Retro Games And Why They're Not Just For Us Old Fogies


DavidBeoulve

GP2X by EvilDragon OC's to 280-300MHz
Joined
May 10, 2006
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USA
Website
www.gamersgonebad.com
"PS3" versus "XBOX About Face"
Sony and Microsoft have really declared that the latest console war is about ever-increasing costs and hardware (Web comic on that issue).

Even though it's named after that thing that separates my son from my daughters, the Nintendo Wii looks more enticing because how I'd play games would change more than, say, buying a $2,000 HDTV screen. The Wii offers more than incremental gameplay changes, for around 10% of that cost (plus games). And no, I don't own a GameCube, and got an N64 only when my cousin junked it for a PS2 and XBOX. I'm no fanboi.

Meanwhile, genres we grew up with have died fashion deaths.

Beat-Em-Ups
I must have seen the Beats of Rage download page three times before I saw the download "lots of mods" link. Some of those mods look like crazy fun. I'm sure most of y'all know about it, but it got my blood going.

Hyper Final Fight 2? The original Final Fight was my favorite beat-em-up game. I was sad that the genre died when the PSX entered the scene, because nothing really took its place.

How many 3d games allowed you to run all over the place beating people up? Unless you play Dynasty Warriors franchise, Rygar (PS2) ... there just aren't many options. Lame "play with your thumbs" First Person Shooters began to rule the day.

Halo 2 versus PC Gamer
Using a Lik-Sang keyboard/mouse adapter ("SmartJoy FRAG") for my XBOX, I went from being ranked 4% to 96%, behind only three other guys, one of which was my cousin, who couldn't believe it. I told him "The only reason I'm not beating you guys is that, while you've shown me where the guns are, I'm still not used to the best way to move about the level, and I have to keep my back to a wall or a buddy because I can't turn a 180 with a mouse (the adapter only approximated the mouse movement by using the thumbstick, which can only bend over so far).

Bleh.

Retro is Good
I don't let my kids play games often - and frequently they prefer other things like drawing with me or going outside, but they do enjoy their 2 GBA's in the van. Car rides are killers for 4 kids. Anyway, accidentally I've been showing them all kinds of retro games when I think about it. Other than Shadow of the Colossus (PS2), my oldest daughter prefers older, more strategic games, like Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX), FFT Advance (GBA), La Pucille Tactics (PS2).

Heck, all my kids do in Shadow of the Colossus is ride the horse and run around and explore. They find that immense fun. But how many games let you explore at your liesure these days? Well, ever.

Does he have a point?
Rarely. I guess I'm trying to say that the GP2X's retro gaming, it's emulators, its Vektar and homebrew games, they're good things because they all represent a time when folks without large budgets tried to make games.

For the emulated games, that time has passed.

For homebrew, you can't make a simple game for the PC and get noticed. It just doesn't normally happen. However, if you make a game for the GP2X, and it's good, man, everyone jumps on it. Folks will even pay.

While it's not the "old times" relived, it does have that flavor.

That's something I like about the handheld I have yet to own, and the community.
 
I have been saying that a lot in the Other Consoles section a lot. What attributes to good graphics no gameplay is probably because companies push for graphics from programmers and the programmers did not have enough time to work on gameplay (well those that care, maybe they are just there for the money). Back when graphics were super simple and easy to make, people had more time to work on GAMEPLAY.

David Beoulve posted on May 19 2006 at 03:50 PM said:
Beat-Em-Ups
I must have seen the Beats of Rage download page three times before I saw the download "lots of mods" link. Some of those mods look like crazy fun. I'm sure most of y'all know about it, but it got my blood going.

Hyper Final Fight 2? The original Final Fight was my favorite beat-em-up game. I was sad that the genre died when the PSX entered the scene, because nothing really took its place.

How many 3d games allowed you to run all over the place beating people up? Unless you play Dynasty Warriors franchise, Rygar (PS2) ... there just aren't many options. Lame "play with your thumbs" First Person Shooters began to rule the day.

Ever played Shinobi for the PS2? =)
 
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I havn't bought a console since the dreamcast, and I really wasnt planning on until the Ps2/Gc/xbox was about 10 years old...but the Wii has really caught my attention. it's not about uber-sauce graphics, the gameplay looks awesome with the nunchuk pad. ninty have really got it right, the future of gaming isnt in the graphics, it's in the way we /play/ our games. arent they also releasing an SDK or something so devs can get their hands dirty with the Wii?
 
My problem with modern game development is they have given up on 2D games .

It is not the developers either , MS and SOny will not approve most 2d games .

If sega would just get their heads out of their asses and stop ruining sonic they would realize that for 1% of the dev cost they could make a sick 2d sonic for modern consoles with like 40 hours of amazing gameplay that would sell out like crazy .
 
PokeParadox posted on May 19 2006 at 10:09 PM said:
The thing is... you can relatively easily make nice 2D graphics anyway! It is just this whole "It needs to be 3D" mentality that gets in the way.

<Grumpy old man rant mode>
1) May be it's because I'm an Old Fogie but I prefer 2D games. A good example is Worms - I found it fun in 2D, in 3D aiming's so much harder - I can hit even less that before! The game play isn't improved. Screens are 2D - when 3D displays come along then I might want to play 3D games.

2) The drive to get more and more realism into games e.g. driving games. I don't want cars that do realistic speeds and obey realistic physical laws, I want sometime better than real life.
</Grumpy old man rant mode>
 
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gaterooze posted on May 19 2006 at 03:49 PM said:
For a breath of fresh air at check out Shadowgrounds on the PC. It's real retro flavour (Alien Breed!) done right. The flashlight gameplay is awesome :ph34r:
My boss was telling me about this game! I hope there's a console version coming eventually, because it looks fucking awesome.
 
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There are games that are designed to be 2D, there are games that are designed to be 3D. Making the 2D ones 3D or the 3D ones 2D is, in almost every case, a really bad move.
 
I've pretty much been saying this for close to a decade, in different words. The only genre that really benefits from increasing-quality 3D graphics without significant gameplay changes is that of First-Person Shooters (and even then I only want to play them on PCs for control reasons the Wii MIGHT solve.)

Honestly, things may improve later, but it could take another industry crash to change things. In the meantime, there's 20 years of games I'm yet to play, and each new discovery for me of a good classic game might as well be a new release the way I look at it.

In the meantime, I am content enough with that and working to develop my own games that have a traditional feel as I am doing for the '2x.
 
Epicenter posted on May 19 2006 at 06:52 PM said:
...In the meantime, I am content enough with that and working to develop my own games that have a traditional feel as I am doing for the '2x.
This is something that makes me like the concept of the GP2X. If it makes any sense at all, I'm more excited to see what you, Dzz, Paeryn, Pepone, and other GP2X devs I can't recall at the moment, are doing than I am to see what games come out for the Sony PSP. Why? Because I've probably already played them in a format that better suited them. I doubt that Vektar is "better suited" to sitting down at a PC and dedicating 4 hours to it.
 
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IMO it's not really about 2d vs 3d or oldskool vs newskool; It's just a case of innovation vs stagnation.

Firstly, there are a ton of repetitive and boring 2d games made in the style of successful franchises like Double Dragon, Streets of Rage or Final Fight. They can be frustrating and boring as you mash the button to progress slowly through each level, where the only reward is a new background and set of sprites.

Secondly, even in the 80's and 90's video-games were a profitable commodity and shit film-licenses and poorly programmed cash-ins and ports from the arcades could be found in abundence for any system. If you look at the arcades in the 90's, espescially in the US. It is quite obviously aggressively marketed towards teenage males with a taste in violence rather than quality in games.

Thirdly, with Sony's clever rebranding of the console as a lifestyle commodity for young adults in the form of the PS1, the market simply expanded to include a wider age range. The result being a lot more tie ins with brands that a mainstream consumer can trust, more shit film-licenses and never ending strings of sequels of established games series.

Finally, the market is changing, in order to attract more gamers to the fold the market has to cater to the groups currently ignored by the games-industry, this includes girls (look at the adverts for animal crossing dx) older adults and also alienated old-school / hardcore / nostalgic gamers like most of us.

I get just as sick with dull sidescrolling beat em ups as I do with bland 1st person shooters, basically what I crave is original concepts.

The DS is a step in the right direction, as is the online arcade offered by Xbox/MS. Additionaly, there is the smaller markets emerging around the internet for posthumous dreamcast releases and homebrew consoles like the 2X and finally the homebrew scene for the PC, these markets should provide some interesting new directions.

Overall I am optimistic about the future and infact I think an obsession with retrospection will just hold the whole market back. We need new ideas.
 
Mr_Munk posted on May 20 2006 at 10:34 AM said:
IMO it's not really about 2d vs 3d or oldskool vs newskool; It's just a case of innovation vs stagnation.
That's true, when "it" is defined as the state of the gaming industry. I love this post, it's really good. Penny-Arcade had a great comic years back about how "our games were being marketed for people who aren't us." It was inevitable, unless videogames were a fad.

I suppose I mixed in a bit too much nostalgia in my initial post, but perhaps that's still relevant - particularly on the GP2X, where if you aren't engaging in some decent nostalgia... what are you doing?

But nostalgia won't save nor direct the future of the videogame industry, as it has become.

... but back to the topic title - I stand by the idea that the GP2X stands to innovate based on its homebrew nature - just as Mr. Munk and others among you have said, and this excites me like seeing my lovely Latina put on something colored red over her perfect year-round tanned skin. Because both of these happenings involve unforeseen but presumed events later, I'm not sure that I'm exaggerating. Granted, I pretty much bat 1,000 when it comes to having a Latin wife - they are insanely jealous and have a libido that's so big it could fill the shoes of a bookie - it's not like I'm trying to hit a fastball, but a homing missile aimed at my bat. I guess that's one reason this lucky American has four kids.

I digress.

The Bottom Line
Mr. Munk is right about the gaming industry, though I think we're more concerned about our selfish, immediate needs with our GP2X's. Nintendo's Pee (see? that rhymes with Wii!) stands to innovate and if it's only $200 I'm sure I'll find it irresistable, something that can't be said for the N64 or GameCube.

Epicenter's Point
Honestly, things may improve later, but it could take another industry crash to change things. In the meantime, there's 20 years of games I'm yet to play, and each new discovery for me of a good classic game might as well be a new release the way I look at it.
The GP2X, as I've said before, has a lot of freedom associated with it. Can you change the boot-up time of your PSP by uploading a refined OS? Nevermind playing emulated games.

I love Epicenter's point about the videogame market crash - I wish we could have another, in my dreams, no one would buy an overpriced PS3 (as much as I thought I wanted one, I saw the price {web comic}) and Nintendo would run around showing everyone how fun it is to pee on high-priced consoles' parade. However, the reality is - we won't have another crash, just lulls. Hopefully those will do the trick and we'll start to see developers (and more importantly, distributors) take risks again.

Who Is To Blame for Stagnation?
By in large, there are two things to blame: As V for Vendetta said... we're number 1.

Sure, a large part of it is the money involved in making games, and the fact that so much is put on the line that game distributors just don't want to fork over millions on things they can't quantify, when there are genres that just keep selling if you just incrementally make the same thing better.
  • World War II First Person Shooter
  • Sports games
  • Shallow FPS with Multiplayer
  • Racing Games
...just to name a few.

But the real culprit is us - and by us - I mean them. The people who aren't videogame connoisseurs and don't care to be. And people like me, who are just so hardcore we buy good games even if they are something we've played before.

That said, when something like Galactic Civilizations II comes out with its insanely good AI (for a game), I buy it. I mean, the lead programmer trolls the strategy forums and then tweaks the AI for fun on his weekends just so he can make us cry.

So there's really no stopping this problem, because there's no stopping us. Short of a massive dive in sales, as Epicenter said, nothing is going to wake up the 2nd culprit, the distributors. It's not the developers - do you think they'd make Halo 3 times in a row if someone would give them money to do something else?

There Is, However, A Solution:
We take what we can get as far as innovation - be it random games like Galactic Civilizations II, or a little-known handheld gaming device called the GP2X.

We're not "dropping out" of our hobby, nor buying what we don't really like. We're finding our niche.

Here's to hoping the niche becomes the new genre of the future.
 
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Remembering the 'good old days' is half of the fun of the gp2x.

My obsession with Duke Nukem 3D is probably half me remembering playing this when I was 6, and half the awesome gameplay and *gasp* actually originality in an FPS! My dad still says 'What are you waiting for, christmas?' to this day. (any Duke3d fan knows where that comes from)

The sad part (and a metaphor of the entire progression of the game industry) is that if they made a new Duke Nukem game, it would be a ps3/360 exclusive and just have impressive visuals and rehash gameplay. Although they may be selling out, the facts are that they could make more money selling to the 'wannabe gamers' that play True Crime and Halo 2 and think graphics make a game.

We 'hardcore' gamers are a minority in the video game consumer market that we've only recently begun to realize and accept. The PS2 killing the DreamCast is probably the first major example of this. Although Powerstone 2 (for an example) is an awesome game, almost noone in the gaming majority knows what that is.
 
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