The Powerful Emotional Pull of Old Video Games (2014)

http://nautil.us/blog/the-powerful-emotional-pull-of-old-video-games

by samsolomon • 10 years ago

109 80 10 years ago

Not sure about the "past accomplishments" part. I usually feel more drawn to old games I never finished.

Umn44• 10 years ago

All old games have good things and bad things about them. The great things about old games were the challenge. The bad thing about them was that the industry was still learning and hence many games won't age well in terms of some dimension because many lessons had yet to be learned.

Karunamon• 10 years ago

This is going to make me sound like a ranting old curmudgeon, but I am having a hard time thinking of much that's an improvement in modern games except for art style/graphical limitations.

There's not much innovation anymore. Modern AAA titles are rife with handholding, patronizing, unimaginative and focus-grouped-to-hell stories (because those sell the best), DLC bait, and other such tiresome tropes.

I remember the 90's being a time when there was a lot of innovation and experimentation because nobody had it down pat what would sell the best. You'd never see a Mister Mosquito[1] or a Vangers[2] or an Urban Assault[3] nowadays. You might see an indie homage or two, but that's totally different from having a large studio throwing resources at the wall and seeing what sticks.

It's a time I dearly miss. You want to know what the most memorable game in recent memory was to me? Undertale[4] . A retro-styled indie RPG with graphics that could probably have been pulled off 20 years ago on the SNES, but in spite of that limitation, its story and sound design is absolutely top shelf and is, in my mind, one of those games that everyone should play at least once.

Commercialism ruins everything. Sure, the usual response to this is "but there are more games than ever, and it's easier for anyone to jump in", which is true, but it still feels like as if there's some magic that was long since lost, only occasionally recaptured by a clever group of developers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mosquito

[2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/264080/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Assault

[4] http://undertale.com/about.htm

HCIdivision17• 10 years ago

Here's the really cool bit: today we can have both. I get to play Chrono Trigger - a masterpiece of artfully taking a system to its limits - and I can play The Witness - a gorgeous game that would lose so much if it couldn't be rendered so well.

To me, the only hope is to have lots and lots and lots of games made. Whenever we wax philosophical about old games, no one ever mentions the absolute piles of junk that were made. And then some were good, but not great (compare Super Monkey Ball to Marble Madness) I loved Marble Madness as a little kid but couldn't really wrap my head around the controls, whereas SMB was fun right off the bat (and I was still terrible at it - but for actual gameplay reasons now).

Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon? The whole game felt rock solid and hand crafted. The 3D version added the ability to ride. But the world was so much less pretty. By contrast, look at the evolution of 3D in the Myst series; the game was supposed to be played like Uru, but computers could only handle HyperCard at the time. And contrast again with Into the Manhole, which really ought to be flash cards (or like flipping pages in a book - I remember the animations surprising and delighting me as a kid).

TL;DR: don't worry, it's not all bad. Some games need constraints, and people will build engines just for that. And some don't. But the important thing is: more games! (So more amazing ones trickle out).

jjoonathan2• 10 years ago

If I wanted to give "old school" games a shot, which few should I try? I haven't played many -- Sonic as a kid, I watched FF7 and Symphony of the Night on youtube -- so I don't really have a good basis to judge from, but nothing I've seen obviously meets (let alone exceeds) the bar set by my favorite modern games, e.g.

Soma: Story, Atmosphere, Thought Provoking

Deus Ex HR: Story, Atmosphere, Thought Provoking

BioShock 1: Story, Thought Provoking

DragonAge 1,3 / MassEffect 1,2,3: Story, Characters

Witcher 3: Story, Characters

Portal 2: Story, Mechanics

Undertale: Story, Mechanics

Alien Isolation: Story, Atmosphere, Mechanics

Mirror's Edge: Mechanics

Braid: Mechanics

Dark Souls / Bloodborne: Mechanics? (Haven't played)

Blood Dragon: 1980s simulator

I can identify the "commercialization" trend that you're talking about if and only if I focus my attention to a single franchise or a single aspect of a single franchise. Example: Mass Effect lost its hard SF edge in 2, 3 but the characters and mechanics got better. Starcraft lost its story and character edge in 2, but the mechanics got better. Bioshock lost its philosophical depth in Infinite but the story and characters got better.

Overlaid on top of this is a trend of increasing production value. Every franchise gives you some facet to point at and say "devs don't care about X, only production value, boo." This ignores the boring explanation that it's hard to churn out sequels that exceed the original in each and every possible point of comparison. Sequels need to be evaluated on their own merits and the industry needs to be judged as a whole. Otherwise everything is guaranteed to look like it's going downhill.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Let me know your favorites and I'll promise to give at least one a try.

techdragon4• 10 years ago

Urban Assault, now there's a nostalgic flashback. I got hooked on the demo that came on the CD with one of the PC magazines, but never had the money to get the full game. They did a damn decent job trying to merge two very different genres and I'm really saddened by how few games since have done anywhere near as good a job.

mikeash• 10 years ago

If you look beyond the AAA games you can find a lot of great stuff. My favorite is Kerbal Space Program. It's fun, it's educational, it has personality, the challenge scales up with player skill to an almost unlimited degree and entirety organically, you can set your own goals or have them given to you... I could go on.

What really amazes me is looking at the players and seeing a lot of people going into aerospace careers because of it. And not only that, but finding that they have a huge leg up on their classmates because they've already learned so much from the game.

The magic is still there, you just have to find it.

iolothebard• 10 years ago

Mame is fantastic for this reason. Although, I'm not sure how I played a lot of those games, they're much more difficult than I remember. I guess when you had only $5 in quarters you had to make them last. Getting a $20 for games at the big arcade or Chuck E Cheese/Crystals as a kid was like winning the lottery.

carsongross• 10 years ago

Two non-nostalgia aspects of old games stand out to me:

1) The gameplay is often much easier to pick up quickly without a crutch mode because there were fewer degrees of freedom.

2) The artistry was at times amazing. Orson Wells said that "the enemy of art is the absence of limitations" and I think the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, in particular, demonstrated the truth of that maxim.

mangeletti4• 10 years ago

Wow, I could not agree more.

One more-recent case that really stands out is Command & Conquer - Red Alert 2. This game had much simpler graphics than later RTS games, so the focus was mostly on gameplay. IMHO, this was the best RTS ever created[1], and the reason for this was that it was sort of at the peak of perfection for its level of graphical and spatial limitations.

1. I know Star Craft was epic as well, and Generals from the remaining remnants of Westwood combined with EA was great also. And... Dune. Red Alert, for me, was the sort of Vivaldi[1.1] culmination that built on all these past successes, just before the age of "Moar Triangles!" reached RTS.

1.1 (I heard you liked footnotes) Vivaldi, the Baroque composer, built upon the style of Corelli and others before him, even copied some aspects of their musical styles, but this is what made his music so great.

untog• 10 years ago

Ah, Red Alert 2. I really loved that game, haven't played in forever. It was before I had ubiquitous broadband so I never really played it online - does anyone know if it is still possible to do so / whether anyone does? I'm sure I'd lose within minutes against anyone still playing today, but a 4 way multiplayer battle would be amazing.

EDIT: figured I could be less lazy and find out myself. It appears you can play online through https://cncnet.org/red-alert-2. Now all I need to do is figure out where to buy it and how to make it work on my Mac. I suppose it's old enough I might be able to play via a virtual machine.

techdragon4• 10 years ago

C&C-RA2 was very good, but for me RTS, the era of Starcraft and C&C was crushed to dust by the 3d terrain and balistics of Total Annihilation, nothing held a candle to it.

I still remember yelling out loud with surprise the first time enemy artillery destroyed some of my aircraft while firing on ground targets further away.

Sadly the 'moar triangles' era began shortly afterwards and definitely abandoned the simplicity of well balanced gameplay and solid game engines, for flashy graphics and other cheap lures.

agumonkey• 10 years ago

Artistry and engineering. It always fun to read how people managed to use every corner of these chips.

Also, limitations means the spirit of the game emerges stronger.

tarsinge3• 10 years ago

On the artistry side there is more : 20 years ago (ouch) you still had mainstream games that were built without too much of marketing pressure. I remember an interview of a Warcraft 2 team member who was saying that they were simply trying to make the best game for themselves. So sure there is nostalgia, but when comparing mainstream the difference is not just technical. Same as in music, the (edit: artistic) quality is now in the indie, and thanks to great tools it's a better time than ever for creativity, at the expense that it's harder to live from it.

vlunkr• 10 years ago

I also wanted to say that old video games can be appealing for reasons other than nostalgia. Only recently I played through chrono trigger and symphony of the night, both for the first time, and they are amazing even by today's standards. People enjoy old books, movies, etc because they are still great, why can't video games be the same way?

toyg3• 10 years ago

To be fair, loads of XIX century novels are considered boring for today's standards mostly because they were born as serials, paid by episode or even by word, and published in newspapers first. After the media landscape evolved, their appreciation diminished; similarly, old games suffer from the rapid evolution of their platforms / media.

bobwaycott• 10 years ago

I've long been a Final Fantasy fan. I was introduced to it with FF7, a game I still continue to love—and am more than a little excited for the impending PS4 remake. It's a gold standard for me. My sons (16 & 12) and I recently embarked on playing through the entire Final Fantasy catalogue. I'm currently on FF4, while they're still finishing the first. We've all been having a blast with the playthroughs, as well as discussing comparative gameplay, art, mechanics, etc. they're just fantastic and timeless games.

Best of all, my boys now want to work together to make a game. My oldest has already made an FF clone on his TI-84. If their interest holds, it could be an awesome project to work on together.

CM303• 10 years ago

I 100% agree with this. A lot of older games are appealing simply because they're good games in general, and are seen as a new experience for people who didn't grow up with them. For example, how many people likely played Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask for the first time on 3DS? Or before that, the Wii Virtual Console? Yet for a lot of people coming back to them, they still consider them some of the best games of all time.

Heck, I do, and I'm one of the people who never played either til then.

rybosome2• 10 years ago

Chrono Trigger is my favorite game of all time. Its images and music have been part of my life since I was ten years old, so I've often wondered how I would perceive it if the experience were new as an adult. Glad to hear that it held up so well.

lostgame2• 10 years ago

Oh, man. 'NiGHTS into Dreams...', though...

CM303• 10 years ago

Yeah, the artistry in a lot of older games is pretty incredible, if only for the sheer amount of detail and work the creators put into the very tiniest aspects of these games. Like Yoshi's Island for the SNES, where every corner of the game was crammed with secrets, bonus rooms, etc. In some cases, even messages from the creators about the work they put in:

http://www.nindb.net/snes/yoshis-island/

That game itself was impressive in its mechanics too, given that it had situations where enemies behaved in unique ways that were never likely to come up in the actual game.

Or a game which I still remember quite fondly from 2001, Wario Land 4. There, despite using traditional sprite animation, every single level had at least one different tileset and background (usually two or three), its own music (which had things like echo effects added for caves and sped up or slowed down based on on screen events) and tons of details that were exceedingly unlikely for the player to notice. Like a whole tileset for a single room or two, with tons of animations. Or music specifically for part of an ending medley... if the player did really poorly overall. Or a sound test where every single song was exclusive to the sound test.

That's the kind of thing that was more common in older games. A huge amount of attention to detail and small secrets scattered everywhere.

freshyill• 10 years ago

A great thing about Yoshi's Island is that it's possibly the only SNES game that benefits from the fancy pixel-smoothing modes that emulators offer. Rather than looking distorted, it makes it look like a completely modern 2D platformer.

the_af• 10 years ago

I fully agree with your second point (the Wells quote). It's most noticeable in movie-making, but I agree it also applies to games.

However, I somewhat disagree about your first point. Some old school games are not easy to pick up; some are so punishing as to be almost non-viable for today's standards. Some games came with a complex manual that you absolutely had to read (and it was really hard for those of us living in countries where piracy was the only option).

For example, some 90s RPGs are so untractable and complex I never had the patience to learn how to play them. I'm thinking for example of Darklands, which has many fans in the abandonware community, but which would probably never succeed these days.

douche• 10 years ago

Man, we desperately need a reboot of Darklands. Something like the newer XCOM games for the tactical combat, and a little bit nicer world map would be an insta-buy. Especially if the complexity and beautiful menu art of the original was retained.

gaius• 10 years ago

It's not about nostalgia. It's about in the days before powerful GPUs gameplay and originality really mattered. The game was "rendered" in your own imagination. It's the same reason in the days of 4k TVs many people still prefer books to TV.

ZenoArrow• 10 years ago

Not all games from the past hold up today, there was a lot of poor gameplay and unoriginal games from back in the day too. For example, the 80s had tons of shoot-em-ups, the early 90s had a deluge of 2D platformers, etc...

What was different back then was the costs involved in developing a commercial game. As the appetite for high-end graphics has increased, so too has the cost of producing games, which has led to fewer risks being taken by big game publishers. Thankfully the indie game scene is stronger than ever, and has proven to be a good outlet for game developers when experimenting with new ideas.

GFK_of_xmaspast2• 10 years ago

the days before ... gameplay and originality really mattered.

That's exactly what I remember people saying about then-modern games in the 90s.

andrewclunn• 10 years ago

It's all about the music. If a game was so so, but had an awesome soundtrack, then I'm invariably going to remember it more fondly. Saga Frontier comes to mind as an example.

rybosome2• 10 years ago

Great example. Overall it was a thoroughly mediocre game, but it had very, very distinct and memorable music. I too feel fondness for that game.

aclimatt• 10 years ago

For me, the nostalgia is very much attributed to the music. Music in general can be very nostalgic, but a 30 second track that you listened to for hours a day on repeat as a child can really become a part of you.

Much for that reason, Ocarina of Time has always been top of my list for nostalgic games, and the score was arguably some of Koji Kondo's finest work.

J-dawg• 10 years ago

Oh, this is so true! For me it's Frontier: Elite II. I can't hear the Blue Danube Waltz without imagining I'm docking at a Coriolis station

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7PqehW2X7mHp3UW2Ix5Z85...

tjl• 10 years ago

When I was much younger, I used to play Dune 2 while listening to Smashing Pumpkins. Now, whenever I hear Smashing Pumpkins, I'm taken back to playing Dune 2 all over again.

Fezzik• 10 years ago

Same. I recently played Zelda: A Link To the Past (on my iPhone, nonetheless, which is cool to a non-tech inclined person!), and I felt like I was a kid again. All the same emotions flooded back, just from listening to that unforgettable music and wandering through Hyrule. Re-playing that game was some of the best therapy ever. I would start the game on the bus, or at lunch, or play for a few minutes before dinner, and all worry would melt away.

mangeletti4• 10 years ago

This HN thread is hitting on so many notes (pun intended). I have every one of Koji Kondo's songs, and Ocarina of Time was it for me also. I would listen to Koji's cello-dominated Gerudo Valley theme so many times...

drcode• 10 years ago

This is very true of c64 games, which had the powerful SID music chip. I didn't realize until I was an adult how much of the emotional draw of those games was tied to music.

nistur2• 10 years ago

I am very sad never to have had a C64 at the time pretty much because of the SID. The first (and for a while only) computer/console I had was an AtariST which had decent sound chip too but looking back at what people are, and were fondest of, I feel I'm missing out on the nostalgia a bit.

However, I did get Bitmap Brother's Magic Pockets... and now the intro music is stuck in my head... Betty Boo.

On a tangential note, does anyone remember many games that had their soundtrack on audio cassette? I had a copy of Star Glider 2, which had a synth-y track on tape, which you were meant to play on your hifi while playing the game.

navbaker• 10 years ago

Overclocked Remix has built an amazing community and collection of music around this idea. Ten plus years after I discovered the site and I still visit once or twice a week to look for new tracks.

erik_landerholm• 10 years ago

This is apropo for me. I just purchased a wiiu for my children and was getting a bit choked up looking through the virtual console list. I actually had a conversation with my wife about it after the kids were in bed.

We all did a 6 hour tour of super metroid, it was great. There is something to this for sure. Hearing original Zelda music transports me back to being a kid instantly.

xivzgrev• 10 years ago

How timely. I recently visited parents, and while going thru super Nintendo games remembers some of the music from final fantasy 3. Then I started listening to it at work. Then I downloaded the game now I'm 17 hours in. Kefka here I come...

jmduke2• 10 years ago

Kefka is the worst, but he's also a great villain from a time where it felt like most villains were sort of generic and one-dimensional.

jmduke2• 10 years ago

This article struck quite a chord with me. I spent most of my childhood playing (but rarely finishing) a lot of RPGs and action-adventure games (chief among them Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, etc. etc.)

I've been going back over the past couple years and replaying them. For a couple of reasons: there's the sense of closure of having finished something I started a dozen years ago (shouts to Turtle Rock, which Elementary School Justin did not have the fortitude to complete). More, though, I just wanted to see if these games which I spent so much energy and imagination on a while back were worth the investment.

I've been struck by how mature and powerful these games were in their own right:

- Earthbound is this dense, bizarre paean to Western culture also wrapped up in this story about losing your innocence and the creepiest final boss fight ever;

- Link's Awakening forces players to answer the difficult question of why you'd want to wake up from an amazing dream;

- Even Final Fantasy has a narrative device that I've yet to see replicated since, of having the main villain straight up win, and then forcing you to deal with the fallout and rebuild from the literal dust and ashes.

These things are for sure enhanced by nostalgia, and a common argument against these games are that you're looking at them "through rose-tinted glasses" (the implication being that their luster is gone without my memories of playing them as a child). I'm not so sure that's true -- but, more importantly, I'm not so sure that matters.

In a lot of ways, it feels like having gotten coffee with an old friend after a long time apart, and remarking on how both you and they have matured so much. If you have fond memories of video games, I recommend you blow the dust off of the proverbial cartridge and treat yourself.

sogen• 10 years ago

I remember flammie the dragon in Secret of Mana, that at some point in the game grows up/matures, and I was like "Whoa!"

zaroth• 10 years ago

Every so often I find myself searching for a BBS to telnet into to play a few hours of Galactic Empire or Trade Wars. Loved playing those games as a kid, and definitely eeriely drawn back to them from time to time.

spdustin• 10 years ago

I would lose days of productivity if I could play either of those games again. And I want to. Badly. I've played a few 4X games since then, but those old "Door Games" we're something special.

I wonder if anyone has the source for them still...

EDIT: oh, no. I'll see you guys later. telnet://twgs.classictw.com

jmspring• 10 years ago

Tradewars (or TW 2002) continues to be available online -- http://www.tradewars.com/default.html

I lost many hours playing this game.

csense• 10 years ago

Gaming site gog.com [1] [2] built a successful business around acquiring rights to game companies' back catalogs and selling them online. (Originally they were Good Old Games, but they've now rebranded to simply "gog.com" and sell new games as well.) HN readers may be interested in the technology (Dosbox) and gog.com's strong anti-DRM stance [3].

From a user's perspective, the work they've done getting games to work on modern systems is alone worth the price of admission -- I must have spent hours [4] tweaking Dosbox configs to try to get my copy of Master of Magic to play music (the game directory that began with a 7-floppy installation in the mid-90s has been copied to every system I've had since then). Buying (another) copy of the game from GOG and getting a Dosbox config that Just Works, was well worth the modest price.

From the publisher's perspective I'm sure it's a win as well -- I could easily believe they gave up on ever realizing any more income from that IP a decade before they were approached by GOG.

[1] https://www.gog.com

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com

[3] https://www.gog.com/support/website_help/what_is_gog_com

[4] The finickiness isn't unique to Dosbox, I remember having to fiddle with the in-game settings for a while running bare-metal on at least one '90s era PC as well.

AdeptusAquinas3• 10 years ago

Master of Magic has been on every PC I've owned as well. And gog.com's version was the first thing I installed on my newest Win10 laptop a few months ago: Runs with no problems :)

Razengan• 10 years ago

There's a new Master of Orion game coming out too :)

http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion

Natsu• 10 years ago

That's quite a fun game.

Archmage + channeler + confusion spam can win so many otherwise unwinnable battles. And yes, I have alechemist to keep up the mana supply, so I have almost no spells or troops and still win fights with my magic spirit scouts.

Naturally I use Rjack's portrait as I'd prefer not to face him in game with a strategy like this.

Goladus• 10 years ago

This is such a weird coincidence. I've been listening to The History of Rome podcast [1] and was getting the itch to play some civilization/strategy. I literally downloaded Master of Magic from gog.com (had purchased it there years ago) about 20 minutes ago.

[1] http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/

benologist• 10 years ago

GOG is my go-to place for buying games too, they just seem to be such an honest and user-friendly company.

Steam is my go-to place when I want to support a company that spent years persecuting their own customers for getting refunds.

zurn• 10 years ago

Sees they have other emulated systems besides DOS, like the Amiga: https://www.gog.com/mix/amiga_classics

qKTDxAy4KfcOjA9• 10 years ago

I am 27, my sister is 29, and when we meet up (a couple of times a year, we live far apart) we play our old Super Nintendo, as we used to do as kids.

Neither of us play the SNES at any other time.

LoSboccacc• 10 years ago

it's not just nostalgia, some game principles are very hard to find in modern games, especially regarding the exploration of interesting mechanics irregardless of balance.

strategy games like master of magic or total annihilation, were faction had a distinct feeling from each other, even if some were more powerful, are almost impossible today where multiplayer is a large portion of the game and necessarily need to be balanced, which causes many games' faction to feel reskin of each other with just minor changes and not really unique mechanics.

stretchwithme• 10 years ago

I got hooked on Subterrania on Sega Genesis for several months back in 94, then didn't play for 15 years. Then I decided to look for it on eBay. Found a system and the game for only $35 and now I play it several times a week.

lostgame2• 10 years ago

My partner gave me a Sega Saturn for my birthday a year ago...since then, our band's little collective has used it as a little centre of some of our gatherings...Street Fighter II, NiGHTS into Dreams, Daytona USA CC, oh, man...

DanBC• 10 years ago

Sega Rally on Saturn is pretty amazing. 3 cars, 4 tracks - but it's really nailed the feel.

The Powerful Emotional Pull of Old Video Games (2014)

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