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?

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Banjo-Kazooie > Super Mario 64

anon_mastermind said:

Banjo-Kazooie > Super Mario 64

Truth.

The transformations, the special moves, the characters. Mario 64 is definitely the more important game but Banjo Kazooie is easily the better game.

@anon_mastermind

Does it hurt to be so wrong?

@Jargon
Feels good, man. Feels right.

At the time I think Banjo-Kazooie was a better game than Super Mario 64. It did pretty much everything 64 did and then some.

Has it passed the test of time as well though? No idea, haven't played it in a long time. So maybe that answers itself, since I feel more compelled to go back to Super Mario 64.

I preferred BK back then as well, but I think the more sluggish controls and floaty mechanics don't hold up as well any more as they used to.

I hate Banjo Kazooie. The characters are annoying, the controls suck, and the damn fetch quests. Not helped that I played it first on XBLA and went straight for 100%. But I feel confident in saying that I hate the game.

@missypissy The N64 version is worse in that regard; you have to collect all the notes in each level in one go to have them count; if you leave, they all respawn and you have to start over.

rebonack said:

I think the biggest issue with Banjo is the same as a lot of Rare games of the era -- the framerate isn't great. The XBLA version remedies that, though. I love Banjo-Kazooie, but I think Tooie goes a bit too far into collectathon territory.

WRONG! It didn't go far enough. Banjo-Tooie is a classic example of why good developers should not listen to their whiny fans who think they know more about game development than the developer does.

Banjo-Tooie's problem is that it TOOK OUT the collecting while simultaneously making the levels massive. Couple that with a slow moving character in Banjo and it completely threw off the pacing of the game. You're wandering around these massive levels later in the game with nothing to do, and since Banjo moves slowly, it takes forever to get anywhere. Couple that also with a bad framerate and inferior graphics to the original, and Tooie was disappointing to say the least. Tooie should have had MORE collecting than Kazooie or even DK64!!!

All you collect-a-thon whiners can get bent. If you don't want to collect stuff in games, go play a FPS or something.

As you can probably tell, I'm still sore about how Banjo-Tooie turned out.

/rant

@X-pert74

That's no different from Mario 64's 100 coin power stars when you think about it.

@WrathOfSamus777

I love collecting. I love DK64. It was bloated but I cared not.

I want it on VC.

(And Jet Force Gemini. And to think I used to laugh at Microsoft paying Nintendo through the nose for modern lemony Rare )

@Shadowlink
I love DK64 too. I played through it twice and got all 200 bananas both times.

What do you even collect in Banjo? Notes, Jinjos, and Mumbo Tokens? I guess you could add Jiggies but you aren't really running around collecting them off the ground, they are rewarded for specific tasks. I think everything else is just ammo or a powerup right?

WrathOfSamus777 said:

Tooie should have had MORE collecting than ... DK64!!!

This has to be one of the most untrue things that I have ever read.

@stephen08

That's not enough? I mean, just the fact you have to collect 100 notes is enough to make me groan.

Granted, I've only played a very negligible part of the game, so I'm not saying it's a failure or that it breaks the game. I haven't played enough of Banjo-Kazooie, so I'm really not sure. But all that collecting is a turn-off to me, especially after playing quite a bit of Donkey Kong 64, which made me sick of collecting.

I like Banjo Kazooie's compact levels. If you are high enough, it will likely take a few seconds to get anywhere in the level. DK64 and tooie aren't like this, unsurprisingly their fun factors fall apart..

@Renjaku

If you have to resort to drugs to make the game bearable, I'm sorry but to me that screams "bad game design".

Zero said:

WrathOfSamus777 said:

Tooie should have had MORE collecting than ... DK64!!!

This has to be one of the most untrue things that I have ever read.

How can it be untrue if it's an opinion?

@Guillaume

I LOL'd. (quietly)

@Shadowlink True, but as a whole I still prefer Super Mario 64.

@kriswright

Well first of all, you don't need to collect all the notes the only purpose they serve is to open the note doors. Second, there are 100 Notes per level, 5 Jinjos, and a couple Mumbo tokens which again, are not mandatory. I guess if you have OCD or something it could be a little much but I hardly find it to be a problem.