#1990s videos games

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

Mario Party Bowser's Magma Mountain

1998

Stills taken from Youtube, user NintendoMovies

[prokopetz]

I think the hardest miss I've ever bumped into in children's educational television came from a show called Ghost Writer that debuted in 1992.

The opening story arc concerned a series of thefts at the protagonists' school; when the kids tried to figure out who was behind it, their investigation eventually discovered that a bunch of other middle schoolers had independently formed some sort of bizarre pseudo-Dionysian cult where they'd perform ominous chants and greet each other with secret mottos and wear masks with faces on both the front and back, except literally all this cult was doing was stealing the lunch money out of other kids' backpacks and using it to buy tokens at the local video arcade, which was also the cult's headquarters.

It was like they couldn't decide whether they wanted to do a Satanic Panic thing or a video-games-are-making-children-violent thing, so they split the difference in what I assume was intended as a grim cautionary tale, but all that nine-year-old me took away from the viewing experience was "wow, being in a cult looks cool as hell".

[zman80]

Blade City

[acquired-stardust]

Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring Playstation 1998

[callmevenus]

｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ ★ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ★

🍮🎀. ★⋆.つきの うさぎ おいしい. ★⋆.🍮🎀

｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ ★ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ★

[yodaprod]

1993年

[arcadebroke]

[90s-2000s-barbie]

1995

[tvneon]

[retrogamingblog2]

Toys ‘R’ Us in 1999

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

Super Mario Land Muda Kingdom for Gameboy Color

released 1989 (I got it in 1998 and it was still the same levels)

Stills taken from Youtube, user NintendoComplete

[prokopetz]

My retro video game pet peeves:

No, sprite flicker on consoles like the NES didn't look like that. The NES ran at 60fps (and how it managed this on contemporary televisions which technically didn't support progressive scan is a fascinating piece of technical bugfuckery, if you have an afternoon to kill to read up on it), but YouTube downsamples all videos that are below a certain resolution to 30fps, which makes sprites that are flickering at 60fps look weird. The way that sprites sometimes seem to disappear entirely for long periods in NES gameplay footage on YouTube is also usually an artefact of this process – YouTube just happened to exclusively pick frames where the sprite in question is not visible when converting from 60fps to 30fps.

No, not all old-school pixel art was explicitly designed with "CRT fuzz" in mind. While this was often the case for games originally released for non-portable consoles, portable consoles have always had LCD screens (yes, even the original Game Boy!), so CRT fuzz simply wasn't a thing for them. Conversely, while desktop PCs of the era did use CRT monitors, from the mid 1980s onward, PC monitors typically used a variant CRT technology that had a much higher scan rate than contemporary CRT televisions in order to improve legibility of small text; such monitors had pixel sharpness comparable to that of modern LCD monitors, so CRT fuzz wasn't a thing for most PC games, either.

No, the textures on N64 and PS1 games weren't that bad. While these consoles were technically capable of resolutions up to 480p, this was very demanding for them, and rarely used outside of menus and cutscenes; actual gameplay output for games on these consoles typically ranged from 192p to 240p. The textures were of an appropriate size for the gameplay resolution. The whole "razor-sharp polygons with drab, muddy textures" look that pops up in a lot of retro media inspired by games of this era isn't imitating how such games look on their native hardware – it's imitating how they look when played on desktop PC emulators that have to stretch the textures all to hell in order to render them.

Like, I'm not saying these aren't valid aesthetic choices for modern retro games – particularly those that are trying to capture the experience of playing pirated console games on a janky PC emulator – but it's the spurious assertions of greater authenticity that often go with them that get my goat. If you want to slap a CRT filter on a Game Boy Advance title because you like the look of it, be my guest, but insisting that this is "how it was meant to be played" is simply false.

[goobersplat]

PaRappa the Rapper and Um Jammer Lammy Figures

[acquired-stardust]

Super Smash Bros. Nintendo 64 1999

[callmevenus]

₊ ˙ ◌ ⁎˚ 〇🍅⭐️🎀₊ ˙ ◌ ⁎˚ 〇🎀🌈🥬₊ ˙ ◌ ⁎˚ 〇

✿*,(*´◕ω◕`*)+✿.* 🍉🍇🍍ときめきパーティ🍓🍊🥝

₊ ˙ ◌ ⁎˚ 〇🍅⭐️🎀₊ ˙ ◌ ⁎˚ 〇🎀🌈🥬₊ ˙ ◌ ⁎˚ 〇

[yodaprod]

Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel, Sierra 1992 VGA remake on a Pentium 75Mhz