/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5554845]

Can games "age"?

[Anonymous No.5554846]

Yes. they absolutely do.

But not Mario 64, that's timeless.

[Anonymous No.5554847]

Oh boy... here we go.

[Anonymous No.5554851]

>>5554845
No. We do.

[Anonymous No.5554853]

Can we all just agree that "this game has aged poorly" is just shorthand for "this game is a product of its time and does not operate as well within the context of current gaming standards."

[Anonymous No.5554856]

Games don't age. Mario 64 was just always bad.

[Anonymous No.5554857]

>>5554846
>But not Mario 64, that's timeless.
Boy, I sure love clunky cameras, most levels being designed like shit, and glitches out the ass.

[Anonymous No.5554862]

>>5554845
Yeah. Shit like double dragon was the hottest shit ever until someone did it better

[Anonymous No.5554868]

>>5554857
See? We can all love a timeless classic for our own reasons :)

[Anonymous No.5554873]

>>5554851
In all seriousness, this. People look at an older game and think "wow these mechanics suck" because they're used to what we have now. If they only ever had contact with games that came out in that same time period, they wouldn't be inclined to say that game's mechanics were bad, even if they looked at in in the current time period. It's our perception of what's good and bad that's ageing, not the games themselves.

[Anonymous No.5554878]

>>5554845
Yes. Some more than others.
*cough* *cough* *wheeze*

[Anonymous No.5554889]

This game aged in reverse

>>5554853
this

[Anonymous No.5554891]

>>5554873
Obsolescence = aging, faggot.
Doesn't mean you can't enjoy it like driving a 50s car

[Anonymous No.5554894]

No, but some people, especially clueless younger ones, don't even get the proper experience.
>plays an SD games meant to be played on a 4:3 CRT TV on an HD LED stretched to 4K
No wonder they think the games "aged".

[Anonymous No.5554901]

>>5554889
In the context of that review it's a perfectly fine comment: using that controller layout was completely inferior to a keyboard and mouse, but even using a keyboard and mouse can't redeem a shitty game like that was.

[Anonymous No.5554913]

sonyniggers should be shot.

[Anonymous No.5554919]

To deny that games age is to deny that any game can improve on the ideas that came before it.

[Anonymous No.5554924]

Games can age but it's stupid to complain about a game because it has aged.

[Anonymous No.5554927]

>>5554919
If you were able to enjoy the game when it originally came out, then you should be able to enjoy it the same way, even if "improved ideas" came after it.
Also, have in mind "improved ideas" are subjective, some people might not like certain changes, or think they're that important.

[Anonymous No.5554934]

>>5554901
FALSE. Yes, you PC fucks think you're superior for having a mouse & keyboard, but this is a PS1 exclusive game and that Gamespot review is poorly written since most of the damn article was criticizing the controls. Yes, I played it myself and the analog controls aren't even great, but this was the very first game to use the default analog controls as the standards besides the finicky shoulder-strafing at the time. Then again, PC controls didn't use the mouse & keyboard until the days of Quake, and used the arrow keys to do your bidding.

[Anonymous No.5554976]

>>5554857
>>5554868
To be fair, you don't run into too many glitches in a normal playthrough--at least I didn't. I don't do any fancy tricks though, just owl-less usually.

The camera is the biggest complaint, also Mario is much less fluid than in Galaxy+ Mario games.
Replay this game or Sunshien and you'll see what I mean. Here he's car-like in comparison with e.g. turning.
It hasn't aged quite as well as the Zelda games, sure, but it's still quite fun.

When replaying I find a sense of eeriness at how the skyboxes in particular make it seem like Mario's in some sort of weird purgatory.

[Anonymous No.5554998]

>>5554845
Game design literally evolves. Good /profitable choices live and are imitated by future games and bad ones die out or mutate.

I would say a game that "aged poorly" contains a significant amount of design choices that were rubbed out over time. If there's an easy way to say this without triggering your autism, I'd like to hear it.

[Anonymous No.5555006]

modern games are objectively garbage

[Anonymous No.5555025]

>>5554853
Yes. This is all this has ever made. These bait threads all start by using a phrase, not defining it, and then being willfully ignorant when people give its clear definition.

[Anonymous No.5555026]

/vr/ is literally /v/ 2.0
you cant defend this.

[Anonymous No.5555032]

>>5555026
Somehow we went from
>We don't post like that, we're not /v/
to
>REEEEE GET OUT >>>/v/
and then became /v/.

[Anonymous No.5555043]

>>5555026
You fucks have been so melodramatic recently. So people like to talk controversial topics, who the fuck cares. Post quality posts and you'll receive quality replies.

[Anonymous No.5555079]

>>5554927
People lived in caves and hunted for their food for much of early human history. Why aren't you doing that right now? Oh wait it's because you have all the conveniences of modern life. Just because people put up with something shitty in the past does not mean that it'll be seen as acceptable once improvements come along, dumbass. People didn't like Mario 64's camera back then and it's even worse now that so many games exist that have far better cameras, so the average person will be used to something that isn't garbage and see the flaw in an even darker light.

[Anonymous No.5555183]

>>5554846
Timeless and full of soul.

[Anonymous No.5555186]

>>5554845
no

[Anonymous No.5555187]

>>5555079
Camping and hunting are hobbies, you know. Many people enjoy them and I don't think they think these activities have "aged".
Silly analogy anyway.
The camera in mario 64 is not any worse than it was in 1996. The game didn't age. Games don't age.

[Anonymous No.5555189]

>>5555032
It's better this way, anyway (t. not a zoompest)

[Anonymous No.5555202]

>>5555187
>The camera in mario 64 is not any worse than it was in 1996.
No shit, but as I said before, it was seen as a grievance even back then. It's only natural that with more and more modern games blowing the SM64 camera out of the water it would become harder and harder to come back to how shitty it is. Would you like it if someone ripped the heating and AC out of your house and told you that people didn't used to have those and the atmosphere hasn't aged, so you should put up with it despite modern conveniences existing now that eliminate a negative factor in the context of the current age? No you wouldn't, dipshit.

[Anonymous No.5555209]

>>5554853
Understand that, but think that it's kind of silly. I guess you could say "other things like this in the future did it better", and in some cases I'd agree with you, but at the end of the day, either the game itself is fun to play, or it isn't. and that doesn't really change over time.

here's rollin for the all 5s

[Anonymous No.5555417]

>>5554934
>Beyond the control issues, Alien Resurrection is gruelingly hard. That is, it's hard to the point where you'll spend as much time reloading your save file as you will spend playing the game. The near-mythical PlayStation mouse peripheral is supposed to solve many of the game's control problems, but the 99.9 percent of PlayStation owners who've never even seen the device will find the game almost unplayably difficult to control and unreasonably hard to enjoy. It's a dramatic answer to a problem far more easily solved by adopting the control scheme from EA's Medal of Honor.

[Anonymous No.5555489]

>>5555202
Shit analogy again.
It's funny that you're comparing 90s games to prehistory. Why are you even on /vr/?

[Anonymous No.5555491]

>>5554857
>glitches out the ass.
I love glitches and wished more games had them.

[Anonymous No.5555495]

>>5555202
> it was seen as a grievance even back then
No it wasn't.

[Anonymous No.5555498]

>>5554845
No, standards change. Though not necessarily for the better. Many reviewers these days take points off for games lacking story or narrative, for example.

[Anonymous No.5555502]

Why are you guys even replying? It's the same guy from the "im sorry its not that good" old tired bait.
Mario 64 lives rent free inside him

[Anonymous No.5555505]

>>5554845
Good job jannies, threads like this really make /vr/ shine!

[Anonymous No.5555657]

>>5555489
>Make point that compares something that humans lived without and put up with for years but would very much prefer not to go back to now that they know better, to something that people also lived with for years but would prefer not to go back to now that they know better
>Clearly this is a shit analogy
Also, why wouldn't I be on /vr/? It's not like I'm saying Mario 64 is a bad game, it blows almost all modern titles out of the water in every aspect but its camera. It was the OP image so I used it as part of my example. I'm simply not denying that a singular part of it has not lived up to modern standards, which is the point of saying a game has aged. But of course games aging as a concept doesn't exist, because nothing in history has ever been iterated upon.

>>5555495
t. history revisionist, that shit caused plenty of grief back in the day. No there wasn't much better to compare it to at the time especially for the usual consumer and all 3D titles of that era have hilariously bad cameras (almost as if it's an aspect of game development that got better with time) but it was always a big complaint for all of those games in question.

[Anonymous No.5555793]

>>5555657
>that shit caused plenty of grief back in the day
Proof?

[Anonymous No.5555820]

>Do games age?
Yes
>Do you care?
No

This board was created specifically for audiences who have a continuing desire to play these games, flaws and all. Bear in mind that we're a completely different demographic from /v/ - this board isn't simply /v/ with dates.

[Anonymous No.5555824]

>>5554889
>pic
Is that real?

[Anonymous No.5555828]

>>5555657
Name one (1) 3D game released prior to June 23 1996 (Mario 64 release) which has better or even as good camera as Mario 64.

[Anonymous No.5556004]

>>5554845
>>5554853
I believe they do, but i think proper context and explanation are needed. The way i've always seen it is, if i play a game i played when i was younger and the feeling and satisfaction i get from it is the same or if i play an old game i've never played before and am impressed by it or have fun with it, then it has aged well.

Examples: Game i played as a kid: Super Metroid, i loved it then, i love it now, and i still think its one of the best designed games ever.

Game i didn't play as a kid: Kirby's super star. Didn't get to play this game until i got my hands on an SNES classic and i was very impressed by it with no prior experience or nostalgia.

On the flipside:
If i go back and play a game i used to think was amazing, and then suddenly think to myself "This isn't as good as i remember it" Then it has aged poorly or other, newer games of the same genre have outclassed it.

The prime example i always use from my experience is Stunt Race FX on SNES. I rented it from blockbuster all the time when i was a kid and adored it. I excitedly bought a copy from a used game store recently, stuck it in my snes and... it failed to get me even remotely close to as excited as it used to.

So in short: Is it old, but still a great game/better than newer games = aged well. Is it old, and when you play it again it feels old and obsolete/newer games have improved on it greatly = aged poorly

BUT... obviously this concept is heavily influenced by personal opinion. A game that i feel hasn't aged well could easily be someone else's favorite retro game. And there are no doubt people that feel the opposite about all three games i've mentioned above. So i don't think there will ever be a real answer to this question because it's all a matter of perspective, experience, and preference.

[Anonymous No.5556078]

>>5555828
That's not the point. The point is, does Mario 64's camera hold up? No, even games from the same era as it had far better cameras, such as Banjo-Kazooie, Rayman 2, and Spyro.

[Anonymous No.5556089]

>>5555079
Humans didn't improve shit. They used to live in harmony with nature in the jungle and have delicious organic fruit available at all times during the year, they could pick food when they needed it. I would go back to that in a heartbeat if I could, but things are too fucked now to ever return like that, especially if you were to try to convince a decent population to go with you. But mostly, those habitats are either gone now or are being eroded on a daily basis by human expansion. There were no sanitation problems because waste naturally decomposes in the jungle.

Even if there are advantages to modern life, don't talk about it like it's "shitty" and like we're living with such "improvements" now. Working your ass off for 70 hours a week isn't an "improvement" just because you can watch tv later. Also fuck you, Mario 64's camera is not "worse", it didn't change.

[Anonymous No.5556093]

>>5556089
Yeah I was gonna comment something like that.
I know people who grow their own stuff and it's definitely better. It's harder, and you have to look out for non-monsanto seeds and you still won't be able to escape chemtrails if you live in a populated place, but better than buying from the market.

[Anonymous No.5556097]

>>5556089
Join an amish community, broski.

[Anonymous No.5556145]

>>5556078
The Mario 64 camera holds up though

[Anonymous No.5556162]

>>5554878
Literally the only reason that game was noteworthy out of Japan was because I hate black people.

[Anonymous No.5556174]

>>5555820
>this board isn't simply /v/ with dates.

[Anonymous No.5556214]

>>5556145
Does it? I find it pretty clunky compared to those other games listed, no-where near as smooth.

Hell, just compare Sunshine's camera to 64's and you'll see how poorly 64's camera has aged while Sunshine's is still pretty good.

[Anonymous No.5556224]

no, otherwise we would have heard of this 10 or 20 years earlier, but we only hear it these days.

[Anonymous No.5556231]

>>5556214
Different guy here, but for all it's clunky 'clearly the first attempt'-ness Mario 64's camera has never hindered me from playing it effectively. Every once in a while it'll turn around on me or wont turn a direction i want it to, but it doesn't happen enough to annoy me and i can often immediately fix it/deal with it. It can be jankey as fuck, yeah, but it's not unbearable.

[Anonymous No.5556237]

Games aging doesn't literally mean "this game got older and is no longer as good," it's basically someone saying that something about it is harder to go back to because more recent things have improved on it or streamlined things in some way

[Anonymous No.5556245]

>>5556214
Not him, but I think the devs made the game having the camera into account, I didn't really find myself having issues with the camera, not back then, not today.
Having free 360 camera with a left stick on modern games is nice, but it doesn't single-handlely make me enjoy the game more. Game design is a group of factors and the way they interlace them together, not individual assembly parts you just put together and dispatch.
I remember some japanese dev, can't remember if Kojima or Kamiya or someone else, that said he was shocked when he first worked with a western video game company. In Japan, all the dev team works together, giving feedback to each other, many gameplay ideas come from programmers, or many artists give concept ideas for gameplay, etc. It's a back and forth and the game is developed harmoniously as a group effort. While in western companies (big ones, of course, like EA, or Ubisoft, if it was Kamiya, he was probably talking about Microsoft, I think it was at the time of the dragon game that got canned), development is more like a factory, you have different teams working on different areas and they just mash up their work together, resulting in the often soulless, generic vibe many western blockbuster games have.

[Anonymous No.5556517]

>>5555824
yes

[Anonymous No.5556519]

>>5556004
>Stunt Race FX on SNES
I had the exact same experience. I was really excited to play it as a kid and today... it just seems horrible, like absolute trash.

[Anonymous No.5556743]

>>5554845
Yes.

[Anonymous No.5557764]

What does it mean to "age?" If aging is defined as obsolescence, then I don't think games age in the traditional understanding of the term. When we say a 1950s automobile is aged compared to a modern one, it's because the modern one performs the intended goal of an automobile (to get somewhere) "better," as defined by quicker, more comfortable, more reliable and using less fuel. Technology has clear "goals" (doing a thing over its previous iteration cheaper and more efficiently).

What is the goal of a game? To give the user enjoyment and challenge their skills. Pong serves this function just as well vs. whatever modern game is being heralded at the moment. We can say the graphics of Pong have "aged," but retro graphics in that style have an aesthetic all their own that can be appreciated.

I recently played Warcraft 1 and StarCraft 1 back-to-back. I had equal fun with both, and the "limitations" (i.e. not being able to group units, only being able to select 4 men at a time) of the former actually forced you to employ different tactics than if you didn't have those limitations.

I would concede certain technical elements can "age," like camera control, but if these technical elements weren't enough to discourage players from the game back then, they probably aren't now. Though tolerance of technical glitches in a game is obviously subjective.

To clarify, if a game serves its intended purpose of fun and challenge, I don't think you can define it as "aged." Again, obviously a subjective determination. And many modern games are neither fun nor challenge your skills in an interesting way. Are they aged? Or just badly designed?

[Anonymous No.5557768]

>>5554845
Absolutely. I think mario 64 was always shit though.

[Anonymous No.5557781]

Yeah they do, but it's a subjective term, like maybe you don't find a game you played in your childhood fun today, but someone who plays it for the first time today could find it fun.

[Anonymous No.5558572]

Hardware literally does, but mechanics don’t. People do however, and with age their expectations change

[Anonymous No.5558581]

>>5554845
No. If you think it's shit now, it was always shit.

Protip: Super Mario 64 was always shit.

[Anonymous No.5558641]

>With the release of the 8th generation of consoles, the Sega Dreamcast will now be considered "retro", though the remainder of the sixth generation (Xbox, PS2, GameCube) will not.

SEGA DREAMCAST IS NOT RETRO
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Anonymous No.5558654]

>>5554845
No, but Display Technology does.

[Anonymous No.5558689]

>>5554873
>>5554853
>>5555498
duh.. this is the definition


>>5554927


I remember having a gimps of some Goethe romantic poetry
He is no doubt a genius that pushed writing to new levels, but those love poems
seemed to me the most uninspired boring generic 'birds-are-singing-flowers-are-blooming' shit
works of art objectively can age. games can age.

[Anonymous No.5558696]

>>5556089
>life expectancy skyrockets ever since discovery of agriculture
>Humans didn't improve shit
what did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.5558725]

Games don't age, they are preserved in time from the moment that they are released. What changes is how we perceive them in relation to games released before and after them.

[Anonymous No.5558730]

>>5558581
>>5557768
sonyniggers

[Anonymous No.5558753]

>>5558696
It's objectively the exact opposite - human life expectancy in Africa is unknown because there are no fossils from this period. However there is no reason to believe they lived anything except the maximum human lifespan.

When humans started coming out of Africa about 70,000 years ago the life expectancy of people who had migrated fell due to harsher unnatural environments, however it was still decent. When the neolithic era came however, coinciding with the start of agriculture, was when life expectancy dropped to joke levels of 30-40 years old. This was when there was mass overpopulation, mass disease outbreak (diseases such as from bad sanitation or carried on rats that can't outbreak in a similar way in subsaharan Africa). This was all as a result of civilization. It's only in modern times that humans are finally fixing things so they can live a decent lifespan in europe, but they still have plenty of other maladies of civilization - obesity, arthritis, back pain, diabetes and so on.

Did you read in the news yesterday that scientists are being baffled by light therapy devastating alzheimers? The light Yep. It's almost as if conditions like alzheimers are also caused by the modern world, they just haven't found out how yet. It's not as simple as going out in the sun more but there is something about natural uv light that seems to break down the proteins that cause alzheimers.

[Anonymous No.5558787]

>>5555043
>Post quality posts and you'll receive quality replies.
lurk moar

[Anonymous No.5559308]

>>5558730
>>>/v/

[Anonymous No.5559410]

>>5559308
Segatard

[Anonymous No.5559420]

>>5554853
No.If a game is bad, then its bad, if its good, then its good. How hard do you niggers need that drilled in your head?
Time does nothing to games, comparing it to other games doesn't decrease its quality.

If a 2019 game copied a 1998 game and improved all its aspects, it doesn't make the 1998 game less good by comparison. All it means it that the 2019 game improved the 1998 formula.

[Anonymous No.5559424]

Games are composed of food factors
- the quality of the game (how does it look, how does it play, how hard it is, etc)
- the surprise (how different it is from everything you have seen so far)

A game can age when it drew the attention thanks to the novelty above the general quality. Mario 64 at the time was a novelty, playing the game was a mix of enjoying the quality but also the emotion of experiencing something completly new.

That experience of surprise is no longer there. What people felt at the time when the concept, graphics, and controls were new is no possible to be felt nowdays. And that emotion was an important factor of how you perceived the game.

If a game is more surprising than well built, as time passes and surprise disappears, the perception of that game will be worse, as surprise and novelty can no longer shield it.

[Anonymous No.5559540]

Donkey Kong 1 is only fun for 5 minutes, and even then, fun is a reach

[Anonymous No.5559591]

>>5554845
>>5554853
I agree with this anon except
Games do age: Diablo 1 - 22 years old
Diablo 2 - 18 years old
Diablo 3 - 6 years old

[Anonymous No.5560135]

>>5556089
sure, but then you get yellow fever and it kills you.