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Post by Ex on Mar 19, 2019 9:29:35 GMT -5
This thread isn't about a bunch of Luddites decrying modern gaming. Because actually, most of us here do engage in modern gaming, in addition to our retro gaming. And yet we don't all blindly adhere to purely modern games as most gamers do. I'm sure we all have our personal reasons why this is so. So tell us why you are indeed a "retro gamer", despite the constant deluge of flashy new games that pour out of the industrial game complex every single day.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 19, 2019 11:26:28 GMT -5
I think for me, more than anything, it's that the "retro" period effectively shaped my tastes in gaming. Now, granted, some of those have changed over the years. I don't blindly play just any JRPG anymore, although there are a lot of low-tier games that I never finished, so maybe it's more that I'm out of the outstanding ones. Still, while the modern indie scene scratches some of that itch, there are still classics out there that fulfill the sort of gaming experience I enjoy, so I continue to play them. And some games are absolutely timeless. They're as fun now as when I first played them.
The best modern indie titles actually manage to capture that feeling, even if you have to wade through piles of junk to get to them. I guess that's one of the benefits of having folks in our generation actually making games, because a few of them are bound to bottle that lightning that made retro gaming special.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2019 15:42:14 GMT -5
I believe it's important to know the classics first in order to form an informed opinion on newer titles. That doesn't mean your opinion is worthless if you, say, loved Bloodstained but never played a Castlevania game, but I feel like I'm lacking the larger picture if I don't play the games that were major inspiration for some newer titles. I suppose you can make a similar argument for novels and movies.
Modern gaming is also too expensive. I could buy enough food for a month for the price of a brand-new game.
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Post by toei on Mar 19, 2019 18:55:15 GMT -5
I love the immediacy of older action titles. I just don't have a lot of patience anymore, so being able to start a game and just start playing right away is great. I find a lot of modern game design to be bloated. What I enjoy the most is when developers take simple basics and push them as far as they can.
I like the concision, too. Getting into a game for a few days and finishing it is nice. I always find it weird how no one I know seems to actually finish games, but when everything is super long, it's perfectly understandable.
RPG-wise, things evolved in a direction I don't like long ago, in terms of story as much as aesthetics, and most modern-ish Japanese RPGs I've tried don't work for me at all. Most of the modern series I still enjoy - Dragon Quest, Yakuza, etc - are either "retro" or closely informed by earlier generations of games.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 19, 2019 19:40:54 GMT -5
That's an excellent point as well, toei . The older I get, the less patience I have for really long games. Even the "long" games from the era are comparatively short. It's no wonder I've beaten over 100 games every year as long as I've been keeping track, and I don't see that changing this year, given that I'm almost 30% there again already. And that's not even getting into the modern "games as a service" model that I avoid like the plague. |
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Post by anayo on Mar 19, 2019 20:11:48 GMT -5
It does something special for me to think about how people reacted to technology when it was new. Like this picture of a boy in 1948 seeing a TV for the first time. I’m not old enough to remember a time before TV (or even VCRs). But I do remember when flat sprites sliding around on an X Y grid were enough to spellbind people. Today’s technology is like how soft drinks are available everywhere all the time. It raises the noise floor for everyone’s threshold of how sweet should taste. I’ve even known people who didn’t like tap water because Coca-Cola tasted “normal” to them. Just as it exhausts me to carpet bomb everything with sugar all the time, I don't think chasing a stronger dose in today’s deluge of tech is necessarily the answer for me. Lowering the noise floor back to the days when Sega Genesis could turn heads wows me in a way that a top-of-the-line gaming PC never could. |
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Post by Sarge on Mar 19, 2019 20:21:10 GMT -5
I think you've got a good point, anayo, and I think that's why a lot of us, particularly growing up in the early days of gaming, can still be "wowed" by a game that objectively doesn't look all that good to someone else. Granted, art design goes a long way, but there were some pretty hefty limits on these games. Still, there's not much that impresses more than seeing a well-designed NES game, knowing what the system is capable of, and marveling at how the designers seem to break through those limitations. Speaking of which, I still say Kirby's Adventure is an absolute work of art. |
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Post by Ex on Mar 19, 2019 22:25:44 GMT -5
The best modern indie titles actually manage to capture that feeling There's quite a few I wouldn't mind trying. (Can't list them because 95% are less than 10 years old.) I likely haven't played these indie retro-styled PC games yet, because of the whole "work all day on a PC, don't want to play all night on one" hangup I've got going on. What I should do is utilize my dork cave's desktop more often. It's different enough from my work laptop that it might do the trick. I believe it's important to know the classics first in order to form an informed opinion on newer titles. I can appreciate a scholarly stance like that. I could buy enough food for a month for the price of a brand-new game. Hmm, I guess food is less expensive where you live? $60 in USA food prices wouldn't go too far. Unless you only eat beans, rice, and ramen noodles perhaps. I do prefer brand new games to be around $30 though. I got a lot of 3DS and Vita games brand new on release day at that price, back when those systems were viable. What I enjoy the most is when developers take simple basics and push them as far as they can. I too appreciate how the limitations of old tech bred such creativity. Less was more in the right hands. I don't talk to a lot of modern-gaming gamers, so I wouldn't know about completion rates. I suspect a lot of these players are addicted to "new and fresh" experiences, so they simply favor the flavor of the week. I do agree that the bloat is real with modern gaming. Trying to be all things to all people, or just pure contrivances in the name of artificial longevity. I guess most people think quantity is of greater value than quality. Said ethos started in the 6th gen but exploded in the 7th. The older I get, the less patience I have for really long games. It's interesting to read you say that, because you've certainly polished off a lot of long games. Granted less so in recent years; tastes change. Myself I'm willing to put 100 hours into one game IF the game is consistently worth every single one of those hours. Unfortunately that's the exception far more than the rule. With most long games I start burning out around 30 hours, unless it's a truly outstanding experience. It also doesn't help that I usually only game 2 hours a night (I have other hobbies), so one 60-ish hour game can often take me a whole month to finish. Thus a game stretched out over that amount of time, it will stand in stark relief eventually, as opposed to just binging through the thing in a few days. Now I could beat multiple 60 hour RPGs in a month back when I was in my early '20s - and didn't have a life. I suspect now though, even if I had as much free time as I did back then, I still wouldn't put those kind of hours into just video gaming. I've got other hobbies now that I like just as much. Lowering the noise floor back to the days when Sega Genesis could turn heads wows me in a way that a top-of-the-line gaming PC never could. That's a good point, and I think is a method older gamers have an advantage of employing. Having actively played through the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and so on generations as they existed - one can form an appreciative frame of reference that a much younger gamer perhaps could not. Like if a kid grew up with purely CG animation, they might not be able to appreciate the nuances of well produced stop motion animation. I can tell you that I still get "wowed" by plenty of 8 and 16-bit games today. It helps to technically understand the limitations of the hardware itself of course. |
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Post by Sarge on Mar 19, 2019 23:13:08 GMT -5
Yeah, I find it weird. A game really has to get its hooks into me for me to play that long. I'm just likely to put those hours in if a game doesn't feel like it's at least an 8/10. And my library is littered with the corpses of half-finished RPG playthroughs... I also wonder if part of it is that I play a lot of shorter games, so when a really good long game comes along, I'm more willing to put in that time investment. I just know that I've intentionally stayed clear of online gaming in pretty much all its forms. I did try WoW back in the day because a friend was playing it, but it was pretty boring to me. Looks like last year, I only had two of the massive time sinks of 70+ hours. Too modern to talk about. I had a few 20-ish hour games, though, in KFIV and Thief Gold. Huh, wonder who recommended I play those?  |
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Post by 20thcenturygamer on Mar 21, 2019 17:13:34 GMT -5
1. Challenge. Tough, fair, non-optional challenge.
2. Instant action. No load times or tutorials, rarely any excessive menu navigation. Just press power, press start, kick ass.
3. Chiptunes: The lost art. Even modern attempts at aping the sound of older hardware rarely ring authentic because they're not truly bound by the same limitations. I want my video games to sound like video games, not films.
3. No Internet bullshit. I mostly play games to get away from other people, thanks.
4. Brevity. I can finish most non-RPG retro games in a single play session, maybe two or three for an extremely challenging title. They're not glorified second jobs designed to eat up hundreds of hours of your time just because they can.
5. Completeness. No DLC, no loot boxes, just one (1) whole video game.
6. Characterization and story. Or, rather, the lack thereof. Simon Belmont doesn't need to talk, just whip. Fewer words can be so much more and I can't stand how modern game characters are never content to shut their mouths and leave anything to my imagination. 99 out of 100 games these days are ludicrously overwritten.
7. Inventiveness. The drive for increased realism in game graphics has made many titles more "grounded," less wildly creative and downright weird. This is definitely not true for every game, but it drags far too many down to drab mediocrity. Less photorealistic skin pores and more technicolor acid trips, please.
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