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For pre-8-bit, do you mean 4-bit (earlier Ataris, SG-1000, Colecovision etc....)?
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To the best of my knowledge, there weren't any "4-bit" game consoles. The Atari 2600, SG-1000, and Colecovision are all 8-bit systems. Incidentally, the number is pretty meaningless to anyone but hardware hackers and low-level programmers, and to them it's only one variable in a design. Sitting here and saying such-and-such is "8-bit" or "16-bit" or "128-bit" has nothing to do with the console's actual abilities and everything to do with marketing campaigns designed to make you think you've been given important information.
Anyway, 16-bit for me. The appeal is hard to explain, but it also has a lot to do with seeing the 32-bit generation as the point at which everything started to go wrong. Nintendo and Sega screwed up their launches (Nintendo too late, Sega too early and too expensive), and Sony took the opportunity to start cramming 3D everything down people's throats (yes, there is a handful of 2D PSX games, great ones even, but as a matter of policy Sony was pushing 3D - I think around 10% of titles in their launch year were traditional 2D style, the rest were FMV, 3D, etc). The market seems to have gradually become more controlled by the huge publishers, and now MS and - to a lesser extent - Sony seem to want to play the "it's not a game console, it's a media platform" game. Yuck. At least Nintendo seems to have figured out when to let video games be video games, even if their methods are unconventional sometimes. |
