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Hardcore Gamers - Living In The Past?
Thanks to NTSC-uk for their editorial arguing that overly nostalgic gamers are failing to appreciate the videogames of today. The writer suggests that "...this breed of 'l337' gamers refuse to look at today's games", and complains about their unjust criticism of titles such as Final Fantasy X, saying of these retro-focused gamers: "It seems, to them at least, as time passes, all the faults and niggles of yesteryear's games mysteriously vanish, as age irons out the flaws. Rose-tinted glasses donned, we can forget the 'far too flawed' modern games, because the 'golden era' of gaming did it better."
We shun nine out of ten titles and place the remaining one percent on a pedestal.
.1 .1 = 10%
10 - 9 = 1
1 / 10 =
10% != 1%
!!!
(fp)
no thanks
There's nothing wrong with following the mainstream, and liking the same things as everybody else. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Yeah, so fall into line, you fucking independent thinkers! And while you're at the mall shopping at "Game" store, stop by the mall and pick up the latest Britney Spears album for when you are happy and Linkin Park album for when you are sad, read Time Magazine, and watch FoxNews!
Wait, was that article ironic?
All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
The author of this article misunderstands the point of the nostalgic gamer. The gamer who enjoys the classic game does not hate the modern game; he or she is merely more accustomed to the classic way of gameplay. This is not to say that the new game is of horrible quality. However, the nostalgic gamer is, sadly, not often the target audience of a game. With the notable exception of Nintendo, gaming companies simply want 'fresh meat' (new players). While this sometimes causes some classic gamers to grade newer games somewhat harshly, one must also consider that the newer game raters have less experience, and thus are easily blinded by a game's glitter.
Take all viewpoints with a grain of salt.
There surely is a bit nostalgia about this all, but that is not the only reason. The cost of playing those games, both in money and in time, is often much lower than modern games.
Money: to play these older games, one doesn't need the latest greatest hardware. A lot of us have other priorities now (married, unemployed, children). That, and the fact we don't want (cannot) pay premium on the software itself.
Time: as I get older, spare time is my most sparse commodity. While I do enjoy games, I often don't have the time to spend weeks, or even days to get acquainted with a new game. Modern games tend to be more complex than older games. Older games are often finished in 15-30 minutes. I mean, you only have 3 lives.
These are the reasons for me to play mainly older games. It's not that I do not enjoy many newer games, but lack of time and unwillingness to participate in the 3d arms race left me behind. Do not pity me, for I still enjoy those older games...
the pun is mightier than the sword
Well Said.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Subject says it all. I love games as much as the next man but the "good old days" of gaming had a lot more gems than today's bunch. Gaming wasn't as popular a thing back then. To sell a title, you had to put serious effort into it's gameplay, especially because graphics at the time were marginal. These days, teams of hundreds of people work on eye candy and very few develop the actual gameplay. Go beat FFX and look at the credits sometime and see how much manpower is used in each developmental aspect. I assure you graphics are most heavily focused on. Sure, some new games are works of art. But like punk rock, gaming is becoming mainstream. And when something cool becomes mainstream, it can deteriorate.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Pong is the only game anyone EVER needs and that's that.
There are all these new fangled so called "games" like Unreal and whatnot but they are all just the same concept! you are all being conned!
I see two reasons why people complain:
1. They are spoilt. Way back in time they maybe just had the one machine, and had to pay for most of their games, so they forced themselves to like it more. Now, with more money, all the consoles, warez by the gigabyte, no time to play anything properly, they pick on any little fault, remembering the golden days when they had no choice but to enjoy the little they had.
2. They are snobby. These guys will no doubt be the ones getting modded up in this thread, about how they still play Ultima IV or M.U.L.E. once per month, or will talk about how everything is now just cut-screens and renders, no content, not like back then when they had their 160 x 120 B&W screen on their half-a-mega-hertz wind-up computer so it had to be all content, not glitz.
I accept there might actually be some people who genuinely enjoy regularly playing old PC games, but for each one that does, there's no doubt 10 more chipping in about their rose-tinted memories, not their experiences. I rememer the last three times recently I tracked down some old games I had really fond memories of. I tried replaying them, and realised they were actually really awful, knowing what I know now about what is available!
One of the biggest complaints that I have about todays games is the fact that they all (again a generalization) have to be in some sort of 3-D environment. What happened to side scrollers??? Some of the best games ever made were plain old side scrollers. I probably wouldn't mind the 3-D style that much if someone could perfect, or at least slightly improve the camera angles of most games. Very few games are actually playable as far as the cameraman is concerned. I recall Lakitu to be a very good cameraman, and he should become a teacher. Resident Evil could have definately used him.
I used to be a fan of first person shooters, but really, how many times can you remake Doom & Wolfenstein. There are five thousand FPSs out there, and they just aren't fun anymore. I was on a Counter-Strike kick for a bit, I did like that game, but it just seemed to get old after a while (although I'm sure I wouldn't mind playing it again).
I could lament about the poor quality of modern video games all night, but I just don't feel like it, I'm sure there will be plenty of people complaining for me. Pretty much, nine times out of ten, I'd just rather pick up my Nintendo controller (or even my Super Nintendo one) and play a good old Castlevania game.
Oh yea, Game Boy Advance games aren't that bad at all, they seem to pretty much stick to the old style, and I like that.
-Magiluke
Earl Grey, Hot.
But people just enjoy complaining. We feared the XBox because the industry never supported 3 consoles before.
What happened? Well, none of them faded away, instead it gave each supporter twice as many competitors and turned their fanbase into overly supportive, defensive and blind customers shunning anything that doesn't match their demographic.
"It's not on the _console I bought_, therefore it sucks" is the main attitude today. People are blinded by their fervor to save a couple hundred dollars. Look at how many people flock to complain about exclusive titles? You've seen it all here before, even I'm guilty of it.
You'd have to live in an incubation chamber to not be sick of discussion about GTA or Halo by now. They're both years old, but the hardcore people refuse to move on, because like most humans, they fear change.
The sooner we get Sony or MS to leave the console industry the better, so we can all get back to our normal complaining lives devoid of blind debate and focused back on a simple version choice rather than a tri-fecta of nerd-criticism.
Crowd of people - "YES, WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS"
Lone voice - "I'm not"
movies and music are just the same, and the only reason we notice this as gamers is because we all knew the days when gaming was a niche. I think that a lot of people don't dig mainstream because they want do differentiate themselves from the rest of the world, define themselves in some way. I have always had a problem with following the same direction as the masses, I like having my own ideas about stuff wether it's about music, politics, movies and games. So why should we all follow mainstream again??
Ignoring the luscious graphics, the brilliant musical score, the huge lifespan, the charming mini-games and secrets, and story that for once isn't a simple afterthought - it's too 'cinematic'. Not enough speed, not enough skill, not enough hammering at the 'fire' button and dodging swathes of bullets.
No. Ignoring the luscious graphics, brilliant musical score, ``huge lifespan,'' ``charming'' mini games and secrets, and story, there is nothing there at all. It's 10 hour movie broken up by what most of the world calls ``work'' -- endless, mind-numbing repetition of random battles for purpose of leveling up, so you can be tough enough to beat the next boss and acquire the next plot token.
And while the graphics and musical score are undeniably gorgeous, but Square's skill at making a compelling story pales compared to even the average hollywood summer blockbuster. But hey, if you have to work to watch it, that must mean it's good, right?
We shun nine out of ten titles and place the remaining one percent on a pedestal. 10% is a pretty good margin. I'll only own one out of about 500 cars.
You see, that's the problem with gamers today. We're so picky. That's not a problem. That's a GOOD THING. If we weren't, we'd still be playing Mario Bros and be all happy about nokia's horrible little paperweight.
they look into the past. It seems, to them at least, as time passes, all the faults and niggles of yesteryear's games mysteriously vanish.. (etc, ad nauseum) Um, no. The best games were fun back then, and there were good parts and bad parts. The issue here is repetition and change of focus. Because so little had been tried before, it was easy to come up with a 'unique' idea for a game. Game play was more important than graphics (because the graphics were going to suck no matter what you did). With improvements in graphics hardware people DEMAND something 'pretty' or 'stimulating' to look at. That takes some of the dev teams focus away from game play. With limited production schedules, these factors combine to increase the likely-hood that game 'foo' will be just as crappy as the movie 'foo'. I mean really, how many renditions of Lara Croft are people going to take?
In ten years time, what will today's gamers be playing? Why, the software they failed to appreciate today. I doubt it. If a game sucks, it sucks ok?
Try playing Medal of Honor Frontline or The Getaway some time, with a clean frame of mind, untainted by the thoughts of superiority and not specifically looking for faults. Boo Hoo, what's with this guy? Someone must have given him a wegie at a ROM lan party or something.
I'd like to know where this retro 'modern hate' gamer crowd is. NONE of my gamer friends shun modern games. Different people have different tastes. I wish this guy would bitch about teen angst or terrorism. "Try eating at McDonalds or White Castle some time, with a clean....." oy.Have you even been to a video game arcade lately? It should be obvious to everyone that the state of gaming has gotten worse on many levels--after all, entire *genres* of games have disappeared entirely.
I was and am a big fan of various different side-scrolling action/adventure/space games. Now, don't tell me that that genre is too old to make new games or something, because the fighting games in the arcade are even simpler. Back in the day, we had Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Shinobi, X-Men... you name it, we had it, and they were all great. Now, we have... what, Gauntlet Legends? There's simply no comparison.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I am a "retro gamer" who fondly remembers the acorn and sega master system. I currently play way too many games these days in addition to reviewing them
http://www.videogames.co.nz/
and one thing that has struck me thru the ages is that the same mistakes get made time and time again. That is the frustrating thing. Retro gamers have seen it all before and are stunned the new games have the same flaws as old ones. It's almost as if the industry is going out of its way to not learn.
I don't want the old days back though since we have only gained. While we carry the flaws from the past we are getting new graphics, excellent soundtracks and increasingly realistic physics. This in my opinion means that the avergae game is getting better, and I believ the top games of today whallop yesteryears in terms of gameplay.
Think about it. If someone released pong/mario 64 today and tried to sell it for full price (or anything at all) it'd be the laughing stock. We have come a long way, just not in all areas, and unsurprisingly its gameplay, the hardest one to pin down that is lagging the most.
I have been gaming since I was one (no shit). I have seen the rise and fall of the arcades and have owned every game system out there. Here is my view on this (stupid) article. Everyone my age plays both new and classic games. I personally think that there will be no equivalent to playing games in the arcades in the 80's. That was THE Golden age. It was also a different time. Eveyone views their own childhood age as "Golden," but the "Generation X" had the best of ANY age. We saw the invention of the vcr, cable tv, tapes, cds, microwaves, computers and most importantly, Star Wars and Video Games. :) Being a kid and playing Space Invaders after watching Star Wars (re-release in theaters) in 1978 was like taking crack, coke, meth and heroin together, no other high has ever topped that!
However, all GenXers must admit that whereas the videogames of the 70's and 80's were fun, and stimulated the imagination, genexers always yearned for better graphics and that ultimate "movie-like" experience, which is what we have today.
Yah, I loved playing Targ, Tron, Mappy, Blueprint, Qbert, Dragon's Lair, Food Fight, et al, but I always wanted my games to be as realistic as possible. So contrary to what the article says, I have already bought a new system JUST to play HL2. Sure, I play MAME a lot, but really, HL2 is where, at 30 years old, I want to be. :)
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
An unusual article to say the least. Seems more like a passing entry in someone's 'blog. And since it's awfully light on which old games the "1337ists" are veering towards, it's tough to draw any meaningful conclusions.
At any rate, comparing the games of today to the games of yesteryear is, rather counterintuitively, not comparing the same things. It's like comparing Fritz Lang's Metropolis to The Matrix.
Oldschool twitch-Shmup fans are, fairly predictably, not going to like RPGs. Pac-Man enthusiasts aren't going to find much to enjoy in FPSs. If all I care about is Robotron, I'm not going to sing any praises of RTS. Everyone's on stage in their designated places, reading their expected lines.
Anyway, yes, mainstream is going to include poor games, even from a purely statistical point of view (since mainstream is average, and average taste is not "highly-discerning".) It will, by its nature include sub-standard games and obvious greats. However, just because the mainstream crowd says the sky is blue doesn't mean they're wrong.
They're just right without merit.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Given the choice between:
- a modern Squaresoft RPG drama, joining a bunch of ragtag characters as they embark upon an epic adventure, or
- an old-style "twitch" game played on reactions alone, no story to speak of, no reward besides beating an arbitrary high score, and "game over" if I lose concentration for so much as a millisecond,
I'll take the modern game any day of the week. I didn't like classic games back in the day, and I don't like them now.-Stephen
We shun nine out of ten titles and place the remaining one percent on a pedestal.
Ok, to begin with, I'll be nitpicking that 1 out of 10 games is 10%, not 1%. And compared to my "good ol' days" (which is, for me, the 8-bit time beginning 1980), many more games come out each month for the PC alone than for all the 8-bit computers (in a month) back then. Not counting consoles, even if some titles are published for both.
So back then I accepted almost every title, because there were no others. And they were cheaper. Is it a bad thing I'm not spending all my income on games and pick those instead that I like?!?
Games that are poorly received by the general public are termed "misunderstood" [...] others, that appeal to the masses are nitpicked.
No, it does depend on the game. Battlezone was poorly received, but a really good game. Same thing with System Shock. Pokemon was selling hot, but I didn't care about that. My bad. Same with "Deer Hunter" or some obscure fishing simulation. Sold well - but I don't play them.
Is it despisable that everyone has a different taste? So I played games 20 years ago, I know what I like and I know what a decent game designer can do. Therefore, I only buy games that I like. And now I'm a bad person? Then why do I have Half-Life, UT, Civ 1, 2, 3 and The Sims on my shelf, which all sold well?
So what's the message? Well it's simply, start appreciating games for what they're worth.
Hmm, ok, I do that. Maybe that article wasn't targeted at people like me. But I still won't play FF X, thank you.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Why do these asinine articles from NTSC-UK keep getting posted? The last one was laughable - asking that bug testers move on to reviewing gameplay instead of "just testing bugs" at a time when they haven't been able to keep up with the bugs in big releases like Enter the Matrix, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, GTA3, GTA: Vice City, and KOTOR. This one isn't much better.
Did it ever occur to the author of this article that the people around him aren't complete fucking morons and that they might be buying the games that they LIKE rather than what looks good on their shelf, just like his so-called "mainstream" game players are buying the games that they like instead of being mindless sheep? I've never met anyone that imports games that seems to be doing it for this nebulous cool factor that he seems to have stumbled upon. They import Super Robot Wars because they either like strategy games or just think that watching the Big O beat the Hell out of the Refined Gundam Zeta is amusing. They import Gyakuten Saiban because they wish there was still such a thing as a quality Adventure game in the US, where detective games have pretty much disappeared. They import The King of Fighters 2002 because they simply want more 2D fighting than one single game, Guilty Gear XX, can offer them.
I've also never seen any of these complaints that he claims to have heard. FFX was "too cinematic"? Whoever said that? The only complaints I've seen about FFX are: the random battles were boring because they've become static, which leaves you with two to three different groups of random enemies per dungeon instead of a dozen; the sphere system was completely broken and could make you feel like were using GameShark cheats or something if you tried to improve your characters; the game was terribly inconsistent in terms of strategy (Zombie + Life combos could kill you, but using Life on undead enemies and bosses did nothing); and the game's ultra-linear nature ruined parts of the game by leaving minigames and optional dungeons inaccessible for stretches of ten hours or so at a time. Those complaints are a far cry from "too cinematic" or "not enough hammering at the 'fire' button", which are nothing but idiotic straw man arguments. The sort of arguments that make a worthless, amateurish article.
Just because someone recognizes that not all of the good games that were ever made came out this year doesn't make them a "fool", an "illiterate noob", nor "ridiculous", as NTSC-UK's hate-spewing, trollish author alleges. There are a lot of good games coming out now, but there are also some really respectable ones that came out in the past. Just because Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Warcraft III have been released does not mean that Final Fantasy Tactics is not worth the average gamer's time and should not be recommended. And just because Super Robot Wars, Gyakuten Saiban 3, and many, many different fighting games have not been released in the US does not mean that there is anything pretentious about them. Some gamers just have tastes that are a little unusual. Most gamers enjoy Grand Theft Auto and are able to immediately enjoy more of that type of game in the forms of Vice City, True Crime, and The Simpsons Hit and Run. Gamers who enjoy Guilty Gear have little choice but to hoard and import.
In short, stop assuming that the rantings of prepubescent forum trolls represent the actual motivations of "retro gamers, niche gamers, [and] import gamers". They're nothing but straw man arguments for you to form an asinine opinion and a lousy article around.
Has to be one of the first networked games with graphics and is still being played today. Feels more like a pinball machine than modern video games (which is a good thing).
The thing is, this tends to happen among all entertainment mediums.
You get the people who think the best movies were made in the 30's and 40's and everything now is crap.
You get the people who won't read a book that was written this century.
All the same, you do find some people that believe that modern games are atrocious compared to the "classics".
It's just a matter of taste.
Myself? A lot of those games have aged very poorly. They didn't have enough interesting gameplay to really make themselves compelling in a larger marketplace. Look through the MAME lists sometime, and see just how many duds there were. How many stupid Galaga clones there were without any fun gameplay. How many silly beat-em-up games there were.
Now, there are some games that have aged well I think. Bubble Bobble, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, pretty much all of Capcom's CPS-2 games, and the Konami licensed games. (TMNT, Simpsons, GI Joe X-Men). SMB 3 and Yoshi's Island for platformers. All the FF games, pretty much and DW 4. SFII is still a great fighting game.
But all the same, they are making some pretty damn great games today. Without thinking too deep, Viewtiful Joe, DDR, Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, Halo, GTA 3/VC, Dynasty Warriors series...etc.
All of those games give me an experience that wasn't possible a few years ago. An experience that is wonderfully fun.
You know what i mean: being in a lonely quest to save the world - or some princess - all by yourself, exploring countless labirynthic, hypnotic dungeons all the while. Old Metroid titles were like that, Castlevania was like that - especially SotN - and the last game i played like that was Zelda: OoT on N64 - Celda, by its on nature, doesn't feel eerie enough...
Today you look around and see lots and lots of flashy racing games, FPSs and, of course, gorgeous-looking fighting games which gets old real fast. And when you look at fantasy games of today, they are either IRC-like chatrooms like MMPRPGs - where many idiots ruin any fantasy mood whatsoever the "game" was supposed to offer - or - pardon me here - a sequence of linear, barely interactive cut-scenes with some crap action going on in-between - can you say Parappa the Rapper and its many clones, Metal Gear Solid 2 (not 1) and, yes, FFX.
Other thing i don't like about this games is the goal for "realism". I can't understand why game makers spend so much time trying to mimick reality with polygons. So, you have a machine which can throw, say, 10000000000 polygons per second, and what you draw on the screen? Everyday reality, that's what. They seem to forget many of us play games to escape reality boredom.
Sure, realism is good for sports, simulation games. For fantasy games it sucks big time. Why not anime-looking characters in the lastest Final Fantasy games? Why have characters in silly costumes look realistic? I not asking for the old short-big headed sprites from yesterday, but how about some sweet-looking Neon Genesis Evangelion-like character designs in full 3D? It doesn't even need to be in cell-shading...
Well, for while ill be playing some Infocom classics... :)
I don't feel like it...
What happened to side scrollers???
Viewtiful Joe happened to them - and all I can say is damn!
Score one for Capcom. Maybe they're trying to make amends for the Super Street Fighter Alpha II Championship Ex garbage they were pulling before.
--Dan
Think about it. If someone released pong/mario 64 today and tried to sell it for full price (or anything at all) it'd be the laughing stock. We have come a long way, just not in all areas, and unsurprisingly its gameplay, the hardest one to pin down that is lagging the most.
Yet Nintendo has been selling 4 of the Super Mario titles (SMB2, SMB3, SMW, Yoshi's Island) for $35/each in the last year or so and they're selling quite well. They are planning on releasing most of the old Zelda games as a bundle with the Cube in a month or so.
The games aren't getting any better or any worse, and the best games of the past are still good. It's just that as we gain some distance from the games of the past, we forget more and more of the crap and remember the games we had fondly. In some cases we realize that some of the old games we enjoyed were crap, too, but for the most part we just forget the bad ones existed.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
but the music in them has always been beautiful.
Chrono Trigger MIDI's, anyone?
One of the reasons why so many "old school" gamers are critical of new games is the expectation of better gameplay with better hardware. Things like a credible AI tend to take a backseat to flashy graphics and sound.
Back in the day, the complexity of our games was limited by the hardware we had available to us. Most games on the market pushed every piece of the hardware to the limit. Back in my Amiga days, some games and demos came with their own OS on the disk to avoid the overhead of Amiga's desktop OS so they could squeeze a little more performance out of the system...and this system was far more advanced than the really old school systems that I grew up playing games on (Commodore 64, Atari 2600, NES, Activision, etc).
Because of the hardware limitation, not only were the graphics and sound limited, much of the gameplay had to be as simple as possible.
Now, 20+ years later, our hardware has surpassed nearly every physical limitation that the early game developers had to overcome. The graphics and sound in modern games are breathtaking -- with no indication that they won't keep getting better (which I can really appreciate). However, the gameplay itself has not evolved with the graphics and sound. I'll admit that the gameplay is far more complex than it was back in the day -- but I'm afraid that it has been far outpaced by the graphics and sound. Furthermore, much of the complexity in modern games is accounted for by a steep learning curve and a combersome control interface -- not a brilliant AI engine (which is what I'd really like to see) and/or a truly interactive world.
Just like with the Six Million Dollar Man -- we have the technology. Hopefully, our game developers will start to really use it.
-Turkey
I, for one, welcome our new shiny 3D-game overlords!
I still won't play most of them, though, heh, heh.
I love NetHack.
Market Saturation.
I don't recall a time when more and more people were into games, and gaming has become so mainstream you see the gaming culture intermingled in everything else. In the old days, there were fewer gamers and fewer genres of games. When Wing Commander came out it rocked our world, there was nothing like it. When Wolfenstein 3d and Doom hit the scene, we all fell out of our chairs. The old school gamers remember those moments watching in awe at a buddy's house as they loaded those ground breaking games for the first time.
Now 10, 20 years later, we're on the Nth iteration of everything. Inovations are measured in minor graphical updates and "physics models". Even online gaming is quickly becoming saturated with titles that are just knockoffs of a handful of pioneers (how many Counter Strike clones can you name?).
So it basically comes down to this to get old school gamers attention: re-release a classic title on a new platform (i.e. the upcoming Zelda classics on the GameCube), release a sequel of a known classic (i.e. Metroid Prime), release a really inovative game (i.e. Wind Waker).
--
hecubas
Hecubas
If you're going to invest the time to write several paragraphs, at least write a proper subject.
The subject is a subject, not the place where you start typing your comment.
"So if this breed of 'l337' gamers refuse to look at today's games, where do they go? What do they do? The answer - they look into the past."
That sounds to me more like a bunch of OMG-1337-g@merz (a minority group amongst actual gamers, I hasten to add) from some random forum or another who desperately wish they could have been old-skool gamers, but weren't around at the right time, or are too young to remember those days.
"In ten years time, what will today's gamers be playing? Why, the software they failed to appreciate today."
I don't think so, somehow. If people find a game to be non-entertaining now, I doubt they will find it entertaining in a decade's time.
"There's nothing wrong with following the mainstream, and liking the same things as everybody else. Nothing wrong with that at all."
There's nothing wrong with people having their own taste in games, and playing older software if they don't find modern titles particularly entertaining, either. There is, however, something wrong with making generalisations that all people who like to play older games are some sort of elitist prats.
The guy who wrote this article must have been beat up at some LAN where everyone was playing Nethack while cursing DirectX to hell. By his logic, we gamers who chose to play older games, actually go out of our way to do so, and thus label our-selfs 'retro-gamers' or some crap. This is pretty stupid, since any gamer who is 'retro-gaming' for the bravura of it, is not a gamer, but a jackass.
I've yet to meet one of these rabid anti-new game people, and as someone who plays both, it seems like this article is pretty pointless since the author is imagining conflict where there is none. And even if there are a handful of hardcore types, who the hell cares, they're a fringe group. A majority of your target population seems quite willing to spring for such games as 'DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball', and 'The Sims: Makin Magic', so I am having a hard time picturing these legions of neferously superior gamers who just cause a ruckus by their non-playing of new games. Please, find a better subject to write an article about thats an actual problem/issue, not some whiney crap, and don't dramaticize it so much.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Articles like this are damned easy to write when you simply assert the existence of a stereotype. By immediately disconnecting yourself from reality, you are then free to spout whatever meaningless rant you want.
I defy you to find someone who actually behaves like the gamer this article is ranting about, who never plays new games and never thinks they are good.
Some of us may look crotchety, but after playing games for 20 years some of us do have higher standards. And some games meet them; many don't. Guess what percentage of movies I see in the theatre, though... am I "elitist" for only watching the best (in my opinion) 1% or so?
What a pointless article. I think I'll write an article about how stupid people who eat dung as their primary food source are. Sure, they don't actually exist, but I'll get a great, if pointless, rant out of it.
old school gamers are NOT close-minded, 8-bit game-worshippers! i happen to have a Colecovision with Frogger, Donkey Kong and the like. the old games still have something going. as for the new breed of games? it depends solely upon the idividual. IF THEY WANT 8-BIT, LET THEM SHUN 3D!
=^_^= P|-|33R |\/|3
SIMULATOR SICKNESS
I went to a party, they had a clown, the clown wasn't very good so everyone ignored him. The clown got mad and yelled at us. This kinda feels like that.
For anyone that rips on 8-bit gaming, YOU NEED TO STFU!!! We are not outdated. For the record, I have both an original GameBoy, a PSone, AND a PS2. Hows that for enjoying a wide range of gaming experience. I am not narrow minded like some of you criticising SOB's. Graphics are not everything. If the game has a good story line then who cares if it's 8-bit or 64-bit!!!
/ \ / \ / \ / \ ( l | 3 | 3 | 7 ) \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/
I recently picked up Activision Anthology for PS2, and after playing about 8 of the games on there once each, I can safely say that that disc will never see the laser of my PS2 ever again.
Bring on the eye candy!
Sales say it all. How many copies did Contra (PS2) sell? How many copies did Ikaruga sell?
How much more fun would a game like Onimusha be if it were a side-scroller? ZIP.
My policy for games is to not even look at a game that is less than a year old. I've found that this filters out 90% of the crap, and reading a year's worth of player reviews gets rid of most of the rest.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Gran Turismo 3. Period. Nothing before, nothing after. The sole existence of gaming is for this one title alone. No sissy mushrooms. No "extreme" skiing. No shooting aliens. No searching for keys to open stupid doors. Just the feeling you get of 900+ turbocharged horses feeding into all four wheels as you go sideways into a hairpin.
Anyone that's been gaming since before the crash of the early 80s knows what a good game looks like and what a crap game looks like. We also know when someone is lying when they claim their game is original. I see little of merit in the current batch of computer and video games.
- a modern Squaresoft RPG drama, joining a bunch of ragtag characters as they embark upon an epic adventure, or
- an old-style "twitch" game played on reactions alone, no story to speak of, no reward besides beating an arbitrary high score, and "game over" if I lose concentration for so much as a millisecond,
I'll take the modern game any day of the week. I didn't like classic games back in the day, and I don't like them now.He compares an RPG with a twich fighting game and his conclusion is that new games are better than old games?
Whoever modded that insightfull needs to stop moderating drunk.
You can't take the sky from me...
Most of the successful arcades in the area (including kids places like Chucky Cheese) still have a lot of these 'old nostalgia' games. I would say it has less to do with nostalgia and more to do with quality; a child can still be entertained by a game of PacMan, same as they could have twenty years ago.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
There is an essence present in any game that you enjoy. It has heart and balance. It must be present for you to enjoy the game. It could be something about the story line (if it has one), the challange of the puzzles, the graphics and gameplay. Something that clicks with the user. The older games had to achieve this with simpler tools. Less graphics, sound, etc. As a result it was much simpler to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the dominating principle was easy to see. And, it was all new. Now we have so many tremendous technological achievements with no essence -- no heart. And much of it is not new.
The golden age of rock, the golden age of porn, the golden age of gaming. You can't say that some of the modern accomplishments are not better than the old, but the magic of the simpler times was special.
The first text game, the first button game, the first joystick game, the first trackball game, the first dual joystick game, the first multiplayer game --- text adventures, vector graphics, raster graphics, side scrollers, top scrollers, 3D. Now we have progressed to the HL2 physics engine and online communities. I've loved it all, and at 57 I'm as addicted to Counterstrike on a PC today as I was to Life on a PDP-8 teletype way back then.
Games such as FF3, FF7, Xenogears, Fallout 1 and 2 and Final Fantasy tactics either had extremely fun gameplay or a really complex, facinating story. Or both. Games these days are very simple or incomplete in these ways and I can't help but find it very sad.