The reason old games are better

[Chojin]

It's originality and playability, not graphics and style. But originality mostly. That's what's missing in games today. The plotlines are lackluster and the dudes and dudettes responsible for today's gaming seem more and more content with churning out clichéd rubbish.

Of course, you could argue that ten years ago, it was a lot easier to be original. Or you could argue that the focus of game development has shifted with what today's general public want. Or any number of reasons.

DISCUSS.

[Snurx]

Maybe it's beacause the big companies have realised that the people who want original games, simply are less then people who just want simple games. So, instead of making a huge effort making big, complicated games, they make easy games, thus making it less costly to make and more sellabale.

Old games are so much better. I don't really know why, maybe it's just the retro-effect?

[Chojin]

Starflight would kick Starcraft's fancy ass any day of the week

[Snurx]

FF6 rocks all the new FF's.
The old zelda's are ten times better.
Duke Nukem is soo much better then today's shooters.

etc

[Matrim]

I guess nowadays in the game workshops they spend too much time thinking about graphics and making the games look smashing.

With 95% resources devoted to graphics and 5% resources put on story and gameplay and creativity and originality and etc things are bound to go wrong.


Though to be honest I don't feel competent enough to answer your question.



Matrim

[Leshy]

Game designers think too much of games that people will want to buy, rather than games that they themselves would like to play.

[Mushroom]

I've got this really old (1995) game called Ascendancy, which is still bloody playable now. Its graphics aren't bad, and it can literally consume days! Old games seemed to have so much more depth to them than newer ones - and the manuals were thicker and more comprehensive and something you could read rather than flick through if something goes wrong

[Mushroom]

Originally posted by Leshy
Game designers think too much of games that people will want to buy, rather than games that they themselves would like to play.

That's the problem with huge companies rather than little ones being responsible for them (the all consuming EA and Microsoft, for example).

[Structural Integrity]

RESPECT for the person who came up with the idea for Tetris. Or the first scrolling platform game. These games are unique because the ideas are original.

Anyway...

Current companies don't want to burn their hands on an untested gameconcept. Develloping a game is expensive nowadays and if a game fails because the whole concept isn't "fun enough" the whole company can go tits up.
In the old days everyone who could program well could write games. People made games because they liked doing it (a lot of them anyway), not because they were making a living from it.
Also, now it's too difficult to learn every aspect of game making (designing, programming + maths, sound arts, visual arts (2D, 3D modelling), networking, storylines, level design, interface design, you name it).

Companies always fall back on an older idea and polish up the graphics and sound a bit. Perhaps adding one or two minor features or changing the weapons a tad (in the case of a shooter). Or they change the jumping man into an alien and make the background green. Not a single game concept of any major releases is unique.
These companies are making games for the money and for nothing else, whereas in the old days, these hobbyists were making games just for their own fun.

Oh well.... I'm a hobbyist, but the techniques are simply overwhelming... You have to be able to do about everything yourself.
Thereby, I'm too busy to work on anything. School is keeping me busy enough.
People are too busy to work on anything for themselves. That's how I experience it anyways.
I'll stop now before I turn this into an "I hate the society"-post.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by Mushroom
I've got this really old (1995) game called Ascendancy, which is still bloody playable now. Its graphics aren't bad, and it can literally consume days! Old games seemed to have so much more depth to them than newer ones - and the manuals were thicker and more comprehensive and something you could read rather than flick through if something goes wrong

Master of Orion II's better.

ps.

Deus Ex.

[lokken]

Doom
Micro Machines 2
Sonic The Hedgehog
Mariokart
Streetfighter 2

There are the kind of games that anyone would rate over the crap that is released nowadays.

[Leshy]

I'm anxiously awaiting Hero 6.

[Snurx]

Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri
Master of Orion II's better.

That game made was partly responisble for a bad schoolyear for me!

It rocks. Even today.

[G_frog]

Originally posted by Mushroom
I've got this really old (1995) game called Ascendancy, which is still bloody playable now.

First game i bought iirc. Bloody fantastic, although it is upstaged a bit by MOO2 and Civ2. Still, there's nothing quite like it that i've seen.

Do you find the mouse slows down to unusability under winXP?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by G_frog
First game i bought iirc. Bloody fantastic, although it is upstaged a bit by MOO2 and Civ2. Still, there's nothing quite like it that i've seen.

Do you find the mouse slows down to unusability under winXP?

Chenoleans (sp?) remain unbalanaced a tad.

[CjC]

I personally think it all went wrong when we got 3D. Games suddenly got over complex - both graphically and challenge wise.

These days Id rather play cards.

Games concepts were original back then but its hard to come up with a magic formula thats unique these days. Also I found that the little nuances in games made them what they were (ie- the bad sprite detection, the sound effect jitters, slowdown whenever there were more than five things moving on screen.)

That said, games these days are becoming totally unbalanced and buggy as hell.

I've started following the "Remakes" movement - some people have come up with some great ideas to spring life into some old classics - with some novel improvements too.

[wakey]

The problem is that games companies know that the customers are generally very superficial. If it looks good they will sell loads no matter how crap it is.

Over at F-Crew we are having an online CM4 game. Ravont_lee(telhilion) was taking part but gave up before he had even played the first match. He basically stated that "The game looks crap so I wont play" and went back to playing his EA footie managerment game that looks great but has no gameplay about it.

Then again its not just the games industry where this has become the norm.

When buying a computer most people will buy something that looks good but is underpowered over a machine that looks boring but is very hi spec even though the higher spec machine is normally cheaper

When Buying a TV/DVD/Video people will buy the sleek, good looking models over the better speced and once again lower priced model

We can go through most products and say the exact same about them.

Simply put looks sell and allow you to put a bigger mark up on products. In the case of games by going down the graphics route and ignoring the originality and gameplay issues you can produce a generic game that doesnt play too well which takes less time to produce and requires less people working on it which means costs lower making the markup higher and the good looking graphics will still make you enough cash to cover the costs and make a tidy sum.

As long as Humans remain as superficial as the majority are this isnt really going to change

[Deffeh]

I think there are many paralels here that can be drawn with music. In both video games, and music, most things have been "done" - its like trying to think of a new colour. Im pretty sure regardless of how hard they try, i will never ever be captivated like a racing game the way i was (and am, we always play it at my house) with Mariokart on the snes.

Of course, there can be some improvements whilst keeping the same effect. The original civilisation was great, but Civ2 was a significant improvement - without going OTT and all high tech.

Super Marioworld was and is easily the best of the Mario series - they took a good idea and executed it brilliantly - then it just went -boom-.

Snurx mentioned ff6, i have never played it, but i know that ff7 blew my mind, and ff8 grew on me. Anything after those two in that series just didnt interest me.

[Dante Hicks]

There are still original, good games coming out every once in a while. But obviously due to increased development costs (e.g. FMV, voice being used in most games, etc) there are less and less games made by amateurs or by "barely pro" or small studios.

If you had to borrow $1 million dollars to make your game, you're sure as hell not going to make any risky decisions.

p.s. There is an article in Edge from a few months ago which discusses (lack of) originality in today's titles by ex-Digi person Mr Biffo. Worth reading.

[insane_in_da_membrane]

I've spend the past week or so playing megadrive games, Sonic 3 is too addictive for my liking

[Evil Skragg]

It is true that more time should be devoted to the plot and gameplay rather thna the graphics. BUT...

Imagine Ocarina of Time on the NES.....
Goldeneye using the (origional) Doom engine....
Quake III using vectored landscapes a'la Battlezone....

you see, with improved graphical capability comes the ability to expand games more. The leap from 2D sprites to 3D polygonal creations revolutionized the gaming industry.

[Kumnaa]

Old games arent as good as I remember them. I'd much rather play play HL then any of the dos/console games of my youth

[plasmas_arms]

You are wrong.

[Radical Edward]

The Secret Of Monkey Island. It would still be playable if I could get the sound to work on my laptop.

[djbass]

My theory follows simular lines to what CjC was saying, in that with the advance in things like 3D graphics game developers seem to have had trouble translating the narrative and interface of a lot of more traditional games to the new format. I miss the days when you had highly detailed backgrounds and sprites that were hand drawn and really added a lot of dimension to the games. When 3D first came out we suddenly lost a lot of definition and detail that was previously available on a 2D plane. Even today where the graphics are quite stunning and in some places almost photorealistic, developers have not yet learnt to use the technology in a more subtle and creative way. The most promising (if not ironic) advance in 3D technology in my oppinion is cell shading (a method of rendering a 3D object with a flat, almost cartoonish surface). The only suitable genre of game for todays technology seems to be FPS.

Still, there have been some rare cases where they have made good use of 3D rendering in other genres. Two that I can think of on hand are Escape From Monkey Island and Neverwinter Nights.

=[DJ Bass]=

[Pi-air]

Originally posted by Radical Edward
The Secret Of Monkey Island. It would still be playable if I could get the sound to work on my laptop.

Have you tried ScummVM ?

I'm playing Monkey Island 2 at the moment, still funny as hell