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Don't Go Down Memory Lane?
fieldsofclover writes "Gamers With Jobs is running a piece today about the darker side of gaming nostalgia. From the article: 'Here's an example. Konami's Castlevania had interesting monsters, catchy music, and a great gimmick: a guy with a whip. But if you went back and played it today, chances are you wouldn't bother playing past the second level. Why are the newest games in the series so drastically different from the original? The answer is because gamers demand more from their hobby now, and there's just not a lot of meat on those old bones. But when the fully 3D, story-driven sequel fails, they point at the original on its lofty pedestal and demand an experience that lives up to their memories. It's a double standard that's next to impossible to satisfy.' Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by staying obsessed with the old classics?"
You can lead a gift horse to water, but you can't shoot it in the foot.
That's a tad melodramatic don't you think?
....where everything is a hi-res shade of brown, and the boss is always a giant bug.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Super Mario Bros is still lots of fun, I don't care what you say.
It's time we put away the Conkers and Contras and Castlevanias of our past and focus on the games we have yet to dream of
This message should be for video game developers, not video game consumers. Developers definitely need to get their heads out of their @sses and start dreaming up new, creative ideas instead of just taking the easy way out with throwbacks. Consumers on the other hand have little impact on what games are being developed, and therefore consumers can do whatever they want. If they want throwbacks or if they want brand new fresh ideas, no biggy. But the writer of this article needs to direct his ranting towards the appropriate people.
My gaming experience maybe jaded by my memories (I can't enjoy half-life 1 quite the same way anymore) and tunnel vision might obstruct my modern game view (New Super Mario Bros. was good, but It could have been so much more,)but they haven't discouraged my number one reason for buying the Wii...Fun new games with their classic predicessors all in one system.
Demented But Determined.
For some of us, gaming past isn't "looking back on things and remembering them."
While it's true some people do just look back on it and remember things as better than they were, and that's their issue, it's not the case for everyone.
Some of us still play those games you know.
Those "old bones" have a tendency to still have similarly excellent gameplay as the newer generation (and are usually far more challenging to boot!). When will we realize that gameplay isn't all bells and whistles?
Why put out new stuff when you make extremely minor changes and call it a new game? EA proved that business model to be a successful one, and everyone else has followed.
From a business standpoint, it makes sense -- why take a risk when you don't have to?
From a consumer standpoint, it sucks. Eventually enough consumers will quit buying SUPER-COOL-GAME-2,3,4....x and force a shift in the market. Until that happens, enjoy Madden 2007, 2008, 2009, etc and FinalFantasy-WHATEVER because its not going to change.
Haha. It bugs me when people talk like you do. Surely you don't really believe that every new game is utter crap, or indeed that every older game is fantastic? There were just as many absolutely terrible games back then as there are now. You've just conveniently forgotten about them.
Truth is, newer installments of classic games can be as good as ever, but they will never live up to the memories that gamers have developped for their classic, personal favorites.
Many of the great Super NES and Genesis games still have excellent replay value. Some of the fad titles and the crap shooter/fighter clones don't withstand the test of time when replayed. However, the true classics like Super Metroid, Yoshi's Island, Final Fantasy 4-6, Phantasy Star 2 & 4, the Sonic games, etc. are still as fun to play as they were back in the day.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Ditto. I don't regularly play these games, the challenge factor isn't there as much, but every so often I'll fire up the ol' emulator and break out the classics... Mega Man series (esp. 2), SMB3, dragon warrior 1-4, contra, zelda...
Sorry, they're still fun for me. Maybe Conker just sucks as a game? Haven't played it myself, but I don't see many people pining over the days of Conker... On the other hand, Zelda, FF series... those always have replay value.
sure the old games have been done to death by now, but for the most part the good games from back in the day were pioneering things. Though, it should be said that for the most parts the major driving force behind the remake is the nostalgia factor. I mean, look at NARC. The remake was absolutely horrible because they spent more time saying "Remember how you liked play NARC back in the day? Guess what, It's back! and SHINEY TOO!!!" when they should have been making a game where blast druggies with missiles.
It's not that we crap on game remakes because they don't take us back to 1989, we crap on them because they are absolute garbage that try to change too many things from the gameplay that made it classic in the first place. I mean, my brother just picked up a copy of "Space Raiders" for the gamecube for $10, it hardly changes the gameplay of the original space invaders, and then updates the graphics, but the core game mech stays exactly the same.
If you try to change too much, you alienate the memories we had of the original. If you change too little, you get the same game over again, which may or may not be what the consumers want. I don't know about anyone else, but my fond memories of Ninja Gaiden were rekindled when the new one came out. It gave shiney graphics, slick controls, was still hard as granite, but it didn't alienate the gamers. I think you can mainly credit this to the fact that tecmo actually tried to make a new game out, not just advertise the hell out of a poorly designed potential cashcow.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
On top of it all, New Super Mario Bros. just got released and is doing quite well. This is a perfect example of classic gameplay in a successful contemporary game. Maybe developers just shouldn't waste so much time on production values, but should just concentrate on gameplay and level variety.
Twinstiq, game news
The first RPG I ever played was simply called "Dungeon", this was the Commodore game that got my entire family hooked on video games for the rest of our lives.
We would sit around the supper table, each trading stories about our experience in this expansive and immersive alternate reality. I would inform everyone about the secret passage I found, where I found a secret spell called Temporal Fugue; my brother would update us as to how much money he had stolen from the bank that day; my father would describe his run-in with "The Devourer".
This game held a special place in all of our hearts and often we would fondly discuss how great the game was... until last year... when I found an emulator and ROM and decided to relive all my old memories. The lush and vibrant full-color dungeon memories that I had in my mind was immediately shattered by a crude 4 color, blocky rendition of what vaguely looked like walls and doors. My memories of thrilling game-play in a true-to-life virtual world were replaced by agonizing and seemingly endless boring hall-walking.
I showed my father. All he did was scream "NO! THERE IS NO WAY THAT THAT'S HOW BAD IT LOOKED! CHRIS YOU MUST HAVE MADE A MISTAKE. THIS CAN'T BE DUNGEON!!"
While my father is STILL in denial, I have accepted the truth. My fond memories of that game are gone forever.
Just look at Metroid, Mario, Metal Gear, Castlevania (SotN and gameboy), Zelda, Prince of Persia, Final Fantasy... Fans and newcomers alike hated the more recent installments, right? Right?
No, it's not hard to involve the themes, maybe part of the storyline, and the major gameplay elements from the original game into an entirely new engine. But it does make a convenient scapegoat if you're a developer whose games are failing or a pundit firing off the first story idea that came to his mind.
I think the thing that was most enjoyable about the 'old' games, was that they always pushed the edge. One of my favorites was Ultima 7. The game play was very simple and consistent, but provided a ton of freedom. Once I beat the game, I spent a long time playing with the editor(cheat) mode, building castles out of gold bricks, making Lord british join my party and such. Wolfenstien, DOOM and Quake were much the same game, but all of them made huge leaps in gameplay. Then you had merging between MUDs, FPSs and Strategy(Ultima Online, Starcraft, etc...). The mixing of genres in a simple consistent way pushed the edge again. After that I started to grow up and found myself more interested in being social, so I'm not really up to date on how more modern games push the edge. However, I wonder what ideas slashdotters have for pushing the edge of gameplay.
There were some games we played because we had nothing better.
Then there were games we played because they were fucking awesome.
I play Asteroids, Puzzle Bobble, and Galaga regularly. I will fire up an NES for Punch-Out, Duck Hunt, or Mario. I doubt anyone in their right mind would slight Street Fighter II or Metal Slug.
Games like Castlevania, Resident Evil, and even Zelda were more promise than game in their first iteration. They were landmark games for their time, but if you were honest with yourself when you first played them, you knew that those games needed more power. The developers were making do with what they had, but they were coding for future systems. Those type of games don't age well.
I noticed this problem when I was the lead tester for Atari Anniversary Advance for the GameBoy Advance. This title had the original ROMs of Asteriod, Battlezone, Centipede, Missile Command, and Tempest being emulated on the GBA. When I first got the title, I thought these were awesome games because I played them when they first came out. (I also played Pong when it first came out as well.) But, with the critical eye of a professional tester, I found out that there were sure buggy as heck. Mostly due to the limitation of the hardware during the early 1980's. The gameplay is still awesome and I still suck 20 years later. :P
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
What's the point of hypothesizing about "if", when emulators are cheap and plentiful? If you think that Castlevania 1 was better than it's latest sequel, go play it. Nobody's going to pick on you for not keeping up with the times.
Sometimes I find out that I just had low expectations when I was young. (e.g. Dragon Warrior 1, Final Fantasy 1, Paperboy)
Sometimes I find out that games which were good have nevertheless been surpassed by better alternatives or sequels. (e.g. Zelda 1, Mario Kart 1, Duke Nukem 3D).
And sometimes, the old games are fondly remembered because they were really, really good. Star Control 2, Deus Ex 1, and the Baldur's Gate series are each 5 or 10 years old, but (despite playing Starcon 3, Deus Ex 2, Neverwinter Nights, and lots of similar games from the same genres) I still haven't found any similar-but-better games to replace any of them. Judging by sales, there are a lot of people that feel the same way about Starcraft and Half Life 1. We don't all have some retro-gaming fetish, we just know what we like and know how rare it can be.
Of course, I would not want interactive 3D dysentary.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Most developers would love to do something creative with the paltry time and money their publishers give them.
But the publishers see only one thing: the bottom line. They are firmly convinced that making a guaranteed mediocre profit is better than taking a risk and possibly hitting the big time with a new, creative, fun idea.
This can be true. I'm a big music game fan and I've recently gotten my hands on a copy of PaRappa the Rapper (one of my favorites). Now lately I've been playing tons of Guitar Hero (awesome game). So then I go back to PaRappa for a little bit. Now the graphics look really blocky (it was PS1 after all), but that's not a problem. However, compared to Frequency/Amplitude/Guitar Hero/Donkey Konga it is REALLY HARD to get the timings right. I don't know what the issue is, but it seems to be much less forgiving (either that, or the indicator at the top of the screen is inaccurate). It's still fun, but that was a surprise to me when I started playing again. If the game came out today, I think it would have a hard time because of that.
Then there is also just the fun factor. I got a copy of Donkey Konga 2 a few months ago. After playing Guitar Hero it just wasn't very fun. The music in it was terrible (worse the the first by far) and it just wasn't as fun. You didn't get the connection to the music like you do with GH. Then just for comparison I put in my copy of Donkey Konga, and it was the same. I really liked that game, but now it just wasn't as fun.
Guitar Hero has REALLY raised the bar, it seems. Some games hold up very well (Frequency and Amplitude are still fun to play), others don't.
This happens in all genres. If a game is good enough (Super Mario World, Mario 64) then it will stand above it's peers for years to come. But if a game was just good when it came out, it may not stand the test of time. That's what we're seeing in some of these things.
I played through Kid Icarus about two months ago for the first time ever. I've got to say, that game was HARD. If I didn't know better I'd think it was an arcade (that you'd have to pump full of quarters). You can really see how games have changed. Most games that hard would never survive today. There is nothing wrong with a strong challenge, but that game just beats you over the head with it. I know tons of people think that is one of the best games ever, but I just can't see it from my (obviously quite different) perspective.
Some nostalgia is good. Some games really deserve it (Super Mario World, Mario 64, Yoshi's Island). But many games are remembered fondly and while they were important, they don't stand up to recent games.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
This is precisely the same problem with Star Wars: Episode One. It is impossible to live up to the memory of seeing Star Wars for the first time, especially when the first time you saw it you were seven.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
Sure, there were terrible games 15 years ago, but the shear number of bad games today is the difference.
I disagree - I think it's all perspective. 90% of everything is crap, consistently. It was then, and it is now. But with older games, you're comparing the 10% of non-crap over a long period of time - because that's all you really remember - to the entire volume of current crap/noncrap that you notice on a daily basis. So it seems like there were more good games back then.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Back when the graphics were cheesy 3D lines (Wizardry) and 2D pictures (Bard's Tale), the top down looks (Ultima), or the top down look of Might & Magic, the the companies couldn't rely on "wickedly cool graphics" or "scantily clad heroine" to make a game work. They had to rely on the story in the game to keep you coming back.
The original Wizardry made it feel like you were playing a bit of DnD on your computer, right down to the dungeon crawl. The story wasn't that great, but the gameplay was different from a lot of other games.
Ultima gave us a fantastic story, coupled with 2D first person (and later, 4 person group) graphics to give you a sense of size to the world. You felt like you were going somewhere as the story plot carried you along.
The Bard's Tale was just flat out brilliant. The graphics were cheesy, but the story was strong, and you felt yourself moving around the city advancing the story.
And Might & Magic truly had a lengthy story line, filled with interesting puzzles that kept you going for months.
All of these games went beyond graphics to make you feel immersed. They had original thoughts and ideas, and were successful because of it. Then, the sequels started, and many of them stunk. But the name recogniztion alone made sales happen, and the bottom line is always the almight dollar.
Nowadays, with as much time as people have to put into the graphics, for a one time shot type game with limited extra revenue potential, they skimp on the story, and try to wow you with graphics. Even some MMOs are falling into this model, and don't last long.
I completely disagree with almost all the comments in this article and made in response. I've dug out old systems, and downloaded emulators and while on a few occassions the games were much easier due to their play-style (The Orig. Super Mario Bros, I could never beat it as a kid, now I pull it out for my kid and its super easy for me) but by and large they are very similar to how I remember them, and they are still fun to boot! - I find the early 3D games a little tough on the eyes, but I imagine they were just as nausia inducing back then, we just tolerated it more.
To this day I have never played a game as fun and well designed as the original Legend of Zelda, and I have played it many times on emulators, on original hardware, and on the gamecube release. It is still great. Sure it has no story, and no dialogue, but I find I play games for the play not for the story line anyway. I can always watch a movie for the story. Which brings up the problem with this piece, how can you hope to ever have games be considered art if you constantly rant about how dispossable they are? I'd like to see a film reviewer rant about given up on watching old movies because modern film techniques and special effects are so much better.
You'd be surprised what you _can_ find if you do your research instead of complaining about youth these days. And that's coming from a mid-30's guy, so don't rush back on the "you young whippersnappers" bandwagon yet.
E.g., "real time strategy" doesn't only include C&C clones. It also includes Paradox's games which span continents or even the globe, and are thus truly at strategic level. You don't have to select companies or order aim artillery strikes in real time, because such things are abstracted by brigades and doctrines. Plus you can do such things as setting divisions or indeed army corps to auto-reinforce any of its neighbours that are under attack, so you don't have to respond in real time to everything.
Plus, at least in single player you can always pause the game and take your time thinking up a strategy. So why the huge fuss about lightning reflexes and the like? (And trust me, you'll need to think pincer maneuvers, envelopment and cutting off supply to win a Paradox game. Try just grouping everyone and sending them that-a-way lightning fast, and you'll have the honour of seeing your Wehrmacht thoroughly thrashed by Poland. How's that for strategy?)
And you can even find the occasional turn based game published in the last few years. I know I even have one on the PS2, and there are several on the handhelds. And I can think of two for the PC too, just off the top of my head. So you can pick your poison.
And then there are games like Civ 3 and 4 which are technically empire building, but are turn based all right. Heck, even Rome Total War can be played as a Civ game if you leave the battles on auto. It worked for me, anyway.
And that's just in the commercial arena. If you move on to F/OSS games, you can find stuff like, for example, MegaMek. It's an excellent implementation of BattleTek. Turn- and hex-based, like in the good old days.
Puzzles? Get an adventure game, since they're making a spectacular comeback. It may not be an exact clone of whatever puzzles you have in mind, but there are plenty who'll exercise the little grey cells. E.g., the latest Sherlock Holmes game.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A few years ago while I was still in college, I wrote a paper for my computer ethics class on the subject of abandonware. In the course of my research I stumbled across some old games that I'd never played as a kid; the first game in the Monkey Island series, and the first three Quest for Glory titles. Those games were positively *ancient*. Someone already mentioned in the comments that these games are considered classics (bringing back memories and whatnot), but I thought the games were compelling, even without having played them as a kid. I remember taking a three week break from Unreal Tournament to play through QFGII for the first time. I thought it was great, despite the EGA graphics and text parser. That is evidence enough for me that vintage games can have more than just nostalgia value.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
"I have also wondered why the mega boss always leaves tons of ammo for weapons possible enemies might have sitting outside thier door"
You are so right. Whether the boss is a giant bug or one of those dragon-thingies they toss in every once in a while for variety, they are kind of dumb, and should be depicted with pointy hair.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I've heard these arguments before and in some cases they have truth to them. I could say this about a game like Altered Beast, which when it came out on the Genesis was sold on it's graphics not it's game play. So when the draw was the graphics, and now those graphics are dated, there is no draw.
Not all games get their fun from graphics though. Why is it that every system and cellphone has an Arkanoid type game? Because Arkanoid is fun to play and requires no time commitment. Play and put it down, no logging out or spending hours leveling your chracter.
Castlevania 1, 2, and 3 on the NES were all excellent games because the gameplay was both challenging and rewarding. You kept playing to see what would happen next, what would the next boss look like? And in their own way, the graphics and sound contributed to it.
Sometimes less is more. One of the charming aspects of the old 8 bit games is that the rasterized rendering engines relied on simple block like textures repeated and varied to form the game world. This was cruder than bitmapped graphics but it forced you to use your imagination more. The box art and the user manuals for the game is where the art was. Those told you what the game was supposed to look like.
Any 10 year old can loose themselves in the world of Legend of Zelda with it's water falls and dangerous ascent to mount doom with it's falling boulders, and explore an entire world. And the map that came with the game showed you what that world was really like. So when you played the game you didn't see raster blocks stacked end on end, you saw woods and rivers. And since your mind was filling in so much, the real world, and hence real world realism, could never possibly be as fantastic as the one in your head.
There is no better example of this than reading a good book. You have nothing to go on but your imagination and the words of the author. Any bookworm here can tell you that the movie never lives up to the book. As fantastic as Peter Jacksons movies were, they can never capture the raw fantasy of reading the books themselves.
So rather than be disappointed by playing older games, they remind me of the shortcomings of newer games. As the graphics become more and more realistic, the imagination and fantasy elements took a back burner to the eye candy.
I can't look at a full moon in a clear sky to this day, without remembering the opening cinematics for Ninja Gaiden. And I absolutely lost myself in the world of Castlevania. In particular, Simons Quest was especially fulfilling to play over and over to get the different endings. I wanted to live in that world, and playing the game was the closest I could come to it.
Some people like nice rendering and graphics, they prefer photo realism to impressionism. Some people like Monet and some people just see little paint daubs.
The old games that are worth saving, are still completly viable games that continue to hold my attention and I only wish there were more games that sucked you in so bad that you dreamed about them.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
i disable sigs
"For $5, $10, you download Mario 1. Then another $10 for 2, 3, Mario Kart, etc. You play these games (as is the point of the post) for a short period of time, and then download more"
fuck, no!
I own the original cartridges, they are mine!! My SNES still works, but it's much more convenient to store backups of said games in my HD and play them in an emulator. I don't give a fuck to the legalese Nintendo will sprout once they are profiting from the old gems again: they are still mine!
I won't pay for them again, Nintendo! You hear that?
They'll try to close down legitimate open-source software projects like SNES9X or ZSNES, but it's too late because the source is already out there. It'll also probably get harder to get ROM dumps from the web, but they can't stop me from owning my cartridges and a ROM dumper...
fuck, no! Time to move on and profit from new franchises, Nintendo...
I don't feel like it...