Classic games: Just not really that good?

[Stark]

I used it as an example because he mentioned it. I'd agree it probably wouldn't be considered very good, but its non-linearity might be considered a plus. People might see it as a "sandbox" exploration game, but if nothing new is added it'd be a pretty disappointing exploration. "Ooh a cave with an old man it it!"

I'm sorry I snapped at you, because you are absolutely right. Oh look, let's 'deviate from the OP a little' to post irrelevant lists of games we like! Who cares that it's about 'classic' 'pre-SNES' games that are still playable and actually good.

Starflight is an intersting example of an actual classic, pre-SNES game that can be proven to be more playable with a decent UI (as Cov says) because the Genesis version is just that. There's an actual SPACESHIP on the screen now! It broke the combat though.

[Nephtys]

I suppose you can split games into 3 categories of eras. Although a simplification, it would envelop systems. Different types of systems (PCs, consoles) had different years for these 3 categories.

Category 1 - Technically Limited. - Computing power is weak, graphics are not technically sophisticated by modern standards. You were limited as much by your onboard memory for tracking items and objects and mechanics. 8-bit numbering with that magic 0-255 Object count. Etc. Your storage medium for data may also be weak (cartridges, floppy disks, small HDs) This is the 386 Era and previous, or NES/Borderline SNES.
Category 2 - Technically Developed - Computing power is stronger. You no longer have 'real' limitations for most mundane things, such as tracking numbers, entity AI or even basic physics. Graphics may not be particularly photorealistic, but I'm assuming capable of some decent 3D work. You presumably are using CD-roms, so only assets really are limited by CD space (IE, your game code is not going to take up a whole CD, without lots of pretty textures and sound and video).
Category 3 - Modern - Your computing power is somewhat more powerful, but it doesn't matter. It's still overkill if you have a Pentium II with 300 MHZ, or a quad core modern monster, if you're just tracking the number of enemies you're fighting in Diablo 1 vs Diablo 3. Your graphics and art however, are extremely well developed to the point of being nearly entirely the providence of major developers (IE, large teams required). A powerful system is required to run all of that naturally. Specs matter. Lots of games have the potential to need overpowered systems to run at full quality.

---

By these standards really, any good 'category 2' thing should be playable, I think. This is that 1996-2002ish period for PC games in my mind, where Integrated Graphics could get you by, and where CDs made storage of most things a non-issue, at worst being an 'install disc' and 'play disc' for most games. Lots of 'classics' from this Era are just good games, that could do well by being updated technically in graphics and suchforth, but lose little in translation.

Category 1 however, is different. It's classics need the appeal of say, a well made flash game. Megaman, Mario, SNES Zelda and suchforth are damned simple, but fun, well made, and have art that tries to cover up their technical limitations (Lots of SNES games for example, with good spritework). Others can be stupidly frustrating with their computing limitations naturally (X-COM's 80 item limit, augh), so these are harder to gauge.

There's really no reason for modern games to be 'worse' than earlier ones. Subjectively, I think they are merely because of the increase in games becoming major projects means more of an emphasis on shiny trinkets, instead of solid mechanics. The sales figures don't follow the quality of a game, merely how many people are going to buy it, so why improve a subtle thing like 'replayability', when you can just sell a game to a lot of people once because it has some edgy gimmick?

[Stark]

Very primitive games in presentation, however, are often built on very solid ideas that are different to typical 'modern' genres, and thus might be playable with a graphics overhaul. Take King of Dragon Pass as an example - it's not old, but it's the sort of thing you'd play ASCII only in 1984. Graphics make it far more accessible, and nobody would make a game like that these days.

And M.U.L.E.. Put some nice anime in there, port to XBLA, make money.

[Nephtys]

Oregon Trail: It's like Spore. But Better!

[Stark]

Oregon Trail is being sold for $5 on iPhone with exactly that; some jRPG art, a few minigames. Turns out good ideas are good ideas?

[Oskuro]

I'm also inclined to believe that due to technical limitations, old games had to compensate with gameplay, unlike today's games, wich keep vomiting copious amounts of bloom in an attempt to blind the player to their utter blandness.

On the other hand, there being no need for multi-million investments or large teams means there were inrodinate amounts of shit being passed as games.

[Stark]

I think it worked both ways. No graphics meant your idea had to be compelling, but also that complexity was expected (because there was almost zero flash). This is why older games with keyboard interfaces and no art can sometimes be more sophisiticated and yet easier to use than modern games.

[Uraniun235]

Expectations have changed. People were okay to get Metroid and play it for weeks or months with little idea of what they were supposed to do; these days this is totally unacceptable and plays need to be railroaded through a cinematic experience that requires little if any thinking.

You mean that was normal? I thought I was just a big thickie when I tried playing it a few years ago and found myself getting endlessly lost until I looked up a map online.

[Stark]

Even when I was a kid it took me literally weeks to finish Zelda 1, and you can do it in an hour and a half these days.

One of my mates went on holiday and his dad tried to play it; he ended up with a five square-metre map made of a4 sheets taped together. And he still never found most of the secret (ps necessary) passages.

[Vympel]

Expectations have changed. People were okay to get Metroid and play it for weeks or months with little idea of what they were supposed to do

LOL, you guys seriously think ambling about Metroid not knowing what to do was how you were meant to play it?

What you were supposed to do was buy Nintendo Power or ring up their hotline (for big money) and ask for tips on just what the fuck you were supposed to be doing. God you guys are naive.

[Stark]

Those hotline costs were pretty hilarious; I actually think hotlines like that still exist.

The point remains that expectations have changed. So there!

[Uraniun235]

I've heard the hotline theory bandied about for adventure games and their obscure puzzles.

[Covenant]

I've heard the hotline theory bandied about for adventure games and their obscure puzzles.

Milon's Secret Castle was, in fact, absolutely impossible to progress in without Nintendo Power. Pretty lame, eh? Well, probably not absolutely impossible, but nearly absolutely impossible.

The Nintendo Power maps were really helpful, but back in those days we dorks had graphing paper ready from Bard's Tale and similar games that would allow us to roughly map out areas. That and it was just kinda a big exploration game, so you eventually got a handle on where you were. Zelda was harder than Metroid, I think, since it had so many sub-areas and much less obvious difference in terms of zone.

I think most people would agree that fumbling around without a map is an aggravation that's not necessary or beneficial to the game. Again, since I just played Mass Effect for the first time, I was surprised how fucking obtuse and backwards that station is, but I'm frankly finding a good portion of the game an exercise in questionable game design. Unless it's actually valuable to the game to make you waste time, be confused, or have a complicated inventory system... they should just not bother. You can eventually streamline things into nonexistance, but if streamlining actually starts removing some of your features, maybe you need less roadblocky features. Ooh! A million guns with tiny, miniscule upgrades! This is a feature! Look at all the guns!

Yeah, that or it's just database bloat to justify the fact you didn't want to make more than one goddamn pistol model. Ass.

[Stark]

PROTIP: build up loot, sell everything to get 1,000,000 bucks, get access to the SPARTAN super items that make every other item in the game useless, then stop pickig stuff up.

[Oskuro]

All this raving about how hard games like Milon's Secret Castle, Zelda or Metroid were is funny, specially since they were developed in Japan, and thus didn't have the hotlines or Nintendo Power in consideration.

From what I've read on the subject, these games were hard because that was the norm in Japan. It was the non-japanese public that had trouble with them (not being as obsessive and masochistic as the japanese, it seems). Same rationale behind the release of the american version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (yes, I know the original Mario 2 was a mod of Mario 1, but it was a hard mod)

I find it funny when the Angry Video Game Nerd rants about some extremely hard nintendo game, like Milon's Castle, and fails to realize all those secrets were the point of the game. Chalk one up for research!

[Vympel]

PROTIP: build up loot, sell everything to get 1,000,000 bucks, get access to the SPARTAN super items that make every other item in the game useless, then stop pickig stuff up.

Ooh! A million guns with tiny, miniscule upgrades! This is a feature! Look at all the guns!

Yeah, that or it's just database bloat to justify the fact you didn't want to make more than one goddamn pistol model. Ass.

Indeed. I like ME a lot, but it's a fucking master class in lazy design. The ten variations of each identical weapon (but a different colour) using only two models for each gun, only one model for each type of armor, the carbon copy caves on the random planets - blargh. So damn lazy. Why the fuck do they need all those useless damn guns that they just know no one is ever going to use?

I find it funny when the Angry Video Game Nerd rants about some extremely hard nintendo game, like Milon's Castle, and fails to realize all those secrets were the point of the game. Chalk one up for research!

I find it funny you haven't read his FAQ and realised that the AGVN is a fictional character.

[weemadando]

I'm trying to play through Mass Effect now and it's so many triumphs of laziness/bad design over common sense.

Lets have lots of guns - because you need lots of items in an RPG. NO - you don't. If you came along and said - here's your standard issue Spectre gear, then I would have been much happier, because I wouldn't have had to fight your retarded inventory system for a minor boost to my "kill things" stats.

Also - can I please have a mobile phone? All this time I spend trudging through corridors, waiting in elevators and driving on planets could at least be used more efficiently by having me able to advance other plots elsewhere by having conversations with someone without having to fly all the way across the galaxy to visit them face to face.

[Oskuro]

I find it funny you haven't read his FAQ and realised that the AGVN is a fictional character.

Are you serious, or trying to troll? His comedy act is based on lambasting shitty games, but there are instances where he forces the jokes by ignoring things that help explain some bizarre design decisions. That's what I meant. How you got the idea that I thought he was a real reviewer and not just a comedy persona is beyond me.

Also - can I please have a mobile phone?

Heh, do you know how long it took for me to realize I had a mobile phone in City of Heroes and didn't need to run up to the quest givers? And even then I kept doing it out of habit. Indoctrination, yes sir, and useless time sinks.

[TheLostVikings]

All this raving about how hard games like Milon's Secret Castle, Zelda or Metroid were is funny, specially since they were developed in Japan, and thus didn't have the hotlines or Nintendo Power in consideration.

From what I've read on the subject, these games were hard because that was the norm in Japan. It was the non-japanese public that had trouble with them (not being as obsessive and masochistic as the japanese, it seems). Same rationale behind the release of the american version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (yes, I know the original Mario 2 was a mod of Mario 1, but it was a hard mod)

I don't think it is anything special about the Japanese, more like they got all the game consoles way before they appeared overseas, and thus simply had more practice playing games.

Useless anecdote: About 5 years ago I got hold of a 2nd hand SNES with Super Mario World, Zelda:alttp, Super Metriod, and a few others. And generally they were pretty easy to me, even just playing an hour, and hour and a half, each day I still beat Metroid in less than a week despite it being A: my first metroid game, and B: My first 2d platformer. Zelda took me about a week more since It was my first time playing 2d games and I suck at it. (I died a total of 6 times before completing alttp, all of them was by the guy with a ball and chain at the very beginning, because I had not yet figured out how to dodge properly in 2d )

I mean Metroids basic gameplay is relatively simple: Since there is about 1000 bajillion doors/obstacles that you can't open/pass yet, you are basically funneled into a very limited set of paths. Follow the only paths available to you, and you'll either discover a dead end, or if you're lucky a new upgrade that will let you open/pass a new set of doors/obstacles. Rinse and repeat. And since I had played Ocarina of Time on the N64 almost all the puzzles in a Link to the Past were already familiar to me: Bomb cracks in walls, slash bushes, smash pots, shoot arrows at distant switches, etc, etc.

Now Super Mario World was a whole different story. I still think it's hard even today, simply because I only started gaming with the N64, and most 2D games require a slightly different set of skills. Personally that is what makes a lot of older games hard for me, since you can't move in as many directions in 2D many games, especially old school platformers/shooters require really precise timing, tap a little to early/late and you're screwed. I'm just not good at that, which kinda ruins some older games for me, as I simply can't play them well at all.

[Covenant]

I find it funny when the Angry Video Game Nerd rants about some extremely hard nintendo game, like Milon's Castle, and fails to realize all those secrets were the point of the game. Chalk one up for research!

It's not a failure to realize that it was the point-- even if that's the "point" of the game, that doesn't make it good. Milon's Secret Castle is one of the most egregious examples I can think of because not only is it insanely complicated just to advance through the game, to the point that you'd need to trade secrets and rumors at the lunch table to try and advance it whatsoever, but because it also punished you for trial and error because you only had one life, no hit-invul, a useless weapon, and the most dreary, godawful graphics the nintendo could create. That's all I was getting at, really--that there's merit in difficulty, but some games are hard to progress in without being challenging.

So sure, that's the point of it, but it was a lousy game anyway. A challenging game can ramp up the hard mode to make it rough, but still give you a way to win according to skill and not luck or simple time-sink A crappy game like this doesn't challenge you legitimately, it just makes life extremely unsparing and assigns you a dangerous, dull, aimless quest. I think it falls squarely into the "not that good then, would be pointless to update" category.

There's also a few games that were harder in American release than Japanese, so it's not universal. I also remember the so-called "hard" version of Airman being just as much of a joke as the normal one, despite being quite talked of as difficult. I think that this was just a game genre (the self-flagellation adventure quest) that never caught on here because it was a dodo from the beginning.

[Oskuro]

Hey, I'm not arguing that Milon's Secret Castle or other similar games were good. I'm just saying that the extreme difficulty was intentional. There are plenty of hard games, like Zelda or Metroid, wich are not shit, I just find it funny when people go all AVGN and yell "what where they thinking?!" when the answer is that the were making it a living hell intentionally. I'd rather acknowledge their intentions, and then bash them for making crappy design decisions and mistaking "hard" for "frustrating".

For example, I consider bullet-hell games to be hard, but since after a few attempts your pattern recognition kicks in and you start getting the hang of it, they are not frustrating (well, ok, the ones that had patterns, not the crappy you will die ones)

[Eleas]

Some games pioneered gameplay ideas, and many of those ideas are just as good now as they were then. Others focused on pushing the envelope in terms of graphics, sound, or scale; those were dated quickly.

As for those not-really-good games, I'd say the majority of the ones I've played were those old platformers that were merely diversions in the first place. Games like Monkey Island, D/Generation, and even Wing Commander have largely retained their charm. All of those games had solid ideas and execution behind them, and their attraction wasn't really a case of mere graphical extravaganza (except possibly in the case of Wing Commander, and even then I'd argue it was really the Star Wars experience people were paying for).

Of course, a lot of games that wowed people when they first appeared quickly grew dated. I don't care how many hard core Star Wars fans like to revisit X-Wing, the game still looks like shit, because the overall standard of graphics has progressed so far beyond that. I actually think I'd rather play Elite, mostly because as I remember the Amiga version graphics were so impossibly fluid it looked like a cartoon rather than cheap effects.

Oh, and the David Braben space traders, Elite and Frontier? I still think they're amazingly well made, all things considered, but even when it came out Frontier felt horribly dated in terms of graphics and, curiously, gameplay. Using procedural programming in that manner and to that effect is an accomplishment; failing to camouflage the stifling emptiness a procedural galaxy brought was an atrocity.

[TheFeniX]

Useless anecdote: About 5 years ago I got hold of a 2nd hand SNES with Super Mario World, Zelda:alttp, Super Metriod, and a few others. And generally they were pretty easy to me, even just playing an hour, and hour and a half, each day I still beat Metroid in less than a week

Super Metroid had access to a map, an inventory system, the ability to crouch, fire at 45 degree angles, and swap beam weapons without having to go back to where you found them. I believe it also gave you a general idea on where to go next, although I could just be channeling "Shadow Complex." The original had none of these. Most Super Nintendo games were pathetically easy when compared to NES games. In fact, the games you listed are talked about less for being beaten and more fore finding all the heart containers, all missiles, or all exits, etc.

There are some really hard SNES games, but they just weren't as popular because "challenging, but not soul destroying" is a better design than "so difficult, someone get me a gun." But all NES had was the latter with a few exceptions.

I mean Metroids basic gameplay is relatively simple: Since there is about 1000 bajillion doors/obstacles that you can't open/pass yet,

The original Metroid had "bomb jumping" parts that were pure masochism. The learning curve was fucking steep. I bought the GBA port on my DS for nostalgia and couldn't last more than 2 hours playing it because I'm weak... that and I played the "Zero Mission" remake, which is tons better because, like Super Metroid, it has a map, inventory, etc.

[Eleas]

The original Metroid had "bomb jumping" parts that were pure masochism. The learning curve was fucking steep. I bought the GBA port on my DS for nostalgia and couldn't last more than 2 hours playing it because I'm weak... that and I played the "Zero Mission" remake, which is tons better because, like Super Metroid, it has a map, inventory, etc.

There was a pretty huge range of difficulty. Some games were, as pointed out earlier, just punishing in order to make the game last. If anyone remembers Shadow of the Beast 1 and 2 or Barbarian, their gameplay was basically just rote memorization. One reason why (for instance) Super Mario, which as a platformer is technically fairly similar, was so beloved is that it was possible to get better at it and learn things without the experience sucking. For one, there was variation. Same thing with Sonic. Having never played Metroid, I can't comment, but I would imagine it to be similar.

A bare minority of games were sufficiently varied and interesting that you would play them despite their unfairness. Another World springs to mind.

[Wing Commander MAD]

All this raving about how hard games like Milon's Secret Castle, Zelda or Metroid were is funny, specially since they were developed in Japan, and thus didn't have the hotlines or Nintendo Power in consideration.

From what I've read on the subject, these games were hard because that was the norm in Japan. It was the non-japanese public that had trouble with them (not being as obsessive and masochistic as the japanese, it seems). Same rationale behind the release of the american version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (yes, I know the original Mario 2 was a mod of Mario 1, but it was a hard mod)

I find it funny when the Angry Video Game Nerd rants about some extremely hard nintendo game, like Milon's Castle, and fails to realize all those secrets were the point of the game. Chalk one up for research!

Care to share, how/where you found this information? I honestly would be quite interested in reading such things, though I have no real idea of what kind of search criteria to use, other than history of video games. Also, is there any way to actually verify the accuracy of these sources? The history of the games industry is a rather interestng subject to me.