David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…They didn't actually have to think about whether we need to create a standard platform for developers to target for the next five years because every cabinet has its own self-contained -system. It's not really in their DNA to do a once-every-five-plus-year. This is the standard thing, we promise not to change it, and we will create a bedrock platform for you developers. That's not really a thing. Yes. That means a couple things for the market that keep the arcade market not just viable, but thriving. The arcades are where the most technologically advanced games are during this era because the hardware cycle is so iterative. The home systems, even the NES, as amazingly groundbreaking as it was, because the console cycles have to be designed to last so long, that's not where the latest cutting edge stuff is. Those games, the Nintendo games that they're making, the way Sega counter positioned against them with the Genesis, they're slow, they're not exciting, but that's what home console games became. They became these long adventures, these fantasy lands. It's a very different thing than you would do in the arcades. Coming out of this era and then into the early and mid 90s, Sega's arcade unit is just killing it. They had those hits in the 80s, everybody got super wealthy, and then they started really pushing the envelope on technology. There was a ton of innovation coming out of Sega. They developed the first real modern, great 3D games. We all think now of Super Mario 64 as being the first 3D video game that consumers used and loved. Actually, years before, Sega put out the Virtual series in the arcades. This was Virtual Racing, Virtua Cop, and most importantly, Virtua Fighter. This game, Virtua Fighter, which was a fighting game, used 3D polygonal technology. If you think back to 16-bit Super Nintendo games, they're flat, they're 2D. 3D games, think Mario 64, you're running around in a 3D world, all of the environments and characters are built using polygonal math. We talked about this a lot on the NVIDIA episode. Right, triangles.…

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