Retro Gaming Gets Hot

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, retro gaming is big business, according to a recent article in The Rocky Mountain News. The story talks to Nintendo, Namco and the maker of those all in one controllers that feature games from old systems like Atari. Lin Leng, who's working on the latest Pac-Man game, summarizes it best: 'The games today are hyper-realistic, photo-realistic and take a long time to complete, an average of 20 hours of gameplay,' he said. 'But with Pac-Man you just jump in and play and you get a quick fix. It also brings back childhood memories for some of us.' There's also an interesting sidebar to the story talking about Invader, the Parisian graffiti artist tagging famous locations around the world with images from Space Invaders. The author's website has the full interview with Invader posted in his weblog."

one more tetris/pacman clone is what we need

[rd4tech]

...who's working on the latest Pac-Man game,...

/rant/ Why don't those guys start trying out NEW ideas instead of endless XYZ pacman/tetris/whatnot variations and tons of chrome. I mean, it's damn pacman, it's the idea that counts, who cares about the rest, it's PLAYABLE.

Instead, they've got blocky graphics, tinny sound and bizarre objectives. And despite their rudimentary look, these games have inspired an almost manic need to play them

Because when you know for a fact that you have 4 colors and less than 100 pixels on an axis, your mind will start thinking how playable you can make it. When you have 1600x1200 on a 100fps, 48bits w alpha and a graphic card which beats most PC's computational power, you mostly think how to fill all of that for a 'real-life' gaming experience. Well, if I wanted real gaming experience, I would go and play waterpolo or football, not pc 'real games'

/rant/

legalities of emulators

[Hatta]

So how long until Nintendo or whoever starts going after the authors of emulators?

woot!

[Donald_Knuth_Esq.]

after picking up both a NES (front load :( ) and the mega man anniversary collection, i must agree.

despite some of the great console titles as of late (beyond good & evil, riddick, front mission 4, etc) it's nice to just sit down and go for score or literally -beat- something in a short span of time.

now, rerelease gijoe arcade and sunset riders and i'll be happy.

Good Games

[svenvder]

Goes to show that all the money and time you spend on graphics and special effects is all for not if the gameplay suks. I mean these games are in 8 bits at best yet the game play is truly revolutionary and addicting still today. I hope this goes as a message to all the game companies that visuals are nice but gameplay is what will truly make the game great

need an article to tell me retrogaming was hot

[geminidomino]

All I had to do was look at the shelf at Walmart. They're charging $20 a pop for the "classic NES" series (Zelda, SMB, Excitebike, Donkey Kong). Now, if they put, say Zelda and Zelda II on one cart, I might pay $20 bucks for the "on the go, I'm bored" factor (I did for Dragon Warrior I&II), but the truth of the matter is that Gameboy Advance cartridges can hold 32 MEGS at 8-bit (or 16 at 16-bit). The original NES only went up to 8 MB, *max* (games based on the MMC5 chip. Only a few towards the end of the NES' run used this. I.E. Castlevania III). That means you could fit at LEAST 4 NES games on one GBA cart. It's not like they even did any rewriting. Hell, the reviews say that Zelda still has the old "8-sprite slowdown" from the original NES days.

Looks to me like the Retro craze is the best thing that could happen to the game companies. Now they can come up with even LESS new stuff and STILL fleece their loyal customers. =\

Bunch of suckers-Retro-money

[Anonymous Coward]

And people wonder why companies hold onto old games, instead of releasing them into public domain.

Re:Good Games

[Zorilla]

I believe this came up in a "new games lack imagination" discussion a while back. One thing that was said that I agree with is that the less you have to work with (sound, graphics), the more creative you have to be in other ways.

I think the optimal point between game console power and gameplay was the SNES. Powerful enough to allow things like massive areas and saving your game without passwords (Super Metroid), but not graphically intense enough to just get by with graphics.

Sure beats seeing a new MMO or military-related FPS out every 7.53 seconds.

Um, no shit

[Stick_Fig]

Back when I followed emulation pretty heavily, you could just tell this undercurrent was coming back up. I picked up on this in 1996. It's 2004. Something about newer games really smacks of "losing soul", because they take forever and a day to play. Personally, i just got sick of following new games after a while, because they are too complex for playing for short periods of time. I admit it: I'm a grazer, and when I can choose from a thousand NES ROMs, I'll play nine or ten in a session.

Can't say I agree with you there...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Clones and variations aren't anything new.

We had Pacman, Ms. Pacman, Pacland, Pacmania, Pacman Jr and a few more flavours of Pacman that I can't remember off the top of my head. Similarly, we had Tetris, Wetris, 3-D Tetris, etc.

Even popular arcade machines of yesteryear were sequeled: Galaga/Galaxians, Operation Wolf/Operation Thunderbolt, Nemesis/Salamander/Vulcan Venture, R-Type/R-Type 2, Gauntlet/Gauntlet 2, Outrun/Outrun 2, etc.

The reason why we got more of the same is because people wanted more of the same. If it aint broke don't fix it is one of the oldest rules of arcade/PC/console gaming.

Re:Bunch of suckers

[CPlusPlusOwnsYou]

What do you think Game Boy Advance users are paying for? Recycled games.

Re:Games don't have to be old to be good.

[CommanderData]

Yes! I have seen and played his stuff. Speaking of interesting 2-D games, have you seen Gish [chroniclogic.com]? Not a shooter, but a very unique and fun 2-D game. Check out the demo, or at least look at the gameplay video (no I'm not affiliated with them, my company's name just happens to be similar to theirs!)

Re:Except.....

[momerath2003]

So you're telling me you only played those games once? I mean, most people who like a game enough to buy it play it at least 100 times (or the equivalent of 100 arcade $.25 runs).

Why 8-bit computers are featured on /. so rarely?

[dotz]

I don't know much about 8-bit computers market in US, but in my country, 'retro gaming' is more like '8-bit computers', and not 'gaming consoles'. Of course, NES (Pegauss) was available here, but machines, which were much more popular for an average teenage users, were Atari 65 XE, Commodore 64, and last, but not least - ZX Spectrum (aka Timex 2048, which of I was a proud owner).

Why are such computers featured so rarely on slashdot retro games? Wasn't they popular in US?

Another thing, big "booya!" to all authors of emulator software. Thanks to their software, I use my unix workstation to do some gaming sometimes - nowadays games are too much schematic for me, sorry! :)

Re:Retro Lover

[NanoGator]

"m glad that some companies have figured this out! I love the latest and greatest games as much as anyone, but my heart still belongs to good old 2-D action games."

I think the retro games are okay, but I really like when they are updated to modern standards.

Tempest 2000 for the Playstation kicked ass. I loved how they retained the feel of the game, but updated with the trippy graphics and technoo music.

Re:Retro Lover

[Jagasian]

Why not play the real thing? Classic games won't bite. Emulation is not as good as the real thing. While I appreciate emulation, I have my hacked Xbox with several emulators on it, and I also have an original NES and SNES hooked up to the same TV. Know this: the emulators do not emulate the games perfectly. The NES is better emulated than the SNES, but when you can pickup the real thing with several great games for about $50... why not do it?

If you lack a free video input on your TV, then get one of the A/V multiplexers from Radioshack.

Do society a favor and keep something that is good as opposed to throwing it away. What would society be like if we threw away Chess, classical music, old movies, etc...? We would be a society without history, without culture.

Re:Secret of Mana

[Erwos]

"It seems all the game makers went from story lines to graphics."

It's because game reviewers punish them more for "bad" graphics than bad gameplay.

Recently, I read a review for Front Mission 4. The damned reviewer simply could not stop talking about how the graphics "didn't live up to the PS2 potential"[1]. But, if graphics weren't that important, then why does that matter? I mean, I saw the screenshots, and I certainly didn't have any issues distinguishing wanzers from each other, and the "drab backgrounds" didn't hurt the gameplay, did they?

So, blame lying game critics, who _say_ that gameplay is more important than graphics, yet go nuts if the graphics are anything less than perfect.

-Erwos

[1] This is not to imply Front Mission 4 didn't have genuine gameplay issues - only that reviewers seemed to get hung up on the graphics more than their stated preference for "gameplay > graphics" would indicate.

Re:Secret of Mana

[Twinbee]

A similar story applies with me, but with Zelda 3 especially. Somehow the later 3D incarnations of Zelda just don't do it for me. The Zelda 3 world was more compact (but still massive), the 2D control was more intuitive and it was simply more fun to play than Zelda 64. And of course the music was better. Today we're given 'cinematic' and 'film-like' (read mostly generic, and/or mundane) soundtracks, instead of the original and atmospheric music of the old games. Indeed, the SNES most likely had the best music for a console ever (you just can't beat the likes of Secret of Mana, Axelay, Pop 'n' Twinbee or the Kirby series for melody).

but, now I want the games to lose quality

Agreed. Though I would in fact call the graphics of today poorer. Yes, they may be more complex in one way (I would say mostly the wrong way), but simplicity and /focussed/ complexity is the way to go. Compare the classic Outrun to the new Outrun. I'm not sure how fun it is to play, but to me, it's obvious the graphics of the new Outrun look less colourful, less 'sharp' and generally less inviting. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's less fun.

Re:Bunch of suckers-Retro-money

[Saeger]

People don't wonder why companies would want to hold onto "intellectual property" like old games for as long as possible. They know why: GREED. And that's what people question. They had a long window of time to profit, and it makes sense that it should now be the public domains turn [creativecommons.org], so that other people (and companies) can then build upon it.

--

Not 8MB

[Dwedit]

There are no games as big as 8 megabytes, nor 8 megabits for that matter.
The largest offical NES game was Kirby's Adventure, weighing in at 768 kilobytes.
The largest unlicenced US NES game was Action 52, at 2 megabytes.

Re:Bullshit!

[Anonymous Coward]

People generally don't want to buy an old Atari, with controllers that may or may not work (do ANY 2600 paddles still work?), a mess of twenty year old wires, a stack of carts an a console that may or may not have had a liter of Mountain Dew spilled on it. Not when these all-in-one joysticks and various emulators are so readily available. I just saw a huge stack of the joysticks, the first thing you see when you walk in to Urban Outfitters.

Or if they do want to buy it, they want it for a few dollars. And if they wanted it they probably bought it at a thrift store ten years ago. There are a lot more people who want the casual retro warm fuzzies than to seriously collect (and clutter their house with) old consoles, computers and VCS games.

Give me a fucking break

[bonch]

Only on Slashdot is a company holding onto a successful product it personally created, made money with, and decided to hang on to in order to re-release it later on "GREED."

It's called being a business and selling the product you have a right to sell. You need to get out of the college dorm room and get a real job someday and start making money--is that "greed?"

Those companies own those games. It's not like the games came out all that long ago--20 years is hardly a long time. The public domain doesn't have a "right" to these games. Get over yourself.

Just look at Deus Ex

[bonch]

Boring, drab, dark graphics. Yet the gameplay was so amazing, it didn't matter. In fact, the graphics suddenly became part of the dark, paranoid atmosphere.