The Seventh Console Generation Should Not Be Forgotten

I am sure most of you grew up gaming, we all started somewhere, but it is not just where we start that matters, where we grew and where we discovered so much more than we ever imagined, that should always matter most. We all have fond memories of certain console generations, I am sure for older players you feel the same about the sixth generation. However, it is not just our memories or even our feeling, that gives this generation the reason to not be so carelessly discarded.
If you go back and play any number of games from this era, you will learn this is where modern gaming found its legs. Think in terms of the Fith generation, with that we saw the birth of three-dimensional gaming in the Nintendo 64, PlayStation and Sega Saturn. However, it was not until the sixth generation with the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox, that developers really understood how to work with the new tools. That first era is always one of learning, by this breath once we reached the Seventh generation with the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii, developers had gained an understanding of their new tools, and begun to experiment. This is why you saw so many diverse and new kinds of games during this time. Every gaming generation needs to be preserved, the games need to remain playable so that future generations can see where we came from, and understand why certain design choices are so prevalent. However, while earlier generations show us the leaps and bounds we have had in advancement, the Seventh and current Eighth generation show something different.
While visuals no doubt improved, the last generation does not look bad at all for its age, games that released well over a decade ago still look quite impressive today.

The Godfather The Game (Rated Mature) (Xbox360, Wii, PS3)

What the last generation can teach us is far more subtle than the ones that came before it. Playing a game like The Godfather shows us how gaming has evolved in the open world genre, unlike a game like GTA III that inspired it, this game has many of the trimmings that are quite common today. Customizable clothes, the ability to level up your character, and a world that features far more dynamic interaction than those before it. You had the ability to take over businesses to slowly gain control of the city, like recent open world games it was about taking over the map, but how you did this was very new for the time. Every business had an owner you needed to intimidate to take over and earn a slice of the pie. You did this by beating the shit out of them, smashing their store up, shooting up their bodyguards, tossing out customers and I am sure there are methods I even missed out on. On top of this, player customization was a relatively new feature in these kinds of games, you normally saw costume options, but full clothing options in those days were mostly relegated to RPGs. You also got to design your character's appearance, and with each rise in rank, you could raise one of your skills like shooting, fighting, health that sort of thing, which now is quite common, but again not in that era. One of the most subtle things this game pioneered and which we only saw start during this generation, was in-engine cut-scenes with no loading screens. Now, this is very common, but it was unheard of when this game came out. While some cut-scenes do have loading screens, for the most part, if you walk up to someone and start a little chat, it cuts to a cinematic angle and plays out with everything going on in the background as it was. Mission-based cut-scenes were the only ones with loading screens, and even these were done entirely in-engine, the fact that they hold up, and still look as impressive as ever with so many effects and small touches, shows that even games that may seem outdated can still hold up damn well. Will every gamer want to revisit the ones that shaped modern classics? No, that is a simple question to answer. However, there always will be those gamers who love playing games for the history, to experience something old that has become new again. There needs to be a way beyond buying used copies, and hunting down old consoles to play these games, it is not fair that we as the gamers have to preserve our own history. Films are transferred to new mediums every day, yet games are constantly left in the dust. Why? I understand we are seeing some games remastered and some games brought to newer platforms, however that number is far too small. We should not live in the past, but we should respect and admire it, for it has much to teach us. Sadly history, no matter if it is gaming or otherwise, rarely is seen as worth preserving or learning from.