Fourth Gen (18 дек 1992 г. – 1 дек 1996 г.)
Описание:
Also known as the 16-bit era, the fourth generation of video games began with the release of the Nippon Electric Company's release of the PC Engine, known as the TurboGrafx-16 in North America. The console was successful in Japan, where NEC dominated the computer market with the PC-88 and PC-98. Overseas, however, the PC Engine was quickly overshadowed by Nintendo and Sega's 16-bit consoles: Sega's Mega Drive (Genesis in North America) and then Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System ("SNES", or Super Famicom in Japan).
It was during this era that our good old friend Sonic was created.
Other consoles released during this time included the Neo Geo, Sega Mega-CD, and Sega 32X. Atari had one last go at trying to capture the market with their unsuccessful Atari Jaguar console. The Sega CD had 16/32-bit 68000 CPU and 32-bit VDP.
The fourth generation of games is often considered to be the turning point for video games. In the past, home console games were of worse quality than their arcade counterparts, but the 16-bit consoles dramatically closed that gap, so much so that arcade usage started to decline in this generation. Why go out to an arcade when you can play the same game in the comfort of your own home? However, arcades were still leading consoles in terms of revenues, but consoles were slowly starting to close the gap with arcades.
Many more advanced computers were starting to emerge in this generation also, such as the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and the rise of DOS-based IBM PCs. The first first-person shooters emerged in this generation, leading to one of the most successful genres of video games of all time. It was also a time were developers started to experiment with compact discs as a form of storage - before this point everything had relied on cartridges, which were expensive to produce and could hold very little data in comparison to CDs, with the advantage of short loading times.
It was also a time where Nintendo's censorship rules were being challenged. The release of Mortal Kombat, a very violent video game by 1992's standards saw a release on both the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Mega Drive, with the former cutting back on the violence/blood, the game's cutting-edge feature. It was also the era where the first ratings bodies would come into action. Though they had existed with films for some time, video games were still not rated according to age, and when they finally were with the introduction of the ESRB, many of Nintendo's censorship polices were dropped. It did take a very long time for Nintendo to start accepting more violent video games however. Rumour has it that they dropped the oppotrunity to have Grand Theft Auto games on their sixth-gen GameCube console.
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