At what point did videogames begin to acknowledge their own history?

o1s1n

Something I was thinking about this morning on the boring commute to work. I mean more from a technical standpoint than just storytelling lore in games.

A lot of modern games have 'retro' references (like Super Smash Bros Brawl for example) - but what's the first such reference in gaming? There has to be a first game out there which acknowledges limitations in a previous generation or looks back at it fondly?

Dr Bob

hmm I know theres earlier but 1992's Arcade Smash Hits on the Mastersystem (official arcade conversions of centipede breakout and Missile attack) comes to mind.
There was a space invaders game built into some late release c64 loading screens (invadaload), but it was an unnofficial clone though.
A year or two later but the cd version of Day of the tentacle came with an Easter egg emulated copy of its predecessor Maniac Mansion built in .

Retr0gamer

Most companies didn't really care about their legacy except Nintendo who still keep an archive of all their previous work, betas and source code. In the playstation era you started to get games with unlockable games from previous generations.

I think however the main catalyst were not the companies interested in profit but the people archiving rom images. This started in 1996 with the first console emulators that emulated the NES and really kicked into gear in 1997 with the release of Nesticle. It showed the games companies that there was a market for old games but I very much doubt that they were interested in preserving of acknowledging their history.

Retr0gamer

luas_dublin wrote: »

Easter egg emulated copy of its predecessor Maniac Mansion built in .

I don't think this was really acknowledging the old game. I've read that the programmers ran into a bug where the game kept crashing during one animation. They found out it was because the SCUMM engine could only handle 64kb of memory in the RAM since it was originally created for the C64 and the animation was greater than 64kb. The guys realised then how easy it would be to fit the entirety of maniac mansion in the game since it was only 64kb.

Mr.Saturn

Super Mario Bros. 3 had a remake of Mario Bros on it as a mini-game. Does that count?

chopperbyrne

Mr.Saturn wrote: »

Super Mario Bros. 3 had a remake of Mario Bros on it as a mini-game. Does that count?

This and Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure had the original Pitfall playable too.

Ridge Racer had an old Namco shooter you could play.

Cranky Kong in general.

CiDeRmAn

It was mentioned at the Beers, Lazy Jones on the C64, it had rooms that were classic videogame tributes, although they were really just cutdown versions of recent games, less history to mine!

Pyjamarama and Everyones a Wally, on the Spectrum, had tributes to games in there as well.

Terrormolinos, also on the Spectrum, was a text adventure and featured a text version of Space Invaders.

Sega have been giving Gamegear collections along with the MD stuff in the retro collections for years, not that most people cared.