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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

• 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.
      • mangeletti 11y ago
        My god, you and @untog are my heroes! OpenRA looks like it's for OS X as well! Man, I feel like I just stumbled into heaven!
  • techdragon 11y ago
    C&C-RA2 was very good, but for me RTS, the era of Starcraft and C&C was crushed to dust by the 3d terrain and balistics of Total Annihilation, nothing held a candle to it. I still remember yelling out loud with surprise the first time enemy artillery destroyed some of my aircraft while firing on ground targets further away. Sadly the 'moar triangles' era began shortly afterwards and definitely abandoned the simplicity of well balanced gameplay and solid game engines, for flashy graphics and other cheap lures.
    • mangeletti 11y ago
      Interesting. I've never even heard of it, but I just watched a video of the gameplay and it looks awesome!
      • techdragon 11y ago
        There's a trilogy of Epic RTS games built Cavedog Alumni. Three different companies, three different "universes", yet a clear line of spiritual succession exists through them thanks to some unsung powerhouses of the gaming industry over the last 20 years. Total Annihilation Supreme Commander Planetary Annihilation The amazing thing about these games is how much longevity they have due to quality design. There is an active community of players around TA still to this day. Who have done some pretty amazing things over the years... The game is routinely played with more than 10 times the number of units it was 'designed for' with extra large custom maps and LAN games that can take hours to play out. Supreme Commander came out and upped the ante, TA had scaled to massive RTS battles where micromanagement became nearly pointless. Supreme Commander goes further, units range massively in size, so much so that you often spend most of the game zoomed out, controlling an army of thousands of coloured dots spread out over maps up to 80km x 80km Then somehow they found the crazy inspiration to go further. Not content with nuclear weapons deforming terrain with explosions so big your units are mere specs on the map if you zoom out to admire the fireball... Planetary Annihilation is everything you imagine when you read the name. Spherical planets swarming with thousands and thousands of tanks robots planes and ships, satellites in orbit, rockets, teleportation and other crazy machines to transport your army between planets and moons, massive asteroid pushing engines that let you push asteroids and moons out of their orbits and use the planets themselves as weapons of warfare. TLDR: Yep, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, and Planetary Annihilation are three of the best RTS games ever, if not THE best RTS games ever then clearly the best Strategic RTS games ever. Total Annihilation Intro Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mZZiI4ShQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mZZiI4ShQ Supreme Commander Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItDVrkLkYXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItDVrkLkYXw Planetary Annihilation Launch Trailer - https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=enzglv8sLn8 https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=enzglv8sLn8 Planetary Annihilation: Titans Launch Trailer - https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=gpZWAZwoNz0 https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=gpZWAZwoNz0
• agumonkey 11y ago
  Artistry and engineering. It always fun to read how people managed to use every corner of these chips. Also, limitations means the spirit of the game emerges stronger.
• tarsinge 11y ago
  On the artistry side there is more : 20 years ago (ouch) you still had mainstream games that were built without too much of marketing pressure. I remember an interview of a Warcraft 2 team member who was saying that they were simply trying to make the best game for themselves. So sure there is nostalgia, but when comparing mainstream the difference is not just technical. Same as in music, the (edit: artistic) quality is now in the indie, and thanks to great tools it's a better time than ever for creativity, at the expense that it's harder to live from it.
• vlunkr 11y ago
  I also wanted to say that old video games can be appealing for reasons other than nostalgia. Only recently I played through chrono trigger and symphony of the night, both for the first time, and they are amazing even by today's standards. People enjoy old books, movies, etc because they are still great, why can't video games be the same way?
  • toyg 11y ago
    To be fair, loads of XIX century novels are considered boring for today's standards mostly because they were born as serials, paid by episode or even by word, and published in newspapers first. After the media landscape evolved, their appreciation diminished; similarly, old games suffer from the rapid evolution of their platforms / media.
    • tarsinge 11y ago
      You found some books that don't age well, but what about the rest of the litterature?
      • toyg 11y ago
        Well, we know about a lot of abandonware since the times of Gilgamesh and Ulysses. Even what we managed to preserve is usually executed with emulated languages, because original runtimes are lost or evolved beyond recognition. Some are ports of pirated or censored copies, on completely different architectures, completely reskinned and modded beyond recognition. The result is, to be brutally honest, that reading Beowulf is a chore; most Shakespeare works need a walkthrough; Dante's Inferno is fun but we'll never appreciate it in the same way as XIII-century political junkies did. And so on and so forth for huge chunks of literature. In short, most old literature is not as accessible or enjoyable as contemporary pulp. You have to accept these limitations as you consume it; which is why Plato does not sell as much as J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown. Similarly with games, we cannot expect today's kids to appreciate what came before them. Some will, some won't. That's just how it is.
        • 11y ago
• CM30 11y ago
  Yeah, the artistry in a lot of older games is pretty incredible, if only for the sheer amount of detail and work the creators put into the very tiniest aspects of these games. Like Yoshi's Island for the SNES, where every corner of the game was crammed with secrets, bonus rooms, etc. In some cases, even messages from the creators about the work they put in: http://www.nindb.net/snes/yoshis-island/ http://www.nindb.net/snes/yoshis-island/ That game itself was impressive in its mechanics too, given that it had situations where enemies behaved in unique ways that were never likely to come up in the actual game. Or a game which I still remember quite fondly from 2001, Wario Land 4. There, despite using traditional sprite animation, every single level had at least one different tileset and background (usually two or three), its own music (which had things like echo effects added for caves and sped up or slowed down based on on screen events) and tons of details that were exceedingly unlikely for the player to notice. Like a whole tileset for a single room or two, with tons of animations. Or music specifically for part of an ending medley... if the player did really poorly overall. Or a sound test where every single song was exclusive to the sound test. That's the kind of thing that was more common in older games. A huge amount of attention to detail and small secrets scattered everywhere.
  • freshyill 11y ago
    A great thing about Yoshi's Island is that it's possibly the only SNES game that benefits from the fancy pixel-smoothing modes that emulators offer. Rather than looking distorted, it makes it look like a completely modern 2D platformer.
• the_af 11y ago
  I fully agree with your second point (the Wells quote). It's most noticeable in movie-making, but I agree it also applies to games. However, I somewhat disagree about your first point. Some old school games are not easy to pick up; some are so punishing as to be almost non-viable for today's standards. Some games came with a complex manual that you absolutely had to read (and it was really hard for those of us living in countries where piracy was the only option). For example, some 90s RPGs are so untractable and complex I never had the patience to learn how to play them. I'm thinking for example of Darklands, which has many fans in the abandonware community, but which would probably never succeed these days.
  • douche 11y ago
    Man, we desperately need a reboot of Darklands. Something like the newer XCOM games for the tactical combat, and a little bit nicer world map would be an insta-buy. Especially if the complexity and beautiful menu art of the original was retained.