Was Videogaming Better Back in the Day? 381
An anonymous reader writes "Sean Sands at Gamers With Jobs looks back at the dawn of videogaming, when we were all kids just typing in our games, one line of BASIC at a time. And he finds the present lacking: 'The dreamers became assets instead of leaders, and the rockstar designers became, well, Rockstar ... or Blizzard, or Valve. Publishers with cash-rich money to spend bought the creative process, and the minds of marketing professionals replaced four guys hopped up on sugar doughnuts and generic cola. So, how dare I be surprised that the price of today's gaming blitz is a little piece of last generation's soul?' Do you agree? Was simple gaming better, or are you a story in games fan?"
No, it wasn't (Score:1, Interesting)
It was certainly easier to be impressed, back in the day.
99% of the titles I played on C64 were shit, and the Atari 2600 or NES could only dream of a good/bad title ratio like that.
Gaming today is as it's always been. If you prefer the older titles (and to a certain extent, I do), go ahead and play them.
It all depends... (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends. There's games that are compelx and terrible, and there are games that are complex and amazing (Supreme Commander, hopefully Spore)
there were also simple games that were and are amazing (Tetris) and simple games that were just horrible (Amagon, Super Mario Bros. 1 by today's standards (I'll elaborate if anyone cares))
"Are you a story in games fan?"
Yes I am. But it depends on the story, and the game. I just picked up Wing Island last night for the Wii. If I had known about the story, I would probably have thought twice. Gameplay is okay, but it's no Pilotwings (what I was hoping for). On the other hand, I absolutly love Hotel Dusk. Maniac Mansion continues to be one of my all time favorites, and the Half-Life series are great because of not only the story, but how that story is told. Wing Commander showed that cinematic games can be fun, if done right.
There's lots of examples of good story driven games. Not all of them new. And there's lots of examples of games that are fun without much story (Super Mario Bros. 3 continues to be a favorite of mine) and even some examples of decent games *dammaged* by the inclusion of a story (Super Monkey Ball, Bomberman, Wario Ware, etc, etc.)
Indie Games (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy really needs to see my sig. And by the way, I'm one of the people he doesn't believe in anymore. A gamer who wants to make games. Am I discouraged by the big money games? No, because I don't want to make those.
I don't know about 'better', but it was different. (Score:5, Interesting)
The games might have been garbage, but I recall the experiences with more fondness than anything I've picked up recently.
I don't even need to go back that far, the 90's had a lot of fantastic games that I still play and have a lot more fun with than running another damn WoW instance, or another round of Countersrike: OMGSNIPERFAGZ!!LAWLZ Edition.
Less shared culture (Score:5, Interesting)
Nowadays games have become very audience-specialized. For instance, the two top-selling franchises right now are Grand Theft Auto and Pokemon--how many people can you find that play and enjoy both? Off the top of my head I'm actually struggling to think of a single accquaintance who enjoys one and doesn't turn up their nose at the other.
Re:It all depends... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Less shared culture (Score:2, Interesting)
Games today are better... and worse. (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't what it was in the 80s, where 2 college students come together and hash out a game over the time of a year in their spare time. If it flies, great, if it doesn't, so what. In the 80s, making a game was "easy". Now, hold your horses, of COURSE it is way "easier" today to code a game with DirectX (which pretty much takes the burden of actually placing the graphics onto the screen off your back, with perfect algorithms that you'd need to study 10 years of advanced maths to get close), but back then the computers sucked so badly that even a hint of graphics was already something that inspired awe in your player. Take the average 80s game. "Pole Position" anyone? With some blocks resembling cars and a "pit stop" that consisted mainly of you moving an unanimated sprite across the screen.
Doesn't need an "animation artist" to make, does it?
Sound? Yeah, it squeaked. We have sound. And when the gun fires it makes "taktaktak". Perfekt.
Story? Yeah, someone of the crew wrote a 10-liner for the manual (since in the game there was no room for story anyway. Remember, 64k is a lot and 640k more than anyone would ever need). Here's your story. Go along the lines of "bad guy hijacks something we think is cool, princess or some gem or something, and you gotta go and get it back. Make it about a page".
Physics? What for? Gravity is "lower sprite a dot every 2 seconds".
Of course, a few crafty coders can hack that together in a few months.
The huge advantage of it is simply that you can take risks that way. You can leave the used and tried paths and try something new. If it blows, well, you tried and you didn't break your neck for it.
This is no longer possible today, with games that cost a few million USD to make possible. Can you imagine sinking about 10 manyears of highly qualified artists into a bomb? 3 bombs like that and EA is a goner.
For a small studio, one such bomb is already the torpedo it needs. And I think we all know a few studios that sunk because they couldn't get their wonderful game (which would have been wonderful, most likely) done before they ran out of dough.
So studios stay with the pathes they know. So we get NHL 200x, Command & Conquer Part 18, Doom 200 and the millionth fantasy MMORPG. Because it works. Because it sells. Because it is no risk.
Re:It all depends... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but thanks to Nintendo it's getting better! (Score:5, Interesting)
Then I lost interest, from Saturn and on games were boring to me. It seemed all about graphics but not fun. Since I had a 200mhz PC up until 2001 I never played any PC games either.
But for the hell of it I got a Wii a couple weeks ago, I feel like a kid again. These games are fun. Super Paper Mario is a great example. It's a side-scroller yet it has 3D, it's a perfect mesh of all the previous mario games and it's fun.
The controller is great too, in fact I think it should become a standard for TVs and not just Wii. It makes more sense to point-and-click through your cable box program guide or your tivo menu. It would also be nice just to program your TV with a Wii style remote rather than using the usual volume +/- to navigate (and accidently click channel +/- and have to start over!)
Yay for Wii
Re:Meanwhile, beyond the land of False Dichotomies (Score:5, Interesting)
I was with you until this part. Ultima Underworld pales next to Oblivion? Oblivion is one of the most retarded, "streamlined" RPGs ever made. It's an example of the modern-day, marketing-driven tech demos that this article is criticizing. Go play Daggerfall from 10 years ago and remember that it came from the same company!
Check out the Angry Videogame Nerd. (Score:4, Interesting)
His reviews, while comically over-the-top, put the lie to the notion that the 8-bit era constituted a mythic golden age or edenic period at the dawn of the videogame industry, largely populated by auteur game designers who produced output in line with the bohemian values of truth, beauty, and good gameplay.
A considerable number of the NES era titles, even those published by major companies like Konami, were utter shite, and would not make it past the comparatively rigorous QA standards of even cynical, moneygrubbing behemoths like Shit-A [penny-arcade.com]. Even titles beloved of kids at the time, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the first NES game, not the arcade game), contained level-design gaffes approaching Daikatana levels of awful, like "that is so stupid, no freakin' way you'd expect a little kid to figure that out".
So no, the videogames were not better by any meaningful objective standard way back then. There were the standouts like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and later Mario and Zelda, and then there was the long tail of crud. Crud that even managed to earn the Nintendo Seal of Quality by being minimally non-shitty. We just think it's better for the same reason some people think Men Without Hats were better than Nirvana: it's what we grew up with.
No. Final answer. (Score:5, Interesting)
My simple answer is no, games were not better. If they were I'd simply play them with an emulator and leave today's offerings behind.
A while back I downloaded some Atari 2600 emulator with something like 870 games. I thought this was going to be fantastic. My experience with it was lukewarm at best. While I did get into playing some old classics I loved I came to realize that it was more me being 10 or 12 years old that made the game good. Not that they sucked but it just wasn't as good.
Now the big thrill was playing all the games I never owned but use to ogle over in the catalogs that came with games. Stuff I begged my parents to get me. After spending a few hours going through some of these "classics" I wanted to go an apologize for ever bothering them about it. Again, if I was 10 again and had just gotten BurgerTime it would have surely kicked ass but as a 30-something it was pretty lame.
Who knows, maybe I'll feel the same about CounterStrike when I'm 50 or 60.
Re:Meanwhile, beyond the land of False Dichotomies (Score:5, Interesting)
I was beginning to think I was the only person on the face of planet Earth who felt that way. As I once quipped on Slashdot: "Oblivion is an RPG for thumb-bashers who want to play an RPG but without all that gay story and s---."
I mean, come on. You get 30 seconds of dialog then spend 5 hours trying to accomplish the quest, 4 hours of which was spent trying to build up enough cash and/or magic in order to complete the quest. Ultima IV, you had to change the way you played the frakking game to win to stay in synch with the story.
It wasn't all good....Outpost anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Second, there are some great old games out there. Master of Orion, Panzer General, the Mario franchise, etc. that are timeless and as enjoyable today as before.
However, there has been a tidal wave of crap over the years nobody wants to remember. My personal list of disappointments is below:
Outpost - I probably put $40 of long distance calls in to the sierra bbs(pre internet) to download 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5. I never got a monorail built and it never ran for more than 45 minutes without crapping it's pants.
The Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Arcade Game - total crap. Indy frees the little kids, rides down the rail cart, steals a stone from the altar.......then goes back to freeing more kids, going down another rail cart,
PacMan for the 2600 - While the audio is still used whenever anyone on TV is playing a video game, this was probably the most disappointing arcade port of all time.
ET for the 2600 - Painfully bad
Indiana Jones for the 2600 - Bad, bad, bad
The Star Wars Games for the original NES - George Lucas owes me $20 for ep1 & ep2, and $80 for these pieces of crap
The Coleco Adam - The entire platform and every game
Master of Orion 3 - WTF! How could you fall so far from grace?
My point is that what's good is good and what's bad is bad. Nostalgia puts a rosy spin on things, but pull down an emulator and try to play some of the games you loved as a kid. I got the Atari collection to play Star Raiders again and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did I ever piss away a couple of years of youth on that game.
How about watchability as a measuring stick? (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, are high quality graphics enough to enjoy watching someone else play? Not for me they aren't -- unless they make the game harder to play for the average player (e.g. R-Type or Raiden).
How about game difficulty -- is it more fun to watch someone ace a game that is very hard than one that is easy? You bet it is. Also, if the player playing is many times better than us (e.g. a great player on Gauntlet, or Mr. Do!, versus myself).
Modern games are like modern action flicks -- ok the first time, but not worth a re-watch. Old classic games like Defender/Stargate, Tetris, Missile Command, Centipede are interesting to watch when a master is at work -- including when you are the master. On one sales trip I drove "up country", passing through several towns along the way. On the way up I played one game of Arkanoid on a game I had not played before. Before playing I bought an ice cream cone and played one while I ate the other. An hour later the game was done and I left. On the way back down I got another cone and popped in another quarter. As I started to play I heard someone behind say "That's the guy!..."
Modern games reflect modern life, where the schools don't give out grades any more. At least not the ones our three go to -- they get slashes, hyphens and single letters not in the range from A to F. Just participate, doodle and consume -- growing up to become good consumers and good sheeple.
One of my most memorable moments was getting a serious score on ST:TNG pin -- 10Billion+. No sooner did I finish the game but the techie came along, turned it off and started to clean it, as clean pins are tougher pins. The ST:TNG pin was so tough, yet so cool, that I surfed the 'net in 1994 to learn more about it (and ended up contributing to the FAQ [pinball.org] I found). Today we might look for cheats, or cracks, but just end up like cheaters or crackers when we use them. At that time is was a true mission (to stop the owner from taking this, my very own, quarter until I have played for an hour or two) and success was shared.
Classic arcade games are meant to be tough coin-suckers. Anyone able to conquer one of them is a hero. Heck, I've even gave one guy a quarter just to see him play a game again after watching him get 9xx,xxx on Centipede.
Today, thanks to MAME I can watch great replays without leaving the house. And I prefer that to playing any modern console/commercial games. They are not my style and don't interest me. I'd rather throw a football. I should say that some flash games carry on the tradition -- Super Collapse [shockwave.com] comes to mind.
Classic games were more physical and that was good. They were tougher and that was good also. They weren't all flash and no substance like modern games. They were truly tough nuts to crack and anyone that did was cool. They made us want to improve ourselves. Modern games are addictive, but not in the way that programming is addictive -- more in the way that TV is, putting us into that coma-like state for hours at a time.
Re:No, it wasn't (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at Gish, LittleBigPlanet or YoshisIsland, there is a lot you can do with physics that you couldn't do in any of the earlier Marios. The jump'n run genre is far from being out of ideas, it just happens that few care to but them into action.
### As for your dislike of the double jump,
Double jump simply isn't fun, its a stupid low cost workaround for bad camera work, so that I can correct a jump mid-air when it doesn't turn out as intended. Its just lazyness on the side of the developer, proper game balancing such as seen in Mario64 wouldn't need a double jump. The presence of a doubte jump simply is a clear signal that somebody didn't care enough, and well, most platformers have them these days, even the few 2D ones.
To elaborate some more, the fun in jump'n runs comes in large part from the speed and chaining of actions, the double jumps however destroys both, since it takes the speed out of a jump and it also makes chaining rather boring, since hitting an enemy just is way easier with a double jump instead of a single one. Double jumps simply destroys the single most important element: the jumping.
Re:Meanwhile, beyond the land of False Dichotomies (Score:2, Interesting)
That aside, I play both modern and classic games all the time. When I want a fun, fast action game, I still dig out Kabuki Quantum Fighter as often as not. I can sit down tonight with my genesis or snes and not see the light of day till I've run through a Phantasy Star or a Shining Force, or any snes Square game. Turn around and I've got God of War or StC running or any of the newer FF games, or a few people are over and it's any one of a slew of new and old multiplayer games: puzzle, sports or misc.
New or old, a game must be compelling for someone to play it, whether it's story, visuals or gameplay there is always a 'killer app' that draws a player back to a game.