Were the "good old days" of gaming really better?

[Popido]

Bad games will be forgotten in time. Gotcha.

Nostalgia? Suree..but its only been 3 months since I found out about System Shock 2 and Deus Ex.

If you ask me, uuh..shit I dunno. I think games were more expressive back then. :<
Im not gonna say gaming is dead or dying, but there seems to be couple zombies walking among.

 

[GoWithDAFro]

When we were younger we had lower standards and when we play those old games again we look past their faults because of the memories they bring back (or at least I do).

If you were to bring your kid self to today and show them the games we have now there's a very good chance they'd abandon most of their games and stick with current games (which for them would be future games).

I remember playing GoldenEye for the first time 2 years ago (I never had an N64) and my impressions were "meh it's alright, I can see why it would be popular all those years ago, I guess, now where the hell is my Timesplitters game?"

This. I've gotten so used to some of the flaws in my older games they don't even register as problems. But all games have flaws, it's about if the rest is good enough to make you overlook it. The fairest way to settle this dispute is to pick one of the best old games and play it for the first time, do the same with one of the best newer gmes, and compare.

 

[Sephychu]

It's a combined effort of people remembering fondly old times, not being able to relive their frustrations, and all the shit we get now. We still get great games, but there's a fuckload of shit.

 

[Fetzenfisch]

Well there is a point there, no doubt. But the truth is, the influence of the "must make maximum money" philosophy leads to the extinction of some nice genres that we all will miss or are already missing.
And thats the really sad part.
The Nostalgia of thinking of my Atari 2600 of course is something a new game hardly can evoke in me (I can control the thinks happening in TV with this stick????!! Incredible!!!!!) but i never would say the games were better there.
But the 90's had the biggest variety i can recall. A lot of experiments, a lot of crap, a lot of masterpieces.
We had Hollywood stars acting in Videogames, we had epic stories in games that changed the genre whilst you play through (adventures turning into strategy games for example, when the character manages to form the revolution he wanted to and the point and click becomes a tactical map with turn based action etc), we had a lot of things that came back again and again. Just follow the History from California Games to WII.
In the department of Philology we say, there are only seven storys to tell in the world, the only thing that changes is the imagery, the same applies to video games. Only that 3 out of seven arent made any more.

 

[Vault101]

People filled with nostalga tend to have no perspective, its amazing that they make wild claims of "everything now sucks!"

 

[JaysonM]

I thought it was obvious?

 

[JaysonM]

It's just nostalgia, most new games are far better than most 90s games

In graphics, yes.
In other things, no. New games lack the effort of the older ones, so we get uninteresting carbon copies of the same short, boring, bland games.

That is a very ignorant statement..

 

[ZiggyE]

It's just nostalgia, most new games are far better than most 90s games

In graphics, yes.
In other things, no. New games lack the effort of the older ones, so we get uninteresting carbon copies of the same short, boring, bland games.

That is a very ignorant statement..

There is some truth in it. It seems now that most FPS games and MMOs being released are carbon copies of Cod/CS and WoW respectively.

And I'm sick of seeing brown and 'realistic' games tbh.

Also,some JRPGs seem to follow the same trends, though that can be put down to Tetsuya Nomura's involvement in the industry and FFVII.

 

[Timmibal]

The one thing I don't like about modern games is the attitude of 'release first, fix later'. Remember the days when you used to be able to buy a game and not have to worry about a whole slew of game-killer bugs? Remember when a studio who released a hot mess of glitches would get raked over the coals by all parties involved?

Now we've got Lionhead and Bethseda releasing AAA titles completely straight faced with game killer bugs that even the most REMOTELY competant beta team should have picked up on. Their justification? They can kiss a little ass, chuck in some free DLC, and take advantage of the free beta testing of their customers by just live patching it.

Also, remember when studios used to bombard you with demos of their product? Duke 3d? Quake? Doom? Hell, the >9000 wolfenstein clones? Remember the playability of those demos?

Yeah, good luck getting a demo which showcases that much of the game's content these days.

 

[Danzaivar]

If you go back and actually play some old games again, you realise just how crap they used to be. Not that I'd condone getting an emulator and some ROMs to try them or anything.

Megaman X was one of my favourite games when it came out. Tried playing it the other day and oh my word it's a piece of crap by todays standards. Quit out of boredom and frustration after 15 minutes.

 

[Antari]

Its not that the games are hitting the nostalgia button and nothing else. But more to the point of look what they were capable of doing back then. With a programming language that was far more difficult to use than any of the "premade" engines alot of companies use now. Many of the good old titles back then were done by companies starting out. Quite a few came directly from basements and garages. Hense why Indie's are doing so well these days. They are more concerned with the vision and intent of the game, than the budget deadline.

I've seen more production quality in some game out of 1986 than today. I still do, I play older Dos games all the time. Back then they didn't have fancy graphics to rely on. They HAD to make the game extremely fun or it went no where fast. There are points from both sides but its entirely down to a point that the industry has become big business. They aren't in it for the games anymore. The programmers might be, but they don't control the budgets or deadlines.

 

[chipfizz]

that is a good question. To be honest some of the best games i have ever played are old(ish) games as i am still quite a young gamer. I liked ratchet and clank witch was my first game and i think one of the best i have ever played but the thing i think is that when people look at old games now they look at them in a different way. Games back then were made with different tool and had different kind of things they could do. The thing i will give them hands down is that they went the distance to try and make the games as interesting as possilbe.

Now about new games i find that i dont like that much. They all feel the same in some ways and there is WAY to big of a thing on realisum. This bugs me no end. For example GTA4 is dead to me. It is not because it was to hard but it was because there was no dam point in it. I have played a good 4 hours into it and i still felt like 'wow time to do what this random guy wants.... fun....' I got so bored and all my friends were like 'it gets so good soon!' In the end i gave up. I hated it because it was to... well to modern for me.

Some things people say about new games is that they are to easy but i dont mind that if it is fun to play witch many games no a days are not so that kind of sucks from time to time but all in all i think that old games have there place as do new. If I had to pick i would go for new thought just because i am still young and haven't been able to try many old games.

 

[Tyzamar]

Cave Story.

 

[tehroc]

I know im gonna get alot of flak for this but I disagree with OP for a multitude of reasons
The main reason being something which has blighted the last few years of gaming at least----- Patches, Bugs, Glitches and a whole lot of unoriginality

Games back then didnt need to patched on release day due to something overlooked by the developer as they were alot easy to produce. I know thats not a very good argument but at least on the consumers side you didnt have to patch the game up before playing it. You could just jump right into the action.
Bugs, although present, were usually the result of a crappy game. Take the amount of bugs in Cheetahmen for instance. Games like Fallout: New Vegas should be relatively bug free due to the massive amounts of care and attenton supposedly put into this generation
Glitches back then were easily sorted by blowing into the cartridge. Now they need to be patched. Tough luck if you havent got an internet connection.
Lastly, older games could be about absolutely ANYTHING. As Yahtzee put it "you could have a game staring a chef with a gun that shoots Veloceraptors". That age of games has gone only to be replaced by "Gun-metal grey Space Marines Vs Aliens MW clones with a cover system"

This isnt just nostalgia speaking here. I play older games just as much as I play modern games. It just seems that there are alot more problems with todays generation of games that the past generations. Gone is the originality. Gone are the days of proper splitscreen multiplayer ala Goldeneye. Gone are the catchy little MIDI tunes

Someone above me said that old games had hackneyed stories. Old games didnt care about the story unless the gameplay was good. Yes, there were alot of platformers back then but they all played completely different and rarely outright copied each other. Take Mario and Sonic for example.
Now take MW/2 and Uncharted 2. Different gameplay styles in the multiplayer but both have a perks system
There is alot more copying going on nowadays than there was back then

Just my opinion though and I doubt anyone will agree with it but if anyone does then feel free to join me in hiding from the inevitable flaming im going to get

I agree with you completely. I will also chime in with there was more variety back then, these days theres like main 3 genres for consoles, First or TPS, Sports and Hacknslash. Personally the best games that have been released lately are the game built off old gaming conventions. Shadow Complex was one of the best games released this decade for a measly $15, based off the classic Metroidvania model of gameplay.

 

[tehroc]

Not really, as gaming progressed it only got better, just the stories of games today could absolutely crush pretty much all games from the 80s and 90s...

That's pretty ignorant considering in the early 90s having a 8 Meg cartridge was a big deal, games today are shipped in DVD format with 5 gigs worth of storage. I should expect better story from today's games, they aren't limited by storage space.

You statement isn't even true either, Final Fantasy 6 had by far the best storyline out of the series on just an 8meg cartridge.

 

[JeanLuc761]

It's just nostalgia, most new games are far better than most 90s games

In graphics, yes.
In other things, no. New games lack the effort of the older ones, so we get uninteresting carbon copies of the same short, boring, bland games.

Man, I couldn't disagree more. Gaming has progressed immensely in the areas of visual design, game design, sound design, music, writing and immersion.

One need only look at games like Half-Life 2, Halo 3, Mass Effect 2 or Uncharted 2 to see how far gaming has advanced. You're honestly going to tell me that all these things have been for the worse?