What Was Gaming Like In 2004? 

And now?

So your 45 now ???

​@@DivineSupremedude is flexing because he has basic math skills

For real though, on a more serious note: I am around the same age, maybe I'm assuming half a year younger thsn the OP. I didn't appreciate the games of the early 2000s enough, and I didn't respect them as much as I should have. I played and loved some JRPGs in the PS2, but that was about it. I was more I to movies, TV and music at that time regarding entertainment, and had fallen out of gaming outside of JRPGs. Part of it was because of the industry's focus on FPS games (I can't stand those), because I loathed the polygon graphics. I've since gone back and discovered some great ps2 and ps3 games, stuff like the DMC series and other character action games like God Hand and Heavenly Sword, Uncharted, the ubisoft Prince of Persia, etc, and I realized that I missed a lot. Those early 2000s polygon just looked so bad, though. I remembers seeing footage of Mario N64, GTA 3, and other games from the late nineties and early 2000s, and I'd go to message boards where everyone else were practically worshipping the way these games looked, and I would read and go gk myself, "the characters in GTA 3 have blocks for hands, and these games can't even do circle shapes." Whenever a game was supposed to have a circle drawn on a wall or something similar, it looked like an octagon. The textures and gradient shading were sad. Every visual aspect of those games was just painful to look at. Yeah, I'm shallow, and visual appeal matters to me. Its difficult for me to watch 2000s era movies with bad CGI. I'm just like that. Thankfully emulators like PCSX2 have the ability to import custom HD textures, and games are being remastered or remade (and if it's done by a Japanese or other non-Anericsn studio the remakes are usually better than the originals).

I’m 46 and around 2004 is when I was slowly starting to grow out of playing games all the time. Life was lifing😂. It was when I went from being a hardcore gamer to a casual gamer. Even to this day, I can appreciate where the graphics and tech has gone behind the current games, I just don’t have the hours in a day to play them like when I was younger. Last thing. I use to always have fun telling my kids when they were younger that the Gameboy was nothing new. The original came out when I was in middle school in 1989. They use to swear I was wrong lol!

Ofc it HAD to go this hard

Imo 2004 is the end of the golden age for general entertainment every industry from the late 90s to early 2000s (1996-2004) peaked till 2005 when there was a lot of bad movies and decline of tv shows and some bad music

2001 even better.

​@@MadPaperMario IMO The decline of general entertainment would start around 2013. Game developers began to release buggy messes and expect you to pay full price for them, most movies or TV shows were soul-less remakes, and modern music has been a unbearable to listen to for over a decade at this point.

Wait till we get to 07 and 08

Yup I agree. No popular social media taking over and a perfect balance imo

Iraq war though… and bling bling Rapp started out…

@@bingobongo1615 of course the Iraq war is of significance but globalization wasn’t as symbiotic at the time compared to now. As much as horror inflicted on Iraq, the war didn’t result in a domino effect until early 2010’s. That’s why I said fever dream, it felt like the final days of comfy seclusion.

Damn why everybody using the phrase “fever dream” lol

​@@bingobongo1615 only if you were iraquí or American, the rest of us gave no fuck about it

I miss being a kid more than anything, or the days I didn't have to deal with exisitentialism.

@@civilwarfare101 you telling me you didnt deal with that as a kid?

@@Blanktester685 Hell no. I had school to brainwash me into thinking that I was going to do great things if I did well there.

@@civilwarfare101 same bro. After school and uni finished, existentialism and purpose is scary.

Fucking same, I hate how quickly time passes

PS 1 called ....

I wasn't even born :(

oh boy... playing CTR with 6 players on 21inch tv screen is really chaotic and really fun

A much more creatively healthy time in gaming. We have the indie scene now which is often great but the triple A scene is becoming extremely sterile. Going the way of Hollywood for sure when it comes to sequels, remakes and Safe bets.

2005 was better.

Hell, even an unsung war was released in 2004! (Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War)

Spiderman 2 is still peak spiderman, miles morales aint it

Don't forget Burnout 3: Takedown and the Sims Spin-off, "The Urbz" with Black Eyed Peas cameo

NFL 2K5, NBA Street, NBA Live 2005, Smackdown Vs Raw

I still play spm2 and sly 2 🤗🔥

I wasn't even born yet, but since they still had lots of these games up when I was still young, I fell in love with them

@localclown3287 : were they just around your house left by an older sibling?

The Paper Mario series is really special.

I was 7

I wasn’t even born yet. I was born in 2006.

​@@kirotalksyt I am playing Halo Master chief collection And dam that game is so fun Multiplayer isn't much for me because I am bad for now But the Campaign is a 10/10 or beyond 10 I don't know how a single player experience feels but playing with siblings and friends is a big Win for fun I had only finished Halo Reach Halo Combat evolved/ Halo 1

14 too. Playing mtg, gba fire red, vector man with my little bro on Sega bayblades, pox, and scanners. DBZ budokai,yuyuhakasho. Kingdom hearts. And star wars ep1, SpongeBob movie!

This exactly, I remember playing through and Pokemon Red and only use my starter Pokemon and no one else and the save battery in the cartridge was bad so it didn't save so I spent my whole summer keeping it on the charger😂

True I Wes just born that day my big brother show me all those amazing things

You're right. I'm glad we got both in retrospect though, some real bangers on both systems.

It reminds me of how the switch was treated with the 3ds

Many people speculated that Nintendo was unsure whether the Nintendo DS was going to be a success, but I think it was a wise decision to keep the GBA alongside it for its first years Nowadays people tend to mock the Third Pillar talk, but they tend to forget that the GBA managed to sell over 80 million units, if the NDS haven't existed I can imagine the GBA selling more than 100 million units

Quick advancements in hardware technology, I suppose.

For me the weirdest time was the Wii era and into the Wii U era. I felt like they abandoned me as Nintendo fanboy. But I’m so happy with where they are now. Love my Switch! The GameCube GBA era was awesome!

The best year in all of gaming in my experience. Bare minimum the best single year in gaming for all three-dimensional games. Everything was top notch

Ninja gaiden>devil may cry

​@@gjergjaurelius9798 both💪

psp my favorite handheld bro I still play it frequently on my modded vita still enjoying it to this day psp goated

I bought a PC back then just to play Half-Life 2 and I regret nothing.

Literally the same games, just started going back and playing game library from around 2004 recently instead of buying "new" console games. PC games like Baldur's Gate 3 seem to indicate more hope of the magic in gaming being continued. Literally most every console game release looks like something I've seen before. People are more accepting of bugs e.g. in Pokemon S/V.

I remember buying this media kit that allowed me to organize and upload data easier to my psp. I first started downloading off RU-vid then to my PsP my friends were freaking out that I had AMVs on my psp and some boobies 😂😅

​@@Faltzerbeast90Dude, every kid that I knew had porn on their PSPs! 😂

Movies too

I've always felt like people never give the PSP and DS the credit they deserve as handheld devices. Especially the PSP. It did a lot of the basic things that we all take for granted on a common smart phone these days. Both devices were ahead of their time.

@@Finfectionpeople DEFINITELY gave credit to the DS.

I think the PSP managed to be the most popular portable console in some markets where the PlayStation was the de facto console, like South America in some aspects, though I say the Game Boy kept that title for a while. The PSP was easy to hack, but the DS became easily hackable later as well I think the most interesting market in which the DS and PSP fought was Japan, the DS did sell the most units for a single console in one year with 8 million, but Monster Hunter sold millions of copies for the PSP

The PSP was definitely the shiny new toy that got all the attention at first. I got one at launch and would take it to school to show the guys how I had a full playable version of Tony Hawk Underground 2 in my pocket as well as a high quality copy of the Spider-Man 2 movie to watch on the device's beautiful wide screen. Nobody had seen anything like it.

2005-2006 was definitely when the DS really came into its own. By the end of 06 we had Nintendogs, New Super Mario Bros, the Japanese release of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, Cooking Mama, Brain Age, Mario Kart DS Animal Crossing Wild World, and the DS Lite model.

@@Finfection Problem is the iPod came along and stole PSP's media playback attention. Even though the screen was only SD, it was the "cool" thing to have running video on it. PSP disks felt positively dated compared to downloading at that point.

@@cattysplat You could play digital video files on a psp as well.

Same. I was 21 and owned a PC and every console. It was glorious.

haha so essentially just ~2006 - 2015 was weak? I think 07 -08 was amazing with Halo 3, Mario Galaxy, Bioshock, GTA 4, Call of Duty's at their peak, Smash Bros Brawl, Fallout 3, Metal Gear Solid 4. 09 weaker, 10-11 good, 11-16 few masterpieces per year but agreed weaker (AKA the skyrim and GTA 5 era). 17-19 golden era, then 20-22 weak again (Elden Ring saved 22) 23 was amazing but I feel like 24 will again be a weaker year. I blame the late 00's and early 10's for appealing to casual audiences via mobile and motion controls. This focus was corrected when the switch came out in my opinion. The last few years have been suffering from the pandemic (development hell), overcommitting to graphics instead of fun meaningful gameplay (broken launches), and trying to innovate live services after the lootbox backlash of the mid 10's.

@@Walt_Heisenberg You’re making way too much out of my comment. Calm down, dude. There’s great games every year, never said or called any year “weak.” Also, golden ages have as much to do with changes in gameplay and innovations as well as the games released. Take care, happy gaming.

Man you’re so lucky. If I wasn’t 7 years old in 2005 I would have went broke during the launch of the Xbox 360.

I still remember like yesterday my mom letting my brother and I open a present early on Christmas eve and it was the limited edition Halo 2 with the sick silver case. We were so pumped lol. I miss the early 2000s.

Thanks, yeah I just talk about stuff that interests me haha

You're welcome!

Holy shit, I shared the same birthday as you but I was born 3 years earlier. Edit: I just found out that i was born the same day as the initial release of super smash bros melee.

Wow, that's a crazy coincidence! The DS is a great first handheld. I had a GBA before then, but I probably spent just as much time if not more time over the years playing DS games.

And Crash Twinsanity and MK Deception. But yeah Jak 3 is one of all time favorites. He comitted a cardinal sin.

The great thing about that period is there was huge competition in retail game sales and internet shopping started to become a thing. You could buy games very competitively priced from dozens of different stores and websites. Renting started to die because buying games became more affordable.

It helped all 3 consoles were having consistent solid releases and the affordability of the hardware and software. We had like a dozen GOTY contenders per year, a ton of exclusives for each console that made them all worth owning, a very diverse library of games of all genres, more creative risks, less annoying trends, more music variety, no remakes or remasters, no cringey forced politics, fun cheat codes, excellent couch co-op action, and no extra monetization or broken games at launch. People may call it nostalgia but it was without a doubt the golden age and we didn't even realize.

@@cattysplat Agreed that shopping options were more versatile 20 years ago, but if anything, rentals were booming with no sign of stopping. Blockbuster was still huge back then. My town had one of the largest Blockbuster locations on the US east coast and the big parking lot was always full on Friday nights. Nowadays the lot is mostly empty. Feels like it was all a dream now.

What made 2017 special to you?

@@loope9421 Breathe of the wild, Mario Odyssey, Nier Automata, even Horizon and RE7, some other low key games released that year and some indie releases. Those brought some semblance of older days in gaming to me.

1. 2006 2. 2004 3. 2005 4. 2003 5. 2007

In 2004, I was a “kid” starting graduate school 👴

Same dude! It was the best!

2003

@@nobodycares607 I'm talking about the American release for Sonic Heroes

@@devinsauls9137 game existed before 2004 so 2003

@@nobodycares607 for two days before 2004. Besides, the rest of the world didn't even get it until 2004 and regardless of what you say most people remember Sonic Heroes as a 2004 game. It still should have been mentioned along with Sonic Advance 3

@@devinsauls9137 debatable

It wasn't quite on the level of Toys R' Us back in 90's era US, but Circuit City and other mall-sized stores were like media meccas, and Electronics Boutique still felt like... a boutique. There are a lot of benefits for gaming to expand from being a boutique industry to one that most people have access to. But it does feel like we lost something since 20 years ago...