Old Games

[5k17]

This thread is about all those games from what it nowadays often perceived as the antiquity of gaming that encompasses the 1990s, 1980s and those prehistoric times before that. Does the age of games matter to you? What are the advantages and disadvantages of old vs new games?
As to myself, some of my favourites are from the those times: Master of Magic, Master of Orion II, Blood, Fantasy General, the Monkey Island series, Skyroads, and some more. I do also play newer games, but I find many of them lacking in terms of ideas; rather than creating something new, they just apply well-tried concepts to new backgrounds.

 

[EvilScientist Trainee]

Ah, the oldies (Although mines are not so old)...

I can remember playing Final Fantasy IV from the SNES version. The plot just felt outstanding, the characters were awesome. And i didn't understood a word of english at the time. Surprisingly enough, got really far.

And even though it might look like a cliché, i really enjoyed duck hunt with a group of friends. Also, the first castlevania. Civilization II, LoZ: a Link to the past. *Sigh* That's a fucking time machine there.

And while i'm on the subject, it's also fun to see new games portrayed on an old fashion.

Have anyone played the Left 4 dead demake?

 

[Deleted member 1424]

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[Inappropriate Behavior]

I loved Master of Orion 2 (it was almost funny seeing how bad 3 was.....funny if I hadn't bought it).

I guess the original Starcraft counts even though SC2 just came out. Good game there.

American McGee's Alice was fun.

Like the original Age of Empires too.

Only had one game console in my life and only played the silly Kong game that came with it. Nothing else....it wasn't even mine really.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Does the age of games matter to you? What are the advantages and disadvantages of old vs new games?

Games will always be secondary in my life, even if they became another obsession. I was heavily into the culture of '96-'05 but after that I became more interested in the net.

Nowadays it's tough to play old action games with no story or depth, because then gaming becomes just a mindless activity to pass the time, that doesn't mean they aren't still fun for a while though. New games are pretty much just story rehashes with improved graphics, they all offer the same things. I need an innovative nextgen game to interest me.

Favorite console:
Sega Genesis, Playstation 1

 

[The Gopher]

Triplane Turmoil! I was probably the highest score in the world.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Something I always liked about old games is that they didn't have to make sense outside of themselves. A lot of modern games try to keep things as realistic as they possibly can. Realism is irrelevant, gameplay and fun are what's important.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Realism is irrelevant, gameplay and fun are what's important.

Yea, games are a means to escape, why would you want them to be realistic?? (looking at you skate 1&2)

 

[ApostateAbe]

Back in the day, there was a very cool game titled, "Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds." It was a worthy sequel to the original "Ultima Underworld," which was a pioneering 3D role-playing game. I downloaded it recently and ran it on DOSbox. I now hate that game. It is terrible. From playing it again, I remembered all of the maddening elements of that game, and progress in game engineering has put those maddening elements in the correct perspective--design flaws.

Today, PC and console gaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and it took only a single generation of engineering after the early Ultima series to very effectively maximize the addictive power of games. I am concerned for the future. I have seen very many people get sucked into these alternate realities because, I suppose, it is better than the actual reality. There are a bunch of people who spend many hours each day in World of Warcraft. They are the same people who could be contributing very big things to society. I had to consciously restrain myself from PC games on many occasions.

 

[Melllvar]

Something I always liked about old games is that they didn't have to make sense outside of themselves. A lot of modern games try to keep things as realistic as they possibly can. Realism is irrelevant, gameplay and fun are what's important.

Sir, I disagree.

The more advanced technology and realism allows games to not just be about gameplay, but story and atmosphere too. Now you can either have a game that is great because it tells a great story (e.g. Metal Gear Solid 4) or creates a wonderful atmosphere (e.g. Bioshock), or is great because it has great gameplay (Left 4 Dead). I think the really best games combine both (Uncharted, Mass Effect). Maybe those aren't the best examples, since Bioshock and MGS4 still have pretty good gameplay, but look at Final Fantasy 13. The gameplay is pretty out of date, and not really that much fun by today's standards, IMO. But it still wins because of the story and atmosphere. Alan Wake's another example: the gameplay is fairly mediocre, but the story keeps you going. Personally I think a lot of modern video games have stories that rival or surpass the majority of movies that come out now.

As for old-school games, I still play Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, and Super Metroid on the emulator sometimes, and Breakout clones on my cell phone.

 

[ApostateAbe]

As for old-school games, I still play Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, and Super Metroid on the emulator sometimes, and Breakout clones on my cell phone.

Those are three games that have not lost much value with time. Donkey Kong Country was and remains an awesome experience. Super Metroid could be the best game ever--I regret that I discovered Super Metroid only as an adult with an emulator.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Sir, I disagree.

The more advanced technology and realism allows games to not just be about gameplay, but story and atmosphere too. Now you can either have a game that is great because it tells a great story or creates a wonderful atmosphere or is great because it has great gameplay.

I'm not sure that's where SpaceYeti was coming from. I agree that technology has improved games in the ways you listed but realism beyond graphics just makes a game very uninteresting. Themes, gameplay and physics should not be restricted by our own limits in reality.

 

[Melllvar]

How often does that actually happen though? Some games are fun specifically because of the realism (Fallout, Oblivion, Alone in the Dark, Heavy Rain). Sure some overrealism can be annoying (like actually having to walk everywhere in Morrowind), but that's just bad game design. Not every game was meant to be realistic, but some games are fun specifically because of it. In general I think the trend has been good, it's just a matter of finding ways to add the realism without taking away from the core experience or pissing off the user.

Although you're right that I probably shouldn't confuse realism with story, and if done poorly it can detract from the game.

 

[LPolaright]

I'm having trouble finding a game I liked, it was very old - back in the day I was 10 I think.
Anyways if any one knows this game -
3D game, bird's view but not so much far away as RTS games (kinda like sonic 3D - NOT SONIC HEROES or anything of that sort). The main character was a man with a blue kind of dress I think? Anyway he had some sort of power I think to throw a yellow ball, I'm not sure, memory is a bit fuzzy. He could drive things, and I remember that part of the scenery was a city, a museum(at the beginning of the game), a desert and space. also I remember that some of the characters were wizards, aliens and undead. and at the middle end of the game you could go to an intergalactic trip or something like that to another planet.
It was a really weird game but I enjoyed the puzzles that it gave me to solve, really interesting.

Ive searched the game through lists of old games but couldnt find it, I can't remember the game but i think the main characters name was something with Z. seriously if anyone knows this game give me a shout... I really miss that one! I think it was 1999 when I played it.

If youre wondering that was my king of oldies that i played (played Oni too if anyone knows it)
but since im pretty young (18) i havent really played anything too old.

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

Donkey Kong Country was and remains an awesome experience.

Is that the one where you ran around collecting bananas? Where you could tag team between a gorilla and chimp?

 

[SpaceYeti]

Sir, I disagree.

The more advanced technology and realism allows games to not just be about gameplay, but story and atmosphere too. Now you can either have a game that is great because it tells a great story (e.g. Metal Gear Solid 4) or creates a wonderful atmosphere (e.g. Bioshock), or is great because it has great gameplay (Left 4 Dead). I think the really best games combine both (Uncharted, Mass Effect). Maybe those aren't the best examples, since Bioshock and MGS4 still have pretty good gameplay, but look at Final Fantasy 13. The gameplay is pretty out of date, and not really that much fun by today's standards, IMO. But it still wins because of the story and atmosphere. Alan Wake's another example: the gameplay is fairly mediocre, but the story keeps you going. Personally I think a lot of modern video games have stories that rival or surpass the majority of movies that come out now.

As for old-school games, I still play Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, and Super Metroid on the emulator sometimes, and Breakout clones on my cell phone.

I'm not sure you understood what I meant, then.

I don't disagree that story is a big part of games. I assumed an inclusion of "story" within my use of "fun", as good story, illustrated well, can only add to the fun. And some games need good, realistic physics in order for it to be a believable game. However, it's not necessary to all games. If you take a gander through oldskool games, you see a cast of anthropomorphic animals and objects, body fluid as weapons, conjured fireballs, inexplicably humanoid suits on animals with no limbs, etc. Magic, dragons, alchemy, hollow worlds, airships and a host of other obviously fictional/mythical things.

As long as the gameworld does not contradict itself, it can have any sort of physics or mechanics imaginable. But the game is good because the controls aren't difficult to learn, the mechanics of the world make sense within the game itself, the story is involved, good, and played out smoothly, etc. How real it appears when compared to the real world really isn't important, though. It's a game, not the real world.

And that's not to say I don't value graphics, either. They're low on my list of priorities, but I do like the game to look nice, smooth, and I like to know what the things I'm interacting with are supposed to actually be. I don't care how realistic the 3D models are compared to real life, I care that I can distinguish what it is and it's role within the game.

For example, one of my friends refuses to play World of Warcraft because it's too cartoony. Sure, the graphics are undeniably outdated, and they're certainly cartoony, but that simply doesn't bother me, and I can't empathize with the annoyance. This same friend doesn't want to play a human when he plays fictional, fantastic games, either, because he's one in real life. So I dunno what kid of realistic/not realistic dynamic he looks for, since in real life he can't throw magical fireballs at giant devil pigs, but whatever.

 

[ApostateAbe]

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Is that the one where you ran around collecting bananas? Where you could tag team between a gorilla and chimp?

That's the game. If you haven't played it, download it.

 

[-Z-]

First game ever I played on the PC was Golden Axe, loved it and always remember it as an awesome game. Except that, at that time I enjoyed almost every 2D platformer that was available(Superfrog, Prehistorik series etc.).

The games I enjoyed the most, though, were the RPG's of the 90's.

I was always a fan of Black Isle and practically worshiped most of their games that they made, most favorite include Baldurs Gate series, Fallout & Fallout 2 and Planescape Torment. Icewind Dale wasn't as great as those, but it was good (not IWD2 which was a total waste of time).

Dink Smallwood also comes to mind.

I have played some more games on consoles but can't remember all their names, but the ones i liked the most were Conkers Bad Fur Day, Zelda and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for N64.


As far as JRPG's go, I kind of always considered them to flashy, and to linear for my tastes. So no FF for me.

Anyway, playing these games kind of marked my whole childhood since I was mostly doing that since i was about 5 yo. I am now almost 24 btw.
AND I LACK FOCUS. ^^

 

[EyeSeeCold]

First game ever I played on the PC was Golden Axe, loved it and always remember it as an awesome game.

Golden Axe! I loved that game.

 

[-Z-]

Yeah, it was pretty awesome and the best thing is, later on i found a similar game for SNES and played it extensively. It's called Knights of the Round. ^^

 

[5k17]

...the soundtracks! The soundtracks!
There are still pretty good game soundtracks nowadays, but so far, I have not played any game newer than 2000 that could match those:
YouTube - Fantasy General OST - Keldonia
YouTube - Skyroads - Road 8 Music
YouTube - Master of Orion 2 : Battle at Antares Soundtrack (Galactic theme2)

 

[Thoughtful]

Simcopter

"I'm the CEO of McDonnell Douglas."
It was buggy as hell, but had sweet music, hilarious adds, and all kinds of generally fun features. great to play for laughs and goggles

 

[Jennywocky]

Arcade games I was very much into:
Tempest
Battlezone
Golden Axe
Double Dragon
Q*bert
Ms. Pac Man
Street Fighter
Virtua Fighter
Bad Dudes
Shinobi
Gauntlet
old pinball (like Royal Flush) where you could work the machine

I was so good at Q*Bert that one day I spent over 6 hours in front of the machine on one quarter, and had so many free guys left that the little icons disappeared off the edge of the screen but were still being accumulated (I think it was somewhere in the 17+ range)... and finally I just handed the controls to someone watching because I had to go home. That was the last time I played Q*Bert, because I had beaten the game and it was no longer interesting.

I had an Atari when younger (Asteroids, Pitfall, Missile Command, Adventure, all the old old games) and then a Nintendo (I beat Mike Tyson's Punch*Out).

I got into computers in the mid-80's just so I could play video games, ironically then branched out, and computers ended up becoming the center of my career. On the mainframes at school I was playing Nethack and Moria. On PC I was playing Adventure, Zork 1-3, other Infocom games, Wizardry 1-5, Ultima 1-8, Grim Fandango, lots of Sierra games (including the Kings Quest), HeroQuest 1-4, Castle Wolfenstein, Doom 1-3, Quake 1+, Black & White, Need for Speed (various), Dungeon Siege, Tomb Raider 1-4, SWKOTOR 1-2, and Dragon Age, among others.

I've also put a lot of time into City of Heroes and WoW, and a few months into EQII. I tried the Matrix Online and Champions Online, but got bored within a few days.

I think the music has just gotten better and better. Maybe I'm old school, but I love evocative music, and when Tomb Raider came out, that oboe opening the game and echoing through vast subterranean space just set the perfect mood for the series... and then in later games, hearing the theme be translated into various musical styles... It's funny how music can define a game, not just visuals or story. I remember also like Katrina's theme in Hero's Quest 3.

Dragon Age had some decent music as well. Nowadays, some games can (and do) release soundtracks or downloadables of their music.

I don't actually play much nowadays at all. I get bored trying to play MMOs again, and Dragon Age was the last thing I have really played... and before that, not much. I am in a life stage where I'm working on being out of the house more / with friends more often, and am finally in a position where I'm not trapped at home if I do not want to be.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of old vs new games?

Well obviously graphic quality has improved. When graphic quality first began to improve (in the mid/late 90's), we saw a lot of games with better graphics but more hardware issues as well as just... bad gameplay. But I think over time, now, we are seeing games with decent graphics and decent gameplay.

New games have a lot more resources to work with -- music files, graphics files, and game size/length is much larger/longer; there's more room for games that are not like cattle chutes, they can respond to user input in terms of how the rest of the game unfolds; and interconnectivity and user communities can also play an important role in gameplay. SWKOTOR 1 and 2 were amazing not just because of the fairly clean graphics and interface, but because of all the options open to story as well as accommodating user behavior.

I think the beauty of old games is, aside from the fact that not as many games were out there so some really awful games could be released, the games that excelled all hinged on story. I think this is one reason Infocom did so well for so long (as text games) until graphics started to truly take off and ended their success, and why Sierra did so well at first... at the time, they were graphically near the pinnacle of the industry, while Roberta Williams ensured that there would still be a main focus on story. There was a simplicity and sweetness about some of those early games. I still remember Grim Fandango very fondly, when cut scenes were a "new" concept in video games before Tomb Raider and others started to incorporate a more "movie like" feel to things.

 

[Melllvar]

I'm not sure you understood what I meant, then.

I don't disagree that story is a big part of games. I assumed an inclusion of "story" within my use of "fun", as good story, illustrated well, can only add to the fun. And some games need good, realistic physics in order for it to be a believable game. However, it's not necessary to all games. If you take a gander through oldskool games, you see a cast of anthropomorphic animals and objects, body fluid as weapons, conjured fireballs, inexplicably humanoid suits on animals with no limbs, etc. Magic, dragons, alchemy, hollow worlds, airships and a host of other obviously fictional/mythical things.

As long as the gameworld does not contradict itself, it can have any sort of physics or mechanics imaginable. But the game is good because the controls aren't difficult to learn, the mechanics of the world make sense within the game itself, the story is involved, good, and played out smoothly, etc. How real it appears when compared to the real world really isn't important, though. It's a game, not the real world.

And that's not to say I don't value graphics, either. They're low on my list of priorities, but I do like the game to look nice, smooth, and I like to know what the things I'm interacting with are supposed to actually be. I don't care how realistic the 3D models are compared to real life, I care that I can distinguish what it is and it's role within the game.

For example, one of my friends refuses to play World of Warcraft because it's too cartoony. Sure, the graphics are undeniably outdated, and they're certainly cartoony, but that simply doesn't bother me, and I can't empathize with the annoyance. This same friend doesn't want to play a human when he plays fictional, fantastic games, either, because he's one in real life. So I dunno what kid of realistic/not realistic dynamic he looks for, since in real life he can't throw magical fireballs at giant devil pigs, but whatever.

Yeah, sorry, I did misread you there. I actually agree with pretty much all of that. Although I still think some games are fun because of the needless realism (as examples, Alone in the Dark makes you blink your eyes in the beginning, and Heavy Rain [which I haven't actually played] seems to be pretty much a real-life simulator).

I can't relate to your friend. Personally I go for the crazy sci-fi shoot-em-up types, so the more out-of-this-world the better. I suspect he may just not like the art style and be poorly communicating his feelings on the game. I didn't go much for the cel-shaded art style of Borderlands, even though that was supposedly a selling point, but I wouldn't confuse that with a desire for more realism.

It pisses me off more when a game breaks it's own rules and takes you out of the gameplay mode, like using quick-time events in the middle of an otherwise not-quick-time game. I kind of feel like story should unfold in whatever way the gameplay allows, and when they find needless excuses to put you in movie-mode it seems like a deus ex machina moment. Half-life 2 is an extreme example of not doing this - the entire story unfolds in gameplay, without any cutscenes (that I can remember).

 

[Cosmic Monster]

All my favorite games are from the 90s.
Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES)
Super Mario 64 (N64)
Twisted Metal (PS)

 

[Anchorite]

A lot of great games came out in the 80s (Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Metroid) and the 90s (Super Mario World, Ocarina of Time, Doom) but the video game industry of today is in just about the healthiest state it's ever been in and that has been good over all. My one complaint is that I think the increased popularity of games brought on this stupid phase where 70% of games have to be first person shooters or else they're "kids games."That being said a lot of great stuff has been getting made (the Fable series, Uncharted, Super Mario Galaxy). The one draw back to modern games is that they are so expensive to make and take so long to make, for that reason there is so much less getting made than we can see in previous generations.

 

[jachian]

A lot of great games came out in the 80s (Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Metroid) and the 90s (Super Mario World, Ocarina of Time, Doom) but the video game industry of today is in just about the healthiest state it's ever been in and that has been good over all. My one complaint is that I think the increased popularity of games brought on this stupid phase where 70% of games have to be first person shooters or else they're "kids games."That being said a lot of great stuff has been getting made (the Fable series, Uncharted, Super Mario Galaxy). The one draw back to modern games is that they are so expensive to make and take so long to make, for that reason there is so much less getting made than we can see in previous generations.

The golden age of games was the late 80's and 90's.
I dont know what you mean by "healthiest state its ever been". I dont think so.

I think there is no imagination.... all graphics, no gameplay, poor design,.. they leave nothing to the imagination.
Games have become interactive movies now............ To me they just seem so very unsatisfying.

 

[Stoic Beverage]

"Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" is arguably the best game of all time.
"Chrono Trigger" It was let out in 1996, I think. Does that count as old enough? If it does, then it is unarguably the best game of all time.

 

[Anchorite]

The golden age of games was the late 80's and 90's.
I dont know what you mean by "healthiest state its ever been". I dont think so.

I think there is no imagination.... all graphics, no gameplay, poor design,.. they leave nothing to the imagination.
Games have become interactive movies now............ To me they just seem so very unsatisfying.

It's in it's healthiest state because it is vastly more popular than ever. Games are used to tell complex stories and are generally more engaging than before. If you don't like that's fine, but the fact of the matter is that video games are a huge market and technology allows more unique designs among games, You can play them anywhere you are, and more simple games along the lines of what was seen in the 80s and 90s are being made by smaller companies and individuals are all over the internet and portable devices. How you feel about that is completely irrelevant.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Methinks activity is being confused with healthy.

From a business perspective I agree, the industry is really productive right now. But that does not mean everything else is healthy about the industry.

 

[jachian]

It's in it's healthiest state because it is vastly more popular than ever. Games are used to tell complex stories and are generally more engaging than before. If you don't like that's fine, but the fact of the matter is that video games are a huge market and technology allows more unique designs among games, You can play them anywhere you are, and more simple games along the lines of what was seen in the 80s and 90s are being made by smaller companies and individuals are all over the internet and portable devices. How you feel about that is completely irrelevant.

I totally disagree.........
Yes improvements in technology mean "games" are much more accessible to the market. "Games" seem to be more mainstream now.

I have looked closely however, and the fact is that most of the current games are not actually games.......

Again an interactive story book or film is not a game. and neither is a simulation.

Just look at the IP out there. pretty much the same IP from the 70's, 80's and 90's is rehashed....... mario, sonic, streetfighter...... the various spinofs or similar titles are only being repackaged..... I cant even remember any new character or concept in the last 6 years that has really made an impact on me or changed the industry.

The creativity is non existent........ the craftsmanship shabby.

I remember getting my hands on a copy of super metroid on the snes when i was young....... yes 2d sprite graphics...... and being utterly amazed at what a piece of genius that game was........ and still is...... given the technology of the time.

the same thing with samurai showdown 2 and many others......... In those games gameplay was paramount........ the stories supported the game, not the other way around...... and what the stories, the graphics, the sound could not convey.... these games where such intricately designed as to MAKE your imagination fill in the gaps

This lack of substance..... of imagination, of skill, is what has killed the industry..... even though every tom, dick and harry wants to produce mindless titles to fill their pockets........

So I guess if your looking at popularity.... as in how many people are playing java games on their handset..... and the number of people punching the air with their Wii controllers..... then yeah you could say the industry is healthy.....


........... As far as am concerned the industry lost its appeal to me along time ago........ I cant even bring myself to call the rubbish am seeing now as games....