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)
My limit is probably the very late 80s
I just wonder if it's a simple generational thing where whatever you grow up with becomes the baseline compared to which anything older looks increasingly primitive and impenetrable or if video games achieved a level of graphical fidelity and game design sophistication at some point that would make them accessible even to new audiences.
I would imagine it'd be easier for a person born in 2007 to go back to Final Fantasy 10 than it would be for a person born in 1992 to go back to Final Fantasy 1
Maybe for some people but I started gaming on DOS and NES and for the most part I dislike old games. I have tons of nostalgia for stuff like Myst and Golden Eye but going back to play them is just not fun. A part of my problem might be that I get motion sick and old games can be really bad for that. Original NES games can still be fun, super mario 3 will remain one of the best games ever made.
Final Fantasy 7 is a great example. The original game is a classic, but it does have some infuriating gameplay at times and the graphics are definitely early-3D vintage. Try climbing the Shin-Ra tower and try not to get frustrated! The remake sought to carry forward the good ideas (story, Materia), ditching things that are dated (time/turn-based combat, random encounters), and adding newer designs that came after it was released. The Godfather is a movie equivalent to FF7. Easily a classic, extremely well done, and looms large on the history of film. However, these days we learned many film techniques from that movie and others. while at the same time the high praise also creates high expectations. The Godfather has difficulty standing up to it's lofty scrutiny these days simply because our tastes and film-making abilities have increased as well.
Art forms evolve by learning from previous artists, and art consumers evolve alongside.
It's crazy how big the graphical gap is between 7 and 8. Not just in terms of the ingame character models but the quality of the pre-rendered backgrounds and cutscenes. Compare any cutscene from FF7 to the opening movie of FF8 and it looks like a generational leap.
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Too bad the actual game kinda sucksspoiler