/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.3715797]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLOBaFwCKbI [Embed]

What do you guys think about this? It should be pretty amazing if you're seeing it for the first time.

For me the most interesting thing is the juxtaposition of modern graphical capability with retro game design sensibilities. If Lost Woods was completely reimagined from scratch today, it would be virtually unrecognizable. It would probably resemble an actual vast forest wherein getting lost is easy.

And you can say what you will about that, but personally I feel that is overall worse because it inherently prioritizes immersion over gameplay - the reverse of what OoT's Lost Woods actually does. And in a broader sense, and by extension, I find that sentiment applicable to all modern game design theory in general.

Look at what you're seeing here: it is fundamentally a puzzle maze, which looks nothing like anything which might conceivably occur in nature. It's a pleasingly bizarre fantasy of the real world, set within the underlying fantasy setting of the game itself. It is an approximation of an idea - a meandering forest maze, a classic retro game design trope - whose greatness as a game mechanic is directly linked to the fact that it is just that: an approximation.

Hardware limitations and retro design theory, and players expectations which were once rather different than they are today, naturally enhanced the gameplay by forcing devs to put it, first, because they didn't have the luxury of falling back on flashy graphics and story sequences to pacify their audiences between the actually engaging pieces of content.

This video perfectly illustrates the special charm of retro games that has been sadly lost to the ages. The realistic graphics highlight the strangeness of the surrounding environment, which was perhaps less noticeable back in the day when the graphics were also similarly unrealistic (but equally, if not more impressive at the time).

[Anonymous No.3716162]

Thanks so much for this, OP, I feel like a kid again.

[Anonymous No.3716229]

>>3715797

CEASE

AND

DESIST

WHEN

[Anonymous No.3716627]

>>3715797
Everything wrong about modern graphics in 1 video

—shadows and lights so harsh, it's like you're looking at a nuclear explosion

—poorly lit dark areas where you literally can't see anything, looking like a poor low light phone camera video

—needless exhibition of grass movement and other "tech"

—needless shining objects everywhere, making the game look like a christmas tree

—cartoon models have realistic lightning, bump mapping and so on, which obviously clashes with them being cartoon

And of course, what better game to pick for this than America's holy cow of retro video gaming, the game you can't say anything bad about or else you'll face consequences.

[Anonymous No.3716679]

>>3716627
Don't reply to me or my thread ever again.

[Anonymous No.3716690]

>>3716627
This is just a fanmade experiment without a sense of aesthetics, there's nothing wrong with modern graphics, just like in the old days it depends entirely of who made it, be it 2D or 3D.

[Anonymous No.3716693]

>>3715797
>If Lost Woods was completely reimagined from scratch today, it would be virtually unrecognizable. It would probably resemble an actual vast forest wherein getting lost is easy.
Funny you said that, if I remember correctly the beta idea for Lost Woods was exactly this.

[Anonymous No.3716696]

Shiny graphics doesn't amaze me anymore. People tend to think remakes of retro games as simply graphic overhauls when the only thing I can think is, specially in the case of 5th gen games, good framerate for 3D titles and maybe changes in control schemes

[Anonymous No.3716697]

>>3716690
> This is just a fanmade experiment without a sense of aesthetics
True

> there's nothing wrong with modern graphics, just like in the old days it depends entirely of who made it, be it 2D or 3D.
I have outlined several negative qualities of 3D graphics which are omnipresent in modern 3d games, regardless of the developer. They've been there for years, yet everyone seems to accept them as a given. For me personally, they've made the modern graphics impossible to enjoy.

[Anonymous No.3716739]

>>3715797
I think the truth is far simpler: Western devs have been the cancer that killed all good action games and destroyed the good ol' arcade feel. In the pursuit of "muh realism" and ironing out every bit of "outdated Japanese conventions", they've created the dullest games the industry has seen from Famicom's inception, bringing their plague of PC games to consoles.

They can't do good games because they have no imagination. They keep repeating the same mantra of "muh realism", "muh immersion" and "muh physics", and their target auditory plays along happily. Until this continues, you won't see "retro"-style games make a true comeback.

[Anonymous No.3716741]

Ocarina of Time's Lost Woods was always stupid, bare, and ugly. And yes I thought so even back when the game was released. Never liked that area in the game and thought the music was annoying to.

OP is trying way too hard to "prove" something with wordswordswords when you can sum it up in two sentences: the original layout was boring and simple, and the new effects are garish and gaudy. Mixing them together is the worst of both worlds.

[Anonymous No.3716743]

>>3715797
>It's a pleasingly bizarre fantasy of the real world
>It is an approximation of an idea
FYI this is incorrect, video games are not "approximations" or abstractions of anything, they are primitive virtual realities and should be understood and analyzed like their own little universes. There is no "real" Lost Woods that has been abstracted, just as Link's heart meter is not an abstraction of any "real" indicator of health. It's just its own weird world with weird rules.

[Anonymous No.3716816]

>>3716739

>muh psychics

If at least the psychics were good I wouldn't complain, but fuck. You can see 10yo games with better psychics than some titles nowadays, they think throwing ragdoll models everywhere will be enough

[Anonymous No.3716863]

>>3716816
My biggest gripe though is when it boils down to this:

> WOOOW look dude you can set things on fire in this game this is amazing this is 2017 right here
> Well what about the gameplay? The overall system, the mechanics, level/map design, etc.
> Lol who cares about this nerdy stuff, it's 2017 dude! Now look at this thing here! It fucking B-U-R-N-S, it's amazing! Haha I'm gonna spend 20 hours just throwing stuff into fire and see how it burns!!!

[Anonymous No.3716965]

>>3716739
>Western devs have been the cancer that killed all good action games and destroyed the good ol' arcade feel.
Even if they helped pioneer some of the shit those slant-eyed simpsons freaks would eventually try to take credit for?

[Anonymous No.3717013]

>>3716965
The point is not who took the credit for what. Western devs could and did make fun action action games. Except these devs have died long ago or turned into pale shadows of their former selves (see: Monolith, Id, Rare, etc.)

Japanese never gave a fuck about total realism, except in the few sims they make (and these can still be fun, like Gran Turismo). They still make fun games which kinda have parallels with older arcade games, like Dark Souls and Bayonetta. They simply know that to make an interesting game, you've got to keep it that: a game. They aren't afraid to keep games unrealistic or even completely virtual, like >>3716743 described.

And Western action devs just never got that, especially PC devs. They needed to be retardedly autistic about going "beyond" games all the time—and in result we got modern non-games. No, they can't just allow DBZ levels of silly fun. They need movie games, "interactive novels", or at least party games, but just not games per se. It's like they have unspoken rule: "video games are silly embarrassing fun for kids and we're here to elevate them by selling you something better in the guise of a game".

And I say fuck this, I like playing games and I want games, not movies or historic recreations. Gimme the arcade-style nonsense back because I liked it.

[Anonymous No.3717018]

>>3717013
>Japanese never gave a fuck about total realism
Explain Squeenix then.

>They need movie games, "interactive novels"
Explain JRPGs, especially those of the above company.

[Anonymous No.3717037]

>>3716743
>>3716863
>>3717013

I hate to admit it but I agree with you guys. I personally think there are more reasons for it (gamers who think they "deserve" "great" games or publishers who rather fuck over people because of hypercapitalism like what happened with mobile games, MMOs and all that shit or the whole indie scene where it's more about the nostalgia than the actual gameplay and technical aspects of /vr/-related games) but god, modern gaming really has become a place of decadence.

[Anonymous No.3717052]

>>3717018
By that logic, Id software would represent every American developer because they made Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. As if there were no American studios making other kinds of games. You might as well think every european developer was like Rare back in the 80s and 90s.

What makes you think every Squaresoft (notice I only mention Square and not Enix) game was about being an interactive novel? Let me guess, you only played FF7 or FF8? They made several RPGs that where presentation wasn't the only thing that made them interesting. Besides, even back in the /vr/ days games were advertized because of how incredible they looked or how great of a lore they had. It's not as if things suddenly changed in 2000.

[Anonymous No.3717060]

>>3715797
Is this your dissertation on modern graphics and how they negatively impact older game design?

>If Lost Woods was completely reimagined from scratch today, it would be virtually unrecognizable. It would probably resemble an actual vast forest wherein getting lost is easy.
That sounds pretty cool and would have fit very well into the theme of The Lost Woods. You are making assumptions that this would prioritize immersion over gameplay and that this would be a negative thing.

You could just cut out all your overwritten nonsense and say:
Limitations can promote creativity which may result in better games. (true)
Games aren't limited graphically as much any more. (true)
"I'm a faggot who thinks OoT is a great example of gameplay over flashy graphics and story sequences and will ignore comparing it to LttP because OoT is retro and I love my forest maze trope." (fact)

[Anonymous No.3717064]

>>3717018
>Explain Squeenix then.
They're designs are just Gackt "pretty boy" bishonen etc inspired, not realistic.

[Anonymous No.3717084]

>>3716739
Agreed

[Anonymous No.3717092]

>>3716965
>that salt
Unemployed auto union guy in Detroit or Grandpappy shot down in the Pacific?

[Anonymous No.3717457]

>>3717018
>Explain Squeenix then.
You misunderstood my point. I was talking about the setting and the gameplay in action games alone.

> Explain JRPGs, especially those of the above company.
JRPGs still have more gameplay and less cutscenes than some Western non-games, believe it or not. And the genre is MEANT to be cutscene heavy—unlike action games. The cutscenes serve a real point in them—delivering the plot, unlike in non-games where the point is to make games be like movies.

[Anonymous No.3717645]

>>3717037
Who's to blame for the decline of video games? I think PS3 is one of the main reasons. Check those sales figures from Japan:
>PS: 19.36 million
>PS2: 23.18 million
>PS3: 10.44 million
And that's adjusting for its longer lifespan. The only normal Japanese home console got outdone by Nintendo's casual box in Japan. This is where it all went downhill.

By comparison, DS sold 33 million, PSP did 20, and notice how both had damn fine libraries of games.

So we got some good games on portables. But on home consoles, where it matters most of all, it all went to shit. Americans got X360 which cut their dependency on Japanese devs. They got their sports games and online shooters, and then the big switch from PC to consoles happened and it covered their demands for games completely, drastically increasing the domestic market and supply.

Japanese patriots, on the other hand, mostly denounced X360 and then got stuck with a dilemma: stay till the end with the sinking ship of Playstation 3, or join the clowns at Nintendo. No wonder many of them stuck with PS2 till the end.

But now Microsoft has gone retarded with XBOne, and Nintendo went full retard with Wii U (as if you thought it couldn't get worse). And so far, Sony seems more preoccupied with the West than anything else, trying to make PS4 a new X360. 3.32 million of PS4s sold in Japan so far kind of confirms that.

How will Japanese industry recover? God only knows. So far it's looking pretty fucking grim for them. This might pretty much be it, especially with the whole talk of home consoles dying.

[Anonymous No.3717648]

>>3717645
>WELL UMMM UMMM UMMM I DONTLR ILEIKE SININTENDO SOOI MUMMM UMMM THAT MAKES IT CAUSALS MUMMJM @UJMNMM M @IUMNMMMMMMMMMMMMM UMMMMMM

[Anonymous No.3717662]

>>3717648
Your ad-hominem and implication of my bias doesn't change that Wii targeted casual auditory, and also was heavily marketed to kids and as a family-friendly entertainment just like all Nintendo products. Yes, perhaps my sarcastic comments make it harder to take my analysis seriously and are a bit improper, but Nintendo is sometimes hard to take seriously too.

[Anonymous No.3717698]

>>3717645
>The only normal Japanese home console got outdone by Nintendo's casual box in Japan
Just like poor Mark-III

[Anonymous No.3717803]

>>3716743
I disagree with this. The heart meter IS an abstraction of a real indicator of health, that being both (1) how hurt the individual feels and (2) how injured they look (amount of bleeding, limping, etc.)

1 is impossible to accurately represent since it's a subjective experience, so it can only be shown visually, with 2.

2 takes resources, many if done well, and also causes problems with the game's rating.

If Link is on his last heart, in the "story in your mind" of the game, don't you imagine him exhausted, beaten and bleeding? The heart meter is an abstraction of his overall wellness, and its job is to communicate to the player how much more punishment the character can take before collapsing.

It's a lot more abstract than something like the Silent Hill games which actually show the character bleeding to indicate their health, but it is still an abstraction of a real world idea.

[Anonymous No.3718097]

>>3717060
Go back to /v/ retard.

[Anonymous No.3718191]

>>3718097
Why would I want to do that? At least I attempted to add something to this thread.

[Anonymous No.3718217]

>>3718191
Yeah you added shit and plenty of it. Since you're so keen on putting the /v/ in /vr/ when the adults are talking, maybe you should just go back there where you belong - rather than lowering the level of discourse with your idiocy.

[Anonymous No.3718253]

>>3718217
I feel like you're disregarding my counterpoints I had with you essay you worked so hard on because I didn't try and use my 6th grade vocab list in every sentence.

[Anonymous No.3718327]

>>3715797
I watched this without reading ahead of the first line. I had this odd uncanny valley feeling where I sort of just felt distracted. Without my mind to fill in the gaps, I instead was drawn to the strangeness of the environment, especially where the artists took shortcuts, like the edges of the area with the skullkid. Of course, this is a demo, but anything like that in a final game wouldn't fly, and that severely limits what you could do with certain areas without it feeling absurd in a negative way. IE : You can no longer constantly be surrounded by canyon-like walls because it doesn't seem feasible that there would be no area to climb, in a game that, while very magical, now looks very real.

It's an odd thing to be sure. I don't think it would take away from the original, I would play through a game that played exactly like OoT but looks like this, and I would marvel at all the new graphics and the water/etc, but it wouldn't replace the feeling old games gave me where my own interpretations were made to fill in certain blanks.

That said, there are things now we can do with graphics outside of realism that are fantastic and follow the same sort of ideologies, sort of like what WindWaker did. I think Link going on a massive journey (like perhaps what BotW will be) is a great direction for Nintendo to go in with their updated hardware, and while it seems to follow modern tropes, it goes back to the earliest gameplay elements of all in Zelda. Just wandering around and stabbing stuff, sometimes going in a cave for a thing.

.... Ah, I have written far too much. I think these graphics are novel, but they do clash with old sensibilities. That said, if games all look like this in 10 years, there will still be games with older sensibilities, and there's a chance that it will no longer feel so odd. That there will be a new mental disconnect that is accepted - that something is 'gamey' or childlike, like perhaps the magical writing in certain novels

[Anonymous No.3718425]

>>3718327
Very well said. I had the same feeling watching it as well. Things like the canyon walls really just make it more jarring and apparent that it's basically updated textures with fancy lighting and effects. With the graphical processing power you could now have an actual dense forest instead of square rooms.

On the subject of BotW, I am liking the art style and hope it can deliver the same sense of exploration Link to the Past has.

[Anonymous No.3718576]

>>3718253
What counter points? Kill yourself retard.

[Anonymous No.3719953]

>>3717803
>If Link is on his last heart, in the "story in your mind" of the game, don't you imagine him exhausted, beaten and bleeding?
No. It's fine if you do, but that's not in the game, it's basically your fanfiction. It's wrong to say the heart meter is "really" representing whatever you're imagining. That's just your imagination dude, a video game does not have any reality behind what you see on screen. Well, not aside from the real-world aspects of how computers and screens work to make it possible.

[Anonymous No.3719968]

>>3717064
>GACKT
>not realistic
away with you and stay away

[Anonymous No.3719994]

The lighting is way too harsh in most places. It makes sense for Navi's lighting to be so harsh, because she's a ball of light with wings, but the bloom on everything else obstructs visibility. You can't even see Skull Kid.

Aside from that and the moving texture that is trees, it looks pretty good. I would legitimately enjoy a full remake of Ocarina of Time using this engine, even if Nintendo wouldn't let it past the planning phase.


Now do Wind Waker

[Anonymous No.3720092]

>>3719953
You sound like an autist, and a contrarian for the sake of not admitting you were wrong. The heart meter and indeed the whole health mechanic in general in games clearly is a representational metaphor for the character's health.

[Anonymous No.3720107]

>>3720092
>>3719953
I think you two have good points, but this doesn't really matter. You're arguing about a very pointless and ephemeral thing. If heart mechanic is virtual or not does not really add or take anything from a game. It's a philosophical question much in the vein like "what came first: an egg or a chicken". Zelda is not a cryptic philosophical statement, it's but a video game.

[Anonymous No.3720247]

>>3719968
gackt isn't realistic

he's dolled up so much it's not even funny

[Anonymous No.3721010]

>>3720092
>clearly is a representational metaphor
Mechanics are not metaphors, dude, you're just wrong. There are a billion things in games that don't make sense no matter how hard to try to come up with an interpretation of what they "really" represent. It's fine to say the hearts reprsent health because health in this case just means a numerical value, but it's nonsense to say the hearts represent Link's physical condition. Link does not have a physical condition.

I think it's funny you call this autism because I see it as anti-autism. Autism is the people that try to calculate the real-life physics of how strong Mario must be to smash bricks with a jump and a punch. Most video game mechanics do not easily map to real-life concepts.

[Anonymous No.3721098]

>>3721010
If you use this definition of a metaphore:
"a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract."
How is a health bar not a representation the main characters vitality? Not everything is a metaphor but i'm confused how that is not one

[Anonymous No.3722742]

>>3721098
I'm not sure how you're using "vitality" here but the heart meter simply tells you how many hearts you have left. It's a symbolic representation, but not figurative. It's like the fuel gauge on your car. It's a representation of how much fuel you have in the tank, but it's a very direct one and a simple ratio. I think you'd be really stretching the usage of metaphor to say that a fuel gauge is one. People usually use metaphor to mean a figurative relationship between dissimilar objects and abstract concepts.

[Anonymous No.3724512]

[Anonymous No.3725982]

>OoT

[Anonymous No.3726493]

Some of you are delusional.

Realism was always a main design point for games, back from the Odyssey.

Why else would It require skins, if gameplay was the main design point?

Also, developers always try to make the best with the hand they're dealt with, and the claim that "games are not as limited today" has no weight behind it. What is the standard here? How can you say that games are not limited graphically today? What trends or evidence suggests this? What makes you think the future won't look at look us with the same smug attitude we have today?

It's almost as if one should compartmentalize and study case by case (company X over timeframe Y prioritized Z on game ______) instead of making overreaching arrogant baseless claims that:

X killed gaming.
Y games prioritized __________.

Tldr: Stop grossly generalizing.