Young'un's Today!!!

Darr3nG

I don't know if you would consider me a collector or a gamer (or both!)

I started buying retro machines a few years back, the ZX being my favourite. Initially just being able to see one again was enough, but then I started investing more into *MINT* condition, *UNOPENED* box versions. Built it up with ZXs, C64s, Amigas of all kinds etc. etc.

Although it was nice to look at em, all pretty n' shiney, in their lovely boxes... The buzz I got with opening them up and playing the games from yesteryear... Deadly!

My 10 year old son wondered why it was taking so long to get Chuckie Egg or Jet Set Willy to load, and what the screen was flashing funny colours... Ha! Still, when they did load, he actually really enjoyed playing.

Now, I've had pretty much every main-stream console over the years and it has struck me that, apart from Burnout on the XBOX, no recent game can keep me entertained as much as Frontier: Elite 2 or even Stunt Car Racer... Why is that? Do kids today have a shorter attention span, or are the games just not as addictive?

I remember my brother and I playing Anarchy on the C64 for months on end. More joysticks were destroyed during a year-long marathon of Sensible Soccer, than even Daly Thompson's Decathlon...

I know I'm rambling... ah the nostalgia of it all... But my question still stands, Are there any current releases that have the same level of gameplay (addiction?) as the older games?

Thoughts?

animaX

The only game that i've been addicted to in recent times is Call of Duty 4 on xbox live. The "one-more-go" factor is ridiculous

CCCP^

The last modern game I played was Bioshock on the 360 and it was pure sex.

CiDeRmAn

Well, I think you were lucky that the game you showed your son was Chuckie Egg ans Jet Set Willy, two excellent games, and that's good, but had you shown him some of the other games of that period, Daley Thompson, KnightLore, Atic Atac etc, he may have found them a pain.
We have to realise that an awful lot of our memories of console and computers of yesteryear are tinged with the rose tinted sweetness of nostalgia, making everything Spectrum related seem blissful and a wonder to behold.
If looked at a bit more coolly, the period had a lot of crap, a lot of disappointments, some true gems certainly but not all that popped onto the Speccy, Amiga or C64 scene was a game I'd care to play now.
I'm a child of the Speccy era too, I have both a 16 and 48k machine and love them, I have many pleasant memories of Starstrike 3d, Tau Ceti and, yes, Elite.
But I also remember a terrible version of Beach Head, Outrun, never liked Alien8 or KnightLore.
The thing is, you are more than likely playing the games you loved from across the life of each console/computer that you own, and so have the condensed good bits, and that helps to mask off the dross that inevitably get released on all formats.

As such, there are plenty of games that have the same staying power of the early titles you mention, Geometry Wars 2, PGR4, Shadow of the Colossus, Bioshock, Silent Hill 2, Gears Of War/2, the Halo series, Ico and many many more.
It's just that now, with the fact we are adults, like you I have a son and a household to help run, a job to maintain and al the rest, so our time isn't freely available to devote to our hobby, so the time we can invest is less, unless, that is, a special title arrives that demands your full attention until you complete it, or beat the high score in, Bioshock and Geometry Wars- Pacifism mode did those things for me in spades.

As for are you a collector, yup, I reckon by any yardstick you are, but as for the mint condition thing, not too sure about that myself, I like my console like my books, used, and used often, no time for slip cases, poly inserts and perfect boxes.
Games and consoles, especially retro ones, are to be played not popped onto a shelf and admired as a "historical artifact".

TinCool

Most of my best memories of playing games over the years all step back to the C64. Countless games on this (the best home computer ever made) are still pure gold. I still on occasion fire up my C64 emulator and play through some classics like Beach Head, Impossible Mission, Staff of Karnath, Entombed, Blackwyche (yes I liked Sir Arthur Pendragon), Forbidden Forest.... the list goes on and on. The odd time I fire up Jet Set Willy and am still in awe at how impossible that game was (don't get me started on China Miner). I also replayed and completed a lesser known game published by ELITE not so long ago called Kokatoni Wilf.

Yes, the graphics are crud but there is a certain atmosphere that these games possess, and yes the music from the trusty SID chip in these games still hold up today.

There aren't so many games on the current systems that really grab my attention compared to the days of yore. Yes, I do own a PS3 and do like to play Burnout Paradise and have played my way through GTA IV. I have a decent PC rig and have a multiltude of games still to complete, RA3, FC2, the latest COD game.... I don't know, they are cool games but I they never give me those warm fuzzy feelings I get when I load up that emulator to be greeted by the C64 blue screen.

Just my two cents,

TC

Picture the scene in twenty years when your kids are talking about the retro delights of GOW etc...

What will the games be like then?

CiDeRmAn

Hopefully the likes of Gear Of War will be thought of as fondly as Galaga, but not likely.
You see, we look back on the retro games we love and think, wasn't the 70's/80's great, yadda yadda yadda...
But, in reality there was a ton of muck out there, and we were forced to trawl through the rubbish to get to the good stuff, and all the average and sometimes the things that once seemed awesome just faded away, leaving us with memories of the best there was, the SFIIs, Pacman, ChaseHQ etc.
So, some day, we may look back on Halo 3 as an opus, or we may look back and realise how foolish we were, and wasn't Haze the best all along.... Just kidding!
But, I have a feeling Bioshock could last longer than GOW, GTA4 may have a lot to say to future generations about our gaming habits than Ghost Recon.

Also, rest assured none of the identikit football titles will be as respected as ISS on the Snes or SensiSoccer on the Amiga.

Racing titles too, there is so much choice right now in class games, the 20 years hence retro fan may have trouble caring about Forza, going straight for Race Driver Grid or, more likely, Gran Turismo 5, maybe even PGR4 or MSR perhaps.

Retr0gamer

Also it's hard to figure out how games are going to age. Just look at Goldeneye. The pinnacle of the FPS on release with tonnes of fresh innovative gameplay now reduced to an unplayable mess. I'd say the GTA games will head that way. Massive open world sandbox gameplay that was way ahead of everything at the time with a decent driving engine marred by some truly horrendous on foot controls. Someday a game will come out that combines the openworld and driving of GTA with the gunplay of something like GoW and the GTA's will be relegated to dinosaurs.

For racing games I'd put money on the arcade racers being the ones people remember and go back to play. Outrun 2, PGR and it's ilk. There will always be better simulation games out that are better than the last one making older forza and GT games stale in comparison (although why all the best features from GT2 aren't back in the newer games is a mystery).

BLITZ_Molloy

I think we're genuinely going through a pretty dull period in gaming. We're in summer blockbuster mode.

The strength of old games is they were very short and distilled down to their essenence. A single person couldn't blast out huuuge amounts of content. They had to be replayable, because if they weren't you'd finish it in 10 minutes.

I personally think things are going to go back to what things were like in the Spectrum and C64 days. The iPhone is showing the way forward. To sell truly spectacular amounts of games they need to be cheap and easy to publish. Sure, you'll get astonomical amounts of **** games, but you'll get alot more interesting wierd ones too.

Most good creativity is one persons vision, or a small group of people. And it's not as limiting as you might think. Look at this new MMO called Love. It's procedurally generated, you can build or destroy everything.. it's amazing and the product of one mans hard graft. That's what I hope gamings future is.

koHd

Portal has that one more go vibe of retro games for me.

Also Civilization and Advance Wars literally have me saying "just one more turn" for about 50 turns, before I finish up.

0ubliette

You also have to take into account that back in the day, games seemed like you played them for years on end solely because you were a kid, and couldnt afford to buy many games. I had plenty of games for my ST but id go months on end with nothing new, and some of the games back then were so difficult with no save system, that youd play them over and over and over trying desperately to finish them! (ghouls n ghosts, bubble bobble etc). I love retro gaming, i usd to have a massive colection of everything fromt he 2600 to the saturn. But if i had to choose id still pick modern day gaming! As much as i love bubble bobble, id still rather be chainsawing locust in GOW

CiDeRmAn

BLITZ_Molloy wrote: »

I think we're genuinely going through a pretty dull period in gaming.

Not to offend, but

ARE YOU INSANE????


Seriously, we have never had it so good.
From a great range of titles, since launch, on the 360, PGR4, Geometry Wars, Lost Planet, Fallout 3, Halo 3, GOW/2 etc.
From the PS3 finally getting into gear and producing some nice games, with mroe on the way, Heavenly Sword, GT5 Prologue, MGS4.
From the Wii giving us another way to play, more inclusive and fun on the one hand, with Wii Sport and Wii Fit, not to mention more hardcore titles, Metroid Prime 3 and No More Heroes.
With the handheld scene bringing us some truely great experiences, Zelda TPH, Professor Layton, Ridge Racer 2, Wipeout Pulse.

Honestly, we've never had it so good.
Sure there's a lot of muck, a lot of rushed titles that promised much, Haze and Fracture to name 2, but it's always been that way.
Don't you remember the tons of terrible games on the machines of yesteryear, the muck made by Ultimate towards the end, the mound of dung Mastertronic made aside from a couple of notable exceptions.

As you said, the iphone could be one portal to new and interesting games, made by small, driven devs, but aren't they so a part of todays gaming scene?
Aren't they also more of an attempt to use the business model created by MS in XBLA?
And, overall, they are just a consolisation of independent game development in the PC scene, as can be viewed by the number of games on iphone, XBLA and PSN that are based on freeware titles on the PC.

Honestly, it's next to impossible to defend the notion that gaming today is "dull".

valleyoftheunos

My own two cents is that the only franchise to run right from the very beginning to the current generation and get better with every step is Mario. From Donkey Kong to Galaxy, every iteration has had new features and improved gameplay. No one else has managed it.

I dont think games are getting duller but they are evolving along strict genre lines and often feel derivative, many FPS's and racers are annual titles in a series and its only rare titles that break those barriers.

koHd

koHd wrote: »

Portal has that one more go vibe of retro games for me.

Also Civilization and Advance Wars literally have me saying "just one more turn" for about 50 turns, before I finish up.

You too?? (for the Civilisation bit...!)

CiDeRmAn

valleyoftheunos wrote: »

My own two cents is that the only franchise to run right from the very beginning to the current generation and get better with every step is Mario. From Donkey Kong to Galaxy, every iteration has had new features and improved gameplay. No one else has managed it.

Except for MarioKart DD, MarioKart 64 both poorer than the Snes game.
Except for Super Mario Sunshine that lost it's way, relying on New SuperMario Bros to regain the series lustre, followed by the excellent Galaxy.
And not forgetting the frankly pitiful Super Mario 2.

No, there are simply no game series without their misteps, no exceptions, although few seem to have wandered off to bang their heads off a wall and drool like Sonic, deary deary me...

Retr0gamer

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Except for MarioKart DD, MarioKart 64 both poorer than the Snes game.
Except for Super Mario Sunshine that lost it's way, relying on New SuperMario Bros to regain the series lustre, followed by the excellent Galaxy.
And not forgetting the frankly pitiful Super Mario 2.

Well there's no denying that despite Mario Sunshine not being as good as Mario 64 it was still an exceptional game. As for Mario Bros. 2 well it wasn't a mario game.

CiDeRmAn

Not forgetting Nintendo's nasty habit of putting Mario into nearly every IP they make, tennis, football, heck, I'm waiting for Mario 1 on 1 Colonic Lavage, with new Wii controls!!!

Must register that!

Perhaps Capcom and the Street Fighter II and it's myriad offspring are the only relatively unsullied series, aside from Street Fighter Movie game *shudder*

valleyoftheunos

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Except for MarioKart DD, MarioKart 64 both poorer than the Snes game.
Except for Super Mario Sunshine that lost it's way, relying on New SuperMario Bros to regain the series lustre, followed by the excellent Galaxy.
And not forgetting the frankly pitiful Super Mario 2.

No, there are simply no game series without their misteps, no exceptions, although few seem to have wandered off to bang their heads off a wall and drool like Sonic, deary deary me...

i wasn't really including the spinoffs such as mario kart (although for the record I think DD is much maligned), my only complaint about Mario Shunshine was that it got a bit dull in a "oh I'm still on the island" kind of way.

Mario 2 as we know it, isn't really a Mario game and as a result I wouldn't consider it canon. Although its enjoyable in patches.

CiDeRmAn

Super World, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy, the three greatest platformers of all time.
For a developer like Nintendo and a creative force like Shigeru Miyamoto just one would have been an achievement, but writing the book on 2D and 3D platforming is simply legend, never to be repeated.

Sonic Team should be ashamed of themselves...

valleyoftheunos

the thing about sonic is that the Sonic Team was essentially disbanded in all but name and Sonics gameplay doesn't translate easily to 3D, so much so that all attempts have been terrible. I heard recently that one of the developers of Sonic unleashed said that if the whole game were to be made up the Day time levels (the fast fun bits) with Sonic tearing along like he used to, they would need to design hundreds of thousands of miles of level in order to make a game long enough to live up to modern gamers expectations.

Retr0gamer

valleyoftheunos wrote: »

I heard recently that one of the developers of Sonic unleashed said that if the whole game were to be made up the Day time levels (the fast fun bits) with Sonic tearing along like he used to, they would need to design hundreds of thousands of miles of level in order to make a game long enough to live up to modern gamers expectations.

Thats the problem with Sonic Team. They don't realise that Sonics speed was a total gimmick in the old games. Sonic as a game was never that fast. Sure there were speed run sections were you just held right on hte dpad but the vast majority of the time the gameplay was actually quite slow. All they need to do is make loads of decent 2D platforming sections and add the odd speed run to link them. Also add the multiple paths that the sonic games are known for. If they did that they would have a winner. Same with the 3D games. Reduce the speed and instance death bottomless pits and change the combat totally. Have mario 64 exploration sections linked with speed runs.

FFS I could be a better game designer than those talentless hacks.

valleyoftheunos

Have you tried Sonic Rush on DS? quality old school sonic gear, nicely tarted up.

97i9y3941

maybe i just have the know how,i dont know but,i grew up with them sort of games too,and a retro enthuastist too i would still remember some of the commands in the c64/spectrum,then also the Amiga,how to install the o.s system if you wanted to install it,it was intresting back then because you learned from trial and error in what you did,most people i know now would give up or send their comp back to the shop because they are just scared of the computer blowing up,modern technology has it benefits too,often i would be frustrated that a game mighnt load up because of dirty tape heads,bad quality tape,magentic inferernce from somewhere

CiDeRmAn

Copying games on a mates tape 2 tape and trying to fiddle with the head levels on my tape deck to get it to work.
Copying, by hand, the colour coded protection chart for Jet Set Willy.
Ah, great days...

97i9y3941

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Copying games on a mates tape 2 tape and trying to fiddle with the head levels on my tape deck to get it to work.
Copying, by hand, the colour coded protection chart for Jet Set Willy.
Ah, great days...

remember them too,remember the black bit of cardboard that was with some games,and you had to hold it in the light to see the codes,or games that came with big bulky manual and you would had to open a page and enter a word that the game requested

fiveeuros

old games were more addictive and compulsive as they were simpler to play, left right shoot etc. new sps games are very realistic and become boring... i worled in retail commodore 64 and amiga 500 were the big sellers at £199 and £799 repectively. amiga 500 had 500 mbs of memory !!!!

97i9y3941

A500 had 512kb of ram,still have an amiga myself still remember the dos commands aswell,think do the technology now is better,have younger siblings and they are more of a plug and play type,no such thing as what if the game doesnt load or what does that the error message mean!

CiDeRmAn

As much as I love retro games, and I think there is little doubt about that here on these boards, I see, as most others do too, that old games, games of yesteryear are quite limited in scope compared to modern titles.

There are plenty of modern titles that are simple to play and extremely compulsive, PuzzleBobble, Super Monkey Ball, Flow, Outrun 2006, all of these feature simple or common controls that anyone can pick up and play.
At the same time for every simple great retro game, Tetris, Space Invaders or my fave Galaga, there were a dozen or more that sucked, to the extent that they are lost in the merciful mists of time and memory.
Also, complex titles of days gone by are great too, Tau Ceti, Elite, Lords Of Midnight, while they too have their modern analogues, Bioshock, Fallout 3, Oblivion, KOTOR and GT5Pr.
So, really, sure there were a lot of great titles years ago, but we have distilled them over the years into the few really amazing titles that have stood the test of time and remain great even today.
This is not a static process and can be seen in action on Saturn, PSone and Dreamcast titles now, the dross on all systems forgotten and the best still revered, sometimes used to demonstrate the greatness of the host hardware and enhance the memories of those who played them the first time and now still like to fire them up.
The PS2 and Xbox will be next, along with the PSP, to be subject to this soft edit of gaming history, the selective remembering of only the great and good on each console, we will remember the Ico's, the DMC's, the Halo's and the LocoRoco's whilst forgetting the Armymen's and the Ford Racing titles.

RichCRX

Personally I dont think you can ever compare retro consoles and games to todays ones. Technology has moved on in a big way.Graphic detail and sound clarity has become a major concept around game building, nearly so much so that some games have overdone it and left out good storylines and gameplay. Nowadays there is so much competition between game developers that one has to be ahead of the other in order to suceed in this competitive world, therefore i feel games tend to be rushed and less thought put into them.For example nintendo wanted to keep ahead of the console market and keep people buying them over other consoles by realesing the DSi which i think is a step back from the ds lite. But it is simply to keep there product life cycle going and buy them time to develop another console.

I think thats why the older games are more addictive and fun because more thought went into games,there wasn't as much competition and every new game was seen as a break through in technology.There is a great deal of nostalgia around retro consoles. The whole sense of "wow i haven't played that since I was a kid", keep us relieving our past slightly".

Personally I was a big fan of the RARE developers. I think they produced more great games than they did flops in comparison than any other developer.Just yesterday i was playing conkers bad fur day on the n64 and my god wow,what a game.Such balls to have such comments and pisstaking in a game around a time where It would have been frowned upon. There has not been one single game like it that comes remotely close to it since.

Old skool cool...my 2 cents

appleidog

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Hopefully the likes of Gear Of War will be thought of as fondly as Galaga, but not likely.

One thing about today's games are 70% of the gameplay is online so with so much emphesis on online they are fantastic now but when the server goes, then what.....


Also Bioshock one of the best games ever made.

Originally Posted by CiDeRmAn View Post
Except for MarioKart DD, MarioKart 64 both poorer than the Snes game.
Except for Super Mario Sunshine that lost it's way, relying on New SuperMario Bros to regain the series lustre, followed by the excellent Galaxy.
And not forgetting the frankly pitiful Super Mario 2.

New Super Mario is the worst Mario game to come out, and sure Mario sunshine wasn't as good as 64, but Nothing has even come close to Mario 64. And probably nothing will ever the game is so close to perfection its scary. btw im talking about the original and not the DS version.

Super mario 2/doki doki panic is a fantastic game really fantastic, its like saying Halo wars is crap because its not a Shooter.

o1s1n

appleidog wrote: »

New Super Mario is the worst Mario game to come out

?!

Come on now. That's just a silly comment. It's a fantastic game. Sure it's extremely easy, but it's has a very high replay value. Even the mini games are brilliant.

appleidog wrote: »

and sure Mario sunshine wasn't as good as 64, but Nothing has even come close to Mario 64. And probably nothing will ever the game is so close to perfection its scary. btw im talking about the original and not the DS version.

Still don't understand the obsession with Mario 64

2D Mario will forever be greater. It's Mario as he's meant to be. None of this third dimension silliness.

I'd even go so far as to say that 3D Mario is almost as disappointing as 3D Sonic.