Classic games: Just not really that good?

[Stark]

It's not hard if you've got a brain. It's even easier to not post 'list of games I like' in a thread about 'xyz specific type of game' or 'game with abc feature in particular'. It's funny enough when it's (say) 'top 3 games ever' and people start posting giant lists, but it's best when its about 'best sport game' and people post giant lists of their pet games that aren't even sport games.

I actually think this thread is laughably easy. But then you suggested Contra; a game ONLY 'good' these days because of nostalgia.

[RedImperator]

I just recently played Super Mario Brothers all the way through, and I think it meets the criteria of a classic game that's actually good. What's interesting is that it's the same things that would make a modern game good: the controls are responsive and intuitive, the gameplay is self-explanatory, there are enough power-ups and extra lives floating around to make the player's life a little easier, without there being enough to make finishing trivial (a flaw I feel the otherwise excellent Super Mario World suffers from; there are so many coins around that even a moderately competent player will rack up dozens of extra lives), the enemies are varied and require different strategies to beat, the later-stage jumps can get quite tricky (essential for a platformer), the music holds up well after 20 years, and if you actually play through the levels instead of using the warp pipes, the difficulty curve is pretty smooth.

The only thing I would ding it for are the later "maze" castles which give you no indication they're mazes (I can't imagine how frustrating they'd be if you're a gamer in 1989 and you don't know about them and there's no Internet to tell you; though on the other hand, everybody had SMB in 1989 so you probably knew someone who knew). I wouldn't even knock the graphics; obviously the NES is primitive, and SMB isn't nearly as colorful as even SMB 3, but it's always clear what's going on on-screen. They're not beautiful, but they don't get in your way, either, which is more than I can say for quite a few modern games.

[TheFeniX]

I'd like to submit that Battletoads is a great game.

It is, except it's only 3 levels long. Well, techincally there are other levels after the racer one, but damned if I ever made it that far. The game would have to be changed to make it less gruesome to beat level 3, so a direct port is out. But I think the concepts of that game could survive now.

The problem is that "beat-em up" side-scrollers were a dime a dozen. Battletoads was great, but Double Dragon 1 and 2 were much more balanced and would likely survive a direct port. River City Ransom had the ability to beat your teammate to death as well as a system to boost your stats and attacks.

[Molyneux]

I'd like to submit that Battletoads is a great game.

It is, except it's only 3 levels long. Well, techincally there are other levels after the racer one, but damned if I ever made it that far. The game would have to be changed to make it less gruesome to beat level 3, so a direct port is out. But I think the concepts of that game could survive now.

The problem is that "beat-em up" side-scrollers were a dime a dozen. Battletoads was great, but Double Dragon 1 and 2 were much more balanced and would likely survive a direct port. River City Ransom had the ability to beat your teammate to death as well as a system to boost your stats and attacks.

How about Battletoads vs. Double Dragon?

[Vendetta]

there are enough power-ups and extra lives floating around to make the player's life a little easier, without there being enough to make finishing trivial (a flaw I feel the otherwise excellent Super Mario World suffers from; there are so many coins around that even a moderately competent player will rack up dozens of extra lives),

It's a problem that Mario games still suffer from. Really, if they're going to make lives as common as they are, they should just do away with them entirely. They're a relic of the arcades anyway.

[TheFeniX]

How about Battletoads vs. Double Dragon?

I'm pretty sure it was a NES release after the SNES came out which, sadly, is likely the reason I never played it. Wiki pegs it at 1993.

[Bluewolf]

(a flaw I feel the otherwise excellent Super Mario World suffers from; there are so many coins around that even a moderately competent player will rack up dozens of extra lives)

Sadly this flaw goes on for more recent Nintendo games featuring Mario. In New Super Mario Bros, through a combination of power ups and more forgiving levels made it a cakewalk. It is not a bad game by any means but the the curve is shallow in terms of difficulty and that drags the game down a bit. In fact a lot of games done by Nintendo, this has happened. In many cases it's not strictly bad but sometimes like in Zelda games, it makes it less fun. It really shows difficulty curving and challenge matter in deciding a classic too.

[VF5SS]

It's a problem that Mario games still suffer from. Really, if they're going to make lives as common as they are, they should just do away with them entirely. They're a relic of the arcades anyway.

I think Nintendo sticks with the live system because it has become so familiar and accepted as an easy way of encouraging the player it doesn't matter how shallow it really is. Even I find it somewhat frustrating when I play some indie platformer (looking at your Braid and N) where the only thing that keeps me going is my own patience. At the very least lives let me know when I need to take a breather.

[Bluewolf]

On top of that, it's a common feature in many games still and is easy to gauge. It could be argued that it is an easy system as well and Nintendo do not want to deviate too much from their core concept.

[Covenant]

Lives have moved away from "deaths until you need to put in more coins/lose" and more towards a "deaths until you need to restart earlier in the level" which is a viable thing. Bioshock is the ultimate example of a checkpoint system without lives--you can just sledgehammer your way through the game, oblivious to consequence. In fact, this is a SUPERIOR way to play, as it is the most cost-effective, giving you the maximum possible advantage for the final areas, where this death-and-repeat option is gone.

A life system, like "once a tube is used it takes 30 minutes to recharge, or it breaks, and you have to charge it with a movable battery from a previous one" would have added a difficulty curve that was nil originally. And a continue system without lives can make you endlessly replay the exact same things over and over again, unless the continue system is very sparing, in which it's essentially just an infinite lives system, a checkpoint system, or a quicksave system.

The idea of a life system is less at fault than level/game design that forces you to endlessly replay one jump or a single hard enemy without arming you with the skills beforehand. Nothing should ever REALLY be a gameplay surprise. If there's a very hard jump later in a level, there should have been a few progressively difficult ones earlier on... so the Life system becomes a "re-do" and the Continue system becomes the "You didn't learn how to do this so we're going to make you re-practice the earlier stuff." So continues should be infinite, unless you're specifically on a 'challenge' mode, but lives are better than infinitely redoing checkpoints. Hell, in some checkpoint games I -wish- I had lives so I could just DIE and go back to an earlier part to do better, so I end up with more health, more ammo, or could back out and try a new area.

[Vendetta]

It's a problem that Mario games still suffer from. Really, if they're going to make lives as common as they are, they should just do away with them entirely. They're a relic of the arcades anyway.

I think Nintendo sticks with the live system because it has become so familiar and accepted as an easy way of encouraging the player it doesn't matter how shallow it really is. Even I find it somewhat frustrating when I play some indie platformer (looking at your Braid and N) where the only thing that keeps me going is my own patience. At the very least lives let me know when I need to take a breather.

In Super Mario Galaxy lives let you know to take a breather because you've somehow racked up fifty of the buggers without trying, and it's time to get that reset to a sensible number.

A life system, like "once a tube is used it takes 30 minutes to recharge, or it breaks, and you have to charge it with a movable battery from a previous one" would have added a difficulty curve that was nil originally. And a continue system without lives can make you endlessly replay the exact same things over and over again, unless the continue system is very sparing, in which it's essentially just an infinite lives system, a checkpoint system, or a quicksave system.

It would have been better to have System Shock's recovery chambers. They're there, but you have to find them and turn them on yourself. Which also fits the exploration gameplay.

However, the flipside to the difficulty argument is that by making a game too difficult to progress in, it becomes unrewarding to play it and most people will give up and play something else. Which means you've wasted whatever portion of your budget you spent on any content after that point. It's a point made in Gameswipe, no other narrative medium does this, books do not send you back to chapter 1 if you have failed to correctly grasp the symbolism of the work. So for games that aspire to be narratives, they should aim not to impede players unreasonably, because if they do they are not doing their job.

[General Zod]

It would have been better to have System Shock's recovery chambers. They're there, but you have to find them and turn them on yourself. Which also fits the exploration gameplay.

However, the flipside to the difficulty argument is that by making a game too difficult to progress in, it becomes unrewarding to play it and most people will give up and play something else. Which means you've wasted whatever portion of your budget you spent on any content after that point. It's a point made in Gameswipe, no other narrative medium does this, books do not send you back to chapter 1 if you have failed to correctly grasp the symbolism of the work. So for games that aspire to be narratives, they should aim not to impede players unreasonably, because if they do they are not doing their job.

Bioshock has an option to completely turn off the vita-chambers anyway though. So if people want to play on hard or they want the game to be easier they can. I don't think Mario games ever had any kind of difficulty selection, which might have wound up changing the gameplay considerably.

[Stark]

If I recall, that was patched in because 'shooter 2.0' turned out to mean 'laughably easy pretentious nonsense'. I don't think it shipped that way.

[Xisiqomelir]

My question is this: which classic games (pre-SNES) on any platform (Atari, Commodore, NES, Master System, PC, etc) would be considered good games if released today (with improved graphics)?

Why exactly are "improved graphics" required?

[Stark]

Depends on the market. M.U.L.E. doesn't NEED graphics at all, but good graphics and a slick interface would make the game actually appeal to actual people instead of man-babies stuck in 1982 with no standards.

[General Zod]

If I recall, that was patched in because 'shooter 2.0' turned out to mean 'laughably easy pretentious nonsense'. I don't think it shipped that way.

Eh, no idea it was added in later. I didn't touch Bioshock until it had been on the market for like a year anyway, so I missed out on all the hype.

[Molyneux]

I never got a chance to play it as a kid, but the Darkwing Duck game on NES was fairly entertaining.

[VF5SS]

In Super Mario Galaxy lives let you know to take a breather because you've somehow racked up fifty of the buggers without trying, and it's time to get that reset to a sensible number.

Well in games with a slightly less than piss easy way to gaining lives, like say Mega Man, its a way to gently break the player's will if he's getting towards controller throwing rage. I don't recall lives being so easy to get in Super Mario 64, did this get easier in Sunshine and Galaxy?

[Covenant]

However, the flipside to the difficulty argument is that by making a game too difficult to progress in, it becomes unrewarding to play it and most people will give up and play something else. Which means you've wasted whatever portion of your budget you spent on any content after that point. It's a point made in Gameswipe, no other narrative medium does this, books do not send you back to chapter 1 if you have failed to correctly grasp the symbolism of the work. So for games that aspire to be narratives, they should aim not to impede players unreasonably, because if they do they are not doing their job.

Only if you're relying on the narrative to sell the game. A hard game is usually relying on the feeling of reward that comes with figuring out the puzzles, beating those last bosses, etc. This goes back to the discussion on raw difficulty versus challenge. A challenge is something you can beat with the requisite level of skill--all you need to do is play well, which is some skill plus luck. Just making things hard is an arbitrary increase that may or may not offer any extra challenge. I don't want to just make things harder, I want to offer rewarding challenges that enhance the gameplay without forcing new players to bang their head against the wall.

Really, the point of a game should not be narrative. It should be the game portion.

[Vendetta]

Really, the point of a game should not be narrative. It should be the game portion.

Videogames are in an almost unique position in that they can offer both narrative and interactive experiences. It's not valid to say that they "should" be one or the other, but developers do need to take care over which they wish to focus on and design the other part to complement that not interfere with it.

And most videogames will be sold by their narrative. This may come as a shock, but people like to be told stories, even not particularly good ones. We're evolutionarily wired for storytelling and listening to stories, and so for the majority of people that will always be what draws them to a particular game.

Old pointy-clicky (or even text) adventure games, for instance, were driven entirely by narrative, as the puzzles they contained could be solved via trial and error (and frequent saving, in the case of the old Sierra games), all the puzzles really were were a structure via which to guide the player through the narrative in the order the developer wanted. (You can't go here because you haven't got the frilly dress, wig, and stockings yet, go and solve some other puzzles before we let you get to this bit)

On the other end of the scale, bullet bukkake shooters like Ikaruga don't need stories, because that's not what they're for, and you're lucky to see more than two lines of explanation as to why you're shooting all these things.

[Stark]

Videogames are sold by narrative because it's marketable. Everyone knows about heroes and princesses and evil twins and shit; not everyone can appreciate the value of xyz game mechanic. It also allows marketers to need less specific skills.

[Xisiqomelir]

OP, would Crystalis make your list? There's a playthrough on Youtube.

Depends on the market. M.U.L.E. doesn't NEED graphics at all, but good graphics and a slick interface would make the game actually appeal to actual people instead of man-babies stuck in 1982 with no standards.

Could it be possible that people simply want finished works to remain as they are, and would prefer that new developments in graphical technology be applied to new games? I know the incessant cashcowing of things like Square-Enix's SNES catalog for DS and PSP is getting absurd.

In Super Mario Galaxy lives let you know to take a breather because you've somehow racked up fifty of the buggers without trying, and it's time to get that reset to a sensible number.

Well in games with a slightly less than piss easy way to gaining lives, like say Mega Man, its a way to gently break the player's will if he's getting towards controller throwing rage. I don't recall lives being so easy to get in Super Mario 64, did this get easier in Sunshine and Galaxy?

It is unbelievably easy to get lives in Galaxy.

[Stark]

Could it be possible that people simply want finished works to remain as they are, and would prefer that new developments in graphical technology be applied to new games? I know the incessant cashcowing of things like Square-Enix's SNES catalog for DS and PSP is getting absurd.

So you're seriously saying classic games are perfect in a thread about whether classic games are even playable by modern audiences? It's fascinating to me that you consider 'making games more accessible' to be 'incessant cash cowing'. PROTIP: most people don't worship shit-looking games that have shit interfaces when they could just as easily be flash and easy to play.

I mean, Carcassone on PC? STOP CASH COWING! TOO EASY TO PLAY! JUST BUY THE BOARDGAME!!!!

[Bluewolf]

Graphical improvements and touch ups can really help games that were not quite so good become a lot better. Besides that, it helps them become more known to recent generations. In that sense it is a win/win situation.

[RedImperator]

Yeah, I don't know how you expect a modern audience to play SNES-era games without porting them to modern consoles. How many people are going to troll eBay for a working SNES and cartridge? My girlfriend's little sister is about the same age I was when I started getting into video games, and she didn't even know what an SNES was. She was in diapers when the Gamecube came out.