Don't Go Down Memory Lane?

fieldsofclover writes "Gamers With Jobs is running a piece today about the darker side of gaming nostalgia. From the article: 'Here's an example. Konami's Castlevania had interesting monsters, catchy music, and a great gimmick: a guy with a whip. But if you went back and played it today, chances are you wouldn't bother playing past the second level. Why are the newest games in the series so drastically different from the original? The answer is because gamers demand more from their hobby now, and there's just not a lot of meat on those old bones. But when the fully 3D, story-driven sequel fails, they point at the original on its lofty pedestal and demand an experience that lives up to their memories. It's a double standard that's next to impossible to satisfy.' Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by staying obsessed with the old classics?"

It just goes to show

You can lead a gift horse to water, but you can't shoot it in the foot.

Darker?

That's a tad melodramatic don't you think?

Nothing beats today's games

....where everything is a hi-res shade of brown, and the boss is always a giant bug.

Oregon Trail

If they made a 3D version of Oregon Trail using the Doom or Quake engine and the old storyline, I would buy it. I would expect significantly improved hunting. The ability to shoot in towns wouldn't hurt either.

Of course, I would not want interactive 3D dysentary.

Re:Oregon Trail

"If they made a 3D version of Oregon Trail using the Doom or Quake engine and the old storyline, I would buy it. I would expect significantly improved hunting. The ability to shoot in towns wouldn't hurt either."

And, along the way, you pick up enough shoot 'n' strafe kills to be able to kill the giant bug boss you find at the end in the Portland level.

Re:Oregon Trail

You mean the giant Slug boss... this is Portland, after all...

Re:Oregon Trail

Computer: u pwned 2149 lbs of food but u can only take 200 lbs back to ur wagon
Bison: rofl noob

Re:Oregon Trail

I live not too far from the end of the Oregon Trail, and we're still trying to get enough rocket ammo to take on the giant bug boss.

Re:Oregon Trail

Rocket ammo? You don't have the BFG yet? It was in a secret cave along the north route.

Re:Nothing beats today's games

I have also wondered why the mega boss always leaves tons of ammo for weapons possible enemies might have sitting outside thier door.

Re:Nothing beats today's games

Because a supervillain's ultimate weakness is always their arrogance. "Ha ha ha! There is no way a puny mortal like you could defeat me, even with all the nuke-blaster ammo in the world! Here, have a truck load! And I'll heal you to maximum health first! And I'll stand above pits of the only substance that can harm me, with levers that drop the floor into the substance! Ha ha ha-- What? Impossible!!!! I cannot be defea---"

Okay, so their ultimate weakness is that they are stupid.

Re:Nothing beats today's games

....where everything is a hi-res shade of brown, and the boss is always a giant bug.

Compared to the 70's where everything was a dime-a-dozen maze game? Or maybe the 80's where everything was a dime-a-dozen platformer? Or the early 90's with their dime-a-dozen beat-em-ups? Or the late 90's with their and dime-a-dozen arcadey first person shooters?

Gaming...gaming never changes. You have the games that define the genre and you have a couple of other worthwhile titles and then you hve the vast amount of crap. Tell me, have you ever tried looking through a complete Atari, NES or SNES ROM collection and picking a game at random to see how it played. Trust me, it's just as much of a crapshoot back then as it is now.

Re:Nothing beats today's games

I think you have put your finger on the problem. We remember the great games of the past when we get nostalgic, for the very reason that they have enduring value. Of course a merely average modern game doesn't stack up, even if that game is superior to an average older game.

I play a lot of games via MAME and enjoy them a great deal -- but I don't play every game I can find. I don't want to. Most of them weren't that good. Still, I think TFA overstated the case.

Re:Nothing beats today's games

yes, but now we seem to be getting to the point where in most entertainment media, truely original ideas have almost no chance of getting through the bean-counters to ever be seen. It ain't just the game industry, it's movies and TV as well. The propblem is that our production values for entertainment is so high that just about any entertainment product MUST gaurentee the producers that it will make millions, because a loss isn't just "oops", it can be bankruptcy, or at least major cutbacks.

to make a long story short, the fastest way to make any form of entertainment get stale and derivitive is to make the cost of failure catastrophic.

A year ago I would have agreed with you. But with Steam finally getting some momentum under its belt, suddenly, it's been a lot easier for indie developers to find an outlet. It was a rocky start, and there were problems, but we owe a great deal to valve for taking such a big risk and fuck-starting steam's role as a content distribution system by putting their crown jewel, Half Life 2, on the line. The gamble worked, and the result is that millions of Half Life fans now also are exposed to the work of these indie developers. Think about it from a developers point of view. When millions of HL players from around the globe log in, they see their game, smack dab in the center of the Steam Storefront's main window. It's an IV directly into the pulse of their target market, and I guarentee you that getting such exposure through conventional means would be several orders of magnitude more expensive.

What happened as a result of this? The developers of Darwinia sold more copies of their game in a couple days than their run of Darwinia or Uplink in a box by itself. Now, Introvision is on solid financial ground and also has the leeway to keep creating new games such as DEFCON. This basically opened the door to other indie developers who now market and promote their games online. And because you dont have to go out to a store and buy the game itself, it's a lot easier to make impulse purchases, which is good for developers at least. Of course, some of the indie games are sucessful, some of them not, but the point stands that it is a LOT easier for indie developers to get exposure now than it was a couple years ago.

This is to say nothing of the strides that free software, with its vast array of mature and free compilers and libraries making serious programming accessable without having to fork over hundreds of dollars for Visual Studio .NET.

Digital content distribution is the way of the future. There will always be titles of all shapes and sizies being at the whims of the publishers, but now with digital content distribution, the indie developer is no longer relegated to living on the margins, scraping out a living on a small fanatical fanbase...if that.

Re:Nothing beats today's games

Not anymore! With the power of the next generation, we can fight GIANT ENEMY CRABS!

Super Mario Bros

Super Mario Bros is still lots of fun, I don't care what you say.

Re:Super Mario Bros

not to mention the sequels are pretty well true to the spirit of the original game

Developers not Consumers

It's time we put away the Conkers and Contras and Castlevanias of our past and focus on the games we have yet to dream of

This message should be for video game developers, not video game consumers. Developers definitely need to get their heads out of their @sses and start dreaming up new, creative ideas instead of just taking the easy way out with throwbacks. Consumers on the other hand have little impact on what games are being developed, and therefore consumers can do whatever they want. If they want throwbacks or if they want brand new fresh ideas, no biggy. But the writer of this article needs to direct his ranting towards the appropriate people.

Re:Developers not Consumers

Devs continue to make "throwback" games and sequels because that is what all gets bought mostly, nothing new ever goes anywhere anymore becasue the gaming demographic has aged and all you old fuckers hate change.

Hogwash! It's all you young whippersnappers that have ruined gaming with your short attention spans and aversion to thinking. When's the last time we had a decent turn-based strategy game? Nowadays all this "Rea-Time Strategy" crap is the rage. Real-time my ass! Did General Patton have only a fraction of a second to select and click a company of troops and send them in the right direction before they got clobbered by the krauts? What kind of stupid game requires lightining fast reflexes to execute strategy? C&C, I am looking in your direction! But no, you kids with your Mario-tuned twitchy monkey brains need that or you will get bored.

Don't even get me started on the watering-down of "puzzles" in modern games. The modern idea of a difficult puzzle is one that requires you to find eight levers (hidden beyond reflex-based "jumping puzzlre" obstacles) and push them all up (changing a red light to green) to open a door somewhere. You punks would WET YOUR PANTS if you saw the kind of monstrously devious crap we had to solve in our day. Plover's egg emeralds hidden beyond a crack your lamp doesn't fit through? Try THAT on for size!

Re:Developers not Consumers

Maybe the problem is the specific RTS games you're playing (e.g., C&C rather than TA). :-)

A decent RTS isn't a clickfest, but rather a strategic conflict over resources. Let the units do the work, and make the high-level decisions.

Re:Developers not Consumers

Don't even get me started on the watering-down of "puzzles" in modern games. ... Plover's egg emeralds hidden beyond a crack your lamp doesn't fit through? Try THAT on for size!

"google plover's egg emeralds"

Within 4 clicks I had a walkthru that told me exactly how to do it.

The internet ruined those kind of puzzle games, because almost nobody is going to spend weeks trying to figure something out when they KNOW the answer is sitting within arms reach.

At least jumping obstacle reflex puzzles require some semblance of dexterity to solve.

The internet fundamentally changed the dynamics of these games. Many (most?) players find it difficult to ignore that the answers to all their questions are within arms reach.

Re:Developers not Consumers

I'm a professional game developer and have been for nine years, my entire post-collegiate life. As you might expect, I'm also a dedicated gamer and on the one hand, I really agree with what you're saying. We rely too much on rehashed ideas, license tie-ins, clones, knockoffs and sequels. I'm sick of it, and I just don't buy those games anymore. So I can sympathize and agree with where you're coming from.

That said, your comment is awfully naive. It's really, really easy to sit outside the industry (or pretty much any creative-based industry) and complain about the lack of originality. Big-picture creative ideas for games are cheap; practically worthless. Just about every single person I've worked with, every kid I meet that finds out I make games, my friends, etc. has ideas for some weird, creative, potentially fun game. But the vast, vast majority of those ideas would collapse under the crushing weight of the reality of game development. Got an idea for a game? Great. Now, is it going to make money? (The large majority of games don't justify their existence, financially speaking). Is it technically feasible? Is it appealing to a wide audience? Will it sell overseas? Can you get capital to finance its development? If so, can you get it without giving up the rights to your idea? Not likely. Can you find money and people to actually build the game? How are you going to market it? Who pays for marketing? Who's competing with you? Is your idea fun to play for 10 minutes? 10 hours?

It's not as simple as pulling your head out of your ass, and presto, crazy new creative games start showing up on shelves. Like everything, money speaks loudest.

Light at the end of my Tunnel Vision

My gaming experience maybe jaded by my memories (I can't enjoy half-life 1 quite the same way anymore) and tunnel vision might obstruct my modern game view (New Super Mario Bros. was good, but It could have been so much more,)but they haven't discouraged my number one reason for buying the Wii...Fun new games with their classic predicessors all in one system.

You know, some of us still play these games

For some of us, gaming past isn't "looking back on things and remembering them."

While it's true some people do just look back on it and remember things as better than they were, and that's their issue, it's not the case for everyone.
Some of us still play those games you know.

"Old Bones"

Why are the newest games in the series so drastically different from the original? The answer is because gamers demand more from their hobby now, and there's just not a lot of meat on those old bones.

Those "old bones" have a tendency to still have similarly excellent gameplay as the newer generation (and are usually far more challenging to boot!). When will we realize that gameplay isn't all bells and whistles?

EA Strikes again

Why put out new stuff when you make extremely minor changes and call it a new game? EA proved that business model to be a successful one, and everyone else has followed.

From a business standpoint, it makes sense -- why take a risk when you don't have to?

From a consumer standpoint, it sucks. Eventually enough consumers will quit buying SUPER-COOL-GAME-2,3,4....x and force a shift in the market. Until that happens, enjoy Madden 2007, 2008, 2009, etc and FinalFantasy-WHATEVER because its not going to change.

Shooting ourselves in the foot

Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by staying obsessed with the old classics?

Yes. I think people have too much of a tendency to look back at a game as being better than it really was and better as it gets older. When they hear of a new sequel in the works for an old series they're in love with, they expect it to be as much (if not more) fun than previous games, however, they expect the gameplay, setting, and monsters to be the same as the old game while, at the same time, they expect the new version to be fantastically different, addictive, and genre-breaking.

Truth is, newer installments of classic games can be as good as ever, but they will never live up to the memories that gamers have developped for their classic, personal favorites.

Some games withstand the test of time.

Many of the great Super NES and Genesis games still have excellent replay value. Some of the fad titles and the crap shooter/fighter clones don't withstand the test of time when replayed. However, the true classics like Super Metroid, Yoshi's Island, Final Fantasy 4-6, Phantasy Star 2 & 4, the Sonic games, etc. are still as fun to play as they were back in the day.

Except...

Haven't emulators exploded in popularity (not to mention promised classic gaming on newer consoles) because people DO want to re-play these games? There are also new gamers that want to go back and play earlier games in series that they like. Portable versions of games also often remain in 2D and exhibit the same gameplay as their classic counterparts. People do like these games. Recently expressed by Nintendo and others, gamers may even want shorter games with more intense gameplay that they can pick up and play for 15 minutes, and older games (aside from lack of save features, but remedied witih savestates) are perfect for this type of play.

On top of it all, New Super Mario Bros. just got released and is doing quite well. This is a perfect example of classic gameplay in a successful contemporary game. Maybe developers just shouldn't waste so much time on production values, but should just concentrate on gameplay and level variety.

Don't ever try to go back.

The first RPG I ever played was simply called "Dungeon", this was the Commodore game that got my entire family hooked on video games for the rest of our lives.

We would sit around the supper table, each trading stories about our experience in this expansive and immersive alternate reality. I would inform everyone about the secret passage I found, where I found a secret spell called Temporal Fugue; my brother would update us as to how much money he had stolen from the bank that day; my father would describe his run-in with "The Devourer".

This game held a special place in all of our hearts and often we would fondly discuss how great the game was... until last year... when I found an emulator and ROM and decided to relive all my old memories. The lush and vibrant full-color dungeon memories that I had in my mind was immediately shattered by a crude 4 color, blocky rendition of what vaguely looked like walls and doors. My memories of thrilling game-play in a true-to-life virtual world were replaced by agonizing and seemingly endless boring hall-walking.

I showed my father. All he did was scream "NO! THERE IS NO WAY THAT THAT'S HOW BAD IT LOOKED! CHRIS YOU MUST HAVE MADE A MISTAKE. THIS CAN'T BE DUNGEON!!"

While my father is STILL in denial, I have accepted the truth. My fond memories of that game are gone forever.

Re:Don't ever try to go back.

You should have played text-based games instead.

I was addicted to Legend of the Red Dragon in high school. A friend of a friend got a copy of LoGreenD running on his server last year, and I had a blast on it until Katrina took his computer away. It looked just as good as ever!

Exactly.

Just look at Metroid, Mario, Metal Gear, Castlevania (SotN and gameboy), Zelda, Prince of Persia, Final Fantasy... Fans and newcomers alike hated the more recent installments, right? Right?

No, it's not hard to involve the themes, maybe part of the storyline, and the major gameplay elements from the original game into an entirely new engine. But it does make a convenient scapegoat if you're a developer whose games are failing or a pundit firing off the first story idea that came to his mind.

Nostalga

There were some games we played because we had nothing better.

Then there were games we played because they were fucking awesome.

I play Asteroids, Puzzle Bobble, and Galaga regularly. I will fire up an NES for Punch-Out, Duck Hunt, or Mario. I doubt anyone in their right mind would slight Street Fighter II or Metal Slug.

Games like Castlevania, Resident Evil, and even Zelda were more promise than game in their first iteration. They were landmark games for their time, but if you were honest with yourself when you first played them, you knew that those games needed more power. The developers were making do with what they had, but they were coding for future systems. Those type of games don't age well.

Atari Anniversary Advance...

I noticed this problem when I was the lead tester for Atari Anniversary Advance [gamespot.com] for the GameBoy Advance. This title had the original ROMs of Asteriod, Battlezone, Centipede, Missile Command, and Tempest being emulated on the GBA. When I first got the title, I thought these were awesome games because I played them when they first came out. (I also played Pong when it first came out as well.) But, with the critical eye of a professional tester, I found out that there were sure buggy as heck. Mostly due to the limitation of the hardware during the early 1980's. The gameplay is still awesome and I still suck 20 years later. :P

If you're nostalgic, then *go back and play it*

What's the point of hypothesizing about "if", when emulators are cheap and plentiful? If you think that Castlevania 1 was better than it's latest sequel, go play it. Nobody's going to pick on you for not keeping up with the times.

Sometimes I find out that I just had low expectations when I was young. (e.g. Dragon Warrior 1, Final Fantasy 1, Paperboy)

Sometimes I find out that games which were good have nevertheless been surpassed by better alternatives or sequels. (e.g. Zelda 1, Mario Kart 1, Duke Nukem 3D).

And sometimes, the old games are fondly remembered because they were really, really good. Star Control 2, Deus Ex 1, and the Baldur's Gate series are each 5 or 10 years old, but (despite playing Starcon 3, Deus Ex 2, Neverwinter Nights, and lots of similar games from the same genres) I still haven't found any similar-but-better games to replace any of them. Judging by sales, there are a lot of people that feel the same way about Starcraft and Half Life 1. We don't all have some retro-gaming fetish, we just know what we like and know how rare it can be.

This Can Be True

This can be true. I'm a big music game fan and I've recently gotten my hands on a copy of PaRappa the Rapper (one of my favorites). Now lately I've been playing tons of Guitar Hero (awesome game). So then I go back to PaRappa for a little bit. Now the graphics look really blocky (it was PS1 after all), but that's not a problem. However, compared to Frequency/Amplitude/Guitar Hero/Donkey Konga it is REALLY HARD to get the timings right. I don't know what the issue is, but it seems to be much less forgiving (either that, or the indicator at the top of the screen is inaccurate). It's still fun, but that was a surprise to me when I started playing again. If the game came out today, I think it would have a hard time because of that.

Then there is also just the fun factor. I got a copy of Donkey Konga 2 a few months ago. After playing Guitar Hero it just wasn't very fun. The music in it was terrible (worse the the first by far) and it just wasn't as fun. You didn't get the connection to the music like you do with GH. Then just for comparison I put in my copy of Donkey Konga, and it was the same. I really liked that game, but now it just wasn't as fun.

Guitar Hero has REALLY raised the bar, it seems. Some games hold up very well (Frequency and Amplitude are still fun to play), others don't.

This happens in all genres. If a game is good enough (Super Mario World, Mario 64) then it will stand above it's peers for years to come. But if a game was just good when it came out, it may not stand the test of time. That's what we're seeing in some of these things.

I played through Kid Icarus about two months ago for the first time ever. I've got to say, that game was HARD. If I didn't know better I'd think it was an arcade (that you'd have to pump full of quarters). You can really see how games have changed. Most games that hard would never survive today. There is nothing wrong with a strong challenge, but that game just beats you over the head with it. I know tons of people think that is one of the best games ever, but I just can't see it from my (obviously quite different) perspective.

Some nostalgia is good. Some games really deserve it (Super Mario World, Mario 64, Yoshi's Island). But many games are remembered fondly and while they were important, they don't stand up to recent games.

aka "The Episode One Effect"

This is precisely the same problem with Star Wars: Episode One. It is impossible to live up to the memory of seeing Star Wars for the first time, especially when the first time you saw it you were seven.

Because developers believe Graphics Story

Back when the graphics were cheesy 3D lines (Wizardry) and 2D pictures (Bard's Tale), the top down looks (Ultima), or the top down look of Might & Magic, the the companies couldn't rely on "wickedly cool graphics" or "scantily clad heroine" to make a game work. They had to rely on the story in the game to keep you coming back.

The original Wizardry made it feel like you were playing a bit of DnD on your computer, right down to the dungeon crawl. The story wasn't that great, but the gameplay was different from a lot of other games.

Ultima gave us a fantastic story, coupled with 2D first person (and later, 4 person group) graphics to give you a sense of size to the world. You felt like you were going somewhere as the story plot carried you along.

The Bard's Tale was just flat out brilliant. The graphics were cheesy, but the story was strong, and you felt yourself moving around the city advancing the story.

And Might & Magic truly had a lengthy story line, filled with interesting puzzles that kept you going for months.

All of these games went beyond graphics to make you feel immersed. They had original thoughts and ideas, and were successful because of it. Then, the sequels started, and many of them stunk. But the name recogniztion alone made sales happen, and the bottom line is always the almight dollar.

Nowadays, with as much time as people have to put into the graphics, for a one time shot type game with limited extra revenue potential, they skimp on the story, and try to wow you with graphics. Even some MMOs are falling into this model, and don't last long.

I couldn't disagree more.

I completely disagree with almost all the comments in this article and made in response. I've dug out old systems, and downloaded emulators and while on a few occassions the games were much easier due to their play-style (The Orig. Super Mario Bros, I could never beat it as a kid, now I pull it out for my kid and its super easy for me) but by and large they are very similar to how I remember them, and they are still fun to boot! - I find the early 3D games a little tough on the eyes, but I imagine they were just as nausia inducing back then, we just tolerated it more.

To this day I have never played a game as fun and well designed as the original Legend of Zelda, and I have played it many times on emulators, on original hardware, and on the gamecube release. It is still great. Sure it has no story, and no dialogue, but I find I play games for the play not for the story line anyway. I can always watch a movie for the story. Which brings up the problem with this piece, how can you hope to ever have games be considered art if you constantly rant about how dispossable they are? I'd like to see a film reviewer rant about given up on watching old movies because modern film techniques and special effects are so much better.

Nostalgia-free vintage gaming

A few years ago while I was still in college, I wrote a paper for my computer ethics class on the subject of abandonware. In the course of my research I stumbled across some old games that I'd never played as a kid; the first game in the Monkey Island series, and the first three Quest for Glory titles. Those games were positively *ancient*. Someone already mentioned in the comments that these games are considered classics (bringing back memories and whatnot), but I thought the games were compelling, even without having played them as a kid. I remember taking a three week break from Unreal Tournament to play through QFGII for the first time. I thought it was great, despite the EGA graphics and text parser. That is evidence enough for me that vintage games can have more than just nostalgia value.

8 bit games are like a Monet painting.....

I've heard these arguments before and in some cases they have truth to them. I could say this about a game like Altered Beast, which when it came out on the Genesis was sold on it's graphics not it's game play. So when the draw was the graphics, and now those graphics are dated, there is no draw.

Not all games get their fun from graphics though. Why is it that every system and cellphone has an Arkanoid type game? Because Arkanoid is fun to play and requires no time commitment. Play and put it down, no logging out or spending hours leveling your chracter.

Castlevania 1, 2, and 3 on the NES were all excellent games because the gameplay was both challenging and rewarding. You kept playing to see what would happen next, what would the next boss look like? And in their own way, the graphics and sound contributed to it.

Sometimes less is more. One of the charming aspects of the old 8 bit games is that the rasterized rendering engines relied on simple block like textures repeated and varied to form the game world. This was cruder than bitmapped graphics but it forced you to use your imagination more. The box art and the user manuals for the game is where the art was. Those told you what the game was supposed to look like.

Any 10 year old can loose themselves in the world of Legend of Zelda with it's water falls and dangerous ascent to mount doom with it's falling boulders, and explore an entire world. And the map that came with the game showed you what that world was really like. So when you played the game you didn't see raster blocks stacked end on end, you saw woods and rivers. And since your mind was filling in so much, the real world, and hence real world realism, could never possibly be as fantastic as the one in your head.

There is no better example of this than reading a good book. You have nothing to go on but your imagination and the words of the author. Any bookworm here can tell you that the movie never lives up to the book. As fantastic as Peter Jacksons movies were, they can never capture the raw fantasy of reading the books themselves.

So rather than be disappointed by playing older games, they remind me of the shortcomings of newer games. As the graphics become more and more realistic, the imagination and fantasy elements took a back burner to the eye candy.

I can't look at a full moon in a clear sky to this day, without remembering the opening cinematics for Ninja Gaiden. And I absolutely lost myself in the world of Castlevania. In particular, Simons Quest was especially fulfilling to play over and over to get the different endings. I wanted to live in that world, and playing the game was the closest I could come to it.

Some people like nice rendering and graphics, they prefer photo realism to impressionism. Some people like Monet and some people just see little paint daubs.

The old games that are worth saving, are still completly viable games that continue to hold my attention and I only wish there were more games that sucked you in so bad that you dreamed about them.

Re:yeah, right...

Sure, there were terrible games 15 years ago, but the shear number of bad games today is the difference.

I disagree - I think it's all perspective. 90% of everything is crap, consistently. It was then, and it is now. But with older games, you're comparing the 10% of non-crap over a long period of time - because that's all you really remember - to the entire volume of current crap/noncrap that you notice on a daily basis. So it seems like there were more good games back then.

Re:I call BS

Ditto. I don't regularly play these games, the challenge factor isn't there as much, but every so often I'll fire up the ol' emulator and break out the classics... Mega Man series (esp. 2), SMB3, dragon warrior 1-4, contra, zelda...

Sorry, they're still fun for me. Maybe Conker just sucks as a game? Haven't played it myself, but I don't see many people pining over the days of Conker... On the other hand, Zelda, FF series... those always have replay value.