Are Neo-Retro Game Releases a Fad?

With modern console technology making it easy to develop and distribute small games, more and more companies are taking advantage of gamers' nostalgia to re-release decades-old hits, and to create entirely new titles in older styles. Gamasutra takes a look at what the retro game fad has become, and where it can go from here. What old games or series do you think would translate well onto today's consoles? "Many gamers who bought Mega Man 9 did so because of the game's inherent nostalgia, or because they never had a chance to enjoy the older games on the Nintendo Entertainment System when they were younger. Mega Man 9 is very much a product of its context. Its gameplay is fantastic, but it too is a product of the time period in which it reigned supreme. It suggests the question: can neo-retro games stand the test of time? Will games that mimic or lampoon the 8-bit era remain relevant and interesting to the masses long after its original audience has disappeared?"

Comments

Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't imagine it's a fad, it's just that there hasn't been a decent new game in years, aside from maybe Portal and Audiosurf.

Re:Nah

[bigstrat2003]

You know what? This whining that there hasn't been a decent new game in years is getting seriously old. There have been TONS of good new games in the past, say, 5 years. I don't know if gamers like you are jaded, stuck-up, or what, but you are so wrong about this mythical "quality of games has gone down the tubes" bullshit.

Re:Nah

[Majik Sheff]

It has something to do with walking to school uphill both ways in 16 feet of snow while carrying our siblings in a burlap sack, all with two broken legs and... HEY YOU KIDS! GET OF MY FSCKING LAWN!

Re:Nah

[MikeFM]

It's true. Recent games aren't games so much as simulations. Simulations can be fun at times but they don't have the same game play value as a real game. It's the difference between running around in a field with a paintball gun or playing Scrabble. Both are entertainment but only the later is really a game under that meaning of the word.

Most current games aren't designed for gamers - they are designed for people who want to spend a huge amount of time involved in complex simulations. Most of us don't have time or energy for such complex simulations and have satisfying enough lives that we don't need pretend ones so this sort of game doesn't appeal to us. It's just not the same sort of beast that classic video games were.

ie. I have a real wife, a real child, real friends, and a real job so I don't need or want to waste 16 hours a day playing Sims or WoW but I'd still sit down and play a classic platform scroller for 30 minutes every now and then.

Re:Nah

[stonefoz]

It's a shift in content. Back in days of yor, anyone with a meager budget or some artistic ability could max out the console's video system. In the last five years there's been a real push towards adding as many eye catching extras in game as possible. While the newer games are more interesting to watch, older games forced producers to create content. Who today would build a game watching a plumber bend over to eat mushrooms, now in "High Def". They where strange, unique and had simplicity that seems lost in modern games. I hope flat-land gaming lives on past the nostalgia.

Re:Nah

[AKAImBatman]

Recent games aren't games so much as simulations. Simulations can be fun at times but they don't have the same game play value as a real game.

Bingo. Games used to be fun because of their interesting mechanics, not their realism. We used to have such wonderfully varied genres ranging from platformers, side-scrolling shooters, space combat, point and click adventures, "arcade" games (e.g. QBert/Donkey Kong/Galaga), action-puzzle games, shmups, etc. Once gaming went down a path of realism, the lines between games started to blur more and more. Some of the genres that were once popular got lost in the transition to greater realism. Pretty soon the only genres left were First Person Shooters, Third Person Shooters/Platformers, and Racing.

Some of the newer games are trying to differentiate themselves with interesting mechanics (e.g. Using a cyber-arm to swing around, gymnastics, portals, vertical climbing and gravity effects), which does occasionally make the games more compelling. But at the end of the day a GAME does not need realism any more than Clue or Monopoly need the realism of a hexagonal wargame. It just needs to be fun. That's an aspect of video games that modern gaming is having to rediscover.

Re:Nah

[i.of.the.storm]

Woah, your lawn does that? I always have to check for errors by hand...

Re:Nah

[blahplusplus]

"You know what? This whining that there hasn't been a decent new game in years is getting seriously old."

It's not that there hasn't been a decent new game in years, it's that there hasn't been a decent IMPROVEMENT in the new games in a franchise, in years! I can count MANY games who after their first sequel or two started going downhill and just sputtering around. There are tonnes of games that never live up to their potential and I am not the only one who feels this way. I can name a tonne right off the bat:

-Mario kart Double dash and Wii (not as good as original, MK64 and the one for the DS)
-Zelda's after OOT started going downhill. OoT > Majora's mask, OoT > Twilight princess > Wind waker.
-Mario Sunshine, Mario 64 > Sunshine, Mario Galaxy > Sunshine.
-Final fantasy series FF4, FF6, FF7 > FF8, FF9, FF10
-Streetfighter2+, Street Fighter 2 > many from the SF Alpha series (can't remember all of them)
-Megaman X, Megaman X and X2, > others in the series
-Original Megaman, MM1, MM2, MM3 > most of the rest practically
-Chrono Trigger, Chronot trigger > Chrono Cross (Chrono Cross totally f'd up the chrono universe, I'm not the only one who feels this way AGHHH!!)
-Castlevania after Castlevania IV (SNES) and SOTN (PS1), sputtered out, CS4, SoTN > Most if not all of the 3D castlevania's ... and that is just the beginning of my list, I could go on.

Sometimes I have to wonder how out of touch many people are, and especially some of the people who work at game companies.

Re:Nah

[cheater512]

A good game is one which you will play 5, 10 or even 20 years later.
Not one which has millions of polygons and looks pretty.

That requires superb, original gameplay.
I can only name a handful - Quake, Total Annihilation, Zork and a few more.

Re:Nah

[AKAImBatman]

Wing Commander, Duke Nukem I & II, BioForge, Command and Conquer, Star Trek TNG: A Final Unity, Secret of Monkey Island, System Shock, Sim City, The Incredible Machine, Where in the [World|Time|Space] is Carmen Sandiego?, California Raisins, Space Quest, Prince of Persia, King's Quest, Myst, Doom, X-Com, Under a Killing Moon

Just to name a few. :-P

I miss Gaming Goodness(TM) and all the pointy sticks that went with it. *sigh*

Re:Nah

[cheater512]

Ahhh memories. Yes I did miss a few. :)

Re:Nah

[ElectricTurtle]

Total Annihilation was the best RTS ever for gameplay. Quake still has the best deathmatch environment.

I still play Alpha Centauri, Birth of the Federation, and Ancient Domains of Mystery a couple months a year. Every year. And they can still trap me at 3 am with the obsessive "just one... more... turn..." mindset.

I really miss the Microprose classics like Airborne Ranger and F-19 Stealth fighter. Not to mention Star Control 2 and Stars!

Re:Nah

[grumbel]

It is worse then that. A real simulation at least is interesting because it is complex and allows many different ways how things can interact together and most importantly because it gives you plenty of freedom to act, todays games however seldomly go in that direction. Instead most of them go more into the direction of a roller coaster ride, they are flashy and noise, but ultimately they are repetitive and pointless, because the player really doesn't have all that much to do in them. Its always the same: point at enemy, pull trigger, rinse and repeat. There aren't decision to be made, characters to interact with or stories worth to listen to.

Now I don't expect games to be full of deep meaning, but I want at least some descent player involvement, if that means learning boss patterns in a MegaMan or making moral choices in a deep storyline I don't care, at least both of those keep me involved. But the roller coaster rides that most of todays games provide, which are so easy that you never have to remember much of anything, are getting really annoying.

Re:Nah

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

look at the sheer number of games released in the 80's and 90's, and you'll find that a lot of the ground breaking stuff was released pretty sporatically. Games NEEDED realism, or atleast, better graphics. Comparing the boss fights from Mega Man 1-6 to MegaMan 7 and 8? Or From 1-6 to X, Z, and ZX? Bigger screen real estate, better sprites, and 3D graphics *did* something for gaming. Portal wouldn't be Portal if it was a 2D platformer, Mirror's Edge would be no fun if it was top down. Metal Gear would be no fun if it started with:

"You are on Shadow Moses Island, you are being lifted up to the surface by a cargo elevator. You see several guards and you are armed with a SOCOM Mk.23 pistol."

> Use gun on man"

there is unique flavor with 2D gaming, and while it's gone, it's not gone forever. Braid, LBP, and any number of platformers, fighters, shooters or puzzle games that have come out in the last 12 years since the original PlayStation was launched really prove that. I mean, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix is slated for this month! Street Fighter 4! King of Fighters 12, Raiden 4, Mushihime-sama, and god knows how many other "old school" style games are being released with with modern twists. SSF2THDR is getting a 1080p make over, KOFXII is 1080p and so is SF4(which is also 3D rendered on a 2D plane with 2D game mechanics), etc.

Re:Nah

[grumbel]

The problem is that a "good game" is something different from a game I care to play. I fully agree that many of todays games are very solid and would be plenty of fun, however most of those games come from the 'been there, done that'-land and feature the same old gameplay that already got boring last year or the year before. I mean, just look at the weapons in a shooter genre, pistol, shotgun, machine gun and rocket launcher. I have already played with those weapons back then 15 years ago in Doom1, I don't care to repeat that experience over and over and over again. It stopped to be interesting long long ago, not because there is anything fundamentally bad with that game mechanic, but simply because it has been done to death before. Games today have become far to stale and far to tightly locked into their genres to be much of an excitement for me any more.

The reason why old games are still fun is not because they are necessarily a better kind of game, but for most part simply because they are something very different from the big titles that dominate todays market.

Re:Nah

[sketerpot]

Final fantasy series FF4, FF6, FF7 > FF8, FF9, FF10

I almost agree with you, but I thought FF9 was fantastic -- the core gameplay mechanics were better than FF7 or FF8 (mostly due to the dearth of long-ass summons), the art and music were bright and colorful, the cutscenes were spectacular, and the story was acceptable. Now I kind of want to get it back out and play it some more.

Re:Nah

[syousef]

Woah, your lawn does that? I always have to check for errors by hand...

Hands???? Luxury!!!!

Re:Nah

[FingerSoup]

The biggest thing about the whole realism thing, is that people WANTED more realism than the 8-bit eras. There's a reason adventure games don't get made much any more, and it's because of the lack of realism. Realism is the reason why FPS have replaced the adventure game...

What is an adventure game? A maze, or freeform level, where you collect objects, and use them to progress further, and advance the storyline... What's a modern FPS? The exact same thing, but in a first person view.

The problem that FPS are facing now is the same that adventure games dealt with... Puzzles and themes are overdone and repetitive, stories are too thin, or too far-fetched, and interfaces are too cumbersome to do everything that you want/need to do in order to play your game.

So, FPS and adventure games are similar. they both started out with simple controls. Adventure games were Text based games like the infocom games, FPS were really 2 dimensional with Wolfenstein. More realism was needed to keep interest, and people NEVER STOPPED with pushing realism. Adventure games got graphics with "Mystery House", and then Animation with "King's Quest". FPS got Depth with Doom, and 3D with Quake. Plots for both were simple, and linear. People wanted more Drama. Adventure games got more and more story driven, or more and more rediculous with puzzles. FPS did something very similar - More map complexity, and more movement/jumping/physics puzzles. All the while, the focus on making games "Prettier" than the last, was always a driving force, which eventually overtook as the measure of Quality for which the industry stood upon, instead of gameplay. Doom3 Engine versus Source/HL2 was one useless fight, just like Sierra's SCI1+ interpreters versus LucasArts SCUMM interfaces. Simplification was a key point at several points... LucasArts brought point 'n' Click, just as "Quake 3" did away with ladders, secondary attacks, and other extraneous controls such as leaning, etc... We now sit in a market which is flooded with FPS, just as the market used to be flooded with Adventure games... And everybody is looking for the next "Big Thing" to replace the FPS....

Then comes this game, where you can pretend to be a rock star, and all you have to do is mash 3 - 5 buttons, and flick a switch back and forth. Game play is fun and simple to understand. It doesn't require 100 buttons, and has no plot to worry about. "Guitar Hero" makes a bunch of people realize that fun games are more than just pretty graphics, are more than walking around and shooting things, and are more than just puzzles that don't really make sense... And OF COURSE people are going to realize that in all the hype of "who's prettier?" and "Who looks more real?", somewhere we lost the concept of fun and entertainment as the standards of a good game.

Now, we have a resurgence of old games, neo-retro games, and unique new games which really could have been made 15 years ago, had corporations not had their heads up their Wazoos, trying to cash in on previous Intellectual properties, and jumping on bandwagons to create the prettiest FPS to win the FPS war. There's still the old school, such as the Crysis team who pumps out a gorgeous looking game that's as forgettable as most FPS' on the market. The indy-game developer is still at work trying to get their innovations to market, and finally, there's the new crew trying to resurrect the old and market as new, because it really is new to a whole generation. Net result? An new generation and appreciation for old gaming, which will likely last a short period of time before someone tries to out-tech and out-spec the rest.

Already, we are starting the same progression with Guitar Hero vs Rock Band... Who has the more realistic guitar? Hey, lets add drums, and make them more complex... I'm waiting for the day where you need a webcam and you get scored for how close you dressed up like the band you're playing. Imagine - Dressing up like RHCP in their sock-donning glory of the late 80's early 90's... Good ol' Family fun!

Re:Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

You reproduced? You bastard! VHEMT.org

Re:Nah

[shish]

Has there been a new game in the same genre as Deus Ex with even 90% of its awesomeness?

Re:Nah

[m50d]

It's true. Recent games aren't games so much as simulations.

Bollocks. Stop focusing on what's getting the headlines, which has been the latest photo-realistic FPS for at least ten years; look through the aisles at the store rather than the big stand, and you'll find all the variety there used to be is still alive and well. Yes, the quirkier "gamier" games get less exposure than the "realistic" ones, but guess what? They don't sell as well.

Re:Nah

[PopeRatzo]

Of course it's a fad. If it was a fad the first time, why wouldn't it be a fad this time?

Oh, you're saying it's some fundamental change in human existence? That people, now and forever, will want to play eight-bit games?

You do realize that after a few generations come along that did NOT grow up on 8-bit games, they will become as popular as quoites.

Re:Nah

[harrry]

Its a very good game. Kids really love it. People go crazy for games. Harry Intelligent SEO

Re:Nah

[Zencyde]

Dude.. go open a terminal and type "man lsck" right now. If you don't have a manual for it, try nabbing a copy from your local repository.

Re:Nah

[Koivuniemi]

Has there been a new game in the same genre as Deus Ex with even 90% of its awesomeness?

Well Fallout 3 is quite similar and it even has moderate amounts of awesomeness. Not 90% but close.

Re:Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the genres that were once popular got lost in the transition to greater realism. Pretty soon the only genres left were First Person Shooters, Third Person Shooters/Platformers, and Racing.

Just because you don't see the games doesn't mean they don't exist any more... you need to look beyond the top three games of the quarter.

Re:Nah

[whoop]

It is more a matter of different target audiences. Back in the NES days, Megaman was a top-of-the-line action game. Games borrowed a lot from the arcade games of the time, short levels, playable in little bursts, instead of hundreds of hours epic sagas. Then again, back then, wasting $20 on Deadly Towers didn't hurt as bad as blowing $60 on the latest life simulator today.

It would be interesting to see what you young punks who started playing video games around the Playstation days (CDs were the death of the old-time games) think of something like Megaman 9. Do you throw it aside after failing the same level twenty times, or do you keep chugging along?

Re:Nah

[Golddess]

Metal Gear would be no fun if it started with:

"You are on Shadow Moses Island, you are being lifted up to the surface by a cargo elevator. You see several guards and you are armed with a SOCOM Mk.23 pistol."

> Use gun on man"

I beg to differ. It may not appeal to you or even to me personally, but Text Adventure games were hugely popular back in the day, and, dare I say, I'm sure even today it continues to garner support from a loyal following.

Note: I don't actually know if any of this is true, but it sounds plausible, depending on how one might define "hugely popular".

Re:Nah

[WDot]

Really? When I think of "simulations" I think of flight sims, racing sims, mech sims, or any type of game that's designed for hardcore enthusiasts that want to make an experience as real as possible--the kind that would make their PC desk look and act like an airplane cockpit just to make the simulation better. Or at the very least, the kind that refuse to play driving games without a racing wheel.

Your average game is very much a game, as lots of compromises are made in realism to make the gameplay more manageable. Sure the models have super high res textures and a million polygons or whatever, but if all you have to do to pick up a gun is walk over it, what kind of simulation is that?

Re:Nah

[nurb432]

Because a bunch of pretty ( and expensive ) graphics with pathetic game content does not qualify as a "good game", which is most of what has been coming out for YEARS.

Re:Nah

[Registered Coward v2]

But at the end of the day a GAME does not need realism any more than Clue or Monopoly need the realism of a hexagonal wargame. It just needs to be fun. That's an aspect of video games that modern gaming is having to rediscover.

True - and I believe the really good games; no matter the era, will stand the test of time and remain popular. Fun games capture the player and make them want to play; and are not necessarily complex or graphic intensive. Tetris springs to mind, as does an ancient ASCII based DOS air traffic control game I used to play on an ancient Compaq sewing machine portable with a tiny green CRT (6 or 8" I can't recall).

The challenge for computer games, unlike the more traditional board or non-computer based games is that you need the computer and OS to run the game. You can't pick it off a shelf, dust it off, read the rules and start playing, unlike a 20 year old Scrabble game.

As a result, unless companies commit to emulation and continue to make code available many great games will die as systems they work on disappear. Copyright complicates matters since the Scrabble game I mentioned is still playable by the owner or can be shared since it is a tangible item; unlike a computer game whose code disappears when a company goes bankrupt. I realize there is a vast collection of old games; but few companies have chosen to make their old code free (unlike say, Beagle Bros) so even if you have the code it is not possible to build a viable business out of it to make it available without risk of lawsuits.

Now, if companies realized not only the economic but cultural values of old software then maybe we'd at least see some historical archiving and plans to make them at least playable in the future.

Re:Nah

[blahplusplus]

"but I thought FF9 was fantastic "

The thing I didn't like about FF9 was the art direction and the fact it was caught between sci-fi and a bad disney movie, the game itself was ok, but the art direction really ruined a lot of it for me. Especially the tin man guy and the monkey boy, the main hero, and the fat greenish queen... ugh. That and they took the black mage and cutified him to the maximum extent (vivi?? wtf?), I was hoping FF9 would take the world thematically right back to it's roots in FF1, but that was not the case. So FF9 for me was quite a let down in that regard, although I have to say over all it was a decent game, but still nowhere approaching the earlier games.

It just seems to me the people at square have some real issues sticking to a thematic vision, their games after FF7 started to go all over the place. I remember one of the big boss men taking his teams to task recently in comments I read about "making games for gamers, not the ones you want to make!" which is absolutely necessary, especially if you don't know how to design a gaming experience.

Just because they have the skills to make a game, does not mean they know how to design a gaming experience! as I like to say. The bossman apparently agreed.

Re:Nah

[danwesnor]

Yeah, saying there hasn't been a good game in 5 years is getting old, but mostly because we've been saying it since 5 years after Doom. For 15 years we've just been getting the same old crap with upgraded graphics.

Re:Nah

[Paradigm_Complex]

Do you understand that this is largely about preferences, which differ from person to person? Oddly enough, no one else in my family thinks *any* of my music is any what good while I like it all quite a bit. IMO there's only been a handful of decent games since the turn of the millennium, largely because the market is turning away from what I like in games. Or do you also believe that the change of focus from PC to console games is because I'm stuck up as well?

There is a large number of perfectly healthy, sane people such as my self who feel the videogame market is going the wrong way and dislike most games coming out these days. Get off your own high horse, and get it off our lawns.

Re:Nah

[10101001 10101001]

Games NEEDED realism, or atleast, better graphics. Comparing the boss fights from Mega Man 1-6 to MegaMan 7 and 8? Or From 1-6 to X, Z, and ZX? Bigger screen real estate, better sprites, ...

Um, you should really compare 1-6 to X to Z. Better graphics almost invariably mean bigger sprites. Bigger sprites almost invariable means *smaller* screen real estate. With the Zero games, this is especially obvious, as the GBA screen is smaller than either the NES, SNES, or Playstation screens.

The end result is having boss fights in Zero that are often two screens across. On the one hand, that ups the challenge factor. On the other, it just makes the game much more frustrating, as you can't watch the boss nearly as readily to counter attacks. There's also a high tendency to make the top and bottom of the screen still a ceiling and floor. Even more generally, having your sprite occupy a significant percentage of screen real estate makes the game world seem even less expansive.

As much as I welcome better graphics, there's something to be said for having an expansive world. That's the real element that I see in Mega Man 9 and more "8-bit" graphics. This is where having HD resolutions could really be useful. Unfortunately, I believe too many are fixated on HD resolutions for 3D graphics. Perhaps the XBox 360's download service will leave room for those with more thoughtfulness.

Re:Nah

[bigstrat2003]

You may not be the only one who feels that way, but your opinion isn't exactly the majority viewpoint, either. Mario Kart, for example, has got better with every iteration. People loved Chrono Cross. FF8 and 10 were fantastic games (FF10 is my second-favorite in the series, behind 7). Twilight Princess was even better than OoT (it was essentially the same gameplay as OoT but with better graphics).

Call of Duty 1 and 2 were kind of OK games in my opinion, but Call of Duty 4 was amazing, and was a big step forward for the franchise. People loved Half-Life 2 just as much as, if not more than, Half-Life 1. Mario Galaxy was acclaimed by people as being a worthy follow-up to Mario 64. Games are still going strong, and most of us are still enjoying them a great deal. That's what I'm saying, is that this "new games aren't cutting it" BS is the minority opinion, but gets spouted like everyone knows it's true.

Re:Nah

[4D6963]

Are you kidding? Anyone knows that Mega Man for SNES > Grand Theft Auto 4, by every possible metric. Oh and did you try that game E.T. for the Atari 2600? Best. Game. Ever. They don't make games like that anymore..

Re:Nah

[amliebsch]

TankWars/Bomb.exe, Warlords II, Jones in the Fast Lane

Re:Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

Portal wouldn't be Portal if it was a 2D platformer

This whole thread has been a nonstop parade of misinformation, but I have to stop it here. There is a Portal 2D version, and the levels created there have even been translated back into Portal map packs, and picked up as part of Portal: Still Alive for the 360.

And Metal Gear has changed a few times ("Uh oh, the truck have started to move!"), and I dare say people hated how Solid DIDN'T really use the 3rd dimension and retained a lot of the usual 2D gameplay.

Re:Nah

[hitmark]

2D portal:
http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/

Re:Nah

[hitmark]

ah yes, the CD. having available "silly" amounts of space for cheap moved the focus away from stuffing as much playability as possible into a small package...

instead one could go overboard with video sequences and 3D models that would have given the previous gen of platforms cold sweats.

Re:Nah

[Narishma]

Well you are obviously in the minority since a lot more people like the games that are being released. The developers wouldn't make them if they didn't sell very well.

Re:Nah

[hitmark]

the big diff between adventure and fps is the twitch aspect.

timed elements in adventure games where more or less verboten. they just didnt work.

in a fps on the other hand, you should not think, just act. if the game wants you to think, there will be a locked door behind you and a door in front of you and something blocking your path thats not packing a weapon.

Re:Nah

[Enki X]

I like 'em...and I keep "chugging along"

Re:Nah

[nine-times]

I agree that there have been many good and even a few great games in recent years, and I also think that a fair amount of time people over-idealize old games.

I think sometimes it's nostalgia, but there's something else too. To drag in a movie analog, I saw the Matrix again recently, and I realized that part of my attachment to it was that I remembered how revolutionary it was at the time. The actions scenes blew away everything that came before, and that fact is lodged in my brain to a degree that when I watch the Matrix, I still think it's cool in a way that someone coming to it new, having seen movies of recent years, might not really appreciate it. I think that's different from nostalgia, but I'm digressing a little here.

Over-idealization aside, I think there is another problem that people are seeing and expressing as "they don't make good games anymore", where the real problem isn't that they don't make good games anymore. It's that people don't make games of the sort that they like anymore.

My point is that, although the new games are good, money has had a normalizing effect on game development. There have been a couple genres that have continued to do well, like FPS, RTS, and MMORPG, and most of the good games that are released are just variations on the theme. Isometric RPGs, adventure games, and side-scrollers, for example, have become rare. The only puzzle games you find are usually little Flash games with practically no budget. "Arcade games" of the sort of Pacman or Space Invaders are pretty much dead.

So if you go looking for a great new arcade game or side-scroller, you aren't going to find much. Most of what you'll find are unimaginative Flash games that are very derivative of past games. There are a few gems out there, but what people may be missing is a sense of diversity over the spectrum of popular games.

Re:Nah

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Yes, but Portal as released by Valve software wouldn't be the same Portal that came out with The Orange Box, particularly if GLaDOS was a text box instead of a fucked up voice in your head trying to kill you.

While MGS is primitive, MGS2, 3, 4, and the remake The Twin Snakes did use three dimensions to great effect.

Re:Nah

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Had Valve released that with The Orange Box, gamers would've strung Gabe Newell by his toes and hung him out to dry.

Re:Nah

[maxume]

That's what I thought when I first got glasses.

Re:Nah

[FingerSoup]

They still tried it though... The Mini-game is all about twitch, which is why we have car chase/track shooting in Sam'n'Max, and it's why we had Astro Chicken in Space Quest 3.... Which is what makes "Super Turbo turkey Puncher 3" in Doom 3 a perfect example of how FPS Development history follows Adventure game development history, even if it was meant to showcase how ridiculous mini games were in FPS....

Re:Nah

[KDR_11k]

You picked a terrible example with Metal Gear considering that IS a 2D game. Maybe you mean Metal Gear Solid or are you really arguing about downgrading 2D games into text-only games?

Re:Nah

[PastaLover]

I concur. This whole thread is full of people that don't realize there's an entire universe of games out there. If only I had time to play them all. :(

But seriously people, learn to look past the latest installment in the GTA series (not that that is a bad game, though I liked GTA 1 best, honestly). This thread manages to be both hilarious and extremely sad at the same time.

Re:Nah

[CastrTroy]

Have you actually gone back and played any of those old games. Mario Kart SNES version is terrible. I liked it at the time, and it was a great game, but it can't hold a candle to MK Wii. I think the only thing I wish they would bring back, was the leaf, so that you could do high jumps. Other than that, I have to say that MK Wii is by far the best Mario Kart of all time.

Re:Nah

[TheLink]

But they aren't selling very well - they're being pirated. That's what they keep saying anyway.

My friend was waiting for Spore for ages, and when he finally got it, he said it was boring.

I wonder how many copies of Spore are the local pirate stores managing to sell. Might pop by and ask one.

Re:Nah

[Jesus_666]

The problem is not realism, the problem is maturing. The gaming industry mtures and becomes more and more like the music and movie industries: Averse to experimentation and focused on ROI. Modern games are immensely expensive (because everyone expects superb graphics and cinema-level sound) and thus nobody wants, to quote a panel from this years' GCDC, to make a steampunk MMORPG about the French wine industry.

That's why every game has to be first-person or over-the-shoulder: Those games sell best so who cares about the bird's view fraction? The same applies to difficulty: Very few games can afford being really hard. Most people don't like that - and since things that force you to be careful and think a lot are especially hard that's what gets tossed out first. The result are games like BioShock - in System Shock 2 you were constantly worrying about the state of your weapons, ammunition, where to find nanites, whether to learn how to handle the crystal shard or how to repair your assault rifle... Even the individual actions were harder; hacking/repairing occured in realtime while enemies might sneak up on you and might leave you with no chance of success at all. In BioShock they got rid of most of that so that you can focus on shooting things. Realism actually took the back seat here gameplay-wise.

It's also the reason why I think that the Nintendo DS has a vastly superior lineup compared to the current-gen consoles: The NDS is very limited, so games have to make clever use of its assets rather than just throw pixel shaders at the problem. At the same time it's powerful enough for careful ports of last-gen games like Disgaea.


So yeah, realistic presentation does get in the way of creative games simply because it makes games hellishly expensive and nobody wants to burn ten million dollars on an experiment. Unrelated to that, most games try to be quite forgiving so as not to alienate anyone by being too hard.
At the same time the indie developers continue to release whatever they can come up with (giving us titles like World of Goo) and portables still aren't quite powerful enough to abandon clever design in favor of graphics. So that's where you find interesting games not desperately wanting to be like Halo.

Re:Nah

[KDR_11k]

(CDs were the death of the old-time games)

Play Earth Defense Force 2 (PS2) or 2017 (360) and say that again.

Megaman 9 suffered from instadeath-overload like recent MMX games. There's hardly anything to shoot at but there's loads of things that will instantly kill you. Death from HP depletion is rare outside of miniboss and boss fights and just to be sure you can buy a crapload of E tanks which might be the reason why there's so many spikes. The old MM games weren't like that.

Re:Nah

[Hadlock]

Dude, pick up Team Fortress 2. Super active community, loads of fun. It was underrated when it was reviewed when it first came out, and with it's massive content patches, it's easily a 95/100.

Re:Nah

[saveyourboredom]

I agree completely. Ppl just say games have gone down hill cos they either don't get new games or they find them too difficult. Games nowadays let you do or become anything you want! If you want button bashing then stick to ur gameboy.

Re:Nah

[iamhassi]

"Bingo. Games used to be fun because of their interesting mechanics, not their realism."

Exactly. This is how the Nintendo Gameboy lasted from 1989 to nearly 2000 without updates, despite much better systems out there like the NeoGeo and Atari Lynx. The gameboy had games that were fun to play.

I loved the original top down Final Fantasy games and Zelda A Link to the Past was amazing, I'd like to see more games in those series created like that rather than all the 3D crap they have now.

Re:Nah

[KDR_11k]

TA was the best for GUI (back then) but the gameplay wasn't designed with much thought about balancing and units ended up being useless or OP and overall the games played out in ways that probably weren't intended.

Re:Nah

[OrangeTide]

Because a bunch of pretty ( and expensive ) graphics with pathetic game content does not qualify as a "good game", which is most of what has been coming out for YEARS.

To be fair, It's mainly EA that does that.

Re:Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

Only winey girlies played with SNESes and NESes, with their strange fetishes for cutesy japenese graphics that they could turn themselves on with.

Real men used Commodore 64s.

Re:Nah

[CronoCloud]

Part of the charm of FF9 for me was the music and art direction. It was a homage to the older games.

Re:Nah

[blahplusplus]

"Part of the charm of FF9 for me was the music and art direction. It was a homage to the older games."

I know but they could have done a way better job, I would have loved FF1'ish world remade with a modern FF story, FF1 had some of the best thematic art for boss, characters and monsters.

Re:Nah

[bonch]

I call bullshit. I remember the 90s when PC Gamer would package shareware CDs with its magazines, and there were adventure games, flying sims, first-person shooters, RPGs, RTS games, and more. Now, it's all first-person shooters or sports games with an occasional mass-appeal title like The Sims or World of Warcraft. It's all looking and playing very similar now. Even Deus Ex 3 is getting a fucking regenerating health meter, for crying out loud.

While the nostalgia element of "neo-retro" games is fun, the real appeal is that they mimic the pick-up-and-play mentality of older games. Today, I have to sit through cut scenes, prologues, introductions, tutorials, and story progressions. However, when you press start in Super Mario Bros., you're plopped into level 1 and already playing. There's no ridiculous setup to get to the game. I like that because I'm an extremely impatient person.

Today's games require more time commitment, and that's why people say they're appealing to a more hardcore market--in other words, creepy nerds with a lot of time on their hands because they don't have real lives. I can play a quick game of Mega Man 9 without having to feel like I have to schedule a whole evening to get into it. Compare that to, say, Fallout 3.

Re:Nah

[blahplusplus]

You missed the point, I was talking about each game being better and 'more exciting' then the last, few games really are. MK Double dash was a slap in the face.

"FF8 and 10 were fantastic games..."

FF8 was ok, but FFX was not "fantastic", it was ho-hum, I hated the lack of variety in enemies, the sameness of it all. FFX had too many points where you could just 'check out' for 10-15 or more minutes at a time not doing anything - that totally sucks. FFX had the least customizable characters in the FF series! Armor and weapons were gay as hell... how you could say FFX was the best is just seriously in question when you consider the gameplay flaws of FFX.

After FF7 with its graphics whorefest it attracted a lot of stupid people into the RPG fold. I would easily class FF4, FF6, FF7 > FFX. FFX had the really forced and horrible voice acting, trynig to fit it to japanese voice animated models, I really hope some day companies get a clue and include Japanese Voiceovers with english subtitles.

"but your opinion isn't exactly the majority viewpoint,"

Which means absolutely nothing, many gamers are drooling idiots, many of whom have no prior gaming experience or who's tastes are shitty as many games and their sales prove. As gaming became more mainstream gameplay started to take a backseat in certain genres in certain games, ironically you point out RPG's which are some of the worst offenders when it comes to having grown stale in the gameplay innovation department.

"Call of Duty 1 and 2 were kind of OK games in my opinion, but Call of Duty 4 was amazing, and was a big step forward for the franchise."

I agree some games buck the trend, I wholeheartedly a gree CoD4 was better then the other first 3, but I was never a big CoD fan, CoD seemed to come out of the "FPS mass market" churn machine for quarterly profits IMHO. I was pleasantly surprised by CoD4, the first CoD game I actually really dug.

I agree also that Mario galaxy reclaimed some marioness and is par with M64, but after sunshine I was not looking forward to another mario game so that kind of sapped my energy. Sunshine really killed the experience for me at the time.

Twilight princess could have been a hell of a lot better, there were times in windwaker that easily outshone Twilight princess, TWP felt really forced in parts and because TWP was for the most part a gamecube game, it suffered graphically. TWP is the game the gamecube really needed but never got. Also the ocean in Wind waker was what really killed windwaker for me and a lot of others, that and the lack of dungeons. Windwaker had all the elements of a good game, but was missing the content and the stupid design decision to have the boat and the ocean play a major part was what messed up the game.

Re:Nah

[bonch]

I think he chose an incorrect term. Instead of simulation, he should have used "immersion." That's what today's games are obsessed with--trying to be some immersive studio production that feels like a movie.

Meanwhile, games like Portal and Mega Man 9 come out and wow people with good, challenging gameplay.

Re:Nah

[ElectricTurtle]

Balance is overrated. Games these days are designed with spreadsheets for chrissake. Gameplay shouldn't be about precisely aligning two sides of a scale, it should be fun. That's why Quake is still the top in my mind for deathmatch. It's unbalanced as hell, if you're using anything but a rocket launcher without a specific reason (AKA strategy), you're toast, but the FEEL of it is just really fun, especially when it's half a dozen guys in a one room LAN. Same with TA, put half a dozen people in a room and it's about the best RTS there is, because it's layered and fast-paced, and the units are very open ended, which results in surprising strategies. When you look at an over-balanced game like StarCraft where units are locked into roles of x can shoot y but not z (and shoot anything through any barrier because the engine SUCKED), there's no room for innovation, it's just rock, paper, scissors. Not to mention all the thousands of 3rd party units for TA that would make games crazy.

Re:Nah

[bonch]

It's not that people want to play 8-bit games. It's that they want games that don't require hours of investment to enjoy. Something you can pick up and play. The success of the Wii shows that people want simple fun, and games that are easy and quick to get into will only become more popular as mobile gaming takes over. Adding layers of complexity and hardware requirements only appeals to the super-hardcore who have nothing better to do in the world but play games.

In truth, neo-retro is really an excuse for developers to go back to more accessible gameplay under the guise of appealing to the nostalgia market without admitting that they've made things overly complicated and expensive.

Re:Nah

[Majik Sheff]

As an active member of AGNA (American Grammar Nazi Association) I feel I must apologize publicly to my fellow members.

I failed to properly proofread my post and neglected to notice that I lack the word 'off' between the words 'get' and 'of'.

I have already sent my check to the home office to cover the fine, along with a letter pleading for leniency.

Re:Nah

[@madeus]

But they aren't selling very well - they're being pirated. That's what they keep saying anyway.

"They"? What publisher says games, in general, are not selling very well?

Lots of people not buying games and playing them anyway (and revenues being down on what they could be as a result) doesn't prevent games from selling well - the two are not always mutually exclusive. Illegal copying is problem, but on consoles at least it's not bad enough to prevent games from being financially successful. It just means that retailers, publishers and developers ultimately make less money - an inconvenient truth for some.

Copying is a much bigger problem for PC titles however as it's much easier to copy games on PC's. PC games sales are generally much smaller in number than sales on consoles and this makes the PC games market even more vulnerable sales lost through illegal copying.

Of course in fantasy pirate land, content creators only benefit from piracy, because it engenders positive mindshare that somehow ultimately translates into enough new sales that they outweigh the lost potential sales....somehow (for some reason no one ever goes in to detail about how the economics of that are supposed to work).

Re:Nah

[KDR_11k]

The point of balance is to allow a variety of strategies and actions instead of forcing everyone onto a narrow path of choices where every deviation means a loss. The LAN situation is mostly untrained players that don't know the game well, once you get at least one experienced player into the game anyone trying to be creative is toast in five minutes, crushed by an onslaught of more cost effective units. There is an "over-balanced" version of TA in the mod Balanced Annihilation for Spring and everyone who played that agrees it's better.

A lack of balancing also makes a game very hard to learn without having someone tell you the secrets. You pretty much have to play the game in a way that wasn't intended and you can be sure the manual won't tell you about that. A balanced game plays closer to what the manual describes.

The worst example of imbalance would be imbalanced factions, it means a player is practically guaranteed to lose if he picks the wrong option in a drop-down box before the game even starts. Some people have the misconception that balance is boring and means everything is the same, it really just means out of the options you have there's not one that's best and the rest that make you lose. The factions can very well be different as night and day but balance means you actually have an equal chance, no matter which faction you pick.

Balance allows MORE creativity because you can be pretty damn sure creativity takes you off the prescribed path for exploiting an imbalance and makes you fight that imbalance head-on, putting you at a disadvantage. With balance you at least don't wreck your chances automatically but only by doing something that just doesn't work.

Re:Nah

[grumbel]

Ppl just say games have gone down hill cos they either don't get new games or they find them too difficult.

Except of course that todays games are far easier then games of the past. Games todays have grown in complexity, not difficulty, no longer is left/right and jump going to do much, now you need at least two analogsticks and a dozen buttons to get anything done. Those people that can handle that have little problems making it through all of todays games and well, those that get irritated by it won't even start playing those games.

Games nowadays let you do or become anything you want!

Well, yeah, as long as you want to be a muscular marine with lots of guns... Games were you solve your problems without the use of guns are extremely rare these days and no, Tetris doesn't count. That of course doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with guns, but a little change of pace would be nice every now and then.

And while at the topic of guns and weapons, one thing I found quite disturbing is that most PS3 games I have played so far involved the execution of unarmed men (GTAIV, CoD4, AssassinsCreed, Uncharted). I don't mind much fighting of an alien invasion, but being forced to do things that I don't like in games starts to get a little annoying.

Re:Nah

[DaVince21]

No, plenty of good games have been released, you just need to know where to look. And I get more good games from Indie developers than the big studios nowadays (except Telltale, they are AWESOME).

Re:Nah

[drinkypoo]

It's true. Recent games aren't games so much as simulations. Simulations can be fun at times but they don't have the same game play value as a real game.

Amen to that. I've been playing Star Wars: Battlefront II and discovering all the many fuckups in that game, but the biggest one is the inclusion of only one seriously unpolished and stupid single player campaign. (Number two is the lack of modding ability. That game could be improved in almost countless ways.)

I find it hilarious that people allegedly bought Mega Man IX because they "missed" the old games. Have kids these days really not heard of emulators?

Re:Nah

[drinkypoo]

TA was the best for GUI (back then) but the gameplay wasn't designed with much thought about balancing

TA was very well-balanced when it was released, but they caved to pressure from users and the two sides ended up being virtually identical in some ways, and yet unbalanced in others. Restricting to the original unit list can be rewarding.

overall the games played out in ways that probably weren't intended.

Art imitating life? Sound the alarms!

Re:Nah

[drinkypoo]

Really? When I think of "simulations" I think of flight sims, racing sims, mech sims, or any type of game that's designed for hardcore enthusiasts that want to make an experience as real as possible--the kind that would make their PC desk look and act like an airplane cockpit just to make the simulation better.

What you are missing on your ivory tower is that Indianapolis 500 on the Amiga 500 was a simulation game and is still one of the most realistic Indy simulations available - but it looks like poop.

The "true" simulation gamer wants simulations which are as true-to-life as possible. All the window dressing (like a cockpit etc) is secondary, although many require it for full enjoyment. If the physics aren't good, no buttons or dials will improve the gameplay experience.

Of course, let's face it, "Quake" is a simulation. Granted, it's not amazingly realistic, but it's still a simulation. It's also a game.

Re:Nah

[WDot]

No ivory tower around me--I prefer unrealistic games to simulations. And I already made the point in my previous post that graphics != realism.

The main idea of my post was that a simulation strives for realism--that's why shooters aren't called "soldier sims" and role-playing games aren't called "medieval mercenary sims." Quake may have been revolutionary with its physics, but it's very much a game and not a sim. You use WASD to move your avatar at 50km/h, jump off cliffs with no disabling injury (i.e. you don't limp,) you fire weapons that never overheat, jam, or need reloading and wield a rocket launcher that can apparently fit 60 rockets snugly in its body. In short, that would be akin to saying Mario Kart is a racing sim. Quake is fun, Quake is gritty, but Quake is NOT a sim.

Fine, the super-realistic cockpits aren't necessary to enjoy a good sim. I simply make the argument that very few AAA games coming out right now are true "sims." Developers are in love with realism, but often not at the expense of making the game inaccessible or un-fun to their target audience. That's why there's so many super-detailed games with decidedly video game-looking trappings.

Re:Nah

[Allison Geode]

maybe so, but how many of those games from the past 8 years ('ll raise it up and say "games from this decade" not just the last 5) have you had the desire to go back and replay over and over? because i still whip out my NES, SNES, and Genesis, and they're still fun. but i haven't gone back and played through many of the games from this decade once I'd beaten them. I think that replay "over the years" is a better measure of gaming goodness than "hey, there's been tons of games that you liked and had fun playing." there's something missing from modern releases.

Re:Nah

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Oops. Meant MGS. Although MG2: Solid Snake's crouch ability arguably makes it psuedo 3D

Re:Nah

[Krater76]

Metal Gear would be no fun if it started with:

"You are on Shadow Moses Island, you are being lifted up to the surface by a cargo elevator. You see several guards and you are armed with a SOCOM Mk.23 pistol."

> Use gun on man"

You're right. Since Metal Gear isn't any fun anyways converting it to a text based game wouldn't help it very much.

Nope.

[Cowclops]

Well they won't keep making recreations of NES era games when nobody remembers NES anymore. They'll make recreations of newer games that people still remember playing as a kid.

Re:Nope.

[bigstrat2003]

Exactly. There's nothing special about the NES era, as the article insinuates. It's just that gamers who cut their teeth on NES are old enough to be nostalgic now. In the future, gamers will be nostalgic for the games they grew up on. Nostalgia is the driving force here, not something special about the NES.

Re:Nope.

[The Grim Reefer2]

Well they won't keep making recreations of NES era games when nobody remembers NES anymore. They'll make recreations of newer games that people still remember playing as a kid.

I'm not sure I agree with you. My 5 year old really enjoys Atari 2600 games as well as Pac-man and other old arcade games. There's something to be said about the simplicity of many of the older games. She also loves playing Spore, so it's not like she can only handle simple games.

Re:Nope.

[jmorris42]

> There's nothing special about the NES era, as the article insinuates.

You are right there was nothing special about the NES, but there was something special about that time period, across both console, early 8bit PCs and the arcade scene. That was the period when everything was new, the genres were being defined and every month or two some development house was putting out something that was actually new and different.

For example, a lot of good fantasy has been written after J.R.R. Tolkien blew open the genre, but each generation keeps going back to his work. Same thing is games. Donkey Kong might not have been the very first 'platform' game but Mario's enduring legacy traces back to it and because it and the Mario sequels forever left such a stamp on the genre designers still, even unconsiously, follow in Nintendo's footsteps when doing anything that resembles a 'platformer.'

> In the future, gamers will be nostalgic for the games they grew up on.

And will pine away for them in vain. Emulation saved the old 8bit world from oblivion because DRM, even when used, wasn't a serious obstacle. There still hasn't been a proper crack for any of the current generation consoles. Hopefully the proven nostalgia market in this generation will induce teh publishers to do a port to the platforms of 20 years from now, but since the effort will be non-trivial and the die hard fans won't be able to do it themselves.....

Re:Nope.

[Tubal-Cain]

In the future, gamers will be nostalgic for the games they grew up on.

My games of nostalgia will be SimCity 2000 and Civilization 2

Re:Nope.

[Tubal-Cain]

Hopefully the proven nostalgia market in this generation will induce teh publishers to do a port to the platforms of 20 years from now, but since the effort will be non-trivial and the die hard fans won't be able to do it themselves.....

If the current trend continues, in 20 years making a game of today will be trivial compared to making a game of that day.

Re:Nope.

[earthbound kid]

There's nothing special about the NES era, as the article insinuates.

Not so. The NES was the first game console with a significant library of non-sucky titles. I tried playing my old Atari 2600 a few years ago and gave up, because it's all crap except for maybe a couple of games (Adventure, Outlaw, ... I can't think of a third title, and I had dozens and dozens of games). On the other hand, there are a ton of great NES game. Tetris had an NES version, and it's still gold. (OK, so the NES version was crap compared to the Game Boy version. But still...) Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best game of all time. MegaMan is still popular as are a number of different platformers from back then. BattleToads and Ninja Turtles were popular beat 'em ups. Bomberman introduced a formula that's still around. The RPGs from the NES were generally crappy, but they laid the groundwork for future games and are decent as the basis for a remake. Most of the game ideas that we like now were previewed in a basically decent form on the NES.

That said, the SNES is still a better console overall because it had the good play mechanics of the NES and combined it with non-ugly graphics. Zelda 3, for example, is great and will never go out of style. The RPGs of the SNES don't need to be remade to be playable.

Re:Nope.

[KDR_11k]

and the Mario sequels forever left such a stamp on the genre designers still, even unconsiously, follow in Nintendo's footsteps when doing anything that resembles a 'platformer.'

Not really, modern "platformers" resemble something like Quake more than Mario. It seems they're adding more and more guns while removing the jumping parts because jumping in 3d just isn't as much fun.

Re:Nope.

[kesuki]

people won't buy the NES or SNES era games without the gaming magazines that go along with them. that's not an opinion, it's a fact. i could never have beaten zelda without nintendo power. and i am not alone. in fact there are at least 2.7 million people just like me who can't keep up with classic games without period specific game guides.

i just made the number up, but it sounded cool.

Re:Nope.

[hairyfeet]

Nostalgia may be part of it,but I also think there is something deeper. When there were serious limits to the hardware the develops HAD to come up with new and interesting things to be noticd. Even the early PC FPS,which at the time would have been "state of the art" seemed to go that extra distance. Like the sheer fun of blasting to the NiN soundtrack in Quake, or the first time I played SoF and actually shot the gun out of the bad guys hand(is there even a game you can do that trick with now?) or of course the big boys- System Shock 2 and Deus Ex. Deus Ex allowed you to play it YOUR way while actually giving you more than go and kill X number of bad guys,and what can you say about SS2,it was just so damned good.

But now,because of the incredible cost to keep up with the Jone's graphics wise,there just doesn't seem to be nearly as many risk takers out there. Instead we get to fight WW2 for the bazillionth time. More and more we just get sequel after sequel after sequel. Yet I still keep finding myself going back to Quake,SoF,Freelancer(best damned mods I've ever played) Deus Ex,etc. Why? Because they were FUN then,and you know what? They still are. Maybe the whole retro thing will hit more and more genres as the little guys see that they can find a market with them. Because I don't care if a game looks like 8-bit Mario,or the first DOOM, or the mitten hands of the Win9X shooter era. All I care about is the FUN,and if it has something different to it,like those games I mentioned,so much the better.

Because I don't know about you guys,but I'm really getting sick of fighting WW2. Of course with some of the nasty DRM that the PC games companies are pushing you'll spend more time fighting it than Japs or Nazis,but fighting DRM isn't my idea of fun either.

Re:Nope.

[hairyfeet]

Yar's Revenge and Pitfall. And yes I am old. But while I agree on the NES,I always thought Sega Genesis had the better lineup. Sonic,Eternal Champions,Shining in the Darkness,Phantasy Star 3&4,Mutant League Football and General Chaos(not sure if the last 2 were Sega only). But I wholeheartedly agree that the games of the Genesis/SNES era are still enjoyable today just as they are.

Re:Nope.

[Wobble-U]

Simcity 2000 was the first game I ever bought, I've still got it next to my computer and it's the game I've played the most out of my whole small collection!

Re:Nope.

[Antique Geekmeister]

Now we have Google and Wikipedia to find on-line gaming guides. I don't think you need worry about this lack.

Some of the X-com and Thief games have shown up on Steam, the PC gaming service that includes Half-Life and Darwinia. I'm thrilled: now I don't have to hang onto my old media, and I can play it on any PC I have access to.

Re:Nope.

[kesuki]

there was always gamefaqs, but text walkthroughs are so much less worth it, even at the price of 'free' pictures which belong to say Nintendo in the case of Nintendo power, make zelda walkthoughs for instance much faster, especially if you have dual screens, one for zelda and one for the walk though magazine.

downloaded pictures of copyrighted materials, is a crime in some countries.

Re:Nope.

[DreadPiratePizz]

The reason old games can be so compelling was indeed the lack of spectacle. We couldn't be wowed by a scripted sequence or cinematic effect, so the gameplay had to. This is what's missing from games nowadays: the gameplay being interesting for its own sake, and the game demanding your constant attention and input. Developers now are all about creating this quasi-cinematic experience that doesn't feel like a movie, and doesn't feel like a game either. It's really doing a disservice to the medium, which is ironic because all of it is being done precisely to give games artistic legitimacy.

Re:Nope.

[mattack2]

I never had a NES, but bought the MegaMan Anniversary collection for my PS2(*), since it was a set of games that looked like fun. (I've only gotten partway through the first, and it is hellishly hard like the reviews talk about.) I had an Atari 2600, I'm of the age that could have had a NES. (One housemate at college in the late 80s did bring one to our apartment.)

(*) Which I actually got only several years ago, after the PS2 had been out a LONG time. (It was free due to Sony credit card points.. but since then I've bought tons of games for it.. and I'm glad to see that there are still new games coming out for the PS2... I think it's sad that none of the currently available PS3s are backward compatible. I'm glad that my PS2 is backward compatible even though I've never actually put a PS1 game in it. Maybe someday I'll find some at a garage sale or eBay that I want.)

Re:Nope.

[lokedhs]

Little Big Planet disagrees with you.

Re:Nope.

[Antique Geekmeister]

You wrote:

> downloaded pictures of copyrighted materials, is a crime in some countries.

Not necessarily. The 'fair use' exceptions, while not as clearly defined as a programmer might like, certainly exist and allow 'criticism' of copyrighted work. I think that careful use of screenshots would be fair use, especially if you're careful not to violate the trademarks and claim that your guide is official material from the game designers.

Re:Nope.

[Chris Mattern]

Oh, if only there was a place where you could still get those hints. It could even be a website, so that it could be more easily accessed, with a web search service to help you find it. Alas that there is no such thing...

Re:Nope.

[Alphax.au]

I think the "golden age" of PC games would have to be the 1990s - when PC games were made for PC, not PC plus half a dozen consoles at the same time. Developers made games that they would have fun playing, not whatever (insert name of publisher here) told them to, and they'd be able to put in all the intricacies that made games fun and interesting. Console games were generally an entirely different affair - simplicity reigned because of the user interfaces and controls available (though doubtless someone will point out a decent exception to this). These days, however, you've got games that try to be complex, but not too complex (or they won't be playable on consoles, which is where the publisher is making their money because they've overpriced to the point of encouraging piracy on the PC); and people are saying "screw that, if I want a PC game I'll play a PC game (old), if I want a console game I'll play a console game (old)"; people are seeing that the newer games, for the most part, suck, because they're either trying to add too many features, not enough features, or rehashing an old concept but badly. The old games did things (mostly) right, or at least better than the new ones have so they go back to them.

Sometimes, though, you get a new game which gets it right, but they're rare - Portal and Audiosurf as other people have already mentioned.

Re:Nope.

[springbox]

or the first time I played SoF and actually shot the gun out of the bad guys hand(is there even a game you can do that trick with now?)

Fallout 3

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, though, that there were plenty of shitty games that came out back then, too. Like furniture, the good stuff survives and the crap falls apart and gets forgotten and then people complain that "they don't make 'em like they used to".

Re: Nope.

[JustNilt]

or the first time I played SoF and actually shot the gun out of the bad guys hand(is there even a game you can do that trick with now?)

Fallout 3 allows this, both in VATS and in realtime combat. Doing so even destroys the weapon, making it useless until repaired.

Re:Nope.

[drsquare]

Yet I still keep finding myself going back to Quake,SoF,Freelancer(best damned mods I've ever played) Deus Ex,etc. Why?

Because those were the first ones you played and you're looking through rose-tinted specs. Someone brought up on Crysis or Call of Duty or Halo would think Quake was a piece of shit. You might be tired of WWII, other people might be tired of shooting monsters in brown corridors.

Re:Nope.

[hairyfeet]

Oh young one,I can only wish those were the first ones I played. if we were to go back to my first games it would involve a $200 Sears monster that had a giant base and two paddles and would burn pong and soccer into your parent's TV set.

As for WW2,how many times have we seen Normandy beach now? Three,four times? How many times the siege of Stalingrad? As one of the other posters said so perfectly they are trying so hard to give the users a cinematic experience they forget that this is a GAME they are building. How many reviews have you seen in the last couple of years comparing a game to Saving Private Ryan? Games have the power to give us completely new worlds to explore,new experiences and new ways to have fun. Nobody would sit in the theaters for Saving Private Ryan #8,yet we PC gamers have to keep buying the movie over and over in game form. Why? Because they are just about the only FPS that aren't a cheap console port with controls so lousy they aren't worth playing. Just the other day I picked up a game called Cold Fear in the bargain bin. Looked good,but the SECOND I started playing I knew it was a console game. Because frankly it was unplayable.

As the retro games have shown us,and I hope the PC developers take notice of,is that there are plenty of us that don't care if the graphics are dating if the game is fun. But more and more often I have heard my shooter playing buddies asking me "Hey,is there anything good that ISN'T WW2 you heard about lately?" because there is such a concept as beating the dead horse.

Re:Nope.

[Narishma]

Of the current-gen consoles, the PS3 is the only one who hasn't been cracked yet.

Re:Nope.

[Eli Gottlieb]

Sure it does. Now given PS3's market penetration, how many people will get to play LittleBigPlanet?

Re:Nope.

[drsquare]

Oh young one,I can only wish those were the first ones I played.

I'm talking about FPSes. If you hadn't played Quake before, and played it today, you'd wonder what all the fuss was about.

Re:Nope.

[kesuki]

true, under fair use, i can go home and read any nintendo power issue i own. even if i don't have the right to send that image over the internet, there is fair use for anyone who i permit to visit my place and look at the magazines with me. same thing with music, fair use doctrine means any of my neighbor friends has a right to visit me, as long as i'm not promoting it as some form of public display. if you knock on my door, and i'm home and you initiated the contact the fair use applies. and i do have a nice set of nintendo power magazines, i have a few working nes and SNES carts, (at least they worked last time i checked)

so the question then becomes, who is willing to become my neighbor, and how do we deal with the logistics issues of my never saying explicitly that i've got a bunch of nintendo power magazines and that anyone who wants a good look at them is welcome to use plastic wrap or gloves to handle the pages, or i can even still photo them all, and never give the images away for free or for money, and have one screen showing the game guides while the other screen plays the game.

fair use is fair use, and copyright always expires at some point.

Re:Nope.

[Jesus_666]

I still think that someone should make a game called "Nazi Bastard" where you get to play WW2 backwards as a time-travelling, socially-unfit Nazi supersoldier who was sent from Adolf Hitler's secret command bunker on the inside of the hollow Earth. Postal meets Call of Duty's evil twin. Not because I think that Nazis are cool but because WW2 games are so goddamn annoyingly common that it's time to pay some serious disrespect. Not to the brave soldiers who fought the war but to the genre of WW2 FPSes.

Maybe the sequel, "Nazi Bastard Zwei, du Hurensohn" could be about the good Adolf Hitler from Vega waging war on he evil Adolf Hitler and his lizardman masters inside Earth (a big twist being that you were actually working for the bad guys in the first part). Features include real hydrodynamics for your piss, the ability to projectile vomit after looking at lizardman porn (enemies even slip on your vomit!) and a minigame where you put red warrior ants into the Omaha beach sand right before the Allies invade.

Re:Nope.

[hairyfeet]

Actually I played the original Unreal for the first time last year. I know,what rock did I crawl out from under,etc. But at the time the Original Unreal hit I was in a serious FASA phase and blasting up Mechwarrior with a bunch of my buds. By the time I was playing anything else Unreal Tournament was out and I really didn't care for it. Too many guys running around like chickens with their heads cut off blasting every single thing in sight.

So there is an old game with dated graphics that I should have hate by today's standards. But did I think it sucked? Hell no! Because you could tell that love and serious time went into those levels and above all it was FUN. I also picked up a game recently called Terrawars: NY Invasion. It is obviously made by non English speakers by how cheesy the dialog is. Pretty damned funny without meaning to be. Did I hate it? Nope,because it was GOOD cheese. The levels were fun and challenging,and you collected "biopacks" that let you spend them on whichever weapons you chose at any time. So if you were a run and gun Rambo type you could turn the .50 Cal into a mowing death machine,or if you liked to snipe you could crank up the sniper rifle high enough that even the most armor plated baddie ate instant death from a distance. Very fun,even though the graphics are about 2000 standards.

The point is that game companies are so busy trying to outdo each other in the GPU stomping dept. that they forget it is supposed to be fun. So many of the new games coming out look more like tech demos for the newest engine than an actual game,and sadly many play like that too. DOOM 3 comes to mind,so damned predictable. Walk halfway into room,turn and shoot the monster hiding in the closet behind you. After you modded it because some idiot thought marines wouldn't have any way to mount a flashlight to their weapon. Lame,just really really lame. Me I'd rather play a game that has graphics behind the curve that is actually fun and imaginative than yet another tech demo of the latest explosions or ragdoll physics. Wouldn't you?

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am convinced that I am the only Nintendo- and Mario-loving PS3 owner who is not interested in Little Big Planet whatsoever. In the world.

Thanks, hype machine.

Re:Nope.

[Hadlock]

I was at a friend's dorm once, they were playing kingdom hearts. The guy was playing in the aladin level while his girlfriend read for him straight out of the guide. She could read about as fast as he could play. It was both sad and depressing. I swore to never read a players guide again.

Re:Nope.

[OrangeTide]

I just like the fatbits style of graphics. It's not a matter of nostalgia. Because I have other demands from a game that don't fit into the NES universe. I like expansive dynamic worlds to explore with lots of variability on my own avatar and lots of story that can unfold through characters and events. But 512K of ROM (or so) and 2K RAM doesn't leave that much room for a giant dynamic world and hundreds of plot threads.

Re:Nope.

[Antique Geekmeister]

Copyright no longer effectively expires, thanks to Disney Corporation protecting Mickey Mouse. To quote from a writeup of the current US law, "the Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier."

I was referring, not to your magazines, but to others writing game guides and publishing their own work on the web where it is freely readable or downloadable. And I thought you were referring to the copyrights of the game developers, not of your magazines' publishers.

Please excuse my confusion: we've seen so many cases of game and software developers trying to control publication of game guides and walkthroughs that I thought you meant those.

Re:Nope.

[CronoCloud]

The MGS4 80GB PS3 bundles that you can still find on the shelves are backwards compatible. That's the one I have. I've played PS1 and PS2 games on it. There's a fuckton of good PS1 games, though you can't find them in the usual usual used game haunts anymore around here, don't know why since any PS2 or PS3 can play them.

Here's a short list:

MegaMan Legends 1/2 and The Adventures of Tron Bonne: 3D Mega Man games totally unlike the 2D Mega Man's. They're like DOOM + Tomb Raider + RPG elements + Mega Man.

DOOM: The PS1 version (which is basically DOOM 1 and 2 combined) is graphically enhanced and has slightly different levels than the PC version. The downside is that the music is ambient and NOT the traditional DOOM music.

Diablo: Slight graphical enhancements, but the animation is choppier, probably because it runs faster. The Daddy of all those PS2 Diablo clones. It's the same as the PC version except for the controls and lack of online play, but the same screen multiplayer rocks. I find that the comfort level of this version is better than the PC version, I can play this version for much much longer without hand fatique compared to the clicky clicky PC version.

X-COM: I couldn't get into the base management stuff, but the turned based combat is very fun. Supports the PSone mouse too.

Quake II: probably the best FPS on the PS1.

Final Fantasy foo: games 1 and 2 (Final Fantasy Origins) 4 and Chrono Trigger (Final Fantasy Chronicles, 5 and 6 (Final Fantasy Anthology) and 7, 8, and 9 are available as PSone games. 9 is best played on the PS2 anyway because it seriously benefits from the PS2's ability to texture smooth and fast load PS1 games.

Final Fantasy Tactics

Azure Dreams: a monster raising/breeding game crossed with Rogue/Nethack of all things.

Spyro the Dragon 1/2/3: Easily the best 32 bit platformers simply because they have a much better camera and controls than Mario 64 does.

Caslevania Symphony of the Night: The first Metroidvania game, also available via PSN for the PS3 and PSP.

Persona series: These games are probably a bit more PC RPG influenced than other PS1 RPG's. They're set in the modern world.

Future Cop LAPD: a simple but fun shooter in the "Strike" tradition

Darkstone: Yes it's a port of a PC Diablo clone, but since it's fully 3D it is probably better suited to the PS1 than diablo is, even if it's not as good of a game. It also hugely benefits from the PS2's fast loading ability. Don't play it on anything less than an S-Video connection to your TV, because the fonts will be hard to read otherwise. Haven't tried it on my PS3 to see if it benefits from the PS3's smoothing and upscaling ability.

Crash Team Racing: best cart racer on the PS1.

Re:Nope.

[bonch]

It's not just the lack of risk-taking. It's the immense investment in graphics and other multimedia that sucks the accessibility out of the game. Once in a while, something like that is fun, but when it's every game, you shut out mainstream players from your demographic.

Think about it. If you had an NES, you grew up playing a game library where you could shove a game into the slot, press start at the title screen, and you were already playing in less than a minute. The gameplay was the gameplay that you would be experiencing for the rest of the game.

Today, it feels like it takes up to half an hour for a game to "get going." It's a huge production number that tries to feel like a movie. It's cool, but at the same time, it's so refreshing when you install MAME and play the original Pac-Man. You actually get into it because it's so quick and simple to play.

Look at how Capcom is making Street Fighter IV into a 3D Street Fighter II. People got burned out on fighting games because of the increasing complexity. Street Fighter II was a game you could just pick up and play. Neo-retro games are an excuse for game developers to return to that era of accessibility, which is really a return to gaming's roots.

Honestly, if the Wii hadn't come out and surprised everyone with simple fun, the PS3 and Xbox 360 would be competing with each other over who had the most hardcore games, and we'd eventually hit another market crash like the 80s. Now, we get neat games like Braid. Geometry Wars, Wii Sports, etc.

I even think games like Twilight Princess are a step in the wrong direction. Zelda 1 and Link to the Past were easy games to grasp and arguably some of the best in the series. These hardcore whiners ranting about Nintendo's lack of support for them are forgetting that the Nintendo franchises they love so much started out being much more accessible and fun.

Re:Nope.

[bonch]

My 10 year old sister obsesses over Zelda and insisted on getting every version available on the Virtual Console. She did this on her own, playing the original Legend of Zelda and also Super Mario Bros. Even though she's growing up in an era when 3D graphics are nothing special, the old games still appealed to her and will be part of her childhood memories. Now she's getting into Majora's Mask, and that came out almost a decade ago. It's new to her.

I think these games, rather than being relics of the past, are really just contributions to established culture that stick around. We'll still have pick-up-and-play, 2D-styled games in the future. It'll be an artistic choice, and that's what makes these neo-retro games important. Mega Man 9's producer said as much--that it was an excuse to return to the old style of gaming using the nostalgia of the current generation.

The surprise success of the Wii, of several of the XBLA games like Braid and Geometry Wars, and of games like Portal prove that gamers are aching for how gaming used to be, which was easier and quicker to get into without having to be a goddamn cinematic production with ridiculous graphics requirements and a time commitment.

My mom played Galaga when it was in arcades, and my dad played NES racing games with me when I was growing up. I can't imagine either of them picking up a videogame today and playing it with my little sister. There's just too much nonsense involved with most today's games that only appeals to smaller, devoted markets. Think of how huge Mario used to be during his original series of games. Everyone identified with it and had fun with it, even people who usually never played games. Today, who cares about Halo 3 outside of Halo fans?

Re:Nope.

[Hatta]

Try playing nethack sometime. Even with the help of every spoiler I could find, it still took me 4 years to figure out how to beat the thing.

Re:Nope.

[Hatta]

Breakout, Asteriods, Qbert, Defender, River Raid, Enduro, Pitfall, Galaxian, Ms. Pacman, Spider Fighter, Circus Atari, H.E.R.O

That's just off the top of my head. And I never even had a 2600 as a kid. There were plenty of great games, the problem is that 2600 games were by necessity so limited in scope that the modern gamer doesn't have the attention span for it. It's gaming distilled down to it's essence, nothing gets me in the zone quit like a few dozen rounds of breakout. Even if it is just the same thing over and over again, that's kind of the point.

That said, there are a lot more bad games than good games. I don't know if the signal to noise ratio is worse than the NES though. Ever spent a weekend randomly playing games from a complete NES romset?

Re:Nope.

[Hadlock]

Do you have any D&D background? That helps tremenously. I didn't take much to nethack as a kid but in my post college years logging into a server with my game on it from my bed has some appeal to it.

Re:Nope.

[operagost]

I really feel that's just your opinion, and that your opinion is based not on a lack of good titles for the 2600 but because of the low good/bad ratio on that system. For every Yar's Revenge or Frogger, there must have been ten E.T.s. The NES fared much better because of Nintendo's licensing requirements, but I have 40 titles or so and I'd say there are several clunkers in there also.

Re:Nope.

[lokedhs]

That's OK. No games are for everybody. As you have noticed, however, most people love it though.

Re:Nope.

[lokedhs]

A million or so this month, given current sales figures.

Re:Nope.

[earthbound kid]

Most of those are 2600-era arcade games, not 2600 games. Or if they were also 2600 games, the home version sucked balls.

I will give you Pitfall though, that was cool.

Real neo-retro games

[davidwr]

Making old-fashioned new games is nothing new.

In the '60s Star Trek gave us 3-D Chess.

In the '70s gave us Sudoku, similar to Magic Squares number puzzles.

The 21st century is giving us modern versions of Monopoly, which uses pre-real-estate-market-crash valuations.

Me? I like Pong.

Yes and No.

[jellomizer]

The Retro games often have some staying power that newer games lack. When the new video games are more like interactive movies and less like a game, it creates a niche market for people who actually want to play the games, the old way with simple controls and not having to remember hundreds of key combinations to use all the features. But in terms of releasing them using the old 8 bit graphics I see that dying out as the people who plays them die out. Unless they reincarnate them in dirt cheap hardware for budget use, aka Happy Meal games, The fact that it is just as easy if not easier to code for higher end system and do better graphics then it does to do an 8 bit game in assembly would mean the nostalgia effect of the game will die out. However I see Pac Man coming back perhaps slightly updated every generation or so as a classic eat the dot game.

Re:Yes and No.

[phulegart]

Just an FYI... anyone with a Wii can be playing NES games. Most of the NES titles are available as extras that can be downloaded to the console with a net connection. Miss that old 3 level Donky Kong? Download it. Have a Yearning for Castlevania? Download it. Then sit back, turn your Wii controller sideways, and play.

Re:Yes and No.

[KDR_11k]

Niche market? The Wii owns roughly 50% of the market last I checked.

Re:Yes and No.

[Eli Gottlieb]

And yet all the Big Deal games keep coming out on the XBox and PS3...

Yes, I'm a bitter Wii owner.

Re:Yes and No.

[maxume]

What made you think to taste it?

Re:Yes and No.

[KDR_11k]

That's because "big deal" translates to the epic, complicated, long, story-driven games jellomizer was complaining about these days.

I got a 360 recently and find it no easier to find games for the system than for the Wii.

Re:Yes and No.

[demonlapin]

Christ, isn't that the truth. GTA? Please? An FPS? *Anything* that treats the Wii controller like a wireless controller instead of a novelty toy?

Re:Yes and No.

[Eli Gottlieb]

No it doesn't translate that way. For example, why didn't Valve port the Orange Box, or at least Portal, to the Wii? Those FPS controls in particular are exactly the sort of thing that the motion sensing and location-bar were invented for. I protest because I can run those games without much problem on a middle-of-the-road gaming PC, so I think I should have enough hardware power in the Wii for at least the graphically stripped-down modes.

Re:Yes and No.

[trdrstv]

An FPS? *Anything* that treats the Wii controller like a wireless controller instead of a novelty toy?

If you are talking Strictly FPS - Pick up Medal of Honor Heroes 2, and Metroid Prime 3 (both from last year) and The Conduit (coming in 2009) looks stellar already.

If you want a Gameplay is Greater than Graphics Argument, I'd start with Tiger Woods 09 on the Wii. It's not as pretty as the PS360 versions, but using the motion controls beats the hell out of the dual analog setup.

Re:Yes and No.

[KDR_11k]

Don't ask me why third parties don't try to make FPS games on the Wii, there have been FPSes that sold well, there are good controls and a userbase yearning for more. Execs just don't seem to have a fucking clue when it comes to Wii development, treating its userbase like a black box and only trying the inputs others have tried and reached a positive response on (often ignoring one or two key parts that didn't seem important at first glance). Overall The Orange Box does fall into the epic, story driven and long category though (Portal is short but can't really be sold as a standalone).

Re:Yes and No.

[demonlapin]

Thanks for the tips.

Neo-retro?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure of the definition of 'neo-retro.' If this means creating 8-bit games just for the sake of nostalgia, then they'll probably die out. But games that build on and improve old styles of gameplay (here I'm thinking of the Castlevania series for the DS) will, I hope, always have a place in the video game universe.

Here's hoping for Super Paper Metroid.

Re:Neo-retro?

[thrillseeker]

Excellent idea - some of us are almost done with Colossal Cave!

Re:Neo-retro?

[Eli Gottlieb]

How about...

neo-retro (adj) -- Deliberately creating a game for an older style, thus cutting development costs and allowing developers to concentrate on fun and gameplay instead of media presentation while still allowing developers to take advantage of modern technologies.

For example, "Braid" and rhythm games are neo-retro.

Re:Neo-retro?

[cluke]

Yeah, kind of like Dogme for films. From Wiki - "The goal of the Dogme collective is to purify filmmaking by refusing expensive and spectacular special effects, postproduction modifications and other gimmicks"

It would be an intriguing experiment to set down similar rules for video games.

Of course it's not a fad

[Anonymous Coward]

If a game is good people will continue to play it.

Puzzles, chess, checkers, solitaire, cribbage, spades...

Good games stand the test of time.

not really

[ILuvRamen]

I for one re-played (in an emulator) Phntasy Star 3 because yeah it has ancient graphics and music but the gameplay kicked so much ass in its time, other games couldn't even come close. Even today it at least ties some modern games when it comes to size of the world and the fight system. Other older games completely beat their modern counterparts in gameplay. Starcraft's online play still beats modern games and that's why it's still sold in stores today. The only usual downfall for older games is AI but that doesn't always affect every game.

Re:not really

[Stormwatch]

I for one re-played (in an emulator) Phntasy Star 3 because yeah it has ancient graphics and music but the gameplay kicked so much ass in its time, other games couldn't even come close.

Opinions, opinions... even back in the day, I thought Phantasy Star 2 and 3 were awful. The original Phantasy Star was a great game that pushed the SMS to its limits; those two sequels had some good writing, but despite the better hardware, they looked worse, sounded worse, and played worse. Luckily, Phantasy Star IV redeemed the series and ended it on a very high note.

Re:not really

[dlZ]

Phantasy Star 2 is the one that I have the fondest memories of. But I didn't get to play the original until many years later on an emulator, as we had a NES and not a SMS. I enjoyed the entire series on the Genesis, but for some reason I would always go back and replay 2.

Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[Dracos]

Does anyone else feel like Nintendo dropped the ball with the Virtual Console? There aren't that many channels, Wii Ware selection is still sparse and uncompelling, and the titles released from old console systems don't interest me, partly because what they have put out is crap that didn't sell in the first place.

I've had 2500 Wii points sitting unspent waiting for the Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior titles from the NES and SNES. The only reason I can think of preventing this is some licensing issue with Square Enix or possibly Sony. Any insight on that?

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[PotatoSan]

Sony has nothing to do with the Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior titles on the NES and SNES. The reason you haven't seen these series is that Square-Enix is notorious for selling ports and remakes. If they can sell you these titles as $40 DS games, why would they cut into that with a $10 VC release?

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

SNES Secret of Mana, 800 Wii points, WORTH IT.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[AKAImBatman]

Wii Ware selection is still sparse and uncompelling

Are you serious?

- Defend Your Castle
- Toki Tori
- World of Goo
- Mega Man 9
- Alien Crush Returns
- Lost Winds
- Bomberman Blast
- Tetris Party
- Art Style: Orbient
- Dr. Mario RX
- Star Soldier R
- Strong Bad
- Wild West Guns
- Gyrostarr

While a few of the items do not appeal to me personally, I included them because they appeal to a majority of other gamers I've spoken with. However, the super-majority of the list are games I have downloaded and enjoyed. (WiiWare is going to send me to the poor house at this rate! :-P) The games I didn't like on that list are merely a difference in gaming preferences.

So there is certainly more than enough to choose from. If you can't find a bunch of great games on WiiWare, you either are too picky or have already played them all because you've got WAY too much time and money. ;-)

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[bitrex]

Personally I can't say I miss some of the NES RPGs. A few years back I dusted off my NES console from a closet and fired up Dragon Warrior. Somehow my saved games were still intact from 1989, but first I started a new quest. After 20 minutes I was pretty well bored. These games were the ultimate grindfests; killing slime after slime to get enough gold to upgrade my bamboo stick to a sharpened bamboo stick or whatever comes next without even the social interaction or plot that makes WoW or modern RPGs interesting respectively. Sometimes nostalgia is well placed, in this case old is definitely not better.

I remember that some of the later titles in the Dragon Warrior series were more interesting. I did get a kick out of loading up one of my nearly 2 decade old games, saved right near the end, and killing the Dragonlord once more for good measure.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[KDR_11k]

The WiiWare selection is pretty good IMO and growing at a good rate (less so in Europe, more in the US...).

I think Square Enix just doesn't want VC releases of FF and DQ since they can sell DS remakes that way.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[atraintocry]

Can't say I agree. River City Ransom is on there! But you're going to be waiting a long time for FF or DW games. As others have said, Square would rather sell you remake upon remake. Just grab the ROMs.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[gEvil (beta)]

I've had 2500 Wii points sitting unspent waiting for the Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior titles from the NES and SNES.

And you'll continue waiting because they're making a ton more money by reissuing/reworking them (well, FF at least) for the GBA and DS. And they've done a great job of it. If you want to play them, that's the way to do it. And a nice thing is that you can then leave the TV on and listen to it while you play the game.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[whoop]

and yet, I played the same game all the way through to the end again to get ready for the remakes of DQ4-6 coming to the DS. I loved it all. You have to keep it in its context though. It was a huge world to explore back then, making Zelda seem very small. I found it amazing how much I was able to remember from playing it 18+ years ago (Goldman, score!).

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[yanos]

without even the social interaction or plot that makes WoW or modern RPGs interesting

I'm not sure I can agree to that. What annoy me of the modern RPGs is that very few of them has a compelling story. There are always full of cliche and are told by in the worst way possible. Bad voice acting, silly and totally uninteresting dialogs, you are the chosen one, please save the universe, you must reunite the 7 crystals... etc.

I think I haven't played a real mature game yet. Sure there are full of 'M' games with blood and guns, but they are all very immature at their core.

Mind you, I play a lot of modern games. But I'm always unimpressed by how very few developer are actually trying to improve the medium, I feel like we are stuck in the middle age of gaming somehow.

So in a way, I think it's totally reasonable for people to like old school type of game, what they lack in complexity they gain in pure fun, and I'm pretty sure they will be part of every gaming generation.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[Jaysyn]

They are selling Final Fantasy I for the PSP, maybe that's why you haven't seen it on the WII.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[ninjakoala]

Out of the games listed I'd only bother with Mega Man 9, Strong Bad and World of Goo (but they are giving that a full retail release in Europe and the Steam version works fine...). I find WiiWare to be very overrated - but of course it's a matter of personal preference.

I've enjoyed a lot of games on Xbox Live Arcade, a handful on PSN and I've actually bought one game on WiiWare. To be honest it's partially principle keeping me away from WiiWare. If I buy the games, decide to sell my Wii and perhaps later reconsider and pick up a new machine, my games will all have to be repurchased. Also what will happen if my console breaks down ten years from now and I feel like having a go at the WiiWare games?

(The same could be said about XBLA and PSN games as we don't know for how long the services will be provided, but on the other hand I'm actually playing those machines while the Wii gathers dust, so I'm getting my money's worth)

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[AKAImBatman]

So let me see if I can get this straight: You don't want to buy any games for your Wii because you don't play it. But you don't play your Wii because you refuse to buy any games for it?

I think I see your problem.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[Jesus_666]

I think I haven't played a real mature game yet. Sure there are full of 'M' games with blood and guns, but they are all very immature at their core.

If you like tactics games, try the original Final Fantasy Tactics. While you still end up killing that world's equivalent of Jesus, at least it's a gritty world where most main characters are readily willing to screw over everyone they know for power. It's also the first video game I've played that really made the term "feudal" seem appropriate for its world. Great athmosphere and easily the most mature Final Fantasy game I've seen - which of course doesn't mean much.

Too bad they made FFT Advance for retarded grade-schoolers, both story- and gameplay-wise.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[ninjakoala]

Actually no. I do buy games for it. I have more than I like actually (VC specifically - the rest you can always keep or sell). It's just a demotivator for further investment, but if a game came along that was sufficiently awesome I'm sure I'd budge.

Re:Wii Virtual Console is a disappointment

[AKAImBatman]

The Wii's genius is that the "awesome" games don't fit the mold that other consoles have set. Games like Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection, Excite Truck, Zack and Wiki, and Defend Your Castle may seem like budget or cash-in titles, but they truly are what makes the system awesome.

Just my 2 cents worth of advice. Take it for what it's worth. :-)

Hmm.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

One phenomenon that I think we'll see a lot of(aside from simple "Hey, we paid to develop this game in the early 90's, slap an NES emulator on the sucker and any sales are pure profit!" cash ins) is the obsolescence/nostalgia response curve.

New stuff is love or hate: Either it is new, improved, shiny, and exciting, or shoddy crap that ruins the original.
Current stuff is ok: You can see the flaws and have some ideas about what could use fixing; but it is familiar and mostly comfortable.
Old stuff blows: It is largely the same as current stuff; but the flaws that used to be merely niggling are horrific now that you've been using stuff that fixed them for a few years(I got into shooters pre-mouselook; but I'll be damned if I could go back).
Quite old stuff is awesome: It is so far from memories of practicality that its defects are part of the charm, and most of the worst elements(remember all the NES games that aren't timeless classics?) have either been forgotten about or are now old friends.

The above is quite vague, I admit; but it fits my experience of how the desirability of things like tech toys and video games change over time. Cutting edge PCs are cool, and fun to read about/drool over occasionally. My current rig is adequate; but unexciting. The couple before that suck, exactly the same feel as the current one; but slower, louder, and more expensive. My old-school Compaq portable rules, even though it is only really good for doing stupid basic tricks, I don't actually have to get any use out of it, so its limitations are quaint and endearing rather than annoying. Games are similar in many respects.

Now, this is just a general outline. Some things are genuine classics, most things sucked from day one. I think, though, that it fairly well explains the current pattern in retro gaming. 8-bit is big because it has a lot of nostalgia for many of us, and because it is qualitatively different than current games.

A little while back, I gave GoldenEye a try again. It was horrific. I don't know how I ever enjoyed it. The experience was qualitatively equivalent to a modern 3D shooter; but with gaping holes where all the stuff we've improved between now and then should have been. Same thing happened with Dune II. A true classic of the RTS genre; but all I could think about was how Dune II's interface was missing all the refinements that it had picked up by the time Red Alert was released. It's like picking up an old Pentium machine, it's exactly the same deal as whatever beige box is under your desk now, none of the exoticism of an old C-64 or apple or amiga, but it's a zillion times slower, you can't get RAM for it, and you had completely forgotten that it predated ATAPI CDROMS.

Don't forget....

[carbon 68k]

Those of us who didn't have consoles as kids, and are enjoying these titles and genres for the first time!

Re:Don't forget....

[lokedhs]

I agree. I was a Commodore 64 user during the 8-bit era. My first experience with MegaMan was quite recently when I played the Nintendo games on the NES emulator on the PSP. I bought MegaMan 9 for my PS3 the day it came out, and I'm really enjoying it.

I think that we have recently seen a resurrection of 2D gameplay, both in terms of rereleased 8-bit games as well as completely new games (including the amazing Super Stardust HD, Bionic Commando Rearmed and the new king of 2D platformers Little Big Planet).

The revolution that has happened is that 2D games are no longer considered "old style" but rather a different, but equal, style. It has widened the range of available game types, and I don't see that going away until there is a completely new bandwagon everybody wants to jump on to in the same was as everybody went to 3D back when the PS1 came out.

Re:Don't forget....

[Anonymous Coward]

So you were that 1 weird kid on the block that DIDN'T have a NES?

The X-Wing series

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a fun simulator. I'd love a copy that would run on one of my current machines.

Re:The X-Wing series

[Tomfrh]

Use DOSBox if you want to run old games on new hardware

I hope not.

[MrMista_B]

Especially since they're smaller and faster to develop, that means that, as long as more crap, we're also likely to recieve, on average, more /good/ games than when compared to the multi-year, multi-million dollar mega development 'modern' games.

I'd rather play a new 2d Metroid, Sonic, or even just basic /fun/ 2d game than the latest 'FPS Hero Guy' game any day.

Re:I hope not.

[karnal]

http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/

Just a word of warning: very difficult. Well, not much more so than the old platformers - memorization is key..... pretty sure I found that on Slashdot a while back.

Re:I hope not.

[atraintocry]

IWBTG looks pretty funny. But here's a serious one that may or may not blow your mind: Cave Story.

Retro games have been around for 10 year or more.

[NerdENerd]

Console downloads are just the latest way for companies to make money from old titles. I have been an emulator junkie for years and playing the games I grew up with in the eighties has been a passion since I first discovered emulators in the late nineties. When I show the old games to friends my age who played those games with me in the arcades they have the same amount of nostalgia I do but when I show them to my nephew I get no interest. He just wants to go play a Halo death match and calls my games budget or pov (his slang for poverty). When I show them to friends my age who don't play games I get comments like, I remember Frogger, do you have Galaga? There are plenty of games that I have fallen in love with from playing emulators that I never played in their time so for me it is not all nostalgia, but it seems that kids who were first exposed to 3D games have no interest in the 80's classics. They will probably be playing Halo or Guitar Hero in 15 years as their retro games.

Keep it simple, stupid

[PFritz21]

One thing I love about the old school games: their simplicity. You don't need a manual to play them. It's not difficult to pick up the controller and find out what the 2/3/6 buttons do, then proceed to play. There's only two basic functions in a side-scroller: jump and fire. Add a few more buttons, maybe get a couple more ways to attack or move. I miss that in the newer games.

Re:Keep it simple, stupid

[Psychotria]

I actually have the opposite experience. I have no trouble picking up any of the latest FPS shooters and immediately know what each of the 85 key combinations do. I don't know why or how I know this--perhaps I just press keys randomly. Perhaps it's because every key ont the keyboard has a function. But I always seem to know which keys to press to allow me to duck while throwing a grenade and snipering the dude standing on the jeep before I die.

Wonder no more!

[DerekLyons]

And people wonder why Hollywood keeps retreading the same old stuff...

Re:Wonder no more!

[Anonymous Coward]

Old movies get remade because people enjoy them and they enjoy the stories. People watch the original versions for the same reasons. Ever watched Casablanca? Once you get past the black and white, the old special effects, and outdated cultural sensibilities, the film is just effin awesome. Of course, some people just get put off by black and white, or whatever, the same way some people are just put off by 8-bit. But many people enjoy the old games simply because they're fun and addictive. So some of them get remade and some are enjoyed in retro form. It's not all nostalgia etc. and it's not a fad, although those elements _are_ present. But why do people play poker? OMG! an analog game you play with your hands, OMG OMG retro nerd! Um, no, it's just a very enjoyable pastime. Rich, beautifully rendered 3D environments are nice and I truly love them and the complex gameplay, but I also get a kick out of Frogger and watching movies that were made decades before I was born. It's not nostalgia or a retro craze, it's all just good, interesting, engaging art in its own way. Am I retro for liking Van Gogh?

AC sez

[Anonymous Coward]

"retro" = fad

Retro games

[etherlad]

There's always going to be a market for retro games, but the definition of "retro" will change depending on the market.

8-bit games like MegaMan 9 will be big with the set who remember playing them back on the NES. As will parody games, like Strong Bad's Snake Boxer 5 and Alge-bros. (:

I never owned a NES (only console my parents ever sprung for was the Intellivision); I spent my halcyon youth playing Sierra games. So stuff like the VGA remake of Quest for Glory 2 by AGD Interactive are like gold to me.

As time goes on and gamers grow up, each generation of kids will hearken back to their favourite generation of game console.

Memories

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded the demo of Mega Man 9, and if there was one memory of the NES days it brought back it was that the old NES Mega Man games were a pain in the arse.

Simply the best one

[Anonymous Coward]

Galaga

Re:Simply the best one

[kandela]

I so agree with you. Galaga is my favourite game of all time. I could spend hours playing it.

Why? It's about the intensity of concentration. Give me two dimensions, a joystick, and a maximum of two buttons and my attention is completely consumed. With just two things to concentrate on - avoid and shoot - everything else just melts away and it's me and the game.

Re:Simply the best one

[eric-x]

I always found that (galaga) a frustrating game.
On the Amiga I preferred POD (proof of destruction). Super fast mindless action and excellent graphics.

Gaming has lost its heart

[Chrono11901]

Simple, the new age of gaming is about making it look nice at the cost of everything else. Its easy to make a game look good (as in its just money + time) which is why its now the industry standard. You cant calculate,graph, or project profits on creativity, so that's out the window.

Fortunately companies like Nintendo,Valve, and Blizzard still do there best to put out games that focus on story and game play.

There'll always be a need for some brainless fun?

[a11acce55]

The newest games are great -- but stuff like PacMan and Galaga have timeless appeal to middle-aged/^B/^B/^B/^B/^B/^B/^B/^B/^B/^B^Bwisdom-endowed foks like me imho... on a cell phone you can't beat these games to pass a couple of minutes with some good, brainless fun...

Play

[Elsan]

Personally, I just wanna play games I'll have fun playing. I don't care if it's retro or not. Mega Man 9? I like shooting stuff and jumping around, so why not? I'm not gonna spend my time asking if it's fad, I'll load it and have fun, maybe even nostalgia.

Here's a 'retro' game

[colourmyeyes]

...that was plugged on slashdot recently. It's very 80's-arcade style. I can't even tell that it's about emacs and vi (no, keep reading! seriously!) when I'm playing it.

What I do know is that it has a heavy metal soundtrack, explosions, wireframe graphics, spaceships, lasers, shit blowing up left and right, and MORE.

I haven't been able to get more than, like, a minute into the first level, but just playing it cracks me up. The geekiness of it (e.g. bumping into "kernel space" at the top of the screen) makes it funnier too.

http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net/

Re:Here's a 'retro' game

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds interesting but it's too much effort to compile. (It has weird dependencies.) The developers should provide a precompiled version and (to be honest) a Windows EXE. It's good that there's source code, but the game needs to work instantly if the developers want mere mortals to play it. Just a suggestion.

Re:Here's a 'retro' game

[colourmyeyes]

I had no problem building it without sound on a Slackware 12.1 system, and after installing portaudio the sound is working as well.

I agree about the binaries though; especially having a prebuilt Windows binary.

Oblig

[atuwh]

"long after its original audience has disappeared"

I'm part of the original audience, you insensitive clod!

professors of late 20th century gaming

[HappyEngineer]

But there will always be a small minority group of classical gamers who will act akin to Shakespeare lovers. Imagine 100 years from now people are lying back in their Matrix-style brain boxes chatting about the beautiful simplicity of Pac-Man.

Imagine the professors of late 20th century gaming who fight with the professors of early 21st century gaming about how the 21st century was just a dumping ground for mindless copies of the true classics. Mario Tennis is after all just a graphical update for Pong. Fallout 3 is really just a graphical update for Bezerk.

Imagine the angry depressed loners with digital fingernails and LED hair who fight about how ET for Atari was the best game of all time.

And, of course, there will be people like me who still write text adventures for the yearly ifcomp. (If you've forgotten, check out ifcomp.org. This year's contest ends on the 15th of November!)

Sweet

[rtobyr]

Oh PLEASE remake Atari 2600's "Adventure" with today's technology. Holy shit! The Red Dragon! Run muthafucka, run!!!!

Re:Sweet

[AKAImBatman]

Dragon? What Dragon?

Personally, I can't figure out why more games don't have killer ducks. Those mofos were the scariest fowl ever rendered on a low-res display!

Re:Sweet

[tepples]

Dragon? What Dragon?

Personally, I can't figure out why more games don't have killer ducks.

Probably because EA now owns exclusive video game rights to the Anaheim Ducks. And then there were the people who got an NES with a Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt pack-in cart, and they thought the turtles in SMB were the ducks.

SoF ftw

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as I have my Sword of Fargoal, I'm happy.

Some games can't be 3d

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Some games just aren't as good or are totally different games in 3D. Sonic, Mario, Metroid, Secret of Mana, etc... Seriously, who wouldn't want to play a good Super Mario World 3? And let's not forget the atrocities that happened when Capcom brought Mega Man into 3D (X7, X8)...

Re:Some games can't be 3d

[philspear]

And plenty of games are much better in 3D than in 2d. Halo comes to mind along with any FPS or over the shoulder. Mario and metroid are clear examples of the opposite of what you're suggesting even though you compensate by saying "totally different." Katamari damancy... The grand theft auto series is by itself a reason to say that all 2d series should at least have one attempt at a 3d incarnation.

2d has it's place, there are definitely some games that need to be 3d, I think we need more 2d platformers, but let's not act like a few franchises that are better in 2d are reasons why games are worse today.

Re:Some games can't be 3d

[jollyreaper]

Some games just aren't as good or are totally different games in 3D. Sonic, Mario, Metroid, Secret of Mana, etc... Seriously, who wouldn't want to play a good Super Mario World 3? And let's not forget the atrocities that happened when Capcom brought Mega Man into 3D (X7, X8)...

Agreed. Sonic in 3D on the Dreamcast was impossible for me. I played one of the 3D sonics that came after that, again it was awful. Tried Sonic on the Nintendo DS, it was perfect! Same 2D format that made sonic sonic but everything was polygonal so they could do fancy stuff that couldn't be done back in the Genesis era. Of course, I still suck at it but that's no slight against the game.

Re:Some games can't be 3d

[Anonymous Coward]

But they're still making 2d platformers!

New Super Mario Brothers for DS
Gish for PC
Mega Man 9 for Wii

They aren't as common as they were, but there are still some cracking 2d platformers out there. While some are sequels from the big studios, titles like Gish (it's cheap and on Steam) show that indie developers can still produce innovative mechanics in one of the oldest genres.

Re:Some games can't be 3d

[bigstrat2003]

This is true. I occasionally weep at the travesty that Mario has become in 3D, it's terrible, and has been ever since Mario 64. New Super Mario Bros was a much-needed 2D entry, and I hope that we see more like it.

Re:Some games can't be 3d

[Eli Gottlieb]

Actually, I always thought that the Sonic/Shadow/Whichever-dumbass-character-they've-added-this-time levels of the 3D Sonic games were quite good. Sonic Team really figured out how to let bad players falter and fail through the games while good players got a fluid, flowing experience quite comparable to the 2D Sonic games.

The real difference is that they added retarded stories, voice acting, extraneous gameplay modes, and too many damned characters to the 3D Sonic games. The core "Sonic mechanic" still works in 3D.

Re:Some games can't be 3d

[CastrTroy]

If you want 2D Mario, there are multiple versions of Paper Mario available. I for one, love Mario in 3D. Mario Galaxy gave me way more fun than Mario 1 or 2 ever did.

Re:Some games can't be 3d

[Stormx2]

I'm tempted to disagree. My experience of sonic isn't vast (1, 2, 3, spinball, sonic & knuckles, sonic adventure 2, some GBA game), but I definately enjoy sonic 2 and 3 much more than sonic adventure 2. It's just more fun, a lot less tedious... generally really awesome

The original sonic games sort of have a life to them. There were all these quirks, all these interesting things you could do. You could play them again and again and never get tired, never find them tedious or repetitive. I don't get that with the 3D counterparts.

Re:Some games can't be 3d

[bigstrat2003]

If you want 2D Mario, there are multiple versions of Paper Mario available.

Except Paper Mario (I'm judging by Super Paper Mario here, so if the others are different, please correct me) isn't really a platformer, it's an RPG with platformer trappings. It's not a substitute for proper 2D Mario at all.

Re:Some games can't be 3d

[@madeus]

I love Galaxy too and I also really liked Sunshine on the Game Cube - though I thought Mario 64 was completely horrible, largely due to the game play inhibiting limitations imposed by the N64 hardware, as much as a fair number of people apparently loved it.

Sunshine got some criticism for being short, and Paper Mario has gotten positive reviews with a small amount of criticism but Galaxy is absolutely a real work of art. The only criticism I've heard of Galaxy is from someone who didn't like "that it was a collection of mini games", which I can't understand at all.

I also thought Sonic Adventure in 3D on the Dreamcast was superb, and the best Sonic outing of all time, which I realize is a minority opinion. I never understood why it got so much flack for having a narrative element. I thought Sonic Adventure 2 was less impressive, partly by virtue of being a sequel. However, I think the most recent Sonic 3D title Sonic and the Secret Rings is not just bad but absolutely dire - a steaming travesty with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.

I think ports of 2D to 3D games are very hit and miss. To make a great 3D title I think you need to adopt mechanics that best suit 3D, and that can mean departing from some of the feel of the 2D original. If that happens some people are going to be unhappy with the move to 3D if you don't, the game will probably suck because it's too much of a round peg in a square hole and so even more people (very likely most people) will think it sucks.

I think the challenge of how similar a sequel to a predecessor a title should be isn't unique to 2D-to-3D conversions though (and is not even unique to games, or even to software in general). If a format doesn't evolve then it will grow stale, boring and lose followers, if it does evolve then some people are bound to not like the new direction and stop following it. You might end up with new followers as a result (that is people who didn't like the original format, but do like the new one) but you can't expect to always come out ahead indefinitely.

The problem with nostaligia...

[w0mprat]

I periodically get nostalgic for the old days of gaming, and decide I'll fire up something like Quake II, Fallout, X-Com, Duke Nukem 3d, play for 10 minutes and find only disappointment. Not only is the gameplay simplistic but the graphics are ugly and the sound is rubbish. It has plenty of charm and if your a real gamer you care about the fun factor not the wow factor, but at the end of it a gamers brain today is starved for input by old games.

You is you remember these games better than they really are because a bit part of the thrill of playing these games back in the day was seeing some incremental advancement in technology that made the new game you just bought and dumped into your 4x CD drive freshly immersive compared to what you had been playing previously. That thrill is all but gone when you go back to the old school after playing todays titles. When it comes to remakes even with a spruce up and a modern graphics engine, some how the old game doesn't shine through with that same something it had back in the day. Sure some of the gameplay of old games still holds its own today, you simply do not get what made the game great at the time.

In some cases, taking a nostalgia trip you realise that old games, compared to todays can dreadfully unbearably shit. And retro game fad only serves to prove that the game industry is dangerously close to stagnating on the new ideas front (some would argue it would have). We've gone from seeing revolutionary change, to incremental change, and despite a few leaps forward (Wii etc) the last thing the gaming industry needs to do is go the way of hollywood: Rehash old sure-bet ideas.

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[grumbel]

Rehash old sure-bet ideas.

The thing is, old games still provide tons of ideas that you haven't seen in 15 years. They might not be totally new, but they are certainly a lot more interesting then many of the stuff that goes into todays games, since what goes into todays games is mostly the same stuff that went into last years games. And of course also keep in mind that some of those 'old ideas' are older then the gamers that play todays games, so those things will be fresh and new for a newer generation of gamers.

And about the nostalgia thing, its totally different for me. I played X-Com just a few years ago for the first time, back when it was already a well over a decade old and yet it was nothing short of a mind blowing experience where nothing I have played more recently came close and I don't even like turn based games. With Fallout, which I currently play for the first time, it was a little different, since that game has a ton of bugs and issues, but still it was a pretty good experience so far and I had plenty of fun with it, more fun then with many of todays AAA titles. That of course doesn't mean that in the past everything was great, in fact most of the user interfaces of old games are truly terrible and I really wouldn't mind to see those polished up. But some of the core ideas of past games are nothing short of awesome and I would like to see them reused in more modern games. The whole complexity of weapon research, base building, UFO interception, inspection of crash sites, environmental destruction and stuff in XCom was pretty damn cool and I would like to see recycled. I wouldn't even mind if they change the whole thing around from turn-based to something like Full Spectrum Warrior or even something like Gears of War style as long as they keep the scale of the whole thing. Todays games are far to often focused on presenting something from a single point of view, instead of allowing you to see the bigger picture and acting in it.

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[Rakishi]

With Fallout, which I currently play for the first time, it was a little different, since that game has a ton of bugs and issues, but still it was a pretty good experience so far and I had plenty of fun with it, more fun then with many of todays AAA titles.

Did you install all the official and unofficial patches?

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[atraintocry]

I get the feeling that if someone really loves FPS-style games, they're going to want the latest, because the better engines allow for more fluid play and better immersion. X-Com doesn't fit into that, I guess.

The games you mention just aren't that old. Still, I think we've all had the experience you mention...I used to love playing Duke Nukem II, but when I fired it up recently I realized that while it has a certain charm, it's pretty annoying as far as platformers go. Pretty much every Genesis/MegaDrive platformer is better than DN2 in terms of gameplay.

Myst was probably the most fun I've ever had playing a game. But it's hard for me to take it seriously now since those renders are so bad by today's standards :D

Some games will always stand out for me. I think of games like Out of this World, Future Wars, and Mindshadow. You'll notice that these are more adventure-style games, though. Maybe they just age better.

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[Dun Malg]

I played X-Com just a few years ago for the first time, back when it was already a well over a decade old and yet it was nothing short of a mind blowing experience where nothing I have played more recently came close and I don't even like turn based games.

X-Com: Enemy Unknown is generally regarded as one of the best PC games ever. Last year at IGN it was voted the #1 Best Game Ever, ahead of Civilization IV at #2. For a game released in 1994, that really says something. I bought the game when it came out and could only barely play it on my 386SX16 machine. 14 years later, I still play that damn game once every few months. I still occasionally play a few old games (e.g. Master of Orion 2 and Master of Magic), but none really compare to the full-bore "replayability" of the original X-Com.

-Steam has all the original X-Com games available for download. Take-Two, who owns the rights to the X-Com franchise, has even patched some of them recently.
-Rumor has it that Take-Two is working on a new installment in the X-Com series, but I'm not hopeful. All the sequels have failed to capture some key aspect of the original game.
-Some crazy russian dude actually created a freeware PocketPC/Windows Mobile version of the original X-Com. Not only is it completely true to the original game, it actually works a little better. The only drawback is that you generally are stuck playing it on a screen about the size of a business card. Still, it keeps me occupied during long, boring "all hands" meetings.
- Xenocide is an ongoing attempt to create a modern version of the original X-Com: Enemy Unknown. Like most such fan projects, it's perpetually about 30% done. (yes, FreeOrion, I am looking at YOU)

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[Dun Malg]

I get the feeling that if someone really loves FPS-style games, they're going to want the latest, because the better engines allow for more fluid play and better immersion. X-Com doesn't fit into that, I guess.

Well yeah. People who play nothing but basketball and live and breathe basketball aren't generally going to find chess to be a suitable alternative. X-Com is a shooter for the turn-based folks more interested in "thinkery" than developing razor sharp reflexes and complex key macros in the (vain) hope of getting the bulge on some 10 year old who plays the game 14 hours a day.

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[domatic]

Many of those are better if modern ports of the games are used with graphical add-on packs. I couldn't stand to play Duke3d in all it's 320x240 glory either but it is pretty fun when eduke32 and the Hi Resolution Pack are used to render the old game content. Most of the old sprites have been replaced with 3D models as well. There is also proper mouselook. The result isn't a truly modern game but it does beat the snot of out the unadorned original.

The people over at descent2.de are doing wonderful things with Descent 1 and 2 as well. It is a very actively developed modernization of Descent using every 3D trick in the book. D2X-XL with the hi-res and model packs really does play like a modern game. They also have levels that are made with the enhancements in mind that have very little of that old-game-spruced-up feel.

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[Jesus_666]

X-Com: Enemy Unknown

Minor nitpick: It's either UFO: Enemy Unknown (Europe) or X-Com: UFO Defense (USA). Yes, I'm a fellow X-Com nerd and I still rate this game as a contender for Best Game Ever.

By the way, you might want to look into UFO: Cydonias Fall. They apparently attempt a straight 3D remake of the first X-Com game.

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[CronoCloud]

Personally I'd like to see a game that was like X-Com, but without the base building and budgeting stuff.

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[Dun Malg]

Minor nitpick: It's either UFO: Enemy Unknown (Europe) or X-Com: UFO Defense (USA). Yes, I'm a fellow X-Com nerd and I still rate this game as a contender for Best Game Ever.

You're right! Before I bought the US version I played the European version extensively ("found" it via FTP...), so in the back of my mind it's always "UFO: Enemy Unknown" first...

By the way, you might want to look into UFO: Cydonias Fall. They apparently attempt a straight 3D remake of the first X-Com game.

It looks great, and I wish I could say I was hopeful.... but reading the forums, they appear to all be university students and a lot of the recent news is about how busy they are not working on the game....

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[Jesus_666]

It looks great, and I wish I could say I was hopeful.... but reading the forums, they appear to all be university students and a lot of the recent news is about how busy they are not working on the game....

Well, yeah. But that's par for the course for community-created X-Com games, so...

Re:The problem with nostaligia...

[kv9]

I periodically get nostalgic for the old days of gaming, and decide I'll fire up something like Quake II, Fallout, X-Com, Duke Nukem 3d, play for 10 minutes and find only disappointment.

a few weeks back I played Carmageddon for a whole weekend. and it was just as awesome as 10y+ back when I played it for the first time. I bet Q2 would be the same, only multiplayer.

but these are quite new games compared to what else is being discussed in this thread.

Test of Time?

[Enderandrew]

Who cares if it stands the test of time? If I enjoy it now, and it is cheap, isn't that a winning combination? It isn't like I'm paying $60 for Mega Man 9 and expecting it to stand up against Gears of War.

Er. wait a mo...

[Fallen Andy]

Dead wrong. Some of us (and I'm 50 this year) are discovering most of those old console games for the first time!! (Disclaimer: I've been playing games back to c.a. '77 - the original "adven" on a PDP-11 in a research lab). The nice thing is that many of them can be played as casual games so I'll go off and play a little Dragon Warrior IV (NES), Summon Night (GBA) etc. My friend's son in the shop two doors down is probably playing Mario 64 (N64) right now...

Andy

Re:Er. wait a mo...

[bigstrat2003]

My friend's son in the shop two doors down is probably playing Mario 64 (N64) right now...

This proves the GP's statement. Already the N64 era is starting to become the fond old memories. Give it 10 years, and N64 stuff will be the retro gaming. What you're saying is that people enjoy playing quality games, which is always going to be true. Open-minded gamers will always play through old classics they never had, and discover how great they are. The primary driving force, though, is nostalgia, which is going to manifest itself differently as different generations of gamers grow up.

Re:Er. wait a mo...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead wrong

No he is right. When the people who grew up with Nintendo die off it will no longer be profitable to make retro-NES style games.

what the retro game fad has become

[CopaceticOpus]

What it's become is an easy way to make money. Why make a new Megaman and sell it for $10, rather than emulating a bunch of older, tried and true games? Why doesn't Sony create a way for volunteers to develop retro/homebrew games for the PS3, and then distribute them freely/cheaply over the PSN? It's all about money.

With digital purchasing made easy on the consoles, the potential for an endless profit stream is huge. Realize this, and you'll start seeing that it drives everything the console makers do, especially Sony. I saw them selling a bonus character for Soul Caliber IV (a Mortal Kombat style game) for $5. Paying $60 for the game wasn't enough? Add-on content, online movie rentals, downloadable small games that cost little to develop, all these things are easy money.

Now, I really like my PS3. It can even do some things that don't make money back for Sony, such as web surfing, watching videos (if they're encoded in a certain way), and even running Linux in a sandbox environment. (I don't list playing Blu-Rays because Sony is making money on those discs.) But I'll be watching out to see just how greedy they become.

Different interfaces and priorities

[Waccoon]

I think it's backlash against 3D gameplay. I'm not talking about 3D graphics, but rather 3D gameplay and interacting with things in a 3D world.

In 2D, you can do a lot of really cool things because you don't have to think about depth, like how far you have to jump to get to a platform. In 2D, it's obvious. You also don't have to worry about camera angles, which have gotten better in the last 10 years due to improved AI, but they still pretty much suck. I hate backing against a wall in a 3rd-person platform game and seeing the camera go berserk.

I also believe that 2D games, especially platformers, give you more freedom to goof around. If a game has a good "feel", you can go all kinds of cool chain-reaction moves which are pretty much impossible in 3D games. 3D games have usually been more procedural due to the interface complexity. I can jump off a platform, smush rows of goombas, and punch a brick to get a coin in one shot. With a typical 3D platformer, you pretty much do one thing at a time -- walk up to something, jump, move again, pick something up, shoot, walk, talk, then walk some more. That's my theory as to why the Wii's 3D controller is wasted on waggle games. Thinking in 3D is actually very difficult.

Of course, style matters, too. 3D graphics often lacks the color and graphic power of good 2D. I like remakes of old games, but they cannot either be exact replicas of the old games, or use too much technology. Geometry Wars is a real favorite of mind, as it brings back the old arcade feel, but still offers a pretty fireworks show. Games like Mega Man 9 really turn me off. I have fond memories of 8-bit gaming, not 8-bit limitations.

Re:Different interfaces and priorities

[atraintocry]

I feel about the same way. I am a big fan of the more recent 2D Mega Man games, like X4. There's a 2.5D remake of Mega Man X for PSP that's decent.

On the other hand, there's something charming about the limitations themselves, and how developers worked with and against them to make art. Chip tunes, for instance. Some people don't like it but I love the style of the original Mega Man serious music, or Castlevania, etc. Granted, I don't drive around listening to it, but when I play the games it definitely adds a lot.

Re:Different interfaces and priorities

[4D6963]

Very true. I think that since the widespread advent of 3D graphics, 3D has been seen as a must-do, i.e. well feel that 2D belongs to the early 90s. And therefore, 3D is forced onto any genre because well you don't have the choice, people still enjoy the relative novelty of 3D.

However, sometimes, often, as you pointed out, it makes the gameplay worse, by making things harder to control, to see, and so on. Sonic the Hedgehog was never better than when it was in 2D. It should have stayed this way, unfortunately it didn't have a choice. Besides, there's another aspect of 2D graphics that can make it a good choice compared to 3D graphics. 3D graphics, age poorly, models never have enough polygons, textures never have enough resolution, and so on. This being said, 2D graphics can be all you can want, considered modern hardware capabilities. And you've got to admit, Sonic the Hedgehog for Genesis, Super Metroid for SNES or Super Mario SNES still look damn good.

In conclusion, I think that the peak of the 3D hype is just behind us, and that in the future we'll see 2D and 3D graphics, under their increasingly varying forms, be re-appreciated for what they're really worth.

Re:Different interfaces and priorities

[amliebsch]

I agree, and what I believe (and what I think Gemometry Wars demonstrates very well) is that the 2D perspective can offer a different gaming experience, which is much faster paced and frenetic than any 3D game, but which you are somehow able to deal with by entering a weird trance-like state. That's what many older games had that most newer ones often lack - the ability to get in such a zone that you are able to perform feats you didn't know you could. Newer games are mostly much slower paced and contemplative.

Fun Games

[decipher_saint]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if a game is fun and challenging it will win no matter how sophisticated (or "unsophisticated") it is.

So if "fun games" is a fad then fuck it I'm on the fad bandwagon.

Re:Fun Games

[atraintocry]

I think the article was talking specifically about Mega Man 9 and Contra 4. Not just about simple games or 2D games, of which there are plenty on the online stores for each console. But actually reviving old franchises and making games in a specific style, down to the palettes and music composition, etc.

What they did with Mega Man 9 was probably more sophisticated than it would have been had they not been trying to artificially recreate an NES-style environment. They went even beyond that, by setting out to make a game resembling, say, Mega Man 2, rather than Mega Man 6 (which has some pretty amazing artwork).

Re:Fun Games

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with ya man! Nobody care's if it's retro or something completely different. All that matters is whether or not the actual gameplay is fun. Some people remember old games that would still be fun, but no longer have the old consoles or feel like dicking around with some emulator. (And typically you don't have the same gaming experience on an emulator, because the keyboard/mouse simply doesn't have the same feel as the old joystick or paddle the game used.) It'd be nice if someone made a proper package of retro games for the PC/Mac, and not only that, but to top it off - included USB versions of the classic gaming controllers. Then that way you could have the retro gaming experience as intended.

What I'd like to see is retro in the sense of the actual gameplay mechanics, but taking advantage of more modern graphics. Why not? There isn't really a rule against having the 2D layout and behavior with 3D rendered "sprites". What would also be fun is to re-do some of the older "3D" games like escape from Fractalus, Ballblazer, Star Raider, etc. where the old computers didn't have the capability to make it look good. Also you can take the concepts, but smooth out the mechanics from some of the older games that weren't as good. Some "almost-fun" games were kludgy because they didn't have the CPU power or RAM needed to implement the gameplay ideas properly.

Battletoads

[britneys 9th husband]

Saturday night at midnight, they're going to be re-releasing the original Battletoads (ie THE greatest NES game of all time) on the Wii. They signed an exclusivity deal with Gamestop, so be sure and call to reserve your copy before you go since they'll run out fast.

Re:Battletoads

[atraintocry]

Ask for Chris!

This game was cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Love to play the retrogames. Always play at http://www.thisgamewascool.com/ They have a bunch of very good ones.

Paying twice has reached the game world.

[Hannes2000]

Woohoo, now I can even pay twice for my games, along with buying dvds (and nowadays blu-rays, of course) of my old vhs tapes and mp3s of my cd and vinyl collection.

Tunnels of Doom Reboot

[sproketboy]

A classic from the TI-99 days.

http://www.dreamcodex.com/todr.php

Re:Tunnels of Doom Reboot

[OrangeTide]

Pretty neat remake. The remake's appearance kind of reminds me of Castle of the Winds. Which was a great RPG for Windows 3.x back in the day. Only reason I would even bother starting up Windows when I was a kid.

For TI-99 I'm still looking for a good Parsec remake. I kinda liked Munchman better than Pacman too.

Re:Tunnels of Doom Reboot

[sproketboy]

Castle of the Winds is OK but the new Tunnels of Doom has a lot more to it. Up to 4 characters, tactical combat, perspective dungeons, great score. The developer did a really nice job.

Variety is fun but...

[horza]

The good games keep you coming back. Whereas in the 8-bit days games were cheap you could keep buying new ones, I was shopping yesterday and all the new PS3 releases were 60-70e (about $100). Probably ok value for money considering all the work that has gone into them but no longer in the realm where you can play for a couple of days and then forget about it. The retro games fill a good niche for a bit of variety in between the more 'serious' purchases. My favourite 8-bit game was Elite, and I recently discovered Oolite which was some very fun retro-gaming for me.

Phillip.

Re:Variety is fun but...

[Dogtanian]

Whereas in the 8-bit days games were cheap

Although I was fortunate in that by the time I got my 8-bit Atari 800XL there was a healthy budget games market (UK £1.99-2.99) and most games were cheap, I understand that this wasn't always true earlier on, particularly with the Atari. Some of the early Atari home computer games were apparently very expensive, and AFAIK 8-bit console games- whether for the early Atari VCS or the later NES- were *never* that cheap. In fact, taking inflation into account a lot of those games were just as expensive.

The cover scan of this early 1980s Atari game has an (I assume) contemporary price tag of $29.99 (US I assume, again) on it, and I don't believe that this was out of the ordinary.

Re:Variety is fun but...

[Dun Malg]

60-70e (about $100)

the Euro is only 1.27 to the dollar. 60e-70e is only $75-$89

Did all music die with its original audience?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like how we remember the best of music from hundreds of years ago, we will remember the best of games, and it doesn't matter how "primitive" the technology was if it's still a great game. Super Mario, Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog 1, and Street Fighter 2 Turbo (SNES version) are examples of games that will not disappear.

Not a fad

[fortapocalypse]

A lot of us are still very enthusiastic about classic games. For example: see AtariAge, DigitPress RetroGaming Roundtable, ClassicGaming, etc. There is a community out there alive and well with fans of every type of classic gaming console, old computer, and classic game. And don't forget to do a Google Blog Search for your favorite classic console (atari 2600) or old computer (Apple II) (get the feed...). Classic gamers are buying news products like the Classic USB Joystick Controller (Atari 2600-style) and in the past few years there were a flood of products like the Atari Flashback 2, C64 TV Games, a bunch of Jakks TV games, etc. The classic gaming market will always be around, but I think it will change and update as we get older where newer "old" systems get a chance for the spotlight.

thisgamewascool.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Love to play the retrogames. Always play at http://www.thisgamewascool.com/ [thisgamewascool.com] They have a bunch of very good ones.

The internet is a fad

[nurb432]

So are pockets, shoes... Florescent dyed hair..

Re:The internet is a fad

[4D6963]

Everything that won't always be necessary to our survival (sex, food, breathing) will eventually be a fad. Everything that will disappear will be deemable of having been a fad. Maybe even we will be deemed a fad of nature, when we disappear.

The market is already there

[Drakkenmensch]

Consider all the people who play games on cell phones and portable platforms, as well as apps on websites such as social network games. Those usually have limited graphic capability that are close to 8-bit era, or marginally better. This is because of a very simple fact: good gameplay trumps good graphics every time! Have you ever played a game with awesome graphics that you put down quickly because it was simply no fun at all? (I'm looking at YOU, Monster Hunter Freedom!)

Re:The market is already there

[4D6963]

Funny you should mention cellphones, all the commercial game demos I've tried on my N95 all have "flashy" (by modern cell phone standards) 3D graphics, but abysmal gameplays that cannot compare to any standard during any era in the history of the video games.

So many sleepless nights...

[resignator]

playing games like Star Control 2, Total Annihilation, Tribes 1 & 2, and Quake 2 & 3. I am not sure if I could survive another round.

The fan community has redone SC2 and released it as Ur-Quan Masters - http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ (great remake btw). Total Anni has been remade as Spring - http://spring.clan-sy.com/ but I still find the original modded with TAMutation more fun.

The gaming community has changed considerably though. Gaming is bigger than it ever has been and a massive casual gamer crowd has entered the market. Anything that mainstream is bound to have it's share of mediocrity. There are still great titles out there. You just have to wade through more crap to find them.

MAME

[Toll_Free]

Hard to think that MAME is just a fad.

Then again, wait until all the people who grew up in the 80s can't play, and ask that question again.

By that time, WoW will be considered "retro".

--Toll_Free

Slashdot "Best Of"

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot really needs a "best of" moderation a la Craigslist, into which we can elect comments like the parent, which manage to represent a wide canon of Slashdotter sentiment.

Function over Form

[Avalon's_Avatar]

Elite on the BBC micro was the first game I obsessed about - and I can still indulge my passion gratis on my PC today (http://oolite.org).

I guess I'm not really a 'power' gamer since the games I still like to play are Rogue (albeit in it's Nethack guise), DOOM, Warhammer:Dark Omen and Diablo.

All of these games are 10 years old +, yet I still enjoy playing them. Whilst many modern games offer huge improvements in eye candy, I haven't found any that improve on the fundamental game play. As a bonus, I can play all these games on modest hardware which gives me a pretty high fun per Watt ratio.

Master Of Magic

[fadethepolice]

I vote for an updated version of master of magic. Same spells, same races, same creatures, same heroes (even Mystic X). Turn-base play, perhaps as a massively multiplayer online game. Not sure how to handle that, perhaps having a multitude of planes instead of two? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic

Re:Master Of Magic

[OrangeTide]

That does look like a neat game. You can always play the original if you have DOSbox.

Tag "donquixote"

[ZombieRoboNinja]

If you're looking for an example of a loving parody that outlasted the original... they're not too hard to find.

"Don Quixote" is a reaction to the trashy novels about knight-errants that everyone was reading in Cervantes' time. Nowadays, most people have never even heard of Orlando Furioso, but a new translation of the Quixote still makes the NY Times bestseller list.

The trick is to make your parody or throwback so good that it's worth reading/playing even after the nostalgic context has faded.

Re:Tag "donquixote"

[CronoCloud]

Some of the later "prose romances", the ones where they throw in stuff like wizards, magic rings and mythical beasts, are good reading from a D&D perspective.

Asteroids 3D FPS

[revjd909]

I would love to be able to shoot at rocks and alien spaceships from a FPS perspective. Needing to turn in all those different angles, would mean that the game controller mapping would be critical. Perhaps Defender 3D would be cool as well.

Re:Asteroids 3D FPS

[CronoCloud]

A 3D Defender has already been done:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/home/561519.html

Who has time for a gaming fad?

[TenBrothers]

I don't have time to read TFA, I'm too busy playing solitaire.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Neo-Retro, from Oxymoron Software?

mom

[fadethepolice]

i do still play

Retro games, and the web

[physburn]

I've played retro games quite a bit every now and then going back to old spectrum games, and its fun and nostalgia for me. But it seems that neo-retro games are indeed a fad, a passing phase set by the level of games technologies, that can be presented by a web browser. For instead Flash Games made with adobe flash have a level of graphics and video, very much like the games of 10 or more years ago. Its this technology lag in browsers that leads to the Neo retro feel of the games. And it will change as browser technology approaches the level of GPU power of a model computer.

Nostalgia?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't go back and play Diablo 1, Baldur's Gate II, or some of the many old console games for nostalgic purposes. They're just that good. Believe it or not, graphics don't make a game. Gameplay does.

anyone who still plays neo-retro games ...

[porky_pig_jr]

rather than post-neo-retro games is hopelessly behind the curve.

2D platformer with 3D graphics

[tepples]

With a typical 3D platformer, you pretty much do one thing at a time -- walk up to something, jump, move again, pick something up, shoot, walk, talk, then walk some more.

You've probably played at least one of Wild 9 (PS1), Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64), Adventure Mode of Super Smash Bros. Melee (GCN), Viewtiful Joe (GCN), Mega Man X 8 (PS2), and The Subspace Emissary of Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii). Are these 2D platformers with 3D graphics, or are they 3D platformers confined to a plane?

The games will always stay around

[Anonymous Coward]

The games will always stay around. Someone playing Mega Man XY Turbo Net Hyper 28 is going to want to know where the whole thing started.