6 ms·

Retro gaming really is an interesting area. It was an era where game play made or broke a game. After you get past nostalgia, I think it is even more critical

Retro gaming really is an interesting area. It was an era where game play made or broke a game. After you get past nostalgia, I think it is even more critical for success of a game. For myself, I make regular forays into IF games (off of ifarchive) and just recent reinstalled OS/2 (as a VM) so I could play GalCiv in the original form I played it.

EpicEng 13y ago
Chrono Trigger is still my favorite game of all time. I could never be sure if nostalgia was tinting my view, but I feel like games lost some of their magic when we went transitioned to mostly 3d games, where graphics were emphasized so heavily.
- xerophtye 13y ago
  Exactly what elements of Chrono Trigger do you think modern games are missing? (Not critical, just curious)
  - jonnathanson 13y ago
    Music is a big one. Most of the early to mid-90s Square RPGs had amazing soundtracks, and Chrono Trigger was no exception. Today's game music is technically of a higher quality and complexity. But it's nowhere near as interesting, and I dare say, not 1/10th as good. Yesterday's game composers had to possess a certain ingenuity, working, as they did, under tight constraints. Creativity can flourish under a constricting framework, often in ways it fails to do in the absence of limits. This is why $200 million Michael Bay movies often suck, while a movie made for a fraction of the price can kick ass. Bay doesn't have to be creative. Nothing presses him toward ingenuity. That's not to say that today's game composers aren't good, or that I necessarily compare them to Michael Bay. Rather, it's to say that the composers in the '90s had to be good. They had to go out of their way to be good. They had to achieve so much with so little.
    - pshin45 13y ago
      Same with me and Final Fantasy VII - 17 years after it came out, I'm still listening to the soundtrack[1] regularly while I work, and while I'm doing so I can vividly see all the scenes from the game playing out before my eyes. Makes me wonder how many teenagers nowadays have played the original Chrono Trigger and/or Final Fantasy VII, and how they would compare them to today's games (and their music). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMtlLpYcCAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMtlLpYcCAQ
      - EpicEng 13y ago
        Not too many unfortunately. Many people poo-poo video games as nothing more than mindless drivel, but I put some of these games on the same level as any great work of fiction that these same people may recommend you read. My son will be getting an SNES emulator loaded with all of the great RPG's of my childhood for his birthday sometime soon (he's three months old, I thought I should wait a bit.)
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      I agree on the music part - most of the recent video games music is utterly boring, but there's still some interesting soundtrack in a few recent games. There's too many game developers doing games as a day job and who have no passion for it (whereas in the 70s, 80s, most people were highly educated pioneers experimenting with the new tools of the day). But kid you not, lots of 90s video games music was utter crap as well. You probably remember the good ones only, but there was also a lot of garbage back then.
    - notastartup 13y ago
      I remember listening to the .psf files for the HE plugin on winamp. http://www.neillcorlett.com/he/ http://www.neillcorlett.com/he/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Sound_Format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Sound_Format
    - nightski 13y ago
      Chrono Trigger had amazing music. But to say there aren't quite a few games today that have similarly outstanding music is just not true.
  - EpicEng 13y ago
    I suppose it was the way in which I felt attached to the characters. Like reading a good book, that is my #1 criteria for "was the story good?" I mean, Crono didn't even speak. Not once. But, when [spoiler] he "died"... I don't know, I still get a bit choked up at Marle breaking down in front of the tree. Same for Lufia II when Maxim and Selan [spoiler] die at the end. I felt like I was losing a friend. I just haven't found emotion like that in modern games. For me it was all about story. I love great gameplay, but I wanted to be engrossed in a storyline while I played the game. That's why I played RPG's to begin with. I have found games since the 16-bit era which have had the same effect (FF IX, FF Tactics, Kingdom Hearts I & II, and Suikoden I & II to name a few), but there seemed to be an abundance of them on the SNES. Modern RPG's just don't feel the same to me. I still play my SNES favorites every year when I can find the time. I'm going out on a bit of a limb here, but I wonder if the limitations of the hardware didn't force the creators to be more creative in different areas. I mean, there was only so much you could do on the SNES (even though they managed to do some cool things on such a limited platform.) After it was all said and done, the games had to offer more than cool looking pixels. The great games had great stories, interesting characters, and innovative gameplay (to be fair, it was probably easier to be innovative in those days.) Graphics were less of a concern.
    - the_mat 13y ago
      It's easy to forget that the SNES game library was mostly a sewer filled with "character with attitude" platformers. Loads of really, tremendously bad, unoriginal stuff
      - EpicEng 13y ago
        I didn't forget that, but that's true of pretty much every system, no? Most games are bad.
    - kmkemp 13y ago
      Honestly, the Playstation 1 was probably the greatest system ever for RPGs.
      - 13y ago
- agumonkey 13y ago
  Old games are like books, they have to do more with less. We got generality, you can render everything under any angle but none of them says any thing, and thus lost the artistic cut if I may call it that way. Also pixels come with impressionism, surrealism .. I think for most games, running after photorealism is the wrong idea. Maybe it's a question of technology helping us to break into the suspension of disbelief more easily. Your brain can't accept previous generation graphics as a representation cause the fakeness is more apparent now you have the current gen as a comparison point. But this gen technology is as fake as the previous one, in 20 years we'll see blatant flaws in it. It's quite amazing that we could take 4 pixels for a character and live through it. Or maybe it's just that we've seen it all, in the 80s nobody knew what was possible by assembling a bunch of chips and controlling the beam on your screen, surprise was at every corner. About music I have the same feeling but also for movies. Maybe that's an age thing but many themes (star wars, superman, bttf, robocop, terminator [nerdy boy]) were really amazing, I rarely get this nowadays. Something since this era changed, can't tell what.
xerophtye 13y ago
Exactly why Bomberman is still one of my all time favourites. It's not the graphics, its the gameplay

EpicEng 13y ago

Chrono Trigger is still my favorite game of all time. I could never be sure if nostalgia was tinting my view, but I feel like games lost some of their magic when we went transitioned to mostly 3d games, where graphics were emphasized so heavily.

xerophtye 13y ago
Exactly what elements of Chrono Trigger do you think modern games are missing? (Not critical, just curious)
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  Music is a big one. Most of the early to mid-90s Square RPGs had amazing soundtracks, and Chrono Trigger was no exception. Today's game music is technically of a higher quality and complexity. But it's nowhere near as interesting, and I dare say, not 1/10th as good. Yesterday's game composers had to possess a certain ingenuity, working, as they did, under tight constraints. Creativity can flourish under a constricting framework, often in ways it fails to do in the absence of limits. This is why $200 million Michael Bay movies often suck, while a movie made for a fraction of the price can kick ass. Bay doesn't have to be creative. Nothing presses him toward ingenuity. That's not to say that today's game composers aren't good, or that I necessarily compare them to Michael Bay. Rather, it's to say that the composers in the '90s had to be good. They had to go out of their way to be good. They had to achieve so much with so little.
  - pshin45 13y ago
    Same with me and Final Fantasy VII - 17 years after it came out, I'm still listening to the soundtrack[1] regularly while I work, and while I'm doing so I can vividly see all the scenes from the game playing out before my eyes. Makes me wonder how many teenagers nowadays have played the original Chrono Trigger and/or Final Fantasy VII, and how they would compare them to today's games (and their music). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMtlLpYcCAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMtlLpYcCAQ
    - EpicEng 13y ago
      Not too many unfortunately. Many people poo-poo video games as nothing more than mindless drivel, but I put some of these games on the same level as any great work of fiction that these same people may recommend you read. My son will be getting an SNES emulator loaded with all of the great RPG's of my childhood for his birthday sometime soon (he's three months old, I thought I should wait a bit.)
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    I agree on the music part - most of the recent video games music is utterly boring, but there's still some interesting soundtrack in a few recent games. There's too many game developers doing games as a day job and who have no passion for it (whereas in the 70s, 80s, most people were highly educated pioneers experimenting with the new tools of the day). But kid you not, lots of 90s video games music was utter crap as well. You probably remember the good ones only, but there was also a lot of garbage back then.
  - notastartup 13y ago
    I remember listening to the .psf files for the HE plugin on winamp. http://www.neillcorlett.com/he/ http://www.neillcorlett.com/he/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Sound_Format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Sound_Format
  - nightski 13y ago
    Chrono Trigger had amazing music. But to say there aren't quite a few games today that have similarly outstanding music is just not true.
- EpicEng 13y ago
  I suppose it was the way in which I felt attached to the characters. Like reading a good book, that is my #1 criteria for "was the story good?" I mean, Crono didn't even speak. Not once. But, when [spoiler] he "died"... I don't know, I still get a bit choked up at Marle breaking down in front of the tree. Same for Lufia II when Maxim and Selan [spoiler] die at the end. I felt like I was losing a friend. I just haven't found emotion like that in modern games. For me it was all about story. I love great gameplay, but I wanted to be engrossed in a storyline while I played the game. That's why I played RPG's to begin with. I have found games since the 16-bit era which have had the same effect (FF IX, FF Tactics, Kingdom Hearts I & II, and Suikoden I & II to name a few), but there seemed to be an abundance of them on the SNES. Modern RPG's just don't feel the same to me. I still play my SNES favorites every year when I can find the time. I'm going out on a bit of a limb here, but I wonder if the limitations of the hardware didn't force the creators to be more creative in different areas. I mean, there was only so much you could do on the SNES (even though they managed to do some cool things on such a limited platform.) After it was all said and done, the games had to offer more than cool looking pixels. The great games had great stories, interesting characters, and innovative gameplay (to be fair, it was probably easier to be innovative in those days.) Graphics were less of a concern.
  - the_mat 13y ago
    It's easy to forget that the SNES game library was mostly a sewer filled with "character with attitude" platformers. Loads of really, tremendously bad, unoriginal stuff
    - EpicEng 13y ago
      I didn't forget that, but that's true of pretty much every system, no? Most games are bad.
  - kmkemp 13y ago
    Honestly, the Playstation 1 was probably the greatest system ever for RPGs.
    - 13y ago
agumonkey 13y ago
Old games are like books, they have to do more with less. We got generality, you can render everything under any angle but none of them says any thing, and thus lost the artistic cut if I may call it that way. Also pixels come with impressionism, surrealism .. I think for most games, running after photorealism is the wrong idea. Maybe it's a question of technology helping us to break into the suspension of disbelief more easily. Your brain can't accept previous generation graphics as a representation cause the fakeness is more apparent now you have the current gen as a comparison point. But this gen technology is as fake as the previous one, in 20 years we'll see blatant flaws in it. It's quite amazing that we could take 4 pixels for a character and live through it. Or maybe it's just that we've seen it all, in the 80s nobody knew what was possible by assembling a bunch of chips and controlling the beam on your screen, surprise was at every corner. About music I have the same feeling but also for movies. Maybe that's an age thing but many themes (star wars, superman, bttf, robocop, terminator [nerdy boy]) were really amazing, I rarely get this nowadays. Something since this era changed, can't tell what.

xerophtye 13y ago

Exactly why Bomberman is still one of my all time favourites. It's not the graphics, its the gameplay