Slashdot Mirror
Retro Gaming Gets Hot
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, retro gaming is big business, according to a recent article in The Rocky Mountain News. The story talks to Nintendo, Namco and the maker of those all in one controllers that feature games from old systems like Atari. Lin Leng, who's working on the latest Pac-Man game, summarizes it best: 'The games today are hyper-realistic, photo-realistic and take a long time to complete, an average of 20 hours of gameplay,' he said. 'But with Pac-Man you just jump in and play and you get a quick fix. It also brings back childhood memories for some of us.' There's also an interesting sidebar to the story talking about Invader, the Parisian graffiti artist tagging famous locations around the world with images from Space Invaders. The author's website has the full interview with Invader posted in his weblog."
Instead, they've got blocky graphics, tinny sound and bizarre objectives. And despite their rudimentary look, these games have inspired an almost manic need to play them
Because when you know for a fact that you have 4 colors and less than 100 pixels on an axis, your mind will start thinking how playable you can make it. When you have 1600x1200 on a 100fps, 48bits w alpha and a graphic card which beats most PC's computational power, you mostly think how to fill all of that for a 'real-life' gaming experience. Well, if I wanted real gaming experience, I would go and play waterpolo or football, not pc 'real games'
So how long until Nintendo or whoever starts going after the authors of emulators?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Goes to show that all the money and time you spend on graphics and special effects is all for not if the gameplay suks. I mean these games are in 8 bits at best yet the game play is truly revolutionary and addicting still today. I hope this goes as a message to all the game companies that visuals are nice but gameplay is what will truly make the game great
All I had to do was look at the shelf at Walmart. They're charging $20 a pop for the "classic NES" series (Zelda, SMB, Excitebike, Donkey Kong). Now, if they put, say Zelda and Zelda II on one cart, I might pay $20 bucks for the "on the go, I'm bored" factor (I did for Dragon Warrior I&II), but the truth of the matter is that Gameboy Advance cartridges can hold 32 MEGS at 8-bit (or 16 at 16-bit). The original NES only went up to 8 MB, *max* (games based on the MMC5 chip. Only a few towards the end of the NES' run used this. I.E. Castlevania III). That means you could fit at LEAST 4 NES games on one GBA cart. It's not like they even did any rewriting. Hell, the reviews say that Zelda still has the old "8-sprite slowdown" from the original NES days.
Looks to me like the Retro craze is the best thing that could happen to the game companies. Now they can come up with even LESS new stuff and STILL fleece their loyal customers. =\
And people wonder why companies hold onto old games, instead of releasing them into public domain.
Back when I followed emulation pretty heavily, you could just tell this undercurrent was coming back up. I picked up on this in 1996. It's 2004. Something about newer games really smacks of "losing soul", because they take forever and a day to play. Personally, i just got sick of following new games after a while, because they are too complex for playing for short periods of time. I admit it: I'm a grazer, and when I can choose from a thousand NES ROMs, I'll play nine or ten in a session.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
Yes! I have seen and played his stuff. Speaking of interesting 2-D games, have you seen Gish? Not a shooter, but a very unique and fun 2-D game. Check out the demo, or at least look at the gameplay video (no I'm not affiliated with them, my company's name just happens to be similar to theirs!)
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
Why are such computers featured so rarely on slashdot retro games? Wasn't they popular in US?
Another thing, big "booya!" to all authors of emulator software. Thanks to their software, I use my unix workstation to do some gaming sometimes - nowadays games are too much schematic for me, sorry! :)
"m glad that some companies have figured this out! I love the latest and greatest games as much as anyone, but my heart still belongs to good old 2-D action games."
I think the retro games are okay, but I really like when they are updated to modern standards.
Tempest 2000 for the Playstation kicked ass. I loved how they retained the feel of the game, but updated with the trippy graphics and technoo music.
"Derp de derp."
Why not play the real thing? Classic games won't bite. Emulation is not as good as the real thing. While I appreciate emulation, I have my hacked Xbox with several emulators on it, and I also have an original NES and SNES hooked up to the same TV. Know this: the emulators do not emulate the games perfectly. The NES is better emulated than the SNES, but when you can pickup the real thing with several great games for about $50... why not do it?
If you lack a free video input on your TV, then get one of the A/V multiplexers from Radioshack.
Do society a favor and keep something that is good as opposed to throwing it away. What would society be like if we threw away Chess, classical music, old movies, etc...? We would be a society without history, without culture.
Only on Slashdot is a company holding onto a successful product it personally created, made money with, and decided to hang on to in order to re-release it later on "GREED."
It's called being a business and selling the product you have a right to sell. You need to get out of the college dorm room and get a real job someday and start making money--is that "greed?"
Those companies own those games. It's not like the games came out all that long ago--20 years is hardly a long time. The public domain doesn't have a "right" to these games. Get over yourself.