How does Nostalgia affect our attitude towards gaming?

Reality_Check1

I know some people wont like clicking YT links so I'll post the general jst of it below to try and get some discussion going.

How does Nostalgia affect our attitude to gaming? Is it better that old school classics are being made or should we leave them alone so we can wallow in the memories of what once was a great game. There is a current trend where nowadays a lot of retro games are being repolished for the PC - Do people still go back to these games or would they prefer to keep their memories and not spoil the experience?

o1s1n

This thinking does my nut in :pac:

A good game is a good game. Doesn't matter when it was made.

You may have nostalgic memories of a game which was in fact always crap - but if it was a good game then it's still a good game now.

It's no different than film. Do we judge black and white classic films with the same level of harshness?

Retr0gamer

It can swing both ways as well though. Some people can be nostalgic for a game they remember that really isn't so good anymore but it's flaws were forgivable at the time for being new. Something like Goldeneye which is a chore to play now still has a rake of followers claiming that it's the best FPS game ever made.

Then on the other hand you might have a very well regarded game being made getting a very well made sequel that just can't live up to the old game in peoples eyes. The new X-Com is a good example. I recently finished the 1994 game for the first time a few days ago and I can honestly say it's one of the greatest games ever made. However it's not without its flaws. combat can be slow and sometimes hunting for the last alien on a huge map can be a total pain. Psionics get way overpowered towards the end. The new X-Com was a fantastic game and while it didn't deliver in it's tech tree and the overworld management was simplified way down the combat was much improved over the original. However old school fans won't give it credit there.

tl;dr Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

Then there's Legend of Dragoon fans who are just wrong.

Reality_Check1

I actually use Goldeneye as a specific example in the vid. Is it that it was never a good game or was it because the nostalgia of coming up with new ways to stop friends looking into your screen made it so enjoyable

o1s1n

It was fun when it came out and a new experience for a generation of console gamers. With a lot of people a 'first experience' leads to nostalgia and then the perception that a game is better than it actually is.

Goldeneye is definitely a good example of that.

666irishguy

I think games are less about games these days and more about selling you this idea that you are part of a culture called gaming. I rather the older games for the simple fact they were made for entertainment alone and weren't pushing anything other than the game. Look at Age of Empires 1 on the PC and see what they achieved and look at this modern reworking of it. More or less the same gameplay, but you are getting shoveled all this extra nonsense with it.

Retr0gamer

You mention FFVII as well which is a good example of the 'firsties'. We all thought it was amazing with a really deep story. I was 14 when it was released and some of the crap music and terrible films I liked at the time show I was no barometer of good taste. While it's far from a terrible game and still very playable, there really is so much better out there than FFVII not jusy within the RPG genre but within the same series. However it will be a lot of peoples favourite because they played it first and their first RPG was a mind blowing experience.

Myrddin

I'd agree with o1s1n here, if it is a good game in the first place then it doesn't matter when it was made. Nostalgia can be a factor when looking back, again say Goldeneye - it was nice to have an fps on a console that wasn't a poor port of Doom, it catered for up to four players at once, & provided a bit of fun {shock horror!}

It hasn't held up well over time, & to play it now would be painful enough as Retr0 says. I'd never have called it the greatest fps game ever made, not by a longshot, but it had its time & place & I certainly enjoyed a good few hours of it.

Would I play it today? No, not really. Was it ever really a 'great' game? No, not really...it just had a time & place.

briany

It's amazing when you look back at some of the stuff we put up in gaming. The voice acting in RE1 seems ridiculous now. No, wait, it was always ridiculous, even then. It was clunky as all hell to play with it's fixed camera angles and movement scheme as well though, although it fit with the pacing of the game, the clunky elements of the control scheme almost enhance the helplessness.

o1s1n

The voice acting in RE1 was still better than the voice acting in any modern Final Fantasy game

Myrddin

briany wrote: »

It's amazing when you look back at some of the stuff we put up in gaming. The voice acting in RE1 seems ridiculous now. No, wait, it was always ridiculous, even then. It was clunky as all hell to play with it's fixed camera angles and movement scheme as well though, although it fit with the pacing of the game, the clunky elements of the control scheme almost enhance the helplessness.

Yet Resident Evil 1 despite all its many faults, had enough charm & impact to spawn a whole empire of sequels & movie spin-off's. Resident Evil 5, for all its silky smooth controls & modern comforts, is a bland & generic modern direction that misses the point completely

briany

EnterNow wrote: »

Yet Resident Evil 1 despite all its many faults, had enough charm & impact to spawn a whole empire of sequels & movie spin-off's. Resident Evil 5, for all its silky smooth controls & modern comforts, is a bland & generic modern direction that misses the point completely

I agree. While I would - actually, have - not be inclined to play through more than a half an hour of the original PS1 release today because of the various unsophisticated elements within, that game had atmosphere and I think that would be tangible to anyone even today, playing it for the first time. I remember the moment that realisation hit me back in '96. It was where you step into that empty dining room (?) with the loudly ticking clock. Right there, even before the sh*t hits the fan, you know you're in for an experience.

CiDeRmAn

Just started reading this thread now.
Nostalgia is normally a poor excuse for someone to play an older game, but it is a good enough reason to get started.
As stated, all good game is a good game, no matter the year it was released or the format it was released on.
Retro gamers were once seen as niche enthusiasts, but really commentators are seeing this the wrong way round, in fact retro gamers seek their kicks from the entire spectrum of gaming while gamers who are hung up on current gen, latest releases, are the niche gamers, limiting themselves to a narrow band.
A part of this is the lack of money available to promote classic games, an area where players needs are catered for via preowned games and consoles, circumventing big business and so not providing a revenue stream. Older games therefore become passe, not in the now, according to mainstream gaming media, itself paid for by revenue from gaming publishers.
This was the situation, but the movement to push old and current IPs into the paid for realm means retro gaming is big business again, so we have PSN, XBL, VC and e-shops, no mention interminable HD re releases of old games all catering for the nostalgia activated gamers, with money to spend.
The retro gamers of us scratch our collective heads and wonder why it took so long for the greater gaming community to appreciate Ico or Symphony of the Night.

CiDeRmAn

EnterNow wrote: »

Yet Resident Evil 1 despite all its many faults, had enough charm & impact to spawn a whole empire of sequels & movie spin-off's. Resident Evil 5, for all its silky smooth controls & modern comforts, is a bland & generic modern direction that misses the point completely

Resident Evil on the Gamecube, absolute bliss, and one of the few remakes that are worthy of anyones time.

Myrddin

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Resident Evil on the Gamecube, absolute bliss, and one of the few remakes that are worthy of anyones time.

Thats the point though...will we ever see a 4k remake of Resident Evil 5 on the Playstation 6? Unlikely. Resident Evil, for all its faults, was still a good game.

CiDeRmAn

A careful choice has to be made, if you remake a game are you going to mess with the core mechanics?
Are you able to tease out what those mechanics are?
If you take a game like Tomb Raider, for example, what can we change/improve before we lose what is that "something" that makes it Tomb Raider?
In that case it was improve the visuals, tweak the story, get rid of some of the instant deaths.
A big one was removing the tank controls, and that really improved things.
But in other games, altering such a thing could have broken the experience, making it a new game with an old games clothes.
Resident Evil trod this line carefully, adding much to the original while preserving the essence of, what was, an amazing game.
Another example is the Resident Evil 4 variants.
The GC version was the first and impressive, refreshing the series and, once again, treading the line in almost being too different from those that went before, with the switch to an over the shoulder cam.
The PS2 version mostly added widescreen to the mix, while the Wii edition popped in some motion controls, arguable unnecessary, but the 480p widescreen looked great afaik.
The game is now 8 years old, and I can see it being a title that will, along with Zelda LttP and SMB3, be referenced as an all time classic.

Resident Evils 5 and 6 though, they seem to be riding on the coat tails of the 4th game, getting it all so wrong.
Along side the not bad Revelations game on the 3DS, they have made the same mistakes as the later Dead Space titles, themselves borrowing much from Resi 4, they have swapped threat for action and made a fundamentally different game.
Returning to an issue made earlier, this is the line when a game ceases to share enough with it's predecessor to be considered of a series, and instead is a whole new, maybe lesser, game.
So, we really have a 3rd person military shooter with some horror overtones, that sense of threat is much reduced. The developers and writers attempt to dress it up in the characteristics that they think defines a Resident Evil game, convoluted plots, shoehorning a lab and a mansion setting into every title, but miss the bigger picture.
I don't think that Resident Evil 5 or 6 are awful games, as another IP they may have fared better, but as part of the Resident Evil franchise they simply fail.

krudler

EnterNow wrote: »

Yet Resident Evil 1 despite all its many faults, had enough charm & impact to spawn a whole empire of sequels & movie spin-off's. Resident Evil 5, for all its silky smooth controls & modern comforts, is a bland & generic modern direction that misses the point completely

That, the pre-4 Resi games were clunky, badly written, horribly acted, had chore filled gameplay mechanics, but they had charm dammit. playing 6 was like playing COD/Gears with zombie things, it had zero character or charm of its own.

Look at The Twin Snakes, using MGS2 mechanics on a remake of MSG made it too easy, and MGS is still playable, I only played it recently and enjoyed it more than I did MGS4 :pac:

666irishguy

My two cents on Resident Evil nostalgia:
I think the stiff controls, the awkward camera angles and the sparse sound effects are the secret to what made Resident Evil 1 and 2 so great and we never realized it at the time. The games control system inadvertently meant that you could never maneuver or fight back as fast as you would like to think you could in real life and you could never really see all that well with the camera. The whole thing just left you constantly feeling slightly vulnerable and helpless and add that to the great atmosphere the games established and you have the original Resident Evil experience. Things changed after 2 and they gave the controls a hand for 3 which I suppose was the last of the that era of Resident Evil games. I think the modern ones are much more pick up and playable and are more action than atmosphere. I enjoyed Code Veronica and 4 and the one I have for the 360 (I think it's 5). Great and good games in their own right but nowhere near as terrifying as the originals (1,2 and probably 3). The originals were a special blend of timing and originality in their day and it will be hard to top that initial shock and impact with anything new in the series. It's very much a thing you had to experience first hand at the time. We went from stuff like Sonic and Tails in 94 to Resident Evil in 96.

Retr0gamer

I still think Resi 1 is a perfectly playable and brilliant game. I think a lot of the criticism of the game is due to the tank controls which is down to people picking it up, pronouncing it to be crap within minutes because there's no tutorial handholding you through it and giving up on it within 5 minutes.

I still think the original mansion and surroundings is one of the most well designed game spaces in any game.

Banjo

With goldeneye you have to remember that it helped to mainstream a number of things we take for granted in shooters now - a plot that isn't "kill everything on planet x", cinematic cutscenes, head and limb shots - which in turn made pistols viable and sniping awesome, goals other than find key/open door / traverse level, etc. What it brought to the table has been refined over the last decade, you can't go back and experience it for the first time any more than you can get back that moment you first heard your c64 say GhostBusters or the first time you saw the end of the Usual suspects, or your first hand job. And that's the problem with nostalgia, you can't objectively judge that moment, you weren't paying enough attention at the time because you didn't know it was so precious when it was happening

Along with all this it was that most rare of breeds - a movie license that was well implemented. For that it should be put on a high shelf where our harsh judgements can't hurt it

CiDeRmAn

That's fine, and many would argue that the were titles on the pc that had preempted the "firsts" in Goldeneye.
Also, we are talking about nostalgia in games and this is both case and point.
Goldeneye was a great game, or at least represented a zenith at the time, but because standards have improved in terms of graphical fidelity, game play implementation and frame rates, the game is actually barely playable now.
Contrast this with Galaga or Elite and you begin to see the problem.
This is not something "personal" about Goldeneye, but as it is the oft referenced console fps, it is the one that is most commonly criticised.

The best example of what is wrong with it is apparent when you play the HD version of Perfect Dark on the 360, even with the various issues like framerate attended to, it still is a pain to play and only "nostalgia" will drag you back, if ever.

Myrddin

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I still think Resi 1 is a perfectly playable and brilliant game. I think a lot of the criticism of the game is due to the tank controls which is down to people picking it up, pronouncing it to be crap within minutes because there's no tutorial handholding you through it and giving up on it within 5 minutes.

I still think the original mansion and surroundings is one of the most well designed game spaces in any game.

This. And as you rightly mention, the amount of hand holding in games today is really unreal, & gives me an excuse to post this again

krudler

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I still think Resi 1 is a perfectly playable and brilliant game. I think a lot of the criticism of the game is due to the tank controls which is down to people picking it up, pronouncing it to be crap within minutes because there's no tutorial handholding you through it and giving up on it within 5 minutes.

I still think the original mansion and surroundings is one of the most well designed game spaces in any game.

The only thing I think they improved in the sequels was the quick about turn move, it was annoying having to turn on your own axis to run away instead of the quick 180 move you can do in Nemesis, which I think is really underrated, the simple idea that running through a door no longer protected you once the Nemesis was around was brilliant.

The fixed camera angles made those games scary, well tense in places, when you walked in a room and had the camera facing you, and you could hear...something, you have to walk forward to make the viewpoint change and you never knew what you were going to see. There's a few points in Resi 6 where playing Leon's campaign it changed to a fixed viewpoint, and I just thought WHY can't I play the whole came like this?!

I definitely agree that a great game will be a great game forever, Mario 3, A Link To The Past, Super Metroid, Mario World etc, all as engrossing as they ever were. Sure they may have stuff you need to look past but if a game released 20 years ago is still playable now then it will stand the test of time forever.

It's gas to think that what the current gen is now will be seen as retro by the time our kids are our age. 1080p?! sure you can barely make anything out!

Myrddin

krudler wrote: »

1080p?! sure you can barely make anything out!

CiDeRmAn

I'd say the gameplay is the thing that will date most games of this era.
Not the exceptional stuff, like the retro scene, it's the interesting stuff, the stuff that innovates or perfects an existing genre that will persist, the rest will just get sadder.
So, from recent times, we see the oft mentioned Ico, still a cracking game because it innovates, and while the visual fidelity is not all that anymore, it was never about that to begin with, the gameplay, the audio, the sense of dread, the mysteries, they will persist.
Another example, for me, is Metroid Prime, which still looks great, despite being 10 years old now.
A minor buff up in the Metroid Trilogy, nice motion control implementation and widescreen support and you have a game that compares with the best of now and has all the hallmarks that made Super Metroid so essential.

CiDeRmAn

RopeDrink wrote: »

Try to impress someone like that with your nostalgic memories of, say, Treasure Island Dizzy with it's low-bit C64 Chip music, pixel graphics and mad puzzle solving difficulty rather than going around in some almost realistic looking world with a shotgun blowing people up in glorious surround sound of today.

Whenever I hear someone talk of the Dizzy games, I reach for my shotgun.....
Hate that series!

But, nostalgia is a powerful drug, but nothing prepares you for the lows of playing something that used to be so right, and realising it's pants.
There is a vast amount of games from the last 3 decades that will never be played again because they were lousy and no one had any great feelings playing them, aside from feelings of disappointment that you just wasted money, say the likes of Rise of the Robots.
But then there's the likes of Goldeneye, which so many people have such warm feelings towards, only to be slightly gutted when they try to play it now.
Alternatively you have the previous posters SOTN, a stone cold classic, as well as the likes of Super Metroid, neither of which will be eclipsed in there genres any decade soon.