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E3 2015: A Lot of Nostalgia For Old Games 102

Posted by samzenpus from the what's-old-is-new dept.
_xeno_ writes: E3 2015 saw a lot of game companies banking on nostalgia, but much less hype for new games. While the biggest thing coming out of Microsoft's press conference was undoubtedly the Hololens, the biggest buzz from E3 was probably Sony's announcement of Square Enix's announcement of a remake of a two decade old game (Final Fantasy VII), seconded by the announcement of a sequel to a fifteen year old game (Shenmue). Nintendo announced mostly new sequels as well. Ultimately, though, it isn't surprising that the biggest buzz is around old games. Old games are a known quantity, while truly new games are — well, new. Who knows if they're going to be the next classic or not?
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E3 2015: A Lot of Nostalgia For Old Games More

E3 2015: A Lot of Nostalgia For Old Games

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  • Well, it's worked really well for Hollywood, if by really well, you mean a safe bet but nothing groundbreaking

    • Re:Sequels (Score:5, Informative)

      by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Thursday June 18, 2015 @08:11PM (#49941131)

      This isn't new. EA has been remaking the same sports game for 20+ years. Activision has been remaking Call of Duty for years.

      Funny that the movie list is so big it is split in two! [wikipedia.org]

      And you thought 11 remakes of Robin Hood was bad. LOL.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Well, it's worked really well for Hollywood, if by really well, you mean a safe bet but nothing groundbreaking

      The problem with sequels is that they often fail as they have to have original scripts.

      Now remakes, there's a safe bet.

    • Re:Sequels (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Thursday June 18, 2015 @09:06PM (#49941409)

      There's a good argument for remakes or sequels for many game properties. As much as people love to stick their nose up in the air in disdain at remakes and sequels (and yeah, sometimes I'm guilty of that), in truth, fans of a world or character they've enjoyed in the past are also likely to appreciate the chance to revisit those same worlds or characters on a modern platform.

      Besides, let's face it, while they're still enjoyable to play, many early videogames haven't exactly aged all that gracefully. It's not just about shinier graphics, although that's certainly a factor of course. There are a lot of examples of downright clunky gameplay mechanics that we once thought were acceptable, but wouldn't put up with in a modern game. And oh lord, don't get me started on the state of voice acting in the first games that attempted to do so. Cringe-worth doesn't even begin to describe it, mostly because earlier developers thought it would be a great idea for people in the studio or friends and family to do the voice-acting.

      There are also some examples of fantastic games that had nothing wrong with them at a fundamental level, but would be great to see in a modern sequel. Star Wars Battlefront is a great example of this. Another good example (sticking with the Star Wars universe as an example) would be the X-Wing/Tie Fighter series of games, although as a PC franchise, I'm far less hopeful we'd ever see a remake of that one. It has nothing to do with the original being inadequate in any way given technology of the time, but a lot of fans of the original would love to see what could be done with modern state-of-the-art capabilities.

  • Hololens (Score:3)

    by upontheturtlesback ( 2605689 ) on Thursday June 18, 2015 @07:40PM (#49940911)
    "Transform your world with holograms. Microsoft HoloLens, together with Windows 10, brings high-definition holograms to life in your world." I don't normally say this, but this is idiotic. Suddenly we're erroneously calling Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality holographic despite the fact that these systems have been around for years? Making a good AR system would be a significant contribution without mislabelling it as a marketing gimmick. A hologram in the physical sense involves recording a light field, and in the popular/science fiction sense it involves projecting three dimensional objects in space so that everyone can see them -- not projecting things into a particular person's eyes through a headset so that only they can see them (which has been done for decades). To the best of my knowledge we still have no idea how to make a three dimensional "holographic" projection in the popular/science fiction sense.

  • Call me... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    When Jumpman or Racing Destruction Set comes out.

  • Star Wars are also a good example of this endless rerun of the same old but known franchises.
  • you are now THAT old.

    • I'm hoping that my old age rest home has a computer gaming room!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Whiteox ( 919863 )

        It's one of those desert island scenarios when the kids send you away and maybe visit on birthdays.
        I'll be happy with a gaming laptop and some choice games. Maybe I'll spend the children's inheritance on Steam ;) and those nurses better be pretty as I'm practising to be a dirty old man.
        Maybe Slashdot will have a version for us, the permanently baffled....

  • Let me share this:

    @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
    @-moz-document domain("slashdot.org") {
    .comment-bubble, .popularity {
              display: none !important;
        }
    }

    Nothing speaks louder than a deafening silence.

    Going live in 3, 2, 1 ...

  • Fuck share (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Thursday June 18, 2015 @08:34PM (#49941273)
    Put a share icon in the upper right, like everyone else does. Don't replace "read comments" with "share".

    Jeez Dice, why are you trying so hard to drive your users away?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Sig updated. Also, what happened to the rounded corners on the boxes on the front page? The comment pages are still okay.

      Stop fucking with the site layout. If you want to do something useful, implement Unicode! The Soylent guys did it as a hobby project in a few weeks.

  • I played Jetpac [wikipedia.org] on an Xbox One at E3 yesterday, which looked exactly like it did on the ZX Spectrum.

    And Cuphead looks unchanged from the original 30's version.

  • If only some group could bring back one of the old versions 2.3, 2.5 or 2.8.5 combined with bringing back the thousands of players they used to have online any time of day I would be happy.

    I would even take the v3 before they crippled it, put flares on all players backpacks and the players all left.

    • I'm actually alt-tabbed out of the new AA as I type this. I assume you've played it so I won't go into details of how it sucks. What I will say is that it seems like the old AA players have left for games like Arma... I've not played it personally, and it's not free, but could be worth checking out.

      Did they ever bring out more guns or maps in AA3? I played around 2012 and remember it being a decent game, but getting so bored of playing on the same three maps with the same three guns over and over. Sometim

      • All Army games are offshoots of training programs. Either it's a program that wasn't useful as a training program, or a civilianized version of a program that was actually used as one. That's why they keep putting out beta games and then abandoning them. They're on to the next project for the military.

        Full Spectrum Warrior is the only one of these titles of which I'm aware that actually became fully polished.

      • I stopped playing AA3 around 2012 also. I think that was around the time they upgraded the game, ruined it and players left. I used to play Ranch all the time then I came back to a newer version and they had removed it. It looks like the new version has more maps, user submitted ones and new weapons but I did not try it since I thought no one was playing it.

        I did not try AA4 since I did not think when I checked they had many players but I see they have 400 players online right now. So maybe it is worth a

  • Who would of thought people would enjoy sequels to long beloved intellectual properties?

    Star Wars VII set to make millions? Colour me surprised. Do people really still see games as something 'other' from traditional mainstream entertainment?

    • Sure. There are plenty of smaller, independent games coming out with interesting gameplay mechanics, stories, graphics, etc. Even some indy games that have done well and become big names (including one that still has yet to be released). If you think the games at E3 are all that's out there, then you're missing a ton of good gaming.

  • Just look at Doom... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by azcoyote ( 1101073 ) on Thursday June 18, 2015 @09:55PM (#49941625)
    The new Doom really shows this nostalgic trend all by itself. The gameplay footage shows that they were definitely looking to approximate the feel of the original even to the point of abandoning more contemporary elements (regenerating health, weapon inventory limit). It will be interesting to see how the retro gameplay is received by younger gamers who haven't played the original, and whether this kind of nostalgia will affect the way that future, new franchises are designed.

    On a side note, the game looks pretty awesome and brings me back to my childhood, but I will personally miss the survival horror style of Doom 3.
    • Every now and then I still whimper in my sleep due to Doom 3.

      • Wow....Doom 3 is considered retro and nostalgia? Holy crap do I feel old. Cause I remember when Doom 3 was, in itself, a throwback to retro and nostalgia. Which means I'm double-retro'd and double-nostalgia'd.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Khyber ( 864651 )

      "The new Doom really shows this nostalgic trend all by itself. The gameplay footage shows that they were definitely looking to approximate the feel of the original"

      Nope.

      They fucking ripped off the idea and implementation of Brutal Doom and slapped it in what looks like nothing more than a half-assed incremental revamp of the Doom3 Engine.

      So desperate for a 'revamp' that they went and ripped off the ZDoom/Zandronum modders idea for their fucking game.

      A ton of us are pretty heated over that. What's net? id/Be

  • 2015 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheCreeep ( 794716 ) on Thursday June 18, 2015 @10:02PM (#49941657)
    2015. Also the year for nostalgia for the old slashdot without the dumb Share button after every story.
  • Square finally gave into the fanboys for the FF7 remake? They've resisted it for years because they didn't think they could make money at it, and with how pricy modern graphics are I tend to agree. Maybe Sony backed it as a marketing stunt...

    • Re:Anyone figure out why (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Brulath ( 2765381 ) on Friday June 19, 2015 @12:40AM (#49942275)

      Sony probably backed it to give them another edge over the Xbox One. It's an odd decision, however, given RPG remakes don't tend to happen.

      I'll be interested to see if they can live up to the expectations we've developed over time. Upon replaying them I discovered that a large part of the depth of PSX and earlier Final Fantasy games was filling in the blanks – particularly when it came to personalities. Without voice acting you can come up with a completely different person depending on how you read them, which leads to different people having dissimilar experiences. With latter FF games they've been inserting a lot of voice acting, which I found very off-putting (it's not exactly A-list stuff, and I find that the personalities they project are strained).

      I found Leigh and Kirk's FF7 Letters [pastemagazine.com] to be an interesting nostalgia trip. Kirk had been in the industry for a while before playing FF7, having been exposed to its legend on many an occasion, and exchanged letters with Leigh whilst he experienced it for the first time. There's a lot of things my mind skipped over as a kid; always ignored Tifa, for example, when I could have interpreted her in an entirely different and more mature way. It's interesting.

      It'll be cool to see, regardless; re-imaginings are often fun ways of looking deeper into a story.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Sony probably backed it to give them another edge over the Xbox One.

        Not really - FF7 is coming to Xbone and PC as well. And FF7 plain old is coming straight to iOS this year. The FF7 remake for PS4/Xbone/PC? Unnannounced release date.

        In fact, the big problem with Sony's E3 announcements Is they're for games so far in the future - even Microsoft's ones are for games to be released in 2015 and 2016 and potentially 2017 at the latest.

        I'm suspecting the PS4 grew too big too fast and now Sony's in a bit of a bin

    • It's a money thing. They've been remaking FF games with better graphics for a couple years now but they had been targeting the earlier games that didn't get as wide of a release or had the same presence. FF7 would be a more expensive remake than a game like FF3 or FF4 and you're going to need capital for that. SE was in a bad way for cash after the FF14 fiasco but Yoshida managed to turn that around with Realm Reborn and with Heavensward it looks like SE is going to have a reliable cash flow for a good amou

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Khyber ( 864651 )

      Here's why.

      The FF team leadership has consistently said that they will not remake FFVII until they feel they have a Final Fantasy game that will EXCEED FFVII.

      Which means they must think FFXV is going to be the next FFVII.

  • Well... (Score:3)

    by kainewynd2 ( 821530 ) on Friday June 19, 2015 @12:31AM (#49942241)
    Call me a Bioware whore, but the best news out of EA was the new Mass Effect and the class-driven expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Just saying. Barely gave any shits to the FF7 remake because it's a silly idea...

    • I tried playing the first Mass Effect and just couldn't get into it. I liked the world building and setting. The alien that prefaced everything he said with a statement indicating his intended emotional context was hilarious. But the game play just sucked. Maybe it was an issue of playing it on a PC but actually playing the game was tedious and just not fun at all. I think I only ever got in one session where I read a ton of the ingame encyclopedia stuff and expored all the conversation I could with that al

  • uh huh (Score:3)

    by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Friday June 19, 2015 @03:04AM (#49942725)

    The topic is about E3's love of nostalgia and you didn't even mention Mario Maker..!? That is a game specifically about... nostalgia!

    • I was going to post the same thing. As a Dad, I look forward to playing all new Super Mario World levels! The real question is whether or not it is possible to remake all of the old levels...

  • Attack of the Mutant Camels FTW! (Score:3)

    by GrahamCox ( 741991 ) on Friday June 19, 2015 @03:27AM (#49942843) Homepage
    Attack of the Mutant Camels FTW! That is all.
  • The long held dream of Privateer 3/Wing Commander: Online is what started all this. Frankly it's a good thing. Many old games deserved good HD remakes. Remaking a Dos game using HD is like reshooting a black and white film in Colour. Nothing wrong with that. The main thing to ensure is that the originals aren't trampled with too many modernisms. Dune2000 was a lot better than Dune 2. I'd like to see more of the old artwork adapted/modernised same with music. Some games had excellent soundtracks that deserve

  • Some old games really are better if you like a certain type of game mechanics. For instance if you like crpgs with tactical combat there just isn't much being made like that now. The console gamers prefer a different type of game and that is the type that is being made now most of the time. Faster, twitchier, and imo more repetitive. Popamole. I guess it's really more about faster non-tactical combat that is the problem for players like me. I prefer combat that is more like chess where you have to carefull

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      I don't even think that it's that difficult.

      Some old games just worked better because of their simplicity. Syndicate you could pick up in ten minutes, including completing a couple of missions, riding in vehicles, etc. despite it being almost an entirely new mechanic.

      Syndicate Wars, I got bored to trying to get the camera where I needed it to go. The new Syndicate is a heap of junk.

      But I would gladly pay for an extension, expansion, a slight enhancement of Syndicate designed for casual play.

      Again, just be

    • These games would make me say "Shut up and take my money", but only if they made a version for OSX and/or the iPad:

      • Master of Magic
      • Master of Orion 2:Battle at Antares
      • Myth:The Fallen Lords and/or Myth 2:Soulbligher
      • Avalon Hill tactical combat games such as Under Fire!, Squad Leader, etc.
      • SSI Gold Box RPG games

      .

      For MOO, Endless Space is close (I don't mind the 3D), but is missing the tactical combat and instead has a "pretty to watch" combat system that I end up skipping most of the time.

      If anyone can point m

    • There are some smaller independent and mostly crowdfunded developers now that are at least claiming to try to cater to that style of play but so far there hasn't been much in that regard and at least one attempt, Pillars of Eternity, failed utterly in terms of the combat imo. It ended up playing more like Dragon Age: Origins or other modern Bioware games. Again, catering to what the majority of gamers like despite being funded by gamers like me who wanted something that played more like Icewind Dale or Baldurs Gate II.

      Hmm, Pillars of Eternity is next on my list. I actually liked DA:O. I hadn't played a tactical combat RPG in years until that game. I'll eventually play DA:I once it gets to a bargain bin price.

      I just picked up Divinity Original Sin in the Steam Summer Sale. This is my first Divinity game and it's very enjoyable so far. The graphics, art and sound are all excellent. There are some quirks I am getting used to and I'm still trying to learn/master the rule set as well. I like having "action points" tha

  • Games don't get worse as they age. Don't hundreds of years of chess and poker teach us that? How about Scrabble or Monopoly? Is Tetris no longer fun? Prettier graphics aside, if games are outdated after a few years, they're either poor games to begin with, or the game was deliberately designed to be obsolete and no longer fun after you "solved" it, or it's a completely illusory perception encouraged by game makers who want to sell you more stuff.
  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance by makers of Mafia, Operation Flashpoint, ARMA and others.
  • Try converting BASIC Games [atariarchives.org] into a modern programming language. I'm doing that with Python to learn the finer points of the language while remembering the tricks needed to get PITA BASIC to work back in the day.

  • Instead of doing countless ports and remakes of FF7, how about giving us Einhänder 2?

  • small mailbox here...

  • Hey - it worked for Hollywood.

  • The greatest game of all time: http://www.newser.com/story/18... [newser.com]

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