The computer being a mystical machine is also a lot about the period in which existed. I think since computers were not very powerful it was a bit magical how much stuff it can be made to do just with the right instructions (I mean software). I mean, one day it can only do ASCII output in, and the next day it is playing movies at 24bit color, Just with the right software..

At least for me, this inspired to spend endless nights with the computer in hopes of making it do magical things (which I managed to accomplish to my great satisfaction). For example, "morphing" was a big deal back then and was everywhere, in commercials, music videos an movies. One late night I implemented a QBasic program that can "morph" between two figures (also traced using a program that controlled a pixel using keyboard).

I understand that it is trivial, but to me accomplishing that was magical (in my own terms ofcourse)...

> Persona 3

I've been playing Persona 3:Reload recently and little things like the pause menu [1] and the overall visual presentation clearly have so much deliberation and thought put into them that they feel like interactive art pieces rather than menus. This pretty much extends to every recent Atlus game [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d6x1CIgLSc [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/arts/metaphor-refantazio-...

That's fair; I am not in the loop with indie games personally but I do know it's a golden age of creativity.

Shadow of the Colossus and Ico.