32 64-bit era
The 32-bit era featured both 32-bit and 64-bit consoles. It was the fifth generation of video game consoles which was dominated by the Nintendo 64 and Sony Playstation. The Sega Saturn and Atari Jaguar were also part of this era, but failed to make an impact like their competitors. This era also saw three slightly improved versions of Nintendo's GameBoy, the GameBoy Pocket, GameBoy Color and GameBoy Light (Japan only).
Bit ratings for consoles largely fell by the wayside during this era, with the notable exception of the Nintendo 64. The number of "bits" cited in console names referred to the CPU word size, but there was little to be gained from increasing the word size much beyond 32 or 64 bits - performance depended on more varied factors, such as processor clock speed, bandwidth and memory size.
'New School' Gaming
It is the era that followed the 16-bit era. It is the birth of what some video game players call "new school" gaming, which uses 3D computer graphics. The Sony Playstation was released in Japan near the end of the 16-bit era in 1994, and in the United States in 1995. The Nintendo 64 was released in Japan and the United States in 1996. Many critics, who some call themselves old school gamers, call this the beginning of an industrial revolution of video gaming, and think that SNES games are more amusing than 32-bit era video games and today's video games. Fundamental gameplay changes between the old school and new school era include gameplay actions revolving around a realistic animation instead of a quick action (which had already been tried with Prince of Persia, but really brought to the fore with games like Tomb Raider and Tekken). The 32-bit era was also the time console emulation started to become popular. NES and SNES ROMs have been easier to find during the 128-bit era than they were during the 32-bit era.
System Wars
More so than any other previous era however, the 32-bit era was home to the "system wars". The "system wars" was a phenomenon where people would attempt to evaluate the upcoming hardware of a system and purchase the system for that reason alone, speculating that the best games must be made for that hardware. Since it took a long time for the systems to come out, and even longer for most of the games to come out, people chose early and defended their choices in many online and offline arguments. Many events transpired to mislead gamer players during this era, further causing controversy and bitterness over the process:
- The Atari Jaguar was released claiming to be a 64 bit system, but many games for it were disappointing.
- The Nintendo 64 was announced as "Ultra 64" and two arcade games (Killer Instinct and Cruisin USA) were released claiming to use the hardware. These games for there time were by far the best looking games ever made (to this day the only more technologically advanced game using the pre-rendered 3D background technique of KI is called Dark Heart). This caused many gamers to abstain from buying systems like the 3DO, Saturn and Playstation, because they saw that what they thought was the Nintendo 64 hardware was clearly superior to any of those systems. In the end, the system was completely different than what was used for Killer Instinct and Cruisin USA.
- Video game magazines constantly did side by side hardware-specification comparisons of the systems using dubious statistics.
Consoles of the 32/64-bit era
Video game franchises established during the 32/64-bit era
See also
