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Retro gaming

Started by madhair60, January 25, 2010, 12:35:45 PM

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madhair60

A large proportion of my gaming time is spent on older titles - mostly Game Boy (Classic, Colour and Advance) efforts.  I also play a lot of DOS games, NES, SNES, Master System, Mega Drive... mostly on the DS.

I'm wondering if you sods play retro games much?  There's not a lot of discussion of them.  Do you think they hold out?  Do you think gaming's all about moving forward?  Any titles you regularly return to?

Yes, I'm aware "Retro" is a vague, cringeworthy word that doesn't really describe anything accurately, but for the sake of argument let's say anything from the Dreamcast backwards

vrailaine

Asides from Football Managers and puzzle games, I haven't really played any games from the current generation. Although there are a few PSP and DS games I wanna play.


I still play plenty really old games (late 70s/early 80s vintage), such as Joust and Space Taxi.

Unlike the forum cliche of someone coming back to a very old game and going: "Gah! The graphics are far more primitive than I remember! The rose-tinted goggles - they do nothing!", my impression of all old games (at the time) was that they were obviously simplistic even when they were current, and so I've never had a sadface nostalgia meltdown when revisiting them. They've always been the same looking- and playing- games to me, even 30 years later.


Anyway, I bloody love old blocky pixels with limited animation! It's an art to create those games under the restrictions of the early video game hardware.

Quote from: Garfield And Friends on January 25, 2010, 01:24:49 PM
Unlike the forum cliche of someone coming back to a very old game and going: "Gah! The graphics are far more primitive than I remember! The rose-tinted goggles - they do nothing!", my impression of all old games (at the time) was that they were obviously simplistic even when they were current, and so I've never had a sadface nostalgia meltdown when revisiting them.

RE above, I should clarify that I'm specifically talking about 2d sprite-based raster games, of course.

3D polygon games from the 90s onwards are a different matter entirely. They haven't aged (graphically) a fraction as well as the 80s 2d sprite ones.

.

And on yet another tangent, modern games (i.e. PS3/X360) are by and large way better than the majority of retro games. Though I still play both (old and new).

AsparagusTrevor

I have a lot of respect for people with the skills to chuck out good looking pixel graphics. Look at something like the Metal Slug series, the art and animation in that is beautiful, and you can see right away the effort that must've gone into it all.

Gameplay wise, it's funny how that can age between different genres. Something like Pacman will have trouble holding the modern gamer's attention, but a game like Tetris will be happily played by any generation, with little or no variation to the original forumla.

Still Not George

Challenge is the thing. Games used to be hard.

Which sounds like crap - games have "HARD" modes still, right? But the definition of "hard" has changed. "Gives you a bit of a challenge" isn't the same as what "hard" used to mean. "Hard" games used to leave you replaying them. Again and again. The same 4 levels, over and over and over, trying to get past that fucking ledge on that fucking level with that fucking jump.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Tellies are more delicate these days though. They can't withstand the inevitable throwing of the controller that accompanied the old style hard games.

madhair60

Quote from: Still Not George on January 25, 2010, 02:00:48 PM
Challenge is the thing. Games used to be hard.

Which sounds like crap - games have "HARD" modes still, right? But the definition of "hard" has changed. "Gives you a bit of a challenge" isn't the same as what "hard" used to mean. "Hard" games used to leave you replaying them. Again and again. The same 4 levels, over and over and over, trying to get past that fucking ledge on that fucking level with that fucking jump.

Yep, you have to dig deep to find a contemporary game that offers the same kind of challenge as the classics.  Older games had the tendency to drop you in at the deep end and force the player to learn the mechanics, rather than run into giant "?" icons that tell you what to do. ;)

Again I'll pimp this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QghOy8aInw4&feature=player_embedded

Still Not George

Looking back, I think there's very few games I genuinely liked that weren't horrifically difficult. Probably PacMan is one of the few examples, and that's only because it's mechanically brain-dead. I have strong memories of throwing whole weeks of my life at stuff like The Addams Family on the SNES.

Never been a fan of side-scrolling shooters, mind you. There's pixel-perfect difficulty, and then there's tedious pattern recognition AND pixel-perfect difficulty...

madhair60

Addams Family on SNES is great and no fucker gives it the time of day when I tell them so.  It's so, so difficult, but enjoyable with it.

I still remember the password of all "1"s.  Gives you 99 lives.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

If you're talking about true retro gaming, then it's the BBC Micro for me. My Dad had an original from school he used to bring home from work so my brother and I could play on it. 50 odd diskettes with various things on. I like exploring so I would generally play on whatever was on them, regardless of whether it was Folio (a primitive word processor) or something more obvious like Repton. I will inherit the diskettes after informing my Dad that they are soon to become valuable items, but alas I have no original console of my own, and do all my retro Micro gaming on emulators. The best BBC Micro games I have played are Repton, Imogen, Stryker's Run, Yes Prime Minister and this amazing political/war text sim I have never been able to find since.

Other than that, I am a veteran of 1990-1995 DOS gaming and would happily bore people to death about 486's and why an 8 year old child should never be given access to Autoexec.BAT.

As for difficulty level, I hate trial and error and I hate having to do things over and over again- probably why I'm not that keen on platformers. I like things that reward exploration and consideration.

Still Not George

Plan B was by far my favourite BBC Micro game. All in "hi-res" black and white (mode 0 was it?), smooth as anything.

Codename Droid and Repton 3 were just two of my favourite computer games on the BBC Micro. Loved the four colour graphics on codename droid - great side-scrolling shooting platformer. Nice loading music too.

Gulftastic

#13
Once I got PC'd up about ten years ago, I got an emulator and spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to clock (the correct term for completing a game) Tron, my favourite arcade game, back in the day. Even after hacking the thing and givning myself extra lives and such though, it becomes downright impossible after about level 7. It was the cause of much frustration to me.

And regarding console games, I've never felt as pleased with myself as I did when I finshed Zelda on the SNES, and sat back and watched the movie that played as a consequence.

Guy

Quote from: Gulftastic on January 25, 2010, 02:59:39 PMclock (the correct term for completing a game)

Only if you're a fourteen year old rudeboy trading in a game at CEX.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Garfield And Friends on January 25, 2010, 02:51:43 PM
Codename Droid and Repton 3 were just two of my favourite computer games on the BBC Micro. Loved the four colour graphics on codename droid - great side-scrolling shooting platformer. Nice loading music too.

Repton 3 is genuinely amazing- I love the purple and gold colours; it's the zenith of the whole concept. But I feel like I'm betraying the original to suggest anyone plays that first.

I just remembered Dodgy Dealers which was a white-van-man type management game that was really fun. I was definitely too young for it at the time though. I'm sure it's on emulation somewhere.

madhair60

I've never played Repton, but a relatively recent Stuart Campbell article made me want to.  Any tips on Micro emulation?


Castle Quest on the BBC Micro. Infuriated the fuck out of my cousin and me. We'd do the opening section with the candles to trap the little fellas running around again and again and again and inevitably get nailed when we tried to go past the spider or troll. Downloaded it a few months ago, nailed the bastard after about four thousand tries and a walkthrough.

VegaLA

I tried playing some of the old Speccy, C64 and Amiga games using Emus on a PC but I simply could not gel with it. I had absolutely zero enthusiasm for playing any of the old games I enjoyed so much in my youth. I can't think of any old games that I would want to revisit now! The only games I would like to play are the Resident Evil series and they are barely 14 years old. I'm hoping they will come out as some sort of Special Edition for the 360. Fat chance of that.

There you go, there's the flip side, I suspect i'm in the minority yet again..........

Johnny Townmouse

I really don't think that in a group situation I have played multi-player games better than MarioKart and Bomberman on the N64. There is something about those two games that can hold a group of people enraptured for hours upon hours.

gmoney

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on January 25, 2010, 02:36:32 PM
this amazing political/war text sim I have never been able to find since.

Does anyone know what this might be? Or have a recommendation for a decent game similar to this description? I've played Democracy and Democracy 2, but I wondered if there's anything else out there.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on January 25, 2010, 04:58:43 PM
I really don't think that in a group situation I have played multi-player games better than MarioKart and Bomberman on the N64. There is something about those two games that can hold a group of people enraptured for hours upon hours.
Wot, no Goldeneye?

Where do folk draw the line for what they consider retro? While PS1 and N64 stuff might look a bit primitive now, I wouldn't really have thought of it as retro. I'm not even sure I'd include the 16 bit consoles either.

Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on January 25, 2010, 05:19:16 PM
Wot, no Goldeneye?

Where do folk draw the line for what they consider retro? While PS1 and N64 stuff might look a bit primitive now, I wouldn't really have thought of it as retro. I'm not even sure I'd include the 16 bit consoles either.

Yeah, I guess mid-90s isn't really that retro - I just think of it as a bit of a golden age. Since then games have moved on so far that it is hard for me to not look back on that period from a completely different vantage point. Which is hard to fathom, because I only have a PS2.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: gmoney on January 25, 2010, 05:04:12 PM
Does anyone know what this might be? Or have a recommendation for a decent game similar to this description? I've played Democracy and Democracy 2, but I wondered if there's anything else out there.

I just can't remember it, that's what's so annoying.

The BBC Micro version of Democracy was called Great Britain Ltd and is very addictive, attempting to run the country from different political standpoints and keep them onside in the process, and bring through enough reforms. Top banana! And hard- the best I managed was 3 terms of government.

presta didwicks

My dad bought the Mattel Intellivision, it was fuckin great at the time.
Space Battle in which I figured out that if you killed the last spaceship whilst simultaneously comitting suicide, then you could open up loads more levels.
We also had Tron, footy and best of all Sea Battle which me and my brother played to death.
The contollers were a bit vague with buttons on the side and a big central disk for direction, then there was the plastic insert which slid over the buttons, but I miss the hours wasted on that game.
Are there any decent contemporary sea battle games ?

HappyTree

Alley Cat for 8-bit PC was great. My favourite room was the giant cheese with the little mousies popping in and out. Or the one with the sleeping dogs and you had to steal their food. The goldfish bowl with electric eels in it was too hard, I never managed to get out alive.



I am still determined to complete the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure. And Leather Goddesses of Phobos.

Last year I got a BBC emulator so I could relive my Acorn Electron glory days. Played SIMS a bit. Chuckie Egg was great. I got the level editor and the extra jump ability which let you jump up platforms instead of climbing up the ladder.

Canted_Angle

Braid is a brilliant new game with a semi old game ethos. I'd advise anyone to give it a go.

samadriel


Every other Ultima can get fucked.

Niall Quim

I spend an awful lot of my free time gaming, but having a crack at retro games (16bit and under) is generally a once every month or two endeavour at most. I think the forgiving nature of modern games, where the difficulty is only a matter of getting from checkpoint to checkpoint, has weaned me onto wanting some guarantee that when I start a game I'll almost certainly be able to beat it given time. I'd struggle to come up with any titles from the last ten years that have left me thinking 'there's just no way I can do this.'

Although there's a charm of having a game where beating it would require extensive practice and the patience to sit through it all in one go, I could understand anyone who doesn't look back too fondly on that era. The extreme difficulty and unforgivingness of booting you back to the title screen was often a mask for the fact that many games barely had an hour's actual content in them. On the other hand, the satisfaction of beating a 12 hour modern game doesn't compare to overcoming even a 30 minute NES title.

Oh, one for the coincidences thread, but I was just reading a guide for a mega drive game on gameFAQs and noticed it was written by madhair60. IT'S FREAKING ME OUT.