Some musings on how to think about games you played long after the fact in the context of a console's library

For a lot of people this question is going to seem stupid and pointless and it kind of is, but it's something I've been thinking about.

I owned a PlayStation during its relevant cycle. Ape Escape was a big release towards the end of that cycle and though I played demos and eventually picked up a Greatest Hits copy on the cheap, I never actually played the whole thing. Until it released for PS4/PS5 last year. I've now finished the game and platinumed it and it definitely lived up to the hype. It's definitely not my favorite PS1 game ever (That's probably Symphony of the Night, Metal Gear Solid, or FF VII or Tactics) but it might crack my top 10 and definitely cracks my top 20. It's also probably my favorite 3D platformer for the system.

On the other hand I played the game in a totally different context from its original release. Not just later in time but on a different controller, upscaled on a modern display (which can mean lag) and in an emulator with rewind and save states. I definitely used the rewind function a lot, especially for some of the more annoying jumps in the game, and I also made liberal use of save states and the suspend/resume function so I could just stop playing in the middle of a level if I wanted to, and those are things that greatly affect the game experience. All that means I had a very different experience in some ways than I would have on the native platform.

On the other hand the content was the same as the original release, and I think that I can compensate for those differences. I've played PS1 in a variety of contexts over the years and I don't think that playing on PS4/5 is fundamentally different from playing on something like a PS3 (which doesn't have the more advanced emulator functions) or a PS Classic or an Evercade.

My general policy is that I count games that are emulated or a straight port but not a remake. So I consider the PS4 version of Ape Escape to be pretty much the same as the PS1 version but the PS4 version of Klonoa (which is a port of the PS2 remake) is not the same as PS1 Klonoa. I don't really rank the Spyro PS1 games because I never really played the original releases and instead went through the Reignited trilogy (which I really enjoyed.)

As I said I know a lot of people don't care about this at all and that's totally valid, but I really enjoy filling in gaps of my knowledge of a system's library, and part of that for me is figuring out what games I like best on that system. Most of my experience with Genesis games comes from emulation (though I did play some on real systems at friends houses in the 90s) but I'm pretty confident in how I feel about the games for that system.

For me games have never been about the hardware and always about the software. I love retro games and exploring old libraries but I have no interest in buying old hardware and the other stuff you need for a good set up, and I love the conveniences of modern interpretations of retro, things like save states and rewind functions. I didn't have to play Ape Escape this way. I have a PS3 and the original disc so I could have played it there with a controller much more similar to the original Dual Shock but things like trophy support and more importantly rewind and save states were too alluring. But it is a different experience because of those things and that's something I try to keep in mind in thinking about where it fits in my personal pantheon. The truth is that nothing will ever recapture the feeling of playing my real PlayStation in the late 90s on a Sunday afternoon with a friend from school. It's impossible. But at least I can still enjoy the cool monkey game and the satisfaction of stopping that jerk Spectre and his army of silly simians 4 generations of hardware after their first adventure.

A very interesting story of your console gaming experience.

This is something I've though about when playing enhanced backwards-compatible games on the Xbox. There are tons of games that have been rightfully criticized for poor performance on consoles. When I play these games with improved performance, it's clear that my experience is not the same that most people had when the game was released. Does that give me right to participate in the conversation about these games? Can I argue with people that a game is underrated when I didn't experience the technical problems that most people did? I don't know. This is of course excluding the PC as a platform where everything goes and official remakes where people typically specify that they played the remake.

Take The Evil Within for example. The infamous black bars during gameplay and still typically below 30 frames. That game never got much of a following and most people tend to think that it's very mid at best. On the Series S it's at least a solid 30fps without the black bars, and of course lighting fast load times off the SSD too in a game where you die and reload a lot. So it's no surprise that I liked that game more than most.

I had the opposite experience with Red Factions: Guerrilla Remastered on my PS4, which is the console I played it on. All I kept hearing over the years, was how its one of the greatest third person action game ever made. So I played it thanks to having a PS Now subscription back when it was separate from PS Plus, and at first it seemed okay. But then a lot of gameplay bugs, and cheap difficulty spikes in later levels ruined the experience for me. All the game did was make me appreciate more how modern action games are made. Gravity Rush Remastered did live up to the hype. I really enjoyed that game. The difference though, was that Red Factions Guerrilla was streamed off a PS3 though PS Now, while Gravity Rush was recreated to work and play well on a PS4. I don't know if that made the difference or not. I personally don't think it did. If I were to play Red Factions Guerrilla on a PS3 hardware in my house, I still don't think I would've liked it. But I completely skipped the Xbox 360/PS3 era for PC gaming during that time, and don't regret it.

I play old video games primarily for fun. When it comes to fun, save states make the experience better. There's an argument that they ruin the challenge, but I don't really want to restart a game when I lose all my lives like you do in a lot of older games. Even when older games have saves, they can be stingy about them, or have poor save point placement, or have too much space in between save points, or whatever. Resolution bumps and framerates also can only help to make the experience better. Sure, I could pull out my Xbox 360 and play Gears of War 3 on it, but have you seen the Series X enhancements for that game? They look great! Resolution bumps and framerate bumps can only help make a game that much better.

If I'm looking to play a game to better understand why it's important, I can think about it in the context of when it came out. Like if I were to play Ape Escape, I wouldn't just approach it as "a game people thought was good on PS1". I'd think about it in terms of "this game came out when analog sticks were still a novelty thing that most games didn't require, this game does, why, and how significant is that?" Turns out very significant as analog sticks wound up becoming completely necessary for 3D gaming.

That's not to say there's no value in buying a CRT, original equipment, and the game you want to play. There sure is! But honestly I'm not trying to be some kind of video game scholar. I'm really just here to have some fun, and I can do that better on my computer, with an emulator and whatever controller I choose to use. If I want to be more academic about my approach to whatever old game I'm playing, I can consider a game in the context of its release.

I also want to note that for a short time I was trying to buy original game carts and the stuff to play them "just like it was back in the old days" I mostly bought some SNES games and I'm really happy I have them, but I spent some time thinking about it and I figured I'd rather spend that money elsewhere and play more easily available modern versions of those games. That really helped me mentally settle on "this is the method I use to play old video games" and not think about it anymore. I also still have a pretty solid collection of PS1, PS2, and Gamecube games from my childhood so I'm not lacking in an "old games collection for nostalgia's sake". I don't have everything I'd like but I don't really need it all to do what I really want to do, which is just have fun with video games of all shapes and sizes, new and old.

@bigsocrates: I think it's a good topic to talk about, but I think as long as you have the context of what things were like at the time then playing on new hardware with benefits doesn't cheapen the experience. Even with save states or rewind you can still see difficulty spikes or bad game design, you are just saving yourself time in death animations and restarts.

Not that you are suggesting this, but the only time this issue would come up would be in a sense of beating a notoriously hard game and claiming that your journey was the same. If I beat contra with save states and rewind and compared that to what Dan and Vinny did says those abilities is not the same. However if you just want to experience a game or even beat a retro game, then as long as you understand what other people went through it's totally legit to use the abilities you have now.

There are still games that just "feel" better on retro consoles or tvs, but that's again just something you have to keep in mind when playing a game. Playing goldeneye on a switch is not the same as playing on an N64 controller, because the game was designed with one controller in mind.. but neither is the wrong way.

I wonder to what extent this could inform a wider discussion of what constitutes a considered-"legitimate" experience.

In my teens, I played SNES and N64 games on 50Hz PAL consoles to a 14-inch CRT through a cheese-wire RF cable - a friend of mine whose parents had much more money played on imported, 60Hz consoles and a bigger, better TV with fancy inputs and premium interconnects. Even though I've accumulated an enviable collection of gaming and AV equipment as an adult, those memories burn with envy even now...

... one might consider this is a different question: but I suppose what I'm saying is, the passing of time isn't an essential requirement for asking whether two experiences of the same game are directly comparable.

@imunbeatable80: I pretty much agree with this take, but for some games you can really alter the nature of the game this way, and those harder games are often where that happens. A month or so ago I decided to go through Mega Man 1 for the first time. I played it as a kid but never got too far and even as an adult I found a lot of the cheap deaths frustrating and have never enjoyed pattern memorization games. I abused the heck out of rewind and went through it but I don't consider myself to have beaten that game or even necessarily fully played it because of how integral the death and restart mechanics are to that. On the other hand I played Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and really only used the rewind function for the final boss because I was underleveled and he has just...way too many HP. I didn't want to grind to the right level so I just cheated past him, but I don't really think I lost anything there in terms of experience like I did with Mega Man. So it somewhat depends on the game.

@dh2005: I think that's an interesting question. And of course with PC games there's even more variety, not to mention the PS4 vs PS4 pro and the like. For me the dividing line is what the developers could have forseen durin the time when the game was developed. SNES designers knew their games might be played on PAL vs NTSC consoles and different TVs but probably had no idea that one day they would be emulated with extra features like rewind. On the other hand they were aware of Game Genie and often put in cheat codes so maybe it's not such a bright line.

The problem with old games is that they're bad. The only reason to play anything more than one generation old would be for intellectual curiosity or nostalgia.

Also, all game experiences are legitimate. There is no wrong way to play bad video games. Games are bad because one or more aspects in the design or execution has failed, if a game has failed you than you cannot fail it. Thus any method of playing old games is valid.

@bigsocrates: Sorry, slow to reply - but I take your points.

I make it clear on my site where I put my reviews that I use save states if I feel the need to to keep going with a game and that I generally don't use them excessively. I still play various newer games (and not necessarily easier ones, Hollow Knight or DKCR for example) without them, so I'd like to think I have a good idea of what a game would be like without them even if I did use them. I wouldn't say I beat the game in the same way as someone who didn't use them if there was a discussion like that, that would be dishonest.

When it comes to systems that I didn't play at all I try to check reviews and play other games to get a feel for what could and couldn't be done on that system.

There have been games where I wanted to play them on the actual system because emulation was obviously not as good, such as Parappa and Trauma Center (DS)