/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.4671096]

Video games where objectively better in the past then they are now

There may be good games coming out now but they will never hold a candle to the games that came between the mid 80's to around the late 90's. This is because most things try to recapture the past, repeat a tired formula or "innovate" by taking a step back. It's either imitation or a regression

You cannot prove me wrong

[Anonymous No.4671103]

posting this on a retro gaming board.. so brave. what you have written is mind blowing. everyone is trying so hard to prove you wrong but you're too smart.

[Anonymous No.4671110]

Gee, I never thought of it that way.

Thanks for turning my life around.

[Anonymous No.4671112]

>>4671096
Nah. There are still good games coming out. All eras have had a hefty share of great games. You're just jaded, or more likely I'm falling for bait. Well done, Man. I feel so bad now.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4671121]

>>4671096
>Video games where (sic) objectively better in the past then they are now
>You cannot prove me wrong
The barriers to video game publishing have never been lower than they are now and the demand has never been higher. So many video games are released every freaking day now it absolutely throttles the imagination. It's statistically impossible that the best video games of the past are better than the best modern video games the only thing that makes them seem that way are hindsight and/or nostalgia. It's just EASIER to say "Yeah, Super Metroid and Final Fantasy 7 are great" than it is to wade through a bunch of modern shit to find the games that are literally made just to blow your mind with how incredible they are as if they're made just for you but I assure you they exist.

[Anonymous No.4671132]

My personal favorite years in gaming take place between 1999 and 2005. You cannot prove me wrong, because it's just my opinion on a strictly opinion based topic.

What's the point of this blog post, OP?

[Anonymous No.4671140]

>>4671121
Not to mention most games then and now were shit bordering on shovelware, its just easier to find the gems with years of hindsight.

[Anonymous No.4671191]

>>4671096
dude did you even play dark souls 3 shit was fucking tight

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4671238]

>>4671140
The proportion of bad games to good is even higher now because it's easier for idiots to release games so it's not inaccurate even to say that the average quality of games now is probably lower and there are way way more really bad games too for that same reason but it also means the greatest games are really really great.

[Anonymous No.4671263]

>>4671121
>>4671140
You guys talk as if modern games were all splendid and great, when in reality most of them just follow a standard and majority is mediocre as fuck. And, unlike the past, games now are aggressively trying to get as much money from your pocked as they can. At least back then you bought a game and that was it, no micro transactions or DLC.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4671272]

>>4671263

[Anonymous No.4671292]

>>4671238
The majority of every games library for any console or computer is shit.

[Anonymous No.4671302]

The sixth generation was the culmination of everything the video games industry was heading towards. It was the last generation that focused on gameplay and could actually experiment without having over-inflated budgets forcing developers to play it safe in order to still turn a profit. There wasn't too much online for consoles so DLC was still extremely limited and were closer to expansion packs than microtransactions.

[Anonymous No.4672112]

>>4671121
>>4671272
A tripfag lecturing others is always grand. Your opinions are worthless as usual too.
It's not "just nostalgia" if, by YOUR OWN admission in >>4671238 there are more idiots releasing games today. It means proportionally games today are objectively worse than in the past because the proportion of idiots has increased. So not only there are more bad games, but there are more games too, which makes it even harder to find the good ones.

You're already sickeningly wrong at this point, but we live in the real world. If you're a game developer and you see that bad games with better budgets outsell you just because it's nearly impossible for you to market your game, will you still insist on developing games, or leave the industry to the idiots?

It doesn't matter that Geneforge games are good, they play approximately as good as old Infinity Engine games, their writing is only somewhat inferior, and their graphics and marketing are infinitely inferior to those games.
To be good Geneforge would need a bigger budget, but because of all the idiots with enough money for good art and marketing the series will never make a quality jump, because guess what, publishers with money know they have to compete with marketing first, IE budget, long before gameplay, even more than in the past. This just drives the point down that games today have a ridiculously low likelihood of being as good as games with higher technical barriers to entry. An obvious conclusion that proves that modern games are SHIT compared to ones from 20-30 years ago.

[Anonymous No.4672124]

The Witcher 3 has surpassed any old school game I have ever played in terms of gameplay and storytelling.

Are most modern games shit? Yes, but they don't have to be.

[Anonymous No.4672167]

>>4672112
>A tripfag lecturing others is always grand. Your opinions are worthless as usual too.
And an idiot appealing to ad hominem is also always grand that doesn't seem to have worthwhile opinions to be shared, especially for someone who use the (buzz)word "objectively".

[Anonymous No.4672236]

>>4671096
What "objective" criterion are you using exactly?

[Anonymous No.4672303]

>>4672167
>objectivity
>a buzzword

Good job outing yourself as complete idiot. That's not an ad-hominem, by the way, but an objective statement stemming from your unironic use of an oxymoron.

[Anonymous No.4672323]

>>4671096
>where

>>4671238
The opposite of this is true.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4672364]

>>4672112
I already pre-emptively covered your point before you made it but you decided to ignore that.

Basically, it hinges on a person's perspective of the argument "video games are better". If you're a negative person like the loudest most obnoxious Anons it's certainly easier to find more terrible games now even if the cream hadn't already risen to the top in the past. However, there are incredibly amazing games released now so a person with a positive perspective can easily see that there are better games now. I don't know how much more clearly I can state this.

[Anonymous No.4672381]

There are more games now that allow me to battle huge 3D monsters in real time.

[Anonymous No.4672394]

>>4672381
>There are more games now

Fixed that so it's more universal. Daily reminder that people who insist there are no good modern games don't actually like games. They just like nostalgia for games.

[Anonymous No.4672414]

There's always a few gems here and there, but from a subjective viewpoint I would call these times the worst ever regarding games.
Not for the lack of "good" games but for the current errant "Zeitgeist" and huge corporate-ness of big titles.

I agree with OP, in so far, that most gaming concepts/novelties have already had their ultimate carrier(reference game) and current titles seem to be just a well polished part of an airy entertainment industry. The "charisma is" gone... which I personally felt was in the early to late 90ies and partially based on lack of resources/established mainstream presence and technology.

[Anonymous No.4672424]

>>4672414
IT depends a lot on what your tastes are and what kind of games you think are good. As someone who finds platformers boring, the 8 and 16 bit eras were chock full of mediocre, derivative games I had no interest in

[Anonymous No.4672473]

There was a ton of shitty games released back then, I'd argue that the average game released back then is worse than the average game released now. However, we only remember the very best from each generation so naturally we remember the NES for Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda, not Bible Adventures and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. In 30 years time, the Nintendo Switch will be remembered for Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, not Vroom into the Night Sky.

Older games also have the benefit of existing first, which means it was easy for them to be innovative or unique. Admittedly most modern games will just be utilising concepts that have been used in other games, but that's to be expected.

[Anonymous No.4672554]

Meh.

I think every console has around the same number of games worth playing and games not worth the time.

[Anonymous No.4672557]

If you only care about arcade style games this is correct. You're lucky to get one good game a year.

Other types of games, the mileage will vary.

[Anonymous No.4672580]

E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy is the last game where I felt the same spirit as old titles
It's not the only good modern game (it's not even great objectively) but it has a heart you just don't see anymore

[Anonymous No.4672648]

somehow people tend to think that e.g. in the 90s each and every game was worth trying out and yet 90% of all released stuff on all platforms was utter crap
for instance, speaking of PC, the mid 90s was the time of "let's make another pinball game; what do you mean by saying there were 5 pinball games released just last month? let's do it anyway!"

[Anonymous No.4672657]

Music or cinema, things that grow in popularity and can make money eventually turn to shit.

[Anonymous No.4672667]

>>4672657
Why?

[Anonymous No.4672670]

>>4671096
Mostly true

[Anonymous No.4672675]

>>4671096
video gaming was arguably best in 6th gen. definitely the best variety of games, and arcades still came out with hot new titles

[Anonymous No.4672684]

>>4672648
>somehow people tend to think that e.g. in the 90s each and every game was worth trying out
No faggot, nobody thinks that. The point isn't that every game or even most games were good, but that the best games were, on average, much better and there were more games worth playing as a whole.

[Anonymous No.4672791]

>>4672394
There are more games now?
You have no idea how many games were around in the 80s and 90s on c64, Speccy etc. Hundreds of the bastards.

[Anonymous No.4672793]

>>4672657

Exactly - there's a golden period in any endeavour and it's most likely in the early stages when one has honed the skills enough to successfully capture the latent talent without too much interference.
Add to that the no pressure-/preset attitude and a rather small ego - and you got a recipe for possible success.
The "industry factor" has a detrimental influence as it contaminates the creators with outside factors(fans, monetary interest, trends, competition, regulations) that should, ideally, be irrelevant to the thing produced.

[Anonymous No.4672796]

>>4672684
>The point isn't that every game or even most games were good, but that the best games were, on average, much better and there were more games worth playing as a whole.

The opposite is true

[Anonymous No.4672830]

>>4672112
I love geneforge, thanks for talking about it

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4672840]

>>4672791
>You have no idea how many games were around in the 80s and 90s on c64, Speccy etc. Hundreds of the bastards.
There were 29 new PC releases today, March 27 2018.

[Anonymous No.4672843]

>>4672394
I like very few modern games, and by modern i mean 8th gen. I find it hard to stay focused on the games, i feel like
"The more realistic a game becomes, the less your imagination works!" I feel that way about movies too. Id much rather watch reruns of the twilight zone than any michael bay sci fi thriller. Fucking cloverfield!! The last good sci fi movie was district 9 and the last good video game was fallout new vegas, in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.4672850]

>>4671096
>There may be good games coming out now but they will never hold a candle to the games that came between the mid 80's to around the late 90's. This is because most things try to recapture the past, repeat a tired formula or "innovate" by taking a step back. It's either imitation or a regression

I think today's racing sims beat out the retro ones. I'll take Forza or Dirt Rally over GT2.

[Anonymous No.4672889]

>>4672796
>The opposite is true
Imagine being such a braindead potato. Yeah, all of those politics-infused team shooters and MOBAs sure are great aren't they?

[Anonymous No.4672902]

>>4672889
>politics-infused team shooters
Imagine being this /pol/ that seeing a chubby girl with pink hair in a fucking MOBA gives you an aneurysm

[Anonymous No.4672903]

>>4672850
Any sumulation game is better now, because we can simulate things on a much more realistic scale... You would think, but elite frontier is still better than dangerous or no mans sky. I would rather play armored core 2 ps2 or virtual on, than any new mech game. Its very variable. Forza and world of tanks are amazing games, im waiting for virtual reality armored core/mech warriors, with the same detail as forza. Ohh fuck please!!

[Anonymous No.4672906]

>>4672902
>/pol/
There it is, the de facto defense of every buttblasted retard that tells you modern games don't suck. Apparently you can't criticize games for trying to push a political agenda without being told you're a blonald blumpf supporter or something.

Yeah, no, a chubby girl with pink hair is not what bothers me. Although trying to sell me a game based on the inclusion of gender-neutral bathrooms and not good gameplay, yeah, that bothers me. Stay retarded my man.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4672934]

>>4672906
I'm a Donald Trump supporter and I find it to be incredibly reactionary for you to dismiss modern gaming entirely for being "political". It's true that there's a certain political climate in the largest publishing communities that attempts to ostracize developers who voice non-leftist political views but only a tiny fraction of new games actually push leftism, less and less so the time as they repeatedly prove to be commercially unsuccessful regardless of echo chamber "critical acclaim"

[Anonymous No.4673054]

>>4672906
you can't speak properly anymore, can you?

[Anonymous No.4673161]

Okay genius,What about the great modern games that don't try to recapture the pasts? Not indie shit that tries too hard to be retro

[Anonymous No.4673183]

Once games became FMV watching open world walking simulators the games of the past all became better than current games.

[Anonymous No.4673239]

>>4671096
I like older games more than new ones for a variety of reasons however you're a fucking idiot OP. The 80s and 90s had their own brand of formulaic shit that got pumped out on a regular basis after the success of one game. The 80s had a plethora of subpar beat em ups and run and guns after the success of games like Double Dragon and Contra. The 90s had an absolute tidal wave of animal mascot with tude platformers after Sonic got big, third rate fighters to capitalize on the success of Street Fighter 2, and an ungodly amount of low quality first person shooters on PC after Doom and Quake.

[Anonymous No.4673373]

>>4671096
I've said it many times before.

To me gen 4-6 are the golden years of gaming imo. This is where the most innovation occurred. It is where at least half of the big IPs today were either refined to a formula or were created. Gen 3 was mostly about Nintendo saving gaming from the shit it was in at that time. Gen 3 also built Nintendo as a force in gaming. I couldn't put it in the same category though. Its great but not as great. Plus it was mostly a one console show.

Gens before 3 I was too young for and most even here don't talk much about since the games are too simple to have much discussion about and gens 7 and 8 are obviously modern. They also changed the industry for the worst. On top of all of that most of the innovation died out anyways.

Gen 4-6 was about delivering great games for the people. Gen 7-8 is about jewing of the highest degree. Gen 3 was Nintendo being jew but at least they revived gaming in America and it is hard to hate NES unless you are a huge underage that needs to fuck off to /v/.

[Anonymous No.4674016]

>>4673373
>jewing of the highest degree.

[Anonymous No.4674078]

I think the fact that legally free games didn't exist between the 80's and 90's should be proof that modern gaming is superior. Of course, I mean actual freeware like Cave Story and not Pay2Win garbage that nobody plays or looks through, because they're busy digging through Steam's Steamy Shit Store and crying about their capitalist Copyright nonsense in which the socialists are too much of retards to stop giving corrupt capitalists money.

The argument that modern gaming is shit just because mainstream corporate games are shit now compared to back then is idiotic. Just because you ate up their terrible advertisements back then that are still just as cringy and retarded, that doesn't mean there's not a better variety available, especially because you're still desperately watching their advertisements and retarded E3 bullshit.

[Anonymous No.4674129]

>>4671096
I feel like it's less that they were actually better, and more that there was positive trajectory.
i.e. when you go from SMB1 to Sonic, you can actually see an increase in graphical/sound quality and think "wow, look at what they can do nowadays!", and even going from PS2 to PS3/360 you kind of get that impression, but with each generation there's been diminishing returns to the point it's become underwhelming.
Similarly, you get less and less new genres to play with, or new takes on older genres, in favour of skin-swaps of the same basic idea (i.e. a WW2 FPS and an Iraq FPS, different vehicles and same gameplay.)

When you play an old game, you can still sort of sense that progression and improvement (and find hints of genres or improvements that never came about.), while with a new game there's a much greater sense that this is basically all it's ever going to be from here on out. Play CoD4 and why do you need to play CoD17?

>>4671121
There is another element to this, which is cultural and linked to the internet.
Before say the PS2 generation - but definitively before 2010ish - there's a sort of cultural recognition of some games over others. FF7 is recognized to be great - by who? "the other", not by any specific individual but by a sort of idea of culture itself. That sort of consensus was reached - you can't get that with a modern game because popular culture is too fragmented. There will be no film, game, TV show, etc, that defines the 2010s in the way we pretend you can define the 80s, 90s, and 2000s because everyone is away doing their own thing. Some of us are playing Overwatch, others are playing FF7, others still don't play games at all, some argue about games on /v/ but haven't bought or played one since before the DS Lite came out.

But everyone knows - they just know - that SMB1 is a good, historically important, era-defining game. Even after the last person to be a child in the 80s dies, we'll know that.

[Anonymous No.4674178]

>>4672793
That's a pretty good post. I agree about how the early stages of videogame history promoted creativity, humbleness, fun and a whole different attitude compared to the corporate mentality of today. There was also a corporate mentality back then too, but the zeigeist favored more weirdness, ingenuity and a lack of prejudices, so the results were interesting and fresh even if some corporation was behind some of those games.

Also, the rise of social media has been fatal for creativity. I hate seeing the same self-conscious jokes you can see everywhere in corporate twitter accounts like the official Sonic one. Japan and Asia it's probably where ingenuity and surprise still persist.

[Anonymous No.4674265]

>>4672840
> obvious meme name like Pukan Bye Bye
> it's just a ripoff
http://store.steampowered.com/app/822530/Pukan_Bye_Bye/

[Anonymous No.4674537]

>>4674178
>Japan
>surprise
Because it's not like their fiction industry isn't as stale, if not even more than western is. Watch some of the more popular anime series from the past seasons, read a few popular LNs, VNs and manga and tell me they stand for "ingenuity" and "suprise" with a straight face.

[Anonymous No.4674691]

>>4674537
Yep, you're right. I was talking more about a feeling I had about their behaviour reading some interviews with japanese developers, but yes, as far as creativity, I believe they're pretty stale too.
The Wii / DS era was the last time I felt japanese devs still got some spark.

[Anonymous No.4674775]

>>4674537
The same can be said for western cartoons and comic books. Usually the most popularist media leans more on cliches.

[Anonymous No.4674793]

>>4671096
>I only play shitty games from shitty companies - the post
I don't know about you but I fucking loved Binding of Isaac, Mark of the Ninja, Atelier Sophie, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Alien Isolation more than the 300 or so games I completed in my youth. And that's just a fraction of the full list of things I enjoyed.

My all-time favorite remains DMC3 however.