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I appreciate everyone taking the bait, but: I did say 1990s, I would not include the early 2000s (particularly since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) is still among the best-written CRPGs in history).
The Super Nintendo was indeed an excellent console with some timeless classics (FF4, FF6, Chrono Trigger, Seiken Densetsu 2 & 3, Super Mario World, Super Metroid) as well as foundations to future franchises (Mario Kart, Star Fox, Harvest Moon) and strong entries in others. The Nintendo 64 struggled but brought amazing first party titles (Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Super Smash Bros.) while the PlayStation brought mature themes and writing to new prominence. Final Fantasy 7 was a tour de force. No question: the 1990s were fire.
But almost every single franchise I've mentioned so far has stronger entries now. The Final Fantasy franchise has fallen off, but Expedition 33 is as good or better than FF7 along almost every axis but chocobo breeding and cinematic summons. Super Mario Galaxy (and its direct sequel) are better games than Mario 64, and Donkey Kong Bananza on the Switch 2 reinvents 3D platforming with equal aplomb. Red Dead Redemption 2 exceeds the writing, design, voice acting, etc. of basically every game that came before it. It's not just "better graphics," though it certainly has those. The Grand Theft Auto games from III to V were just one masterpiece after another. Even indies--you can argue that Stardew Valley lacks originality since it's just an evolution of Harvest Moon, and yet given a choice between Stardew Valley and the SNES Harvest Moon, I don't know anyone who would pick Harvest Moon.
I sometimes go back and play old games for nostalgia, but I almost always bounce off pretty fast. Some few games hold up surprisingly well but most just don't. We owe past developers a debt of gratitude for breaking new ground but the level of polish the years (and billions of dollars) have brought to the industry can't be ignored. Yeah, bad games get made, but that was always true. The best games of today are leagues ahead of the best titles developed in the 1990s, along basically every axis of comparison except pure originality (since originality was lower-hanging fruit in those days), and I don't even think it's close.
Yes, for me, video games are straight up just the best they have ever been. More than ever are releasing and they are excellent in so many ways. I wanted to hedge this by saying that there are some tradeoffs, like hardware being more expensive, but that's not a factor if you don't want it to be. You can remain an herbivore gamer and just play indie games that run on anything and those are still head and shoulders above most stuff from 30 years ago. We've figured out a lot about how to make things fun since then. And everything is way more accessible now, since you can buy games without leaving your house. I suppose you could say that there is less nostalgia now, if you've been playing games a long time, but that wouldn't be a concern for some kid starting to play video games right now. Also,
Everything else has tradeoffs, at best. Medicine is much better now, but the average age of the United States is much older, and healthcare costs have ballooned. You can reach so many more people with your effortposts and read whatever you want, and that would be great, but it's turned into such a double-edged sword, with echo chambers forming and subcultures within subcultures growing ever more toxic and distanced from reality, and in the last year, we seem to be seeing a return to ideological terrorism. Movies are stunning, but shallow, lacking the balance and variety that the 90s (and 2000s, probably) had. Pop music seems to be more vulgar to me now, and will never be a shared cultural touchstone as it had been in the years before the 2010s, though you can listen to anything from across the entire world now. College is probably actively worse than it was in the 90s, it costs more, there is rampant leftist ideology influencing many classes (though not all, I had plenty of great history courses, the art ones were where I really ran into it), and the degrees seem less useful.
You already mentioned most of that, but if many people thought the 90s was close to the peak, I wonder, had smart phones been invented in the 90s, would the same trends we saw in the 2010s happen, with people widely critiquing lack of healthcare and historical oppression of women and minorities? Would they fail to recognize the golden age they were living in? Probably, if you ask me.
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+1. "Better graphics", undoubtedly, but that doesn't make a better video game.
And even then, the only real improvement has been in photorealistic 3D graphics. 2D graphics had already peaked by the late 90s; there's not much further you can go after you can already make gorgeous games like Marvel vs. Capcom. Stylized 3D graphics took a little longer, but by the early 2000s we already had beauties like Wind Waker.
I'm a big believer that the whole quest for MOAR POLYGONS is a mistake, and that we would have all been better off if we had just stuck with the PS2 and Game Cube instead of upgrading our hardware every five years to ever more expensive consoles with ever more expensive games, all in the name of making photorealistic 3D titles look slightly better with every iteration.
Which is why I'm a PC gamer now; I just buy old games on the cheap from Steam.
King of Fighters XIII?
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I've been a PC gamer since I was a kid, I always was ok with mouse and keyboard but I can't use a controller to save my life(s). When PC gaming and system building started to get big I was pretty startled at all the attention the PC was getting, I was just a geek who liked tinkering with systems and suddenly all my male relatives are asking me for PC recommendations!
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