The Beach Generation (Patreon)

Hey everybody! I uploaded a quick fun video on a certain theme running throughout the 6th generation of consoles....

I expected this to only take a couple days to make, but any video with lots of different games to record is inevitably gonna stretch on longer, even if the script length is relatively short. It's also a shame that given the generation we're covering that all the footage I get is gonna look fairly inconsistent!

The 6th gen was a transitory period in a lot of ways. First of all some games started adopting 16:9 aspect ratios throughout the life cycle of the PS2, Gamecube, etc. Some of course didn't, so we end up switching back and forth between these two types of games a lot.

Also in the PAL region, more titles started including 60hz modes... but some still didn't and were 50hz only over here. Performance wise this means a roughly 17.5% percent slowdown across the entire game, your 100 hour JRPG just because 117 and a half hours instead. But on top of that, PAL TVs had slightly more screen space, of course if a game is optimised to run only taking into account the original NTSC version screen size, it can't just display those few missing pixels since a drop to performance would be guaranteed. So some PAL PS2 games and the like actually have slightly flatter wider views because of two black bars placed at the top and bottom of the screen; again making it look different from 60hz NTSC version footage.

So we have

 -60hz 4:3 Only Game 

 -60hz 16:9 Enabled Game 

 -50hz (bars top/bottom; make the picture wider) 4:3 Only Game  

-50hz (bars top/bottom; make the picture wider) 16:9 Enabled Game  

But wait, there's more! A lot of cutscenes in the 6th gen  added a letterbox effect. Whether this was a stylistic choice or a way to cut down on performance cost by showing less of the screen is up in the air; as for my video, it creates more inconsistency when I cut between games since now once again the aspect ratio has changed.

This overall made for one of the most inconsistent looking videos I've made, but I wanted to keep to the original look these games had when they came out, so I consider it worth it, rather than using an HD collection version or something.

Some of the footage I had to collect with caveman like methods though. Usually I record PS2 games off my backwards compatible PS3, but I don't have a PS2 Memory Card to USB converter unfortunately. In the case of Ratchet 2, I show a late game secret area which I could only access via a PS2 memory card save I had. For that bit of footage I had to record off the PS2, and the only way I can do that is via my Hauppauge!!! capture card, which is old as heck and looks like crap, so sorry for the quality of those shots.

When I get the chance I want to invest in a retro console adapter deck like the Framemeister to record high quality retro footage going forward. Dealing with a lot of real life expenses right now, so when they're out of the way, that's a priority buy. I've also been struggling to put content out because of this stuff, but if everything goes well, by early next month I'll be back to normal and can catch up on stuff like Patreon vids and the like.

As for next time, we're doing a longer analysis again, catch you there.