/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.2199629]

So, what are some games and stuff that got retroactive recognition or were liked but are now seen as mediocre to bad?

>reading through magazine circa 2000
>article about how Spyro is babyshit and how a lot of hardcore gamers hate the series for being a cashgrab
>nowadays Spyro is an icon and well liked
>look at gamefaqs polls from the late 90s to early 2000s

>everyone hates Pokemon
>current time
>Pokemon is the second coming

You can really tell the generation difference between gamers when you read old stuff. The kids and infants of then are the current gaming fandom so the views differ a lot.

[Anonymous No.2199759]

Majora's Mask was hated by most fans back in the day.

[Anonymous No.2199771]

Super Mario Bros 2 was mixed to praised upon release. Nobody really hated it back then, like they do now. The hate started when Americans learned of Doki Doki Panic.

Sources: I was there.

[Anonymous No.2199776]

>>2199771

And it's stupid because Doki Doki was originally a Mario game In the first place. Even if it wasn't most of what we know from Mario comes from SMB2 USA

[Anonymous No.2199778]

>>2199629
Are you saying that people liked Pokemon and hate it now, or the opposite? Because Pokemon has always been tremendously popular.

[Anonymous No.2199785]

>>2199778

With kids. People who use Gamefaqs are 13+, usually 18+, so they're not in the demographic. 19 year olds in 1998 often saw it as a stupid fad.

[Anonymous No.2199802]

>>2199759
Isn't this the other way around? Back in the day MM seemed to be well received by both critics and fans but nowadays it seems to be hated for not being a carbon copy of OoT at least by "fans".

[Anonymous No.2199804]

>>2199802
I have literally never heard that opinion about Majora's Mask from anybody.

[Anonymous No.2199818]

>>2199802
Majora´s Mask have been always hated by fans and not fans due to its game mechanics, which even for 2000 were somewhat retarded.

[Anonymous No.2199823]

>>2199802

Very few people complain about it nowadays

[Anonymous No.2199835]

>>2199785

I was 13 when I got Pokemon, I realized the whole "gotta catch 'em all" advertising and merchandising was stupid and meant to cash on kids, I personally never was a big fan of Pokemon, but the game was enjoyable. Played a lot with other 2 buddies my age, at the time it was an innovative concept, being able to transfer one monster to another from GB to GB, etc. I was also aware of how popular Pokemon was as a videogame by reading gaming magazines, I remember reading about "Pocket Monster, the game that drives japanese kids crazy" in some 1997 magazine, showing a picture of 2 kids playing with the link cable on tokyo streets.

Anyway hating on Pokemon because of being a popular kids franchise hasn't changed really. Yes, you've got the 20 year olds who grew up with pokemon and hold it as the best thing ever today, but you've also got edgy 15 year olds who never played a single pokemon game and hate it because they're 15 and edgy. Nothing really changes.

[Anonymous No.2199836]

I have seen several people legitimately saying they loved Legend of Legia which was widely regarded as a steaming pile of trash when it came out. And to a lesser extent Legend of Dragoon which wasn't bad per se but very mediocre.

I've wondered about this for a while and think I've figured it out. I think that by the time those games came out the people making conversations about them saw them as being uninspired rehashes of tired genre conventions. But that's because the people making the conversations back then were older and more experienced with games.

However, there were lots of young people at the time for whom those were some of their first RPG experiences and so they were still blown away by them and remember the games fondly.

[Anonymous No.2199845]

>>2199835
I got Pokemon in my first year of college and it blew me away at the time. Practically everyone was playing it to so we'd sit around at lunch battling and trading with random people. Then IVs and DVs started getting figured out and training and breeding became serious business. That was a hell of a time.

[Anonymous No.2199846]

>>2199802
Majora's Mask was fucking panned back in the day, and everybody who was alive and playing games back then will remember that. It's considered a cult classic now.

[Anonymous No.2199849]

I remember people acting like this game was the second coming of Christ when it came out. Nowadays, not so much.

[Anonymous No.2199850]

>>2199629
Spyro is shit. I am disgusted whenever I see it praised today.

>>2199771
Another good example of this is Zelda II: Adventure of Link. It was a huge seller back in its day and very well received by gamers and critics alike. I know because I was fucking there. Yeah it was different from Legend of Zelda, but it was still beloved. It wasn't until years later when more casuals entered the gaming market and looked back at Zelda II as this very different game that it was called "shit" or a "failure." Those that shit on it either haven't played it, or got their shit pushed in when they tried to play it, got pissed, and gave up. This is even true for fans that jumped on the bandwagon during the SNES days with aLttP. At least they could look back at LoZ as a "simpler" version of aLttP due to similarities of design, even if that's not true. Zelda II was too much for them.

[Anonymous No.2199853]

Mother 2 was considered a piece of shit back in the day, but now days every body and his mother say that is one of the best games ever.

[Anonymous No.2199856]

>>2199802
Nah. MM was pretty much hit with a load of indifference due to a lot of factors (Expansion pack required, blatant copy paste of OoT models written off as "a parallel universe") and sold half as much as Zelda 2, the supposed "black sheep" of the franchise.

And on that note, this modern spin that Zelda 2 is a "black sheep" rustles my jimmies.

[Anonymous No.2199860]

>>2199785
Can confirm; I was in my late teens in the late 90s and to this day pokemon seems like the dumbest shit. I'd have expected it to be Barney the Dinosaur-tier, like nobody would admit to ever liking it the second they aged out of the target demographic.

>implying my childhood fads were better

Yes, reptilian martial artists and cars that turn into robots are better.

[Anonymous No.2199863]

>>2199860
>reptilian martial artists and cars that turn into robots are better.

But kids still have both today thanks to Michael Bay!

[Anonymous No.2199865]

>>2199856
>sold half as much as Zelda 2

Not such a fair comparison

[Anonymous No.2199870]

>>2199865
Or is it? It says a lot for how much we skew things looking back.

>Sold half as much as the apparent "least liked" the franchise has
>Couldn't even sell on a console with no games

But in the history books, Majora's Mask is just "a cult classic beloved by all".

[Anonymous No.2199874]

>>2199860
>Guy who was hooked on Poke in college here
The thing about Pokemon is that even though it had that cutesy look to everything, the underlying game is one of the best JRPGs and by far the best JRPG with vs multiplayer that there had ever been at that point. That's why even though it was aimed at kids, it hooked so many older people as well.

Also I kind of liked by that point that it was finally a JRPG where you weren't going on a quest to save the world from a giant world-threatening evil. You were just a kid going around exploring this massive world and collecting weird party memebers.

[Anonymous No.2199875]

>>2199863

TMNT 2012 is popular, not the movies. I don't think Transformers ever stopped making cartoons either

[Anonymous No.2199876]

>>2199860

Well, we were lucky it was Konami who worked on the TMNT games and not Acclaim.

[Anonymous No.2200317]

>>2199870
I think he means more that the NES had double the install base.

[Anonymous No.2200335]

>>2199853
Was it? I thought it was just very scarcely known before the hipster retro craze. Have any articles from back in the time or something? Just being curious.

[Anonymous No.2200353]

>>2199836
Legend of Legaia was the fucking shit at my high school. They made that mist seem like a Zombie apocalypse in a fantasy setting. It was awesome.

[Anonymous No.2200354]

What was the feedback on the Zelda CD-i games at the time? I was born in '88, but I don't think I knew anything at all about them until they started to get e-fame around the mid 2000s.

[Anonymous No.2200356]

>>2199853
>>2200335
The most negative thing I read about Earthbound back in its day was Jeff Lundrigan's review in Game Players (he was the magazine's JRPG expert) and even then it was more lukewarm than overly negative.

Earthbound was pretty heavily advertised during its release and got extensive Nintendo Power coverage. I would argue its failure has less to do with its obscurity and more to do with people unwilling to pay $80 for a JRPG. Bundling the game with a strategy guide was a mistake.

[Anonymous No.2200364]

>>2200354
Something like "lol" iirc albeit more forgiving toward lousy FMV, not great games but anybody who was getting paid to review cdi games had seen far worse

[Anonymous No.2200450]

>>2199860
>toads
>reptiles

Open a biology book you pleb.

[Anonymous No.2200470]

>>2200335

Earthbound was disliked, not Mother 2. The horrible advertising is to blame

[Anonymous No.2200472]

>>2200354

Positive

[Anonymous No.2200491]

>>2200450
He's talking about Turtles, you know, Ninja Turtles? Goddamn Rigby this is what you get for not having a high school diploma

[Anonymous No.2200497]

>>2200491

[Princess Sevenleaf !AnVbXjgZco No.2200780]

>>2200450
>>2200491
Read it in their voices.

[Anonymous No.2200836]

>>2200470

Earthbound IS Mother 2.

[Anonymous No.2201687]

>>2200356
That doesn't make any damned sense. Dragon Warrior 2 cost me $65 when I got it back then, and Dragon Warrior 3 was $70 when it first came out. I had no issues with the price of EB. It was $40 when I got my copy, since I waited a little while for a price drop. Being a console RPG gamer back then, you got used to paying out the ass for games.

What turned gamers off was the borderline-NES quality graphics. When Square is throwing things like FF6 and CT out there, all EB could really impress people with was the overworld/combat system.

[Anonymous No.2201734]

>>2200470
babby says whut

[Anonymous No.2201742]

>>2200836
Pretty sure what he meant was that the game was disliked in America but not in Japan.

[Anonymous No.2201818]

Street Fighter 3. People didn't like that almost all the old characters were gone, they were mixed on the mechanics, and at the time everyone was more interested in 3D games so 2D games were starting to be looked upon as outdated.

[Anonymous No.2201825]

>>2201818

True, and most people liked the Alpha series more.
SF 3rd strike then got popular over the years thanks to emulation and mainly thanks to the PSN/XBLA Online edition, making Alpha be less popular.

As of late I've noticed Alpha regained a bit of popularity, maybe due to the Alpha characters on Super/Ultra SF IV.

[Anonymous No.2202204]

>>2201818
Ironically though among the hardcore SF community, 3 is considered the best game in the series at this point.

[Anonymous No.2203505]

i bought spyro games for my girlfriend

<spoiler>it's a girls game</spoiler>

[Anonymous No.2203523]

>>2199836
look at when those games came out though.
you had FF7 and FF8 by 2000, also CC and other square titles. LoD was actually praised by mags for being a pretty good effort on sony's part what with the FF7 juggernaut still on everyone's top 10's.

LoL though, i don't remember much talk of by anyone. i think critics liked the change in the battle system, but the story and such was tired and true RPG paint by numbers and that is more than likely the reason why people called it trash when it came out.

[Anonymous No.2203528]

>>2201818
Street Fighter 3 is a meme game. Most people on the internet who say it is better than Street Fighter IV are people young people who watched Daigo's parry video.
Street Fighter 3 made Street Fighter irrelevant, Marvel vs Capcom and KOF became the popular games.

[Anonymous No.2203529]

>>2200356
i still have my issue. back then stuff between a 60%-75% was a "rent it" for me, problem was that no rental store had a copy of EB and the next time I saw copies of it was Xmas 97 when Best Buy was dumping all their overstock of EB, had a fucking wall of copies for 25-30$.

[Anonymous No.2203531]

>>2201825
It was the Anniversary Collection that catapulted the fame of Third Stike and caused people to get balls deep into GGPO dev, but it was already fairly popular on the Dreamcast.

Street Fighter 3 was panned by the fighter scene (for pretty much the same reason as vanilla SF4 ie it was an unbalanced pile of shit) and Double Impact was practically unheard of.

tl;dr Third Stike was popular WAY before PSN/XBLA.

[Anonymous No.2203532]

>>2203528 is right

i remember a lot of people wanting to play DC SF3 after watching the daigo vid. lucky for me, i had both double impact and 3s, though i think i like DI better.

[Anonymous No.2203536]

>>2203528
KOF became a popular game.

It's always been popular in Eastern territories and South America, but it has almost never been popular in the west until XIII almost made it relevant.

XI was big for a very small amount of time, but it faded pretty fucking fast.

[Anonymous No.2203546]

>>2199850
>Spyro is shit. I am disgusted whenever I see it praised today.
Spyro is a decent game for a 6-7 year old. It's not that fun as an adult though... I think the did a great job on the animations and environments though. They should've made a more fun/harder game.

[Anonymous No.2203550]

>>2203505
CTRL+S

[Anonymous No.2203579]

>>2203536
>mfw i forgot to greentext

[Anonymous No.2203629]

>>2203546
Spyro games are decent when it comes to actually taking them on as a completionist, that's essentially what the 'real game' always was. The main quests themselves were always way too simple to complete, you have to at least go for the optional end game bonuses and search everywhere to get the most out of them.

[Anonymous No.2203630]

>>2199856
>>2199802
MM was always a highly controversial game that split tons of people's opinions. There was never any general consensus as to what to make of it.

[Anonymous No.2203631]

>>2199860
>like nobody would admit to ever liking it the second they aged out of the target demographic
That's true enough of the anime, but the games were always completely different.

[Anonymous No.2203634]

>>2202204
>among the hardcore SF community, 3 is considered the best game in the series
You're lying out of your ass and never talk to anyone in the actual core community

[Anonymous No.2203780]

>>2199860
I was around 8 years old when I got my hands on pokemon blue for the first time, and it was fucking cool and all the kids where I live played it, even the older ones (that were in their late teens).

The sticker album and the tcg was a huge hit too.

[Anonymous No.2203789]

>>2199860
>>2203780
I got Pokemon Red when I was 8. My older brother (14) always said how fucking stupid and childish Pokemon is until he actually played and enjoyed it.
Most teens hated it because they thought it looks childish, probably because of the monter designs or because the marketing was (and still is) aimed for children, not for teens.

[Anonymous No.2203852]

Yoshi's Story was absolutely hated upon release. Was considered too cutesey, too easy, and that 2D platformers were a dead genre, so Nintendo had better start doing more things like Banjo Kazooie. Fast forward nowadays, and 2D platformers are far more popular than 3D ones.

[Anonymous No.2203863]

>>2203536
>but it has almost never been popular in the west until XIII almost made it relevant.

You're right and it makes so sad. God I fucking hate XIII and it's new ugly ass falcoon ripoff manga style. Athena and Yuri look completely isiotic now.

[Anonymous No.2203873]

Castlevania 64 is the weird one.

Thought to be average at release, then got the reputation of Worst Game Ever, and now slowly coming back to a slightly above average cult classic.

[Anonymous No.2203942]

>>2203852
On that note, the intial reaction to Paper Mario was dislike for numerous reasons: No Squaresoft, change of art style, "It's 2D! I don't play N64 for SNES games!"

[Anonymous No.2204037]

>>2203942
I don't know anyone who had that reaction to Paper Mario. It was almost universally liked from what I saw.

[Anonymous No.2204047]

>>2204037

[Anonymous No.2204049]

>>2204047

[Anonymous No.2204082]

>>2204047
>>2204049
Lol okay well if you were taking your news from Nintendo Power then we were clearly seeing it from different perspectives.

[Anonymous No.2204092]

>>2203942
>>2204047

> the intial reaction to Paper Mario was dislike
>Nintendo Power letters section as proof

>Electronic Gaming Monthly 9.33/10
>Eurogamer 9/10
>Famitsu 33/40
>GameSpot 9.5/10
>IGN 9.0/10

God this is too fucking funny. Please do another.

[Anonymous No.2204136]

>>2204092
>Reviewer scores over public opinion

[Anonymous No.2204140]

>>2204136
>A handful of dumb kids who sent mail to nintendo power
>public opinion

[Anonymous No.2204143]

>>2204136
>Taking letters to Nintendo Power as actual public opinion

Reviewers aren't perfect by any stretch but their opinions are worth a hell of a lot more than those are. Plus, it's an awesome game as time has now shown.

[Anonymous No.2204145]

i think when it came out it wasnt that popular

[Anonymous No.2204152]

>>2204140
>>2204143
Way to miss the point of this thread.

[Anonymous No.2204161]

>>2204145
Not retro, also it was one of the best selling, if not the best selling, not-licensed, not big-name GBA game.

>In 2001, Golden Sun won the Nintendo Power Award for best Game Boy Advance game of the year.

It also was always shit

[Anonymous No.2204164]

>>2204152
We're not missing it at all. We're just saying that because a few kids who read Nintendo Power didn't like it, that's doesn't mean it wasn't generally widely well received (which it was).

[Anonymous No.2204194]

>>2204161
>It also was always shit

Spoken for truth. I bought that game due to good praise and wow was I disappointed. Hours of mindless drudging and then it ends on a cliffhanger with zero resolution.

[Anonymous No.2204204]

>>2199836
>Legend of Dragoon
There's always been people who said LoD>FF. It's because while it borrowed heavily from RPGs everywhere, it came out as a different atmosphere with a battle system that some legit enjoy.

And more important for the time, it wasn't FFVIII.

[Anonymous No.2204206]

>>2204194
Part two is much better. It's still not the best thing ever, and if you hated the gameplay there it's mostly more of it, but it's got a loooot more time and a definitive ending.

Dark Dawn didn't fare as well.

[Anonymous No.2204216]

>>2199629
I remember Playstation Magazine saying there was going to be a battle between Chrono Cross and FFIX much akin to how people still have wars over FFVI and Trigger.

They also said Spec Ops was shit and made a tirade every month it ended up on the top lists.

[Anonymous No.2204228]

>>2203531

Yeah, that's why I said it got popular thanks to emulation, as you said, and then it thrived on the online edtion on PSN, is what I meant.

[Anonymous No.2204230]

>>2203634
It's divisive, people love it or hate it

>>2203528
>>2203531
I didn't think anybody particularly liked any version of SFIV, the FGC just has to bend over and take whatever Crapcom gives them

[Anonymous No.2204240]

>Namco Museum
Now remember, this is a little before MAME was really really good and well known for all older arcades (with the only big thing being that Namco translated Phozon's text). Nowadays it's barely a blip on the radar because we have the real thing, and the museums aren't that great when you can just look up the same thing on Google.

[Anonymous No.2204535]

CDi Zelda

Hated to the max by the fans in the past
But then YTPs happened

[Anonymous No.2204540]

>>2199849
Well, critics loved it. Don't know of many players who did. Not after owning it for a month, anyway.

[Anonymous No.2204570]

>>2204540
I've seen quite a few people who absolutely love it. I personally hated it compared to Banjo and the 2D DK games.

[Anonymous No.2204625]

>>2199771

SMB2 is hated?

The most I heard is that sometimes people call not being a "true" Super Mario title, wnich today is even more bullshit as several characters who are now absulte staples in Mario like the Shy Guys and Bob Ombs originated in that game.

But I never heard people say that the game itself is "bad".

[Anonymous No.2204631]

>>2199853
My understanding of EarthBound's reception was that it sort of got covered up by Donkey Kong Country not only coming out before it, but being graphically more appealing by comparison.

At least, it wasn't the almighty gaming relic people consider it to be now. Nowadays, you can't really find anyone who flat-out hates it.

As for another game, Jet Set Radio certainly seems to at least be a little more well-received now than it was back in the day.

[Anonymous No.2204640]

>>2204631
>My understanding of EarthBound's reception was that it sort of got covered up by Donkey Kong Country not only coming out before it, but being graphically more appealing by comparison.
Thing is that the kind of people who play DKC are not the kind who would play a game like Earthbound. Earthbound was targeted at JRPG fans who played stuff like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI and Breath of Fire.

[Anonymous No.2204846]

>Past: Just another Doom port to consoles that no-one bothered to check because people had the real deal on PC with hundreds of custom maps to play
>Present: lol the music sucks because X person said so, worst doom port ever

[Anonymous No.2205562]

>>2199853
That's odd. Everyone I know who grew up playing it loved the piss out of that game. Literally everyone.

The only person amongst us who ever said "eh, it's okay" back then and continues to say so today is me.
It was largely ignored, but well-received by those who actually played it.

>>2204640
I owned each of those games. Also EB. Didn't like CT much at all (or EB, for that matter) though I did everything there is to do in both games. BoF was simplistic but I liked it. FFIII was pretty okay. DKC, however, was pretty damned good, but not as good as its sequel, IMO.

>>2204631
Again, everyone I know who owned DC and JSR fucking loved the game, myself included. I've never met anyone who disliked it.

>>2204540
>>2199849
I don't know anyone who even owned it. N64 for me and my friends back in the day was for multiplayer gaming, not pixelmasturbation. I don't think any of us owned a single one-player game for it besides Mario 64, Starfox and the Zelda games (which I greatly disliked then as I still do now). And a handful of us who happened to own Paper Mario. I've never played it.

>>2199629
Two things, both Castlevania related:
The hate for both Cv2 and SotN. While I never thought too highly of SotN, specifically because the first time I played it, I immediately noted how derivative it was (specifically of Super Metroid, duh), I remember it being hugely popular amongst everyone who wasn't me. I enjoyed it at the time, mind you, and never thought it was bad and still don't, but today, it seems to get a lot of hatred.

I knew a few people who disliked Cv2 but no one that hated it back then. Everyone I knew felt ambivalent about it or liked it.

I somehow doubt all the haters were just keeping quiet back then, waiting for a certain nerd in my area to air his distaste for the game on YT and give all these dissenters a common, unified, casually profane voice.

[Anonymous No.2205710]

>>2204049
>Yoshis story for the N64
I didn't even realize that was sprites back then.

[Anonymous No.2205850]

>>2204535
To this day I'm impressed how much content people managed to create from just a couple sentences from the FMV cutscenes.

Anyway more related to the thread is it just me or was Snake's Revenge generally seen as a good game until Metal Gear Solid came out and afterwards it was seen as shit because it wasn't a "true" Metal Gear game and because Kojima wasn't involved with it?

[Anonymous No.2205868]

>>2205850

Yeah, the NES Metal Gear port is indeed pretty bad when compared to the original, but considering it was a rushed port, it came out rather decently. Yes, people liked Metal Gear on NES, before they realized a better version approved by the series creator existed.

Snake's Revenge on the other hand is a much better game, and is indeed underrated now, mainly because of carrying the MG1 port stigma and "not canon" stigma.
Ironically, it was thanks to Snake's Revenge that Kojima got motivated to make Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake on the MSX2.

[Anonymous No.2205883]

>>2204846
I checked it out upon release and thought it was bad, especially the music.

This isn't new.

[Anonymous No.2206759]

>>2205883
>This isn't new.

well, I personally don't remember arguing about how the music sounded like farts with my friends in the DWANGO days

[Anonymous No.2206791]

>>2199846
It was absolutely not "panned". It got positive reviews from the gaming press and was fairly well liked. Majora's Mask just had the unfortunate position of being in Ocarina's massive shadow.

[Anonymous No.2206829]

>>2201687
You were in the minority dude. JRPGs did not have mass audience appeal in the US back then. I can see Earthbound being an especially tough sell for people that weren't familiar with the genre.

[Anonymous No.2206839]

>>2203634
What is considered the best SF game then? I was also under the impression that 3rd Strike is the 2D Street Fighter game most favored by the tournament crowd.

[Anonymous No.2206879]

>>2206839
Super turbo...

[Anonymous No.2206950]

>>2202204
The tournament community didn't give that much of a crap for Street Fighter III until 3rd Strike. They were pretty lukewarm towards New Generation and 2nd Impact, which explains why they never got any ports besides that Dreamcast compilation.

[Anonymous No.2207021]

>>2206839
>What is considered the best SF game then?
Really depends on who you ask.

[Anonymous No.2207396]

>>2205710
Yoshi's Story was the first time I would ever see and understand what "damage control" was.

>N-no, there's still tons of stages even if it has half as many as Yoshi's Island
>It's not easier! Uh, only a real pro will get THE HIGH SCORE!

[Anonymous No.2207670]

apparently Diablo and Diablo 2 used to get a lot of shit. Not that I remember.

[Anonymous No.2207706]

>>2204240
>YOU MEAN, PLAYERS CAN DOWNLOAD LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF OLD ARCADE GAMES FROM ARCHIVE.ORG FOR FREE?
>THAT MEANS THEY STILL WANT TO PLAY OUR OLD ASS GAMES
>PERFECT, LET'S TAKE 10 RANDOM GAMES AND RELEASE A COMPILATION FOR 40 BUCKS
>WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG

[Anonymous No.2207710]

>>2207396

I don't think it's damage control. Yoshi's Story really gets more shit than it deserves.
Sure, it's not nearly as good as the mighty Yoshi's Island, but the stigma it has to carry BECAUSE of being a Yoshi game is too much.

Had Yoshi's Story been an original game with an original character, it would be remembered as a sweet little 2D platformer from the 5th gen. Nothing ground breaking, but it wouldn't be insulted like it is now.