Giant Bomb Presents: Paul Barnett's Golden Rule

I have played plenty of games I played as a child and found them to actually not be very good. I've also played games I didn't like at the time and found they were quite good.

I don't think it's very difficult to reassess a game as an adult and not have your judgement clouded by nostalgia.

I'm not entirely sure if Paul was joking or not, but I lived in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere and the big local shop sold the NES. Me and a bunch of my friends had the NES. I got it for £100 and it came with Duck Hunt/Mario, two controllers and a gun. Games were like £35-45.

I have not been a huge fan of Paul since he hyped up Warhammer Online and it ended up being mostly BS and terrible. He's definitely a good hype man though.

That said, that was a solid interview.

It's conversations like these that remind me that Jeff is 15 years older than me. Seriously though, that was delightful to listen to, even though I didn't recognise a fucking thing you were talking about except GoldenEye, Halo, Minecraft, Doom and Quake 1.

Can my "Golden Age" basically stretch my entire life? Because I still love the shit out of videogames just as much as I did when I was younger, perhaps even more. I'm 26. Super Mario Bros 3 is an important game for me, but Super Mario Galaxy 2 is too.

The concept is certainly a helpful perspective to have, though, a good example being that Donkey Kong Country is an extremely important series to many people, but the Giant Bomb crew seem to basically dismiss it because they'd moved on from the SNES by the time it was released.

FFXII is one of the best Final Fantasies btw. >_>

It's different for everyone and a sound theory in my opinion. I started gaming all the way back when a boxing game was two white sticks on a black screen. Contra was my first big gaming experience when for the first time in my life I saw a ton of color, characters that actually had arms and legs, awesome music, scrolling levels. Yet my "Golden Age" didn't really begin until much later. Like for me Fallout 1 and 2 are amazing games and to this day unique experiences - yet I see people say "uhh I tried it but the combat sucked, Fallout 3 is just overall better in every way" and it makes me cringe to hear it each time.

So... is this the Paul Barnett GOTY discussion or is that still to come?

I love listening to Paul. My golden age was 2003 to around 2009.

Paul is a hero.

The holiday season has started.

Is it just me or does Barnett sound sort of like Dave Snider.. with a British dialect?

Ah, love this view of nostalgia. Reminds me not just of gaming but my love of films as well, especially that transition into making/critiquing a medium.

I still love all the junk I hunted down and watched before getting into films in an academic way and still love movies. But yeah, post-masters tracking down VHS copies of banned Argento horror films in Manchester bong shops seems like a long time ago :)

Oh and -

I love the man. At this point, EA should just pay him to talk into a microphone all day, about whatever the hell he wants to talk and upload that.

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My golden age began when I started collecting arcade games, and I cannot remember when that began.

Golden age from 80's to 90's and beyond and that's just a tiny part of my collection which got too large, and then I got the good habit of selling things I knew I'd never use/play/whatev again.

Damn good golden age. Superguns, countless arcade cabinets, now I have a supergun again and I'm wondering what PCB I'm going to pick up next.

@meatball: My opinion PS1 + PS2 Final Fantasy games > 8 bit + PS3/360 Final Fantasy games. "Shrugs"

He's right on the money. I can't appreciate most anything before the late SNES Era where I entered into gaming the mid 90s. The stuff that I can often comes from the stuff that was ported to GBA (Mario World) or people were so into I had to try it (Earthbound, Chrono Trigger).

That era was all about Rare far as I'm concerned. That was my golden age and theirs.

I like the bit where he made a joke about England.

Any man that thinks that Liefeld ruined comics is a good man in my perspective. And speaking of golden age. No GAME, NOT ONE GAME will ever be better than 2p Super Mario Kart. NOT ONE GAME

I like the golden age theory. Don't think it's entirely true. I mean if that was the case, I would never ever like anything different from what I used to when I was a kid. Nostalgia isn't all liking games are about. But in a broad sense, sure. Experiences very different from my own, like computer gaming or consoles from before even the NES are hard to get a sense of. Never going to appreciate an atari game.

Nice interview!

I don't know... I guess maybe I'm strange, but I feel my golden age is in the future... Don't get me wrong, I have lovedgames. But I have no romanticized vision of anything in the past. Sure, My first absolute love was the Genesis, my first console, and I love Dreamcast, but I remain pretty critical of both of them...

I suppose I am kind of enamored with the potential of games, but what they have not quite realized yet...

God dammit, I love Paul Barnett. Giant Bomb needs more Paul on a monthly basis.

I had a weird golden age. I was born in July 1989 and in 1994-1995 my dad got a console from a guy he knew, it was an Atari 2600, it had a couple of carts, some racing game, combat and one other game that I can't think of the name.

At the time I didn't think this was an old console, I didn't have any friends that had consoles, since I lived in Romania that was a communist country up until the end of 1989, technology had to catch up, so there were no TV shows/commercials about video games that I can remember anyway.

So after the Atari 2600, my dad bought a bootleg Famicom (there were tons of them in the market), this was in 1996, and the cartridges were Japanese too. I played Super Mario Bros. Double Dragon, Excitebike, Tennis, Duck Hunt, Disney's Aladdin, Ice Climber, River City Ransom(in Japanese) and loads more, I had like 60 cartridges. My neighbors and friends played on their bootleg Famicoms too, and we traded games with each other. I found it weird that these games had old Copyrights on them, but I didn't question it so much since we had fun playing. And I played that thing until 2001 when we got a PC.

I guess the thing was that the consoles from that era (1995-2001) were mega expensive in Romania, or hard to find, and the cartridges/CDs too, but these Famicom/NES cartridges were cheap, like equivalent to 1-2 dollars each and anybody could afford them. I remember watching some German TV show that had a N64 game and I was like "Oh man, I wonder if I could find that game to play on my console!". I didn't know there were newer consoles out there. I found out pretty late there were 2 consoles between NES and Gamecube. Even now, If I ask someone to tell me a console name, all they know is Playstation, and that's it. (I'm talking about a normal person that plays games on their PC)

So me and my friends had a fake golden age in the 90s with games from the 80s early 90s. Since the NES/Famicom had a long life span, I played some games on it that were newish, like Mighty Final Fight. So I have nostalgia for games that were released late on the NES/Famicom, games like Mighty Final Fight.

Oh, you mean Portuguese?

It was Great!

More Golden Paul next year, please!

It's strange, my concept of a golden age lasted from about 8yo-30yo. I think it ended when the replacements dropped off, as during that 22-odd years of gaming, things came and went from current love. Platformers and sports games went to racing, Fighters, and RPGs, then to strategy, puzzle, RPG, and MMO, and I can play those older games from that era, even ones I never played back then (Gunstar Heroes was a recent example) no problem.

I've also finally mastered isometric Infinity CRPGs of the turn of the century, but it took till Planescape till that finally *clicked*. I'd like for others too, but like this wonderful Escapist article alludes to, I'm afraid I'm one of a few that can, and it took ALOT of effort.

I'd also like to think I articulated why most games of Gen 7 not only weren't for me, but also gave me reason to know they weren't good enough for me, either rather than me not liking that new-fangled hooziwhatzit gewgaws.

Thanks for crystalizing some thoughts I'd had on this subject, Paul. I am all enlightened 'n stuff now!

"A short Italian plumber who doesn't fix anything and spends most of his time chasing women" is probably the best description of Mario as narrated by Paul Barnett.

Zx Spectrum lords of midnight reference? I loved that game!

My golden age was early nineties PC games, first console was the mega drive. This year I played the ds castlevania games, just bought a vita and am loving symphony of the night.

So poop to that theory

@jarowdowsky: Damm right. I remember seeing Fantasy World Dizzy when I was about 8. First game I ever played right the way through. I still have my Spectrum, it works too.

I generally agree with a lot of what Paul says about the Golden Age theory, but some of it just doesn't ring true for me. My first system was an NES, but I mainly grew up with a SNES and N64, and though there's games on all of those that I hold near and dear, I think games keep getting better. This reminds me of the "Mario Kart Theory" where your first Mario Kart is your favorite, which is most certainly not the case. I played them all in order and had the original SNES game when it was new and the DS game is still my favorite, followed by Double Dash. My first Mario game was SMB 3, but I think Galaxy has taken the crown on that series for me too.

I definitely feel like Nintendo was the best in the NES and SNES eras as well as in the GameCube era possibly because I grew up with only Nintendo consoles up to 2001 when my family got a PS2 for Christmas. I think the PlayStation is probably better than the N64 but I think that whole generation was problematic and dumb in a lot of ways one way or another. I don't understand people liking the Genesis/Mega Drive over the SNES at all. Super Nintendo was better in every respect, though it did come nearly two years later soooo I dunno.

I had PARADROID on the C64 and I could never figure out how to play the damn thing.

I think I got it on one of those free demo tapes on the cover of Zzzaapp 64 but I don' think it came with instructions.

Two old men farting around about old shit, the podcast... dot com.

Joking aside, interesting topic of conversation. I think there's some validity to the Golden Age theory. There are exceptions of course. I started off on the super Nintendo, and I feel that the 16 bit era of gaming holds up a lot more than the first foray into polygonal graphics. I loved Golden Eye at the time, but it doesn't hold up these days, both visually and game play wise. Then again, Ocarina and Mario64 DO hold up in my opinion. There doesn't seem to a constant to rely on.

What makes it harder is how much nostalgia clouds your judgment. I don't, however, believe that nostalgia is necessarily a bad thing. It's not a ball and chain that prisons you from reason and logic. Nostalgia can be a beautiful thing when kept in moderation and perspective. I think it works both ways, too. Jeff looking down on people for loving Halo is a prime example. Halo, unlike goldeneye, still plays great today. It's really easy to be a grumpy old fart and look down on a game you didn't grow up with, but that's JUST as bad as letting your nostalgia cloud your judgement on a game from your childhood that isn't as good as you think it is.

I can see some merit to the Golden Age theory, but I don't think it completely works. Everyone has a soft spot for their childhood and first games, but it's possible to go back and reconsider things. Time separates the wheat from the chaff of games you loved. Some of the SNES and NES games I loved in my childhood are honestly classics that hold up today (Link to the Past, Super Mario Bros 3 / World, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger) but lots of others I loved at the time are not that great.

If I had to make a personal top ten of all time, it'd span pretty much every platform and era of gaming I've played in. I might not have the childhood glee and my tastes change over time, as they have with movies, TV and music, but Portal 2 and Journey hold up against everything I played when I was young.

No offense to Patrick but this is my favorite dump truck so far.

What a awesome interview.

I actually like games more now as an adult then I did as a kid. Also, the idea that the Golden Age of gaming was the time when you enjoyed games most seems like a pretty self-centered way to think.