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Which games do you feel have aged well/poorly, and why? [roundtable]
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Seeing all of the Metroid I hate being flung around has put this topic on my mind. What makes a game age well? What makes a game age poorly? Is nostalgia the biggest factor of your enjoyment of an old title? Feel free to share any of your experiences. I'll start with one: StarTropics. A very divisive game. Never played it back in the day, bought it on VC. It was clunky by modern standards, but still eminently playable, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. In fact, I found it's lack of mercy to be quite refreshing. That's how most of the games that I was introduced to on the VC feel to me: refreshing. It seems that many of the modern tenets of game design annoy me. A counter-example: Beyond Oasis. Blech. Interesting in concept. Horrible in execution. Actually, much of the Sega Genesis Collection gave me that impression. Begin the Segacide! But first, let's go back to good ol', controversial ol' Metroid 1. When I played that game, it was like a nuclear bomb. Just so fresh and innovative and incredible, and, at the time, I was so receptive to that type of exploratory experience. And, like StarTropics, I feel like the game design generally accounts for those 'antiquated' elements. But maybe it's almost impossible for a new player to appreciate things like the Ice Beam and Morph Ball after the game has had so many sequels. On the other hand, I got the 3D Classics version of Twinbee, which is significantly more simple than the sequels that I am familiar with. But I can appreciate it for what it is. So it seems that I am capable of enjoying an old game, as long as the design is solid (or NOT enjoying one, if it's a Sega game). The question is, can I personally overcome the power of nostalgia? I'm trying to think of a game that I loved before, but hate now (or vice versa), and I'm having some difficulty. So either my judgment was always coolly rational, or I can't separate out my happy memories. How about you guys? What's your take on vintage games? URL to share (right click and copy)
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09/29/11, 18:15 Edited: 09/29/11, 18:20
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Let's discuss that enemy respawning thing. That was part of many NES games. Somehow, I don't think it was a programming limitation, since there are obvious ways to avoid it, and showing more enemies is actually more taxing on the hardware. I think it might've been an intentional post-arcade mechanic, to keep things exciting and intense. One which can be annoying in games like Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden, but never bugged me in Metroid.
I really don't think I can talk about Metroid dispassionately, though. I could spin almost all of the 'flaws' that you mentioned in a positive way.
But, yeah, the genre's evolution is an important point. Look at Super Mario Kart. In many ways, it's still an immaculately designed game, perhaps still the best in the series, but the lack of analog control and 3D graphics are a huge barrier.
What about Altered Beast? Was that EVER a good game? Personally, I think it still provides the same stupid fun now that it did then. |
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What makes a game age well? Genius in the game design, mainly. If the game still plays well (SMB, Kirby's Adventure, Sonic 2) then it has aged well. There's also an X-factor in the art design - if the characters and levels feel timeless, then there's more appeal. Some games even have gameplay flaws and still, for me, manage to overcome them with this X-factor (Castlevania, ToeJam and Earl, Ninja Gaiden). What makes a game age poorly? Lots of factors, but usually it's stiffness/looseness in control. There's also the inverse of the "timeless character" argument from above. If everything feels stuck in 80s or 90s trends (like, for instance, all those copycat Animals With Attitude games) then any quality of the gameplay might be overwhelmed by those issues. Gex, for instance, is a decently designed game but I just get no pleasure out of it because it's so unappealingly 90s in presentation. Is nostalgia the biggest factor of your enjoyment of an old title?Not the biggest, but it's a factor, for sure. I'm unrepentant about that. I can tell the difference between a great game and a flawed one that I still enjoy for personal reasons, but I don't feel that's a problem. There's no requirement that I have acutely sensitive critical faculties whenever I evaluate a game for my own personal enjoyment. Nostalgia can factor in. Who says it can't? But even with games I didn't play to any significant degree, it's easy for me to accept flaws in old games as experiments that merely failed - if the game makes up for it by being interesting in other ways. That's not a crime against good taste. Take something like Kid Icarus. I adore that game, but I'm very aware of its flaws (lame boss battles, frustrating difficulty curve, etc.). But it was an early NES game and I can easily see where they were trying to do something different with it. I can still respect that to this day. Any scientist will tell you that you have to accept failure as a possibility when you experiment. That's true in game design, too. Sure, Nintendo could have just repackaged Mario platforming a few dozen ways and we'd have a bunch of games we couldn't really criticize. But, then, they'd all play the same way, wouldn't they? Where's the fun in that? So my attitude is, if Kid Icarus or Metroid controls feel stiff nowadays, so be it. They get other things right. And that's enough for me to have a good time when playing them, even in 2011. @OldmanwinterI tend to agree. Even the great games from the era have certain issues, but when you get down to the B and C-listers things quickly roll down the hill. Still, that was a particularly experimental generation - almost like the 2600 era in 3D - so I'm willing to forgive some of it. The fact that I didn't play many games during that generation keeps me from being too forgiving, though. Maybe that's a kind of anti-nostalgia, I don't know. |
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