Why Modern Gaming Felt Better When It Was Worse

The PS1 couldn't render atmospheric fog without destroying the frame rate. So Konami covered the entire game world in it — and accidentally created the defining aesthetic of horror gaming. An engineering constraint became a masterpiece. Modern PlayStation games have no such limitations. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Thousands of developers. Hardware that can render anything imaginable. So why does nothing feel like Silent Hill's fog anymore. In this video we break down the five constraints that made PS1 and PS2 games extraordinary and what unlimited budgets replaced them with.