Through The Ages Review – A Nostalgic Visual Experience Through Earlier NVIDIA Graphics Cards!

One of the great things about video games is that they allow players to experience different times and places, and reminisce about the past. One title that does this really well is Through The Ages, a free “game” on Steam.

I say that with the word “game” in quotation marks because it isn’t really a game. Instead, it is more of a historical experience that plays like a tech demo with which you can test the power of your PC. Hopefully, you can run it at a reasonable frame rate! In it, you effectively watch a movie that is rendered on-the-fly through the use of your GPU and other computer components. There’s no decisions to make in this title, unless you count the options menu.

There, you can adjust settings such as resolution, DLSS, lens flare, depth of field, and more. Although I think I have a good computer at the time of this writing, it uses an AMD graphics card. Just for frame of reference, I played this on a Windows 11 Pro machine with a Ryzen 5 7600, 64 GB of ram, and a Sapphire 7900 GRE graphics card. I also ran it two different times back to back, with varying settings. All of the images in this review are at the 2nd worst resolution, full render scale, and all extra visual settings turned off.

The Premise

Even so, this is still an impressive showing. Through The Ages is about 15 minutes in length, and takes the viewer through three periods of time from the late 1990’s to the mid 2000’s. Each time, you view a scene of someone’s room as the camera highlights different items from that time period. These include the keyboard and mouse, CD-R discs, the monitor, magazine media, and more.

Graphics

Despite me using such low settings, the program still looks incredible. In fact, it is designed to push a NVIDIA 4090 graphics card to its knees, so the real-time-rendered objects are super clear, crisp, and sometimes clean. You can even see some smudges on items as the “game” plays out. I was very impressed as I watched it, even though there were regular moments of stuttering as it progressed. Sometimes, it would even go down to 3-5 frames per second.

I still found it a lot of fun to watch, especially from the perspective of nostalgia. Although Through The Ages is designed specifically for NVIDIA fans, I still liked it because it helped me reflect on my life in gaming during the time periods shown. As moments came on the screen, I was happy to think of playing my SEGA Dreamcast through a VGA monitor and enjoying such great titles like Shenmue 1 and Sonic Adventure. It also prompted me to reflect on 2005, which was a time where I was beginning to get out of gaming. A hiatus that would last for almost 20 years.

Music and Sound Effects

Turning back to our program, again, the graphics are stunning. Concerning audio, I do like the music as well. It is fitting for the footage rendered, and it fits the topic being shown. To me, it seems to have a bit of techno sound. Although I am not regular listener of that genre, that’s the word that came to mind as I watched this. Through The Ages doesn’t have much sound effects, but that doesn’t hamper it. Most of the effects you hear are the sounds of rain and thunder, which are done to great effect. There may be a couple moments where you hear mouse clicks, but you don’t see many things be moved around in the room as the scenes progress.

Emotional Reflection

While there isn’t exactly a story, there is still a strong emotional component with this release. People who enjoy computing in general will probably have a good time with it, reflecting and remembering what they were doing during the time periods referenced.

I think of this as a quality tech demo, and helpful to see how much you can push your computer. Although, be aware that there is no metrics shown in the “game,” so you can’t use it as a benchmarking tool. It is currently free on Steam. If you want to watch it on YouTube, it is available here.

Title: Through The Ages
Genre: Visual Novel
Year Released: 2025
Developer: Dylan Browne (YouTube)
Played On: Steam
Price Paid: Free

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid.