from the early days of games. I just rather have the option to use save states but not use it for some games than not having it for games that makes you wish for one, for any reasons.
Another was being able to turn on your system with the controller. In the past it made no sense since you'd probably need to change the game disc/cart. But these days I can't image another system without being able to turn it on from a controller.
I'm quite fluent in English but could you please explain whiplash in this context? I would've thought some scandal with players maybe revolting but that does not seem to fit.
So maybe some surprising new behaviour?
Interestingly I always turned my PS2 off the intended way from the beginning. But my pc side might've influenced me to do that, especially with filesystems that die not yet feature journaling
The most gruelling change in consoles were that they have an OS and storage too and are basically PCs. Gone is the fun of just flipping the switch and starting.
being surprised
Whiplash is when youre turned so aggressively, the acceleration causes internal damage.
People use it to mean an abrupt change in something, usually insinuating it was done with a lack of care for the drawbacks of a big decision.
Thanks. Sounds kind of like iron man landing, he would be human goo in his suit.
I think they just mean the "extreme" differences between the two. One tells you to wait for permission to turn off, the other doesn't care when you cut the power.
I think I have to go the negative side, I was always really excited to see what new quirk or feature was coming to the new console. I can still remember scouring magazine racks for tidbits on the upcoming PS2 and Xbox. So, for me the biggest whiplash came with the PS4/Xbone generation when it felt like we had lost something from the previous generation rather than gained something new.
I think that about media in general. Before ubiquitous internet access there was a sense of excitement about the unknown and discovering new things.
Now it feels as if everything is revealed instantly and “spoiled” before that excitement has time to build.