It's hard to put an exact date on when this practice stopped, but if you played in the '90s you'd be familiar with the idea that discussions of video game graphics were restricted to talking about "Bit". At least in school playgrounds. If you were stuck with a Master System, then too bad buddy, it may well have Alex Kidd built-in, but it was sadly an 8-Bit console and everyone else had a 16-Bit Super Nintendo. They would then salivate over the promise of the 32-Bit Saturn (it always had to be doubled, for reasons more tech-literate people can probably explain) until Sony came along and ruined everything. After the N64 all the Bit stuff seemed to stop. No one spoke of a 128-Bit Dreamcast or a 256-Bit XBox 360. And the world was poorer for it.
A regular film and video games contributor for What Culture, Robert also writes reviews and features for The Daily Telegraph, GamesIndustry.biz and The Big Picture Magazine as well as his own Beames on Film blog. He also has essays and reviews in a number of upcoming books by Intellect.
