Here’s a total banger that’s simultaneously retro, indie and a cult classic: Cave Story. A remake is available on most digital stores, including Steam for the people interested. It follows the story of “Quote”, a lovable and- you know what? No spoilers, I’ll let people fall in love with the game by themselves ;)
The philosophies behind game development has changed so much.
Developers used to try and make fun games that they wanted to play, in hopes that fun games will sell well.
Now they have marketing teams with budgets that are greater than twice the development cost. Committees designing games to maximize addiction. And of course, the endless need to monetize everything, micro transactions, games as a service, etc., in order to maximize profits. Is the game any good? Probably not, but they just need a few whales to dump money into it.
It’s this.
NDS games for example hust have a completely different design language.
Still, Indie games continue to be developed. This will be gaming’s salvation when the big studios are fully committed to squeezing every loot box/DLC/microtransaction out of “Live service” forever games.
I don’t think Clash of Candy Shadow Tanks is going anywhere, but there will always be the next Stardew Valley passion project.
On that note, I think Indy’s have embraced a retro aesthetic because you don’t need a whole art team rendering your graphics. Combine this with AAA games being rather formulaic (can’t risk a big studio budget trying unproven ideas) and I think you have an audience willing to accept older graphics in retro games.
JC Denton is eternal
why are you locked in the bathroom
Seeing a Wii Fit Balance Board referred to as a retro gaming accessory…
Just fucking bury me now, why don’t you. 💀
what would that make the power glove? or a pong paddle?
Elegant weapons for a more civilised age.
I was taken aback when I saw Ape Escape in CEX for about as much as I’d originally paid for it. Didn’t even have the manual.
cheaper, easier, simpler, more accessible, a good game is timeless
Easier is questionable. Some of the older games can be tough as hell. Especially with outdated control schemes.
Games of a certain era were intentionally made challenging because they only had about 6 levels. They had to make it last, so they made that shit hard. You’d spend months just trying to beat level 3. Same with arcade machines; though they were hard to make you die and put another quarter in.
I love Battletoads, but it’s so hard.
Easier to get playing, at least.
Put rectangle in rectangle.
Toggle Power.
Enjoy.Its seriously a bigger hassle to figure out where you were in a show on Netflix if it decided not to save your spot in a show than it is to get into a level in a lot of games back in the day.
You forgot blow, blow, try and fail, special blow, etc.
Don’t forget. No saves back then either. You either got nothin or had to write down a crazy save code.
Ninja Gaiden from 1988 is still the hardest game I have ever played. It was next to impossible in the arcade and even harder on the NES
Yeah I grew up with the NES MegaMan games. Revisiting them 30 years later made me realize just how brutally difficult they are. Enemies endlessly spawn and will spawn on top of you.
Probably because “AAA” games are almost all cash grabs at this point.
Not to mention they require high end hardware to run due to lack of optimisation. Many people can’t afford top end shit and with emulators becoming lighter and easier to run retro games just become super accessible.
Even Wii emulators such as dolphin can run decently well on a bog standard phone and with the state the mobile game market is in, Wii games are just universally a better option.
100% agree, too much is being focused on getting games as cutting edge graphic wise as possible without focusing on optimization, size, game play, or even if consumers can reasonably be expected to have the hardware necessary for it. I worry the gaming industry will hit a point where the leeches at the top determine the industry is dead because they’ve ruined it so badly in the never ending pursuit of unrealistic profit. Like no shit not as many people want to buy games riddled with bugs, microtransactions and lacking any attempt at listening to what consumer want to play. I miss when developers were allowed to be creative and work on things they enjoy, because that definitely was represented in the games when playing them.
It’s because those old games are good and fun
Classic movies, music, etc why not expect classic games?
Gameplay always wins over everything else. The rest is a bonus.
Simple as
Because it is a time where you picked something up to be transported away from your worries, or just to have a bit of fun. You turned it on, hit start, and for the most part that was it. There were no season passes on the NES. There was no bullshit shoved in your face constantly. It was just the game, and that was it. My kids are shocked when I tell them about the flash game days, or the late 90’s with an N64. If I was there for the commodore and atari days I’m sure I’d have more to say.
Because the games are good? Does their need to be a deeper reason then that? I mean, I guess a boom in retro games among Gen Z and younger says something about the state of the modern industry, but younger generations have always liked older things despite entertainment industries trying to push them towards the shiny and new. Still definitely nice to see though.
Yeah, agreed. They play retro games for the same reason people watch classic movies, read literature, or listen to older music: because it’s enjoyable regardless of how old it is.
It’s also easier to determine which games are good and which aren’t. I doubt there’s a ton of people playing licensed games from LJN, at least not as many as are playing Zelda or Chrono Trigger.
Sometimes simpler is better.
Don’t know if I’d say simpler, some of the games for the NES are downright punishing in their difficulty.
Though they are often synonyms, simple != easy.
Simple is uncomplicated.
Easy is unchallenging.
Super Mario Bros. is a simple game, but not necessarily an easy one.
I’m reminded of a time I wanted to play SMB, but had to wait hours downloading an update. It may have used all my bandwidth for the month, and made the game crash all the time, but now I can spawn a powerup whenever I need one by just authorizing a micropayment! /s
retro accessories such as the Wii Fit Balance Board
I feel old now
Wii came out 18 years ago
So yesterday?
why would someone intentionally harm like this
Genz here, there’s this sweet spot from about 1985 to 2010 where games and even movies just peaked for me. (Yes I’m aware most of that is before I was born). For movies special effects were finally good enough to still hold up today if used well but not so insanely cheap as to get the modern michael bay problem where writing has actually become secondary to often pointless spectacle. With games its a similar story, the end of that time range is pretty much the point of highest technical capability before online updates allowed a ‘fix it later’ philosiphy to creep in as well as all the cool secrets (Red levels + star world + extra second secret star world is still unmatched in sheer childhood wonder) becomming paid DLC.
TLDR: Retro stuff doesn’t nickle and dime you and survivorship bias means we can pick from the best of it.
To a dad that regularly shows his kid stuff from this era, this level of validation is alarming
I imagine it’s the same reason I like movies and music that came out before I was born. You don’t have to be generationally tied to something to like it. People are going to like good things if they’re good. I don’t feel like it really matters when something came out.
There’s a survival bias too. People rarely will hear about or play the bad stuff from that era, but we keep hearing about the bad stuff happening now because of marketing. People then get nostalgic of a time that didn’t really exist. For every Mario Bros there’s a dozen Bad Street Brawler that no one plays today.
As someone who grew up in the 80s there were a lot of garbage from then too, it just didn’t survive the test of time.
Maybe they’re sick of bug-filled copy/paste endless cash-grab open worlds.
The fact that younger generations are picking it up suggest it’s not just nostalgia. It’s not someone who was there wishing things were still like their childhood. Something has downright broken in the games industry for this to happen.
Something like my generation (elder millennial) listening to Stairway and Dark Side of the Moon. The associated industry was not providing in modern times, so we looked back.
It seems the zoomers picked up a lot of millenial culture. Which I suspect is because the zoomers were exposed to a lot of our culture from an early age. i.e theyre nostalgic for the same stuff because they also grew up being exposed to that culture when they were little
