if the 90’s were defined by classic retro videogames with pixel and “old” graphics, then why was music and images so high quality?? for example, in 1995 radiohead released “the bends”, a cool album!! but it doesn’t sound like it was made in 1995, because in 1995 videogames were pixelated and had blurry graphics, shouldn’t it have been that way too?? if technology was that way in 1995?? why does that album sound so high quality and modern if it was made around the same time old retro games were made?? thank you!?
Ok, so this is a loaded question. The Super Nintendo released in 1990 and used cartridge, but the N64 didn’t release until 1996. This means from Nintendos side, your question is just flat out wrong. The music would still be midi files.
Over on the Sony side, Playstation used a CD format. This means all sound could be CD quality. The visuals were 32 bit, and the whole era was just starting out figuring out how 3D polygons worked. So a lot of games were still 2D, and pixelated. But some 3D games used blocky polygons, which just looked like pixelated 3D objects.
Finally, over at Sega…Sega was a dumpster fire of confusing shit going on. Basically Sega of Japan and Sega of America were in direct conflict with each other. The Sega Saturn released…maybe…depending on where you were. Due to infighting between divisions you had a situation that looked like this…Genesis was releasing new games on cartridge, which were 16 bit, using technology from 1991. The Genesis also had a SegaCD add-on to the Genesis. Which provided games that still ran on 16 bit hardware, but could now store the media on CD. This allowed games to have CD audio and video but still ran hardware through the pixelated genesis hardware. BUT!!! Then there’s the whole Sega Saturn drama. SoA and SoJ were fighting for control of the Sega brand, and who’s in charge. Japan told America that Saturn, while sitting in warehouses and ready to ship, would NOT ship until SoJ was ALSO ready to launch in 1996. SoA didn’t listen, and just started shipping consoles to stores one night. Places like Funkoland and Babbages (think Gamestop like stores but waaaaaaay cooler) employees just show up for work one day, and find in many cases their front door just has unmarked boxes in front of them. Inside with no warning it was coming, the Sega Saturn launch. Trucks showed up in the middle of the night, dropped big cardboard boxes off in front of the door at 2am, while the store is closed, dark, and locked. Employees coming in at their normal time, with no prior knowledge, just find these boxes. That was the Saturn launch…in some places.
Oh…and I forgot about the Virtual Boy, which both launched AND died in 1995. It wasn’t pixelated, but it’s research and development was HEAVILY rushed. As a result, full color displays were scrapped, and it was ONLY red. I can confirm it hurt your eyes after like 30 minutes, but the Wario game was pretty cool. I also liked Tennis.
Couple things about the virtual boy:
It was pixelated, it was nowhere near the power of the home consoles. It sits between the Game Boy color & Game Boy advance.
It had an LED display in the mid 90’s, hence the monochrome. Making it full color would have been cost prohibitive, as they would have had to add in 4 more displays (two for each eye), and triple the storage for games as everything would have to be rendered 3 times.
That was enlightening! And you just made me miss r/hobbydrama, sounds like there was some good drama over at Sega back then!