Why do people seam to like old games more then new ones?

[MrLS]

Old games, I feel didn't set expectations as much back when they first came out. Then, gaming was about having fun, not so much what graphics were better or who could get 5o head shots. Back then game developers weren't so serious about 1 upping each other to the point that the games suffered. It was just a more enjoyable time I think for everyone, but with the bar being raised and raised each console generation and with PC graphics and technology advancing weekly, it's all become rather repetitive for some people. :/

Also, back then games could be about anything. Nowadays, a creative idea can easily ruin or bankrupt a company even if it's a intuitive and great idea. So for developers, back then it was definitely easier too because every game wasn't trying to rip off the big name games like they are these days, so there was something different for everyone.

Well Aylaine nailed my thoughts on it.

Games were more difficult and had alot more love put into the gameplay, it just made it better. Today it's all about design the game to fit/rip-off the most popular gimmick/fad/game.
How many mainstream military shooters have we had now released that are exactly the same in every way since Call Of Duty 4?

 

[GothmogII]

I don't have so much a like of old games more than I have a like of good games. That they're old is only incidental, I'd still play and enjoy them if they were released now. Pointing to nostalgia as a cause for liking a game is rather pointless if you can pick up an old game and still enjoy it.

If it's old and you still enjoy playing it: It's not nostalgia. (That does not necessarily mean it's good, but at least you aren't basing your like of the faultiness of memory).

If it's old and you haven't played it in years but still get good memories from it: That's nostalgia. You have to play it again to find out if it's enjoyable or not.

 

[SimuLord]

Because the genres I love peaked in the late '90s-early '00s. Consider:

- Railroad Tycoon 2
- Tropico
- Capitalism 2
- Patrician 3
- SimCity 4
- Port Royale 2
- Paradox's 2D Europa Engine games

They don't make games like that anymore (and don't say Tropico 3, and if you say SimCity Societies I will hunt you down and kick your teeth in.)

So yes, I love old games. They don't make 'em anymore. They really were better back then.

(and don't even get me started on JRPGs. Final Fantasy 4 and 6. Chrono Trigger. Secret of Mana/Evermore. No further questions, Your Honor.)

 

[Mythbhavd]

I think it's because people were actually trying to be creative back in the 80s and 90s. With the advent of Halo, Half-life, Diablo, and WoW, gaming just became the same thing repackaged with new art and new boxes.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Personally for me it's because I grew up playing those games, and back then I didn't have anything to compare them to, so for me they were very unique and were just plain fun. The games I remember most were ones like Crash bandicoot, Spyro and Dino Crisis.

Nowadays everyone knows everythings gonna have good graphics and online multiplayer, theres hardly any innovation recently. FPS have been the same for like forever and platformers are starting to die out. I'm not saying games these days are bad, just that we know what to expect from them. When you first play something that you've never played before, it's a much more exciting experiance compared to if you're currently playing the 10th installment of that game and nothing much has changed.

Also series like Crash bandicoot and Spyro have been taken over by other developers who have ruined the series and made them horrible and playing the old ones reminds you og how good they once were.

 

[Silver]

Because of the focus of development. Nowadays there's a huge focus on getting the graphics right, and the sound right, and getting actors, and stuff like that. A huge amount of resources is wasted on getting games a little bit shinier, and a little bit more current. We're focusing on graphics technologically, instead of visually. As long as it's 3D, everything's animated, moving, and highpoly, things are good.

When we didn't have to think about that, development time and resources could be spent on other, nice stuff. In some cases that meant we got amazing games, with amazing visuals, if technologically inferior to modern games. Look at Planescape torment. The visuals in that game are gorgeous, they're absolutely amazing. They're not technologically advanced, but they're immersive, and show an amazing world, hinting at even more, behind every corner. Compare with Fable, a rather ugly game even when it came out, and that hasn't aged well. The visuals in Fable were much more expensive, and so that was mostly what they could focus on, there's not really all that much to do in the game. In Planescape: Torment, all those resources that weren't wasted could be put to good using, making it, really, the most immersive story out there, in games, to this date.

If you want, compare Half-life with it's bosses, the length, and the variety with some modern shooters and you see the same.

It's not all bad these days, but the tradeoff has not been completely beneficial.

 

[danintexas]

For every Mass Effect there is a Secret of the Silver Blades
For every God of War there is a Berserk
For every Ratchet and Clank there is a Megamania

I love my new games and I love my old games. New games have better graphics and better sound because of better technology and higher production costs. Older games had none of those so they made up for it with better writing and better more original stories.

To this day I still will hook up my Atari 2600 and sit there for hours at a time playing Space Invaders - Yars' Revenge - Berserk

 

[Jezzascmezza]

It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy about a more youthful time in your life.

 

[Dexiro]

Nostalgia is one reason, but a lot of old games were genuinely better made and more fun then some of the stuff we get these days.

I first played the original DOOM like this year maybe, previously having heard no opinions of it other than the fact i hated DOOM3. And you know what? I fucking loved it, probably one of my favourite FPS games if not my absolute favourite.

Oh and then there's Banjo Kazooie and other old Rare games. I had no nostalgia or hadn't heard much about those games other than that they were well known. I played them, i loved them too. And every other platformer i played as a kid; Spyro, Crash, Tomba. I still enjoy them as much as ever. Tomba in particular i hated as a kid and absolutely love since replaying.

Then you could jump back a little further. I never played SNES or NES games as a kid, but the original Mario games, Zelda, Super Metroid, Megaman. I love those games and i first played most of those fairly recently.

Went a little overkill there but a lot of old games are damn awesome and nostalgia has nothing to do with it.

 

[teh_Canape]

I really cant believe you just defended Cheetahmen o_0
Ive got that on a NES emulator for Dreamcast in the Action52 ROM and I have Cheetahmen 2 on the Megadrive and all I can say is that they are the 2 biggest abominations ever put onto a cartridge

good or bad, either way, you're still agreeing it's epic

FYI, CheetahMen 3 is currently under development by some indie developer called SuckerFree games =P look it up

 

[Talon_Skywarp]

Because Nostalgia stabbed reason and left its corpse to rot in a dark alley.

Guy gets the prize.

I went back to play some classics...Some just shocked me that they are so basic.

 

[Cozzzy]

I'll admit, some games seem better than they are due to nostalgia, but this isn't always true - try finding games like Planescape: Torment these days; I think it's more a case of the majority of games these days being flashy F/TPS games which have gotten a little stale.

I only played Fallout 2 recently, having never touched or even knew of the series as a kid and fell in love with it, as I do with a lot of older games - no way can that be nostalgia BUT, in fairness, maybe it is in a way because we miss that era?

 

[Vrach]

It always makes me wonder when you hear people talking about how game were better before XBox and the PS2. Now with the PSN XBL and the Wiiware you can download games form yesteryear. I've done this on my 360 and PS3.... The games that I remember playing back in the mid 90's when I was a kid were amazing! Now.... there just rubbish! But I always find people that will defend to the death that game where better back then. Some games still stand the test of time or even get a new life like Duke Nukem 3D for the 360. Will games now be the same in 15-20 years time. Will we look back and say "wow, Halo is just unbearable to play".

First off, when someone says an old game is better than a new one, it doesn't necessarily mean literally so. It means it was amazing for the time it came from, much more so than the new game for the current time.

From time to time, some games will actually be better (on the whole) than their next installment. Morrowind for example compared to Oblivion. Some people (myself included) actually enjoy the old 2D engine of Civilization 3 and aren't too hot on the improvements of Civilization 4, but that's mostly just preferences.

Then of course there's nostalgia. On the "games were better before than they are now", sorry but on the whole, that's a very empty argument filled with nothing but nostalgia. There may be games that were better, there may even be genres that were better, but gaming industry on the whole? Definitely not, it's moving forward quite nicely, as for the piles of shit, they were there before, the reason the pile's bigger now is that the industry is bigger on the whole.

edit: Oh - and Halo is unbearable.

 

[Lexxi64]

I do play alot of my older games because of nostalgia (even though most of the games I used to love were quite rubbish, but I still play them to relive memories). But not just that; when I was a kid I didn't really understand games. I could get my head around the Sims and pretend to have a little family etc, but on any other game I'd just mess around. Now when I go on them, I play through them properly, like Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank etc.
For me, though, going back to older games sometimes makes memories of my childhood fade away, because then I'd only remember the time I'd play them as the age I am now. Which is most probably because I have terrible memory, but you see what I'm getting at!

 

[zhemis]

Because today's cardboard cutout games are just imitations of what came before. It's not nostalgia, and if anyone thinks a bigger industry is better because it's bigger they're wrong. Alot of today's big titles leave an empty feeling. Today's games are more disposable. You spend your hours beating it and you never have a desire to pick it up again. I play old and new games. With the new games I pick them up, beat them, then shelf them. The whole time I'm doing that I'm playing those old replayable games on the side. When I've shelved the boring new game I'm back to playing what's fun.

 

[Mass B]

nostalgia, originality, simplicity, there are a lot of reasons. The fact that we still play old games really says something about the quality of the game. I still play Castlevania SOTN all the time, especially now because my Xbox is broken for the time being, and i restarted my Star Ocean 2 game recently, so i'm still on disc 1. My brothers and I just discovered a new room in SOTN, and I'm blown away by the complexity of the story and every little detail about the characters of Star Ocean 2. For those who don't know, each character in Star Ocean has a secret favorite food, secret talents, and they even interact differently with other characters depending how long they fight side by side, or by what choices you make in the huge amounts of mini events throughout the game. it's amazing how complex these games are, despite being around 10 years old.