Older Games and Opinions

I recently fell into a groove of playing older games from the 2600 to Super Nintendo and Genesis era; the reason is that being in my lower 20's I never really got a good appreciation of these systems and games. I remember playing some early console systems when I was young, but I only have memory of a few. My main goal for going back and playing these games is to get a good sense on how far games have come, and what artifacts are still around.

For me I feel that some of these games of aged so poorly that all I can do is drop the controller and move onto the next game. Although game-play is something that can hold some games down, poor graphics don't help either. Some examples of games that just do not hold my attention are Altered Beast, Tecmo Bowl, and a lot of 2600 games. While some games hold up due to their art and game-play. I want to know how people around my age feel about those games. Are they history to you? Do you still play them? Is it nostalgia glasses or do you think some games stand the test of time? Feel free to respond!

I'm 25 and some of my favorite games are Super Nintendo games. Some of those favorites, I didn't play as a kid.

I haven't gone back to many NES games. I've played a bit of the original Final Fantasy, I've played a lot of Super Mario Bros, I played the old Mega Man games with the Anniversary collection that came out a decade ago, and not much else.

I don't really go back and play a lot of games from that era because that was my childhood and unlike now where I have a job and a family, back then I would play a game until I damn near wore it out. Ide rather keep my warm, fuzzy memories of how a game felt to me at the time than see what it actually is now, because no way could they hold up. I mean, I put about 100 hours into Michael Jackson's Moonwalker on the Genesis for gods sake (still the best game soundtrack ever, even though its kinda cheating)

@cornfed40: 100 hours into Moonwalker? I think you may have the record for that, not sure though...

I think it's impossible for those who haven't tried those games back in the days to get this feeling of amazement and excitement that we once felt. Those games were offering something new and they had the best graphics available. Now with the newer generation of gamers being used to those big budget AAA games and recent technology, it's normal that it looks like crap for them though.

It depends on the game. I'm finding many JRPGs have still held up (given that genre hasn't changed that much), but some have not aged well at all.

I run the spread between old and new games, but some like Earthbound influenced more modern games (LISA and Undertale) so it's kinda cool to see where things came from.

There's a certain satisfaction that only older games can deliver which is similar to that of bad games. A way of enjoying bad games is by trying to discern what repulses you about them. Older games might also turn you away, but we have the test of time and nostalgia to know which games hooked us in the first place, so we can play older games with the aim of figuring out what was so appealing in the first place. I think this view, especially if you take it further into basic game development terms of "hypothetically what are the number of things going on in the space right now?", really improves ones appreciation for older titles (and even new ones too).

I think it's tough to get a rounded view on what it would have been like to play the game for the first time when it was released, but think this technique (that game developers do all the time to learn from games/genres they otherwise dislike) allows you the ability to peak in and hopefully enjoy them. This was how I went from "the PS1 fidelity makes these games off-putting and all the characters/stories blur together" to "I need to find time to fit in finishing Final Fantasy VIII because I'm enjoying it so much"... And I had tried FFVIII 3 times before this where I couldn't get passed the first disk before hating it.

I grew up with those games, and while I might hold some of them in reverence, I also agree that they've aged terribly, but hot damn they were impressive at the time.

In this era, where most peoples' phones are easily capable of storing and emulating every 8 and 16 bit video game ever made, it'll never quite be the same.

A lot of those games have not aged well. The ones that are still playable and actually fun tend to be the true blue, dyed in wool classics like the original Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, Metroid, etc. Games that were "just good" tend to not fare as well. Those are the ones where I might watch a playthrough on YouTube or something, but they really aren't that fun to go back and play.

Honestly, at 36, I'm going to quote Greg Miller of all people, 'Old games old'. I wouldn't get too hung up on the notion you simply must experience these historical dinosaurs, I did when I was their, there are were very few greats, especially from the 2600 era.

There has never been a better time to be playing video games.

I like old games, but one thing you need to remember is that 99% of everything is crap all the time.

Altered Beast? It looked great at the time but it was always shallow and stiff. Now it doesn't look great...

Most 2600 stuff was dire because people were just figuring out game design. The 2600 was a novelty and there are relatively few really good games for it (though some do exist. River Raid is still cool, as is Frostbite.)

Most media in general doesn't hold up, but there is a reason so many indie games copy classic design. Some old games are amazing, and a lot of the pixel art games from the 16-bit generation on still look beautiful, to say nothing of the soundtracks.

If you turn on any random TV show from the 80s or 90s, or listen to radio filler music or read a novel from that time it is likely to strike you as crap. Games are the same. You either enjoy them for nostalgia or academic purposes or you should stick to the classics and the pinnacles of their genres.

Mario 3 is still amazing and fun. R-Type and Gradius remain very playable. Day of the Tentacle is still funny and enjoyable.

I could have told you that Altered Beast sucked and Tecmo Bowl felt archaic. If you aren't interested in them intellectually you should drop the controller and move on. Nobody would suggest you watch the 24th best movie of 1989 either!

Some games have aged better than others I still can enjoy the old 2-d Mortal Kombat games they aged well. I can play old PC games that came out from 01 to present 1080p helps quite a bit and graphic mods if needed. As long as I can still enjoy the gameplay graphics wouldn't be to be much of a issue.

A lot of games from gens 2 & 3 are just plain bad. Even as a kid I struggled to understand how someone could enjoy some of those games. Like the original Ghostbusters for the NES. Or the X-Men game that LJN made. Heck, even if they are classics, I also found Paperboy, Skate or Die, and Marble Madness to be frustrating as hell. Part of the reason the classics were so revered at the time is that they stood out from the waves of mediocrity.

I had better luck with the SNES, but I still ran into games like Bart's Nightmare or Animaniacs.

Paperboy, Skate or Die, and Marble Madness were all mediocre ports of arcade games (or computer games for Skate or Die.) I played the heck out of NES Paperboy as a kid, and liked Marble Madness too, but these were not great home versions and were not designed for the NES controller. They ARE hard to go back to at this point, but at the time they were cool because they brought great arcade games home (or let console players enjoy a cool PC game.)

As for the other games, well licensed trash is bad is not a huge headline.

Years from now people will be bashing Starfox Zero and Paper Mario Color Splash on the Wii U, but that won't mean the best games on the system like Mario Maker and Bayonetta 2 won't still be fun to play.