cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13809164
Ignoring the lack of updates if the game is buggy, games back then were also more focused on quality and make gamers replay the game with unlockable features based on skills, not money. I can’t count the number of times I played Metal Gear Solid games over and over to unlock new features playing the hardest difficulty and with handicap features, and also to find Easter eggs. Speaking of Easter eggs, you’d lose a number of hours exploring every nook and cranny finding them!
Nostalgia makes us lie to ourselves.
Have you ever noticed that almost all of the retro games worth playing happen to be the ones you played back in the day? But the games you didn’t play don’t hold up? What a crazy coincidence.
Game design is better today than it has ever been, and it keeps improving. All those old mechanics still exist. You just don’t have to slog through hours of bullshit to get to them anymore. Unless that’s what you want, in which case that is also available.
If you want a manual, play Tunic. If you want punishing difficulty, play Hollow Knight. If you want to delve into new games with unknown mechanics that you figure out as you go, play UFO 50. There are so many options, and you never need to see a microtransaction unless you want to.
Most of the games I liked back in the day don’t really hold up, though. Like, I loved the NES version of Strider back then; it had a strange and intriguing plot, I loved the trappings of the dragon-shaped space station and the plasma sword and the magnetic boots that let you walk on the ceiling, and I was a total sucker for any hint of metroidvania-type progression. But when I try to play it now, I notice the controls are awful, the collision detection is janky, the level designs are dull, and the “triangle jump” is nearly unusable.
Whereas I tried Clash at Demonhead, and that’s surprisingly decent. A little simplistic, sure, and it bogs down as you get further into it, but it’s pretty amusing. Same with Guardian Legend: I can’t get through it, but I can definitely see the appeal. Edit: it may have been clear from context, but these are ones I didn’t play back in my youth.
I do love indie stuff, though. I just played through Alwa’s Legacy, and that one is quite good. (Some people might find it too easy, but I tend to appreciate that at this point. I don’t have the reflexes I once did.)
So I tend to agree that there’s still great stuff around. I just don’t think nostalgia is the whole story with retro games. I think a lot of it has to do with the retro games being the work of a big studio, even though the mechanics today would be relegated to an indie studio. There are subtle ways that affects the experience, that I think people are unconsciously aware of.
But yeah, there are great games out there today, especially on PC.
I think your nostalgia period being in the NES era might just be too early. Successive attempts at an idea in any medium often fall into the following pattern:
Attempt one is explorative and clunky with no pre-existing material close enough to the target idea to draw reference from. The second now having hindsight fixes the most glaring issues from the first. The third and beyond do the same, but with very diminishing returns as most of the available improvement space was already claimed by the second release, which then becomes the nostalgia sweet spot where the familiarity vs. missing QoL ratio peaks.
My favorite game from my childhood is probably Age of Empires II, and that holds up well enough to still have a massive active community around it. Note that it’s a second release.
The “sweet spot on release two” thing is probably also the reason for the very real “Valve can’t count to three” thing. Valve’s developers have generally been more interested in mechanics and technical innovation than storytelling, so they lose motivation to continue after a second release knocks out most of the available improvement they can do, even if the last release leaves a story unfinished.
Edit: Just to be clear, I know I’m not really replying to the main point you were making. AoE2 being a big studio release even adds to it. I don’t think anyone has mentioned the whole survivor bias angle either.
Yeah, despite some of the stuff happening in the AAA and hardware spaces, we’re still in the golden age of gaming. I have a few favorite games from the 90s, but if I had to pick between everything released prior to 10 years ago and everything already released since, I’d still go with the latter without hesitating. I feel sad for anyone not finding enough new hits to feel the same.
Every game wasn’t a blatant cash grab. I’d gladly give up updates in exchange for games that are complete upon release and have no pay to win or fomo elements.
There are so many games like that out there. More than there have ever been. If you can’t find them, you’re not looking.
The HOMM3 book was my favourite for ages after getting the game. Studying all the stat’s and comparing them against each other.
No game updates meant they sold a finished goddamn product, and if you found a glitch you could explore it. No online play meant there was no constant data collection for bug finding or license checks (for some games, in which the only way to opt out is not to play), and you weren’t locked out of the single player or split screen co-op story if you disconnected the internet. Nowadays they’re the fucking game police – you must only play the exact way the devs intended, and your fun is heavily conditional.
I remember home computer and PC games coming in big boxes full of goodies. Especially RPGs often had a poster sized map, a story book, a monster guide and a manual. Also the copy protection often was a physical device like this rotating pirate head thing in Monkey Island, the manual itself or a card that was difficult to copy and could only be read with the included filter glasses.
“Not based on money” As if quarter eaters and movie tie-in games haven’t always been a thing. ET being a notable example.
Also have you played Deltarune?
This brings me back. I grew up with older brothers, watching them play through games that I didn’t have the skill to complete. I remember my oldest brother playing Donkey Kong Country and slapping nearly every spot on the ground to find hidden bananas/balloons, and exploring to find the hidden games and levels. I learned a lot by sitting back and watching until it was finally my turn to play.
I, myself, never made it to the Special world on Super Mario World, but my brothers did. I can’t be sure if that’s the first place I saw the words “gnarly” and “tubular,” but only because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were equally as popular in our early 90s household and they definitely used that “surfer” language too. I just remember thinking those words sounded weird and funny, and have a strong mental connection between them and this game.
I don’t really have a point to this comment, just reminiscing…
I liked your anecdote, i was the older brother, takes me back ❤️
TUNIC
UFO 50
Came here for exactly this.
If you’re the dad in this comic and you’ve never played Tunic, this is your wake-up call. One if the core mechanics of the game is collecting the pages for the instruction manual in game so you can figure out how to play.
No microtransactions. Games were games. It’s by no means inherent to games back then, and we could absolutely have that again. But, that would require gamers everywhere to suddenly not be whores to mini little dopamine hits like gambling and dark pattern addictions in order to push the industry’s overton window back towards responsibility, respect, and integrity.
Infocom’s were the best.
You got sunglasses, a microscopic space fleet, a don’t panic pin, postcards, and something to read.
a microscopic space fleet
can you expand on that, what exactly was that?
In that case, it was an empty bag. There’s a gag in the game/book about a microscopic space fleet appearing and then getting eaten by a dog. The peril-sensitive sunglasses (which were supposed to turn black when there were dangerous situations) were made of black cardboard, etc. Low budget but hysterical.
Thanks, i started to suspect something like that after the first few replies :-D It’s been ages since i read those books, might be a good time to do it again since i seem to have forgotten quite a bit
It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.
For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said, ‘I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle,’ a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of a frightful interstellar battle.
The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.
A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl’hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G’Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.
The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the words, ‘I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle’ drifted across the conference table.
Unfortunately, in the Vl’hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.
Eventually, of course, after their galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realised that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own galaxy—now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.
For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across—which happened to be Earth—where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.
‘It’s just life,’ they say.
Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 31.
It was a space fleet so small it was undetectable by currently available equipment.
Utterly priceless.
Something a small dog swallows, thus unwittingly averting interstellar war.
Use your imagination!
9 downvotes
If we exclude this guy, it will be 8.
Playing on the TV or a shared computer required social interaction to negotiate time, had other people see / watch you play, played together, etc. Playing games was a social activity. Contrast that with getting isolated into your own screen, all that happens is between you and Activision, Activision holding the leverage.
I remember spending ages reading the original Homeworld manual/ lore book.
because shareholders were not involved
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