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."

Comments

one more tetris/pacman clone is what we need

[rd4tech]

...who's working on the latest Pac-Man game,...

/rant/ Why don't those guys start trying out NEW ideas instead of endless XYZ pacman/tetris/whatnot variations and tons of chrome. I mean, it's damn pacman, it's the idea that counts, who cares about the rest, it's PLAYABLE.

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'

/rant/

legalities of emulators

[Hatta]

So how long until Nintendo or whoever starts going after the authors of emulators?

Good Games

[svenvder]

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

Bunch of suckers-Retro-money

[Anonymous Coward]

And people wonder why companies hold onto old games, instead of releasing them into public domain.

Um, no shit

[Stick_Fig]

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.