"@tazsul "moderngames tend to be 6-10x longer then older games" That's a blanket statement so general it's meaningless. WHICH older games? WHICH modern games? Or are you just making an average of all old games and all modern games? And if so, where is the spreadsheet for this, and where does the "older" era end and the "modern" era begin? (And if your model is so exact, then why are you getting a figure so vague as "6-10"?)"
If we are ignoring RPGs (which are about the same length they were then) I'd say most older games. Look at a game like Super Metroid. There are separate endings depending on how quickly you can beat it. The long one is 5+ hours, the next one is 3-5 hours, and the best ending is under 3 hours (it might be under 2). Look at the early Resident Evils. If you beat the game in under x hours in y amount of saves you get z special items the next time you play through. How many games nowadays are you able to sit down and beat in a day? I can also beat the original Zelda in only a few hours while getting every upgrade; meanwhile, a game like Dust (someone mentioned it earlier) is a fairly similar game to a Mario/Zelda-type game and that took far longer than a few hours.
"The vast, overwhelming majority of games up to and including the first half of the PS1 era were designed to be played over and over again, because they were still built around the arcade concept of extreme challenge and constant death. That's not an opinion: that's historical fact. For anybody who grew up with these games, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to argue with us that modern games play longer. They just DON'T. Ask me how many hours I put into most of my NES/SNES/PS1 games, and I literally cannot tell you, the number is so large. Hundreds. For some, thousands."
One, I'm going to point out the flaw in the mathematics to argue that you put thousands of hours into any game. I'm not even sure my WoW play time was ever up to a thousand total /played (let alone "thousands"), and that is a soul sucking game that has spanned almost a decade. I will argue that I've put as much time into replaying games like Arkham Asylum/City as I did playing Resident Evil 2 (and I mastered the fuck outta that game). So, the replaying of the game is due to the quality of the game, not the era it was made in.
"There are comparatively few modern games which engender that kind of time-suck, outside of an Elder Scrolls game or an online shooter. Most of the modern games I own, I've put perhaps twenty hours into, then beaten them, and will likely not play them again for years.
Most AAA single-player games developed today are designed as linear, one-and-done experiences. Again, that's not an opinion, that's a fact. Go to Gamestop and look at any shelf, and 9/10 of what you see are going to be games designed to be played, completed, and then put away. The idea of creating a mechanically-driven game with a rich, organic system not dependent on finite content seems to have fallen by the wayside, and is really only revisited in franchises like Sim City and Civilization (both of which are very old franchises)."
From what I've read (and I might be misunderstanding your post) the "time-suck" you are referring to when you talk about the extreme challenge and constant death is you dying and having to restart (either by continuing or actually having to restart). I might be the odd one here, but I don't like having to do EVERYTHING I've already done for the last 30 minutes because of a shitty control scheme (hell it was bad enough getting noticed by a clicker in Last of Us and having to go back 5 minutes). Slamming your d*ck in the door for hours trying to get past the bike stage in Battletoads wasn't fun. I haven't played Symphony of the Night dozens of times because I died a lot and had to keep playing. I did it because the story and the gameplay were phenomenal. Replaying a game because you enjoy it is completely different than restarting a game because it is ball-breakingly difficult.
Cost-Benefit Analysis: We've paid a heavy "maturity tax" for our games of late, and I'm done with it. I want a game that's fun to play. It just has to be fun. Not cool, not exciting, not ultra-realistic. Just fun. I don't need celebrity voiceovers, pre-rendered cut scenes, or physics engines. Just fun. Thank you.
"I love this subject as it is something that comes up time and time again for me as well.
There is an appeal to nostalgia that is apparent through all forms of entertainment right now. We're the generation that embraces the past and tries to find ways to make it relevant in the present. I can place a cartoon character from the 90s on my Facebook and I'm bound to get someone to say they haven't thought about that cartoon in years so they're going to go buy the DVD. The same goes with videogames."
Mighty Max - You can be mad at me later after you waste an entire day watching episodes on youtube
Man, this video is freakishly good. It made me finally make a Penny Arcade account. You bastards, you went and did it.
Darkmage, I agree that there were bad games back in the SNES/NES era, and that the creative and inventive "joy" wasn't in everything back then, but the entire business landscape has changed since then, thinning out the "joy" among a huge public interest in a more macho and washed-out aesthetic. The more big-budget titles in the States, overseas, and even in Japan in some cases, often do not carry the joy described here due to their goals - this is design by committee, averse to any monetary risk involved and therefore appealing to this gigantic target demographic of "bro" gamers who are mistakenly assumed to be consistently reliable buyers given the subject matter.
There are wonderful movies with a much more colorful, joyful, and mold-breaking aesthetic too. I can think of two this year alone- Upstream Color and Pacific Rim. The Avengers met that aesthetic and the "realistic" stuff halfway. Badmunky64's definitely correct in mentioning Adventure Time and My Little Pony - there are two shows that are both well-written and unashamed to have some childlike imagination to them. Some of these more colorful, less gritty works wind up with a lot more heavy philosophical and social commentary than their big, dumb counterparts. Look at the Shin Megami Tensei core series - what does all that demon negotiation say about both diverse communication styles and religion on its own? I think it's pretty substantial.
But that joyful stuff is definitely still around. Katamari Damacy just petered out (thanks, Namco), but in the PS2 era, that was my jam. Pac-Man CE DX was one of my favorites of the current-gen, and so was Patapon. Some of the 3DS games out there have taken this more "joyful" and retro aesthetic and put it toward more modern graphics, while making way better gameplay advances than "This shooter has a different looking crosshair! Innovation!" in some of these more risk-averse games. I can't put down Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Enough said there.
Say what you will about Mario Kart 8 being "more Mario Kart," there aren't many Mario Karts out there as opposed to Call of Duties or Gears of War...s. The update to HD and the addition of zero-gravity pushed the artists to mess with the field of view in such a way that brings a smile to my face every time I see it in action at an expo or convention. Crashmo manages to stretch out my brain almost painfully at times, but it's also bright, colorful, and minimalistic. Mario 3D Land transforms into a Trials-like platformer around the halfway mark, and the level design is diverse and phenomenal as always.
We're even seeing shooters start to catch on. Sunset Overdrive is looking to buck the green-brown shooter trend altogether, even if it winds up being "just another shooter" mechanically. Someone's at least trying over at Microsoft with Spark; I have no idea how that will actually turn out, but hey, at least it's also on PC. Even when companies don't get what's wrong, they're certainly taking advice regarding the drab designs of old - Killzone: Shadow Fall looks like yet another FPS, but all those neon colors in that city really seem like they're going "Uh, well, it seems like we shouldn't be gritty anymore, so let's try *something.*" Destiny's even going for more bright colors, despite still retaining a lot of the grit. Heck, even Halo 4 tried to look more Metroid Prime-y!
But really, if you want that same amount of joy right here and now, where bigger-budget games have an artist's vision in mind and exuberant play is emphasized, get a 3DS. At this point, the creativity and those aesthetics are still consistently there.
I've long believed that this is the reason why there is so much abuse/exploitation of employees in the video game industry.
Somewhere along the way, video game creators subconsciously feared that what they were doing wasn't "legitimate" work. In an effort to legitimize their efforts, and appear more "serious" to themselves and their peers, they made ever-increasing demands of themselves and their employees. Eventually this metastasized in what we now know of as "MANDATORY CRUNCH TIME".
Unfortunately, these types of abusive practices are inevitably going to effect the tone and quality of the games being produced and ultimately crush the creativity right out of the people making them.
How can a game possibly exude joy or wonder when the people who made it were perpetually overworked and sleep-deprived?
Now what we get are games that may look good, but feel as if they were produced by exhausted employees on an assembly line in a sweat shop.
I think a large portion of what makes older games (ie games we played when we were first introduced to video games) so attractive and nostalgic is due to the sense of discovery. It's where we learned to potential of games in the first place and that first contact with that potential has typically always been the strongest for me. This is the same with other media for me as well. My favorite movies are Fight Club (the first twist / reveal that allowed a movie to change meaning completely within it's last few minutes) and Memento (similar effect but using a reversed timeline, starting from the ending and gradually returning to the start). The Lord of the Rings was the first grand scale fantasy book I've ever read, showing the vastness of scope a fantasy world can have. Game of Thrones, recently, showed me the power of human interactions in a story and how much that adds layers in a well crafted fantasy world.
Final Fantasy did very similar things for me in terms of story and was the first time I could endeavor to save the world (I also love dealing with numbers and maximizing gear to specific effects). TNMT Turtles in Time was the first time I truly played a game with others.
All these first contacts with various aspects of either media or story telling sort of expands our understanding of what's possible. And I think that each time that world of possibilities is expanded significantly, we sort of attach ourselves to whatever did that for us.
I hadn't played video games until the snes era. So when I decide to go play games and look for that sort of secure, nostalgic and simple feeling, I go play snes games as that's where I discovered all that potential. Also, this seems to be very personal and dependent on how you were introduced to these things. For example, most people will have very fond memories of Zelda, Link to the Past and I've been told by all my friends how great it is. And although I admit it's an incredibly well crafted game, I don't get the same joy playing it as others since I was introduced to it much later in life and had played plenty of adventure games prior to it (including Ocarina of Time). That initial impact of discovery wasn't there for me, so it doesn't carry those feelings.
The two recent games that have had that sort of effect on me are FTL (for some reason, I had never really been introduced to "rogue-like" games before FTL and, let's face it, it's really an amazing game) and to a lesser extent, Journey (which is sort of the first game I played where it's more of "an experience" than a manipulation of rules or a test of skills - however, loosing my cloak really pissed me off - but then the fact that I was pissed off to that extent by loosing something impressed me)
Just to be clear, there is nothing about "adult content" that suggests it's something adults will want to spend their time with. I think the game I enjoyed the most in the last year was Mark of the Ninja, because it focused on gameplay and fun rather than 3D environments and "intense storytelling".
I think there is also an aspect that is about organic experiencing, To take Yatzee's sarcastic re-review of Doom3 the fact that I game didn't spoon feed you everything and had you figure things out like you actually have a brain and skill was rewarding in a way an extended tutorial can't be.
For me I don't really think that deep or have that deep a reason to play old games. For me they are just fun. And sometimes that is what you want from a game. Both new and old games can be fun, but sometimes you just want to go back and play River City Ransom again. I guess for me its a combo of nostalgia and plain fun.
"How many games nowadays are you able to sit down and beat in a day?"
MOST OF THEM!
And I wasn't arguing about quality. My point was just that old games were designed to play out over a long period of time, so they were made butt-clenchingly hard. Yes, it's technically possible to beat Metroid or Zelda in just a few hours. But the first time you played it? It took weeks and weeks, if not even longer than that.
You can't possibly argue with the fact that old games were designed to be replayed more. That's asinine. Look at all the NES platformers -- they're DESIGNED to drag out playtime, sometimes infuriatingly so.
The majority of modern games aren't. They're designed to play through, be completed, and then the game is over.
Which you prefer or which is better-designed is beside the point; it's not what we're talking about. My whole point was that what tazsul said was completely wrong and so broadly general as to be meaningless.
This episode touches a bit on what I discovered when I gave a presentation to gaming industry folk last year. I entitled the presentation, "Fun, You, and Innovation"*
"How many games nowadays are you able to sit down and beat in a day?"
MOST OF THEM!
And I wasn't arguing about quality. My point was just that old games were designed to play out over a long period of time, so they were made butt-clenchingly hard. Yes, it's technically possible to beat Metroid or Zelda in just a few hours. But the first time you played it? It took weeks and weeks, if not even longer than that.
You can't possibly argue with the fact that old games were designed to be replayed more. That's asinine. Look at all the NES platformers -- they're DESIGNED to drag out playtime, sometimes infuriatingly so.
The majority of modern games aren't. They're designed to play through, be completed, and then the game is over.
Which you prefer or which is better-designed is beside the point; it's not what we're talking about. My whole point was that what tazsul said was completely wrong and so broadly general as to be meaningless.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. How many "quality" games nowadays are you able to sit down and beat in a day.
As for Metroid or Zelda taking weeks, I can honestly say that I cannot recall a non-RPG that has ever taken me weeks and weeks to beat. I would go to my local video rental store, rent a game, and beat it in the 3-5 days that it was rented (usually only playing after dinner, because I was outside/at school).
The idea that a game is designed to drag out playtime ("sometimes infuriatingly so") shows a bad game IMO. There have been/are/will be bad games for all platforms. Your argument was against his statement that current games take longer; but in all fairness I'd argue that his statement was more accurate than yours.
Game Informer GOTY awards:
'92 - Street Fighter II (obvious replayability due to the fact that it's a fighting game)
'93 - Mortal Kombat (same)
Wiki skips '94 and '95
'96 - Super Mario 64 (Getting all the stars and completing all the missions takes a lot of time)
'97 - FF7 (RPG = doesn't count)
'98 - Ocarina of Time (Same as Super Mario 64 + storyline + Link > Mario)
'99 - Super Smash Bros (same as SF2 and MK)
'00 - Tony Hawk 2 (replayability due to mastering every stage and setting high scores)
'01 - Metal Gear Solid 2 (could be argued that it was a game to be played through, completed, and then the game is over - does 2001 count as modern?)
Wiki skips '02 to '04
'05 - Resident Evil 4 (another one-time playthrough game)
'06 - Twilight Princes (same as Ocarina)
'07 - Bioshock (same as MGS2 and RE4)
'08 - GTA4 (same vein as Mario/Zelda with amount of collectables)
'09 - Uncharted 2 (One time playthrough)
'10 - Red Dead Redemption (never played it, so I can't comment)
'11 - Skyrim (RPG = doesn't count)
'12 - Mass Effect 3 (This RPG does count, because there are MULTIPLE reasons to play through all three games again)
And the current potentials for GOTY for this year are Ni No Kuni (RPG), Last of Us (one time playthrough - with an amazing multiplayer that isn't an FPS) and, from the looks of it, the new GTA (looks amazing and I don't like the games).
Adding in my own personal top 10 games (Super Mario World, Symphony of the Night, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Halo, FF6, Resident Evil 2, Shining Force, Super Metroid and Ocarina of Time - inno particular order), I don't see a single game on the list that is "ball-breakingly" difficult (besides M.Bison on the highest difficulty while using slow characters without projectiles, i.e. Zangief/E.Honda).
The games that are "one time playthroughs" as you describe them take MUCH MUCH longer to straight up beat than any non-RPG NES/SNES game did.
Edit: GOTY for '94 was Super Metroid, '95 was Chrono Trigger, '02 was Metroid Prime, '03 was Wind Waker, and '04 was between Half-Life, World of Warcraft, or GTA: San Andreas
ok I think it was Elise imagining Zelda, James was Super Mario & Scott was Mega man. Who is Daniel imagining himself as at 2:30? I don't recognise the game.
Cheers
Also, there are PLENTY of games for the NES which were easily beatable in mere hours. Contra, any of the Mega Man games after the first one (seriously Guts Man's stage is still horrible to this day), Archon, Donkey Kong (and Jr), Duck Tales, Punch Out, any of the Mario Bros games (except arguably the first) as well as many games like Duck Hunt and Tetris which were just high score games. SNES has far more games (because the controller stopped sucking as badly and was far more responsive).
It also doesn't help that your motor skills and cognitive abilities are much more refined now than they were back then. Go back and play some of those old games (Duck Tales is a perfect example), and tell me that you aren't 100x better now than you were then. I always used the analogy for raids wiping in WoW due to idiots not moving out of the fire as "slamming our dicks in the door" which is the reality you are proposing as designed longer play.
In your scenario, the luckiest man in the world would have beaten all of these games in mere hours simply because he lucked into the correct path/jumped at the right time, and his experience then would be your experience now.
Actually,there's more to it than that. You see,one of the biggest mistakes games made when going mainstream was dumbing things down for the noobs. Now,one or two games like this would've been fine,but the whole industry is about pulling in all the noobs these days. And a lot of great designs got left behind with that dumbing down.
Consider Mega Man 1 where you just have the pea shooter and no slide. Then Mega Man 3 comes along and you get the charge shot and slide. Then we get Mega Man 9 with no charge and no slide again. Why? Cause they didn't really want to,I guess. They can say it's a "design choice",but not including them feels like a step too far backward.
One of my personal issues with this kind of thing is Unreal Tournament 1. The first game in the series offered up some of the most interesting and fun maps of any FPS I've ever seen. The guns were balanced by the fact that any of them could kill you,and quickly,at any time. Even if you had full health and shields,it'd only buy you a second or 2 of extra life against a skilled player and if you didn't use that extra time wisely,you were dead.
Follow up games wanted to appeal more to the Doom 3 crowd and the weapons got nerfed and the graphics got prettier and it all felt like a sell out. And the whole thing with the "yearly installments" thing was just a stupid idea anyway. And while UT3 is a little better than UT2,it's not really back to where UT1 was as far as awesome game play goes. And that's why we play the old games cause all the new games are all about the CODs and MWs and the drama,drama,drama.
The homogenized,overly serious,and overly simple game play don't have the challenge and fun of the old games. And that's why we keep wanted to go back. Cause back then,people weren't judging us by what we did in a video game. We could just run around and have fun and that was that. Now they're treated like second jobs and "serious business".
People tell me stuff like War of the Roses and Chivalry are these great simulators of medieval combat and all I see is DeGroot Keep with new models and skins and a decided lack of hats. They never played Thief. They never saw you could set it up so you could swing from more than one direction thus making an much more detailed sword fighting simulation. Hell,the sword fighting game in Wii Resort Plus is better than those 2 games.
And all these great ideas are just lost on making just another stupid shooter with dialogue spewing NPCs who whine and cry over every little thing and you march from point A to point B and it's the same old shit all over again! So,yeah. Fuck that noise.
1) Nostalgia. A lot of this is confirmation bias clouding your judgement. You want to justify why you like the old games for reasons beyond mere nostalgia, so you come up with rationales for it.
2) Moe culture. The truth is, moe has come to the US. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is proof of this. Why do the bronies exist? Because the show is unabashedly adorable.
3) Cheapness. A lot of retro games are dirt cheap, and therefore have exaggerated ratings/sales numbers as "it is good value" at launch, even if the game isn't as good as a game with the same rating with a higher retail price.
However, you are COMPLETELY WRONG about something else.
That something else is "The games industry wants to be seen as mature". Okay, it does, but you're making a terrible mistake and ignoring reality here. It is part of a larger cultural trend that started in the late 1980s.
Basically, it is the whole "Darker and Edgier" trend. Everything from television shows to movies to video games to comic books became darker, edgier, and grittier because that was what people wanted. It was a major cultural cycle - people wanted to make stuff that was "deep" and showed the pain, man.
20-30 years later, culture is finally start to shift again, I think, which is why you're seeing an increasing amount of cute stuff. Look at indie games like World of Goo or Dust: An Elysian Tail. These games have very cutesy designs to them. Popcap games are similar. Some of the movies are becoming campier again.
Basically I think it is the end of one cycle and the start of another, and retro gaming is just clinging to it because it is cheap and sells well, and a lot of the major studios aren't really pursuing the trend very actively.
It is really just part of a greater cultural trend towards cuter and campier things.
@teknoarcanist: That is your nostalgia talking. "Most games in the era". Really? No. Just no.
Sure, SOME old games were fairly long. But were most of them? Heck no! Many older games were not really that long at all. RPGs were exceptionally long for the era. Games like the original SMB feel longer than they really are because you were so young when you originally played them. They are not nearly so long now. And once save files were introduced (they were pretty common by the SNES era) it was even less of an issue. You could beat many of the old games in a few hours, and the idea that they were "punishingly hard" is largely nostalgia - many older games were not insanely difficult by modern standards, and most of the "difficulty" of those games is just repeating longer sections of them. But having played some of the old school beat 'em up games recently, they really aren't terribly long, and I remember even as a kid being able to rent, say, a TMNT game and beat it in a weekend with time to spare. RPGs were way longer than such games were.
You replayed them over and over again because you didn't have a whole lot of games to choose from. With the advent of cheap games on steam, I have literally hundreds of unplayed games which I purchased for $5 or less. For me to replay a game, it has to be better than any unplayed game I have - a pretty tall order.
This isn't an opinion. It is a fact. The truth is that you are letting nostalgia filter your perception of reality. Most old games had no higher replay value than modern ones.
@lonerogue: Firstly, nostalgia is universal. Baby boomers are nostalgic for the 50s and 60s and early 70s. Their parents were nostalgic for the 1920s. Their parents were nostalgic for the gay nineties. Not a new phenomenon.
Secondly, Xenoblade Chronicles sucked. A lot. The idea behind the world was cool, but the game itself was terrible. Bad story, bad writing, bad gameplay, incredible number of sidequests, grind, grind, grind. The reason that those other games from back in the day sparked your imagination was because the ideas were new to you back then because you had less experience, not necessarily because they were more original back then.
Zelda using its weird names for monsters is okay, but a bit confusing, and unnecessarily so at times. It does nothing to immerse me at all - rather, it has quite the opposite impact, because they just have random names for no good reason. Bats are bats. Characters in the game speak English. so why are we calling rabbits smerps?
The JRPG deserves to die. Were there good JRPGs? Yes! But none of them were good games -because- they were JRPGs, but in spite of being JRPGs. The various good final fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, and the like were good because of their story and characters, not because of the JRPG mechanics, which were often the weakest part of the game, frequently broken, and very often highly repetitive and grindy. JRPGs are in trouble because the limitations that gave rise to the JRPG are no longer as relevant.
The platformer is a more interesting thing. People talk about the death of platformers, but the truth is that platformers never died - 2D platformers certainly became a lot less common for a long time though, but 3D platformers had "taken their place". Eventually people realized that 2D platformers and 3D platformers are actually entirely different genres, and 2D platformers started to be made again in greater numbers. 2D platformers are much more about execution, while 3D platformers are about exploration. And the 2D platformer genre is alive and well today, and has been for years now, since around the point that Nintendo started pushing them again and the indie/low budget game market picked up on the fact that you can make a 2D platformer for cheap.
But there is a catch, and that catch is that you can only sell so many games. So while having tons of low-budget games may seem like a winning solution, the problem is that it doesn't actually work out that way - while it may seem like spreading out your risks in this way would be good, the problem is that Call of Duty is competing with Civilization V but not with Super Meat Boy and Mark of the Ninja. The lower budget games are their own thing, and the AAA games are their own thing, and the lower game market is very saturated with titles - there are numerous games coming out every week on the low-budget end of things. Making ten low budget games instead of one AAA game means that you're cannibalizing your sales on the low-budget games due to self-competition, and if everyone else does the same, you've multiplied your amount of competition by a fair margin with no actual benefit to yourself.
This is why they haven't switched over wholesale to doing this.
There was a time when the video game industry did try to do this. It caused the Great Video Game Collapse of 1983.
@Merlynn: They didn't dumb them down for the noobs.
They "dumbed them down" for you.
The truth is that refinement isn't a bad thing, and people who view it as "dumbing down" don't really get it. You cannot create things of ever greater complexity, and many things are clunky or just plain old badly designed.
I'm going to chime in with my two cents on game length, though I'm not entirely clear on who's saying what.
Basically, I'm coming down on the side of, "where's your data" and "who cares?"
You can beat the original Zelda very quickly if you're deliberately speed running and know the game very well. This describes a lot of games new and old. This is practically a sport, but those guys like to take their time on their first playthrough for the joy of it.
Secondly, a lot of replayability has largely been shunted off to multiplayer or managerial type simulator games. 4X or civ-style strategy games come to mind.
A lot also depends on where you hit your point of "completion" with a game and how much you care to cross your t's and dot your i's. It's horribly subjective.
Retro games also had its share of broken and badly designed games, this isn't particularly new.
Lastly, don't assert your subjective impressions of a game as historical fact. Stop it. It's very wearisome to listen to and put up with.
I also find it ironic that Titanium Dragon takes issue with Zelda being too fantasy after a big paragraph about camp cutesy stuff and exportation of moe.
The answer is simple - better technology and better graphics don't instantly mean better games.
Many games made 10, 20 years ago are still better than a lot of the crap that comes out today. It's not just nostalgia.
See, you won't often finding yourself going back to play the sea of terrible games that flooded the SNES. You'll only play the good ones.
That's just people remembering the good games and ignoring all the forgettable, broken or stupid games.
There's always crap. There always will be. We just choose to honor and remember the "classics."
Nobody will remember the movie-to-game adaptation of Catwoman or Deer Hunter and a couple decades from now, people are going to wonder why their dumb throwaway shovelware wasn't as good as Torment or Shadow of the Colossus or what-have-you.
When I look back at many of the classic games - games which stand head-over-heels in the game-play department compared to many of the titles today - what really makes an impression on me is the "scope of vision" that these games employed.
Not only were they working with an incredibly limited amount of memory, RAM, or, well, anything in the NES/SNES days - it meant everything they did add -had- to count. And not only did it have to count, it had to combine itself with all other elements present to craft as many possibilities as possible (with the goal being infinity; ala Sim City, or Civilization, or Super Mario Kart).
Also, in comparison to the games of today, back then you had an actual "visionary" whose idea was the main one you saw on the canvas. It was a Picasso - it was a Miyamoto. There seemed to be a lot less of an office-feel towards the production of games - with different divisions and sub-divisions and marketing appeal - and it really felt a lot more like a mere handful of people came together to work on something they loved.
I have been actively playing the original Super Mario Kart for roughly 22 years now. The fact that that game was possible on the SNES is simply mind-blowing. The brilliance of every. single. tile. in that game is beyond the capacity of mere words. The balance, the driver-controlled A.I., the colour, music, worlds, and design, design, design seem almost ludicrous to ask for from a SNES cartridge. Yet, there it is. In 1992 no less.
All Mario Karts that came afterwards felt like a homage to the original. In that, the original did things so perfectly, there really was no need to make any sequels. And every sequel in comparison has felt lacking compared to the original. From the broken A.I. in Mario Kart 64, to the expansion of the tracks themselves (in the original - making a series of super-tight turns is an absolute art form), to the fact that the next Mario Kart game feels like it's going to happen no matter what - so why even think about it.
Not that these new games aren't great - but they never mastered the pure perfection of the original. And this is not saying that all the subsequent games were bad because they didn't just replicate the original - but because they didn't fully realize the potential of their own world - and this was perhaps because the goal was always aiming "outwards." How do we make bigger worlds? How do we add bigger control variations? How do we add more characters? Never "inwards." Never tightening or eliminating elements - always just adding more, more, more.
The original was a completely crafted, wholly envisioned world where every single element within it had the golden mean of perfection associated with it, and likewise multiplied the potential and magic of every single element within its sphere by simply being in proximity to every other single element.
These games were master works of art, not just in terms of "nostalgia," but in terms of bare-knuckled design. Those game-creators were absolute masters - the very fathers of our medium - and it had the trade-mark of their vision all over them.
These days, it doesn't feel like there are visionaries any more. Even Miyamoto at Nintendo is spread thin over every single project they're working on - instead of just working on a single one himself. As has been mentioned prior to this - when games come out - you can almost feel the sweat-shop labour that went into actually getting it released. It feels that there's a ton of game stuck on there because that's what you paid for - right? You wouldn't be buying this if it were three hours of FPS goodness instead of ten. So "the game" element becomes something for you to do; ad-nauseum. You repeat the same cover, poke-your-head-around-the-corner, fire strategy throughout the entire spiel - with the one difference being the environments.
There is no need to truncate the vision and make sure that every element can be extrapolated upon by every other element in an endless amount of ways. Instead of doing things - the importance is to make you feel like you are doing things - and so much of the magic of gaming has been, well . . . left behind.
I seem to be on the same wavelength as you very often...
Roger Ebert gave a review once of a detestable, and graphically horrifi display.
His response was I will not rate this movie because this is a place where stars don't shine.
We have lost our innocence and our freedom to look up at the sky and just imagine, but the desire is still there.
It's not that we wish to relive childhood, but that we have had a necessary part of adulthood stripped away from us .. to be dangerous, to be free, to live with ~ hope.
There's a flaw in the reasoning there: The retro movement is happening in Hollywood too. Look at all of the remakes of older movies or franchises popular in the 80s and 90s or are homages to movies made in earlier years (most notably Pacific Rim right now). There are also tons of re-releases on home video of old movies (and TV shows).
I think the retro movement is due to something wider than just playing pretend. I think people want to retreat back to a time without media bombardment. I think people are feeling overwhelmed by everyone trying to sell them everything that they just tune it all out and go back to playing, watching, reading, or listening to something that reminds them of a time when it didn't happen to them. That is, retroism is simply escapism from escapism.
Those are my thoughts, at least. I don't think they are that accurate as I've largely been nostalgia-resistant throughout my life.
Calling Army of Two immature as an insult? TERRIBLE example dude. It's purposely the most bro shooter of all bro shooters. There's a specific control mechanic for doing fist bumps or slapping your partner for pete's sake! Shoulda gone for Medal of Honor or something in your "insult modern shooter to score easy points" bit. Choosing the example you did just proves what a clown debating tack that was.
You know, some of my best programming has been when I was placed under the most absolutely brutal constraints. I had to find ways to do things where I didn't waste one bit, or one cycle. I had to find ways that pushed things to the absolutely most efficient form possible.
Maybe the reason these older games were so good, so rich and clever, was that they DID have such finite resources. They couldn't just throw everything they wanted in, they had to make due, have simpler things stand in for more complex ideas. They had to give you a sense of wonder with a pixilated sprite, with a high tone soundtrack.
That, and society wasn't nearly as cynical as it is today. People today seem to think only negative things are interesting.
I don't think that's really why, at least not for me. I go back and play the first mass effect and assassins creed, those are the games I grew up on. The only ones I had for a couple years, I think I counted it up to 16, maybe 17 playthroughs of mass effect, I don't even know how many for assassins creed. And honestly I owe a big part of who I am, and my beliefs, to those two games. I go back and play because I remember.......I don't really know. I can't really put words to it.
A think graphics are a large part of the reason I still cling to my old consoles. Yes, today's realistic, high-definition graphics are/can be quite an eyegasm. I still remember how blown away I was watching the intro of my first PS3 game.
But something's lacking: room for imagination. That's one of the things I loved so much about my older, far more pixelated games. I could wander around a room and as I'm looking for that gun or switch, my mind is making up the details of the environment that aren't there on the screen - what's it sound like? What's on that pile of boxes in the corner? What do the papers on the desk say? Is there a crack in the wall? Do my footsteps stir up dust or cause bugs to scurry away? By putting so much of my own imagination into the game, it became more personal, and endearing - moreso than the graphical displays today where every detail is spelled out.
None of these arguments are (IMHO) particularly valid.
I think the big appeal with "retro" games has less to do with tonality and more to do with fidelity and aesthetic. The thing about sprites, or even early 3D models, is that their simplicity--simplicity necessitated by the limitations of the technology--forced players to use their IMAGINATION to supplement the experience.
In other words, we had to actively engage our minds in order to fully realize the game worlds--worlds that became all the deeper and more rich from our input. In our minds, we could transform grainy, pixelated deserts into stunning vistas of dunes to dwarf any shot from Lawrence of Arabia. It made games richer -AND- (perhaps more importantly) more personal.
We don't have that any more.
With increased visual fidelity, less and less is left to our imagination. It's like the difference between reading Lord of the Rings or watching the movies. Everyone who reads the books will have his or her own unique Aragorn or Frodo or Gollum--but everyone who watches the movies will only have one. There are a thousand thousand Shires in the minds of those who read the books--but those who saw only the movies, there's only one.
Play any of the old Final Fantasies. We all imagine different worlds. The Magitek armor looks different to different people, because we have to imagine what it would look like in reality. What does Terra look like? What kind of expression is she making? Because we either don't know at all--or have little more to go on than an arrangement of a few pixels--our minds create the perfect image to fit within our understanding of the game, the characters, the setting, and humanity.
But play Final Fantasy XII or XIII. There's nothing to imagine. Rabanastre looks like it does in the game to everyone. There's nothing to imagine. Lightning's expression is what it is to everyone.
Higher fidelity results in a much narrower, much less involved experience. A big part of what makes gaming magical is interaction, and one of the biggest ways we can interact with a game is to invest a bit of our selves--our souls--into the experience. And the less we have to imagine, the less we have to believe in or make up, the more of the magic is lost.
I don't think that they're arguing. I don't think that validity enters into it. The beauty of these videos is the discussion. We aren't trying to prove each other wrong. I get what you're saying, and you do make valid points, but it's like you are trying to win an argument. That's not really what is happening here. Your comments are interesting, but not really in the spirit of the discussion, what?
We glorify the past, have hi expectations of the future, and, we forgive the failings of the artifacts.
I have never judged an ancient clay pot or it's makers for not having intricate patterns all over it. But am instead amazed at their ingenuity, and the beauty of what they have accomplished. Were you as an artisan to make it today, I'd say it was boring. Unless maybe you'd put your own twist on it.
Even worse it would be if it was an artifact from my childhood.
(Not my native language. Sorry if a grammatical vein burst behind your eye.)
Look at the popularity of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and you will see that wonder and hope is something that people really, really need right now. This is that time when we need to realize we are taking ourselves too seriously and acting less and less like decent human beings... or pastel ponies as the case may be.
You seem to be missing some fundamental aspect of communication. This video is very much an argument. They are posing a question, and then proposing an answer--that is an argument. Argument is a form of discussion where people discuss different sides to a specific concept. If it's not an argument, it's an agreement.
Posts
"@tazsul "moderngames tend to be 6-10x longer then older games" That's a blanket statement so general it's meaningless. WHICH older games? WHICH modern games? Or are you just making an average of all old games and all modern games? And if so, where is the spreadsheet for this, and where does the "older" era end and the "modern" era begin? (And if your model is so exact, then why are you getting a figure so vague as "6-10"?)"
If we are ignoring RPGs (which are about the same length they were then) I'd say most older games. Look at a game like Super Metroid. There are separate endings depending on how quickly you can beat it. The long one is 5+ hours, the next one is 3-5 hours, and the best ending is under 3 hours (it might be under 2). Look at the early Resident Evils. If you beat the game in under x hours in y amount of saves you get z special items the next time you play through. How many games nowadays are you able to sit down and beat in a day? I can also beat the original Zelda in only a few hours while getting every upgrade; meanwhile, a game like Dust (someone mentioned it earlier) is a fairly similar game to a Mario/Zelda-type game and that took far longer than a few hours.
"The vast, overwhelming majority of games up to and including the first half of the PS1 era were designed to be played over and over again, because they were still built around the arcade concept of extreme challenge and constant death. That's not an opinion: that's historical fact. For anybody who grew up with these games, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to argue with us that modern games play longer. They just DON'T. Ask me how many hours I put into most of my NES/SNES/PS1 games, and I literally cannot tell you, the number is so large. Hundreds. For some, thousands."
One, I'm going to point out the flaw in the mathematics to argue that you put thousands of hours into any game. I'm not even sure my WoW play time was ever up to a thousand total /played (let alone "thousands"), and that is a soul sucking game that has spanned almost a decade. I will argue that I've put as much time into replaying games like Arkham Asylum/City as I did playing Resident Evil 2 (and I mastered the fuck outta that game). So, the replaying of the game is due to the quality of the game, not the era it was made in.
"There are comparatively few modern games which engender that kind of time-suck, outside of an Elder Scrolls game or an online shooter. Most of the modern games I own, I've put perhaps twenty hours into, then beaten them, and will likely not play them again for years.
Most AAA single-player games developed today are designed as linear, one-and-done experiences. Again, that's not an opinion, that's a fact. Go to Gamestop and look at any shelf, and 9/10 of what you see are going to be games designed to be played, completed, and then put away. The idea of creating a mechanically-driven game with a rich, organic system not dependent on finite content seems to have fallen by the wayside, and is really only revisited in franchises like Sim City and Civilization (both of which are very old franchises)."
From what I've read (and I might be misunderstanding your post) the "time-suck" you are referring to when you talk about the extreme challenge and constant death is you dying and having to restart (either by continuing or actually having to restart). I might be the odd one here, but I don't like having to do EVERYTHING I've already done for the last 30 minutes because of a shitty control scheme (hell it was bad enough getting noticed by a clicker in Last of Us and having to go back 5 minutes). Slamming your d*ck in the door for hours trying to get past the bike stage in Battletoads wasn't fun. I haven't played Symphony of the Night dozens of times because I died a lot and had to keep playing. I did it because the story and the gameplay were phenomenal. Replaying a game because you enjoy it is completely different than restarting a game because it is ball-breakingly difficult.
"I love this subject as it is something that comes up time and time again for me as well.
There is an appeal to nostalgia that is apparent through all forms of entertainment right now. We're the generation that embraces the past and tries to find ways to make it relevant in the present. I can place a cartoon character from the 90s on my Facebook and I'm bound to get someone to say they haven't thought about that cartoon in years so they're going to go buy the DVD. The same goes with videogames."
Mighty Max - You can be mad at me later after you waste an entire day watching episodes on youtube
Darkmage, I agree that there were bad games back in the SNES/NES era, and that the creative and inventive "joy" wasn't in everything back then, but the entire business landscape has changed since then, thinning out the "joy" among a huge public interest in a more macho and washed-out aesthetic. The more big-budget titles in the States, overseas, and even in Japan in some cases, often do not carry the joy described here due to their goals - this is design by committee, averse to any monetary risk involved and therefore appealing to this gigantic target demographic of "bro" gamers who are mistakenly assumed to be consistently reliable buyers given the subject matter.
There are wonderful movies with a much more colorful, joyful, and mold-breaking aesthetic too. I can think of two this year alone- Upstream Color and Pacific Rim. The Avengers met that aesthetic and the "realistic" stuff halfway. Badmunky64's definitely correct in mentioning Adventure Time and My Little Pony - there are two shows that are both well-written and unashamed to have some childlike imagination to them. Some of these more colorful, less gritty works wind up with a lot more heavy philosophical and social commentary than their big, dumb counterparts. Look at the Shin Megami Tensei core series - what does all that demon negotiation say about both diverse communication styles and religion on its own? I think it's pretty substantial.
But that joyful stuff is definitely still around. Katamari Damacy just petered out (thanks, Namco), but in the PS2 era, that was my jam. Pac-Man CE DX was one of my favorites of the current-gen, and so was Patapon. Some of the 3DS games out there have taken this more "joyful" and retro aesthetic and put it toward more modern graphics, while making way better gameplay advances than "This shooter has a different looking crosshair! Innovation!" in some of these more risk-averse games. I can't put down Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Enough said there.
Say what you will about Mario Kart 8 being "more Mario Kart," there aren't many Mario Karts out there as opposed to Call of Duties or Gears of War...s. The update to HD and the addition of zero-gravity pushed the artists to mess with the field of view in such a way that brings a smile to my face every time I see it in action at an expo or convention. Crashmo manages to stretch out my brain almost painfully at times, but it's also bright, colorful, and minimalistic. Mario 3D Land transforms into a Trials-like platformer around the halfway mark, and the level design is diverse and phenomenal as always.
We're even seeing shooters start to catch on. Sunset Overdrive is looking to buck the green-brown shooter trend altogether, even if it winds up being "just another shooter" mechanically. Someone's at least trying over at Microsoft with Spark; I have no idea how that will actually turn out, but hey, at least it's also on PC. Even when companies don't get what's wrong, they're certainly taking advice regarding the drab designs of old - Killzone: Shadow Fall looks like yet another FPS, but all those neon colors in that city really seem like they're going "Uh, well, it seems like we shouldn't be gritty anymore, so let's try *something.*" Destiny's even going for more bright colors, despite still retaining a lot of the grit. Heck, even Halo 4 tried to look more Metroid Prime-y!
But really, if you want that same amount of joy right here and now, where bigger-budget games have an artist's vision in mind and exuberant play is emphasized, get a 3DS. At this point, the creativity and those aesthetics are still consistently there.
Somewhere along the way, video game creators subconsciously feared that what they were doing wasn't "legitimate" work. In an effort to legitimize their efforts, and appear more "serious" to themselves and their peers, they made ever-increasing demands of themselves and their employees. Eventually this metastasized in what we now know of as "MANDATORY CRUNCH TIME".
Unfortunately, these types of abusive practices are inevitably going to effect the tone and quality of the games being produced and ultimately crush the creativity right out of the people making them.
How can a game possibly exude joy or wonder when the people who made it were perpetually overworked and sleep-deprived?
Now what we get are games that may look good, but feel as if they were produced by exhausted employees on an assembly line in a sweat shop.
Final Fantasy did very similar things for me in terms of story and was the first time I could endeavor to save the world (I also love dealing with numbers and maximizing gear to specific effects). TNMT Turtles in Time was the first time I truly played a game with others.
All these first contacts with various aspects of either media or story telling sort of expands our understanding of what's possible. And I think that each time that world of possibilities is expanded significantly, we sort of attach ourselves to whatever did that for us.
I hadn't played video games until the snes era. So when I decide to go play games and look for that sort of secure, nostalgic and simple feeling, I go play snes games as that's where I discovered all that potential. Also, this seems to be very personal and dependent on how you were introduced to these things. For example, most people will have very fond memories of Zelda, Link to the Past and I've been told by all my friends how great it is. And although I admit it's an incredibly well crafted game, I don't get the same joy playing it as others since I was introduced to it much later in life and had played plenty of adventure games prior to it (including Ocarina of Time). That initial impact of discovery wasn't there for me, so it doesn't carry those feelings.
The two recent games that have had that sort of effect on me are FTL (for some reason, I had never really been introduced to "rogue-like" games before FTL and, let's face it, it's really an amazing game) and to a lesser extent, Journey (which is sort of the first game I played where it's more of "an experience" than a manipulation of rules or a test of skills - however, loosing my cloak really pissed me off - but then the fact that I was pissed off to that extent by loosing something impressed me)
"How many games nowadays are you able to sit down and beat in a day?"
MOST OF THEM!
And I wasn't arguing about quality. My point was just that old games were designed to play out over a long period of time, so they were made butt-clenchingly hard. Yes, it's technically possible to beat Metroid or Zelda in just a few hours. But the first time you played it? It took weeks and weeks, if not even longer than that.
You can't possibly argue with the fact that old games were designed to be replayed more. That's asinine. Look at all the NES platformers -- they're DESIGNED to drag out playtime, sometimes infuriatingly so.
The majority of modern games aren't. They're designed to play through, be completed, and then the game is over.
Which you prefer or which is better-designed is beside the point; it's not what we're talking about. My whole point was that what tazsul said was completely wrong and so broadly general as to be meaningless.
http://campbellgrege.com/work-listing/fun-you-and-innovation/
*Because you always get caught in the middle.
@sloportion
"How many games nowadays are you able to sit down and beat in a day?"
MOST OF THEM!
And I wasn't arguing about quality. My point was just that old games were designed to play out over a long period of time, so they were made butt-clenchingly hard. Yes, it's technically possible to beat Metroid or Zelda in just a few hours. But the first time you played it? It took weeks and weeks, if not even longer than that.
You can't possibly argue with the fact that old games were designed to be replayed more. That's asinine. Look at all the NES platformers -- they're DESIGNED to drag out playtime, sometimes infuriatingly so.
The majority of modern games aren't. They're designed to play through, be completed, and then the game is over.
Which you prefer or which is better-designed is beside the point; it's not what we're talking about. My whole point was that what tazsul said was completely wrong and so broadly general as to be meaningless.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. How many "quality" games nowadays are you able to sit down and beat in a day.
As for Metroid or Zelda taking weeks, I can honestly say that I cannot recall a non-RPG that has ever taken me weeks and weeks to beat. I would go to my local video rental store, rent a game, and beat it in the 3-5 days that it was rented (usually only playing after dinner, because I was outside/at school).
The idea that a game is designed to drag out playtime ("sometimes infuriatingly so") shows a bad game IMO. There have been/are/will be bad games for all platforms. Your argument was against his statement that current games take longer; but in all fairness I'd argue that his statement was more accurate than yours.
Game Informer GOTY awards:
'92 - Street Fighter II (obvious replayability due to the fact that it's a fighting game)
'93 - Mortal Kombat (same)
Wiki skips '94 and '95
'96 - Super Mario 64 (Getting all the stars and completing all the missions takes a lot of time)
'97 - FF7 (RPG = doesn't count)
'98 - Ocarina of Time (Same as Super Mario 64 + storyline + Link > Mario)
'99 - Super Smash Bros (same as SF2 and MK)
'00 - Tony Hawk 2 (replayability due to mastering every stage and setting high scores)
'01 - Metal Gear Solid 2 (could be argued that it was a game to be played through, completed, and then the game is over - does 2001 count as modern?)
Wiki skips '02 to '04
'05 - Resident Evil 4 (another one-time playthrough game)
'06 - Twilight Princes (same as Ocarina)
'07 - Bioshock (same as MGS2 and RE4)
'08 - GTA4 (same vein as Mario/Zelda with amount of collectables)
'09 - Uncharted 2 (One time playthrough)
'10 - Red Dead Redemption (never played it, so I can't comment)
'11 - Skyrim (RPG = doesn't count)
'12 - Mass Effect 3 (This RPG does count, because there are MULTIPLE reasons to play through all three games again)
And the current potentials for GOTY for this year are Ni No Kuni (RPG), Last of Us (one time playthrough - with an amazing multiplayer that isn't an FPS) and, from the looks of it, the new GTA (looks amazing and I don't like the games).
Adding in my own personal top 10 games (Super Mario World, Symphony of the Night, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Halo, FF6, Resident Evil 2, Shining Force, Super Metroid and Ocarina of Time - inno particular order), I don't see a single game on the list that is "ball-breakingly" difficult (besides M.Bison on the highest difficulty while using slow characters without projectiles, i.e. Zangief/E.Honda).
The games that are "one time playthroughs" as you describe them take MUCH MUCH longer to straight up beat than any non-RPG NES/SNES game did.
Edit: GOTY for '94 was Super Metroid, '95 was Chrono Trigger, '02 was Metroid Prime, '03 was Wind Waker, and '04 was between Half-Life, World of Warcraft, or GTA: San Andreas
Cheers
Also, there are PLENTY of games for the NES which were easily beatable in mere hours. Contra, any of the Mega Man games after the first one (seriously Guts Man's stage is still horrible to this day), Archon, Donkey Kong (and Jr), Duck Tales, Punch Out, any of the Mario Bros games (except arguably the first) as well as many games like Duck Hunt and Tetris which were just high score games. SNES has far more games (because the controller stopped sucking as badly and was far more responsive).
It also doesn't help that your motor skills and cognitive abilities are much more refined now than they were back then. Go back and play some of those old games (Duck Tales is a perfect example), and tell me that you aren't 100x better now than you were then. I always used the analogy for raids wiping in WoW due to idiots not moving out of the fire as "slamming our dicks in the door" which is the reality you are proposing as designed longer play.
In your scenario, the luckiest man in the world would have beaten all of these games in mere hours simply because he lucked into the correct path/jumped at the right time, and his experience then would be your experience now.
Theoretically, maybe. If you haven't played it a lot it WILL rip you a new one.
Consider Mega Man 1 where you just have the pea shooter and no slide. Then Mega Man 3 comes along and you get the charge shot and slide. Then we get Mega Man 9 with no charge and no slide again. Why? Cause they didn't really want to,I guess. They can say it's a "design choice",but not including them feels like a step too far backward.
One of my personal issues with this kind of thing is Unreal Tournament 1. The first game in the series offered up some of the most interesting and fun maps of any FPS I've ever seen. The guns were balanced by the fact that any of them could kill you,and quickly,at any time. Even if you had full health and shields,it'd only buy you a second or 2 of extra life against a skilled player and if you didn't use that extra time wisely,you were dead.
Follow up games wanted to appeal more to the Doom 3 crowd and the weapons got nerfed and the graphics got prettier and it all felt like a sell out. And the whole thing with the "yearly installments" thing was just a stupid idea anyway. And while UT3 is a little better than UT2,it's not really back to where UT1 was as far as awesome game play goes. And that's why we play the old games cause all the new games are all about the CODs and MWs and the drama,drama,drama.
The homogenized,overly serious,and overly simple game play don't have the challenge and fun of the old games. And that's why we keep wanted to go back. Cause back then,people weren't judging us by what we did in a video game. We could just run around and have fun and that was that. Now they're treated like second jobs and "serious business".
People tell me stuff like War of the Roses and Chivalry are these great simulators of medieval combat and all I see is DeGroot Keep with new models and skins and a decided lack of hats. They never played Thief. They never saw you could set it up so you could swing from more than one direction thus making an much more detailed sword fighting simulation. Hell,the sword fighting game in Wii Resort Plus is better than those 2 games.
And all these great ideas are just lost on making just another stupid shooter with dialogue spewing NPCs who whine and cry over every little thing and you march from point A to point B and it's the same old shit all over again! So,yeah. Fuck that noise.
Ness, I think.
1) Nostalgia. A lot of this is confirmation bias clouding your judgement. You want to justify why you like the old games for reasons beyond mere nostalgia, so you come up with rationales for it.
2) Moe culture. The truth is, moe has come to the US. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is proof of this. Why do the bronies exist? Because the show is unabashedly adorable.
3) Cheapness. A lot of retro games are dirt cheap, and therefore have exaggerated ratings/sales numbers as "it is good value" at launch, even if the game isn't as good as a game with the same rating with a higher retail price.
However, you are COMPLETELY WRONG about something else.
That something else is "The games industry wants to be seen as mature". Okay, it does, but you're making a terrible mistake and ignoring reality here. It is part of a larger cultural trend that started in the late 1980s.
Basically, it is the whole "Darker and Edgier" trend. Everything from television shows to movies to video games to comic books became darker, edgier, and grittier because that was what people wanted. It was a major cultural cycle - people wanted to make stuff that was "deep" and showed the pain, man.
20-30 years later, culture is finally start to shift again, I think, which is why you're seeing an increasing amount of cute stuff. Look at indie games like World of Goo or Dust: An Elysian Tail. These games have very cutesy designs to them. Popcap games are similar. Some of the movies are becoming campier again.
Basically I think it is the end of one cycle and the start of another, and retro gaming is just clinging to it because it is cheap and sells well, and a lot of the major studios aren't really pursuing the trend very actively.
It is really just part of a greater cultural trend towards cuter and campier things.
@teknoarcanist: That is your nostalgia talking. "Most games in the era". Really? No. Just no.
Sure, SOME old games were fairly long. But were most of them? Heck no! Many older games were not really that long at all. RPGs were exceptionally long for the era. Games like the original SMB feel longer than they really are because you were so young when you originally played them. They are not nearly so long now. And once save files were introduced (they were pretty common by the SNES era) it was even less of an issue. You could beat many of the old games in a few hours, and the idea that they were "punishingly hard" is largely nostalgia - many older games were not insanely difficult by modern standards, and most of the "difficulty" of those games is just repeating longer sections of them. But having played some of the old school beat 'em up games recently, they really aren't terribly long, and I remember even as a kid being able to rent, say, a TMNT game and beat it in a weekend with time to spare. RPGs were way longer than such games were.
You replayed them over and over again because you didn't have a whole lot of games to choose from. With the advent of cheap games on steam, I have literally hundreds of unplayed games which I purchased for $5 or less. For me to replay a game, it has to be better than any unplayed game I have - a pretty tall order.
This isn't an opinion. It is a fact. The truth is that you are letting nostalgia filter your perception of reality. Most old games had no higher replay value than modern ones.
@lonerogue: Firstly, nostalgia is universal. Baby boomers are nostalgic for the 50s and 60s and early 70s. Their parents were nostalgic for the 1920s. Their parents were nostalgic for the gay nineties. Not a new phenomenon.
Secondly, Xenoblade Chronicles sucked. A lot. The idea behind the world was cool, but the game itself was terrible. Bad story, bad writing, bad gameplay, incredible number of sidequests, grind, grind, grind. The reason that those other games from back in the day sparked your imagination was because the ideas were new to you back then because you had less experience, not necessarily because they were more original back then.
Zelda using its weird names for monsters is okay, but a bit confusing, and unnecessarily so at times. It does nothing to immerse me at all - rather, it has quite the opposite impact, because they just have random names for no good reason. Bats are bats. Characters in the game speak English. so why are we calling rabbits smerps?
The JRPG deserves to die. Were there good JRPGs? Yes! But none of them were good games -because- they were JRPGs, but in spite of being JRPGs. The various good final fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, and the like were good because of their story and characters, not because of the JRPG mechanics, which were often the weakest part of the game, frequently broken, and very often highly repetitive and grindy. JRPGs are in trouble because the limitations that gave rise to the JRPG are no longer as relevant.
The platformer is a more interesting thing. People talk about the death of platformers, but the truth is that platformers never died - 2D platformers certainly became a lot less common for a long time though, but 3D platformers had "taken their place". Eventually people realized that 2D platformers and 3D platformers are actually entirely different genres, and 2D platformers started to be made again in greater numbers. 2D platformers are much more about execution, while 3D platformers are about exploration. And the 2D platformer genre is alive and well today, and has been for years now, since around the point that Nintendo started pushing them again and the indie/low budget game market picked up on the fact that you can make a 2D platformer for cheap.
But there is a catch, and that catch is that you can only sell so many games. So while having tons of low-budget games may seem like a winning solution, the problem is that it doesn't actually work out that way - while it may seem like spreading out your risks in this way would be good, the problem is that Call of Duty is competing with Civilization V but not with Super Meat Boy and Mark of the Ninja. The lower budget games are their own thing, and the AAA games are their own thing, and the lower game market is very saturated with titles - there are numerous games coming out every week on the low-budget end of things. Making ten low budget games instead of one AAA game means that you're cannibalizing your sales on the low-budget games due to self-competition, and if everyone else does the same, you've multiplied your amount of competition by a fair margin with no actual benefit to yourself.
This is why they haven't switched over wholesale to doing this.
There was a time when the video game industry did try to do this. It caused the Great Video Game Collapse of 1983.
@Merlynn: They didn't dumb them down for the noobs.
They "dumbed them down" for you.
The truth is that refinement isn't a bad thing, and people who view it as "dumbing down" don't really get it. You cannot create things of ever greater complexity, and many things are clunky or just plain old badly designed.
Basically, I'm coming down on the side of, "where's your data" and "who cares?"
You can beat the original Zelda very quickly if you're deliberately speed running and know the game very well. This describes a lot of games new and old. This is practically a sport, but those guys like to take their time on their first playthrough for the joy of it.
Secondly, a lot of replayability has largely been shunted off to multiplayer or managerial type simulator games. 4X or civ-style strategy games come to mind.
A lot also depends on where you hit your point of "completion" with a game and how much you care to cross your t's and dot your i's. It's horribly subjective.
Retro games also had its share of broken and badly designed games, this isn't particularly new.
Lastly, don't assert your subjective impressions of a game as historical fact. Stop it. It's very wearisome to listen to and put up with.
I also find it ironic that Titanium Dragon takes issue with Zelda being too fantasy after a big paragraph about camp cutesy stuff and exportation of moe.
I think they're basically finding objection with rampant sexualization of women in video games.
That's just people remembering the good games and ignoring all the forgettable, broken or stupid games.
There's always crap. There always will be. We just choose to honor and remember the "classics."
Nobody will remember the movie-to-game adaptation of Catwoman or Deer Hunter and a couple decades from now, people are going to wonder why their dumb throwaway shovelware wasn't as good as Torment or Shadow of the Colossus or what-have-you.
Not only were they working with an incredibly limited amount of memory, RAM, or, well, anything in the NES/SNES days - it meant everything they did add -had- to count. And not only did it have to count, it had to combine itself with all other elements present to craft as many possibilities as possible (with the goal being infinity; ala Sim City, or Civilization, or Super Mario Kart).
Also, in comparison to the games of today, back then you had an actual "visionary" whose idea was the main one you saw on the canvas. It was a Picasso - it was a Miyamoto. There seemed to be a lot less of an office-feel towards the production of games - with different divisions and sub-divisions and marketing appeal - and it really felt a lot more like a mere handful of people came together to work on something they loved.
I have been actively playing the original Super Mario Kart for roughly 22 years now. The fact that that game was possible on the SNES is simply mind-blowing. The brilliance of every. single. tile. in that game is beyond the capacity of mere words. The balance, the driver-controlled A.I., the colour, music, worlds, and design, design, design seem almost ludicrous to ask for from a SNES cartridge. Yet, there it is. In 1992 no less.
All Mario Karts that came afterwards felt like a homage to the original. In that, the original did things so perfectly, there really was no need to make any sequels. And every sequel in comparison has felt lacking compared to the original. From the broken A.I. in Mario Kart 64, to the expansion of the tracks themselves (in the original - making a series of super-tight turns is an absolute art form), to the fact that the next Mario Kart game feels like it's going to happen no matter what - so why even think about it.
Not that these new games aren't great - but they never mastered the pure perfection of the original. And this is not saying that all the subsequent games were bad because they didn't just replicate the original - but because they didn't fully realize the potential of their own world - and this was perhaps because the goal was always aiming "outwards." How do we make bigger worlds? How do we add bigger control variations? How do we add more characters? Never "inwards." Never tightening or eliminating elements - always just adding more, more, more.
The original was a completely crafted, wholly envisioned world where every single element within it had the golden mean of perfection associated with it, and likewise multiplied the potential and magic of every single element within its sphere by simply being in proximity to every other single element.
These games were master works of art, not just in terms of "nostalgia," but in terms of bare-knuckled design. Those game-creators were absolute masters - the very fathers of our medium - and it had the trade-mark of their vision all over them.
These days, it doesn't feel like there are visionaries any more. Even Miyamoto at Nintendo is spread thin over every single project they're working on - instead of just working on a single one himself. As has been mentioned prior to this - when games come out - you can almost feel the sweat-shop labour that went into actually getting it released. It feels that there's a ton of game stuck on there because that's what you paid for - right? You wouldn't be buying this if it were three hours of FPS goodness instead of ten. So "the game" element becomes something for you to do; ad-nauseum. You repeat the same cover, poke-your-head-around-the-corner, fire strategy throughout the entire spiel - with the one difference being the environments.
There is no need to truncate the vision and make sure that every element can be extrapolated upon by every other element in an endless amount of ways. Instead of doing things - the importance is to make you feel like you are doing things - and so much of the magic of gaming has been, well . . . left behind.
I seem to be on the same wavelength as you very often...
Roger Ebert gave a review once of a detestable, and graphically horrifi display.
His response was I will not rate this movie because this is a place where stars don't shine.
We have lost our innocence and our freedom to look up at the sky and just imagine, but the desire is still there.
It's not that we wish to relive childhood, but that we have had a necessary part of adulthood stripped away from us .. to be dangerous, to be free, to live with ~ hope.
I think the retro movement is due to something wider than just playing pretend. I think people want to retreat back to a time without media bombardment. I think people are feeling overwhelmed by everyone trying to sell them everything that they just tune it all out and go back to playing, watching, reading, or listening to something that reminds them of a time when it didn't happen to them. That is, retroism is simply escapism from escapism.
Those are my thoughts, at least. I don't think they are that accurate as I've largely been nostalgia-resistant throughout my life.
Maybe the reason these older games were so good, so rich and clever, was that they DID have such finite resources. They couldn't just throw everything they wanted in, they had to make due, have simpler things stand in for more complex ideas. They had to give you a sense of wonder with a pixilated sprite, with a high tone soundtrack.
That, and society wasn't nearly as cynical as it is today. People today seem to think only negative things are interesting.
But something's lacking: room for imagination. That's one of the things I loved so much about my older, far more pixelated games. I could wander around a room and as I'm looking for that gun or switch, my mind is making up the details of the environment that aren't there on the screen - what's it sound like? What's on that pile of boxes in the corner? What do the papers on the desk say? Is there a crack in the wall? Do my footsteps stir up dust or cause bugs to scurry away? By putting so much of my own imagination into the game, it became more personal, and endearing - moreso than the graphical displays today where every detail is spelled out.
I think the big appeal with "retro" games has less to do with tonality and more to do with fidelity and aesthetic. The thing about sprites, or even early 3D models, is that their simplicity--simplicity necessitated by the limitations of the technology--forced players to use their IMAGINATION to supplement the experience.
In other words, we had to actively engage our minds in order to fully realize the game worlds--worlds that became all the deeper and more rich from our input. In our minds, we could transform grainy, pixelated deserts into stunning vistas of dunes to dwarf any shot from Lawrence of Arabia. It made games richer -AND- (perhaps more importantly) more personal.
We don't have that any more.
With increased visual fidelity, less and less is left to our imagination. It's like the difference between reading Lord of the Rings or watching the movies. Everyone who reads the books will have his or her own unique Aragorn or Frodo or Gollum--but everyone who watches the movies will only have one. There are a thousand thousand Shires in the minds of those who read the books--but those who saw only the movies, there's only one.
Play any of the old Final Fantasies. We all imagine different worlds. The Magitek armor looks different to different people, because we have to imagine what it would look like in reality. What does Terra look like? What kind of expression is she making? Because we either don't know at all--or have little more to go on than an arrangement of a few pixels--our minds create the perfect image to fit within our understanding of the game, the characters, the setting, and humanity.
But play Final Fantasy XII or XIII. There's nothing to imagine. Rabanastre looks like it does in the game to everyone. There's nothing to imagine. Lightning's expression is what it is to everyone.
Higher fidelity results in a much narrower, much less involved experience. A big part of what makes gaming magical is interaction, and one of the biggest ways we can interact with a game is to invest a bit of our selves--our souls--into the experience. And the less we have to imagine, the less we have to believe in or make up, the more of the magic is lost.
I have never judged an ancient clay pot or it's makers for not having intricate patterns all over it. But am instead amazed at their ingenuity, and the beauty of what they have accomplished. Were you as an artisan to make it today, I'd say it was boring. Unless maybe you'd put your own twist on it.
Even worse it would be if it was an artifact from my childhood.
(Not my native language. Sorry if a grammatical vein burst behind your eye.)
You seem to be missing some fundamental aspect of communication. This video is very much an argument. They are posing a question, and then proposing an answer--that is an argument. Argument is a form of discussion where people discuss different sides to a specific concept. If it's not an argument, it's an agreement.