Kids Can't Handle Old-School RPGs Anymore

[nohorsetown]

Jeez.. I know I'll come off as an asshole for saying this, but those kids are pathetic. Even if they're not used to reading manuals, they must know what manuals *are*. If you're lost and can't figure something out, consulting the manual is just common sense. There's no excuse for this stupidity.

 

[imnot]

When I was younger I was read the manual in the car ride home from the video game store so I would know all the basic controls. This was for any game, any platform. Makes me wonder what these kids do in the car while they hold a brand new video game in theres hands...

Proberly fart/eat/be whiny/swear.
That sounds about right.

 

[gabe12301]

I'm a kid and I can handle old school games and the first thing I do is read the manual when I buy a game so stop stereotyping.

 

[Father of Worlds]

As much as I like old-school games, I think the article's take on this result is flawed. It boils down to "Old-school games are the kind of thing modern gamers can't really handle well", and has a heavy "good old times" feel of "These dang greenhorns and their inferior, hand-holding games are inferior." It strikes me as a similar kind of thing to, say, someone saying that the music being produced today is inherently inferior to the music produced fifty years ago, because people have various technological innovations that make it easier in the modern music era, and because it's not recorded on vinyl.

Sure, old games can be great, there there were plenty of crap games then, too. Rose-colored glasses looking back, I guess.

 

[WOPR]

Not trying to be rude, but kids can't handle a LOT of classic games.

They're growing up in an age where games are made overly simple so that no kid will be a loser.

The platformers they play now are so simplistic that I'm pretty sure anyone who could easily beat NSMBW would die in seconds if they had to play Megaman 2 or Battletoads, and the shooters... Remember when you would run around collecting stimpacks and armor shooting everything in the face? (Doom, Quake) as opposed to being unloaded into then crouching behind a wall waiting for your legs to grow back (or shield to recharge) then magically being at 100% again? (Halo, CoD)

OT: And the RPG's, I swear the kids that are looking at todays Final Fantasy games would keel over if we gave them a Bioware RPG (let alone a DOS Ultima)

Most of todays games are way too simple and it's pretty sad, especially when a challenge poses itself todays youth (and some "mature" gamers) will throw a tantrum if the game owns them repeatedly because they grew up in games lined with bubble-wrap and rubber.

 

[Slick Samurai]

Looks like it's going into classic "old man syndrome". Where in everything that is old is harder, therefore better, and everything new is easier, therefore worse. Is it not a fault that the game could not explain how to play the game without the inconvenience of a manual? Do the old gamers think themselves tougher because they waded through these inconveniences for the game? They think the new generation dumber because of streamlining, which creates somewhat of hypocrisy, because maybe that makes them dumber for not realizing that games aren't getting worse, they're changing genres.

Maybe "classic" RPGs such as Ultima IV and "new" RPGs such as Dragon Age and Fallout 3 shouldn't be classified in the same vein. In fact, maybe they are different genres all together. So what we have here is two genres with both their pros and cons. One side is bickering with the other because they think their side is better. Ladies and gentlemen, these "old gamers" who think the generations of games are getting worse are, in fact, fanboys.

Your mind is blown.

 

[theshadavid]

when I saw the title i was like "hey, Im 13 and PREFER older rpgs!- oh ultima? jesus christ yea I can't handle that...."

I think this is true with a lot of old games. I downloaded Final Fantasy 7 over PSN and I could not get into it. It's not even very obscure like Ultima IV. I'm 16 I feel a little shafted not getting being able to play some of these awesome old games (I just can't get a grasp on Mega Man).

you can't get a grasp on... mega man?
(catch phrase incoming)

IT BAFFLEZ ZE MIND!

(hint: if your playing mega man 1, abandon all hope, if your playing MM2 go after metal man first. he is the easiest boss but his weapon is overpowered as all hell.)

Wanna hear something funny?... It's Mega Man 9...

And I can do the levels, it's just the bosses. I've only tried to beat Concrete Man and I just can't keep up. It was really fun trying to figure out the levels though.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Hell the remakes of old games such pretty bad too, like Wild arms 1 the PSX version is better than the PS2 version that makes no sentence at all 0-o

 

[NezumiiroKitsune]

I admittedly gave up on the inspiration of the original Fallout, Wasteland. It took a long time to get to grips with how to get the game started, and then gameplay itself felt unengaging and there was almost no prologue or set-up of any kind, so I was absolutely lost for what I was meant to be doing. I could tell the game had depth and potential, especially given the 22 years in advancement since it's release. Conversely, I had no problem with Final Fantasy, but that was obscenely simple, and the interface uncluttered and easy to understand. The minute amount of story it had was a failing, but didn't hinder my ability to progress.

Oregon Trail still provides me with amusement to this day.

I might go back to Wasteland, and Ultima IV sounds intriguing so I may look into it also, however I'll make sure to find a copy of the manual before beginning the game.

I agree with others, manuals in games today are becoming disappointingly thin. Bethesda have some reasonably nice ones, very thematic, packed with fluff and cleverly disguised tips. The same goes for some of Insomniacs manuals, especially old Ratchet and Clank, and GameFreaks manuals for Pokemon games, though I haven't purchased a recent one, so they may have become lazy.

 

[sheah1]

How the bloody hell do people not read the manuals? I absorb everything I can on the ride home and having to download games pisses me off because of the lack of manual, yeah sure the controls are easy but I wanna know the backstory damnit. Just to say that this virus hasn't affected everyone of this generation, I'm a teen and demon's souls is one of my favourite games (seriously though, buy it). Now that that's been said I don't think any of my mates could handle most old games, not even FF7. I don't think that the new generation of games are getting easier, it's just that the easy ones are becoming more popular and certain mechanics are becoming staples (life-regen in shooters, cover based games and the like). The real problem is familiarity, most people find a couple series that they're comfortable with (CoD and Fifa for example) and then they'll stick with that series, buying it annually and ignoring that the game hasn't actually changed all that much. Also, new games are sold on a single element that makes it different to the others, like graphics, sound, or a single new element that is really only a tiny part (like bioshock 2's underwater sections. Older games couldn't be based on one element, or graphics or sound, they had to be made up of a ton of different elements, for example, Final Fantasy 13 has just two elements; Fighting and cutscenes (and I really shouldn't have to call that an element). While Final Fantasy 7 has a few main elements, and a ton of sub elements; It has fighting, exploring, customising, and then there's mini-games, choco-breeding, submarine diving, just a ton of stuff that stops it from getting bland or repetitive (like 13 does about an hour in). We just need to get back to the time when developers couldn't be so lazy.

 

[sheah1]

Just sort of on topic, front mission 3 is really cheap to download onto the PSP, is it worth it? I've heard good things but I don't wanna end up abandoning it like I did with Persona. 1 of course, not 3, never 3.

 

[Deleted]

When he said old school I associated it with the PS1-SNES era of RPGs.

This guy makes me feel young.

 

[Beefjerky]

Oh god... This just makes me sad. I mean, almost literally, sad. What has this god forsaken industry come to?!

 

[JohnDoey]

It's because kids don't read anymore.

 

[tahrey]

Sounds like lazy students to me. I mean, yeah, just try to jump straight in, that's fine, it's understandable, most games - even old ones - were designed that way. But when you're totally baffled, and someone has basically given you the equivalent of a strategy guide with it LABELLED as the game manual, wouldn't you bother to look in it? I mean, it's not even a heavy book, it's just clickety click, and rub your scroll wheel to move between pages. Ctrl-F, Controls, Enter will get you the basic knowledge.

Never mind Ultima, I've got a few games from my own formative gaming years (around 90-95) I'd like to try them on. See how far they get in a combat flight sim like F19, figure out why their randomly-flailed Simm'ed City is dying on its arse, or how come everything in MegaLoMania* takes such a damn long time. Stuff like that.
(* ok, that's officially going to have to be dropped from my Old Game Example Reference List for at least a week now, it's getting over-mentioned)

But it's the way of the internet generation. In a time when an unimaginable ocean of informative, largely text based information that could tell them anything they could ever need to know about how to do something, why something happened, etc, they'd rather watch a few youtube videos, go on yahoo answers and ask the same stupid question that's been asked 100 times before and could be answered with a quick site-search (and read) or google, then complain "tl;dr" if someone dares write a response longer than three or four lines.

It's infuriating, and inexplicable, but hey ... it's going to be their world eventually. Let them figure it out. Maybe they'll mature into it.

FWIW Ultima probably would have bored my pants off as well. As games go, it is pretty longwinded, slow and contemplative, with little payoff in excitement, music or graphics... there's just not enough time, unless you were immortal and it was the last thing left to do in the world. A full on round of Railroad Tycoon or Civ is stretching it, and I've learnt to avoid Gran Turismo because it manages to bypass the temporal-awareness parts of the brain. Never got past the second level of Dungeon Master. Too much investment required.

(Same reason I'm probably not going to buy Minecraft, or a DS of any type, even though I *KNOW* I would love both of them. Free time - currently spent not only on this kind of nonsense but constructive things too - would vanish)

 

[xXAsherahXx]

The oldest RPG I've played is Final Fantasy.

It's weird that a lot of kids still play old Mario and Sonic games, but can't handle an old RPG.

 

[The Cookie Cruncher]

I didn't become a gamer until the good year of 2004, when I got Kingdom Hearts. And even then I wasn't all that into it. But I did try some older games later on. And I really liked them, and I'm sure that I could play Ultima. Even if I have never heard of it before.

 

[kyzill]

back in my day kids knew how to respect a video game cartridge

 

[Vzzdak]

RTFM = Read the Fine Manual

Failing to read the manual is nothing new for any software. For complex office software, it's actually more important that you're capable of quickly locating and understanding feature descriptions as you need them.

Not reading the manual in a class that is specifically about understanding games? That sounds more like the students not doing the assigned reading. But seriously, most game manuals are light reading that can be skimmed through to get the gist of what is there, which one can refer back to as the need arises.

Mind you, the goal in Ultima IV was not terribly difficult to understand. What might have been more challenging was the need to methodically speak with whatever and every NPC that you could to discover dialogue threads, often requiring you to repeatedly criss-cross across the game world.