My first computer was a 486. A blazing 60 mhz, with an astounding 8 megs of RAM. A 2mb video card that shot out 5-10 frames per second in Quake 1, like it was no body's business. It boasted a huge 800 meg hard drive, boy I never thought I'd fill that thing. A lightning fast 2x CD-ROM drive; a drive that was so fast, it knew what CD you were going to run before you even put it in. To top it off, the icing on the cake, I played Quake 1, multi-player, on a 14.4 modem. It was all smooth sailing with my 5000+ ping. Boy, them were the good ol' days.
Today, I run a modest Pentium 3, clocked at a mere 450mhz. I've got a respectable 128 megs of ram, a scant 13 gig hard drive. I somehow manage to get by with my GeForce 2, with 64 megs of DDR RAM, and a wireless broad band internet connection. At 1024x786, with full screaming detail, I manage upwards of 50-60 frames per second. My how times change...
It's hard to imagine how we used to think that 640x480, and a cold black command prompt was all we'd ever need. We used to think anyone with 32 megs of RAM was going over kill. Now people say that in the months to come, 128 RAM won't cut it anymore. To try and compare the hardware from now and then would be like comparing.. well, there's nothing to compare it to. That's how drastically this industry has changed within the past few years. And to think people thought the Apple II and C64 was as good as video games were going to get.
Take for example, ATi's Radeon chip set. A truly astounding card, considering ATi's poor track record with 3D cards. The Radeon's core is packed with 30 million transistors. That is more transistors then CPU's such as the Athlon and PIII have on them. The Radeon can do amazing things, too bad game developers aren't showing signs of supporting them any time soon. I've always said you need the technology before you can make things for it. After all, we'd never have 3D games, if no one ever made a 3D graphics card. However, now days, the technology is moving too fast.
Every six months nVidia pushes out another chip set. Each one far greater then the last. Things are moving at such a rapid pace, cards are coming out so fast, and the market is so flooded with new cards, more information, and more confusion, that the average consumer doesn't know what to buy.
I know, I was in that position. It took me one year to decide what card to get. At the time I wanted a GeForce 256. Then out came the GeForce 256 w/ DDR RAM. Soon after, the GeForce 2. If that wasn't enough, there was also the GeForce 2 MX, the GeForce 2 Ultra. Nothing more confusing then a chipset with pretty buzz words thrown in after it. Reminds me of the Pentium MMX. To make matters all the more confusing, ATi made it's bid with Radeon, and 3dfx coughed up the long over due VooDoo 4, and VooDoo 5. If this circus wasn't enough, you also had to decide if you wanted a card with 32, or 64 RAM.
Finally, I settled on the GeForce 2. It seemed like the best balance of power vs. price. As I was taking my new card out of it's box, I realized a lot of things. The simple card I held in my hand, had more power than my first computer. There was a time when $500 bought you a good computer, now for the same price you can get a high end 3D graphics card. Price was the biggest factor in my decision. Through my year of shopping, the old cards never went down in price. The only thing that made them look like a deal, was the bigger better card was all the more expensive.
What happened to the days when we ran the game, went through the single player missions, played a multi-player game, and most importantly, had fun? Now days we spend all of our time trying to build the biggest baddest monster of a system, something that will make all our friends jealous. We spend so much time tweaking configs to get the optimal frame rate, that we forgot the reason games were made. I can't remember the last time I had a good game of Quake 3, because my eyes were always locked on the frame rate. I would panic if it dropped below 20. I forgot that I was suppose to be having fun, not worrying about mechanical detail. I think we've all forgotten that games aren't about frames per second. They're about having fun.
Games are here, because real life sucks. We want to escape from it all. We get enough stress from our world with homework, and teachers, and people who push us around. We want a world where we can walk into everyone's house, and talk to everyone in the town, simply because we're on a quest for the Mythical Ring of Ryn Di'Mirkon. We want a world where we're The Hero, not the Co-Assistant in charge of Assisting the Junior Assistant Management. We don't want a world of cops, and bosses, and work deadlines, and Monday mornings. We want to get away from it all, to a world where we can fight our way into the depths of Hell, or in some cases, fight our way out of Hell.
Remember playing Doom? We didn't have frames per second back then. It was all about fun. You had just killed a room full of Demons, made your way down a stairway, and a long hallway stretched out before you. Remember when you pressed that big red button? Yeah, you know the button I'm talking about. Slowly you came up the elevator, and remember what happened next? You made it to the top, the elevator stopped, and those two doors in front of you opened. Do you remember how scared you were when you heard the high pitch war cry of the Barons of Hell, as they made their way toward you? Boy, them were the good ol' days.
My how times change...
