11 ms·

The Powerful Emotional Pull of Old Video Games (2014)

109 points by samsolomon 11y ago

paulryanrogers 11y ago
Not sure about the "past accomplishments" part. I usually feel more drawn to old games I never finished.
Umn44 11y ago
All old games have good things and bad things about them. The great things about old games were the challenge. The bad thing about them was that the industry was still learning and hence many games won't age well in terms of some dimension because many lessons had yet to be learned.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  This is going to make me sound like a ranting old curmudgeon, but I am having a hard time thinking of much that's an improvement in modern games except for art style/graphical limitations. There's not much innovation anymore. Modern AAA titles are rife with handholding, patronizing, unimaginative and focus-grouped-to-hell stories (because those sell the best), DLC bait, and other such tiresome tropes. I remember the 90's being a time when there was a lot of innovation and experimentation because nobody had it down pat what would sell the best. You'd never see a Mister Mosquito[1] or a Vangers[2] or an Urban Assault[3] nowadays. You might see an indie homage or two, but that's totally different from having a large studio throwing resources at the wall and seeing what sticks. It's a time I dearly miss. You want to know what the most memorable game in recent memory was to me? Undertale[4] . A retro-styled indie RPG with graphics that could probably have been pulled off 20 years ago on the SNES, but in spite of that limitation, its story and sound design is absolutely top shelf and is, in my mind, one of those games that everyone should play at least once. Commercialism ruins everything. Sure, the usual response to this is "but there are more games than ever, and it's easier for anyone to jump in", which is true, but it still feels like as if there's some magic that was long since lost, only occasionally recaptured by a clever group of developers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mosquito [2]: http://store.steampowered.com/app/264080/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/264080/ [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Assault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Assault [4]: http://undertale.com/about.htm http://undertale.com/about.htm
  - HCIdivision17 11y ago
    Here's the really cool bit: today we can have both. I get to play Chrono Trigger - a masterpiece of artfully taking a system to its limits - and I can play The Witness - a gorgeous game that would lose so much if it couldn't be rendered so well. To me, the only hope is to have lots and lots and lots of games made. Whenever we wax philosophical about old games, no one ever mentions the absolute piles of junk that were made. And then some were good, but not great (compare Super Monkey Ball to Marble Madness) I loved Marble Madness as a little kid but couldn't really wrap my head around the controls, whereas SMB was fun right off the bat (and I was still terrible at it - but for actual gameplay reasons now). Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon? The whole game felt rock solid and hand crafted. The 3D version added the ability to ride. But the world was so much less pretty. By contrast, look at the evolution of 3D in the Myst series; the game was supposed to be played like Uru, but computers could only handle HyperCard at the time. And contrast again with Into the Manhole, which really ought to be flash cards (or like flipping pages in a book - I remember the animations surprising and delighting me as a kid). TL;DR: don't worry, it's not all bad. Some games need constraints, and people will build engines just for that. And some don't. But the important thing is: more games! (So more amazing ones trickle out).
  - Umn44 11y ago
    "This is going to make me sound like a ranting old curmudgeon, but I am having a hard time thinking of much that's an improvement in modern games except for art style/graphical limitations." Matchmaking made it a lot easier for people to play pickup games over joining servers. Even though I too hate the lack of dedicated servers. The blending of cinematics with gameplay like in mass effect 2 and Tranformers Fall of cybertron. You need to play those games to understand. In ye old days we'd play a level and get rewarded with a cutscene, in Mass effect 2/Transformers the 'cinematic' is merged with the set-piece level design so that you are "in" the movie. God of war series for PS2 is another one. Also Ace combat 5. Street fighter 4. Shadow complex. There are definitely a few standouts in modern gaming. You should pick up Magicka, Wizard wars and awesomenauts on steam.
  - jjoonathan 11y ago
    If I wanted to give "old school" games a shot, which few should I try? I haven't played many -- Sonic as a kid, I watched FF7 and Symphony of the Night on youtube -- so I don't really have a good basis to judge from, but nothing I've seen obviously meets (let alone exceeds) the bar set by my favorite modern games, e.g. Soma: Story, Atmosphere, Thought Provoking Deus Ex HR: Story, Atmosphere, Thought Provoking BioShock 1: Story, Thought Provoking DragonAge 1,3 / MassEffect 1,2,3: Story, Characters Witcher 3: Story, Characters Portal 2: Story, Mechanics Undertale: Story, Mechanics Alien Isolation: Story, Atmosphere, Mechanics Mirror's Edge: Mechanics Braid: Mechanics Dark Souls / Bloodborne: Mechanics? (Haven't played) Blood Dragon: 1980s simulator I can identify the "commercialization" trend that you're talking about if and only if I focus my attention to a single franchise or a single aspect of a single franchise. Example: Mass Effect lost its hard SF edge in 2, 3 but the characters and mechanics got better. Starcraft lost its story and character edge in 2, but the mechanics got better. Bioshock lost its philosophical depth in Infinite but the story and characters got better. Overlaid on top of this is a trend of increasing production value. Every franchise gives you some facet to point at and say "devs don't care about X, only production value, boo." This ignores the boring explanation that it's hard to churn out sequels that exceed the original in each and every possible point of comparison. Sequels need to be evaluated on their own merits and the industry needs to be judged as a whole. Otherwise everything is guaranteed to look like it's going downhill. Or maybe I'm wrong. Let me know your favorites and I'll promise to give at least one a try.
iolothebard 11y ago
Mame is fantastic for this reason. Although, I'm not sure how I played a lot of those games, they're much more difficult than I remember. I guess when you had only $5 in quarters you had to make them last. Getting a $20 for games at the big arcade or Chuck E Cheese/Crystals as a kid was like winning the lottery.
carsongross 11y ago
Two non-nostalgia aspects of old games stand out to me: 1) The gameplay is often much easier to pick up quickly without a crutch mode because there were fewer degrees of freedom. 2) The artistry was at times amazing. Orson Wells said that "the enemy of art is the absence of limitations" and I think the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, in particular, demonstrated the truth of that maxim.
- mangeletti 11y ago
  Wow, I could not agree more. One more-recent case that really stands out is Command & Conquer - Red Alert 2. This game had much simpler graphics than later RTS games, so the focus was mostly on gameplay. IMHO, this was the best RTS ever created[1], and the reason for this was that it was sort of at the peak of perfection for its level of graphical and spatial limitations. 1. I know Star Craft was epic as well, and Generals from the remaining remnants of Westwood combined with EA was great also. And... Dune. Red Alert, for me, was the sort of Vivaldi[1.1] culmination that built on all these past successes, just before the age of "Moar Triangles!" reached RTS. 1.1 (I heard you liked footnotes) Vivaldi, the Baroque composer, built upon the style of Corelli and others before him, even copied some aspects of their musical styles, but this is what made his music so great.
  - untog 11y ago
    Ah, Red Alert 2. I really loved that game, haven't played in forever. It was before I had ubiquitous broadband so I never really played it online - does anyone know if it is still possible to do so / whether anyone does? I'm sure I'd lose within minutes against anyone still playing today, but a 4 way multiplayer battle would be amazing. EDIT: figured I could be less lazy and find out myself. It appears you can play online through https://cncnet.org/red-alert-2 https://cncnet.org/red-alert-2. Now all I need to do is figure out where to buy it and how to make it work on my Mac. I suppose it's old enough I might be able to play via a virtual machine.
    - AlecSchueler 11y ago
      Definitely check out OpenRA, a modern open source and cross-platform reimplementation of the old Westwood engines, with support for CnC, Red Alert and Dune2000. There's a few changes to add a bit of balance but its still got the classic feel and there's an active multiplayer community online with regular tournaments and everything.
gaius 11y ago
It's not about nostalgia. It's about in the days before powerful GPUs gameplay and originality really mattered. The game was "rendered" in your own imagination. It's the same reason in the days of 4k TVs many people still prefer books to TV.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  Not all games from the past hold up today, there was a lot of poor gameplay and unoriginal games from back in the day too. For example, the 80s had tons of shoot-em-ups, the early 90s had a deluge of 2D platformers, etc... What was different back then was the costs involved in developing a commercial game. As the appetite for high-end graphics has increased, so too has the cost of producing games, which has led to fewer risks being taken by big game publishers. Thankfully the indie game scene is stronger than ever, and has proven to be a good outlet for game developers when experimenting with new ideas.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  > the days before ... gameplay and originality really mattered. That's exactly what I remember people saying about then-modern games in the 90s.
andrewclunn 11y ago
It's all about the music. If a game was so so, but had an awesome soundtrack, then I'm invariably going to remember it more fondly. Saga Frontier comes to mind as an example.
- rybosome 11y ago
  Great example. Overall it was a thoroughly mediocre game, but it had very, very distinct and memorable music. I too feel fondness for that game.
- clevernickname 11y ago
  Agreed. When I was really into emulation, there were a lot of objectively terrible games that I'd fire up for a few minutes every other day just to hear the music. I feel bad for the composers whose work had to languish in games like that. Music is one of the most important things missing from many modern AAA games. Too many game devs either license existing pop music, or pretend they're making a movie (the source of a lot of problems really) and hire a film score composer. Older game music was certainly inspired by popular music but it had this distinct quality that made it really enjoyable to listen to. It wasn't just from the sound chips. Maybe it's because they loop. Thankfully the indies and a few old-timers like Nintendo seem to understand this.
aclimatt 11y ago
For me, the nostalgia is very much attributed to the music. Music in general can be very nostalgic, but a 30 second track that you listened to for hours a day on repeat as a child can really become a part of you. Much for that reason, Ocarina of Time has always been top of my list for nostalgic games, and the score was arguably some of Koji Kondo's finest work.
- J-dawg 11y ago
  Oh, this is so true! For me it's Frontier: Elite II. I can't hear the Blue Danube Waltz without imagining I'm docking at a Coriolis station https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7PqehW2X7mHp3UW2Ix5Z85sORkxIWss- https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7PqehW2X7mHp3UW2Ix5Z85...
  - tjl 11y ago
    When I was much younger, I used to play Dune 2 while listening to Smashing Pumpkins. Now, whenever I hear Smashing Pumpkins, I'm taken back to playing Dune 2 all over again.
    - over 11y ago
      Wow, I was listening to Siamese Dream last night and thought about Ultima VI! But I'm sure I also played Dune 2 to that album.
- Fezzik 11y ago
  Same. I recently played Zelda: A Link To the Past (on my iPhone, nonetheless, which is cool to a non-tech inclined person!), and I felt like I was a kid again. All the same emotions flooded back, just from listening to that unforgettable music and wandering through Hyrule. Re-playing that game was some of the best therapy ever. I would start the game on the bus, or at lunch, or play for a few minutes before dinner, and all worry would melt away.
- mangeletti 11y ago
  This HN thread is hitting on so many notes (pun intended). I have every one of Koji Kondo's songs, and Ocarina of Time was it for me also. I would listen to Koji's cello-dominated Gerudo Valley theme so many times...
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erik_landerholm 11y ago
This is apropo for me. I just purchased a wiiu for my children and was getting a bit choked up looking through the virtual console list. I actually had a conversation with my wife about it after the kids were in bed. We all did a 6 hour tour of super metroid, it was great. There is something to this for sure. Hearing original Zelda music transports me back to being a kid instantly.
xivzgrev 11y ago
How timely. I recently visited parents, and while going thru super Nintendo games remembers some of the music from final fantasy 3. Then I started listening to it at work. Then I downloaded the game now I'm 17 hours in. Kefka here I come...
- jmduke 11y ago
  Kefka is the worst, but he's also a great villain from a time where it felt like most villains were sort of generic and one-dimensional.
jmduke 11y ago
This article struck quite a chord with me. I spent most of my childhood playing (but rarely finishing) a lot of RPGs and action-adventure games (chief among them Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, etc. etc.) I've been going back over the past couple years and replaying them. For a couple of reasons: there's the sense of closure of having finished something I started a dozen years ago (shouts to Turtle Rock, which Elementary School Justin did not have the fortitude to complete). More, though, I just wanted to see if these games which I spent so much energy and imagination on a while back were worth the investment. I've been struck by how mature and powerful these games were in their own right: - Earthbound is this dense, bizarre paean to Western culture also wrapped up in this story about losing your innocence and the creepiest final boss fight ever; - Link's Awakening forces players to answer the difficult question of why you'd want to wake up from an amazing dream; - Even Final Fantasy has a narrative device that I've yet to see replicated since, of having the main villain straight up win, and then forcing you to deal with the fallout and rebuild from the literal dust and ashes. These things are for sure enhanced by nostalgia, and a common argument against these games are that you're looking at them "through rose-tinted glasses" (the implication being that their luster is gone without my memories of playing them as a child). I'm not so sure that's true -- but, more importantly, I'm not so sure that matters. In a lot of ways, it feels like having gotten coffee with an old friend after a long time apart, and remarking on how both you and they have matured so much. If you have fond memories of video games, I recommend you blow the dust off of the proverbial cartridge and treat yourself.
- sogen 11y ago
  I remember flammie the dragon in Secret of Mana, that at some point in the game grows up/matures, and I was like "Whoa!"
zaroth 11y ago
Every so often I find myself searching for a BBS to telnet into to play a few hours of Galactic Empire or Trade Wars. Loved playing those games as a kid, and definitely eeriely drawn back to them from time to time.
- spdustin 11y ago
  I would lose days of productivity if I could play either of those games again. And I want to. Badly. I've played a few 4X games since then, but those old "Door Games" we're something special. I wonder if anyone has the source for them still... EDIT: oh, no. I'll see you guys later. telnet://twgs.classictw.com
- jmspring 11y ago
  Tradewars (or TW 2002) continues to be available online -- http://www.tradewars.com/default.html http://www.tradewars.com/default.html I lost many hours playing this game.
csense 11y ago
Gaming site gog.com [1] [2] built a successful business around acquiring rights to game companies' back catalogs and selling them online. (Originally they were Good Old Games, but they've now rebranded to simply "gog.com" and sell new games as well.) HN readers may be interested in the technology (Dosbox) and gog.com's strong anti-DRM stance [3]. From a user's perspective, the work they've done getting games to work on modern systems is alone worth the price of admission -- I must have spent hours [4] tweaking Dosbox configs to try to get my copy of Master of Magic to play music (the game directory that began with a 7-floppy installation in the mid-90s has been copied to every system I've had since then). Buying (another) copy of the game from GOG and getting a Dosbox config that Just Works, was well worth the modest price. From the publisher's perspective I'm sure it's a win as well -- I could easily believe they gave up on ever realizing any more income from that IP a decade before they were approached by GOG. [1] https://www.gog.com https://www.gog.com [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com [3] https://www.gog.com/support/website_help/what_is_gog_com https://www.gog.com/support/website_help/what_is_gog_com [4] The finickiness isn't unique to Dosbox, I remember having to fiddle with the in-game settings for a while running bare-metal on at least one '90s era PC as well.
- benologist 11y ago
  GOG is my go-to place for buying games too, they just seem to be such an honest and user-friendly company. Steam is my go-to place when I want to support a company that spent years persecuting their own customers for getting refunds.
- AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
  Master of Magic has been on every PC I've owned as well. And gog.com's version was the first thing I installed on my newest Win10 laptop a few months ago: Runs with no problems :)
  - Razengan 11y ago
    There's a new Master of Orion game coming out too :) http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion
qKTDxAy4KfcOjA9 11y ago
I am 27, my sister is 29, and when we meet up (a couple of times a year, we live far apart) we play our old Super Nintendo, as we used to do as kids. Neither of us play the SNES at any other time.
LoSboccacc 11y ago
it's not just nostalgia, some game principles are very hard to find in modern games, especially regarding the exploration of interesting mechanics irregardless of balance. strategy games like master of magic or total annihilation, were faction had a distinct feeling from each other, even if some were more powerful, are almost impossible today where multiplayer is a large portion of the game and necessarily need to be balanced, which causes many games' faction to feel reskin of each other with just minor changes and not really unique mechanics.
stretchwithme 11y ago
I got hooked on Subterrania on Sega Genesis for several months back in 94, then didn't play for 15 years. Then I decided to look for it on eBay. Found a system and the game for only $35 and now I play it several times a week.
- lostgame 11y ago
  My partner gave me a Sega Saturn for my birthday a year ago...since then, our band's little collective has used it as a little centre of some of our gatherings...Street Fighter II, NiGHTS into Dreams, Daytona USA CC, oh, man...
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Sega Rally on Saturn is pretty amazing. 3 cars, 4 tracks - but it's really nailed the feel.

109 points by samsolomon 11y ago

Not sure about the "past accomplishments" part. I usually feel more drawn to old games I never finished.

Umn44 11y ago

All old games have good things and bad things about them. The great things about old games were the challenge. The bad thing about them was that the industry was still learning and hence many games won't age well in terms of some dimension because many lessons had yet to be learned.

Karunamon 11y ago
This is going to make me sound like a ranting old curmudgeon, but I am having a hard time thinking of much that's an improvement in modern games except for art style/graphical limitations. There's not much innovation anymore. Modern AAA titles are rife with handholding, patronizing, unimaginative and focus-grouped-to-hell stories (because those sell the best), DLC bait, and other such tiresome tropes. I remember the 90's being a time when there was a lot of innovation and experimentation because nobody had it down pat what would sell the best. You'd never see a Mister Mosquito[1] or a Vangers[2] or an Urban Assault[3] nowadays. You might see an indie homage or two, but that's totally different from having a large studio throwing resources at the wall and seeing what sticks. It's a time I dearly miss. You want to know what the most memorable game in recent memory was to me? Undertale[4] . A retro-styled indie RPG with graphics that could probably have been pulled off 20 years ago on the SNES, but in spite of that limitation, its story and sound design is absolutely top shelf and is, in my mind, one of those games that everyone should play at least once. Commercialism ruins everything. Sure, the usual response to this is "but there are more games than ever, and it's easier for anyone to jump in", which is true, but it still feels like as if there's some magic that was long since lost, only occasionally recaptured by a clever group of developers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mosquito [2]: http://store.steampowered.com/app/264080/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/264080/ [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Assault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Assault [4]: http://undertale.com/about.htm http://undertale.com/about.htm
- HCIdivision17 11y ago
  Here's the really cool bit: today we can have both. I get to play Chrono Trigger - a masterpiece of artfully taking a system to its limits - and I can play The Witness - a gorgeous game that would lose so much if it couldn't be rendered so well. To me, the only hope is to have lots and lots and lots of games made. Whenever we wax philosophical about old games, no one ever mentions the absolute piles of junk that were made. And then some were good, but not great (compare Super Monkey Ball to Marble Madness) I loved Marble Madness as a little kid but couldn't really wrap my head around the controls, whereas SMB was fun right off the bat (and I was still terrible at it - but for actual gameplay reasons now). Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon? The whole game felt rock solid and hand crafted. The 3D version added the ability to ride. But the world was so much less pretty. By contrast, look at the evolution of 3D in the Myst series; the game was supposed to be played like Uru, but computers could only handle HyperCard at the time. And contrast again with Into the Manhole, which really ought to be flash cards (or like flipping pages in a book - I remember the animations surprising and delighting me as a kid). TL;DR: don't worry, it's not all bad. Some games need constraints, and people will build engines just for that. And some don't. But the important thing is: more games! (So more amazing ones trickle out).
- Umn44 11y ago
  "This is going to make me sound like a ranting old curmudgeon, but I am having a hard time thinking of much that's an improvement in modern games except for art style/graphical limitations." Matchmaking made it a lot easier for people to play pickup games over joining servers. Even though I too hate the lack of dedicated servers. The blending of cinematics with gameplay like in mass effect 2 and Tranformers Fall of cybertron. You need to play those games to understand. In ye old days we'd play a level and get rewarded with a cutscene, in Mass effect 2/Transformers the 'cinematic' is merged with the set-piece level design so that you are "in" the movie. God of war series for PS2 is another one. Also Ace combat 5. Street fighter 4. Shadow complex. There are definitely a few standouts in modern gaming. You should pick up Magicka, Wizard wars and awesomenauts on steam.
- jjoonathan 11y ago
  If I wanted to give "old school" games a shot, which few should I try? I haven't played many -- Sonic as a kid, I watched FF7 and Symphony of the Night on youtube -- so I don't really have a good basis to judge from, but nothing I've seen obviously meets (let alone exceeds) the bar set by my favorite modern games, e.g. Soma: Story, Atmosphere, Thought Provoking Deus Ex HR: Story, Atmosphere, Thought Provoking BioShock 1: Story, Thought Provoking DragonAge 1,3 / MassEffect 1,2,3: Story, Characters Witcher 3: Story, Characters Portal 2: Story, Mechanics Undertale: Story, Mechanics Alien Isolation: Story, Atmosphere, Mechanics Mirror's Edge: Mechanics Braid: Mechanics Dark Souls / Bloodborne: Mechanics? (Haven't played) Blood Dragon: 1980s simulator I can identify the "commercialization" trend that you're talking about if and only if I focus my attention to a single franchise or a single aspect of a single franchise. Example: Mass Effect lost its hard SF edge in 2, 3 but the characters and mechanics got better. Starcraft lost its story and character edge in 2, but the mechanics got better. Bioshock lost its philosophical depth in Infinite but the story and characters got better. Overlaid on top of this is a trend of increasing production value. Every franchise gives you some facet to point at and say "devs don't care about X, only production value, boo." This ignores the boring explanation that it's hard to churn out sequels that exceed the original in each and every possible point of comparison. Sequels need to be evaluated on their own merits and the industry needs to be judged as a whole. Otherwise everything is guaranteed to look like it's going downhill. Or maybe I'm wrong. Let me know your favorites and I'll promise to give at least one a try.

iolothebard 11y ago

Mame is fantastic for this reason. Although, I'm not sure how I played a lot of those games, they're much more difficult than I remember. I guess when you had only $5 in quarters you had to make them last. Getting a $20 for games at the big arcade or Chuck E Cheese/Crystals as a kid was like winning the lottery.

carsongross 11y ago

Two non-nostalgia aspects of old games stand out to me: 1) The gameplay is often much easier to pick up quickly without a crutch mode because there were fewer degrees of freedom. 2) The artistry was at times amazing. Orson Wells said that "the enemy of art is the absence of limitations" and I think the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, in particular, demonstrated the truth of that maxim.

mangeletti 11y ago
Wow, I could not agree more. One more-recent case that really stands out is Command & Conquer - Red Alert 2. This game had much simpler graphics than later RTS games, so the focus was mostly on gameplay. IMHO, this was the best RTS ever created[1], and the reason for this was that it was sort of at the peak of perfection for its level of graphical and spatial limitations. 1. I know Star Craft was epic as well, and Generals from the remaining remnants of Westwood combined with EA was great also. And... Dune. Red Alert, for me, was the sort of Vivaldi[1.1] culmination that built on all these past successes, just before the age of "Moar Triangles!" reached RTS. 1.1 (I heard you liked footnotes) Vivaldi, the Baroque composer, built upon the style of Corelli and others before him, even copied some aspects of their musical styles, but this is what made his music so great.
- untog 11y ago
  Ah, Red Alert 2. I really loved that game, haven't played in forever. It was before I had ubiquitous broadband so I never really played it online - does anyone know if it is still possible to do so / whether anyone does? I'm sure I'd lose within minutes against anyone still playing today, but a 4 way multiplayer battle would be amazing. EDIT: figured I could be less lazy and find out myself. It appears you can play online through https://cncnet.org/red-alert-2 https://cncnet.org/red-alert-2. Now all I need to do is figure out where to buy it and how to make it work on my Mac. I suppose it's old enough I might be able to play via a virtual machine.
  - AlecSchueler 11y ago
    Definitely check out OpenRA, a modern open source and cross-platform reimplementation of the old Westwood engines, with support for CnC, Red Alert and Dune2000. There's a few changes to add a bit of balance but its still got the classic feel and there's an active multiplayer community online with regular tournaments and everything.

gaius 11y ago

It's not about nostalgia. It's about in the days before powerful GPUs gameplay and originality really mattered. The game was "rendered" in your own imagination. It's the same reason in the days of 4k TVs many people still prefer books to TV.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
Not all games from the past hold up today, there was a lot of poor gameplay and unoriginal games from back in the day too. For example, the 80s had tons of shoot-em-ups, the early 90s had a deluge of 2D platformers, etc... What was different back then was the costs involved in developing a commercial game. As the appetite for high-end graphics has increased, so too has the cost of producing games, which has led to fewer risks being taken by big game publishers. Thankfully the indie game scene is stronger than ever, and has proven to be a good outlet for game developers when experimenting with new ideas.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
> the days before ... gameplay and originality really mattered. That's exactly what I remember people saying about then-modern games in the 90s.

andrewclunn 11y ago

It's all about the music. If a game was so so, but had an awesome soundtrack, then I'm invariably going to remember it more fondly. Saga Frontier comes to mind as an example.

rybosome 11y ago
Great example. Overall it was a thoroughly mediocre game, but it had very, very distinct and memorable music. I too feel fondness for that game.
clevernickname 11y ago
Agreed. When I was really into emulation, there were a lot of objectively terrible games that I'd fire up for a few minutes every other day just to hear the music. I feel bad for the composers whose work had to languish in games like that. Music is one of the most important things missing from many modern AAA games. Too many game devs either license existing pop music, or pretend they're making a movie (the source of a lot of problems really) and hire a film score composer. Older game music was certainly inspired by popular music but it had this distinct quality that made it really enjoyable to listen to. It wasn't just from the sound chips. Maybe it's because they loop. Thankfully the indies and a few old-timers like Nintendo seem to understand this.

aclimatt 11y ago

For me, the nostalgia is very much attributed to the music. Music in general can be very nostalgic, but a 30 second track that you listened to for hours a day on repeat as a child can really become a part of you. Much for that reason, Ocarina of Time has always been top of my list for nostalgic games, and the score was arguably some of Koji Kondo's finest work.

J-dawg 11y ago
Oh, this is so true! For me it's Frontier: Elite II. I can't hear the Blue Danube Waltz without imagining I'm docking at a Coriolis station https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7PqehW2X7mHp3UW2Ix5Z85sORkxIWss- https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7PqehW2X7mHp3UW2Ix5Z85...
- tjl 11y ago
  When I was much younger, I used to play Dune 2 while listening to Smashing Pumpkins. Now, whenever I hear Smashing Pumpkins, I'm taken back to playing Dune 2 all over again.
  - over 11y ago
    Wow, I was listening to Siamese Dream last night and thought about Ultima VI! But I'm sure I also played Dune 2 to that album.
Fezzik 11y ago
Same. I recently played Zelda: A Link To the Past (on my iPhone, nonetheless, which is cool to a non-tech inclined person!), and I felt like I was a kid again. All the same emotions flooded back, just from listening to that unforgettable music and wandering through Hyrule. Re-playing that game was some of the best therapy ever. I would start the game on the bus, or at lunch, or play for a few minutes before dinner, and all worry would melt away.
mangeletti 11y ago
This HN thread is hitting on so many notes (pun intended). I have every one of Koji Kondo's songs, and Ocarina of Time was it for me also. I would listen to Koji's cello-dominated Gerudo Valley theme so many times...

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erik_landerholm 11y ago

This is apropo for me. I just purchased a wiiu for my children and was getting a bit choked up looking through the virtual console list. I actually had a conversation with my wife about it after the kids were in bed. We all did a 6 hour tour of super metroid, it was great. There is something to this for sure. Hearing original Zelda music transports me back to being a kid instantly.

xivzgrev 11y ago

How timely. I recently visited parents, and while going thru super Nintendo games remembers some of the music from final fantasy 3. Then I started listening to it at work. Then I downloaded the game now I'm 17 hours in. Kefka here I come...

jmduke 11y ago
Kefka is the worst, but he's also a great villain from a time where it felt like most villains were sort of generic and one-dimensional.

jmduke 11y ago

This article struck quite a chord with me. I spent most of my childhood playing (but rarely finishing) a lot of RPGs and action-adventure games (chief among them Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, etc. etc.) I've been going back over the past couple years and replaying them. For a couple of reasons: there's the sense of closure of having finished something I started a dozen years ago (shouts to Turtle Rock, which Elementary School Justin did not have the fortitude to complete). More, though, I just wanted to see if these games which I spent so much energy and imagination on a while back were worth the investment. I've been struck by how mature and powerful these games were in their own right: - Earthbound is this dense, bizarre paean to Western culture also wrapped up in this story about losing your innocence and the creepiest final boss fight ever; - Link's Awakening forces players to answer the difficult question of why you'd want to wake up from an amazing dream; - Even Final Fantasy has a narrative device that I've yet to see replicated since, of having the main villain straight up win, and then forcing you to deal with the fallout and rebuild from the literal dust and ashes. These things are for sure enhanced by nostalgia, and a common argument against these games are that you're looking at them "through rose-tinted glasses" (the implication being that their luster is gone without my memories of playing them as a child). I'm not so sure that's true -- but, more importantly, I'm not so sure that matters. In a lot of ways, it feels like having gotten coffee with an old friend after a long time apart, and remarking on how both you and they have matured so much. If you have fond memories of video games, I recommend you blow the dust off of the proverbial cartridge and treat yourself.

sogen 11y ago
I remember flammie the dragon in Secret of Mana, that at some point in the game grows up/matures, and I was like "Whoa!"

zaroth 11y ago

Every so often I find myself searching for a BBS to telnet into to play a few hours of Galactic Empire or Trade Wars. Loved playing those games as a kid, and definitely eeriely drawn back to them from time to time.

spdustin 11y ago
I would lose days of productivity if I could play either of those games again. And I want to. Badly. I've played a few 4X games since then, but those old "Door Games" we're something special. I wonder if anyone has the source for them still... EDIT: oh, no. I'll see you guys later. telnet://twgs.classictw.com
jmspring 11y ago
Tradewars (or TW 2002) continues to be available online -- http://www.tradewars.com/default.html http://www.tradewars.com/default.html I lost many hours playing this game.

csense 11y ago

Gaming site gog.com [1] [2] built a successful business around acquiring rights to game companies' back catalogs and selling them online. (Originally they were Good Old Games, but they've now rebranded to simply "gog.com" and sell new games as well.) HN readers may be interested in the technology (Dosbox) and gog.com's strong anti-DRM stance [3]. From a user's perspective, the work they've done getting games to work on modern systems is alone worth the price of admission -- I must have spent hours [4] tweaking Dosbox configs to try to get my copy of Master of Magic to play music (the game directory that began with a 7-floppy installation in the mid-90s has been copied to every system I've had since then). Buying (another) copy of the game from GOG and getting a Dosbox config that Just Works, was well worth the modest price. From the publisher's perspective I'm sure it's a win as well -- I could easily believe they gave up on ever realizing any more income from that IP a decade before they were approached by GOG. [1] https://www.gog.com https://www.gog.com [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com [3] https://www.gog.com/support/website_help/what_is_gog_com https://www.gog.com/support/website_help/what_is_gog_com [4] The finickiness isn't unique to Dosbox, I remember having to fiddle with the in-game settings for a while running bare-metal on at least one '90s era PC as well.

benologist 11y ago
GOG is my go-to place for buying games too, they just seem to be such an honest and user-friendly company. Steam is my go-to place when I want to support a company that spent years persecuting their own customers for getting refunds.
AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
Master of Magic has been on every PC I've owned as well. And gog.com's version was the first thing I installed on my newest Win10 laptop a few months ago: Runs with no problems :)
- Razengan 11y ago
  There's a new Master of Orion game coming out too :) http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion

qKTDxAy4KfcOjA9 11y ago

I am 27, my sister is 29, and when we meet up (a couple of times a year, we live far apart) we play our old Super Nintendo, as we used to do as kids. Neither of us play the SNES at any other time.

LoSboccacc 11y ago

it's not just nostalgia, some game principles are very hard to find in modern games, especially regarding the exploration of interesting mechanics irregardless of balance. strategy games like master of magic or total annihilation, were faction had a distinct feeling from each other, even if some were more powerful, are almost impossible today where multiplayer is a large portion of the game and necessarily need to be balanced, which causes many games' faction to feel reskin of each other with just minor changes and not really unique mechanics.

stretchwithme 11y ago

I got hooked on Subterrania on Sega Genesis for several months back in 94, then didn't play for 15 years. Then I decided to look for it on eBay. Found a system and the game for only $35 and now I play it several times a week.

lostgame 11y ago
My partner gave me a Sega Saturn for my birthday a year ago...since then, our band's little collective has used it as a little centre of some of our gatherings...Street Fighter II, NiGHTS into Dreams, Daytona USA CC, oh, man...
- DanBC 11y ago
  Sega Rally on Saturn is pretty amazing. 3 cars, 4 tracks - but it's really nailed the feel.