My first dedicated gaming system was the PS1, and in general I have no trouble going back to the sprites and chunky polygons of the mid-to-late 90s, whether on consoles or computers
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as long as I can upscale them to 1080P
Beyond that it gets a bit hit and miss- SNES and Mega Drive games look and sound fine to me and I've played plenty of 16 bit console games as an adult. On PC, I can enjoy 2D stuff like Sam & Max Hit the Road or the original X-Com but most early 3D, like the original System Shock, looks a bit too much like visual vomit.
Going to 8-bit, while the vast majority of NES games are too primitive to my eyes and ears, I have no problems with Game Boy/Game Boy Color games.
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(Well, at least the good ones, mostly made by Nintendo)
Is it just nostalgia because I had a GBC as a kid or is it because Game Boy games came later and had more developed visual aesthetics?
My limit is probably the very late 80s
As an older zoomer, I struggle playing anything older than the PS1 and N64 era. The only games older than that I can play are the classics like Pokemon and Super Mario Bros.
My favourite gaming era definitely has to be the PlayStation 2 and early PS3/ Xbox 360 era, before the Call Of Duty takeover. The late PS3/Xbox 360 era and early PS4 era was dire, with every game trying to cash in and be a Call Of Duty clone. The colour palette used in games of that era was also horrific, everything brown or yellow piss colour filtered. Though we did get some good games that shone through the rubbish, like the last of us. Or battlefield 3 and 4 for shooters that did not try to be call of duty. Then the middle and end of the PS4 era was great, not as good as PS2 games, but probably the best we're going to get in modern gaming.
No love for SNES RPGs?
Given how many sprite-based 2D games there were on the PlayStation there's probably a lot of 16-bit stuff that's fairly similar to those, just with smaller resolution and no CD audio
Breath of Fire 3 and 4 ruined older RPGs for me. They're so it's hard to go back to anything uglier
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I've never been a big RPG fan in general, even with modern games. I'll play some, but it's not my favourite genre.
My retro game knowledge for games and systems before the N64 and PS1 is severely lacking though.