I know my roots

snotknocker

snotknocker

CAGiversary!
Lately there has been a ton of games that I've picked up for my my xbox GC and PS2. However I'm stuck in a retro mode of late and find myself completely re-enjoying some old classic NES games. It's been about a month and everytime I game it's on classics like Kid Icarus, Clash at Demonhead, Gaurdian Legend (I really love this game) and Low G-man (another personal favorite). These are games I jammed on 15 -20 years ago and I can actually remember the first time I played some of them and the gameplay techniques come back to me like I never missed a beat.

I seem to be enjoying these games even more than I did before. Any other CAG out there that ever get stuck in a retro mode from time to time? Just curious
 
classic may have been a poor choice of words. I don't know if it's just me but I seem to be getting more fun out of some games that are twenty years old than I do out of games that just came out
 
[quote name='MadChedar0']I dont know if you'd call it "classic", but I've been on a Super Punch Out spree lately. So fun...[/quote]

I missed out on that one back when it came out, but I recently picked it up in the EB Games classic BOGO sale, and I've been playing through it. It really is a lot of fun.

I picked up a bunch of games in that classic BOGO sale, so I've been playing my NES, SNES, and Genesis a lot lately. I was up late last Friday playing Kid Chameleon, Aladdin, Columns, Altered Beast, and Super Street Fighter 2 on my Genesis, for example. A few weeks ago I had an NES night with Duck Tales, Rescue Rangers, Mega Man 2, Dr. Mario, Bubble Bobble, and R.C. Pro Am.

Games today are great, but I really miss the old days.
 
Yeah, there's something about those classics. If I could pick any system to take to a desert island with me it would be the snes.
 
This has been one of my recent beefs. After getting out some of the old consoles.. I've begun to realize games these days are quite exciting and interesting and graphically outstanding.. but they just aren't fun.

Looking at the GTA series, Fable, to some extent the newer FF games, etc... the games are just amazing. You can do things in all of those games that you could never do before, the level of interactiveness is unbelievable.. but the games aren't fun. GTA 3 and Vice City I played for a while until I got horrendously bored.. which turned out to be about 4-5 hours each. Fable I found great to try out the different things to do... but again, horrendously bored of it after maybe 6 hours. Final Fantasy X I finished.. but looking back, I did it for the story, I didn't really have fun along the way, FF X-2 I never even finished.

Games these days seem more like work than fun, there's no real difficulty (with the exception of a few games), its just keep doing something until you've A. memorized patterns, B. gotten a high level, C. figured out the puzzles.. whatever it is. I spent hours upon hours in FF X-2 doing all the side missions, trying to get all of the extra outfits.. until I realized it was feeling like work instead of enjoyment.

I get the most fun these days out of my GBA and my older consoles, mostly the SNES. While there are a few exceptions (Ratchet & Clank series, KOTOR).. developers these days have lost sight of how to make an enjoyable video game.
 
I went on a classic games buying spree recently with the buy 1 get 1 sale... I bought mostly SNES games, only to find that the SNES I traded for doesn't work. I'll probably just trade them for other rare games for systems I own.

But yeah, I do miss the old games... Theres just something missing from most newer games that the older games have. Plus, developers are afraid of 2d, or aren't good at it, it seems like only Capcom and SNK are holding out.
 
[quote name='Cornfedwb']Games these days seem more like work than fun, there's no real difficulty (with the exception of a few games), its just keep doing something until you've A. memorized patterns, B. gotten a high level, C. figured out the puzzles.. whatever it is. I spent hours upon hours in FF X-2 doing all the side missions, trying to get all of the extra outfits.. until I realized it was feeling like work instead of enjoyment.
[/quote]

Yes, not too many games these days have storylines so gripping that they immerse me, anymore. I think the last title to pull that off successfully for me was Legacy of Kain : Defiance. Even then, the combat & puzzles were fairly formulaic...the cut-scenes, however, served to make the game enjoyable & memorable. It seems like RPG's can at most hope for interesting plot mechanics to make them stand out these days...the actual nitty gritty of combat/character improvement seldom adds that much to the equation...unless you hit it *just* right with your game design and turn simple pointing & clicking into an entertaining affair (Diablo).

That's why the original Thief game stands out in my mind as a singularly engrossing title. Both the story AND the grunt-level footwork of that game were very appealing to me. Sad that such would prove a rarity.
 
Because my apartment is so small, I can't have my older consoles hooked up, but I do enjoy Midway Arcade Treasures 1/2 and Activision Anthology.

Love the avatar, snotknocker...classic!
 
Gotta disagree with your cornfed. I just finished playing through Alias, which is certainly not considered an A list title by anyone, and had a lot of fun with it. Interesting storyline with the real actors from the show doing the VO. Gameplay had a good bit of variety to keep things fresh. And you have to use the old noodle from time to time to figure out how to get past something. Plus there is generally more than one way to win.

Now the game has it's problems. For example I found I could often just run past a few baddies into the next area (where they won't follow) rather than actually fight them. And the actual fighting engine itself was a bit ho-hum. But that didn't keep me from having a good time with it.

And that's just one example using a game that received not so great marks. But I guess the fun-factor of any given game is a very subjective thing to rate.

Back on the topic of old games. I've actually just recently dug out and hooked back up my old systems, plus started to pick up ones I never had at yard sales. I now have: Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari Jaguar, NES, SNES, N64, Genesis 32X, Dreamcast, PS1, and Xbox. Still need to fill in quite a few gaps!

This past weekend I was playing a bit of 2600 using these kick-ass wireless joysticks I picked up at a yard sale. I think I may have to play Bowling for either cash or as a drinking game at some point :)
 
^^^

Funny.. I played Alias and was about to get the Lysol out to disinfect my console when I was done with that thing. Its not a fun game, its a mindless diversion maybe, but not fun.. not like the classics were.
 
Love classic games, even went back and played Final Fantasy 2 and Chrono Trigger before I played my new games. Wish I still had a Link to the Past, and Super Metroid, those were awesome.
 
I like to break out my Intellivision Classics for the PSX sometimes and fire up Astrosmash and Nightstalker. As far as older games, I put a NES emulator on my PDA so that I can play Dr. Mario, Megaman 2 and Gradius on my lunch breaks.
 
Oh yeah I think this is slowly becoming the craze.

I have recently picked up or had a family member pick up a master system with 3d galsses. Neat little system.

Genesis was pretty good to.

I was always such a Nintendo fanboy that I never had many Sega systems. Now I really do give them credit as they made pretty good systems. I guess its a plus because they are all new to me now!
 
[quote name='Snake2715']Oh yeah I think this is slowly becoming the craze.[/quote]

I agree, when you can buy the "Know your Roots" shirt at Target. Nothing pisses me off more than seeing a 13 yr old wearing a shirt that has the classic NES pad talking about how he's into the older stuff.
 
Most of these aren't fair comparisions.
With some of the classics, you're comparing the cream of the crop of a system's entire lifespan to a random assortment of stuff on current systems.
On top of that, most people can't really see the classic games for exactly what they are... playing them is tinted with the sepia tones of memory.
 
[quote name='Nerdy'][quote name='Snake2715']Oh yeah I think this is slowly becoming the craze.[/quote]

I agree, when you can buy the "Know your Roots" shirt at Target. Nothing pisses me off more than seeing a 13 yr old wearing a shirt that has the classic NES pad talking about how he's into the older stuff.[/quote]

Yeah, it is annoying when there are guys like us who have been nerds for years, and now that it's become "cool" and acceptable to be a game junkie, all the younger kids are latching onto it. But hell, these kids are just trying to catch up on some of the greatness they missed, and hopefully at least some of them will have the wherewithall to appreciate the games of the past.

It reminds me what happens in music: various eras of music go back and forth in terms of mainstream "coolness," but there are always people who will always love hair metal bands no matter what. Hell, when i was a teenager in the late '80s and early '90s and popular music sucked especially bad, i found myself clinging tightly to records that came out before i was born or when i was too young to appreciate them.

also, the more this whole 'retro' thing catches on, the more likely it becomes that as new games are made, the game industry will return to some of the great gameplay and other elements that made some of those older games such classics!!
 
This is how I seperate games from great and just ok... Sure the product could be an incredible interactive piece of software, but is it a fun game?

I look at Sly Cooper, Final Fantasy IX and a few others as modern classics, because they possess that one element lacking in this generation... fun factor.

I still play my SNES, and there are a bunch of games that not only still look great graphically, but are amazing GAMES... not just interactive software. I was talking about this recently to somebody, and mentioned that due to the fact that in the earlier generations, graphics were ass no matter what, so they had to sell these games by actually crafting something that was a lot of fun, not just fun to look at.

Having a retro addiction is ok... games were definitely more about fun in the earlier generations.

/rant sorry about that, sometimes I get excited.
 
[quote name='JSweeney']On top of that, most people can't really see the classic games for exactly what they are... playing them is tinted with the sepia tones of memory.[/quote]

Very true in some cases; many games i used to play for hours as a youngster just can't hold my attention these days. But, there are certainly games that offer such compelling gameplay and storylines that if they were to be released for the first time now, with todays graphics technology, they would still become classics.
 
[quote name='organicow']
also, the more this whole 'retro' thing catches on, the more likely it becomes that as new games are made, the game industry will return to some of the great gameplay and other elements that made some of those older games such classics!![/quote]

I feel like my "nerd" credibility is gone now. :lol: I was just practicing my "Grandpa-ish" rant for when I'm older.

Yeah, I totally agree, when Nintendo licsensed logos and old game images for T-shirts for your local hot topic there was a giant rush of compilation packs featuring "Classic games" I think its because of that peak of interest is what brought about those things you plug directly into your TV to play old Namco games and now Genesis games.

Now classic elements are making thier way into newer games, the Bowser areas of Paper Mario: 2 and the "Tempest" style game in CJ's house in San Andreas are just two examples. I those are more geared to the older gamer generation who would like that sort of thing.
 
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