/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.1184891]

/vr/ how do I get into older game graphics? I want to really like the games but it's hard to look at them sometimes. Picture sort of related.

[Anonymous No.1184895]

>>1184891

Those graphics look fine.

[Anonymous No.1184903]

There is no help for you if you can't even stand the graphics of RE2, which really doesn't look that bad even by today's standards.

[Anonymous No.1184905]

I'm the opposite. I can't stand the current hyper-realistic graphics that you see all the time.

Stuff like, oh, Final Fantasy work because they're not striving for too realistic.

[Anonymous No.1184910]

>>1184905
I sure hope you aren't using Mass Effect as an example of games with "two realistic" graphics given there are aliens and shit running around. That puts it right in Final Fantasy territory right there, in the "realism" department.

OP if you don't like it, you don't like it. RE2 still looks good to me, but it's not a game I play for graphics. It's all about atmosphere.

[Anonymous No.1184912]

>>1184910

Realistic graphics, not realistic settings

[Anonymous No.1184916]

you better be trolling, that looks great

[Anonymous No.1184918]

>>1184891

That's a 'realistic' PS1 game and it looks fantastic even today.

[Anonymous No.1184917]

>>1184912

Gave you seen a Final Fantasy game in the last...uh, decade?

It's all been realistic. 9 was the last unrealistic looking game, not counting spinoffs.

[Anonymous No.1184923]

>>1184917

I never said it didn't look unrealistic. I said the graphics were realistic but not too realistic. They're still stylized compared to others

[Anonymous No.1184930]

Early console 3d looks like absolute garbage unless it was cartoon-y stylized.

2D looks fine, and stylized 3d can look fantastic still.

[Anonymous No.1184932]

>>1184891
I don't think it's really something you "get into." Either you understand that they were working with limited technologies and accept/appreciate the polygons, or you're just too used to the new stuff and doomed to think that all older games look like shit. Of course the easiest way to deal with this issue, as with most issues, is to stop whining.

[Anonymous No.1184937]

If you don't like them don't force yourself. Video games are about fun, if you're not having fun you should try some games you do like.

[Anonymous No.1184943]

>>1184918
It looks good today when played on the Dreamcast, yes.

[Anonymous No.1184959]

Just play them for more than 5 minutes at the time and you'll not notice it.

[Anonymous No.1187116]

How did you pick RE2 as an example? RE2 is like one of the select few ps1 games which looks better than its piers and manages to be less visually offensive to casuals.

[Anonymous No.1187152]

If you're talking about the low resolution pixelly mess, DOSBox and console emulators have D3D or OpenGL pixel shaders that do scanline emulation that can reproduce the type of display older games were designed for. Or you can get a big CRT TV or monitor for cheap or free sometimes if you trawl electronic repair shops.

I played the first Wing Commander in on a 24" LCD panel using DOSBox and it looked fine. If you don't like the style of games from the past then I don't know what to tell you. Retro games focus more on gameplay and story etc. than the games we have these days.

[Anonymous No.1187160]

>>1184937
This.

[Anonymous No.1187194]

OP, do you have an issue with the graphics while playing the game or just looking at the screenshots\videos?

Because if that's the latter, call bullshit on your brain magicks. I've seen it so many times, people discard a game based on screenshots\videos. The perception WILL change when YOU will be playing it, sometimes it looks nice but the gameplay is shallow, or it has dreadful early 3d but that might be the last thing you'll care about with the plot twists or loot hoarding. After you start playing - I don't know, 15 minutes, 2 hours - enough for the game to hook you up with its story\gameplay, you would forget about how it looks.

Examples of common (based on my personal experience on forums\irl) styles to dismiss based solely on the look of it (PC-centric mostly):
'cartoony' - (Torchlight, World of Warcraft)
early 3D (Ultima Underworld, TES1-2)
3D of 2000s (Gothic, NWN1, TES3, Wiz8, Deus Ex)
Cel-shaded (Dragon Quest VIII, Borderlands)
FMV (Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight 2)
WTF MY EYES (TES4 Bloom: The Game)

In short: brain tends to fuck around with us, just boot up the game and see for yourself

[Anonymous No.1187196]

try growing up you piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.1187197]

>>1187194

Oh, another example I forgot. Couple of years or so I wanted to get into Ultima series and U4 is usually adviced as the entry title. I looked at the shots and thought 'nigga you MUST be shitting me' (and I'm pretty tolerable to old DOS games overall).

But after I started playing it, damn. Keeping those notes, reading the spell manual, finding towns on the map, so much stuff to do. Needless to say my initial perception of the visuals could go fuck itself.

[Anonymous No.1187202]

>>1184891
If you don't get it you never will. Stick to angry birds.

[Anonymous No.1187668]

I never understood the mentality of people like OP. It's sort of like people who can't watch old black and white films or films that 'look dated', why can't people appreciate media in the context of when they were released in artistic mediums? You're denying yourself untold amounts of great experiences, you'll never watch Rififi or play Jersey Devil, and that's just sad.

[Anonymous No.1187690]

>>1187668
Same, I think graphics stopped impressing me sometime after Oblivion. The constant circlejerk around having more polygons and looking more realistic is what made me increasingly skeptical about PC gaming.

[Anonymous No.1187702]

>>1187197
And that's the enhanced version.

[Anonymous No.1187704]

>>1187197
The visuals of old games bother me significantly less than the awful as fuck UIs, camera angles or shoddy controls do.

[Anonymous No.1187728]

>>1187668
>it's sort of like people who can't watch old black and white films or films that 'look dated'
Meanwhile I just watched the entire 1964 Addams Family series and loved it. Some people are just incapable of realizing that technology cannot and should not be judged by how it is decades later.

[Anonymous No.1187738]

Comparing a game to an old black and white is silly because no matter how "dated" you think an old movie is, it's still closer to what we have today than a game in the late 90s is.

I mean really, do people in 1950s movies look like they're made of blocks? Exactly.

[Anonymous No.1187752]

>>1187690
Don't quote my post to promote your pro-console agenda, I game exclusively on my PC despite owning a PS3 and 360 because current/next gen consoles are moron boxes.

[Anonymous No.1187760]

>>1187752
>because current/next gen consoles are moron boxes.
lol

[Anonymous No.1187806]

old low res graphics look great on an old low res crt TV.

[Anonymous No.1187840]

I actually had the same problem when I was replaying Tenchu for the first time in 10 years. Then I decided to stop being a faggot and just deal with it. Took me an hour or two. It's really not that bad.

[Anonymous No.1187862]

I personally think the graphics of 8/16 bits consoles aged far better than the PS1's as they don't seem as dated and ugly with a current perspective of HD. RE2 isn't a great comparison example as it indeed does have a pleasing aesthetic, but other PS1 games are absolutely hideous, take the PS1 Final Fantasy games as a reference. Even if they are a cult classic, the characters look like absolute shit and the environments aren't much to look at. However, I deem the SNES Final Fantasy quite enjoyable graphically even now. So I say OP should stick to the a video game such as the SMS or MD in order to get used to old graphics, as eventually he would get used to anything, even PS1 games, which are generally blatantly ugly whilst the 8/16 bit retain a certain beauty and complexity, yet their age can't be denied.

[Anonymous No.1187873]

>>1184891
Those graphics are fine. They don't have to look ultra realistic.

Now stuff like early PC games is just a pain to look at.

[Anonymous No.1187894]

>>1187862

>PS1 Final Fantasy games
>Even if they are a cult classic

you think Final Fantasy 7,8, 9 are cult classics? and you really expect anyone to take anything you say about gaming seriously?

[Anonymous No.1188369]

Silent Hill's graphics make shit scarier.
I was going to post a monster but saw Lisa and got sad.
I hate how I was forced to run from her when she realized what was up.
She really needed a hug.

[Anonymous No.1188390]

Try games with an isometric perspective with pre-rendered 2D backgrounds, stuff like Infinity Engine games: Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape, and basically most of the other old RPGs: Fallout, Arcanum, hell even Diablo 2.

For me I really love the art direction of a lot of games that utilise these types of graphics, they just manage to pull off a look, a feel and an atmosphere that is hard to do with 3D, and unfortunately not many devs are doing it any more.

[Anonymous No.1188398]

>>1188369
Bitch would have got blood all over your clothes though.
Fuck that.
This is a new shirt.

[Anonymous No.1188420]

>>1184891

Here's an easy suggestion: don't shoot for realistic graphic games at first. Some of the hand-drawn style games are easier on the eyes and easier to adapt to, especially if you like anime.

Personally, I like Moon Crystal. The artwork is nice and clear, the animation is lovely, and it all flows great on modern systems. You can play it here:
http://www.retronintendogames.com/m/mooncrystal/

pro tip: you can hang off tree limbs and ledges. Pres up to climb up once you get a hold on it to climb up.

[Anonymous No.1188447]

>>1187668
>play Jersey Devil

That game sucked, even when it came out.

[Anonymous No.1188458]

>>1184891
Learn to appreciate the game for something other than the graphics is all I can say to you. When you play RE2, learn to appreciate the fact that without it's success, RE4, 5 & 6 would probably not exist. RE2 is more than just the graphics, it also offers gripping atmosphere, and reasonably challenging gameplay to all who are new to survival horror. As for the graphics, they serve their purpose, and that's all I ever needed from them. I'd rather even love to see the return of pre-rendered backgrounds myself.

[Anonymous No.1188465]

>>1188458
>RE2, learn to appreciate the fact that without it's success, RE4, 5 & 6 would probably not exist.

You make it pretty hard for me to appreciate RE2 under this aspect.

[Anonymous No.1188467]

>>1188390

I agree with this entirely. They just had that perfect atmosphere to them.

[Anonymous No.1188471]

>>1188465

>Hating 4

Everything else yeah pretty much

[Anonymous No.1188486]

>>1188465
Well, I just assumed that OP is one of those new generation kiddies who fawn over the new gen RE-games while hating on the classic old ones.

[Anonymous No.1188501]

>>1184917

FFX looks like anime and XII looks like watercolor gay phantasies

[Anonymous No.1188591]

>>1184891
>/vr/ how do I get into older game graphics? I want to really like the games but it's hard to look at them sometimes. Picture sort of related.

Are you playing on a digital screen?

Because those are awful. Switch to a CRT TV or CRT Monitor. It will work wonders.

[Anonymous No.1188593]

>>1188501
>XII
>Watercolor
The day Final Fantasy resembles Amano's art style will be the day I'll actually have some respect for Square

[Anonymous No.1188595]

>>1188369
>She really needed a hug.

She was seconds away from getting really stabby.

[Anonymous No.1188620]

>>1184891

You're emulating on a shitty LCD display aren't you?

[Anonymous No.1188630]

>>1184891
Don't play old video games.
Don't watch black and white or silent films.
Don't listen to music that came out before the war.
Don't read books written this century.

[Anonymous No.1188847]

>>1184891
Use your imagination

[Anonymous No.1188851]

>>1188630
>Don't watch black and white or silent films.
>Don't listen to music that came out before the war.
>Don't read books written this century.

None of these are even remotely similar to playing a game with blocky graphics, but thanks for playing.

Before anyone says anything, I think RE2 looks fine.

[Anonymous No.1189783]

PS1-era games look a lot less shitty on a real CRT TV IMO. I'd take pictures but I'm feeling lazy (and don't have RE2 on me)

[Anonymous No.1189813]

>>1184891
If you have a problem with low-poly realistic graphics, play the elder scrolls series backwards; if you can stand the shitty faces in oblivion and morrowind, then you're good

[Anonymous No.1189889]

>>1184905

yeah I dig what you're saying.

final fantasy to me will always be little munchkin sprites with big heads and cute funny expressions.

[Anonymous No.1189896]

>>1184912

derp

[Anonymous No.1190062]

>>1188630

Give me one silent film that doesn't suck complete ass.

[Anonymous No.1190097]

>>1184891
Just play the game as if it came out yesterday. Letting the graphics get to you is akin to discarding a good novel just because the font happened to irk you.
Graphics can be ignored. Even obsolete or dysfunctional mechanics can be gotten accustomed to. Up to a point that is.
I always tell people to not force themselves onto vidya or force vidya onto themselves. Some people just can't get used to it no matter how hard they try. And there are those that are actually put off by what the current gen has to offer in the aforementioned departments.

[Anonymous No.1190105]

>>1187752
All consoles are moron boxes. The only thing good about them are the exclusives, which has nothing to do with specs, only marketing.

Apart from the handhelds, there's only one truly unique console: the Wii, and that's why it was so popular initially. Sadly, the industry fucked up big time and just used it as a ps2 substitute for low-end ports. This failure to utilize THE most unique hardware in gaming history is more descriptive of how stale games are than brownanbloom very mature games aimed at 13 year olds.

[Anonymous No.1190107]

>>1190062
Silent Movie

[Anonymous No.1190118]

>>1190105
>All consoles are moron boxes. The only thing good about them are the exclusives, which has nothing to do with specs, only marketing.
Go compare home consoles of the 1980s and 1990s to home computers of the same time. As soon as framebuffers became viable, computers moved to them as the most general solution to video output. This was ludicrously expensive for games. Consoles stuck with character-mapped scrolling backgrounds and sprite engines, and were able to do action games that could never have worked on a "dumb" framebuffer at the time. Check out Abrash's graphics programming black book. He brags about making 20 sprites happen "quickly" on a 386. That's insane when the "16-bit" consoles could push dozens of sprites via their hardware sprite engines with a quarter the CPU performance and 1/10th the retail price.


(Since the Voodoo Graphics board, however, the leader in accelerated video has been the PC consistently.)

[Anonymous No.1190127]

>>1190062
Chaplin movies are quite good, same as Buster Keaton's.

I guess that slapstick humor ages pretty well, everyone likes it.

[Anonymous No.1190130]

>I want to like this band
>I just think they sound horrible
>halp

[Anonymous No.1190137]

>>1190062
>>1190127

Metropolis
Battleship Potemkin
Nosferatu
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Artist

That's a start. Get working pleb.

But anyways, you will notice however that they are "different". Some people can't get over that and will declare them terrible. Same with old games.

[Anonymous No.1190154]

>>1184891

Are you emulating using a digital display? That's likely the cause. Try a CRT TV, or failing that a monitor. It will work wonders.

If you are using a digital display, try RetroArch and then some shaders. CRT Geom is what you want to try. People bitch about shaders because of screenshots, but it works well in motion with some distance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr8zLbqAAFI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqEZCAxh4Sw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l_bfkiUNHo

Retroarch download:
http://emulation-general.wikia.com/wiki/RetroArch#PC_Versions

Guide:
http://emulation-general.wikia.com/wiki/Using_RetroArch

[Anonymous No.1190259]

>>1188390
Is that D2 with an HD mod? Looks amazing.

During the late 90s when PC gaming was exploding I was lucky enough to have gotten handed down an IBM desktop with 150MHz CPU and 16MB RAM, but it couldn't really power any of the new games coming out. Just kept playing Quake, Caesar and Civilization 2 again and again when not busy with the Nintendo consoles.

Now I really want to go back and experience those pretty isometric games I kept seeing in stores and read about but never got to play. Is there a good guide with recommended mods available for Diablo/2 like there is for Planescape? Should I play both starting with the first? (probably will do this anyway)

[Anonymous No.1190265]

>>1190062
nosferatu
caligari

[Anonymous No.1190291]

>>1190137

None of those are any good, they were just the best movies they had before good movies were invented

[Anonymous No.1190296]

>>1184891
Learn to look for and appreciate the technical accomplishments (if they actually exist, that is) of the game you're playing.

For example, Mechwarrior 2 came out in 1994, yet it had absolutely awesome 3D graphics and sound for what it was.

Wing Commander came out in 1990 yet I just played it for the first time a few weeks ago and it blew my balls off how accomplished its graphics and gameplay were. It got a LOT done for what little resources they must have had.

Having played Turok 1 all the way through just a few years ago I was surprised to realize the way you really felt like you were Turok, due to the way they worked the camera (such as the sidling effect you got when climbing ladders).

[Anonymous No.1190295]

>>1190291

Whatever. I'm done responding. Go to /tv/ if you want to troll about movies.

[Anonymous No.1190308]

I personally find the RE 1, 2 and 3 pre-rendered backgrounds gorgeous.

[Anonymous No.1190576]

Advising him to play on a crt is pointless, because playing on a crt doesn't improve the visuals, it hides them. If graphics are that important to you then it's probably best not to bother and play something new

[Anonymous No.1190590]

>>1190576
CRTs provide natural anti-aliasing, blurless motion, color blending, transparency, correct aspect ratio and a myriad of other graphic improvements just as the developers intended.

[Anonymous No.1190597]

>>1190308
Same.

[Anonymous No.1190604]

>>1190590
>just as the developers intended.
Stop making shit up. No developer has ever said that. Ever. Nor have any directors said it. It's only said by marketers.

[Anonymous No.1190609]

>>1190604
>Stop making shit up. No developer has ever said that.

>implying developers didn't make the games to be seen on those TVs

Whether or not you SHOULD is an entirely different matter. Personally I don't give a shit

[Anonymous No.1190714]

>>1190590
Like I said, crt's basically hide any poor graphics. You can replicate this crt 'anti aliasing' by using an emulator with artificial scanlines to hide jagged lines. That's it. Just like the rest you mention, they are relatively minor effects where the devs mainly used the crt's shortcomings to their advantage and don't significantly improve the appearance of low res polygons and pre rendered backgrounds

[Anonymous No.1192265]

>>1190590
>>1190714

Main thing is that CRTs with original hardware display the game at native resolution with no scaling. Using RGB can display the image very sharp. Pre-rendered backgrounds look so crisp.

>You can replicate this crt 'anti aliasing' by using an emulator with artificial scanlines to hide jagged lines.

Shaders are the poor man's CRT. They're... okay. But nothing special.

[Anonymous No.1192301]

Honestly you get used to it while you play. I have trouble with modern games because there's too much to look at and my eyes hate working.

[Anonymous No.1192813]

>>1184891

That's like saying you want to get into cheese without the smell, or you want to enjoy a fine wine without the alcohol.

[Anonymous No.1192819]

>>1192813
the alcohol isn't really what comes to mind when thinking about not liking the taste of wine but yeah

there's updates/remastering/ mod packs with a lot of the more iconic older games but they almost always turn out sort of jank. if you want the experience you just gotta take the "bad" with the good

[Anonymous No.1192829]

It's simple.

Get the fucking idea out of your head that games need good graphics.

I swear, this is the #1 goddamn problem with modern gaming and why so many people like modern garbage just because the fucking graphics are pretty.

Go play a text-only roguelike for a while. FORCE yourself to play it and other very old games. (Good) 2600 games. C64 games. Hell, Apple II games. Old (70s/early 80s) arcade games.

And only those games. Try to pick ones that are considered good, not just any random crap.

You'll gain a new appreciation for gaming and probably begin absolutely hating most modern games like any sensible person raised on old games does.

[Anonymous No.1192860]

>>1192829
>>1192829
games need to be not painful to look at. if you went back to check all those old treasures they were usually the ones that looked comparatively nice at the time.
also, a sensible gamer hates most game in general. old games have a reputation as being better because we only remember the good ones (or the notoriously bad ones) in the first place. if anything, playing a shit ton of old games will give a new-found appreciation for what we take for granted nowadays

[Anonymous No.1192940]

>>1187194
NWN doesn't look that bad. It's not great, but not completely terrible, here's a dose.

[Anonymous No.1192951]

You don't "get into" graphics. You don't PLAY the game because it looks good. It can look fucking great, but if you "get into" it, you probably enjoyed some aspect of PLAYING the game. I just can't wrap my mind around someone not being able to enjoy a game from the 90s primarily for its graphics. You get invested in the process of besting the game. Maybe you enjoy honing your reflexes and coordination, and you have a lot of fun when you're able to handle more and more of what the game throws at you. Maybe you're invested in the characters, and you want to see them through their story. Maybe you get a sense of curious excitement from exploring every nook and cranny of the world to find all the hidden treasures. In the case of your example, you want to get deeper into the police station and see what horrors and answers are hiding behind the next locked door. The point is, when you're "into it," you're taking part. You are working toward a goal within the game, and if the graphics adequately represent what they are intended to be, they aren't hurting the game at all, and by the 90s the characters and environments in 2D games were VERY identifiable and often beautifully crafted. (RE2 has a lot of detail in its environments. Say what you will about the blocky resolution, but that police station feels very lived in, and its halls tell a story. In your screenshot, you can tell those guys went above and beyond to make you feel like you were in a real person's office.) 3D games took a while to get out of the uncanny, blurry valley, but again, if you were playing a good one, it didn't matter that everyone had awful, square heads because your attention was focused on the task at hand.

[Anonymous No.1193309]

>>1184891
You stop being a pleb that's how

[Anonymous No.1193330]

>>1190259
You should play through Diablo 2: LoD vanilla with some friends first.

Then you can move onto the large array of balance and content mods/tweaks.