Classics that had a charm modern games haven't recaptured

[Ike]

I guess I'm just thinking in terms of people in 10 years defining today's games as 'charming' in a way that games no longer capture, even though we being (mostly) 20somethings remember the older games as having the charm. At which point you can't really chalk it up to today's games lacking charm, it's just that we're older.

An example is the fondness with which people look at Kingdom Hearts, which I think is irredeemable garbage but a lot of people younger than me seem to like for some reason.

[nightdreamer]

Oh, I'm 100% with you on Kingdom Hearts, but I won't deny people their affection if they adored Kingdom Hearts and wish they had other games that are confluences of Disney + a game's mythos + lots of drivel!

[moran]

The opposite of that could be, and what I believe that Nightdreamer is getting at with the SMG games and that I agree with, could be the Souls series. Although its only 5 years old, it could also be considered a modern classic given its following. And the world and its characters has its own feel and charm to it that not many games in recent years can provide.

[The Great Klaid]

Aug 7, 2014 12:48:31 GMT -5 nightdreamer said:

Oh, I'm 100% with you on Kingdom Hearts, but I won't deny people their affection if they adored Kingdom Hearts and wish they had other games that are confluences of Disney + a game's mythos + lots of drivel!

Kingdom Hearts is still very tops for me. Even if it has become kind of a guilty pleasure of mine as I get older. I know it's godawful stupid, but I'll be damned if I don't get invested in it all and have genuine fun and excitement watching it all play out. Except Birth By Sleep is still a fantastic game, no qualifiers. No apologies. Play BBS.

And Moran is right. As is the idea that age doesn't make a game a classic. Just the fact that a game is going to pass into the annals of history. It's hard to say without a little time going by, but anyone who thinks Dark Souls is going to be forgotten in 10 years time is just plain wrong.

And pointing out the difference in 3 pixels on a bullet's hitbox from version to version of a game is slightly different then calling out someone's opinion based on incorrect semantics. One is what HG101 does, the other is kind of silly and come off kind of rude.

[muteKi]

I don't think there's anything that's come close to emulating the style, let alone the gameplay, of Dynamite Headdy. It's a game that's meant to be a spectator sport and makes that a lot of the focus of the show (the entire game is basically set as a stage play for crying out loud), and I haven't seen another game that's anywhere near as ostentatious as it.

I've been thinkin a lot about Headdy given that it just turned 20 friggin years old. But it's still one of the best games ever, IMO.

[Roxymandias]

My answer to this thread would be Cave Story, if you had asked before La-Mulana came out.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Related (super bunnyhop's recently posted Rainbow Six series review):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIiZ977gpOU

[Tarsier]

I don't think anything did the whole, "Magic and Technology don't like each other" thing as well as Arcanum. Maybe Silverfall, but I didn't play much of that when I remembered where the disks were so who knows. A shame too because I really like those sorts of things.

[Deleted]

Every single JRPG on earth was infinitely better before voice acting. To that extent, games from the PS1 and on lost a lot of the "charm" of their predecessors. It's a lot like what Harrison Ford used to tell George Lucas about the scripts for the Star Wars movies. "You can write this stuff, but you sure as hell can't say it."

[1983parrothead]

Battle Garegga is considered to be the best shmup by most shmup fans. Not even its sequel Battle Bakraid could recapture its soundtrack with a different composer that made Bakraid's soundtrack sound repetitive and adventurous instead of long and jazzy like in Garegga.

[jjmcjj]

I've played some older titles in recent times I never got to experience at all as a kid and while the "nostalgia" factor isn't there I can understand what people mean by the "charm" factor and in fact have found plenty in the way of games that are as enjoyable today as ever.

It could be just the fascination of looking back at a time with a collectively different mentality of game design that's all but vanished. Seeing the kinds of things developers were able to pull off with more limited technology and the creativity resulting from working under those limitations (whereas pretty much "the world is yours" when it comes to what you can do with gaming technology today, budgets being the only real limiting factor). And obviously we've become far more self-aware nowadays, with all these retro throwbacks/parodies like "oh look how quaint things were back then!" Which isn't to say there aren't any good modern NES imitations being made today (and there are a surprising lot of them) but again, they're working under a different mentality than devs back in the day were.

Like, for instance, the reason why an old NES title would be unnecessarily difficult is different from why a modern faux-old school title would be unnecessarily difficult. The older titles were because of either bad design decisions at points or the rumor of increasing revenues from rentals (and quarters in the case of some arcade games), whereas today it's a self-conscious attempt to mock the old games or even try to outdo them somehow, which sometimes works (I Wanna Be the Guy - actually I think that's the only game in that category I ever even liked) and sometimes is just obnoxious and as badly executed as those old games (mind I'm not ragging on old games with fair difficulty but rather those BS moments like the annoying impossible-to-hit enemies flying at you in large numbers and throwing you off platforms all the time, areas where jumps to other platforms are designed in a way where it is literally impossible not to take damage because of the way some bullets or enemies are positioned, final boss gauntlets, fighting like 20 different forms of it in a row without any breaks in between where all of a sudden the lives/continues system that's worked with you the entire game just up and suddenly disappears and death results in doing the entire level or the whole game all over again!).

Generally, the "hard" games of today are more balanced than the notoriously hard games of yore, whether they be an adventure game or action game. The days of "bragging rights" are coming to an end since the sudden peaks toward insanity and near-impossibility or sheer obtuseness have been carefully observed and leveled down quite a bit to be more even-keeled. Though too many times the manner in which the balancing factor is executed is like "HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THIS SHIT BEING THROWN AT ME AND THESE PLATFORMS AND SPIKES FUCK but that's OK because there's a checkpoint like every two steps I take so everything's gonna be fine and dandy!" I think games designed like that need to go back to the drawing board.

I don't know how to answer this thread really... but the way I think, I can look at say some old Game Boy game, doesn't matter much what, it could be one of the crappier ones or not, and look at the simple rendering of the scenery representing the background, like a cloud for instance. Then I look at a game that also might be designed in a simple way today and look at a cloud in the background of that game. There is something about the nature in the cloud in the Game Boy game, an essence, the manner of its programming into the game, that is lacking in the other, modern game for some reason. Maybe it's like, back then, rendering a simple cloud was more difficult than it is today, and yet it is there, unnoticed, unobtrusive, and whoever designed it will be forever lost to history. And yeah this SERIOUSLY is something I've pondered over a time or two, I don't know why or what it is, but that I've never reached a reconciliation in my head with something like that. I will say I get the same sort of feeling from going in some used bookstore and seeing some old, obscure book about whatever that nobody knows or cares about anymore hidden among a pile of unorganized shelves somewhere inside. Sort of. Anything I see off the beaten path, whether a building sign or artwork dangling around in some old closet, I don't know, it gives off this odd vibe I connect with in some way like an old, forgotten memory I never had. Hm, maybe that's why I like Thomas Ligotti so much. His stories seem to be about that very essence and what it might mean, and no easy answers are provided. Combined with his touch of subtle horror the stories for as confusing as they can be to read really resonate with me, and I think if they were written in a more direct, digestible tone it would lose the very feelings he's trying to capture. I don't know, I really don't know. I guess you could say, for me, a Game Boy cloud has more charm than a cloud in some modern day game for reasons I can't explain coherently.

[Deleted]

I can sort of understand this mentality. I found an old medical book at Goodwill several years ago, and it made me think similar thoughts. There were handwritten notes on several of the pages, and it just made me wonder about who owned this thing back when it was brand new (and the concept of hysteria was a medically-acceptable thing).

I forget which game it was, but one of the Final Fantasies had a line that's stuck with me for quite some time. "To be forgotten is a fate worse than death." Depressing enough to think about in regards to actual human lives, with all of their failures and accomplishments. So too, is it depressing when considered in the context of old video games. How many people have actually played Castle of Dragon on the NES? Total shit game from start to finish, and yet a bunch of people put a lot of work into making that shitty game for people to play. There are probably dozens of triumphs and tragedies associated with its development that no one will ever know about or even contemplate, mostly because the game really isn't worth considering in the first place.

So, yeah. You aren't alone in that regard.

[jjmcjj]

Aug 8, 2014 4:07:51 GMT -5 @jasonx said:

Every single JRPG on earth was infinitely better before voice acting. To that extent, games from the PS1 and on lost a lot of the "charm" of their predecessors. It's a lot like what Harrison Ford used to tell George Lucas about the scripts for the Star Wars movies. "You can write this stuff, but you sure as hell can't say it."

Some would argue that the bad voice acting is part of the charm of those games. I'd agree with that to some extent. The point where I'd probably draw the line when bad voice acting stops being charming and starts to become a plague on the ears would be, oh, let's go with a classic, Tidus' laughing scene in FFX. One good thing about that is the hilarious things some people have done with it. There's a YouTube clip someone took from the show The Big Bang Theory and replaced every single bit of laugh track with Tidus' laughing voice instead. I'll have to look for that one, it was amazing.

But even voices aside I myself would consider the 32-bit console era as my personal "golden age" of JRPGs (and hey, probably CRPGs too, a lot of the best of those came out during the same timeframe). There's always been good to great RPGs being made since before and after but just looking at the PlayStation and Saturn's library of RPGs alone makes a more-than-convincing argument for its high standing for me (a shame about the N64, how they dominated the RPG market in the 16-bit race and then immediately took a nosedive and crashed with the N64 - in terms of RPGs, mind you - everyone knows about Quest 64 and how everyone hates it, but were there any good RPGs made for that system? I imagine if there were some of them were probably only released in Japan, but regardless, well...?).

[X-pert74]

One game that comes to mind for me is Blaster Master. I just played through it a few years ago, so it's still relatively fresh in my mind as far as NES games are concerned. I especially love its soundtrack, and feel that contributes to the game's charm quite a bit. I suppose some people would consider its "story" when thinking about its overall charm, but honestly I think the game itself, particularly with regard to its design and pacing, is charming - silly intro story or no.

Aug 8, 2014 5:54:14 GMT -5 jjmcjj said:

(a shame about the N64, how they dominated the RPG market in the 16-bit race and then immediately took a nosedive and crashed with the N64 - in terms of RPGs, mind you - everyone knows about Quest 64 and how everyone hates it, but were there any good RPGs made for that system? I imagine if there were some of them were probably only released in Japan, but regardless, well...?).

I've heard good things about Ogre Battle 64, but I've never played it. I do love Paper Mario, but that's far from a traditional JRPG.

[The Great Klaid]

Aug 8, 2014 5:43:27 GMT -5 @jasonx said:

I can sort of understand this mentality. I found an old medical book at Goodwill several years ago, and it made me think similar thoughts. There were handwritten notes on several of the pages, and it just made me wonder about who owned this thing back when it was brand new (and the concept of hysteria was a medically-acceptable thing).

I forget which game it was, but one of the Final Fantasies had a line that's stuck with me for quite some time. "To be forgotten is a fate worse than death." Depressing enough to think about in regards to actual human lives, with all of their failures and accomplishments. So too, is it depressing when considered in the context of old video games. How many people have actually played Castle of Dragon on the NES? Total shit game from start to finish, and yet a bunch of people put a lot of work into making that shitty game for people to play. There are probably dozens of triumphs and tragedies associated with its development that no one will ever know about or even contemplate, mostly because the game really isn't worth considering in the first place.

So, yeah. You aren't alone in that regard.

For the record that's IX. And this has gone to a weird place. Interesting, but weird. I've never even thought about it like that.