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Old games: Are they shit?
ben0207
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, upon seeing this "discussion" on Slashdot (land of neckbeard-sporting open-source twats) about whether modern games will stand the test of time I found it an interesting question. Indeed, will modern games stand the test of time. My initial answer was "no, of course not", but now I'm not so sure. I mean, old games are shit aren't they?
What does UK Resistance say (or at least did, ten years ago)
Interesting!
Funnily enough, the original interblag post (here) has the quote
"I think more than half of the games you see today with huge budgets and such a ‘realistic’ focus will be either stale or forgotten in 20 years,"
hahahaha, you crazy fool. That's so full of shit, and you're just saying it because you've been eating out on Galaga and Pole Position for 20 years. What's the matter, can't keep up with the big boys any more?
See, I've played Pacman CE, and it is indeed really good fun. But the same as I don't play Pacman these days, no I won't be playing CE in 20 years. Maybe Portal? And I still occasionally play Sonic 1, so I guess maybe that, at a push. I'm certain it'll have been ported to everything I own in the future, too. But ultimately old games are clunky pieces of shit, with awful control schemes and none of the advancements the last 40 years have given us. Ask a "retro gamer" to swap their copy of Company of Heroes for Warcraft 1. Will they fuck.
So my basic point is, no, modern games won't still be played. But neither will old games. We'll just play whatever is modern at the time, same as now. Unless the cockroaches win, or the LHC really does kill us all.
One last quote from the UK R Retro Gaming special
What does UK Resistance say (or at least did, ten years ago)
Interesting!
Funnily enough, the original interblag post (here) has the quote
"I think more than half of the games you see today with huge budgets and such a ‘realistic’ focus will be either stale or forgotten in 20 years,"
hahahaha, you crazy fool. That's so full of shit, and you're just saying it because you've been eating out on Galaga and Pole Position for 20 years. What's the matter, can't keep up with the big boys any more?
See, I've played Pacman CE, and it is indeed really good fun. But the same as I don't play Pacman these days, no I won't be playing CE in 20 years. Maybe Portal? And I still occasionally play Sonic 1, so I guess maybe that, at a push. I'm certain it'll have been ported to everything I own in the future, too. But ultimately old games are clunky pieces of shit, with awful control schemes and none of the advancements the last 40 years have given us. Ask a "retro gamer" to swap their copy of Company of Heroes for Warcraft 1. Will they fuck.
So my basic point is, no, modern games won't still be played. But neither will old games. We'll just play whatever is modern at the time, same as now. Unless the cockroaches win, or the LHC really does kill us all.
One last quote from the UK R Retro Gaming special
Let us tell you something about "retro gaming" -- it's SHIT and it's for LOSERS. If you are into "retro gaming" you need to STOP LIVING IN A FANTASY WORLD, you need to GROW UP and you need to STOP KIDDING YOURSELF that old games are still relevant today. They're not. They're shit. All of them. Even Outrun. You're just making yourself look stupid.
ben0207 on
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Therefore, this post is false and you have failed, sir.
Or art
Or theater
Or fucking anything.
The good games are good. The shitty games? Well some are still played just because of nostalgia, and some are played because they're still good.
This will always be the case regardless of when they were made.
Same applies to Vampire Rain which came out just last year.
I'd be safe saying that 20 years from now people will still load up Deus Ex when it gets mentioned or play a few games of Lunar Lander. People play games that they like to play.
I never asked for this!
What? Who told you that? Maybe if you weren't around to play them when they came out, but I play games 10-15 years old that I have never played before and I like them. A while ago I considered making a post about how I feel the "soul" of gaming has been lost to me. I miss the days when the credits consisted of three to five people, and companies weren't always big and faceless. Look at id compared to EA (both existed at the same time, I know). When I think of id I think of John Romero and John Carmack. When I think of EA...I just see a logo.
Have my friend over, order a pizza, and play through Super Mario Brothers.
Seems pretty obvious to me.
I've been playing a lot of PS2 and Xbox games recently though (hardly retro yet, I know) and I think they'll stand the test of time much better. Much like the Snes and Megadrive have stood the test of time, they perfected (pretty much) 2D gaming and the games are generally an utter pleasure to go back to. Yearly I still complete Super Mario World. Yoshi's Island can still stand up with the big boys, the Megadrive Sonic games are still awesome and worth going back to and 2D fighting games have hardly changed since that era of video gaming.
I mean, look at the Monkey Island games, by all definitions they should be retro but (even graphically) they still hold up very well today. In fact near enough all the Scumm games do. I played through Full Throttle for the first time (to my shame) about 6 months back and enjoyed it just as much as I've enjoyed some 360 and PS3 titles.
Games are really the same as movies when re-visiting old ones. You wouldn't watch an average 70's flick (well, I would, but I'm odd like that and love awful horror movies) but you would watch the classics.
If a game truely stood out when it was released, there's a good chance it'll be playable and fun in years to come.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
The man on the street isn't buying or playing Pac Man, or Sonic 1. He's buying FIFA 08 and Gears of War. 20 years from now he still won't be buying Pac Man. Or Gears of War. He'll be buying whatever is current, and we'll still be on a forum on the cortex meganet saying that even though the graphics aren't very good and it doesn't run on holodeck XP, isn't this "half life" still amazing to play.
And I still disagree. See my point about SamSho 2.
Well, I personally can't, but there's shitloads who still play StarCraft so I guess some people can
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
It's pretty sweet, fun as it ever was, and it has a nice charm to it I can't explain.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that fun games are fun, and people will always play fun games. People don't fork over money for Pac-Man because Pac-Man isn't readily sold on the 360 (in disc form).
I'm not sure if my post "gets" it, but this seems like a pretty dumb topic anyway.
I repurchased Fallout 1 today and have made it to Junktown. I've only managed to beat the game once before almost ten years ago, and it's like returning to re-read a favorite book that you cherished.
And the idea that retro games are not relevant to today's games is completely bunk. Every single platformer today owes credit to the ones that came before it. Most of these types of games are still compared to Super Mario Bros. One of the most positive and well-received features of Super Mario Galaxy was how it emulated Super Mario Bros. 3 with the multitude of powers. If a Super Metroid remake were to appear in 2d glory on the DS, I truly believe it would sell millions of copies.
Even with film, which has evolved rather rapidly, good films show can show there age rather quickly, especially films with special effects. What was good, or even great when it came out, while they still can be fun, aren't considered good but classic, which is more of a sentimental tie than a quality issue.
There are a few highly regarded early 3d games that over the years I've tried to go back and play through, and because of the progress since they came out they just come as clumsy.
I think (and this applies to films as well), the older a games gets the better it will have to have been to remain fun to play if sentimentality isn't a factor. A lot of game from 3~4 years ago are still fun to pick up and play. Fewer from games from 7~8 years ago are still fun, etc.
Steam ID: Good Life
I love going back and playing games I may have missed though, currently playing JK2O, released in '02, one of the best games I've played in a long while.
you really answered your own question with this:
but fuck the man on the street. fuck him hard.
the entire country of korea for the past 10 years, would like to have a fucking word with you.
We ended up getting 4 wireless controllers for the 360 when Virtual Tennis 3 came out but they still just haven't got the magic back. There simply hasn't been a single tennis game released in almost 10 years that's as much fun in a 2-on-2 doubles match with 3 friends than the original.
So when you say that new games always bring better controls I scoff.
Also, Pong was boring and terrible when it came out, but it was the only game in town. There, I said it!
Baldurs Gate 2 = Best RPG ever made (probably, but the only ones which might beat it are also on the infintiy engine)
MOO2 = Best 4X game ever
Sim City 3000 = Best city builder
Conflict Freespace 2 = Best Space Sim shooter game
XCOM: Terror From the Deep = Best squad strategy + squad builder game
Seriously, old games are often still kings of their genres, and such will remain the case for many years. That article is nonsense.
Fixed (With replacements that are also older games)
Crazy yo.
You Luddite.
That how we roll here, biznatch.
On one hand, most people who say old games are better will list the best 10 games for their system of choice and then the 10 most recent releases for the 360 or PS3. Of course the cherry picked crown jewels will stand out against an effectively random selection.
On the other hand, the counter argument usually involves picking 10 selected pieces of crap from given past system and compares to the 10 best for the current.
Same thing, it's like saying old movies suck by comparing 3rd rate 1920's slapstick to the best films of the last ten years, or saying new movies suck by comparing the tripe that's always flooded the screen to Citizen Kane. If you stack the 10 best from any given year with the 10 best from 2007, they'd stack up fairly well, unless you judge on purely technical merit. Real gems are rare, and it's pretty rare that a game breaks into the top of its genre and is still there after a couple years. If you pick the 10 worst games for the SNES and compare to the 10 worst games for the 360, they'll all be pretty bad, and if you can play enough of them to judge all 20 trainwrecks and can still form coherent thoughts, you'll probably find they stack up fairly well, too.