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Under the Hood

By now, my love of older electronic games should be well-established. Indeed, over the time we've been doing this blog, I've only delved deeper and deeper, more than tripling the number of vintage consoles I have on-hand, hooked up, and ready to go. And while we can look to the pandemic and the money saved by not having to regularly commute lifestyle changes that came with it, the fact is, the propensity was always there - I have always loved older technology, especially if it operates in ways fundamentally different than modern equivalents. And compared to, say, vintage guitar and bass amplifiers (something else I have in... "generous" quantities), consoles are relatively cheap, don't take up much space, and can be used late into the night without risk of noise complaints (provided I'm using headphones). They all have their own quirks, their own histories and unique libraries, and, since they were all released in my lifetime, personal connotations. Each console is a distinct individual in both function and cosmetics.

Modern consoles, on the other hand, present a rather different landscape. From the "eighth generation" on (the PS4 and XBox One), there's been a shift towards consoles with largely the same hardware as PCs. Microsoft, who were ahead of the curve on this concept, basing the original XBox on PC specs, further broken the divide between the desktop and the console with GamePass, offering the same library on both platforms. Sony, meanwhile, are regularly porting their titles to PC rather than using them to entice players to the PlayStation. Nintendo, at least, have shown that handheld gaming has remained viable via the Switch, but this eschews the hardware power of standalone units in favor of more efficient systems that use less power and take up far less space. People are questioning the validity of console gaming altogether, and the recent announcement of the PS5 Pro at a price comparable to a base-level gaming PC hasn't helped matters, either - especially when it seems like each week brings news of another round of layoffs at both Sony and Microsoft. The old model of selling powerful consoles at a loss and making the difference up on exclusive titles doesn't work as well without that exclusivity.

But, once upon a time, that very approach gave us an exciting range of diverse hardware, each with their own set of strengths and limitations, all vying for our attention (and, y'know... money). Sega, in particular, was fond of this strategy and twice took the risk of jamming arcade hardware into comparatively bite-sized home consoles. (For those keeping score, that would be adapting the System 16 into the Genesis/Mega Drive and designing a platform that would power both the Dreamcast and the NAOMI arcade board.) Sony, for their part, started with a PC-adjacent platform with the original PlayStation (partly as a way to quickly win developers over to their fledgling brand), but moved into far more unique hardware in subsequent systems: the "Emotion Engine" in the PS2 and the "Cell" processor in the PS3... both of which gave their consoles unique capabilities, but also made them far more difficult to design around. Nintendo, for their part, stared off using the same foundations as western non-PC computers: the Famicom/NES was, like the Commodore 64 and Atari's 8-bit lines going back to the 2600, based on the 6502 processor, and the Super Famicom/SNES shared a CPU with the late-80s Apples that would run Oregon Trail in my elementary school's computer lab). The Nintendo 64, on the other hand, was a rapid departure, sharing its guts with the Silicon Graphics systems that powered Hollywood special effects... an impressive coup that only happened after Sega passed on using Silicon Graphics' hardware for the Saturn, and very much undercut by Nintendo's insistence on sticking with the cartridge format instead of the much more spacious CD-ROMs used by their competitors. They seem to have taken a cue from Sony for the N64's followup, though, bringing the GameCube more in line with standard PCs to make game development easier... even while Sony was doing the exact opposite with the PS2. And, while it had a much smaller library and lower sales, they liked the design enough to re-use much of it in the Wii.

Needless to say, I'm fascinated by all this stuff, because it's not just trivia and minutiae - all these differences are apparent in the physical design of the consoles themselves and the way the games they run look, play, and feel. The PS2 was unmatched in lighting and particle effects, making it the ideal system for survival horror and games with day/night cycles like the Grand Theft Auto series. (Rockstar seems to have been the only western developer capable of using the oddball hardware of the PS2 and PS3 to the best of its abilities, producing a some games that run fine and look great on Sony's systems, but misbehave wildly when ported elsewhere.) True to its arcade roots, Dreamcast games are bright, clean, and attractive with the right kind of display setup. You can spend hours comparing the differences between games released for both the Genesis and SNES... and that's not even getting to the ones that were totally different between those two contemporary systems. It's an intoxicating world, and a major reason I prefer to play these titles on original hardware rather than emulation - I want to see firsthand what these old boxes can do. Even aside from experiencing the differences in action,  I enjoy learning design history and reading comparisons between different systems despite (or perhaps because of) only having a broad familiarity with the concepts and terminology. To paraphrase one Marjorie Simpson, I just think they're neat

This post isn't intended as a "kids these days don't know how cool consoles used to be" rant  - many retro hardware enthusiasts are younger than I am! Rather, to acknowledge that in the transition to our modern landscape, something was lost. Sure, "console wars" are generally maintained through hype, but each system filled its own niche based on the games that played to their strengths. The Genesis could easily process tons of on-screen items and rapid movement, naturally it was the console of choice for sports games, arcade ports, and high-energy titles like the Sonic series. The SNES could put many more colors onscreen at once, even though it struggled with busy screens - so many of its most beloved titles are RPGs and adventure games, or more puzzle-oriented platformers like the Mario and Donkey Kong games of its generation. And there's a reason that the SNES style is generally the "go-to" when one thinks of pixel art. Think about the games you like, and how attached they are to the systems you played them on. It's not just nostalgia and familiarity (although those are certainly factors as well), but there are technical reasons behind them.

I like this stuff for the same reason I love other pieces of technology that adapt to people's lives, and whose lives are changed in turn by those technologies. I love the way the underpowered amps of the 50s gave the electric guitar a sound that defined rock'n'roll, even though the original designers would have hated it. I love film grain, black-and-white movies, and old air-cooled Volkswagens. Not just because the things themselves are cool (although, again, there's a lot of hidden ingenuity behind these designs) but because each and every one is a story. The kind of story that's around us all the time, all we have to bring is curiosity about how something works and why it works that way. Moving through the world makes us audiences for a near-infinite number of narratives, and that's something I hope I will always find as wonderful as I do right now.

- B

Send questions, comments, and console war propaganda  to neversaydice20@gmail.com or tweet us @neversaydice2.

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