/vr/ - Retro Games

Time perception is funny.
I only got into 4th gen in early 1994, so already kind of the last year of the generation, yet in my mind, I spent a LOOOOT of time playing SNES and Genesis, and from the time I first got my SNES (probably around april, '94) to when I got Donkey Kong Country (november of the same year) it seemed like a fucking lot of time to my kid self.
Nowadays years go by as if they're months, compared to when I was a kid.

>>9978428
The Mega Drive was already 3 years old when Sonic 1 came out.

Exactly. Some things make sense to feel a little off about. Mega Man 6 and Mega Man X came out nearly at the same time but Mega Man 6 feels older because "NES." But some games also have a certain "personality" I guess. It feels weird that Mega Man X1 came out so close to Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country, which appropriately feel further removed from the earlier lineup of SNES games like Mario World and Zelda.

I remember seeing it available for clearance so fucking much I couldn't possibly forget.

>>9978428
Bonk's Adventure for NES came out in 1994, four years later than the original TG16 game and on older hardware. It's very bizarre that it even exists. SEGA CD and Turbo CD games in general can easily be mistaken for Saturn and PS1 games despite coming out years earlier.

>>9978657
the NES was just that big and plenty of people were still playing it in the mid to late 90s. People have forgotten just how huge it was

>>9978685
Yeah, 8-bit in general had an incredibly long tail in places like South America

Ocarina of Time was released in November 1998. Quite a ways into the 3d era of a console gaming.

Final Fantasy VIII came out almost exactly the same time as the Dreamcast (in North America anyway). This tends to knock me for a loop because my brain always wants to place it about a year after FFVII, forgetting that games like FF Tactics and Ehrgeiz were filling the gap for Squaresoft in 1998.

Something similar happens with FFIX and Chrono Cross because it feels like they came much later than FFVIII did when in reality they were all effectively smushed up against each other. Really it just feels like there was less time between FFVII and FFVIII than there was in reality and more time between FFVIII and Chrono Cross/FFIX than there was in reality.

As someone who has been doing research on the actual dates various games came out for the PS1 / PS2, it's very shocking. You can see in real-time which companies were able to advance the tech quickly, which failed, which only caught on late into the console's lifestyle and which hung back a generation to try and pick up any scraps.

>>9978851
Ok this is hard for me to wrap my head around. Man, if sega Hadnt shot themselves in the foot so much before, the dreamcast was a beast. Then again, they could have also taken their time and released something that could compete more. Oh well, what ifs are what ifs.

>>9978862
Yup, I also think delays factor in as well. Given how fast technology moved, a six month delay could make a game look weirdly out of place. Some Working Designs releases were like that. The two Lunar remakes on PS1 came out waaaay later than you'd think, mid 1999 and December 2000 respectively.

>>9978657
>SEGA CD and Turbo CD games in general can easily be mistaken for Saturn and PS1 games
what planet are you from

This thread isn't about games it's about people's faggoty perceptions.

>>9978685
I rented this game and it made me so mad I almost threw up.

>>9978995
Exactly. My perception is that you're a faggot.

It's all just a matter of months, but I could've sworn that
A. Goldeneye 64 was older than StarFox 64, and that
B. Star Fox 64 was released when the N64 was more than a year old
While putting my old game boxes into storage the other day, I was surprised to see that GE64 was actually compatible with the rumble pack, which prompted my realization the SF64 was the older title.

>>9978897
Idk, maybe it's because the Lunar games and Snatcher were literally ported to Saturn and PS1

Not to mention Mickey Mania, Starblade, Road Avenger, Time Gal, Corpse Killer...

>>9978897
Not just SEGA CD and Turbo CD, but 32X and arguably even some SNES games as well

>>9978851
>Something similar happens with FFIX and Chrono Cross because it feels like they came much later than FFVIII did when in reality they were all effectively smushed up against each other
Probably has to do with you being fairly young at the time. A few months for a kid feels like an eternity. I remember eagerly awaiting Twilight Princess back in high school - it felt like the thing was delayed for-fucking-EVER, but it actually released just three and a half years after WW. The gap between BotW and TotK felt like about the same gap as WW to TP, but really was almost twice as along.

>>9978897
kek

The Genesis already being out when a bunch of famous NES games launched is a big one for me. Sega Genesis - 1989. Super Mario Bros. 3 - 1990. I was stupid young so obviously my total awareness was limited but it's crazy to me that a fuck ton of giant NES games were hitting after the 16-bit generation was already active.

>>9979268
Timeline’s specially fucked in Japan since the Famicom not only competed with the Mega Drive for 2 years but also with the PC Engine for 3. Bunch of huge titles on the Famicom coming out around this time too.

>>9979346
The NES's lifespan is weird in general. It's crazy as an American to think of it as existing in Japan since 1983. That's like the age of the Colecovision in my mind, which feels way older. But even then, the majority of NES entries that we consider the core console defining games didn't really start showing up until 1987, when the system had already been out for like a year and a half even in the west. I think of Mega Man as a product of the 80s but three of the six games are from the 90s.

>>9979268
That's where the "Genesis does what Nintendon't" marketing started because the NES couldn't do what the Genesis could.

>>9979410
Yeah, the Genesis originally was marketed as an arcade-at-home system but it took a while for it to catch on because despite the graphical prowess nobody really liked Altered Beast all that much.

>>9979115
I had this game but never played it, I just wanted to look like I played obscure JRPG's.

>>9978710
it wasn't just South America, it was Europe as well. The NES+The Smurfs Bundle came out in 95 in some west European countries, meaning that in 95 stores had new bundles of brand new NESes.

>>9979346
There were still Famicom games being released in 1993 and even 1994, but I think it was similar to Europe as in by that point they were mostly targeted at pre-teens

>>9978995
that's all anything can ever be about nigro

Microsoft has now been in the console business for longer than Sega ever was.

>>9980724
Yeah but time after 2001 is lighter, so it doesn't count.
1 year in the 90s equals to 10 years in the non-retro era.

>>9979870
Play it now, it's great.

>Driver 2
It feels firmly in the PS1 era but it came out in November of 2000, after the PS2 was already out.

>>9980426
The NES had a second wind around 1993 and 1994 thanks to the top loader and Nintendo publishing a bunch of games themselves that would otherwise have stayed in Japan, like Mega Man 6. They also reissued some games like Zelda and Metroid. My guess is that they wanted to exploit the increased interest in budget gaming that made the Game Boy so attractive even during the height of the SNES. Sega tried something similar with the Genesis 3 though way less successfully.

>>9978428
My time perception with the PS1 is completely fucked up, I got one super late (1999) and only had it for 3 years before I got a PS2 but it felt like forever.

>>9978720
I think most people don't really realize that OoT was already a late gen title, it came out the same year the Dreamcast did.

>>9980951
PS1 had a long tail also, the late ps2 releases feel very different than early ones. Hell, compare ridge racer 1 on ps1 to R4.

Things just weren't like they are today, that is all. Back then games and consoles could have a long lifespan and still be find new in stores years after coming out. These days people were led to believe everything is outdated trash after a year, you can thank the iphone mentality for that.

>>9980962
Oh yeah the PS1 is one of the consoles where you can notice the difference between early and late gen titles the most, along with the NES. Funnily enough, I can't really notice that as much in the PS2 and SNES.

>>9978428
>I keep forgetting that Mega Man X is from 1993 and not closer to the SNES's launch.
Super Mario Bros released 2 years into the Famicom's lifespan.

>>9980961
I think this happens to people because the media coverage at the time wouldn't shut up about "Zelda 64." We were seeing alpha screenshots of the thing for a good two years before it actually released, putting it in people's heads as far back as the N64 launch.

>>9980997
Are you sure about that? PS5 is technically mid-cycle now but because generations move so slowly and see so little innovation year to year people still think it's brand new since everything looks like a launch title these days.

>>9981120
PlayStations are usually like that.

>>9981126
PS2 wasn't. You couldn't confuse GTA3 and Jak II for launch titles.

>>9978428
Well the thing about gaming back then that always impresses me to some extent is just how many game consoles and handhelds Sega actually had before they left the hardware industry. Because of nostalgia many of us often forget there was more than just the MD/Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast. I guess those of us who really know of them would also mention Game Gear. However there was a lot more than just this since there was also Master System, Nomad, SG-1000, CD, and 32X. As a kid I was unaware that Sega had also released all of these consoles in addition to what most seem to remember them most for. Releasing shit like the CD, 32X and Saturn so close to one another was a huge factor in why they no longer make consoles. I often feel that the industry though was overall made worse with Sega being forced to end hardware business.

>>9981120
>PS5 is technically mid-cycle now
Sure as hell doesn't feel like it. The console gens feel much longer overall to me starting with gen 7. Back then they felt much shorter. I think the fact that there seems to clearly not be any potential for a competitor to rise up that isn't Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft also plays a factor in this. Back then I feel as if even if a kid wasn't hyped for things like 3DO, Jaguar or Town's Marty he still could perceive them as a viable competitor to whatever his favorite was. At least I felt that way. In the 90s to me it felt like anyone can realistically break into the industry and be good enough to get excited about. Once Microsoft entered and Sega existed though it just wasn't the same anymore. Just look at how much of a joke Stadia was despite its backing. It feels to me like we will have this same 3-way dance of a war for another 50+ years at this rate. It just isn't exciting. Nothing can beat them. Even if it does one day happen the industry as it is today is fucking awful anyways.

>>9978428
Kirby Super Star releasing in 96.Crazy because it was one of the most well known games on the system but came out when N64 was starting. Feels like it should have come out in 94

Arcade games having better than average graphics is a no brainer, but the way Truxton II is drawn really makes it feel like a late 90s Playstation/Saturn game than a 1992 release.

>>9981203
Maybe true for some early launch titles but as soons as 2001/02 you had a lot of games that could have easily passed for later releases.

>>9981120
The chip shortage completely fucked over this gen's timeline, I would honestly throw every notion you may have of a console gen's lifespan out the window at this point, I don't think we have any precedent in past gens for the situation the current gen is in.

>>9979138
soul vs soulless

>>9981825
>licensed shit
soulless vs soulless

>>9978430
I noticed plenty of this because I've gone back and used the release dates of games to figure out what grade I was in when I played them and where I was living etc.
It feels like I played a ton of games and spent all my time playing them, maybe that's true to some extent, but when I actually count them up per year and how many hours I would've played them it's not all that many or that much.
I think the difference is how much I anticipated them, how new everything was, which made them feel special, and how often new games were getting released. A lot of games that are called the best of all time or at least best in their genre came out just in 94-95, not to mention ones that were at least a big deal to me like Power Rangers and Earthworm Jim - just on the SNES.

I remember it was a running gag in magazines and on the playground that Capcom couldn't count to the number 3 because they kept doing a bunch of Street Fighter IIs and Street Fighter Alphas but it was only six years between the original SFII and SFIII. Meanwhile it was eight years between SFIV and SFV.

>>9981959
I just read a review of Street Collection for the ps1 today where the reviewer called Super Turbo an old game.


Super Street Fighter II Turbo came out in February 1994.
Street Fighter Collection came out in December 1997.

A little less than four years between, and the only ways home players had to play the game were the 3do version (far from arcade perfect, stranded on a system few people owned) or the GameTek PC version (extremely janky).

The SF Collection version wasn't arcade perfect either, but it was pretty close and it wasn't so much an "old game" as it was a game that had been too long coming to have a decent home version on a system people actually owned.

>>9982101
This happened to Street Fighter III, too. It simply took too long for a home port to come out and so it effectively flopped. Third Strike only really got big once Evo started getting a lot of attention. Virtua Fighter never entirely recovered from VF3 being arcade only for so long. But I think you hit the nail on the head right there. It took way less time back then for something to be considered "old." People's attention was always being pulled to the next big thing and there was little patience for looking backwards, even if it was only a year or two. You can find a lot of game reviews from back then that would dock points just for something being 2D.

>>9982178
Now people desperately want their games to feel old and retro and they feel like think tank generated California corporate soulless husks, the environment in which games exist and were created in has changed, and trying to artificially capture that soul more often then not flops.

>>9982178
The more I read old game reviews the more I see streaks of current day gaming journalism. The poo-pooing over fighting games during their peak being a big part of it.

>>9982197
It's frustrating for sure. In my mind, "retro" games were always innovating. That was kind of their thing. Whether it was mechanically or graphically, a new game was always trying to impress. Now all these "retro-inspired" games feel like cookie cutter trash. "Oh, look how similar our game is to SOTN!" Like, you stupid son of a bitch, SOTN was so beloved because it dared to break the mold set by previous games and did a bunch of shit that was impressive for it's day.

>>9981061
I honestly think that it makes a lot of sense that thats the case for the NES and PS1 in particular. Both are consoles with relatively long lifespans during which devs initially were trying to grasp games for a type of home hardware that wasn’t quite like anything they had dealt with before so you can really tell the point by which programmers and artists were just trying for the games to work SOMEHOW and for the games to look like SOMETHING and the point by which they really knew how to squeeze every bit of power out of those machines (You can notice this kind of thing happen for other consoles in a simular situation, such as the 2600)
I think this is especially true for the NES, since cartridge chip advancements and stuff like the FDS meant there was pretty huge intra-generational hardware improvements and the fact that there was a visible industry-wide shift in game design from an arcade based one to a more modern one for console games during this period. Still, the change across the PS1’s lifespan in terms of visuals and game design cannot be understated.
Anyway, SNES and PS2 also had a little of devs trying to get used to the hardware, but most had honed in their actual craft at this point, so that’s why the early-late title difference is so much smaller.

>>9981697
I felt this way about Marvel vs Capcom when it first came out in arcades. It's difficult to explain but it was just beautiful and I had played X-Men vs SF and other capcom vs fighters previously.

>>9982218
It's a shame because it's a medium that allows you to do almost anything your imagination can came up with and instead we're stuck with remakes and uninspired poop.

>>9982286
NES and PS1 went through a transitional phase because their success is specifically what sparked a change in game design. The earliest NES games more closely resembled what video games looked like before everyone Super Mario Bros. changed the landscape. Same with PS1 and games like Crash Bandicoot, FFVII, and Tekken 3.

>>9982343
I just wish so-called modern retro games actually looked like the games they're pretending to be throwbacks to. There are very few games in that category that make me feel like it could pass as, for example, a long lost SNES game I just happened to have overlooked until now. Pic related is one example that actually pulls it off.

>>9982383
Oh yeah, now I’m reading back my post I guess I worded it as if the game design evolution happened independent of the technology, but that is a very important point. They were definitely very important enabling technology for game design of that sort to be conceived. Stuff like Mario 1 would not have existed (or at least very differently from how we know it) on just about any other contemporary home hardware or an arcade setting (Sorry but I just had to suck off Mario 1, playing all the Famicom platformers that came before it REALLY helps you appreciate that game)

>>9982218
Aside from 1 VR game, I feel like with the current tech with vidya these days plays a factor in what you said as well as the oversaturated market, in that it's just easier to pull stuff off now and nearly every mechanic is shares something in common from previous games n' such that are tweeked/solidified so it's not that impressive so it ends up being more of a graphics race and how mich stuff you can cram into a game at this point. Talanetless hacks plays a role too for sure. Though I feel I'm being a bit reductive saying and it's more how something it's pulled off and does it do it well rather than what it's borrowing/copying.
Then again who am I to talk, I just play what catches my eye. Hopefully that all made sense.

>>9978685
>>9978710
>>9980426
I didn't even get an SNES until local rental places stopped renting NES games, and that didn't happen until 1995. It wasn't like today with clear generations and known players. Back then the videogame industry was still more of a gamblers market. No one really knew who would be successful, and once a winning horse appeared everyone would ride it until it died.
First was the 2600, which was still halfway alive when it killed the home console market in the US in '83. Then the NES ruled until the early 90's. It wasn't until the 16-bit consoles appeared and the market was split more or less evenly in favor of Sega that people realized home consoles weren't a fad. From then on it became less about picking the one winning horse and more about an arms race between the major players.

>>9979397
Keep in mind a lot of people didn't have an NES at launch. By the end of '86, they had only sold 1.2 million NES consoles in the US total. By the end of '88 they reached about 10 mill. They hit 27 million in 1990. 30 mill in '93. Two thirds of NES owners didn't have one until at least 1989. Ask people what their first NES game was, and SMB is common. Ask what their second was, and you get a wide range. Some people started in the black box era, some in the Zelda/Metroid era, some in the Zelda2/TMNT era, some in the SMB3/DuckTales era, and some even in the Kirby/DuckTales2 era. I didn't get one until DuckTales had already been released.

>>9982485
1989 was a huge year for the NES. I think it makes sense too since its when older millennials were finally old enough to want a video game in the first place. Anyone older than that, the youngest Gen Xers would probably have asked for a Commodore 64 rather than an NES around 1986. It seemed like there was a boom that happened around 1988-1989 because prior to that the kids who would become the core NES audience were still shitting in their diapers and older kids had an more established alternative that was attractive to parents because it was a full computer.