Retro gaming and gamers

[WhitemageofDOOM]

Being that i mainly see PS3 and Xbox fanboys doing the elitist hardcore thing, this entire topic is just weird to me.

But as a retro gamer and a hardcore in eternal support of "casuals first", i prefer retro games because
A) they were simpler, this favors the casual player. Anyone can play mario.
B) they had a gameplay first mentality, right now we have graphics first mentality or story first mentality.
C) they don't waste processing power, in a way this stems from graphics but. From atari, to 8-bit to 16-bit the gameplay got better and better with processing power(as well as gameplay evolution) modern games haven't gotten better thanks to better hardware.
D) Retro games tend to be 2D, in a way it's a simplicity issue but like our better graphics the 3rd dimension is very often unnecessary, it doesn't add anything. Unnecessary complication, further human visual perception is a 2d medium with the illiusion of depth created via eye position, and our tv screens are 2d......(Actually i'm quite fond of the 2.5d style with 3d graphics on a 2d playing field, but i digress.)

 

[SanitysEclips3]

Some people are afraid of change, and as you said, I believe the "retro" gamers may be afraid of losing their image. Now this wouldn't be so bad if most retro gamers didn't piss me off so much. You know who I'm talking about, the people who say that Pong or Super Mario Bros. was the greatest game of all time. Influential, no doubt, but I want you to ask yourself an honest question. If you, right now, had to play either Pong or you Xbox (or whatever you may play now) which would you play? Now, despite what some may say, I bet the first thing that popped into your head when you read that was "Xbox."

The inherent problem is that most retro games either sucked, or were good in their time but suck now (there are of course exceptions). The common claim that "most modern games are crap, but back in the day..." is simply not entirely true. While it may be true that the ration of good to bad games isn't particularly high, it was just as low if not lower in the "good old days."

It is the same problem as with "indie film enthusiasts," who feel they are enlightened and above the others, fooling themselves into thinking they are having a good time when in reality they are simply sitting through a movie about gay cowboys or whatever so they can turn their noses up at people discussing The Dark Knight in Starbucks while writing their "novel" on a Linux laptop running off vegetable oil or whatever, except in this situation the Starbucks is a forum, the nose is a post, and the novel is their "Pong=win" signature.

/rant

P.S. Flame me all you want, it will not work

 

[EvilEngineNumberNine]

I consider myself to be one of the many ultragamers out there in that we've played close to every game available to us on whatever system's were available to us and I can tell you what's eating at those gamers who prefer slightly/very old titles to the new ones.
Homogenization. We as gamers, voluntarily or not, are narrowing or paths down until the only choice left to us will be what system to buy Madden 2066 for. And it's not just the homogenization of the games themselves, but of the studios and production companies. Soon EA will own everything and creative ideas will be scrapped or hamstrung in order to get the game to the widest possible audience and hence, gain the most profit. The autonomous developer who can take chances and buck the rules is becoming an endangered species and that makes a little me more than worried about the future of games. Independent developers are doing a great job making clever, unique gaming experiences but the future of that market is unsteady. Some of the retro gamers are in it for the nostalgia. Some are in it because they've grown up with it and it's raised them as they have raised it. But most retro gamers just want to go back to the times when games were labors of love and creativity instead of cut and paste epics. That's not to say that I think all new games are bad. There are a great many out there right now that I love and I have all current systems and play them regularly. I just see where the industry (feels weird attaching that word to gaming) is going and the line is blurred so think with particle effects and super duper lightning that it all looks like one game to me.



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And to the moron above me. Change that laptop to a Mac running OSX and you'll have arrived at the correct stereotype you were looking to spew from your putrescent gob. I wholeheartedly believe that you like your X-Box more than Pong, and so do I. But to assume that everyone else does, and to assume that the ones who don't are idiots who only want to make you look stupid is imbecilic in the extreme.

 

[PersianLlama]

1998 was the place to be for gamers.

I believe half-life 1 came out then.
*Checks Wikipedia*
Yar!

Not sure if I'd completely agree with that, but it was a good time.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

If you, right now, had to play either Pong or you Xbox (or whatever you may play now) which would you play? Now, despite what some may say, I bet the first thing that popped into your head when you read that was "Xbox."

If it was the C64 or Xbox, the Xbox wouldn't even cross my mind.

I think Yahtzee's having a bit of a dilemma with himself over nostalgia and has actually turned anti-nostalgia. On fullyramblomatic he's actually slagging off all of his old stuff, despite some of it being really quite good.

The basis of a good game is gameplay; and the retro era had better gameplay overall almost due to the limited space.

If you don't believe me, try and fit Halo or Portal or any other current game into 64k and see if it still brings about the same level of 'WOW!'.

Soddit, I'll even give you 128k to play with. It still won't beat titles like Elite, M.U.L.E., Lords of Chaos, Impossible Mission...

Modern games are more immersive, Retro games are more fun.

 

[Altorin]

I try not to associate with snobs of any varieties.

I think retro gaming has its place, and everyone's entitled to their opinion, but most retro-gamers I know (or at least BIG fans of retro gaming) also play new games as well.

 

[Space Spoons]

I like games. That's it, haha. If it's fun, I'll play it. Earlier today I was playing Half Life 2, now I'm playing Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. Doesn't matter when it was made, or what it looks like (to some extent). I'll play it if I enjoy playing it.

Too true. Games is games.

First off, love your avatar, Gothmog. I've seen that particular version of The Mysterious Stranger, and found it brilliant.

Secondly, I agree entirely. If it's fun, I'll play it. Sticking with that mindset, I'm glad that gaming has come as far as it has. It means I can reap the rich rewards of an industry that has matured significantly since it took it's first few stumbling steps, as well as enjoy the classic games that made it fun to begin with. As Whobajube put it, I can enjoy Half-Life 2 and Zelda 2 in the same afternoon, should I choose... And the way I see it, it doesn't get much better than that. It's a golden age, baby.

 

[n01d34]

I play both, I love both. When it comes to the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia people tend to forget all the rubbish games and only remember the great. So when they look back they end up thinking 'oh it was so much better in the oldern days'.

But one thing the old games had was that by virtue of their terrible graphics you were forced to use your imagination. And as every 8 year old knows using your imagination is fun.

 

[Fire Daemon]

Whoa whoa whoa, Half-Life has lackluster gameplay? Dude, what the hell are you smoking?

If you must know, I hate how every enemy takes a large amount of bullets to kill, even with shots to head. It also felt repetitive and far too simple. The same with the puzzles and jumping segments. When I played Half Life I never felt challenged and I always felt like the game revolved around holding down the fire button untill the techo music stopped.

Half Life 2 on the other hand, I liked a lot.

 

[The Iron Ninja]

Whoa whoa whoa, Half-Life has lackluster gameplay? Dude, what the hell are you smoking?

If you must know, I hate how every enemy takes a large amount of bullets to kill, even with shots to head. It also felt repetitive and far too simple. The same with the puzzles and jumping segments. When I played Half Life I never felt challenged and I always felt like the game revolved around holding down the fire button untill the techo music stopped.

Hey come on now, Half-Life 1 was great fun. I wouldn't go back and play it now, but it was a very good game back in 1998. Don't compare it to modern shooters, it's not fair.

 

[haruvister]

Also nostalgia, lots and lots of nostalgia.

I know all about that!

First off, strictly speaking we shouldn't refer to old games as "retro" games. Retro means "reminiscent of" - so games made in an old-fashioned style, or perhaps remakes, like that Bionic Commando one. We're discussing old games, pure and simple.

There was a time when games weren't judged on plot or character because they had no backstory and the sprite was a blob made out of eight pixels. They were judged on gameplay alone, and when they got it right they were pretty compulsive. But the ratio of quality to horseshit was no different to today; if anything, owing to the demands of what is now undeniably a mass market, the capacity for extremes of quality/horseshit is increased. So what if EA cynically sucks a corner of that mass market dry with their endless Sims expansions? This was a corner of the market that didn't even exist in the days of Elite, Supercars and Sensible Soccer. And it's still the same market which has spawned BioShock, MGS4, Half Life 2, Oblivion, et al.

The one thing that definitely ISN'T better these days is the quality of gaming publications. Anyone who remembers Amiga Power or Arcade magazine knows of what I speak.

 

[mark_n_b]

1998 was the place to be for gamers.

1998 is not really "retro gaming", if you want to get retro, we are talking about arguing the superiority of galaga and FF II over 3D driven games.

Fanboyism is a bad thing, whether it's a retro fanboy or a PS3 fanboy. Fact of the matter is, pure game mechanics were what classic video games had to be all about. So I can see a lot of admiration and love for them being fairly reasonable.

But visual technology, 3D, extended game-play and story add a whole new bend on the experience, which has added to it in many ways. So I can understand the "love the future" as well.

But you can have snobs in both camps who argue that their views are the right ones and that others are stupid. Games like pacman and tempest are the foundation on which gaming is premised. and they are damned fun games. It is ignorant to say that someone who loves and admires these types of games is tasteless or silly. On the flipside, games like Killer 7 and Shadow of the Colossus have really brought gaming as an art form forward, and a lot of that has been because of technological advancement. So it is equally lousy to disrespect anyone who finds their love in this aspect of the culture.

Don't be a snob is the long and short of it, everything is the worse for it.

 

[imperialwar]

i am going to be a little arbitary and not read all the posts here.
but i wish to share something.
I always considered myself a variety gamer, playing games from 1990 onwards. This was when i was gifted with my first machine ( at age 13 ).
anyway, recently i decided to search the net for a Mario Bros game to play, and found the ever classic version. You know what ? i suck at Mario Bros... and this is 17 years of gaming experience later. i blame the fact i was using the PC keyboard rather then the controller of the NES. yeah blame the machine, that sounds good
i am an immersive gamer and enjoyed the story of FF7 and all it's sequels, minus 11 which i never played. I don't allow myself to get caught up in hype and barrel shooting of games. I know what i will like and choose accordingly.
Now i don't want the next scomment to derail the debate, or raise a debate of it's own. rather i wish to share something else.
The only recent game i bought, thinking i would like it and not actually liking it has been WAR. I found it to subjective and to reliant on interaction with people that are largely unavailable. Namely opposition players.

On the retro note i still have copies of ff6,7,8,9,12 and intend to recover 10 on the platinum range. I also have Xcom, considered by many to be a retro classic. Unfortunately it is terror from the deep. i did once have enemy unknown as well. i probably should note these are all PS1 formats.
I still have my Mega drive laying around and sitting it just right so the power coupling connects properly it still works. With the Mega CD attatchment as well.

As for the mainstreaming of the computer industry, yes it definately has been dumbed down for joe q public. I like to think of it this way: at least playing games they aren't out on the street driving a vehicle...

 

[iamnotincompliance]

<-

In case the six frames of paranoia didn't draw your eye with it's constant movement, an arrow has been placed for your convenience.

Now then, retro gamers (such as myself, obviously). I'm 22, soon to be 23 (very soon), and my Genesis sits proudly next to my quad-core black monolith. Why, you ask? For one thing, the first person shooter has never rarely appealed to me, which cuts me off from roughly 97% of new releases. Also, the whole "realism" (gray and brown) kick developers seem to be on these days turns me away. I don't know where these people live, but I look around and I see greens and blues and reds and yellows, even the occasional orange, but then I also see the notes coming out of my surround sound system, and they are brandish knives, plotting to kill me.

No, I wouldn't be this articulate if I saw all that, so I'll attempt to wrap this up without for hopefully the sixth and final time without killing myself in the process. Lots of text was typed and deleted coming this far. I believe the retro gaming trend stems from the originality of the day. Everything was new then, experimentation was in order, and it gave us a yellow mouth eating things in a maze while being chased by ghosts. Nothing like that had been done before, and indeed, aside from sequels and remakes on anything sporting a screen, nothing has done like that since. Even my beloved Sonic the Hedgehog games share much of their DNA with Mario. Today, jumping around levels holds nothing in the face of shooting everything that moves (FPS), micromanaging a small fleet (RTS), or pretending to be someone else altogether (RPGs off all sorts). Quite frankly, shoot or manage your way through one army, and you've shot or managed your way through them all, in my opinion, ever better AI be damned. I give the FPS, RTS, and RPG (which I don't mind really) another ten years, max, before the next big acronym comes in and all jump aboard. They won't die out, just as the platformer hasn't, but they will be relegated to more niche status, and someday, they too will be the "retro gaming" squawked about around parts like these.

Having said that (finally), I also feel that if Sega ever pulled a Capcom and released a good (not that other crap they've been pulling) 16-bit looking 2D platformer on Virtual Console and called it Sonic 4 that that would be the smartest thing they've done in a very long time. Now that it's taken me almost two hours to make coherent thoughts out of this, Chaos Emeralds and gold rings are beckoning, and I am not one to resist.

 

[RYjet911]

To hide from new games because they're not like old games seems stupid to me... I still class Ocarina of Time as the greatest game I have ever played, and can still play through it happily without getting bored.

But I have a lot of 'greatest games I have ever played' if that makes any sense. STALKER, Half Life, Command and Conquer, all games I love and play equally as much as 'retro' games, simply because I enjoy playing them, and try not to deny the fact they're good because there was one game I quite liked on the NES all those years back that, because it's retro, must have been so much better.

I guess I'm hardly old enough to consider such games retro anyway, at only 17, but I'm as interested in old games as much as I'm interested in the way games are currently developing. I've picked up random old games recently and loved them, and these are games I never played as a child. But, just because I loved Batman for the NES after only first playing it last year, doesn't mean I turn my head to anything with similar gameplay mechanics of current generation games simply because Batman did it first. And anyway, that game seemed like a cross between Megaman and Metroid, two game series which I haven't actually played yet but look similar from what videos I've watched.

My advice to gamers, both retro and... Whatever the opposite of the word retro is, don't look down on games just because of the era it came out. As retro gamers claim newer games are bad simply because they use concepts taken from older games, I've had gamers of this generation claim to hate old games simply because of their age without having played them first. Generally, these people hate them because of the graphics and sound, rather than actual gameplay and should be condemned to the furthest reaches of hell for such thinking, but whatever.

Just don't hate a game for its age or because it's like an older game. Unless the older game did it better of course, then rip to your hearts content.

 

[Raynaux]

I'd say I'm more of a retro gamer, the only next gen console I've got is the wii and I really only use it for virtual console and playing cube games, don't get me wrong I've got plenty of wii games but generally find myself replaying old games more.

I also have loads of other old consoles hooked up for whenever I feel bored, but I don't do it because the games are better, in my opinion it's kind of silly to compare games from my days to games now, graphically they can't compete, but to me graphics count for less than nothing, gameplay, fun, replayability and general story/themes are what bring me back to games.

I play old games because they are fun, it lets me re-live a bit of my youth and also I love the originality of old games, when you play old games you get to see where most of todays games have spawned from, where the basic concepts of these games have been derived from.

Old gaming is just as good as new gaming, it's down to the player, I wouldn't say that any old game is better than any new game or vice versa, the only place where I'd argue one game is better than another is if it's part of a series or something.

On another topic to support what i've said, I hate people who come out with stupid commments of fanboyism, people who say stuff like, 'Brawl is rubbish, Halo 3 is like way better!'..... these are the people who deserve to be punched in the face until they stop crying. If you want to compare games at least make sure they are of the same type/genre.... comparing a fps towards a fighting game is ridiculous.

Sorry I noticed this kind of thing in another forum i'm in just now and felt like have a good rant about it xD

Also If your intertested three of my favourite games of all time are Ocarina of Time and F-Zero for the N64 and Megaman X for the Snes, I wasted half my childhood on those games and have never regretted a second of it xD

 

[Decroux]

I would like to say right now that I have played Deus Ex, Blood Omen, Diablo I, Arena and Arcanum among others, all between 2006 and now. I've loved them all as much as I like playing God of War, Halo 3 and the Force Unleashed. Games are not something with an enjoyment factor that should be based on time. It should be about gameplay mechanics, and if you're lucky, a half decent story.

I have to preference as to which era of gaming I would like to play in because I have enjoyed pretty much every game I have picked up and then finished it. Games do not age. We do. Our expectations do, and people who quit their general phase of gaming will start to reminisce.

The reason they will exclaim boldly that Pong is better than Metal Gear Solid 4 is because that's what the person in question would have grown up with. For those people, games have turned into an interactive movie that rots our brains, while there games had 1 simply objective at the time whether it had been 'Return the ball to your opponent' or 'Asteroids are here. Shoot them.'

It's all relative to the year you were born and how you classed video games in your life. I personally played games with a passion from 5 when I started playing Quake 2 and now I'm playing through more recent games like The Force Unleashed at the same time I am passing the campaign of Deus Ex in realistic mode. Perhaps that's not an old enough example but it's enough to explain that games should never have their playability judged on it's age.

Maybe the first Diablo was better than the second, though I fail to see how anyone comes to that conclusion when Diablo II has an added run feature, expansive worlds, more character classes, more skills and far more replayability than it's predecessor. This is just like how if I were to look at Pong and then look at a Tennis game on the XBOX and I would rather play that, as it's gameplay is far more evolved to Pong. But gaming was a different thing in a different time.

It all comes down to the fact that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and peopel at a different age who gamed for different reasons will always have a different opinion to 'Hardcore' gamers.

 

[PureChaos]

the old games are going to have something special about them mainly for nostalgia reasons. where things in the gaming industry have progressed most people move with the times and after many years re-live their past gaming memories and go spend hours repeating the phrase 'i remember this level' or something like that. graphics in a game aren't my main priority, if there are amazing graphics then great, if not i won't condemn the game. im more of a gameplay person, if its fun, i'll play it. game producers seem to spent most of their time improving graphics and not enough time on making the game fun to play. a lot of the games in the 90's were fun to play and thats why a lot of people keep going back to them. the mario series went downhill when it went 3D, mario bros 3 will always be the best in the series.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

admittedly im more of a retro gamer. I enjoy Halo, but I don't think it matches up to games Like Ninja Gaiden, or hell, Half Life for that matter. I think that the 90's were the best time to be a gamer. So many good games and consoles coming out, with Arcades galore. Such a beautiful time. So many new franchises coming out, and when the Playstation came out,golden eye was released, and Half Life came out, it was... bliss... A simpler time if i say so myself, as well as no idiots called G4.