>>1511500
>the 2D-3D shift was just a graphical leap and nothing more.
This is just false and you know it. How can you even say something so obviously incorrect? 3D allowed whole new genres of gameplay. It was to such a degree that 2D games essentially disappeared for a long time because nobody even wanted them, because they immediately felt so dated. Do you understand that there were literally no 3D platformers before this transition? 2D racing games feel totally different than 3D racing games, as things like Mario Kart and F-Zero are still practically two dimensional, just you go forward instead of up and down. Even things like Doom and Wolfenstein are really just early forerunners of this shift, and only early by a couple of years. These examples only prove that it wasn't just about polygons, but about movement. It's about both, really. The graphics selling the illusion helped to make the movement easier to sell.
As for the transition to HD, brown and gray was already becoming a thing for a long time by that point. That was just the point when it became overpowering. Plenty of games in the previous generation were already like that, and the colorful games were already dying. That's just part of the transition to "mature" games, which was already being sold as early as the Genesis, and just continued more each year. Everything you're saying is really one point that had been progressing since about 1990.
>>1512826
>Super Mario 64 feels like Super Mario World with better graphics.
>Crash Bandicoot feels like Sonic & Knuckles with better graphics.
>Goldeneye feels like James Bond Jr. with better graphics.
>Soul Calibur feels like Street Fighter with better graphics.
Hell, even Mario Kart 64 feels significantly different than Super Mario Kart just due to the fact that the tracks aren't flat planes anymore and there is tons of verticality to it.
Of course there were games that still played in two dimensions, but they were much fewer and further between. There's a reason New Super Mario Bros. was a big deal. 3D was such a huge shift that they stopped making 2D Mario games. They did rereleases, which were basically sold on nostalgia for an older era, and then, only when they ran out of old Marios to rerelease (including 64. The only one they didn't rerelease was Sunshine because it was still current)), they were able to sell a new one, again using nostalgia for an older era as a selling point. And of course the graphics were 2D, but this isn't about graphics, it's about movement.
>>1513221
Handhelds are secondary accessories to the main consoles. They're like add-ons.
So is arcade and PC.
>>1514153
>I'm guessing most you aren't young enough to remember going to the arcade just to play 3D games, because they were "common" before Starfox in 1993 had full 3D graphics at home.
Your use of "common" in quotes is appropriate, because they weren't really common. That's key.
>were portable consoles still in their retro era for longer?
No, "retro" is based on the standards of the time. Handhelds weren't the main standard. It's like saying FMVs were standard in the early '90s because the Sega CD existed. It existed, but it wasn't where main attention was focused. Handhelds were afterthoughts, arcades were experimental, and home computers were experimental and a bit more indie.
>retro is anything that isn't easy to get running on hardware sold today without an emulator.
>anything from the previous generation is "retro"
Now you're so far from any definition anybody else in the world uses that it's just pointless. You're basically inventing your own language at this point.
>>1515027
>culture, as well as technology accelerates with time.
Not necessarily. Vidya tech was advancing very quickly for a couple decades, but in the last 20 years (I'll allow 15 if you want to argue), things have slowed to a crawl. Games from 15 years ago are almost exactly the same as now. Many of the big benchmark games for current hardware are just rereleases of games for hardware released 20 years ago.