In this time featuring an abundance of interactive entertainment, many cling to the past firmly believing their joyous memories of yesteryear’s titles will never be surpassed by present or future offerings. Have the games that we’ve been receiving in recent times, with our hearts hungry for more playtime, gotten any better or more enjoyable? Or were things better in the olden days?
David Low - PALGN Executive Editor
There are good, mediocre, and bad games in every era. What really stagnates progress is genre rot, and unfortunately there's been a lot more of it in recent years.
Genres go through cycles. They begin as novelties that are resisted by existing gamers, and then, usually via one solid entry, they become a competent gameplay style. Next, the same basic gameplay is copied by everyone, creating a glut of similar games, but nonetheless a few refined examples rise to the top. At this point, some players begin to associate the whole of 'videogames' with the genre, and refuse to accept major (or even minor) changes to the formula. And finally the genre is abandoned by the public and left as an 'old school' niche game style. For example, 2D fighting games began as novelties (Yie Air Kung Fu, Street Fighter) which were ridiculed by action and platformer fans for their 'lack of content'. Through the success of one game (Street Fighter II), fighters became one of the major game types of the 16-bit era, and within a few years a glut of copycats and more complicated fighting systems had bored the public of the genre. Some classics rose to the top (Super Turbo, Alpha 2, King of Fighters) but while the faithful are still around, the genre has been left as a small niche for almost a decade.
This happens with all gameplay types, and the problem right now is that the same genres have been 'mainstream' for too long. We're now entering the third console generation where first person shooters are a major (or maybe still the major) genre. Stealth games are still based on the clumsy, scenario driven gameplay that seemed fresh in 1998's Metal Gear Solid. 3D platformers have evolved sideways rather then up, as developers have tacked on GTA and shooter elements rather then try something actually new. And Japanese RPGs, which reached a zenith in the late 16-bit era, have continued their downward spiral into irrelevance as developers have refused to combat the core deficiencies of the genre, and instead have simply pasted new 'systems' over the top of the same core gameplay. Possibly the only genre with potential artistic growth right now are 'sandbox' games, primarily because last gen didn't/couldn't really do them justice. But overall, this generation we're generally just looking forward to higher-tech, more featured versions of the same thing we already have.
In the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, everything was newer, games were cheaper and easier to make, and as a result of less locked-down standards there was much more variety within genres. The dramatic differences between Super Mario Bros 1, 2 and 3 would be unthinkable for most developers today. As a result, all three NES Mario games are still very unique and worth playing individually, whereas with modern games you can probably just play the latest game in a series and have experienced pretty much everything. Perhaps it's simply the nature of 2D, but games were more abstract back then, and could more easily be approached as 'fairy tales' where 'anything is possible.' 3D brought a lot of homogeneity to games, as a more tangible game space meant that even fantasy games were more realistic. Games now required more concrete physics and collision detection for the gameplay to be understandable within the 3D space. Nobody would accuse the recent Zelda games of being realistic, but compared to the original, their combat engine is almost a sword fighting simulator. In essence, older games better fit the definition of 'game' where some imagination is required for immersion (think Monopoly). But right now the 'simulation' element is still holding more appeal to developers and the public then something more abstract, and until this cycle is broken, we'll be seeing the same ideas over and over, just more polished with each iteration.
I could go on, but I think I'll split the question for the answer. Were older games better then new games? No, and they were probably on the whole worse, simply due to lack of refinement. But were older games more fun? In my opinion, yes, then were. There are still games today that are as fun as the best games of the past – Ouendan immediately comes to mind. But if we compare the 'top' games of each era, the 16-bit era in particular will probably remain more timelessly fun then any era since.
We thought there were going to be even more gaming robots in the future. It must be just around the corner.
Neil B - PALGN Writer
It doesn't matter what it is, the first time you experience something will always leave a lasting impression. The first drink (and the resulting first hangover), the first plane trip, the first time you, um, hold hands with a lady - these all benefit hugely from a kind of exhilarating novelty and tend to get enshrined in out minds as somehow definitive and untouchable. It doesn't matter that later experiences of the same thing are usually better, the first time will always stand apart.
This is as true of videogaming as anything, and leads to a lot of claims that games used to be better than they are now. A lifetime of gaming will be dotted with plenty of Gosh! moments, and most of those will be associated with First Times. A very quick list of my all-time favourites - Starcraft, Bard's Tale, European Air War, Elite - all represent the first time I really got to grips with a particular genre. None of these, though, would stand up today. Starcraft is an arguable exception, but even that is looking decidedly long in the tooth. Given the choice between spending an evening with Company of Heroes or Starcraft, I wouldn't hesitate in choosing CoH. I have wonderful, fond memories of all those old games, but are they really better than what's sitting on the shelves now? No, they're not.
We're still playing fundamentally the same games we were years ago, but they're far less annoying than they used to be. I don't feel like I'm battling user interfaces as much anymore, or being unfairly tripped up by design decisions. BioShock provides a perfect example of a game that is, on the surface, just another FPS, much like Doom, Quake or Half-Life. Strip out all the technological advantages that BioShock has and it's still a far superior game, for a multitude of reasons. Here's one: death. One of the absolute, written-in-stone rules of the genre is that you will die countless times, and therefore have to reload your game countless times. What if, says BioShock, we just revive you and skip the whole quicksave-quickload-quicksave-quickload tedium of practically every other FPS out there? Keep the focus on the game, rather than the savegame system? What a good idea!
Bad design is still with us, but at least we now know that it's bad, rather than just being the way games are. I don't miss sudden, unavoidable death in platform games. I don't miss having to individually build every single unit in an RTS. I don't miss hunting for the lone pixel that will reveal the key to open the door to lift the gate to free the chicken. I'm glad we've had a few decades of innovation, invention and sporadic genius in game and interface design so that I can spend more time having fun, and less time punching the screen.
Tristan Kalogeropolous - PALGN Writer
I would argue that none of the games of yesteryear were specifically better than the titles emerging from contemporary development houses. There were definitely some awesome times to be had with them, and many still offer incredibly enjoyable experiences when picked up today. However the main reason we hold them on a pedestal to be worshipped is nostalgia. As Neville says the early experiences of most enjoyable things, when the awkwardness is out of the way, are always great, especially when compared to being a 10 year old sitting on the family couch with your parents watching period dramas on the ABC.
One thing that a large amount of games from my youth, so some time ago now, did incredibly well was to hold a simplicity that was understandable to almost anyone who picked them up. Hand my dad Galaga and he can sit there for hours tapping wildly on that red button, put him inside one of the immersive environments of Splinter Cell and you’ll find him in either a sensory overloaded atrophy or guiding his character around the screen like a P-Plater with an alcohol reading 10 times the legal driving limit.
Some of ye’ olde games may have suffered from some extreme ramping up of difficulty, and some janky control schemes, but they more than often than not offered the chance to become involved for those not already well versed in the internal conventions of videogames. As a result of their technical limitations, their environments and characters were more able to be focused on by people who were not used to the torrential downpour of information we have become to expect today, not only from games but the world in general. Nintendo seems to have recognized this in the design of the Wii and the games they’ve chosen for it. Microsoft's virtual arcade and Sony’s downloadable content also offer some of what was great about those primordial games. One way to get people into interactive entertainment is to present them with something that is easily understandable and mentally digestible, and if they’ve got the spirit of the games that we grew up on then hopefully there will be a new generation of gamers with overly nostalgic memories of the first time they picked up a controller on that day in 2007.
Simple yet effective gaming.
Harry Milonas - PALGN Writer
No matter how much us old codgers will argue otherwise, the qualities of our favourite games from yesteryear are inherently stuck in a rut that make them hard to recommend with a money back guarantee; not because of any subjective nostalgic reasons per se, but more so because of the design barriers and technical limitations of their respective eras. Indeed, without sounding like too much of a pretentious prat, the tired observation of "how much easier youth have it today" is as relevant as ever.
While it's all well and good that one need no longer be troubled by wonky control schemes, non-existent narratives and a distinct lack of save systems, to have gotten to such an "enlightened" point of game design today naturally required growing pains to begin with - which only goes to fill me with concern about possible future ungratefulness for such advancements on behalf of all the whippersnappers of the world; both those sharing our oxygen today and those forthcoming out of their respective proverbial wombs.
Sure, maybe the games we remember fondly really do leave something to be desired when revisited by those weaned on purdy HD superficialities, endless playtime and "emergent" worlds; but is that necessarily the fault of the retro game or the presuppositions of the player in question? With the industry growing to multi-million dollar proportions, is it any surprise that the game design of our personal 80s and 90s classics is now delegated to the bite-sized digital realm of downloadable content?
The cycle of "bigger, faster, prettier, better" will no doubt continue for as long as any medium survives, but whether it's necessarily for better games is a tricky one to answer. While I weep about how much greater games were "back in the day", 20 years from now there will be gamers whining about the same thing, and so on and so forth into eternity. Indeed, perhaps what doesn't change, and really shouldn't be expected to, is the fact that knowing no better is bliss. It's evolution, baby.
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So what do you think? Were games better in your youth? Or are you still in your youth, you lucky buggers? If you've played the games that started the whole industry how did you feel about them? Let us and everyone else know in the forums.
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