The Nostalga Effect: Or How Old School Games Dont Rock That Hard

The gameplay in prince of persia hasn't changed a bit. If its prince of persia for dos by broderbund. or Prince of Persia for LC11(old apple) that had great graphics. The graphics were truly amazing. Very amazing like mind boggling. "Prince of Persia: Sands of Time" still has the adventure from previous sidescrolling prince of persia games and it has the top notch graphics to go with it.

Other great classic games going into the modern era include:
FIFA 98, France 98, FIFA 99, FIFA 2000, FIFA 01,FIFA 02, World Cup 02, FIFA 03, FIFA 04, UEFA 04....... Yes I've played every one of them. World cup 02 didn't cut it like France 98, since the teams didn't cut it in real life, which kind of projected itself onto the gameplay.

[Edited on 11-7-2004 by websurfer]

websurfer-

ahhh the joys of tetris. I used to be a fan, that is, until, I made a startling revelation.... my brother is a tetris block.

Im not kidding, I wrote about it in my story thingy ma bobber. the similarities are extreme, and scary! heres a clippit-

....Louis is a walking Tetris block.

You can turn it a million ways but in the end it�s still the same fu**ing block and eventually, no matter how good you are at turning him around, you will lose. Because Tetris is not a game, Tetris is a bunch of moving blocks that fu*k you over.....

AHHHH now seems to be a good time for some shameful self promotion! YOu can read the rest here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

OK Im done with the self promotion, sorry, I just had to!

But some of the games, like pac man, have been disgraced. They made this extreme pac man or something, where its 3d and theres actually a plot and levels and worlds and stuff. Disgraceful!

I forgot to mention to chessmaster series. I got swept away in the tsunami at a young age, and it just kept getting better. Especially when they had Kasparov face Deep Blue. Its (c) like that, that keeps the motivation and felling of victory over a hard thought out game alive.

oh yeah I forgot to mention Yahoo games. The time spent there was like mind boggling. That was before I devulged into new games like Enter the Matrix, NFS underground, Worms 3d, POP sands of time, Spider Man 2 and Max Payne 2.


[Edited on 11-7-2004 by websurfer]

Originally posted by Agent47
I dont understand this sentence.

Are you trying to provoke me or am I simply misreading it.

Ha ha, no, sorry to say, I don't provoke people. It's very childish, stupid, and totally unnecessary. If someone provoked me, I always back out.

You did say that you didn't like how many people who never played such old systems/games say they did. But then you talk about people playing old games, etc. I didn't understand what your point was. So some people have never played them and some haven't.

I just want to understand what you're saying.

Originally posted by sweatmonicaIdo


I just want to understand what you're saying.

Your confusion is understandable, this thread has strayed far from its roots.

Im confused as to what Im getting at even now.

i kinda get what the OP was saying altho my fuzzy brain may be from lack of sleep but oddly my fiance plays Resident Evil Director's Cut rom on a emulator ( he loves killing him some zombies)

I started playing 'older games' only recently. I can honestly say that today's games are watered down and lack substance in comparison to classics.

Made me wish I wasn't so busy ALWAYS playing shooters.
To name a few: Xenogears, Planescape Torment, Digital Devil Saga, FF4 & 6

Some of the best Old School games ever....


Road Rash
Skitchin' (nobody ever really even heard of this)
Herzog Zwei (amazing command and conquer type game)
Hogs Of War (Not technically old school but just amazing)



Obviously further back are games like

Yie Ar King Fu en.wikipedia.org...
Pong en.wikipedia.org...
Double Dragon en.wikipedia.org...
Streets of Rage en.wikipedia.org...
Space invaders en.wikipedia.org...


Also

Oh Mummy, Roland on the Ropes or Roland in the caves...

Many, many more I can't remember.

What i like about old-school games, is that during the "amiga/snes/sega mega-drive" era it was possible to make a game look amazing, with only 2d sprites.

With 2D graphics, its rather easy to make a game when compared to renderring a 3D world for example... because of that, the story had to make up for the lack of graphics. When a game is written just like a book, it becomes a success. Take the final fantasy series for example (prior to FF10).


I think i will always prefer the 2D platformers, side-scrollers, isometric, top-down pre-renderred background games than anything 3D. the way i see it, today game companies tend to focus too much on the graphics, tiny details nobody will notice when running through a level, and waste effort on the wrong things. All a good game needs is a story and gameplay.

Even today, most retail games for consoles tend to have short lifespans... it's all about racking in the first few weeks of purchases "over-hyping" a release, short storyline, and then they release a sequal 6months later to keep the cash coming in. The only thing "good" with most modern games today are the graphics... not that it matters to me.

Some unforgettable games i have played many times:
Final Fantasy 5,6,7,8,9
Abe's Odysee & Abe's Exoddus
Metal Gear (the 2d games, and the first one "solid" for psx)
Crash Bandicoot (not that old, but a great example of gameplay/story)

The graphics for those games at the time of their release, wasn't neccesarily good compared to some existing games. But the storyline and the gameplay wins everytime for me.

I haven't actually bought a retail game for a few years now, strayed away from the console, and also don't play any "commercial" games on my computer. Although i do load up a few psx backups i own played through an emulator. I've gotten into a nostalgic habit of looking for and playing indie-games (open source, free) mainly 2D ones similar to the SNES era, i guess it's just what makes me tick. You don't need a three-dimensional world to create a masterpiece of art.

I really think the problem is today, that game developers are trying to sell their games through the "book cover", as in what it looks like. There seems to be a problem with the way people think "if it doesn't look realistic, im not going to buy it". In which developers spent too much time perfecting their "world" without having enough time to actually make the game long-lasting and have an immense story along with gameplay that never gets boring.

PS; just thought of something i missed out.

The ultimate thing that pee's me off with today's games.... Have you ever heard of the term SuperNintendoHard? It's actually a class of difficulty in games dating back to the SNES era, where some games were almost impossible to complete at some point or another, and you actually had to spend time perfecting your movements/timing to complete whatever level on a game.

Today, that doesn't seem to exist, as someone else said, todays games feel like they are watered down... it's almost as if someone has decided, "but not every one will be that good, we need to make it fair so even the guy with no hands can complete the game". Not to be harsh, but that is the reality as i see it. When you can complete a retail game costing £30-40 in a matter of 5 days or less... then it's not worth the reward. Spending 6months battling your way through a game is more of a "game", as it should be a challenge.

Recently, I've been playing Commodore 64 games on an emulator I have. Just gotta complete some of those old games I never finished.

It's good to sit down and play a game for a short amount of time. Some new games are more like simulators, and you need 6 months training to play the game at its full potential. Then once you learn how to play them, it takes huge amounts of time to enjoy them.

With me it has taken a few years to come up with the words to explain it.

The older games, to me, are just the kind of classic that you don't even bother unwrapping because of how old it is. We know these titles are there, but I don't know what it is.

My most prominent memories remain with NES, SNES, Gameboy, N64, PS, PS2.

I was heavily into games like Metroid, Zelda and Final Fantasy, as well as all types of different RPGs that I found online during the initial phase of emulators and stuff. It was all exciting and I think part of it for me was having been in a poor environment and being able to play many of these games for free was very cool. Eventually came the Dreamcast and Gamecube and we're online. I played Phantasy Star Online for a few years, that gave me my first taste of the whole online thing, and nothing can replace how exciting it was at first. Now it's all Call of Duty and World of Warcraft talks. In time there was this shift from FPS to RPG, to RTS for me.

Gaming is all about experience and then moving onto the next. I enjoy the nostalgia of Final Fantasy 7 and 9, I can remember life and reality well through what games I played. It gives me the opportunity to recap the image of my own world at that age and time from gaming. I can't go back and play many older games now because I'm all around with new games. I do play them from time to time. I beat all the Sonic titles last year when I had no PC or consoles.

With online gaming in particular there are many standards now that people are fully accustomed to. You can't play any new MMOs without comparisons to WoW and that's how it has been for years now. With 2012 there will be many titles that will draw attention from WoW for instance, and having played every MMORPG p2p since WoW was released to try and find a replacement I feel that, Guild Wars 2, Kingdoms of Amalur and the Old Republic are strong competitors. I've since become a bit addicted to SWTOR and it's making me compare the experience to WoW to which SWTOR comes close if isn't more fun.

We are watching the development of a new one of these "eras" full of judgement and comparison, but full of all types of new games with new textures and new cinematics.