Those of you who didn't grow up with an NES: Is it possible to go back, or are the games too archaic?

YoureOnABoat · 16 days

Metroid had bidirectional scrolling a lot earlier, but SMB3 was a watermark in graphical fidelity, game play variety, etc.

One of the most technologically impressive games on the hardware was actually never released in the US or most of Europe. Gimmick! came out very late in the life-cycle of the system and it's pretty amazing what they packed into it. Check out this annotated let's play if you haven't heard of it:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?annotation_id=annotation_106349&feature=iv&p=7BD0C60A71FFC2FA&src_vid=DoznFNKFM1E

YoureOnABoat · 17 days

I didn't mean to denigrate Metroid Prime 3 -- Retro is great at what they're doing. The first Prime was incredible, and the second is probably underrated. I've just been finding the third game in particular misaligned with the series routes. I don't need the same game over and over again, but I wish the current direction was to be more exploration-driven rather than less. I'm not that far along in the game, though, so my opinion of the game might change.

YoureOnABoat · 17 days

What they managed to do with the limitations of the NES hardware is absolutely amazing. I'm not a programmer, but I understand that even when the Famicon was first released in Japan in 1983, a lot of the hardware had been around awhile. It was somewhat dated in 1983. That they managed to create Super Mario Bros. 3 with that technology is insane.

YoureOnABoat · 17 days

I think it's really cool that you managed to recreate the "get help from the playground" experience. Some game design decisions were actually built around that construct--that the only way to beat a game was to compare notes with friends. That's almost impossible to implement in the age of the internet, but I'm pleased to hear that it's still being pursued.

YoureOnABoat · 17 days

Next time you make an unfunny second-hand hipster joke, remember that Pabst is spelled P-A-B-S-T.

YoureOnABoat · 17 days

I can't disagree that a lot game design ideas from the 1980s and 1990s wouldn't work today.

But there's a lot about those games that I prefer to modern games. They include: lack of hand-holding, lack of emphasis on non-playable cut-scenes, absence of quick-time events, absence of DLC, absence of prompts for an NPC to complete a level for you or tell you exactly where to go, and absence of dumbed-down context-sensitive one-button game play.

Not all changes in game design are improvements, just as films haven't necessarily "improved" since the 70s and 80s simply because they've gotten better at catering to a blockbuster audience. What I like most about the industry today is overall price of content, the huge range of independent developers, the graphical and musical fidelity, and the occasionally creative risks taken by major developers.

But it's just not accurate to say that games can only improve. Creativity is not a linear evolution.

YoureOnABoat · 17 days

I replayed Zelda a few years ago, having not played it at all since my childhood, and was surprised that I could complete the entire game in two days without consulting a walk-through. I even somehow knew the path through the last woods on my first try via some unknown ingrained memory bank.

I don't need an owl, a hat, a sword, or a magical penguin or whatever telling me where to go next. Exploration sometimes means being lost.

YoureOnABoat · 17 days

I totally agree. I'm playing Metroid Prime 3 right now (for the first time) and the game is so divorced from its routes of isolation and loneliness. The fact that you can call your ship over in places, and that your team of bounty hunters keeps saving your character, and that there's reels of dialogue -- it just seems anti-Metroid. From what I gather, Other M is an even more egregious step in the wrong direction. I really hope Nintendo/Retro can establish a return to the less handy-holdy design of its earlier games (paired with the refined graphics and game-play of their current stuff).

YoureOnABoat · 17 days

Metroid has this haunting sparseness which was a function of graphical limitations, but also an intelligent application of those limitations. The black backgrounds, the minimalist music, the clever way the game forces you to go left instead of right to start the game -- the game was extremely stylized in an era when most other games were still trying to figure out how to have their character jump in a fluid way.

The confusing maze-like level design feels dated, but I think that works in its favor. It's a strange, dream-like product of its time.

YoureOnABoat · 17 days

That sounds like it would make a great letter for a 1989 issue of Nintendo Power.

goldncamo · 10 months

no_front_teeth · 1 year

Look down--back up--where are you?

johnnyb84 · 2 years

Now look at my name. Where are you?

KNovermber · 2 years

Now back at mine.

YoureOnABoat

TROPHY CASE

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