Classic games: Just not really that good?

[Bellator]

I came to this realization while playing the "Re-shelled" version of Turtles in Time. It's just not that good. Same goes for the Namco classics I can play in PS Home, or Prince of Persia Classic, or 90% of the games on the Ultimate Genesis Collection, or Final Fantasy 1 to 3, or Mega Man 9. Other than invoking a sense of nostalgia, or judging them in the context of when it was made ("good for its time"), none of these games is actually any good when looked at from today's perspective. Unlike movies and books, video games do not age well.

My question is this: which classic games (pre-SNES) on any platform (Atari, Commodore, NES, Master System, PC, etc) would be considered good games if released today (with improved graphics)?

I'll start:

1. Tetris
2. Dr. Mario
3. Legend of Zelda. I played this a few years ago and it held up well considering it's age. I prefer it to most subsequent versions.
4. Super Mario Bros 3. Maybe. Haven't played this in over a decade, so I might be wrong.

[Stark]

Why is this in AMP? Uh oh.

Anyway, lots of games are still 'good' in re-released forms on various platforms. Star Control 2 is still fantastic. Hell, Oregon Trail remains a 'good game' and it's now a sprite-based minigame-em-up on iPhone. If we restrict ourselves to overall good games, as opposed to games with xyz good feature, we'd get at least a bunch of Lucasarts 90s adventure games.

[Bellator]

sorry, wrong forum Can someone move this?

And 90s adventure games aren't that good either. Too much "click on everything" to progress since the most logical option usually doesn't work. The storytelling was usually good though.

[Stark]

That's why I said 'Lucasarts'. Aside from Sam and Max they're all pretty easy (unlike Sierra games) and the art isn't horrible in SCUMMvm. Can't die + simple puzzles + humour = still good.

[Dooey Jo]

This is going to be one of those "list your favourite games" threads isn't it? At least give reasons why the games would still be good.

I can see Zelda being considered good, because it would be "innovative" in that you can do the dungeons in whatever order you like, but people might instead moan about the lack of story, or the fact that you basically have to use GameFaqs to even finish it.

[Bellator]

This is going to be one of those "list your favourite games" threads isn't it? At least give reasons why the games would still be good.

I can see Zelda being considered good, because it would be "innovative" in that you can do the dungeons in whatever order you like, but people might instead moan about the lack of story, or the fact that you basically have to use GameFaqs to even finish it.

Not all games need stories. Super Stardust HD doesn't have much in terms storyline (aliens are invading, stop them), but it is still a good game because of it's gameplay.

Dr. Mario & Tetris. This genre hasn't really evolved past these games. Sure Lumines is a blast, but other than improved graphics and some vague attempt to have your actions influencing the music it's the same as any previous puzzler.

Mario: been too long, can't say.

Zelda: yeah, I forgot about the not-knowing-which-bush-to-burn bit. Good point. Maybe it isn't up to par. But yeah, it's quite non-linear. Most of your new weapons and items actually do offer you new strategies to use (instead of just making you stronger). Decent variety of enemies that require different strategies. Plus that it offers a new experience after you beat the game once (new layout, plus harder dungeons).

[salm]

As a general rule you could probably say that most games that have good game mechanics age well. There might be some games with principally good mechanics which have trouble because that particular genre has since been refined and is now simply outdated.

Games like R-Type would still work with updated graphics and actually do work. R-Type Delta on PS1 was a pretty decent decendant of the original R-Type games, as was Einhänder.

[Oskuro]

Chess has aged well.


Ok, more seriously, the trouble many old games get into is that from todays perspective many of the gimmicks that made them unique are either gone stale, or were dependent on technical achievements. Take for example the original Tomb Raider games, back in the day they had amazing graphics and gave a 3d spin to the platformer genre. Nowadays such genre has been explored to death, and the graphics are obviously dated (to the point it has a bit of appeal to see them kind of as an act of gaming archeology).

I feel that, like chess, games that are essentially gameplay based age better, wich usually means puzzle games. I'd include many platformers in this category, like Mario 3 or Metroid (but let's not go into 'favourite games' derailing mode).

As for graphic adventures, most of them were about the graphics. They had subpar stories and non-existant gameplay, in fact, many were just like reading a novel that requires you to go about the house rubbing different items together in order to turn the page. From that perspective, the ones with actual good stories have aged well, even if the gameplay sucked (The Dig is a favourite of mine, wich is laughably easy, but has a compelling story).

Finally, I'm think that just like any other artform, games can age well if they are, well, art. Games with an intriguing style, an excellent atmosphere, a masterful use of their assets can still hold their own aganist the bland resource watefests of today. For example I was thinking of the original Alone in the Dark. The graphics are shit, the action is lame and parts of it are cheesy, but the atmosphere is still great and makes it worth playing with (ironically, that was the big draw of the game, and the point they missed with the sequels).


Then again, it's all a matter of opinion and perspective, I personally got to play Super Metroid for the first time when Quake III was already old news, and loved it all the way through.

[Nephtys]

The important thing about an old game is that if you pick it up now, does it 'feel' right. Even if you never played it, and thus have no nostalgia value. I'll list a few of my old favorites, that I successfully introduced to people who never played them back when.

Star Control 2 is fine. Aside from at most, the awkwardness of only 32 ship facings. The colorful atmosphere, fun dialogue... all of that is there and still fun.
JA2/X-COM is daunting for a new person, but can be picked up by someone who likes the nearest analogues to the genre of the modern type, like Disgaea or FFT. The graphics for X-COM are truly gruesome on a new machine though.
Wing Commander III, if it works on your system, is pretty much just as playable as Freespace or a contemporary sim. And has a better storyline. And hammy acting!

And even the CD-Rom Era golden age of games, between 1997-2002, when Windows 95/98 finally became stable for gaming are still very playable. Homeworld, Freespace, Crimson Skies, Mech 3/4, Dungeon Keeper 2, System Shock 2, Fallout 2, Deus Ex, Total Annihilation... every single one still playable, and quite honestly superior to most every modern release.

[Covenant]

The games that age the best are not just the ones with good mechanics, but the ones that offer a classic version of "hard," so that there's an appreciable skill level you need to get up to. Modern games are by and large much more complicated but less difficult, as most people can attest to, because they're not intentionally killing you to drain your quarters. Many of these old games were based on coin-operated quarter-guzzlers so there was a real reason to make it difficult to progress without a lot of deaths, and sometimes that leads to a very satisfying home experience.

Nowadays the metric for money is time, such as with subscriptions and MMO pricing models, so people will look back at this era not as "Nintendo Hard" but "Blizzard Grind," which I'm not sure will endear future-gamers to the age of the thousand bear skins collection quest.

That's why games like megaman aged better than some others--not only are the mechanics simple and solid, the music pretty decent, and the gameplay fun--but it can also be quite difficult to a novice to win. So getting good at it feels like an accomplishment, and not just like the eventual result of your gameplay inertia. Compare the end of Megaman (must slog through the entire Wily castle, with it's super boss fights and the final boss rush, and wily himself without losing your 3 lives) to the end of nearly any modern game. Look at Fallout 3 for the worst possible matchup. Most games have you essentially on autopilot for the back half, small moments of difficulty excluded, whereas old games made that the time to really knock you down a few. Regaining that retro feel is, in many ways, re-learning the classic difficulty curve.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ah MegaMan, I have many many fond, and hated memories of that unstoppable game series.

Covenant makes an excellent point in regards to "hard" vs "Long" in games these days,. I am sure many of us know the sound-effect "voom" with dread in terms of the disappearing blocks in MegaMan games. I mean, you just don't see things liek that these days, spending time memorizing a sequence of blocks disappearing and repairing and missing just ONE sends you plummeting to doom!.

Ah. Good Times

[Stark]

This is going to be one of those "list your favourite games" threads isn't it? At least give reasons why the games would still be good.

I can see Zelda being considered good, because it would be "innovative" in that you can do the dungeons in whatever order you like, but people might instead moan about the lack of story, or the fact that you basically have to use GameFaqs to even finish it.

His criteria were clearly explained in the OP. 'I like it' isn't good enough; it has to still be playable now (albiet with better art). Zelda 1 is painfully primitive.

I'd argue JA2 because the base game has plenty of problems and I'm not sure later add-ons should count here. If the argument is that 'classic' games aren't fun or competitive anymore, things like X-Com are almost the poster-child. A great, genre-breaking and innovative game that is now nigh unplayable shit. The only reason people have such fond memories is that people have consistently failed to remake it without turning it shit (like the Afterfail series).

Cov's issue with difficulty curves was evident even in the 16-bit era as games became 'wildly unbalanced collect-em-ups'. Games becoming harder as you progress? How can that be possible with the looting philosophy of today?!?

[Oskuro]

Nowadays the metric for money is time, such as with subscriptions and MMO pricing models.

And for non MMO games it is still time, the game has to be long enough so players buy it, but short and easy enough so they finish it and buy the next one. I'd guess the "golden" age of nintendo Hard games was in that sweet spot where home entertainment systems were gaining on the arcades, and as such the marketing departments hadn't caught up yet with the most profitable way to suck the fun out of their creations.

[Stark]

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.

[Bellator]

Some old skool games being hard is NOT a good thing. Try playing the original Ghost & Goblins.

This goes for a lot of games of that era. Games that take cheap shots at your health bar forcing you to pay more quarters. Incredibly archaic in today's world.

And this also applies to Mega Man. I played Mega Man 9 on the PSN recently. It's all about pattern recognition, muscle memory and trial and error.

[Dooey Jo]

Another classic series which is now pretty crap is The Last Ninja. The only thing that made those games hard were the terrible controls and perspective, and the complete lack of clues (half a nunchaku hidden in a toilet? Who knew?). People sometimes cite them as examples of good games because of how difficult they were, but the difficulty was really just a side-effect of their awful game design.

His criteria were clearly explained in the OP. 'I like it' isn't good enough; it has to still be playable now (albiet with better art). Zelda 1 is painfully primitive.

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!"

Not all games need stories.

No, but you must consider what people have come expect from certain genres over the years. People generally don't expect stories in space shooters, but they might in a Zelda-like game.

Dr. Mario & Tetris. This genre hasn't really evolved past these games. Sure Lumines is a blast, but other than improved graphics and some vague attempt to have your actions influencing the music it's the same as any previous puzzler.

But if they were released today, wouldn't they too be considered "just another puzzler"? Out of those games you listed first, I think SMB3 would have the best chance of still being good. I'm sure there are now lots of good platformers so it would probably not be considered "greatest game evar!!", but it's still very much playable, and I can't recall any truly annoying things. Maybe it could use a save feature. Lamers might think it's inferior because it doesn't have any "lol physics" puzzles.

[Jade Falcon]

I still played Gabriel Knight 1 up until I loaned my copy out and never got it back. Despite the graphics aging badly, the story kept me sucked in and it wasn't as bad an interface as some Sierra games. Adventures seem to age the least partially I think because there's not really an assload of them out every month unlike says FPS games.

[Enigma]

I'm deviating a bit from the OP but I'd like to see the Ultima series redone, updated and made it first person.

As per OP, Ultima Underground 1 & 2 updated with updated artwork and be able to run on current OSs.

[WesFox13]

Well, I'm not sure if this counts as a "Classic" game but I recently bought Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. And I've played it for some time and I'm quite impressed by it. even though the graphics are classic isometric perspective sprite graphics; the story and the interesting world really draws me in. Sure the races are the typical "Tolkien-esque" Races (Humans, Dwarfs, Elves, Half-Ogres, etc.) but the interesting thing about it is the relatively recent industrial revolution in world (That happened about 60 years or so before the game start). I mean that is a really interesting answer to the question, "What would happen if a fantasy world had an industrial revolution?" as well as the struggle between technology and magic in the world. (Since because powerful magic disrupts technology and vice versa). So yeah I think the story and a bit of the gameplay is interesting so far.

((And if you're wondering I made a technology using Elf. ))

[TheFeniX]

Unlike movies and books, video games do not age well.

What types of movies and books? Because many age terribly.

My question is this: which classic games (pre-SNES) on any platform (Atari, Commodore, NES, Master System, PC, etc) would be considered good games if released today (with improved graphics)?

Most of the list is going to be made of PC games. But even then, if we're talking pre-SNES, then we're stuck pre-1990. That removes Crusaders of the Dark Savant (which got a remake), X-COM, and Star Control 2. Hell, "The Dig" came out in '95. Most the games mentioned in this thread aren't old enough to qualify.

You're talking about an era of consoles where 90% of the games were either shit or so fucking hard you'd never have played them without cheats (Contra). The "good" games were those that either balanced out or were simple concepts (Tetris). As for the Zelda angle, Zelda II is likely a better "good game" as it was more than walking around waiting to stumble on the next dungeon. Super Dodge Ball and River City Ransom are still playable. But I think the sprites and the exaggerated expressions (both facial and vocal/text) are what made those games as good as they were. That said, if either was released on Arcade with online Co-op/MP, I'd be all over it.

[Samuel]

What types of movies and books? Because many age terribly.

Ones dependant on graphics do, but I still watch the Marx brother's films or Chaplin.

As for books the classics survived pretty well.

[General Zod]

Ones dependant on graphics do, but I still watch the Marx brother's films or Chaplin.

A game whose graphics were cutting edge at the time can still be playable today if the underlying gameplay was solid. Admittedly those tend to be few and far between. Just like how topical humor doesn't age very well past more than a few years.

As for books the classics survived pretty well.

That's a bit like saying Oscar award winner movies have survived pretty well.

[TheFeniX]

Ones dependant on graphics do, but I still watch the Marx brother's films or Chaplin.

Comedies not based on pop-culture references or stupid stereotypes of the time tend to be timeless.

As for books the classics survived pretty well.

That's why they're classics though.

[Covenant]

A lot of the very earliest games would work fine, since the UI was basically just a data-dump, you could hardly get anything out of it but that. It was by it's nature very abstract. Wasteland, Starflight, Bard's Tale, Another World/Out of this World... these games HAD graphics, but they were minimalistic at best. Updating the graphics and keeping the theme of the game leaves you with a game that was interesting on it's own, but is now much less confusing and off-putting to look at.

I think Out of this World and other Prince of Persia clones fare worse than a variety of the early RPG/Adventure games because they're pretty much just linear platformers, so to make them interesting today would require there to be some increase in puzzle complexity or just to really bank on the fact people like the game. Platformers are basically the ye olde version of a modern FPS--they were prettier than other games with a larger amount of their appeal done to the background artwork and character animation, since you spent so much time watching the art move around. Modern platformers make a lot of other concessions to stay relevent--look at Mario Galaxies. That's what happen when you try to keep updating the same experience with new graphics--you can't just do it straight up, unless you WANT to bank on retro appeal.

Also, some simulation games would work fine--mechwarrior games are basically just Mechwarrior 1 + New Graffix. If you allow for some minor code-increase to handle things that were orignally dumb... then you can update a lot. Better AI, or better randomization, etc, those things are just raw computing power benefits of modern systems, and should basically be lumped in with the idea of a 'basic upgrade' to a new system. So it's basically what you'd expect--the more solid the gameplay was originally, the better it'd do now. The real thing that makes an old game good today is having a necessary element of it not be replicated today. Starflight and Wasteland have really not been satisfyingly translated into modern games at all--you have things like Star Control and Elite, but those aren't the same at all, so they miss out on the depth of Starflight's gameplay potential quite heavily. And Wasteland was more than just fallout's predecessor, it had more complex team dynamics, a heavier skill system, and a more elaborate narration. Even Bard's Tale, which is a pretty standard adventure RPG, would be relatively unique in today's solo First Person RPG world.

[Vendetta]

As for books the classics survived pretty well.

Of course, if they hadn't survived, we wouldn't think of them as classics...

Also, the expressive capability of language doesn't vastly increase at the rate that the technology of videogames has. In a direct comparison to the kind of narrative expressed in books, the games regarded as "classics" are basically the first caveman going "ug".